The city council on Wednesday, 07/23/2028. We'll call this meeting to order at 07:02PM. Roll call. Gustafson. Here. Leahy. Here. Melke. Here. Wasenberg. Here. Meyer, we hope will come. Linehan. Here. Johnson. Here. Alright. First order of business here would be approval of tonight's agenda. Are there any changes to tonight's agenda? None, Mayor. No. Okay. Do I hear a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. So moved by Leahy. All those in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye. All those opposed same sign motion carries four o. Tonight we do have a presentation. It's to award a contract for website redesign and, it's resolution 20 five-seventy two and on this we had sent out a request for proposals and we're gonna ask, Elka Johnson, our administrative and communications coordinator to, walk us through this project. Yes. Thank you, Mayor, Council. I have been working on the project to redesign our website because the last major
redesign of the website took place in 2021. And since then much has changed in the world of city websites, as well as the level of expectations, that people have of what the website provides, for residents. So let's take a look. I've wrote out some goals and objectives that I wanted this, I wanted to this project to, help me succeed in this project. So the goal was to create an engaging and user friendly site with a flexible CMS that enables city staff to provide timely,
accurate, and accessible information. And another big goal of this project was to help, the new accessibility requirements for, web content provided by the state and local government set out by the Department of Justice to get that up to, up to date. And so some of the goals here are, to engage, connect, and inform the community deliver a clean, welcoming, and intuitive online experience ensure full compliance with the, web content accessibility guidelines and empower staff with a flexible, easy to use CMS to make timely updates.
And some of the objectives to help carry out those goals is to redesign the website and reflect the unique identity we have here in Falcon Heights. We organize the site structure, for better navigation and usability, update and streamline the content that's currently on there, remove some of the outdated material, and add new as needed. Another objective is to provide staff training, on the CMS as well as accessibility best practices. And then we also want to ensure compatibility across, devices. Okay. And CMS is content management System.
Yeah. So it's like the back end of the website. Yeah. So to kind of give a process summary, of the RFP, We issued the RFP on April 9. The deadline was on May 9 at 04:30. I received a total of 43 proposals. Wow. So I initially hoped to get this a little sooner, to you all, but because that took a little time to review, and to discuss with some of the vendors, it took me a little longer. The budget that we put aside for this was 25,000. And then for the evaluation,
what I did is I divided it up in rounds because I didn't want to hold on to 43 vendors throughout the entire process. So I was able to eliminate 27 proposals in the first round because they exceeded the budget of 25,000, or they didn't have the experience that we were looking for with municipalities. Some of them had experience with nonprofits or other kind of governmental organizations, but not necessarily with cities, or municipalities. And then in the second round, the,
proposals that moved forward to that round, they were reviewed more on, how they were able to help us comply with these accessibility guidelines, what kind of experience they have with municipal websites, what the cost was going to be, what what were they going to provide for that cost, and what kind of training and post launch support they had. Mhmm. And so finally, the there were top there was a top five, of vendors that were invited to do demos. So I did a demo with each one of them, and we decided to,
pick Civic Plus because they are very competitive in their pricing. They are very strong in their compliance with accessibility. They provide unlimited support and robust training. And they are, pretty well known with amongst other municipalities. They're used by over 10,000 organizations to provide their website. And their design of their websites and navigation is just very familiar. It's pretty easy to navigate for residents. This vendor is also used by a lot of our surrounding cities.
So the thought was that if residents go to those websites to find information, they would be familiar with how those website operate. And, they would be able to apply that experience to our website. So some of the goals that Civic Plus has is, I think, aligned pretty well with the goals and the objectives that I set out in this project. So they provide really good designs. The they have a pretty good methodology for navigate nation navigation in their website, and I'll be able to show some of that later. And then their back end.
So the CMS is really easy to use for staff. And it's also they provide a lot of support on the back end of things. They are, believe that they're able to assist all kinds of municipalities, smaller, medium sized, larger with all of the solutions that they provide. And then the way that they are able to differentiate is because they are, able to they'll launch the, website compliance with the current, accessibility guidelines. They will include a, software that's called AudioEye.
