Alright. The music has stopped. So that means this is the city of Northfield council meeting for Tuesday, 05/20/2025. We will start the meeting with a, calling the meeting to order, and we'll start with a roll call. Mayor Zweifel? Here. Councilor Peterson White? Here. Councilor Soukup? Councilor Beamer? Here. Councilor Dahlen? Here. Councilor Holmes? Here. Councilor Ness? Here. Councilor Soukup? Here. Wonderful. Perfect. Perfect timing. Thank you very much. The next item on our agenda is open public comment.
I don't have any cards or any requests to speak tonight. If you would like to speak, please come forward. You'll have two minutes to address the council on any item that is not already on our agenda tonight. Alright. I don't see anyone. So we will move on to approving our agenda. I will note that we have two supplemental memos. Is that correct? Two? We have two supplemental memos in addition to our agenda. So looking for a motion. Councilor Ness. Move the agenda. I don't know if it's amended with, I can't remember.
I'll just move the agenda. Thank you. Councillor Beamer? I'll second. Thank you. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? The agenda is approved. Our next order of business, we have some presentations tonight, which I'm very excited about. It's a very celebratory evening. We just, had a nice opening for a permanent exhibit in City Hall. And so that was the first celebration. And the second celebration tonight is a presentation of our stormwater pollution prevention poster contest winners. Take it away, mister Simonson. Okay.
There we go. Alright. Thank you, madam mayor and fellow council members. So tonight, I'm here along with, James McDermott, our water quality technician, and Heron Marr from Clean River Partners. And they're gonna present awards for our twenty twenty five stormwater poster contest winners. So I'll turn it over to Heron, and she will give you a rundown of the contest and present the awards for this year's, recipients. When we're all said and done, we'd like a group picture with the council, with all our winners. Oh my goodness. More complicated than I thought. Hello, council. Hello, guests. I'm gonna be doing a lot of this because I wanna be talking to everybody.
Thank you so much for being here tonight if you're here for, the recognition ceremony for the poster contest winners. Like Sean said, my name is Heron Marr. My pronouns are they, them, theirs, and I'm the community engagement coordinator for Clean River Partners, which is an environmental nonprofit located right here in Northfield. Our mission is to inspire people and organizations to protect and value and improve the Cannon River watersheds land and water. And one of the ways we do that is through our educational programming, which is for all ages. But one piece of that is the stormwater poster contest for grades two through five
at Northfield Schools. And we're really excited. We got 92 poster submissions this year, which was up quite a bit from last year, which is really exciting. And we went through all of them together. James and Claudia from the city and I went through all these posters. And it was really, really hard to decide because there were a lot of really good submissions this year. But we were able to narrow it down to, a first, second, and third place, and two honorable mentions for both age groups. So we're gonna be starting tonight with our second through third grade age group.
And I'm gonna grab my notes to make sure I don't get any names wrong. Alright. So for our second and third grade age group, we've got in the honorable mention category, Grayson Davis and Evan Estrella Hemp. Grayson and Evan, are either of you here tonight? Shucks. That's okay. We'll keep moving. Alright. Next, in third place for second through third grade, we have Lucy Strand from Spring Creek Elementary. Yeah. And, Lucy, you can come on up to the front. So we're gonna have all of our winners come on up to the front tonight.
You'll get your prize. You get your your certificate. In second place for second through third grade, we have Charlie Reeland Ryland. Rieland. Thank you for saying it nice and loud and clear. That way, we'll all be ready to take a nice photo at the end. And in first place for second through third grade, we have Addison Blumhofer. Addison. I didn't forget to mention what our prizes are tonight. So for third place, we have five free admissions to the Northfield Pool. Second place is 10 free admissions. And first place is an individual season pass.
