Recording in progress. Welcome, everyone, to our, February 24, Rochester City Council study session. We have three items on our agenda this afternoon, and I'm looking for maybe forty five minutes per, item. So, hopefully, we'll get out of here by 06:00, but no promises. So with that, I am I am going to turn it over to administrator Zelms who will introduce us to our first item, which is the fire service contract.
Thank you. My goodness. I'm totally having a blank. Thank you. Randy. I know, but I it's blanking on your title. Council president Schubert. Sorry. I was in a committee meeting earlier and I was gonna share You can go to Randall. That threw me off. Thank you, Randall. So I am here on behalf of a team of folks that have been, working to bring this back to the city council. The fire service contract is something that, we have been, in partnership with our township partners for quite some time. Obviously, we've had a changeover in our fire chief. So, chief Pooler is here with his team.
Also, Brian Anderson, finance director, myself, and then Ryan Yetzer, city, assistant city administrator is joining us online. So, excited to be able to bring this to you, and, be able to answer any questions that you have. I just also wanna acknowledge that we have some of our partners from the township in the audience, from, Marion, Cascade, and Haverhill, are some board members from there. So welcome. With that, I will, just get started. What we're here to talk about is the renewal of the contract. We are, gonna be at the end of a ten year contract period at the end of twenty twenty five and then going into,
I believe a, new ten year contract for '26 through 2036. So, with that, just a little bit of background, for, the current makeup of our city council. It is an agreement to serve Rochester, Marion, Cascade, and then a portion, of Haber Hill Township. The agreements were established, and have been ongoing since 02/2005, so quite some time. And again, that current agreement, was 2016 through the end of twenty twenty five. Just a little bit of background on the timeline for when we started talking about this, with our partners and then to where we are today. So there was a meeting in October of twenty twenty four,
between, the townships, the fire department, and administration group, a couple of meetings in October. Then in November, we also, attended a the annual township board meeting, which is all of the townships in Olmsted County and had some discussion with a couple of council members, and, town board members at that meeting on November 26. There was a vote, not directly related to this, but related to planning, for Olmsted County and, changed to their approval, change to their approval of their general land use plan amendment process in December. Obviously, we have a new council seated now, in January of twenty twenty five.
There was approval of a contract that didn't reflect all of the conversations that was sent to the city council understanding of, why that happened with the townships. And then, obviously, we have between now and the end of the year, but probably sooner than later, to talk through any, changes and proposals for a contract with the townships. So the changes that were previously discussed, are general, cleanup of the language, the ten year old language for the service specific services that are provided to the townships which differ from what happens within the city limits. A simplification of the compensation approach that reflects,
four and a half percent a year. That's a change from the prior that had reflected, cost of valuation or 4% whichever was lower, and better reflects some of the averages that we've seen for the, operations, costs for fire over the last ten years. Updated the contract services. That's also a cleanup of language, just making it very clear what services are provided. And then a section on growth coordination that's probably had the most discussion. So I think through this process, one of the things that, we would recommend as a team is that no matter what, we need to have better coordination and communication,
have that be a priority so that we're remain aligned and there's clarity about what's happening with fire service in the city of Rochester and how how that might impact our ability, and what the expectations might be for our partners for fire service. As either we continue to grow, they continue to grow, things change in the fire service. We continue to make sure that we're services. Obviously, it's no surprise that, we are looking at expanding the fire service over a period of time. That's something that we've been talking about, and there are implications to that for all of us. So, especially the operating budget,
but also the capital budget. So I think just knowing all of those things that will be good to coordinate more, get together more on a, you know, semi annual basis, talk, with the fire chief and administration about what are some of the things that are happening, provide a monthly report on, response data goals just so that the boards can be, better informed so that they can make sure that, our township, residents, understand, you know, what are some of the expectations they could have for, Rochester, fire department service to them, and they've already started working on a draft that's actually very detailed and provides a
lot of clarity on what kinds of calls they're going to and what, amount of time they're spending there, just so that there can be some clarity on on the services. So, obviously, growth does impact service. It impacts services in the city of Rochester. It also impacts services for our partners. These are the types of things, that that occur that the fire chief is thinking about when we're talking about, you know, ten, twenty, thirty year planning for, a city like Rochester in our region. So and the larger your service area is and the more that's in there, the longer it takes to respond.
Obviously, if you're further away from the fire station, it's going to take us longer to get there. There can be increased drawdown times. That depends on where you're going, but also the type of call. So if there's a call that's gonna be a fully engulfed apartment complex, that's a long call for service and while you have a number of people responding and then relieving those responders, you have less service available to your entire service area when that's happening. As you have a higher call volume that changes the demand on all of your resources is obviously and it changes the decision making matrix for which call do you
go to first which is a higher priority and how do you change your system dynamically, to be able to provide a proper response across the system for higher priority call that might come in. Infrastructure development and design changes, how you can get in and out of developments, what kind of firefighting techniques or other rescue techniques you can use, changes potentially the number of traffic accidents that, we're going to. Obviously, staffing and training costs are related to that, the capital and operating, budget pressures that's created when you wanna maintain, low call call response times.
And then the general impact and we're fortunate here to have been able to reduce the ISO rating for Rochester, the fire department, and and some of their efforts two years ago actually would, it it it it improved our rating which makes it go from a three to a two, which is positive for, for our region. So just a little bit of nuts and bolts. The contracts with the townships is related to the operations component of the fire budget, not the capital component. So if you look back to 2015 and take the average, obviously, there's are some lower years and some higher years.
On average, the operating costs have changed by about 4.7 a year. So that kind of correlates with that 4.5% conversation. If you look at the contribution at the 4% versus the percentage of building value, if you could move the words on the screen a little bit to the right, that, you can see would be a significantly different number, but it it really it doesn't necessarily change the amount of response. So a number of you have talked about firefighting. It's really important, but it's sort of like having insurance. Right? Many of your your greatest hope is you never have to call 911 for a
fire response at your home, and, certainly, no one really wants to be in a car accident either. So, it coming up with a correct cost for this really does come to there's lots of different ways to look at this. There are not a significant number of calls that occur within the townships relative to the number of calls that the fire department responds to both medical and fire within the city limits. And the services we're providing in the township does not include medical response provider. So a couple of options, came up especially during, I think a lot of great conversation happened in November,
at that town the annual township meeting. We've had a bit of follow-up after. So one of the conversations talked about growth coordination really being about physical infrastructure. So, and and that it should be related to fire response, not just general concepts of growth. And so one of the proposals here, you could probably tweak some of this language also, but that any changes in physical infrastructure or developments that jeopardize the Rochester Fire Department's ability to provide the coverage specified in this contract must be negotiated between the city
and townships, or you could probably include a parenthesis around the s there because it may be one township, and result in an agreement acceptable, to the city council. And I believe that what we had talked about then with township comments was obviously the important for that to be acceptable not just to the city but also the township board, clarify that's only about development within the township, provide a clear definition for the term physical infrastructure, important to know, what that means. And then, important to know, what that means. And then, must be negotiated should be something more like coordinated, which I think is what we're talking about here, because that makes sort of sets it up to sound like we're negotiating.
It'll be the peace treaty when we're really talking about what does the physical infrastructure change mean for our ability to provide service. So, the language that we came up with, is, that accommodates those things would be to talk about any significant changes in physical infrastructure caused by development within a township that alters, you know, that threatens, but that alters, that change. It could be a positive change. To provide the coverage specified in this contract must be coordinated between the city and townships and result agreement acceptable to the applicable board and council. And then for the purposes of the agreement,
significant physical infrastructure refers to the essential, tangible assets required for effective fire protection and emergency services, generally, including fire stations, fire personnel, services generally including fire stations, fire personnel, apparatus, water supply systems and you could read the rest yourself, and talks about disproportionately impacting. So there might be some impact but maybe it doesn't have any proportionate impact on our ability to respond and, maintain proper ISO ratings for, all the communities involved. And so another option would be to remove section four in its entirety and just describe in the fire protection service area that,
any that it's being provided for existing commercial development and residential areas designated as suburban development on the Olmstead County land use map prior to a date. So it would accomplish similar things, but So what that would mean is the current contract is covering those things. If there's a change, you would still imagine be coordinating and talking about whether or not a change is able to still be served within the contractor can't be served. I would imagine most of those changes probably could be served unless it's a very significant development in, in one of the townships that served.