And they will that software will be able to provide ongoing compliance with the guidelines that are set out. So it offers automatic site remediation, to ensure compliance. So if I make a change on the back end of the website, that software will be able to verify that it actually still matches the guidelines. And then on the front end, it actually is a toolkit that, visitors can use. And they will be able to make changes on the website to ensure that they're able to, use the website to match their needs.
And I'll be able to show that in a second too. And then the other thing is is that they're just provide a lot of support for staff as well. There's a lot of training and videos and tutorials that are available. There is quarterly meetings with a success manager. And I think that's important, to note because none of us are that you know, we don't need high-tech, experience with websites to be able to operate this website. And so some of the features that would be included in this proposal, is are highlighted on the screen.
It's a little small. But some of the, things that are standing out is that I think is really well done on Civic Plus is their agenda center, which I'll be able to show you an example of in a second. But then as well as, the, emergency alerts. They have news flashes. And then another, add on feature that would we would be interested in is the CivicScent, or the newsletter module. And you'll be able to provide, to create newsletters with, templates so we wouldn't have to use other software to build a newsletter.
It's basically it's done on the back end of the website, And it's able to send out messages to multiple channels. You would create one message, and you can send it out to multiple channels. You can send it helped you create newsletters as well as, what they call quick messages. So residents can sign up for the newsletter. They can sign up for, alerts about snow plowing, and we can decide if we wanna send out the newsletter. We can use the templates that they've provided. And if you wanna do a quick message, you can just send out a message about snow piles are coming through.
And so for the project timeline, they estimate about ten to twelve weeks, from start to finish, which sounds pretty fast to me. So we'll see if that actually works out that way. But that just wanted to include that for you all. And then some of the costs related to the project. So the budget that we set out was $25,000 They broke it down into including it with and without the Civic Cent module. So without Civic Cent, the initial cost would be $9,661
and the annual cost would be $8,676 If we include CIVIC Send, it would be an annual cost of 12,000 or a setup cost of $12,035 and the annual cost would be $11,000.50. And there would be a 5% technology fee outlet beginning in year two of the contract. Either one of these include that the custom, custom design of the website, hosting and security will be done by Civic Plus, the unlimited support and training,
content migration of 150 pages, which currently we have 210 published pages. But I'm pretty confident we can narrow that down a little bit to a 150. They also include two years of agenda migration to the website. And then there is a redesign after thirty six or forty eight months of continued services as well as the AudioEye software to help with the accessibility, guidelines. So then I wanted to show some examples of some websites that Civic Plus does, that we might be familiar with.
One of those is Saint Anthony Village's website. Another one is the city of Winona. I'm not sure about Saint Anthony's, but Winona is one of their premium designs, which is what we were offered as well in our proposal. And then this is an example of the city of Farmington. And as you can see, a lot of information is provided on the front page. So it shows you some of their most frequently clicked links. There is a little banner with some of their, news items that they have. So residents can instantly see some of the news items that we put out. As well as a calendar for their events and then their meetings as well.
And then at the bottom, they just have some more of their quick links. So there's various ways for residents to find what they need, if they see it at the top, if they see it at the bottom. And then I wanted to show you the, AudioEye software. So there is a little, a little icon in the bottom of the website that residents can click and then they will bring up this little help desk, that is provides different ways for visitors to, change the website to make it, match their needs and their experiences. And I was going to show you that on the city of Winona's website as
they have the little audio icon in the bottom. So again, we have the the layout here. They have their news and event calendars together, a little on the middle of their screen. So the layout kind of stays the same. You can play around with how you wanna put it on the web site. And then here's the audio eye. So you can change the contrast of the website. You can change the text size, change the font. And then I also wanted to show you what it looked like on a mobile screen,
because I think our website currently doesn't look as nice and just looks very, easy to navigate. It's just kind of stretched out a little bit. But Civic Plus is able to provide the website, on multiple devices. And then an overview of what the agenda center would look like. So it kinda looks like in chronological order, and then residents can sign up through the notify me, to get notified if an agenda gets posted. And then the minutes will be posted here as well once they are published.