Unfortunately, that got a little lost in translation, so we only have punch cards for first place right now. So you can start using those and then come back over to City Hall, and we'll get you a season pass too. Alright. Moving on to fourth and fifth grade. Our honorable mentions tonight are Jezzie Vogel and Willow Reland. Rylan? Did I say wrong again? Reland. Okay. Dougie. Correct. And sweet. I'm gonna shake both of your hands. Alright. In third place for fourth through fifth grade, we have a team of three. So we have Edwin Berg,
Odin Mesa, and Franklin Purcell. And the way this was written on the poster was perhaps a little confusing. It was written as Odin Franklin Edwin, which I perceive to be one name. So we have one certificate for them tonight, but we will be printing more. Alright. In second place for fourth through fifth grade, we have Lola Wilhelm. Lola, are you here? Sweet. And last but certainly not least, we have, in first place for fourth through fifth grade, Elise Diederdt. Alright. I'm gonna try to get it to smoosh together a little bit. And then I would like to invite the council also to come up and join
the picture. While they're coming up, can you give one last round of applause? And hold your certificate up nice and proud. And I'm gonna ask you to stay right where you are because I need to know what order you're in so I can write the captions for the photo. Okay. Yeah. Who's this? Madison. And we got And then we have Edwin and Franklin. Okay, sweet. Thanks so much. Thank you very much, Stormwater poster makers. No. That's a nice prize. Okay. Our next agenda item will be recognition of service for our graduating Northfield High School seniors and youth coming off our boards and commissions.
Davin and I will be coming down and handing out the certificates. Martha Lundin is going to be, reading off the names as we hand those out. And I just have a few words before, we come down there and do all that. So in continuation of our evening of celebration with the opening of the history, exhibit here at City Hall, our stormwater winners and our youth on boards tonight, a huge thank you and congratulations to all our youth who step up and take a leadership role in our community. I've only been mayor for a few short months,
and already I see and feel the impact of your work. I attended the Clean River Partners annual meeting, and there were youth members actively participating in the meeting. I attended an Environmental Quality Commission meeting, and there were youth members taking on roles on committee appointments. And this year, the mayor's youth council brought forward a change to the council's rule of business, which was welcomed and adopted by the council. I appreciate your commitment to making Northfield a welcoming and engaged community that it is. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
So thank you all. And now we'll come down and present the awards. Good evening, everybody. My name is Martha Lundeen. I am the Youth Engagement Coordinator for Healthy Community Initiative, and I am the adult advisor for the students who serve on boards and commissions in our community. Students, as you come up, I would invite you, once you have your certificate, not to sit down quite yet because we will then have you all take a photo with council members. So it'll go in order of city graduating seniors,
city non continuing members, and then nonprofit graduating seniors and nonprofit non continuing. Okay. Great. Claire Casson, Jayel Conde, Andy Elliott, Will Flannery, Anna Forbord, Rhianna Gonzalez Sandoval, Aki Gupta, Maria Hegland, McKenna Malika, Noah Morel, Cameron McMillan, Cameron Melnichuk, Hannah Pape, Shelby Patterson, Rebecca Perez, Danica Sorum, Alec Vader, Anna Zamora, Estella Freeman, Victoria Hema, Hollis Holden, Kaya Markovsky, Ben Parrish, Dalila Agapito,
Saul Alvaro Alvarez, Ben Bergland, Caroline Bryce, Corey Dimas, Lauren Hefmeier, Audrey Hinman, Mary Kamock, Lola McCarty, Edie McLaughlin, Sofia Nyston, Avery Parker, Mackenzie Perkins, CJ Riele Mart Merrill, Elizabeth Tracy, Max Boardman, and Chastity Hicks. At this time, while we're still giving out certificates, if the council members could come down and gather behind our graduates, that would be wonderful. Do you see everything through or are you ready? K. Smile. If you can't see a camera, please let us know now. Alright. I got like 10 photos of you.
Good. It's pretty it's pretty light. Is it? We still have one more item of celebration tonight, and that's the hospital audit. Just just saying. I don't know. You know? So, You guys just know how to attract a crowd. I know. You just look at yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So our next item is a presentation of the Northfield Hospital and Clinics twenty twenty four audit. We are gonna welcome mister Zander. Ben Martig is no. I'm on the yeah. Ben, are you gonna give an intro?
Mister Martig is gonna give an intro. And then Corey Bolter is here from Bolton no. From Clifton, Larson, Allen. Sure. While they're walking up, I'll introduce at least the first two And there's someone up there who's not on the I think first time in our council meeting, we have the CEO and president, Xander Abbott. Eric. I missed Eric. Sorry. Eric Guth. Yeah. Sorry. I think first time in the council chambers here at our official meeting. We're here to welcome our CEO and president of Northfield Hospitals and Clinics, Xander Abbott. So welcome to him and Eric Guth, our CFO for the hospital. And I'll let them introduce the auditor with that.