So those are two very very I guess they I think they read very differently, but the intent is the same to make sure we stay stay coordinated and that there's clarity on if there are any significant changes impacting our ability to provide the services outlined in the contract, that there would be awareness far in advance of when that might happen so that we could be working together, to understand, what might need to change in the future. So what we're looking for from the city council and I do have chief Fuller and, finance director, Anderson here is guidance from you now that we have a different makeup of council
than in 2024. We would like to reengage. We do have a meeting on the calendar in March to talk again with the townships about this and to understand, you know, from you before that meeting what you're comfortable with and then come back for approval. Obviously, we'd also need to have approval from the townships if townships if they had concurrence. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions or welcome any questions to go to Chief Pooler or director. Council member Palmer. Thank you. Can you go back to, slide 12, please? Yes. You. Can you go back to, slide 12, please? Yes. Is this So on slide 12, you you're I think is it this one that you're looking at?
No. Which one? It's the last one you did before the last one. Second to the last. There you go. So so the the townships have already signed the agreement that we we had sent them before. Is is that not agreeable to the city? That's what I'm asking the city council. But what they signed and sent to you is not what we had talked to the townships about in October of twenty twenty four. Okay. I've read what what they they signed and and I'm fine with that. And where I'm I'm having problems with this is and during your discussion, you kind of mix city Of Rochester and the township together.
And you're talking about how many apartment buildings. How many apartment buildings are built in the in the townships right now? Council president, council member Palmer, I don't believe there are many. But what I'm saying is that a structure fire in the city of Rochester also changes our ability to respond everywhere else with where we provide service. So if there's a let's say there that my example was a structure fire in the townships and it was a residence, a single family residence. When we're in a fully engulfed situation, and I'm happy to have chief Fuller provide more information about what the drawdown means,
you have less ability to respond in that area because you have x number of resources, people, and apparatus that are at that scene for hours in order to make sure that it's safe and they aren't available to go anywhere else within this city. But that's not a change. We've always had that that that that problem with with the contract. So we're here today to talk about the township contract. And and and that the section four is about zoning, and and nobody wanted that. Just point of order. It's not about zoning. It's about fire protection and land use. Well, what is land use?
Isn't that zoning? Land use and zoning are distinct within all of our bodies. You have a land use map and a zoning layer. So I just I I see that they can be connected within a project, but Well, I'm they're not they're not I think we're talking semantics here. Council member Palmer, if you can get to your point. Well, my my point is is is that your section four is what what caused the the rift that we have right now. Now. You know, during your conversation or your presentation today, you're talking about car accidents. Well, we don't go out in the townships for car accidents.
Chief Pooler, can you correct me if I'm wrong? We do actually respond to traffic accidents in the townships. Correct, yeah. Well, last time when we had this presentation they said they did, unless they were called. We don't respond in an EMS capacity. We're not there to treat the patients and transport to the hospital, but we carry the jaws of life on the fire engines, so we respond. So if they call you for it, they you do, but you don't typically go to all the car accidents that you would in Rochester? We don't go like on the fender benders or the low acuity things. But if there's potential for somebody to be entrapped, we are responding. Okay. And and I guess I'm looking at what problems are we trying to solve here
in in in the last ten years or five years that we've had this fire contract. I don't know the problem it is. I know you're trying to recover some costs, which I don't think the townships are against paying their fair share. So I think the easiest thing to do is look at the contract that the townships already signed and and move ahead with those. That's my opinion. Just to clarify, council member Palmer's line of questioning. Are we seeing the, the the contract that the township signed, is that one of these two options? The council president, there if the option would be not to have any additional language about coordination.
I think I see what you're saying. To the reason that we talked about it, though, is because the only other section that would apply is the termination section of the contract if there ever became a concern about being able to appropriately provide coverage. So what we're seeing before us incorporates in option one and option two the concept of growth coordination. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. So what I'm looking for is and maybe, attorney Spindler Craig can help with this. I one, I wanna have some wiggle room for that delicate,
use of the word negotiation between our team and the and the, township, folks when they when they come up with the, the, agreeable contract. And so do both option one and option two, give us that language that gets to the growth coordination issue that we wanna make sure is in there in some fashion, whether a as a standalone point or a point within,
section one? Council president, I think city attorney, I'm sorry, assistant city attorney and city administrator zones is in the best, position to answer that. She's been most closely involved in in those negotiations. Thank you, council president. Council members, I I would say that both of those provide, some clarity within the contract that I don't think that it would ever be this body's desire, staff's desire, or likely the desire of the townships that we get to a point where there's a concern about actually being able to serve an area, and then we're just talking about termination,
which, again, would be similar. These are the same discussions that would be happening. It's just providing clarity. I guess from my point of view, granted there are more it's more than one point of view, some clarity within a contract. That's not a short term contract. Ten years is a long time when we're talking about growth planning, likely having an additional fire station come online at some point during that period of time. The growth that's going to be happening within Rochester itself, that it just I think the intent really is that it's providing clarity within the legally binding document that this is an important thing for us to be talking about,
is growth coordination the physical development of property within the area that is expecting to receive service. Thank you. Council member Fredericks. Thank you, president. Members of the township, thanks for being here tonight. Is it the appropriate time to just hear their thoughts a little bit? They're, you know, they're sitting here, they came here to hear this. Is this the appropriate time to kinda hear what's on their mind? Council president, council member, typically, the study session is really for the city council to be talking about what you're interested in, but it's really up to you if you want to waive the rules.
But I I would say council member, if you did want to hear from, the, members of the public that are here, we would have to have a motion and we would have to, suspend the rules, which, city clerk Casel are is it a five to two vote to change the rules to take public comment? I believe it's just a majority vote. Okay. Majority vote. Also, president, just to clarify, your council rules require a super majority in order to override your rules. It is a five to two within the council rules procedure.
Typically, you don't vote during a study session nor typically do you engage with the public whether they are part of it's up to you. However Yep. Absolutely. Got it. So It's typically We understand. Here's the thing. These are parties here, representing their townships. They're paying for a service. Their input's important. And I just, you know, I don't like them to we're sitting here talking and right in front of us. It's just nice to get their input so we can all hear it and, you know, eye contact and and make a real, decision. Council member, would you like to make a motion to that order? It's up to you.
I I don't know what the consensus of the board is. You know, I see some people up here sitting right now shaking their head at me as I'm talking, and that's a little uncomfortable. And, you know, I I I don't understand what protocols are. I just know what decent communication looks like, and that's all I was going for. What I would say and, and, I would say and I wasn't shaking my head at you. But I would say, I think the negotiation between our team and the townships should probably happen as a back and forth. I think if we come up with the bottom line,
and that's why my line of questioning was looking at are we getting what we need in either of these options so that we, our team goes back to, the representatives of the townships and discusses with them what, each wants to see respectfully. I think and I I'm getting off on kind of my closing thoughts, but I think we need to have a very respectful back and forth with the count townships that,
so that we are continuing to build an important relationships that we we have through our region. I will go to council member Keane. Thank you. First, I mean, I do wanna address, council member Palmer's reading of that that was a thing. This is important to me because it is my understanding that the townships took a version that we were talking about, edited and sent it and signed, which really bothered me because we were trying to have this back and forth negotiation and they were saying no. So that's my understanding. I don't need any response back here,
but if I totally misread that someone should explain it to me. As far as coming to this meeting today, the critical priorities in my view are two or three areas. One is just the idea of public safety. And this is across political boundaries. This isn't just our normal thing when we talk about police coverage or fire coverage within the city. And and there's some things here that, you know, decisions and directions we could take that could make it less safe to live in different parts of Olmsted County than than more safe. And I hope we can get to the right thing here. But the other critical,
like, prioritization to address here is is affordable living and city expenses. And if if we accept this language of fire service is more of a fee for service and not an insurance policy, then we go down a very different path. One of the things I've been dealing with the fire department and probably more so than the fire department, but the city's finance department is, are we correctly charging for this service we provide? And I get distressed when I hear it cost, you know, so many dollars to respond to a fire in the township versus in the city.
