good evening ladies and gentlemen I'm going to call to order this regular city council meeting of the city of Richfield It's March 25th at 700 p.m And if you are able please rise for the pledge of allegiance I aliance to the flag of the United
States of America and to the republic for it stands One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all Thank you Uh did we have any comments sent in
ahead of the meeting on the open forum no we did not mayor And do we have any um comments tonight no comments have been received for tonight All right Is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak for open forum and I'm seeing nods saying no they do not wish to speak So we'll move on in
the agenda Thank you all Our next item is approval of the minutes of the city council special meeting from January 31st 2025 The city council special meeting from February 1st 2025 the city council Richfield
Bloomington Water Shed Maintenance Organization or RBWMO special meeting from March 11th 2025 and the city council regular meeting from March 11th 2025 Motion to approve
Second It's been moved and seconded Is there any discussion all in favor of approving those four sets of minutes please say I I All opposed And we have approved the minutes Moving on we get to the approval of the
agenda I move approval of the agenda Second It's been moved and seconded to approve the agenda Is there any discussion we'll discuss that We have a very brief agenda tonight So we do have a very brief agenda and we're going to be discussing agendas at an upcoming
work session So it's like inception of agenda Yeah There we go All in favor of approving the agenda please say I I All opposed And we've approved the agenda Next we'll move on to the consent calendar City Manager Rodriguez Thank you Mayor The consent
calendar contains several separate items which are acted upon by the city council in one motion Once the consent calendar has been approved the individual items and recommended actions have also been approved No further council action on these items is necessary On tonight's
consent calendar item A consideration of the approval of a resolution authorizing staff to submit an application for a Henipin County youth equipment grant in the amount of $10,000 for the purchase of skate aids hockey equipment rental skates and rink
dividers and authorizing staff to enter into a grant agreement if awarded Item B consider the adoption of a resolution authorizing the acceptance of a hose roller one unit from First Response Fire and Safety Item C consider approval of
the contract with Becker Arena Products to provide and install new dashboards on Rink 2 for $251,67 Item D consider a resolution authorizing the execution of an agreement with the state of Minnesota to release the 2023
appropriations bill funds awarded to the Woodlike Nature Center building project in the amount of $12 million and authorizing staff to administer the funds in accordance with all terms as prescribed by the state of Minnesota And I submit these items for your
consideration as part of the consent calendar Thank you So is there a motion motion to approve the consent calendar Second It's been moved and seconded Is there any discussion all in favor please say I I I All
opposed and we have approved the consent calendar Next we'll move on to the city manager report Yes Thank you mayor Uh at our last meeting we had two short-term rental owners that came and provided their
perspective on our study of um potential uh change in rules for short-term um rentals And they didn't ask any questions so I don't have further information tonight And that's all I have Thank you I did have one question that just popped into when you were
talking about that Is the survey now closed that we went out to the public to ask them about short-term rentals i'm fairly certain the survey is closed because they gave us an a total and it was it's like over 500 surveys were completed Well then thank you to the
public for filling out the surveys That'll be useful data when we finally get it Thank you Next we'll move on to claims and payroll Move approval of claims and payroll Second It's been moved and seconded to approve claims and payroll Is there any
discussion all right All in favor please say I I I All opposed And we've approved claims and payroll Next we'll move on to hats off to Hometown Hits Council member Hayford Liry I got no items tonight Oh wow We
are going to have a short agenda Council member Christensen Yes I had the opportunity of attending uh Richfield High School last Thursday evening for the um called Empty Bowls 2025 And for anybody who doesn't know
what that is it's basically a um it's a event with food and um the uh you get soup and salad and rolls and dessert and and and uh beverages But the most important part is
what you get is you get um when you donate uh money to the uh high school you are donating uh different amounts of varying money to um the art department there that conducts the um uh making of
bowls and vases and cups and everything And what's really neat about that is um that all of the products that you have that you that you actually get that the kids make is all um um fired for um use of uh with food and with dishwasher safe
and everything else But the most important part of over and above that is um it goes to the proceeds go to the Richfield High School food shelf That helps a lot of the kids out and a lot of the families out that would not be able to um adequate food during the day for
some of the kids So thank you Council Member Coleman Woods Absolutely So I've got a couple of hats off Um first of all um Agent Carl Herman he's he's a insurance agent here Um it
has been gathering efforts to um to for the uh citywide food drive and it has um incorporated several groups from Richfield High School that he's actually been able to give back to those those high school programs with
donations um and funding So he's been able to to uh entice them by uh asking for volunteers Uh and he's giving a $750 donation to each of those groups I
believe soccer swimming um and um several other sports groups were involved And so the pickup starts soon Uh the distribution of the bags for the citywide food drive starts very soon And the pickup is April in the April
territory So um keep an eye out for those bags that are being distributed to the households And also um congratulations to CJ Armstrong for making the top five Mr Basketball um finalists Um we're so proud of that
Uh all of the sports teams that did great at sections and all of the things and so they're uh they have represented Richfield quite well Thank you I have a a couple of items to add as well
Um last week we had the H EDA gave their urine review presentation and that's one of the most interesting presentations we get because you find out all the good work that the staff has done and that the city has worked on and all the people working together So if you're
interested in seeing that you can go on the city website and if you go under um if you look under I believe it's um government you go down to HA and open that up you can see the whole report of all the programs and all the people that have been served And I think that's
really kudos to everybody involved in that In tonight's um consent agenda we were talking about the ice arena And one of the facts I want to call out and give a kudos is that our ice arena gets 500,000
visitors a year That's half a million people that are going through our ice arena And I also thought it was really cool that the the skate lessons are given for first and fourth graders So that's like a lifelong thing if you can go ice skating in Minnesota So kudos to
everybody involved at the ice arena Um we also um this past week had the um police department awards and we have four new officers that were sworn in There were also a number of commendations and we
also have the 2024 officer of the year was officer Drew Gford So kudos to everyone involved in that Um when we were here for that it overflowed the council um chambers There weren't enough seats We had to go out into the hallway because there were so many family
members and community members there to support So thank you to them And then finally um I had the pleasure of joining our local Tibetan community gathered at the Capitol Rotunda yesterday and they were doing um a celebration to honor the
14th Daly Lama's 90th birthday And so they talked about that that he's calling this the year of compassion and the theme of everything is gratitude And they did say they probably will be stopping by one of our council meetings as well But I just wanted to do a shout
out to our local um Tibetan community It was very gracious invitation to join them So with that is there anything else anybody would like to add and I think this may be a record for one of the shortest council meetings
We've I think it's 11 minutes So you were not kidding when you said it was a short meeting So if there's no further business is there anyone who wishes to make a motion to adjurnn motion to adjurnn Second It's been moved and seconded to
adjourn the meeting All in favor please say I I I All opposed And the meeting