I think they were gonna do a little introduction and welcome to the council. So welcome. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, counsel. I just wanted to say hello. It's been great to have joined the team at Northfield Hospital and Clinics. I've been on board for about four months now, so I've really appreciated it. Learned a lot, met a great number of teams, and really enjoyed being out in the community. So I look forward to continue to interact with all of you, and this is a great first opportunity to be here. So with that, I'll turn it over to Eric who's gonna kick things off. Sure. Eric Gutz, CFO at the hospital, introduced Corey Belter. He's been on our we've used Clifton Larson Allen for many,
many years. Corey has been, on our audit for three years. Lots of experience auditing hospitals and health systems, both in Minnesota and around the country, and very versed in in what we got going on at the hospital as well. With that, I'll introduce Corey. Well, thanks for having me. I think it's my, third time here, so thanks for letting me present. And it feels like there's hardly anyone here after all the celebrations here, but I think we'll we'll keep the good news coming. So, we'll keep this, hopefully fairly brief. But if there's questions, feel free to to interrupt comparing to others and some of the other required communications that we went through with
the finance committee and the hospital board, last month. So, a little bit of, I think this is the I think this is last year's presentation. Yeah. This is actually for Yeah. This is from '24. Is that what went out in the packets as well? I was like, wait a minute. We didn't have any. Looks like the one in our packets might be the correct one. Should be should be '24 on the front. Yeah. We should be able to can we pull can we show the can we do a PDF on that? We'll get that pulled up for,
the public in a minute here. We'll get the 2024 audit. We do have it. It is in the council packet. So if you're at following along at home, you can look in the council packet for it. Thank you so much for the technical support. It's the right year now, so it will be a little bit better. So just some of the summary of significant events that occurred. So there were some new debt issuance this year. That was all recorded appropriately during the year. There was adoption of a new accounting standard, GASB 101, related to compensated absences. That did not have an impact on the financial statements,
but it was something that we had to, work through this year. As part of the audit, we do some unpredictability tests, and those are really tests, a lot of times, done to just kind of, you know, look for fraud and those types of things. And this year, we did some additional testing on disbursements and, did not note any issues as part as far as that testing. There were no audit adjustments, during the audit, so that's not always the case. So that's always a a positive when you don't wait for the audit to to make adjustments to the financial statements. So just feel good about the financial statements that you're seeing on an ongoing basis, that they're they're good financial statements.
There's one past adjustment I'll talk about in a little bit, here. No subsequent events, and there was no material weaknesses noted. Some of the other required communications, the goal of an audit is an expressing opinion. So happy to report that it's an unmodified opinion. So that's the highest level of assurance that you can get as part of the audit. We utilize a risk based audit approach for the audit. So we look at the areas that are more, risky, more material to the financial statements as as part of the audit. The significant accounting policies are in note one of the financial statements. As noted, we noted the adoption of GASB one zero one,
which did not have an impact. There were no, unusual transactions. All the other accounting policies were considered appropriate. There are no changes related to those. The significant estimates are noted in the middle of the page there. The most significant is the valuation of accounts receivable, third party payer settlements, and then the pair the pair of pension liability. No bias on those numbers. I would feel that they're reasonable. They're conservative. They're consistent. So no manipulation of income from any of the estimates. And then there are no adjustments. As I said, there was a past adjustment just related to, the organization wrote off the full amount of the bond refunding loss.
Technically, it should have kept, amortizing that over a little bit of a period. So that was that was elected to be adjusted this year. Got a representation letter from management. No difficulties, no disagreements. The audit went extremely well. And like I said, we presented it last month to the finance and hospital board. This is the internal control communication. So if we had any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies, we would have to note those in the report and did not have any of either of those noted this year. Then we have some financial ratios. So this just compares the hospital to similar size,
hospitals in in that we work with. That's CLA works with from 50,000,000 to $250,000,000 similar paid facilities. And then a couple of standard and pours, A rated and B rated facilities. So from a profitability standpoint, the first ratio here is the operating margin. So you can see that the operating margin has been challenging for the industry. '22, '20 '3 were some real tough years for hospitals. And '24 has been better for organizations. You can see that Northfield Hospital clinics is comparing right in line with where the others are from operating margin.