And we have more calls for this. Using that sort of logic, I'd say the forty years that I've been paying taxes, I should get all my fire stuff back because I haven't made any calls yet. But we all know that's not how fire service works. You get the insurance policy of having a professional fire department with all of its training and all of its equipment at your disposable in the terrible one day of your life that you need it. But but then you have it. And I think as a council member, I try to represent that for the city residents, and I would imagine the supervisors try to make sure that's available for their residents
and their properties. As as far as, my priorities coming into this meeting is I do want that that our fire department to continue to cover these these border areas that don't have that sort of fire service. I want the outcome of this to be is that we have an arrangement and whether it be for five years or ten years and whether it's this percent or some other language, I want us to get to that point. But I but I also wanna protect the taxpayers of Rochester. I have spent a fair amount of time, and really chasing down answers that I haven't totally got,
but I have getting a little bit more that, there is different services that happen in the townships, different than what happens in the city of Rochester. There are different response times, and those things all have costs associated with them. But I I did I was sort of worried that the 4% over ten years certainly did not keep up with the cost of fire over those times, especially when I look, you know, remember some of the old terminology I used to get was the townships are getting smaller as the city expands. But we are facing a situation now where that might stop,
and now the townships will start getting bigger again. That's one of the things that's concerning the city administration saying, what if the the number of properties change? So that leads me towards this greater coordination discussion and this idea of, you know, do we need a level of respond do we need something in the contract that says, if if the townships start growing and the property the number of properties or type of values change, is that a reason to reassess the contract? And I think something like that should be in there. I have spent a fair amount of time with both with the finance group,
with the fire department of trying to say, like, can I get down to these points of what, council member Wahl pays to protect his house is similar to what mister Breck pays to pay to cover his house? And I'm not looking for exact dollar amounts. But is there is that an equity discussion? And I want that to be part of this. And I think the city staff is trying to do it. It. And I I think it requires more than just taking our old contract, crossing out some lines, and sending it back to the city. I I want a better a better partnership going forward than that that implies to me.
Question at the end of that? Something of a question to So so If I understand what the purpose of this meeting is, the staff wants to know what the council wants. That's what I'm trying to communicate to the staff and to the townships. Thank you, council member. Council member Wahl. Thank you. I believe I concur with everything that council member Keane has said. I think that, our hearts are in the right place to ensure that public safety is number one, for everybody. I also, believe that everybody in this room, if you represent a township or, and I will acknowledge,
Brian Mueller sitting over there too as a county, commissioner. Thank you for being here. We we all want to do the best we can for the people of Rochester, the townships, the county. Part of the reason that I believe number four is important and I'll go with just an extreme example that will never happen. I think we're trying to protect the city against, say for instance, Walt Disney corporation decides to build Disney World North, in a budding township and all of a sudden we go, dang, we can't cover that.
I mean, that's that's crazy. So that, some kind of huge development that, imperils our ability to, cover both people in the township and the people of Rochester is something that I understand number four is trying to get to so that, we can be safer together. Thank you, council member. Other, thoughts? Council President Schoebring, this is Ryan Yetzer. Are you guys able to hear me? I'd be like, where is that voice coming from? Go ahead, Mr. Yetzer. We forgot about you. I forgot. Yeah.
Thanks. This is great discussion. Thanks. And I apologize that I can't be there in the room. There's just a couple things that I wanted to to quickly clarify from the discussion. The first is the the difference between land use and zoning. So first of all, land use and zoning are not in in they're not the same thing whatsoever, because the reason is land use is very policy driven, and zoning provides entitlements. Zoning is a legal mechanism that you can approve and deny development based upon legally.
And and that is in no way, shape or form what this section does. The city is not looking for zoning controls in the townships, nor would this even come close to providing them. But I would also go as far as to say this section isn't even about land use. So we can talk about land use and zoning and the difference between them, but this isn't even land use. This is simply saying and I I know that got sideways at the beginning, but I I I wanna be super clear with that. This is simply saying the city and the townships should be coordinating when development is happening so that this service is is provided at a cost that meets the expectations
of everybody in the room today. I think it's important to know that should this contract move forward, the township cost is fixed for the next ten years. It will be four and a half percent. That is not the same for the city. Depending on what happens in the townships, the decisions that are made related to development and growth, it is entirely possible that the cost of the service on the city side could rise. And so that's that is what this section is about, and really nothing more than that. So to to go to the other question that came up of the preference of
the townships, I think the townships have more or less made their, preference known by sending the contract without section four. I don't think that surprised anyone on our end. I know that they would prefer not to have section four there. I think what would be helpful for our team to leave here today with, as council member Keane somewhat alluded to there, is what does our elected officials want? Do do we want one of these two options? Or it sounds like council member Palmer prefers what the townships approved, which is to simply remove section four. Again, I'm just cautioning that that leaves that leaves us with their cost fixed and our
fixed and and ours not. But if if that's the preference of the council, then that's helpful to leave today with an with an understanding. So, again, helpful discussion to see where some of this lands, but I'm hoping to leave here with a really clear direction of one of those two options or none of them. Thank you. Thank you, mister Yetzer. Can we see option two again on the screen? Okay. So with option two, we are removing section four, which, I think the townships during the the last round wanted to see removed.
Yet it looks like and correct me if I'm wrong, administrator zones. It looks like we are adding language that relates to the growth, the growth management issue. Is that correct? Council president, council members, I don't think that we're intending that to be related to the Olmsted County growth management conversation, but, realistically, what that's trying to identify is existing commercial development and the land use related to that and the residential areas that are designated a service.
Like, we're referencing the general land use plan map as of a date, likely the date of approval of a contract as the point in time and the reference document for what would be covered by by the agreed upon contract. What that would imply, and feel free to chime in from on high, Ryan, would be that if there is a desire for a new new growth development subdivision that hasn't already shown up on that map. So you might have something that's plotted on the map,
and it's still gonna continue to develop. But if there's something new, if there's a land use change in the future, to be able to develop something that wasn't contemplated at the date that's that becomes not x's on here, that would to be covered by a site by this contract would require either an amendment with that township or discussion and understanding that it can't be covered. Mister Yetzer? Yeah. Thanks, administrator Zones. Well said. Again, this this option is simply trying to, you know, agree to cover everything that we know today,
and and that if something we don't know today occurs, then we come back to the table and have a discussion. This is not saying no development can happen. So I wanna get in front of that really quickly of of saying, like, this is the city saying nothing can happen in the townships. That's not the case because there's several areas in the township that are designated as such, in these in these terms, but not yet developed. So this would this would be something if if a whole new idea that nobody has contemplated comes in. And so this is is trying to get to that middle ground of saying committing
to develop or committing to providing the service to everything that exists today or is known to be contemplated in the future. But but and if it changes to that need to come back to the table. So Disney North would come back. Exactly. Exactly. Got it. Well, then to I'll just clarify where I'm coming from. If both option one and option two, has language in it that, that meets our needs for discussing discuss discussing growth coordination and having,
us, enter into a dialogue with the townships if there is growth, growth management issues coming up, then I'm comfortable with either because I want to make sure that, as council member Frederick said, we're not hearing from the townships tonight, but I want our team, you, mister Yetzer, and, administrator Zelms, to have the flexibility to work with the townships to meet language that, meets our needs and their needs.
Council member Fredericks. Thank you, president. City administrator Zelms would option to require renegotiation for every, for each development within the township then? Council president, council member, I don't believe so. Mister Yesler, could you elaborate on what you were just sharing? Yeah. So, no, it would not require a renegotiation for every development because just like how development happens in city limits that never comes before city council, It's the same sort of thing here. If development that is contemplated continues to happen,
say a suburban development that zoned for single family homes and they continue down that path, then there would be no need to renegotiate. If, however, there is a large I'm gonna make up a a an example here. But if there was a 20 acre farmstead that decided they wanted to do residential instead, that would likely require a mapping changes. And then and then that is what would need to be discussed. So no, not every development, but significant developments. Yes. Thanks for the clarification.