And then we'll probably include, a section where residents can go to the link to the Nine North videos, of the recordings. And then we have here is the notify me, kind of what that would look like. This is from the city of Roseville. We'll also use the Civic Plus. So residents can sign up for email or text notifications. So for example, they can sign up for news updates through their email. But if they wanna get notified about when the snowplows are coming through, they can say, I wanna get a text about this because I'll be looking at my phone, much sooner than I would look at my email.
And that's it. Good work. Wonderful. Nice. Questions from council? No. Residents are going to love it, and it'll be great for staff. I've heard about how clunky it is. I think it's gonna be great. I have a couple quick questions just so I'm clear. So Mhmm. The the initial term, that's what we pay in year one, or we also pay the annual recurring services in year one as well? No. Okay. Just the initial. An annual recurring service. So that includes hosting and, and support and continued training. Yeah. The module, it would include the CivicSend module.
Yep. And use of the software like AudioEyeM. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And the 5% annual, increase in fee that says it happens in year two, is that gonna happen every year? Or is that I'm not sure about that. Okay. I would have to check on that. Okay. I would think it happens every year. Every year? Okay. So that's something that applies there after. Yeah. Okay. And then it's also possible to add additional features if we wanted to later on. They have a lot of different add on modules that you could add on later if you'd be interested in adding that.
Okay. Okay. Thanks. Very nice. Yeah. So I'm happy that, we're looking at this particular vendor because I believe, when I don't know if it was 2018 or by 2021 when it was actually updated. Mhmm. We this was one of the ones that I was hoping we'd do, but it was way over budget for where our budget was at at that time. So we just had to go nice but can't do it. So I'm I'm Flip flop now. Pardon? The current vendor submitted two, and their proposal was higher.
Oh, that's crazy. Plus. But I think it's their annual costs are just for Civic Plus are just a lot higher than what we currently pay annually Sure. For our current vendor. So I guess it's just a little flip flop. Mhmm. Mhmm. I'm also glad about the AudioEye, just that that allows people to modify for their needs. And just to clarify, it modifies for them personally much like anybody has an app or a tool on their own website. It doesn't change it for everybody, but just for their device.
Yes. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. My last thing, with the notify me, will people that are currently getting e updates be grandfathered into this, or do people have to sign up all over again? I will have to gather the data from our current vendor because I don't have access to that data right now, which with Civic Sent, we would have access to that data. So I would be able to rec I would have to request the data and transfer it over, but I would think it would also be nice for residents to
determine which, other topics they would want to be signed up for because we can create all of the items that they that we think residents want to get notified about. And so I think it would also be nice to provide them that opportunity to sign up for items that they wanna get notified about. So our e news and any crime alerts per neighborhood would have to roll into this new package is what you're saying. Yeah. We would have to trans or migrate that information. It would be nice if there's some way we can roll people into it and
then tell them, please look at it and make their own updates because it's taken a long time, I mean, years to get, the small volume of people that we have signed up right now. Yeah. We have a we have a decent amount of people signed up. I think it's, like, 1,600 or something. 1,600. Yeah. It's just taken forever to get to that 1,600. I haven't checked recently how much it is, but, yeah, I can check on that and make sure that they at least get notified about the newsletter, because they have I think that's a big component of how we get information across.
Mhmm. So Great. Thank you so much. Mhmm. Another question just follow-up on, the last point about, selecting which things residents would like to be informed of. Mhmm. When they go to the I assume they would go to the website, say that they wish to be on the list, and there's like a series of click boxes, probably. Yeah. Yeah. It is. So I was trying to I just, like, clipped some of the items that they have. I've not sure if you've ever looked at other cities' websites, but Rosevilles, they have bid postings, the newsletter. You can get calendar updates. You can get police department updates.
You can get all kinds of updates. Your profile as it Yeah. You kind of set up you put in your email address or your phone number, and then you select which ones you wanna be signed up for, and then that's it. Okay. Seems like it's streamlining because currently, you have to Yeah. With where we're at right now, there's probably two or three different things that people have to take on before. Pages. Right. You can keep going because it will suggest new pages. I'm not sure if anyone has ever gone down that rabbit hole,
but at some point, you're like, do I want information from the state? So it keeps going. But, yeah, this is just this stays within our website. You don't have to go to another website to get notifications. It's great. Is, this website is compatible with all of our current online payment systems and registration systems and Yeah. They can integrate all of those tools. Those into it? Yeah. Currently, we just link to those tools, because we would we just use a couple different, other softwares Okay.