Total margin, this takes into account your non operating revenues as well. So similar trend as you're seeing from the operating margin back to a positive. So the overall total margin is 0.4%, comparing favorably to the comparisons. Probably the best ratio looking at profitability is the EBITDA, which is your earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization. You can see that the organization went from a negative 0.8% to 5.2%. So obviously, big increase in profitability this year.
The revenue is fairly consistent, and you can see that there was a lot of expense control if you look at the financial statements. Net days and accounts receivable, this is one that's that went up this year. The main change here is the organization works with Change Healthcare or worked with Change Healthcare, I should say. They had a security breach during the year, so that that caused some challenges. It's a data clearing house for the payments. So there was some slowdowns there. And from talking to Eric, I think, you know, this is down in the sixties now. So, subsequent to year end, it's been moved down a little bit.
And so, that's that's a positive as well. What this graph shows is just the percentage of AR by the the major payer types that's over 90 days old. You can see that the organization has a little bit more self pay than some. And then total AR over 90 is a little bit older as well. So I think as as the organization continues to work through, the change there as well as there was a system implementation, for for new software as well kind of before that previously. That'll that'll drive these numbers down. Days cash on hand for all sources. So what this this measures is how long could the organization,
be sustained without any more cash coming in the door? Just a couple of things I wanted to point out in this trend here is the organization with some of the debt covenant challenges in the previous years. The banks made the organization pay some of debt more accelerated than what was initially there. So when you're looking at, Northfield Hospital compared to these others, it's right in line with what you're seeing, but other organizations have not had to pay off as much debt. So when we go to some of the debt ratios, you can kind of see the difference there. So the debt service coverage ratio, what this is taken to an account is all the debt payments that were made.
And so you can see in '22, '20 '3, that's why those are negative coverage. In '24, this includes some of those additional payments as well. But the organization met the covenants. It's a little bit of a different calculation, as far as what the covenants had for this year. And this is the graph that I wanted to point out that the organization you can see this is the debt to capitalization. So this looks at your long term debt divided by your long term debt plus your equity or net assets. You can see the organization's at 25%. You can see that the the triple b is at 43%.
So those other organizations, when you're comparing their days cash on hand, they have a similar level, but they have a higher debt load. So Northfield Hospital with those additional payoffs has much less debt and leverage in some of these comparisons. Average age of plant, what this shows you is, you know, health care, obviously a capital intensive industry. And as a whole, you can see that, you know, you're right in line with where the other organizations are at. But at fifteen years, definitely, it's continued to increase as an industry. Any questions on any of the graphs? The last section here, I'm not gonna really spend time going through here,
but, obviously, we spent a lot of time just trying to keep up to date on what's happening out in the industry. So just included the similar slides that we shared with the finance and and board. And this is probably the key one that we're looking at as a firm. Just what are the things that are key drivers to watch? And obviously, with the new administration and Congress, there's a lot of challenges that could be out there as far as on some of the payment changes. Potentially, there could be less payments in the health care world, which would cause, you know, reimbursement to be even more challenged. And, you know, continuing to look at the financial improvements and strategic growth areas,
those are big focus areas for health care as well as what's technology and AI gonna do for the future. So all these drivers are things that just makes the environment for health care more challenging. So definitely wanted to point that out since you're aware that, those guys behind me have a tough job, to continue to move forward. So and then cybersecurity and and, IT, there's some proposed changes for HIPAA. Obviously, health care is a is a organ is a industry gets attacked, you know, gets hacked or gets tried to get hacked more than some of the other industries. So there's some proposed items here related to
that. With that, that's pretty much all I had. Like I said, the audit went really well. The books are very clean. So I think that's the, you know, two key things that as a city council, you should be be happy to hear from the auditor. So good good clean report. Great. Thank you. Are there any questions from the council? Wonderful. Yes. Eric. Goose. Yes, please. Just from an organizational perspective, you know, you saw a lot of the financial ratios, tough twenty twenty two, twenty three industry wide. We weren't immune to that. Similar to the industry, we've been working our way back,
and and '24 was an improved year and continue to work our way back. I'd say, organizationally, we're probably lagging a little bit on some of those other, some of those other comparables in the in the industry. I think we are, focusing on all the headwinds that are that are coming our way. Obviously, we take those as they come, but focusing on strategic priorities, whether that's revenue growth, operational efficiencies, or, adjusting our spending to match our strategic priorities, but committed to the community and and wanna remain independent for the community here in Northfield and our surrounding communities too. So take any questions as well too.