Everybody's kind of pausing. Mayor Norton. Yeah. I'm I'm I think we're saying that both option one and option two are to get to the same conclusion. I'm finding option two, while I think it's supposed to be easier, less clear to me, and so I guess I don't know if that's just my feeling as I'm reading this or how staff would feel if you have a preference in the language and one. To me, that seems clearer, and I think we're trying to get at the same end result. So that's what I'm struggling with. Council president,
mayor Norton, I think if we had if if the council was if the body was comfortable with both with either one, I think that the key is making sure there's clarity between the partners and making sure that there's an understanding. And it might be more clear, I don't know this, but it might be more clear to the townships who their boards work through land exchanges, when they need to happen. They have landowners and developers that come through a process that involves this the the county as well. So if that is more clear to them, it would accomplish similar goals.
And I think the other thing that we're trying to identify here is that even if there was only comfort with doing everything in the changes to the contract but section four, let's say that was what the comfort level was, we still need to have more direct dialogue on a more regular basis, I think, with, the townships that we're serving through this fire service contract. So they have clarity about what kinds of services that they are receiving and that their residents or those who are passing through potentially the township, are receiving in trying to mitigate the impacts of a large crash or something like
that that's that would impact not just the people that are in that crash, but potentially the traveling public that would still need to get through there, many of whom might be township residents or own property in the township. So, I think in any scenario, the key one of the key items is we need to be connecting not every ten years about this or not every five years about this, but having more clarity on from us to the townships about the services that we're providing. Thank you, administrator. Council member Keane. Thank you. Yeah. Again, I appreciate this discussion on this option four and this thing,
but but I guess I I wanna state for clarity or for make sure people understand. My bigger concern with this has been the equity issue and not just this idea of expansion in the townships. There still is this thing that we're sitting here right now contemplating, another fire station and that kind of stuff. And all of those expenses fall to the people who pay taxes and who pay rent in the city of Rochester. I really can't understand the other political body saying, not my business. I don't wanna have anything to do with that. But I also don't want to wake up in 2029 and realize,
by the way, we're setting up this contracting, we're subsidizing coverage in these in a growth area where they're building more houses and living on the edge of Rochester. I got more comfortable that we're in better shape, but I know there's other expenses still to come. And the one thing I wanna mention is some of my discussions that I've had, like, go into other areas and saying, like, how do you do fire coverage and what happens here and why are these other townships don't even have fire coverage or what do they have with the smaller with the volunteer fire departments. And one of the things that came up that just news to me, and I'll just share it with the group,
was this idea of, fire districts. And it's a taxing district, and the fire station isn't owned by the city of Rochester. It is a fire district that expands over the almost the way we do Rocog, and do other things where we do these together. And everybody has a shared interest in it then as a political group. I I would submit that it seems logical to me that the townships wouldn't like that because they don't want to have the issues that the city has to deal with with fire protection and the idea of the expansion in that. But those are the things we have to deal with. And I think it's incumbent on us to protect our taxpayers and our rent payers
from carrying that load. And then on top of that, subsidizing the coverage for other areas. So I I just wanna go back and not just talk about this growth concern, but also just, I'll I'll call it economic equity. Thank you, council member. And, a question on kinda the tail of council member Keane's, comments. So these monthly, response reports, data goals, will that be a part of kinda tracking what we're seeing going forward? Council president, council members, I think that that would, I don't know that that's necessarily gonna track exactly what you're seeing.
I the the ones that have been developed in draft form go back several years. So perhaps I don't wanna put them on the spot, but chief Pooler could kind of describe. It's really more about response and fire operations and response within the townships. Yeah. So as the new chief, one thing I'm diving into is, you know, exactly what is it that we're doing both reactively and proactively. And reactively is the low hanging fruit. So it's pretty easy for us to look back through our record management software and and pull stats for different call types. So I think moving forward, you as as the city representatives and the township,
board as the town representatives would should be expecting to get reports from us about what we're doing, what service we're providing each of you on a regular basis, probably monthly. Township's not quite as busy. It could a quarterly report, but, you know, I'll have some dialogue with them, figure out what works for them and make sure that you guys are understanding what exactly you're getting for your your tax dollars. And if I could tail on to that, I think the key relationship there is if we started to see that, like, our drawdown like, we're having more fires throughout the service area, whether that's township or city, or more,
like, high acuity responses that require significant amount of resource that drawdown what become what is a bit, like, if there is a large incident, if there's a span of twelve hours in the city where we are somewhat less covered because there have to be on scene at that and and relieving each other. You can't stay in the fire for twelve hours. Like, you have to come out, like, every fifteen, thirty minutes. So it's if we started to see more of that happening, that would be an indicator that says,
we need to start thinking about how are we gonna respond. If we're starting to see more times in certain parts of the city where we're reaching that seven and eight minute response for certain types of responses, it's a similar exercise as to how we got to the point of talking about a new fire station in Northwest, if that helps. Thank you, Administrator Zellms and Chief, Poole. I appreciate, administrator Zelms pointing out the, the level set of we want we wanna see better coordination, regular meetings with the township and the the chief and city administration,
and then those monthly, reports. And I think that will help really, have a two way communication going forward. Mister Yetzer, administrative Zems, do you have what you need from the council? Mister Yetzer? Council president, if there's anyone else that has burning thoughts that are different than what was described towards being somewhat comfortable with either of these options that are presented to I hear one person is not comfortable with either one that might get comfortable with something. Another that also wants to speak to Council member, Miller go ahead.
Sorry. I'm just, less talkative than normal. I'm holding back a cough, but I'll say I I feel comfortable with either and I would echo the comments of my colleagues. I think of that this is how we're pricing risk over ten years, and I I think both of those get me comfortable with giving staff and the township flexibility to negotiate how that risk is priced for a significant period of time. Council member Doreen. I would agree with that approach as well. I'm comfortable with with contract language either of option one or option two. Again, I think, council member Keane brought up the the equity issue and that's that's my overriding concern
in these discussions. So, either one of these contracts will get us to to that equity issue, I think. So I'm fine with language of either way. Alright. Council president Schubert, if if I may Go ahead, mister. Again, appreciate the discussion. I just, you asked if if we have what we need. And what I was hoping to leave today with was an idea of whether or not option one or option two is preferred, and and what I'm hearing is either, which is completely fine, knowing that neither are ruled out. And then the the second thing that I wanted to hear is, is there any significant,
push to have neither and and move forward with the contract that the townships have approved. And and I'll just just to make sure I'm not misunderstanding, I'm hearing that that is not the will of of the vast majority of the council. So I I I mean, I heard council president or council member Palmer state that, but I I do wanna be clear with what I'm leaving here with is that we can use either option one or option two or some mixture of that, but but not that we're not concerned about this at all and and remove it
and move forward, with with nothing. So I just wanted to state that out there. And if somebody, strongly disagrees with me, please do so that I leave here with a a clear understanding. Thank you. Thank you, mister Yetzer. I think that is the direction that I'm hearing from the council. And considering that we do not have that earlier language in front of us, I don't think we're responding to that. So, with that, we will move on to our second agenda item. And thank you, mister Yetzer. Thank you, administrator Zelms, and thank you, our neighbors in the townships for joining us as well today.