Such as I work for our permitting. And on our current website, it just it's like a button that you click, but it links to the permitting software. Okay. Right. Yeah. Right. So it'd be the same Yes. Type of Yeah. So we won't have to change all of that software that we've been dealing with. Okay. But we will have to increase our annual budget for website because it's quite an increase. And knowing that it's changing, you know, after that second year, it's gonna go up incrementally to stay on top of that.
So, hopefully, they flag us or flag's not a good word, but they notify us early enough so that when we're doing budget and Yeah. Our administrator's going through all those line items, that can be included before the end of the year. Yeah. If if I may jump on that too. That is kind of one of Civic Plus's trade offs with it. So when we did the Granicus website redesign '21, much larger upfront. That 25,000 number was what we took from that time. So it was 25,000 upfront and then 4,000
annually is about what we pay. Mhmm. Civic Plus kinda does more of a subscription model, and so it works well for city budgeting purposes. It's kinda hard for a lot of small cities to budget 25,000 every couple years. Instead what they do is they even out. And that's why they say that you get a free website redesign every four years if you sign another four year contract. Mhmm. You know, so it's just kind of it it smooths it out so you pay the same amount over 4 years. Okay. But it's just instead of having, you know, really high years for a redesign, it's just kinda continual.
But if you stay with Civic Plus for a while, you can do a new website with them every four years. And that's what a lot of these cities have done that have been with them for a while is they just they launch a new website, and it's a lot cleaner to launch a website with your own vendor versus going out and moving and doing everything again. Yeah. Appreciate that clarity. And then the text alert would obviously be a separate sign up because you'd be putting your phone number in. Yeah. You can decide what you would want to do. One other, feature that I've been hoping for is the language capacity.
Right now, we've been using Google waiting for an upgrade. So There is Google they use Google Translate as well. Google Translate. I think a lot of websites do Are doing that right now. Having I'm not I'm sure there is some sort of software for that, but I think, yeah, I think a lot are just using Google Translate because it has access to so many different languages. Sure. And I've I've translated, like, our website before into Dutch, and to see if it actually kinda matches. And it it works.
It's not the greatest, I would say, because some of the terms that we use here, we just don't use in a different language. So it's kinda hard to match it up, but it works. You can get to where you need to get. And and Google Translate hasn't always existed, so it's nice that that tool can be Yeah. Included in here. Mhmm. And it will be meet all of the requirements for the ADA, website content Yeah. Things that are coming down from I was kinda worried about that too because we're
pretty small. It's just me that kinda upgrades the website, and I'm not an expert in those guidelines. And so when I spoke with, Civic Plus, they have, kind of guardrails in place as well on the back end when you're making updates. Like, there's only a certain amount of fonts you can pick from. Oh, okay. And then if you implement an image, you are required to provide an alt text. And then with the AudioEye, it kinda does a scan as well, and it, remediates that. And then there's also the whole support team from Zivk plus that could help you
with that. And then when they supply the website, like, when it's done and it goes live, it is fully compliant, with those guidelines. That is great that there's a software that's checking on an ongoing basis because Yeah. I've known some people who've had to do these adaptations and do presentations, things like that. It's challenging, but it is more challenging as making sure it stays compliant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Have you met Barb? Communications at Saint Anthony Village. Yeah. I've been in touch with her. Great. She'll be a good resource. Yeah. So any further questions,
comments? Fantastic. Okay. Do we, propose we need to, to vote to adopt, resolution twenty five seventy two, awarding the contract to Civic Plus for the city webs website redesign project. So moved. So moved by Leahy. Further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed same sign. Motion carries four o. Next, we have approval of the, minutes for the, 07/09/2025, regular meeting of the city council.