Great. Thank you so much. It looks it looks like, there aren't any questions for you tonight, but thank you very much for this audit. It's great to see. It's great to hear that, I I appreciated that you knew right away that you were looking at the wrong year. You know, that was that was like boom. I got you this summary slide. I was like, wait a minute. That didn't happen. We tried to mix it up, but you caught us. So yes, thank you. This is all great news. I appreciate it very much. And I know that Mr. Abbott is looking at
getting scheduling meetings with counselors and, getting to know everyone. So we look forward to that opportunity as well. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Yes. Thank you. The next item tonight is our consent agenda. So, you'll see it on the screen if you're watching from home or you're in the audience. We have a number of items on the consent agenda tonight, including, at least one or two items that were part of supplemental memos. Is there I'm so I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. Councillor Holmes. I move to approve the consent agenda. Thank you. Councillor Ness. Second.
All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Those opposed, same sign. The consent agenda carries. Thank you all. We now have a strategic plan. Is that correct? Oh, that oh. Oh, that's after the council reports. No, the comp. We have a strategic plan. It's the comp plan that's coming up next. Yes? Okay. I think so. No? Mayor, first, there is reports from mayor and council members, which is right after the consent. It's up on the top of the I think the mayor is congratulating us on on having a strategic plan that was just passed through the consent agenda,
correct? Yes. Thank you. Sorry. I know I'm I got a little Yeah, I'm trying to celebrate. I know every I'm sorry. I Yes, I tried to, enunciate strategic plan. I I mean, we're supposed to pass them in the opposite order, but I hopefully people will give us the grace for the thirty minutes or so that we're gonna we've passed the strategic plan in front of the comprehensive plan. So celebrating that that win tonight. And then, yes, we'll go to, reports from mayor and council. And I think this week we start over there with councilor Ness.
Thank you. Last Wednesday attended a age friendly Northfield, and there's never a lack of enthusiasm when Cece Lindstroth is in a meeting. She keeps it lively. And off that topic, I'm sure you've heard that she will be the recipient of the Joseph Lee Haywood distinguished service award from the Depita Jesse James days committee. And I think they chose a very good recipient for that award. So that banquet is Wednesday night of the celebration,
approximately 06:00, so tickets are available. And that's all I have right now. Thank you. Councilor Peterson White. Thank you. I attended, Friends of Downtown meeting yesterday. They recapped the first third Thursday event, which was on a day with unfortunate weather, but they pulled through and fun was had by many people. It was a good warm up to a July event when maybe there won't be 40 mile an hour winds ripping down Division Street. But all in all, really successful,
and a good a good, a good, trial run for the new Showmobile. So that was good. I mean, I I know it's not the first time the Showmobile has been out, but I feel like we're still all getting used to it. And, also talked about continuing work on, hosting some information sessions for downtown building and business owners who are interested in forming a special services district for the downtown. So that work continues. There's an information session tomorrow afternoon on Zoom. I don't have the time or the link in front of me, but if anybody's interested, you can contact Emery John in community development and she'll be able to help you
get the details for that. They're holding an information session tomorrow and then two weeks from tomorrow. So people can pop into either one if they're interested in learning more about a downtown special services district and what that might look like. I also today attended a hospital board, sorry, hospital board, community engagement committee meeting, that was largely about partnerships with different organizations of various kinds throughout the community, which, of course, North Northfield Hospital and Clinics has many of those, so there was plenty to talk about. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Soukup. I attended a mayor's youth council meeting at the high school on the fifth,
And we don't have any other mayors' youth council people here anymore, but a lot of the people who were here were at that meeting, so it's good to see them again. They had their elections for leadership next year, so that was really exciting to see. They all had speeches about what they wanted to what how they viewed the council going forward and what they thought they brought to the table. So that was really fun to, witness. And, they're gonna have two, co chairs next year, Evie and Nicholas. So and then, a few different, committee heads that they also elected for, like, elementary and middle school outreach,