Moving on, we will hear from, mister Parrish on the national community survey results. Go ahead. Thank you. To hear this information as you navigate your strategic planning, I would just think about what are the actionable insights within this that we can carry forward to strategic planning. And really encouraged by the results here. So I think as a community, we should be proud of what you're going to hear today. This is something we do every two years, just so you have the landscape of that. We've used the national community survey administered by Polco for the last two years,
which does give us some great information on benchmarking with other communities. But with that, I'm going to turn it over for the balance of the presentation to Brandon Barnett with Polco. He's joining us virtually. I will roll through the slides and then we're certainly happy to answer any questions that you might have at end as well. Go ahead, mister Burnett. Alright. Thank you for having me. Can everybody hear me? We can. Excellent. Well, I'm happy to be here to present a summary of the findings from the Rochester National Community Survey or the NCS. Before I begin on behalf of myself and my Polco NRC coworkers, I'd like to thank Jessica Schuler and Jenna Bowman,
our primary contacts throughout the survey development and implementation process. They provided thoughtful and detailed feedback throughout the project. Next slide. Before we dive into the results, I'd like to share a little bit about Polco. Polco is an online community engagement platform providing local governments and resident with resident and employee feedback. Now hundreds of organizations nationwide use Polco for strategic planning, budgeting, and empowering resident voices. Polco merged with the National Research Center in 02/2019. NRC is best known for our national benchmarking surveys,
such as the national community survey, the national employee survey, and the community assessment survey for older adults, among others. Since 1994, we've worked with hundreds of jurisdictions nationwide. Our benchmark database is the largest of its kind in The United States. We also work closely with the International City County Managers Association and the National League of Cities, as well as the engaged local government leaders, the Alliance for Innovation, and many academic partners, including the American Association for Public Opinion Research, University of Wisconsin Madison, the Hoover Institute at Stanford University,
and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Next slide. Before we dive into the results, I wanna emphasize that there are a variety of ways these results can be used. Most commonly, the jurisdictions we work with use their survey data to monitor trends and resident opinion over time and to inform budgeting processes and strategic plans. Our results also allow you to benchmark your community specific characteristics and services against communities in our benchmark database. Our hope is that as these findings are presented, they will spur ideas for you where you might wanna dig deeper. Next slide. The National Community Survey is a standardized five page comprehensive survey that allows municipalities to
assess resident opinion about their community and local government. The NCS focuses on the livability of Rochester by categorizing survey questions into 10 main facets of community livability as shown here. These facets have been identified through extensive survey research as those that are most impactful to residents' quality of life. NCS includes items within each of these 10 facets to provide a full picture of how residents feel about their community. Finally, these facets also tend to align with municipal departments, making it easy for city staff to quickly find the information that is of most
importance to them in the final report of results. This was the second time conducting the NCS for Rochester. All households within Rochester sorry. Next slide. All households within Rochester were eligible to participate in the survey. A list of all households within the ZIP code serving Rochester was purchased based on updated listings from the United States Postal Service. Using GIS boundary files provided by the city, addresses located outside of Rochester's boundaries were removed from the list of potential households to survey. From that list of eligible households, 4,200 addresses were randomly selected to receive the survey.
The 4,200 randomly selected households received mailings beginning on 07/19/2024, and the survey remained open for six weeks. The first mailing was a postcard inviting the household household to participate in the survey. The next mailing was a reminder postcard. Both postcards included a web link and QR code to give residents the opportunity to respond to the survey online. All follow-up mailings ask those who had not yet completed the survey to do so and those who had already done so did not respond twice. A total of six thirty three completed surveys were received from these efforts, providing a response rate of 16% and the margin of error of plus or minus
four percentage points. We then compared the demographic profile of survey respondents to that of adults in Rochester using the most recent census and American community survey data and weighted the survey results. Weighting is a survey research best practice and helps to improve the representativeness of your survey results. In addition to the randomly selected probability sample of households, a link to an online community wide open participation survey was published by Rochester. The open participation survey was open to all residents and became available on August 2024.
Survey remained open for two weeks and four ninety three responses were received. This presentation and the report are based on the six thirty three responses from the random sample mail based survey. The responses for the open participation survey are provided separately in the full report. Next slide. One of the advantages to local government of participating in our community surveys is the opportunity to compare ratings given by your residents to those from communities across the nation. NRC was the first organization to conceive of the idea to create benchmarks of public opinion. This allows jurisdictions to compare ratings of services to ratings of similar services from other
communities. There are currently about 500 communities in our database. Now moving to an overview of the survey results. Next slide. And next slide, please. In the survey, we have two questions that ask directly about those 10 facets of community livability that we touched on earlier. This first asks residents to rate the quality of each, and you can see the resulting comparison to the national benchmark in the shading on the chart. We see that the overall quality of the utility infrastructure and the overall health and wellness opportunities did score higher than the national benchmarks. Next slide. The second question asks about the same facets of livability,
but it's centered on how important residents think it is for the community to focus on each facet in the coming two years. So we ask about both the quality and the importance of each of these facets, and we use those answers to create the quality importance gap chart, which we'll see on the next slide. Next slide. We use this chart, which is also included in the report, to help determine which areas are of relatively higher importance and lower quality to residents. This chart is one of many ways to interpret your data and can be used to identify key findings and help a community determine which areas may need additional focus or resource allocation in the coming years and which others are performing well by comparison.
Next slide. Could before you move to the next slide, could you move the, the caption that last item we couldn't see? Inclusivity and and engagement. Thank you. You can move on now. Of the 23 survey items for which residents provided evaluative ratings, 13 received ratings higher than the national benchmark, and 108 received similar ratings, and two received lower ratings. Ratings are considered similar if they are within 10 points of the national average, and higher or lower if they are more than 10 points different from the average. These benchmark results can be found in a table in the online report. A few of the items
employment opportunities, street lighting, and snow removal. The two that were lower were yard waste pickup and Rochester as a place to visit. Next slide. When compared to results from Rochester's NCS in 2022, in 2024, '30 '2 received 32 items received ratings that were statistically significantly higher than the previous survey iteration. 82 received similar ratings and nine received lower ratings. The full table of trends dating back to 2022 can be found in the full report online. A few of the items that were higher were affordable high speed Internet access,
land use planning and zoning, street repair, opportunities to attend cultural arts music activities, and the local government being open and honest to the public. Some of the items that were lower were the overall quality of life, Rochester is a place to live, the availability of affordable quality health care, the availability of affordable quality mental health care, and Rochester as a place to work. Next slide. Moving now into the highlights of our findings, I do wanna point to a few items that stood out to us as survey researchers. There's a lot of additional data in the full report that we won't cover today, but today's presentation will focus on a few areas that we found to be most
noteworthy within Rochester's survey results. Next slide. The first of our key findings was that safety remains strong in Rochester with residents reporting feeling safe in all aspects of the community. Next slide. Roughly nine in 10 residents felt very or somewhat safe in their neighborhood and in the downtown commercial area during the day, as well as from fire, flood, or other natural disaster. Slightly smaller proportion had similar feelings of safety from violent crime, while about three quarters of residents reported feeling safe from property crime. Next slide. When looking at the demographic comparisons,
we saw that the most we saw the most disparity in feeling safe from property crime. Residents without disabilities felt statistically significantly safer from profit property crime than those with disabilities. Residents who lived in Rochester less than five years felt the safest based on length of residency, as well as homeowners feeling safer than renters. Geographically, res residents of Ward 1 And 5 had a higher feeling of safety than those in Ward 4. Next slide. Next of our key findings was that Rochester continues to be a desirable place to work with above average employment opportunities. Next slide.
The economy tended to fare well in resident opinion with most items scoring on par or above the national average. Ratings for both Rochester as a place of work and employment opportunities surpassed national averages. Roughly seven in 10 offered high marks for the overall economic health and the overall quality of business and service establishments. Establishments. About six in 10 gave similar ratings to economic development and the variety of business and service establishments. Just four in 10 residents positively rated vibrancy of the downtown commercial area and Rochester as a place to visit, the latter of which fell below national averages. While about three in 10 rated cost of living as excellent or good.
Next slide. When looking at significant disparities in demographics, nearly all items related to the to the economy received higher ratings from residents that are 55 years or older, with the most significant disparity seen in ratings for Rochester as a place to visit and the variety of business and service establishments. When looking at income, reviews were mixed. Residents whose income level were was less than 50,000 a year felt more positively about the cost of living and the overall economic health. While those at 200,000 or higher gave stronger ratings to shopping opportunities, Rochester is a place to visit in the vibrancy of the downtown commercial area.
Next slide. Next, we found that Rochester remains to be a desirable place to live, though slight decreases were observed in both the overall quality of life and the city as a place to live. Next slide. Roughly three quarters of residents reported that they plan to remain in Rochester for the next five years and would recommend living living in Rochester to someone who acts. A slightly smaller proportion gave high marks to the overall individual reputation, while about seven in 10 residents gave excellent or good ratings to Rochester as a place to live and the overall quality of life, both decreasing by at least seven percentage points from 2022.