Any changes to those minutes? I didn't see any. I hear a motion to approve the minutes from so moved by Melki. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed same sign. Motion carries four-zero. We don't have any public hearings tonight. We do have a consent agenda that has six items on it. First are our general disbursements through July 17, payroll through July 13 of $23,885.55
dollars wire payments through July 15 of $15,911 approval of Resolution 2,573, accepting a proposal from ABDO Financial Solutions for Finance Department Assessment. Three, approval of Resolution 2,574, adopting the Ramsey County Hazard Mitigation Plan. Four, approval of Resolution 2,575, supporting MWF Properties application for 2025 Metropolitan Council Livable Communities Demonstration Account Funds and Transit
Oriented Development Funds. Five, approval of Resolution 2,576, awarding crack sealing project to Farrier Asphalt Sealers, LLC. And number six, lawful gambling regulatory tax reimbursement to Roseville Area Youth Hockey. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. So moved by Wattenberg. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Motion carries four-zero. Anything on, the consent agenda that we'd like to highlight for our viewers at home or those
that are watching, after the fact? Yeah. I would like to highlight Resolution 20 five-seventy three accepting the proposal of ABDO, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly, Financial Solutions for Finance Department Assessment. And I just appreciate the work of, our administrator, Linehan, and, just being preemptive with putting this in place at this time as we're transitioning our financial team. Thank you. Thank you. Any other spots? Do we do we need to explain some of these? Yeah. Sure. I'll just go through a couple of the other ones.
So, every city right now for number three, approval of resolution twenty five seventy four, is adopting the Ramsey County hazard mitigation plan. I serve as the city's, emergency management director. Previously, I've been in a role of the fire department, with the dissolution of the fire department. It kinda falls on the administrator. So I've been working with the that group, kind of meeting, quarterly, kinda reviewing this. They brought in a consultant, and really looking at, like, what our natural hazards are. Everything from tornadoes to flooding to, all these environmental concerns, looking at climate, etcetera. So the whole plan is 200 something pages.
There's a link in the packet. I think it's a pretty good plan the consultant helped with, and it'll help us kinda plan for the future. Also further supporting MWF Properties application for more, funding. So they're still kinda working towards their purchase and acquisition, of the am former Amber Flats property. But what they're doing now is they just need additional support. So this is us kind of giving further support. There's no city contributions for this. So it's just kind of us, kinda using our our status as a city. And then we'll actually we'll go in and apply as the applicant.
And so we would receive the grants and and pass it through to them, kinda similar to past, met council grants. The crack ceiling project. So this is one. We don't do a lot of crack ceiling, but it's something that we really, have done historically and we need to really keep up on. Kind of in the phases of, you know, kind of renovating your roads, crack sealing is so important because what it does is when those cracks start to form, University Grove is where we're gonna do this. So 2017, we redo University Grove, little cracks start to form. And if you go and you seal it, it's not the prettiest look, but what it does is it stops that from expanding.
And then instead of having to do a mill and overlay a couple years later, you can maybe buy another seven years or so, saving residents money. So very cheap way to save money and save our roads long term health. And then finally, lawful gambling. So there's an enterprise, Roseville area youth hockey. They're doing very successful over at Stouts. The city has to collect two different taxes for it, one of which we donate to charitable purposes. So that those funds we haven't determined. We're just kinda letting that build up. The second part is a cost that they have to pay for us to regulate
them. We set that in code at 3%. It's a little bit high, and we don't have 3% of their $18,000 worth of expenses to say that we spent to administer this program. So we are recommending that we refund that amount. So those are kind of the actions that were taken on the consent agenda. Thank you. Alright. Parents of the youth hockey will appreciate that. Yep. I think so. And the, and for full details, all of the details are in the, in the agenda packet available on the current website and,
will be available beyond. Tonight, we have a policy item, which is setting the date of Wednesday, August 6 at 06:30PM for a joint workshop with the Planning Commission to discuss Les Bolstad Golf Course Sale stakeholder discussion. Administrator Linehan, would you like to explain or introduce this one to council? Yeah. Thanks, mayor and council. So this is an item that doesn't quite fall under, it's not necessarily a policy, but it deserved a little bit more of a call out. So we've gotten a lot of interest in kind of what's that first next step
on the Les Bolstead Gulf property. And I think all staff, the council, we're all operating. This is a, you know, kind of a a big opportunity for our city, but it's also, we understand that there's a lot of concern around it too. It's a big change. And so we're trying to operate and just show too that we are a lot of our actions we're doing very publicly So that, you know, as we have this first discussion, we're inviting kind of the public, that this is a workshop, that we propose setting for Wednesday, August 6 at 06:30. Kind of as the planning process of this goes,
the planning commission will be involved as different applications go before them, and so will the city council because then actions would go for the city council. And so one of the things that as we've done our due diligence and we talked to other projects and other cities, they all recommend the most important thing is at the beginning to really identify who are the stakeholders, and who kind of are who's gonna do the work. There's a lot of work that's gonna come from this. And obviously, a lot of that is on staff, but then also at the policy level too. Mhmm. Where does that fall? And so it's something I think that'll be an opportunity at that meeting.