student relations, which is high school specific committee, and then council relations, so committee that, is engaged in the work that we do, and making sure there's a youth voice there too. And then I think the only other thing to note was that, Martha Lundin, who's here tonight, is going to grad school at Saint Kate's next this fall. So, she's stepping away from the youth council, and Emily Culver is gonna be taking her place, which is really exciting. Emily currently works with HCI and works on housing,
housing stuff in town. So, Emily will be the new lead next year. That's all I've got. Thank you. Counselor Holmes. Thanks. The most recent planning commission meeting was canceled, due to not having any pending anything pending. So I was able to attend the first third Thursday because of that because it happens on third Thursdays and got pelted by the sand in the street and the wind, but, but it was a good time and, looking forward to more of those. Additionally, the parks board meeting that was scheduled for yesterday was also canceled due to a
lack of agenda items. And also, I think we all received we received the word that, Charlie Fredericks, has has moved on from the city. So, unfortunately, we won't have him guiding the the parks, the parks and recreation advisory board moving forward. But I look forward to our next meeting and hopefully maybe we'll have someone in place then, come midsummer. But we did have a council employment committee meeting yesterday where we debriefed the annual review process that we went through earlier this month for the city administrator and confirmed, the changes that we had made particularly having the having it on a different night
so that we could have a more robust conversation not be shoehorning it in before a meeting was was quite effective. And looking at maintaining the overall process, however, talked about the the switch that we talked about in terms of moving the annual review process to one in the fall so it aligns more with the with the other city employees and then doing our midyear check-in in the springtime. So we'll be working with, miss Mahal and, and our city attorney and employment attorneys to update the code and update our policy so that we have,
we can make that switch. We also had an update on, or just initial kind of seed planting of the 2026 benefits as well as Minnesota paid leave considerations. We didn't discuss anything or make any decisions, but just planted the seed in terms of that would be coming, and looking at what we will likely be discussing more as a committee and then bringing back to the council come fall. So more, more to come later this summer on on those things. Thank you. And councilor Dolan? Nothing to report. Thank you. Councilor Beamer? Thank you. A week ago today,
we had our May Beyond the Yellow Ribbon meeting. Basically, topic of discussion was this coming Monday's, picnic after immediately following, the Memorial Day celebration down at, Veterans Park. That ceremony starts at 9AM. The picnic will take place immediately following at the Riverside Lions Park Shelter. So please come on down and, have a hot dog. I like hot dog, chips, and water,
and some, I think, dessert goodies. In case of inclement weather, the memorial ceremony will be up at, St. Olaf College. And immediately following, the picnic would just take place over at the VFW. So, please come attend. It's a really cool event, I've been to several times. That's all I have. Great. Thank you. I would second that. It is a very well done event, and so I will be there. I have one thing to report. I mentioned earlier that I attended the Clean River Partners annual meeting.
You're wondering how is that relevant? It's relevant because the speaker they had that evening was Paul LeClaire of the DNR. And Paul gave a presentation on the two dams that are currently being removed from the Cannon River watershed. And so, talked about how rock arch rapids work and had a chance to visit with Paul a little bit after the meeting. So and that ties into our strategic plan that we just passed about, the dam removal being one of our strategic objectives.
So that's what I have. Thank you. Next up is our regular agenda. I always get excited when we get to the regular agenda. So first up is the consideration of the comprehensive plan 2045 adoption, and it looks like I'm going to mister Riley for this. Yes. Thank you, mayor, members of the council. I don't have a presentation, today. I do want to remind you of three things. One, a super majority of five white votes is required for the item.
Two, you have an open, motion on the floor to adopt. And I believe there are some pending motions that need to be made because they were brought up, two weeks ago, but not made or passed. So Mhmm. And then then those all of those changes were prompted in the staff report. And so if you need to review the staff report, please do. I'm also here to answer any questions if any arose in the additional information that was provided in the updated staff report. Great. Thank you. Yep. So, as I ask for a motion,
I'd ask someone with the staff report handy to consider making a motion that included, the amendment for the removal of the map, and I'm forgetting the other amendment that we wished for. Would you like a reminder of what the Yes, please. I have. But if I I've Adding in, environmental resources map? Yep. Adding in the NRI Yeah. Natural resources inventory map. Correct. And that has been done on the website that's in draft form, and you can see that in the links to your staff. It's removing the car ownership map.