Next slide. In general, the quality of life was viewed favorably by older adults, homeowners, and residents without a disability. When looking at Rochester as a place to live, we saw significantly higher ratings from residents without disabilities, those that are biracial people of color, and older adults, as well as residents that have lived in Rochester for more than six years, and those without children in the household. Next slide. Lastly, we found that nearly all aspects of governance increased from the previous iteration in 2022. Next slide. All items related to government performance scored in line with national averages with many items
increasing since the previous iteration. Ratings for the overall direction Rochester is taking, being open and transparent to the public and the city and the city government being honest, saw the biggest increases all rising by eight percentage points. With the exception of generally acting in the best interest of the community, all other related items increased by at least five percentage points. Next slide. When looking at the demographics, women provided more favorable reviews for the overall confidence in Rochester government, generally acting in the best interest of the community and informing residents about issues facing
the community. Residents that have lived in Rochester less than five years tended to give more positive ratings with the exception of the value of the services for the taxes paid to Rochester, which received the highest ratings from residents that have lived in cities six to ten years. Residents have lived in attached housing, meaning town townhouses, apartments, condominiums, etcetera, offered higher marks than those that lived in a single family detached homes. As with many most other facets, older adults and residents without disabilities provided more favorable ratings as well. Next slide. The NCS does have space available to ask questions about specific topics or issues facing
the jurisdiction. I'd like to now share the results from the unique questions added to Rochester's survey. Next slide. In the first question unique to Rochester's survey, residents were asked asked about the importance of various amenities for a new sports and recreation complex. An outdoor playground received the most support followed by community flexible space, an indoor playground, and indoor courts. Notably, baseball soft or softball fields receive the least amount of support from residents. Next slide. The next question asked residents how often they used library services in the past twelve months. Just 3% responded that they use library services daily,
and two in 10 had weekly use. About one quarter reported using services monthly, another quarter less than once per month, and the last quarter reporting never using library services. Next slide. In the last question unique to Rochester survey, residents were asked how likely or unlikely they would be to find various resources to increase their utilization of the library. Better parking and increased availability of digital resources were the most likely to increase utilization, followed by increased availability of physical resources, neighborhood pickup locations of materials selected, and more relevant materials or programs.
Increased availability of meeting spaces received the least support, which is three in 10 residents reporting that they would be very or somewhat likely to increase their utilization. Next slide. In conclusion, safety remains strong in Rochester with residents reporting feeling safe in all aspects of the community. Rochester's can Rochester continues to be a desirable place to work with above average employment opportunities. Rochester remains to be desire a desirable place to live. Those slight decreases were observed in both the overall quality of life and the city as a place to live. Nearly all aspects of governance increased from the previous iteration in 2022.
Next slide. If you wish to dig deeper to find out more about the opinions and perceptions of residents, you can continue to engage with your community on Polka. Rochester currently has 3,942 residents who have subscribed to your Polka Polka profile, and you have an opportunity to create a consistent dialogue with these community members. Next slide. HOCO's track module is also included in your current subscription. The over the track overview dashboard shown on the left provides a big picture look at your community data. It includes key metrics, measures of performance over time, and compares Rochester to peer communities within your state and within specific population parameters.
Next slide. I'd like to now open it up for any questions. Questions from council members? I have one to start. If you can go back to the page that had the gaps between, the I think it was the best services and, and where we are. I did notice a large gap on the community engagement piece, and I'm wondering if you can speak to, if that is indicative of other communities or how do we benchmark to other cities
on on that community engagement aspect? We need to go backwards, go in the wrong direction. It's gonna be slide 10. If it's easier to fly around, I can plug my laptop then and just go through them too that. Brandon, do you know what the title of the slide was, please? Can you can you just I I have it. I don't know. It would be balancing quality and importance. There you go. There you go. There it is. Inclusivity and engagement. National benchmarks. In general, we find that while there is a lot of discussion about it, that inclusivity and engagement when ranked against these other items tends to be the lowest
in terms of importance when it comes to resident opinion. Quality wise, however, you were in line and similar to the national benchmarks. So comparatively, you are on par with other communities across the nation. Council member Wahl. On that same slide, thanks for having that pulled up president Schubert. I noticed that there's only one in which quality exceeded importance. We lost that slide. It's coming back. It is. Is that common that that, it was, obviously health and wellness we do very well in Rochester for quality. But is it common for all of the blue dots to be higher than the
green dots? In general, yes. People tend to rate more importance towards items than they necessarily do for quality. But looking at utilities, natural environment, and parks and recreation, those being so close together are that's about as good as it can really get. What we would look at with health and wellness with it being exceeding the importance rating by that much, we would consider that if there was an area where, you know, possible budget cuts or something, you know, needed to happen, that that would be a potential area where you could pull some resources from if
they needed to be allocated to somewhere else. However, what we would see in this, given the ratings that we look at, we would see safety and economy while both of them did score well and the individual items did score well. Those would be considered areas of opportunity followed closely by mobility in there just given the gaps between the quality ratings and the importance ratings. Yes, maybe just one clarification. I think, Mr. You can look at these a lot of ways that if you have a significant gap relative to importance, that might be an area where you could say I want to invest in or
in the case of health and wellness, it might be an area too where you reflect and look at the questions and say there's a number of things in this space that we're not necessarily on first base on as a city, you know see if some things related to healthcare or you know meeting certain community needs that we're not necessarily the primary service provider on. So there's always the opportunity to dig deeper on those. Council member Miller. Yeah, just one question on the same side. So on the mobility question and the gap there, is there a way to drill down and understand who is ranking mobility much lower
in quality than importance? I would suspect perhaps people with living with disabilities since we have some of the other demographic breakdown. Understand, who is scoring it so much lower than importance? Yes. All of those demographic comparisons are available in the online report themselves. Given the extent of all of those comparisons, we didn't have them added to the presentation today, but they are available to you for each of the demographic comparisons, which include age, income, length of residency, housing tenure, housing type, presence of children, presence of older adults, and geographical area.
Mister Paris. So Yeah. Your honor, I would just add to what Brandon is saying is as a team, we do spend a fair amount of time. Yeah. Obviously, this is the aggregate data. Right? Just for ease of presentation. But and I think you saw some of the cross tabs within, you know, a few of the items but as a team we do drill down and and look into that and see where disparity might exist with certain groups for sure. Council member, did you have one follow-up question? One more question. Go ahead. Is the full report that's referenced the other item that's attached to our packet? Because I I'm searching mobility and I see a breakdown of the sub areas under
the question quality of service. I don't see a breakdown by demographic. Council member, I might I might be able to chime in. So this is like the full printed report. There is the online link similar to when we were looking at the community vision that the mayor had, commissioned, like that it doesn't lend itself to really to toggling it online is a little bit clearer. They used to present all of these other reports, but you still had to, like, put multiple pieces of paper out together for different aspects of the report to see how it pulled together. So I think that online one would be helpful and I believe,
correct me if I'm wrong, mister Parish, that we are going to be putting all of that on our website. Yeah. I think that's maybe hosted by Polko but Brandon maybe you can chime in on that otherwise. One way or the other, we'll get you the cross tab information, but as administrator zone says, the way we've seen it and utilize it most effectively is through the the web portal. Council member, King? Yeah. First, thanks to mister Barnett. It's it's probably good it is good for us to be looking at things like this. This is done on a two year cycle, so it's good for us to look at these high level things. I had two ones that process question and the other is just a a surprise
and let you kind of see what you think of it. First on process, you talk about, sent out, I think it's 4,200, got back 6,000 something, 16%, like thing. And that's plus or minus 5%. I I guess I'm struggling with that. I feel like there's a little bit of self selection into deciding to answer it. Can you comment on how the industry looks at that or what number because these are big numbers much bigger than what we're used to, but I'm still feeling like there's a self selection. Sure. The so there's two parts to that. One, the overall response rate can be somewhat of a misleading statistic.