So we're kinda putting this data out there, kinda recommending that if this works for council, if this the council's open to having this as kind of our first action on this, to kind of, I guess, give support here formally. So that's the introduction on that. Okay. Comments, questions from council? Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah. Would, would this be, a time to invite someone from the county, or would that be later? Yeah. It's a fair question. I will say we've been we will be inviting the University of Minnesota, as the landowner. So we will invite the u. I think this will be a time where we identify if the county is a
is a a party, and we start kind of talking about who are all these various parties that we need, you know, the schools, what is their role. And I think after this meeting, that might be when, you know, if we set kind of, okay, we're gonna do a meeting here, that would define where the county's role would be in or where the schools or others. So I'd say after this one would probably be the the once we've identified who the stakeholders are. Because at this point, it's the responsibility or the role of the University of Minnesota to reach out to the county and have their discussion first rather than us reaching out to the county
until after this meeting. Correct? For yeah. I mean, to be honest, the county doesn't have a big role in this, and they've kinda stated as such. Their role will be in financing. So, you know, we'll need them as a partner for grants and other opportunities. Right. But it is different than other big projects that are going on because the county is usually has ownership responsibility. So Battle Creek and some of these other projects the county owns. So they're the landowner. So I think that's where they get involved. But here, our discussions, I believe, you know, kind of with staff at the county level,
is that they, you know, see this as the zoning and the authority will come through the city of Falcon Heights. Mhmm. But they are it it impacts them as a tax holder or a ta Tax recipient. Tax recipient, I guess, and also kind of a entity that kind of helps us with our EDA, other stuff like that. Absolutely. They're important. Mhmm. The streets around it. Yep. Yep. Indeed. But just yeah. I think that'll be a great thing to talk about is kinda who who do we need to include in the room and who needs a seat at the table. I think that'll be the most important thing is, you know,
kinda how we go about how we get the civic engagement, and then also who are the the decision makers and the the people that need they're gonna have that authority. Mhmm. That makes sense. Yeah. And that's our regular scheduled workshop. So Yes. That'll Yeah. That'll be our our big one there. And then if we have to take up something additional We'll work we'll worry about that on August, let's see, six. So that's gonna be, five days. So whatever. August 1. Right? Yeah. We we are gonna talk with the planning commission about,
some other code updates. So not really Oh, okay. Oh, that that wouldn't it's not all golf course. We'll talk to them about some other They wanna make some additional stuff. To talk about other other code updates and just make sure everyone's aligned on on other updates they've been working on. Good. So it'll be kind of a dual of two items probably. Okay. Joint workshop for this and then the joint workshop for For their Code cleanup. Code cleanup that they've been working on this year. Yep. Okay. Cool. Do we need anything more than just direction from council on that? We don't need to vote or or does anybody have an objection to it?
I suppose would be the way to way to put it. No. It's no problem. We're we're all open to it. Get Should be in attendance. Yeah. Okay. Well, that sounds Above quorum. Sounds right. We we we got a quorum. I think it was a question. So we could say, go ahead and set set that as a workshop agenda. Yeah. The planning commission, I believe, has a quorum as well, but they're right on they're right on the fence with this one too. So because it's not their normal date. So Right. That's true. Yeah. And, and it wouldn't be official official. It'd be a workshop. Yep. And it's a discussion with those that are there Yeah.