Point of order. In the staff report, it says that we already did vote on that, and it passed six zero on the removing the car ownership map. Got it. But we need to do the other map. Is that correct? I'm since we didn't pass the plan Right. That's what I wasn't sure about. You might have the motion might have passed. But we didn't then pass the So I don't know what that means. So do we just need to pass the plan, though? I mean, that amendment we did vote on that, and that passed.
Yeah. So then we were voting on the Main motion. The main motion. Right. But do we need to vote on the add addition of the other map? No. That's already part of that previous motion passed at the last meeting. Okay. So we don't need the car ownership. We just need the natural resources inventory map inclusion as an amendment? Was that amendment made last No. Okay. But we talked about it after we decided to post no. Yep. Right before we decided to postpone. Councilor Holmes, are you prepared to make a motion? Move that we include the national natural resources map in the comprehensive plan.
Second. Well Was that is that is that appropriate? Was that the Or, I I mean, can we do we wanna take them that first and then do the whole plan? Or can we We have the whole the whole plan's already open. Okay. Okay. Got it. So alright. Thank you. Counselor Peterson White. Yes, please. I believe we have the approval of the plan on the table. Yes. And so Thank you. The motion by counselor Holmes is an amendment to the motion. Got it. Alright. We have a said, I think. Yes. I know if you said I move an amendment. Yeah. I move an amendment to the plan that adds the natural resource map.
If I may. Yes. And you were second. Except the form should be that you move an amendment to the motion, not to Okay. The plan. Alright. I move an amendment. We're not amending the comp plan because we haven't adopted it yet. Right. Okay. So I move an amendment to the motion that we add the natural resource map to the comprehensive the 02/1945 comprehensive plan. Thank you. And councilor Peterson White is our second second it when I I think I made the original motion. Did I make the original motion? You did. You were you were the you were I made the original motion, so I can't make the amendment. Okay. And you were the you were the seconder,
though. I was the seconder. Gavin is gonna step in here and make a motion. I feel it. I agree. A councilor Soukup. My apologies for I move an amendment to the motion to add the NRI map to the plan. Thank you. Councilor Peterson White. I'll second it. Thank you. Is there any discussion about adding the natural resources inventory map to the comprehensive plan twenty forty five? I don't see any discussion or questions. So all those in favor, signify by saying aye. Those opposed? Alright. So that amendment carries.
And now we have on the table the motion to approve the comprehensive plan twenty twenty two thousand and forty five. Are there yes, councilor? Proper procedure would be to have a motion to take it off the table and move it to the floor. Okay. Would you like to make that motion? Certainly. Thank you. Is there a second? So Councillor, Holmes. Second? Okay. So we have a motion and a second to take the postponed item off the postponement and onto the floor. Any discussion? All those in favor, signify by saying aye.
Aye. Okay. That carries. Yes. Now we're looking for a motion to No. It was open. We have It's open. It's open. It's open. Thank you. It's open for discussion. Thank you. Yes. Who would like to start? The maker of the motion, would you like to start? Sure. I I don't have much to add from the last time we discussed this at the last meeting, but I will thank staff for the extra work that you've put into addressing some of the concerns and and the extra effort that that, that clearly the details that you put into the staff report,
which was very helpful. Thank you for that. And I stay firmly committed to this plan, and and I, am in in favor of passing it tonight. Thank you. Councilor Peterson White as the seconder, would you like to? I don't think I really have much to add to my comments from the last time we discussed this, except, again, to thank staff for, carrying this forward and, to all my colleagues for being open to some healthy discussion about it. And just to say that I'm excited to get this comp plan in place. I think it's it's just,
it's really meaningful to me to observe that this is a a labor of the whole community and of huge amounts of community engagement and, a deeply engaged and thoughtful committee that spent a very long time developing this document, and really thoughtfully bringing in feedback from the whole community. And this is really this document is a visioning document, and from this can follow, some regulatory documents. I think that will be excellent and useful updates to our toolkit. Counselor Ness. Thank you. I'm sure you remember I had some concerns on the plan adding too many rules
and regulations, etcetera. And I did talk to some, contractors between last meeting and this meeting, and they said, well, this should be the overriding document. And the changes should happen in LDC or zoning ordinance, whichever it's going to be called. And I still have some concerns that if this gets passed with the rules and regulations, etcetera, etcetera, that the other document might not have the changes that I would like to see in this document moving
forward. So I still have concerns on this one, you know, pushing it pushing it out. I think, you know, it happens a fair amount. One example is that seventeen years ago, the city built the swimming pool with pumps big enough for a water park and pipes big enough for a water park. That was supposed to be phase two. Well, phase two never happens. So, you know, it's just little things like that that just sort of add up for me. And I'm sorry.