The response rate itself does not necessarily factor into the statistical validity. The total number of responses is what we really are looking for. The industry standard for a total number of responses is 350 to 400 responses, which is what gets you to the five percentage point margin there. So to be able to get 633 and get to a four percentage point margin there is actually well exceeding the average and the industry standard in that. You are corrected that there is a little bit of a self selection even though it is a random sample. It is true that the majority of people who tend to respond to surveys are
homeowners and tend to be age 35 or older. There are always going to be the harder to reach populations, and we know what those are. So in part of what we do in order to be able to help with that representativeness is one, we over sample multifamily units because we know renters respond at a lower response rate. Two, that's where the waiting comes into play where we do wait against the statistical norms from the census and the American Community Survey data. The demographic questions that we ask match those questions from those two,
surveys in order to be able to weight those results and increase the representatives. So with that, you know, so to speak, is that if we received, you know, excessive answers from, you know, white males, fifty five or older, instead of counting as possibly one point, maybe we put them down to point nine or point eight of a point. Whereas a young adult, a young female resident of color, we would increase that representative this to say, maybe 1.2, one point three points per response. Okay. That that's helpful. It probably is a good lead way. I noticed on a couple of areas we did by age and there was a
rating the economy or rating quality of life. It has been something that I've taken by as fact and maybe it's not, but that there was this view that the longer people live in an area, the more disgruntled they'll be in some of these surveys. And these numbers seem to show the opposite, not by length of residency, but just by age. That the older residents seem to be, higher level of satisfaction, and that surprised me. Any comment on that? I tend to find more that it's the residents that have lived within a community
in that six to ten year range that have the lower scores than the old the ones that have lived there longer or the ones that have just moved to the area. It's what I've seen in the statistics in almost every jurisdiction that we've surveyed when we're analyzing those. That bracket tends to be what you would say the more disgruntled of the residents than necessarily the ones that have been that are long term residents or shorter term residents. Okay. Thank you. Council member Wall. Thank you. I'm in, the larger report and there was a a page,
it's number nine. I don't know what, page it would be in the whole Rochester government oh, my gosh. You came up to it right away. Thank you. And, we see an increasing trajectory on every one of them. I'm grateful for that. Do we take solace, however, in the fact that they're all just somewhere between 5060%? Right now, I would say yes, and I would say that you should actually because nationally, trends have been going down. Trust in local government is actually at an all time low based on this based on the numbers that we're seeing. So for you to not only have in,
like, stayed similar, but you have increased in each of those ratings, you should actually view that as a strength. Okay. And and then I'll try a different one and I can't remember what page it's on, but it's, ease of parking, and it went from 46 to to 52 or something like that. Do we as a staff or a city then try to set a goal that next time we want it to be 60% or are we satisfied with being at 52? Thank you. Boy, you pulled that up fast again.
I really appreciate that. Is 52 good, or do we need to set higher goals? President, members of the council, I think that's the exact reason for the tool. So as you go into strategic planning you can say, yeah, this is great that we're similarly situated to other communities but we want to do better. And I think this report provides you those insights to say like these are the areas where we want to grow, these are the areas where we want to sustain our current levels of investment or provide any opportunities for rethinking. So I think that's really what this is designed to do all across the board.
Thank you. Mayor Norton. Yeah, I really appreciate the questions they were and the things you're pointing out because they were some of the same things that I would have targeted. The one thing I wondered, particularly in this parking issues, we've done a had a concerted effort with trying to do better with educating our community and and doing better communication in the city. And I really think we're seeing some of that. We've done a better job letting people know about parking. We've done a better job on communicating about closed streets and on and on. And I'm kind of wondering, if we can't look at those ones that had over 10% gaps and some were
much larger. If we can't work on those that we have control over and really work on the communication and education part of it too because not all of it is budgeting. Sometimes it's just lack of knowledge about the community and maybe that's, you know, I don't know what you think about that but that was something I thought of as I looked at this as maybe that's a place we need to communicate better on, not necessarily spend more, although certainly that's possible too, but it could be both. Administrator Zones? Council president, council member, or mayor Norton, I think yes And.
Right? So there's a lot of different layers to this report that I mean, for example, we are a community that has a dense downtown that has many people coming to it to work every day and also many people who live here. So we have a different parking situation, for example, using that as an example, than, a city that is primarily suburban. Right? So I think there is, some dynamic tension there that then says, like, we don't know exactly why we we is that about parking downtown?
Is that about parking in certain neighborhoods where it might be more challenging? Is that about, dare I say, parking in the winter? And some of the requirements for moving to either side is or is that none of the above and it's that maybe that's the few, renters who maybe responded that wish their parking was covered or something of that nature. So it could be a lot of different things. And, so while this is super valuable, I think the real value is the local kind of dissection of what do the policymakers think,
could be some of the reasons or even to your point, do we communicate more on those with larger gaps? Or do we also potentially get more information with key users in that area to understand what the gap meant to them? Thank you. And if I could follow-up. Go ahead. Yep. Just the the only other one had to do with ease of travel by bicycle. And I do think as we continue to grow and we look at our density downtown, we are going to have to address this. And it's going to be worse before it gets better. And I think with all the construction downtown and everything that's going on, you know, I just I don't know and maybe the consultant who's on here can say,
yes, that was a drop, and I was you know, that makes me sad because I think we have made some improvements in some parts of town. We also have a ton of construction and other things that would cause people to go, this is a nightmare. So, yes, and, a ton of construction and other things that would cause people to go this is a nightmare. So, yes, and. Is 64% or 59% average? I guess I'm looking how do we compare to other cities, if you're still there, the voice in the room? I'm still here. Okay. Thank you. You're still there, the voice in the room? I'm still I'm still here. Thank you. So you you are scoring on par with national averages. But to your point, when there is a lot of construction going on, especially mobility and traffic related, none of those scores are gonna go up until it's fully complete.
You know, jurisdictions, residents look at it that, you know, the best intentions can all be there. But until my actual morning commute has changed and I'm not sitting through an extra fifteen minutes of construction work, I'm not gonna be happy, and I'm not gonna rate this favorably. So if bike lanes are being constructed currently right now but are not yet finished, you're not gonna see kind of the fruits of those efforts until the finished product is available to residents. Brenda, could you repeat the very beginning part about I think you said that we were on par or on average with others, but it kinda broke up for that variance.
So you were similar to the national benchmark. So on par with comparison communities. And is that the 64% or the 59% was on par? That's the 59%. Okay. Thanks. Any other questions on the survey? We all have an opportunity to look at it and, examine it and, incorporate it into our strategic planning as we move forward. Thank you, mister Burnett. And, we will continue on with, mister Parrish and the, twenty twenty four year end action plan and operations plan update.
Alright. Mayor, president, members of the council, also something that really gives you the opportunity to reflect and think forward about your strategic planning and, clerks team, I just if you can just cut over to my computer, I'll run off of off of that if that works for you. No. Oh, let's not do that then. Okay. Sorry about that. Yeah. No. Thanks, Anne. Appreciate that. So again, we've been doing the action plan for a number of years. The foundation of that is the strategic priorities that the city council has adopted, which have been relatively similar for the last, let's say four to six years. Affordable living, which is very sort of comprehensive.
Obviously, there's a strong housing dimension to that, but it can also be do we create a good live work connection, do we have affordable food, any number of different things just to manage the financial footprint of residents and members of the community. Quality services, most of what we do around here is we're a complex service provider and so we want to have that aspirational goal to, deliver service as well. And then economic vibrancy and growth management of course, that's a topic that gets a lot of attention at the city council, and really allows you to think forward about what you want the community to look like in the future.
We are going to be giving you these updates on the action and operations plan, twice a year. We had a quarterly cadence before, but have found that a better rhythm for this information for you is twice a year. So what we're giving you is the results of our 2024 data today. And then as we get closer to the fall, we would then move ahead and provide you with an update then. I've talked to you about what those strategic priorities are. A little over a year ago, the council sort of put a little more focus to each of those strategic priorities. And so in that affordable living space, really wanted to focus on the construction of market rate and affordable owner occupied housing.
And that's been an imperative. We'll talk about a few things that have happened in that space in that economic growth and vibrancy area, investing in public realm. And there's a number of imperatives. But we have to be a place where people want to live, work, and create a great overall experience for the community. And then in the quality services space, we're marching toward this transition plan for post 2,030 power supply needs and being renewable at that point. And so I'll give you a little bit of an update on some of the things in that space realizing this is really,
under the leadership of RPU that that's happening. This is really sort of your small dashboard. We did add a new category, not started this time around. But generally speaking, you can see that we are very much on target. We've completed a number. We're on target for a number. A few have been delayed usually for a very good reason. And one is off target. But again, there's good context within the report for that. Just a couple of highlights. Again, in this affordable living space, a number of great things have happened. This isn't designed to be the deep dive on housing tonight.
You have other opportunities on future study sessions to talk about the Any Path Homes and other items, land use. Those are all upcoming study session topics in terms of the comp plan update. But, you invested sales tax dollars in the affordable, homeownership creation program. You have the Coalition of Rochester Housing, which is supported 134 units kind of on a smaller scale but generated a fair amount of energy and council enthusiasm. We conveyed two lots for single family home construction and partnering on that project with First Homes.