To try to set the stage for an understanding where we're gonna Mhmm. How we're gonna start and proceed Yeah. Absolutely. Basically. Yep. No no decisions are gonna be made on the future of it that at that meeting, I I wouldn't think. Yeah. Yeah. That we would not anticipate. Alright. Information and announcements here on a, nice warm Wednesday evening. Council member Wasserberg is, I am returned from a rather long absence. I don't actually have any announcements, with regards to city business, other than I had a wonderful time where I was while I was gone, so it's but it's great to be back to the lovely city of Falcon Heights
and our friends and neighbors. Welcome back. Council member Lee. Yeah. When we travel, we appreciate even more where we're from. Absolutely. Where we abode. Yeah, so I want to thank everyone who participated and attended the ice cream social. Staff did a great job setting that up, organizing, and at a different location. So but, coming out at first, I was wondering where everyone was till I came around to where the ice cream was at the door here and found that the resource opportunity that was happening in here and all the tables was absolutely fabulous and a
buzz with everyone coming through, residents and nonresidents, and, commending the Community Engagement Commission for tabling and taking questions and getting information out to residents including those that are in apartments. We value all of our residents whether they're homeowners or leasing where they live. We were scheduled to have a meeting on this Monday the twenty first but did not have enough for quorum which brings me to share with y'all. We have openings on the CEC so please consider if this is something you'd like
to do, visit our next meeting or reach out to staff to learn more about the different things that CEC provides, to our fine city of Falcon Heights. That is it for me. Okay. Councilmember Melki. Sure. The state fair, task force met last week, discussed more about getting the word out, clarifying any questions that people might have. They also member staffed, the resource fair portion of the ice cream social. Environment commission met as well last week, to discuss landscape plans for the community park, replacing boulevard trees this fall.
And, also, they were at and we want everyone to, map their trees. That's a piece that you can do on the website. We're trying to capture out the whole all the trees that are in the city to evaluate our canopy. And then the lawn and garden tours was on Saturday. So just wanna thank the 11 residents who host it, who served as host. Yeah. And had a good time with people that came. Traffic was a little light, but it was our first one. And, yeah, gardeners are passionate. We had a good time.
So grateful for staff for the map that they created and the yard signs. People are pretty proud of that sign in their yard. Cool. And you had one more comment. Yeah. I I agree. Council member Milke, I think that that one will increase over the years with more participation and and attendance. Just want to bring to everyone's attention that the August, which is August 5, is Minnesota night to unite. So sign up, for your block party or long block party or or groups of, clusters.
Even if you're in apartment, your apartment complex can host a block party as well. Just contact city hall for ways to do that by signing up here and also through, Saint Anthony Police Department because we partner with our police department for the activities there. Minnesota Night to Unite, those that are new to the city, that is the same as National Night Out. So good time to meet neighbors and get acquainted and just bring everyone together during our, close to end of summer. Cool. The, I'd like to thank everyone for,
the ice cream social. It was it was great. It was a good time. I'd like to thank my young bride for spending a quite a bit of time handing out, ice cream treats and, doing that. I did get to walk home as a result of that, which gave me an opportunity to connect with neighbors as I was walking that I, you know, who had questions, and I got home even later than I had anticipated. But, I didn't have much going on Thursday night anyway other than the ice cream treats. They were great. The resource fair, always spectacular. Having our community partners join us in that and having our commissions there and our
task force to meet and talk and discuss stuff. They all enjoyed being here as I made my last minute tour of it. And so it was great fun. The fin band, you know, had a good time in the parking lot. And, it was a little hot, so they didn't have a lot of dancers. But, the lead's, two year old grandson was out or grand nephew, I forget, was up and was able to dance, and he was dancing good, I heard. So that, that was fun. And, public works, people putting up all the stuff, taking it down.