I still don't think I can support this plan. I know there's hundreds or thousands of hours that have gone into it. I can appreciate that, but I'm gonna have to still be voting no. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else like to weigh in before we vote again? Or vote for the first time? Sorry. As we will be voting for the first time on this. All right. Let's vote. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? No. Roll call, please. Councilor Peterson White?
Yes. Councilor Soukup? Yes. Councilor Beamer? No. Councilor Dahlen? Yes. Councilor Holmes? Yes. Councilor Ness? No. Mayor Zweifel? Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. That's another that's our is that might be well, I don't know if there's anything to celebrate in the administrator's update, but I'm gonna call this our last celebratory moment of the evening. Maybe the biggest. So thank you all. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the Council, certainly celebrate you all for success on the strategic plan. Sorry for my confusion on the consent agenda,
Mayor. I was thought I heard you say comp plan and I was focused on something else. But, yeah, I did, you all probably in tracking the legislature as well with what's happening. They did adjourn the regular session of the legislature, passing a number of bills, but not the one they are statutorily required to do, which is adopting a budget at the end of the year. So they will be scheduling a special session. I believe they have till the June, to finalize a budget to be passed. They have some leadership agreed upon parameters related to those negotiations.
I haven't tracked the news today as far as any updates on that. But certainly there'll be a lot of different impacts to the city with the number of the bills that we'll be taking a look at the league is some of you know, been maybe working with the city in the past. The league assembles the League of Minnesota Cities assembles all of the legislative actions, and they create this kind of summary document that's, you know, hundred pages or something often kind of summarizing the different bills that lot of times staff will look at to see if there are any changes. That takes a little while to assemble. They did I don't know if you all looked. They did push out a little update on some of the legislation,
one that kinda piqued my interest. I I won't call out all of them, but looks like they might have passed some flexibility related to remote participation for council meetings that might allow a little more flexibility related to identification of where, people are for public purposes. It might provide some I don't have the deep details. I didn't get a chance to open that bill, but, you know, that was one that certainly piqued my interest in others. Certainly hopeful that the legislature will work through. They got pretty narrow margins of this very split legislature, and so we're hoping that it doesn't lead to a government shutdown in July.
I have been involved in those in the past, and they can impact a lot of things like highway projects and permitting and all kinds of things that can be, have some impacts with that. So hopefully they'll work to resolve some of those issues. The only other thing I was gonna mention, unless you all had anything specifically was, again, since we haven't done this a lot in the past, just a reminder on procedure and I'm sure the mayor call it out. We're gonna be adjourning the meeting and then having a short work or a work session of a few agenda items afterwards immediately following. And again, we've kind of looking at doing that, staying at the dais, and moving into a work session format to allow some kind of open discussion,
which means we don't allow public input on that, but can maybe get some action on items. So if we have a little extra time on our agendas, sometimes our work sessions get pretty full. We have, some budget and audit presentations coming up at our next work session. Excuse me. That's gonna take some time. So we have a couple of important, street related projects and, Milltown's Trail project as well as some governance work. So that was the only other thing I was just gonna call out is extra attention on that as we will be adjourning the regular meeting and going into a work session afterwards. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I appreciate that as well. So that when we do talk about the CIP and the CEP and some budgeting
things at our next workshop session, now we have freed up more some time to focus more, carefully on those items. So, that is, the end of our council meeting. Looking for a motion to adjourn. Councillor Ness? Move to adjourn. Second, Councillor Beamer. All those in favor signify what? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All right. We're adjourned. Would we like to take our break now or yes. We will take a five minute break beef while we get