It was great. So thank you all to everybody who, who made that happen. And we'll see you on night to unite, at there. That's, week from so we got two weeks from yesterday. So, that'll work. And mister Linehan, what, more things are going on? Yeah. Thank you, mayor and council. So, just wanted to kinda give a note that we handed out 450 pieces of ice cream at ice cream social. Excellent. So we anticipated about 300 attendees is what we're kind of using as the metrics of one and a half ice creams per person.
They're asking. Some skewing high, some passing on ice cream. So it was a nice event. Thank you to staff, for all their work. You know, Alka had put in a ton of work and also especially for Kelly. You know, just the amount of work she puts in planning, getting everything together, changing. And this year, it was kind of the, can we have it at Community Park? Will we not? And so we did it here. Good news is we, Excel was up disconnecting the electricity on, the day of the ice cream. Oh my. So there wouldn't have been power or ice cream. So Or a band.
Or a band. Yeah. So it worked out pretty well pretty well on that one. And then kind of other ones too that I agree. I thought the the garden tours are cool. Hopefully, it continues to to grow. I drove around and got to check out some of the gardens, learned a bit. I am struggling as a gardener, this year, so it was good to get some advice from some people who know very much what they're doing. So cool to see that grow and hopefully can continue that as a item we have in the future. Staff's getting ready, putting together the, the past distribution for the, state fair pay by mobile parking for the residents who live in those zones.
We have all the letters printed. I think I heard the number was 1,800 copies, total because you have 600 with three pages. So, the copier, that that was a big lift for her copier. Me. But getting it all together. So thank you again for staff for their work on that. That should be going out, next couple of I don't wanna quote it exactly because I know it's a ton of work, but we'll be getting out those out very shortly here. And then Public Works has been busy too. They're out, replacing a lot of the storm drains, in the neighborhood. So they're kinda working, through the city. So if you see them out,
that's what they're doing. And then they also did 90, gopher one locates throughout the North Home Northeast Quadrant area. So if you see a lot of stakes out, we're doing the utility locates to put the temporary signs in for, the pay by mobile. So we're sticking with the plan. The plan is we're gonna put up the signs and then take them down as much as possible, trying to piggyback as much as we can on existing signage. So whenever there's a light pole, trying to put a sign on a light pole, just trying to minimize the visual disruption. And then also,
I've been going through interviewing, parking ambassadors. Great response to the applications. Have a great candidate pool. I'm finishing up the applications, and, we'll have a full slate of parking ambassadors for the program. So getting everything from, vehicles, stickers, uniforms, cell phones, all the logistics that'll go into getting this program, making it successful. And so we're we're on track. So everything's on track for the fair. And then the, pavement management program too, Falcon Woods looks fantastic. They're just doing final cleanup. They have stuff that we're making them come get and pick up,
restore some of the spots. And then Northholme did get pushed back at least another week. The rain is not helping, but they are going through when they get chances and, making progress on some of those, manhole covers. So, that would conclude my update. And that's still ahead of schedule even for Northpawn? Yeah. Yeah. They're still they have until August 15, and the contractor will face financial penalties. So they're gonna finish it up before then. That is they they will not let that happen. Yeah. They were out on California very busy today before before rain came in.
Yeah. They're they're on the job. The plus side of the delay was that less cars parked there during this last car show. Mhmm. Yeah. That was tough on residents. It would be. Yep. It is. It was tough with the noise. I heard a lot of complaints. And it was oh, that was this one this last weekend. Yep. Yeah. Unfortunately, I was out of town on a family celebration thing. So activity. But there, today's reign was was really something. But anyway, so that that works there. Anything else before we, move to community forum?
Everybody wanna spin around and talk from the podium? Mhmm. Mhmm. Those that are here offer you an opportunity to address the council with anything that's, on your mind regarding city business. So, think of that opportunity on a Wednesday evening coming, in the near future on that second and fourth Wednesday of each month when the city council meets here at Falcon Heights City Hall. At that, I'll close community forum. I see no one here to, take part in this dazzling stuff. And, thanks for coming out on a nice evening and,
doing the work for the city. Thank you all. Do I hear a motion for, item K? So moved. So moved to adjourn. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed same sign motion carries four-zero. Thank you very much. We are adjourned.