Larger project, more transformative dynamic project in the downtown. Sherman on Civic Center, which is our Civic Center North property just right by the existing Civic Center, which is a surface parking lot. So trying to bring three eighty units forward there and many others. This is just a small reflection of some of the efforts. There's just a lot of activity in this space. And I think the team has been doing excellent work there. Economic growth and, vitamin C and growth management again a number of projects many of which you're familiar
with I'm not going to go through but it will be exciting to have the first full summer of Discovery Walk for the community to enjoy. We have a number of, important energy upgrades in the Marion Road substation, which, you know, again, construction, you know, obviously, takes a lot of effort. You know, there's a lot of the historic preservation work you've been doing in this space, whether it was even Pill Hill the night before, the historic district, the team's been working on the visioning, coming forward, Link Rapid Transit, any number of these things, as well as, like, just signature investments in parks. You know, the park there's not a lot of park projects up here,
but you've got Silver Lake, coming with the pool and the other features there. You've got Soldier's Field, which rolled out last summer. So a lot of excellent work in this space. Just speaking a little bit more, in the post 02/1930 power supply plan, this environment, as you can imagine, has just got a bunch more complicated. You know, we're on this march to being renewable 02/1930. The states adopted some goals relative to, you know, carbon neutrality in 02/1940. We are trying to get to that point, but there's some competing pressures there. Some of the funding strategies that were contemplated are changing and evolving.
We have higher projected energy needs, maybe in the future than what we were originally envisioning. So there's certainly, some things, whether it be data centers or the energy required for AI or electric vehicles that just, you know, needs to be accounted for. And so I know RPU has provided some recent updates to their board, about that. And there's a number of things that will continue to, happen there. But significant investment on the city side, you know, we obviously, you all are at some point gonna be asked to, you know, invest some significant money in either power purchase contracts or investing in your own energy
generation. And there's going to be a lot of zeros behind those bonding numbers. And so just to start to socialize that idea like this is not going to be without cost. Now a lot of those costs are currently there, because we're purchasing power today. But you just have to think about your energy model there. Couple of other highlights, from this action planning period, some work in the legislative space. I mentioned some of those park referendum. Three one one has been a great story. We'll hear more later, but, you know, 12,000 calls already, in that space. Libraries continues to walk through their master planning. And then just,
you know, Jacob Metz, I'll just give a shout out to him. He's a a fellow with us. He's done some exceptional work just in language access and getting us better equipped to serve residents with language access needs as well as, convenient conversations around universal design accessibility and how we can best, serve, you know, our our disabled community. And so number of, great great things. I'm not gonna go through every one of these. I think you all have had the opportunity to review this. The operations plan is more tactical. Right? So this is sort of the some of it's just outputs of things we did.
Some of it is, just things that we use as benchmarks and guideposts as we go forward with the team. But over a thousand data requests this year and that's a lot of data requests even as early as 2020. We had in the 300s of that number. And so it's a growing emerging area, takes a lot of work. We haven't materially changed our staffing in that space. But data requests, as you all know as elected officials, it's just a much more robust conversation in terms of, what people are wanting, how they're being utilized. And so it's definitely something that impacts us operationally.
Building permit, rental housing, both of those record year for permit revenue, last year, and we still have much more to come in that space. Mentioned three one one calls. Over 2,000,000 visits to the website. So I think something we can be really proud of is our, commitment to digital government and how we can best serve residents the way that they wanna and prefer to be served. Pre pandemic, you wouldn't believe and, Councilmember Palmer can potentially attest to this. Like, we had lines at the building permit counter, at the old county facility that we were in. And, the DSIC, there's not the same kind of lines that you used to see.
People are submitting their permits electronically and, you know, being reviewed electronically and we've streamlined much in that space. Likewise, the number of people coming through city hall these days just isn't isn't the same as it used used to be. And we're still very proud of our triple a, bond rating. Dispatch continues to have a number of calls that go a 75,000 calls going through to our dispatch center, 247 3 60 5. 10 local regional artists hired for music events. So just, you know, continuing to invest in that local arts economy through public music and other partnerships.
This is a tough thing. Like, when you're in the business of selling energy and water to show the conservation numbers, because that means you did not sell that. But, you know, it meant you preserve the resource. Right? And so, you know, there's some of the competing priorities that we have. Zips on time, I think we're proud of that. Like, that was a really tough issue for the last, like, year year or two. And, the team really has tried to increase that on time number up to 92%. We're within industry standards and that's, providing great service to, you know, those that, most need it. Still increasing our transit service hours. And then, maybe if you could move the the captioning on this one.
I think this speaks to what the mayor talked about a little earlier about how we can market, effectively some of the things that we're doing in this parking space and the ease of parking. You know, we had over a million ramp utilizations last year and, just a little under half of those were free. So if you're an hour or less or you're using it on nights and weekends, a significant number of those are free utilizations. And as you know, you get a lot of feedback on downtown parking. But, like, this is a great a great statistic for you to say, like, hey, we're we're providing a lot of this at no cost when,
the members of the community wanna ultimately use it. And by the way, no parking's free. Right? Like, that's like a whole a whole thing. But you have those numbers. So, again, this is designed to help you as you go through strategic planning. Next steps in that strategic planning space, include, you getting together on March 24 to have a conversation with the study session. There's still this continued work that's happening with consultant. You've all had the opportunity to meet with them one on one, I hope. Boards and commissions were last week. We had a great conversation with our leadership forum.
And so that's all with this and the community survey. We're all designed to help, you have good information as you move forward, with that. So, with that, I think just looking forward a little bit, using all this in the strategic priorities is important. But also, we get into the budget process. And you'll start to hear from, the team, budget starting in April. And that April, I just don't wanna estimate, this for you to really think about. Like, it's way more important time of the budget than you think. That's the time where we haven't, like, gotten so far down the road with the work of the budget,
where changes can't be made. And so it's a good time for you to reflect back to the team to say, yeah, I really wanna preserve the services that we have available or I really wanna rethink this or I don't feel like we can support this kind of tax levy at this moment in time. That gives us sort of some guidance and marching orders as we move forward to bring you a budget and budget that Allison will ultimately recommend city administrator zones will ultimately recommend to you, in August. And so everyone wants to meet your expectations, but that early information is super important.
You have to set a preliminary levy in September. It's an important period of time because that preliminary levy sets the tone for a whole bunch of notices that goes out to the entire community that will, you know, either let them know, you know, we're 99% there on this or this is we have some confidence in what this looks like or we have a lot of things that are opened up. So we like to be, you know, fairly far down the road with, you know, a budget that you're comfortable with, by the time those notices come in. And then at the end of the day, budget hearing and adoption occurs in December.
So with that, lots of other plans in play that will continue to evolve and feed this, but, happy to answer any questions that you have at this point in time. Thank you, mister Parrish. I had one question, and it speaks to kind of the the data you had, the the slide with all the the data, the 1,000,000 parking ramp usage. Can we, at some point, see the trends like we did in the last in the the survey that we just looked at where we can see that,
for instance, you mentioned zips on time has gone up to 92%. Do you know what it was in the during the last update on the highlights here? Yeah. We said And then the same with ramp usage. How where where was that ramp usage during the last report? Yeah. So, president, mayor, members of the council, there is an attachment in your packet that, has some of the '23 data, within it and and I'm a I'll try to get to,
whether or not parking and transit just just on the on time performance. So our goal in '25 for that, and this would be like a ways into your pocket here. So our goal for, on time zips is 93% in '25. We were 89% in '23. Yes. Good. So we do within that document keep it but certain things we want to continue to try to pull out and even when we do these in the future I think that's a great to see those trends, it's a great way to think about it. Great, thank you. Questions, Mayor Norton? Yeah. I just, mostly just because you provided the opportunity mentioning three one one.
I tried using it the other day and it still said AT and T isn't supported. Are we close to having AT and T on board? Council president, mayor Norton, I I don't know if we are close, but we still have the direct line that's on also. You can still get there. It just can't be just 311. So I think what you're referencing is we have to have agreements where they're geofencing Yep. Within that. So, when, folks are not able to do that, we still just recommend that they are calling, the number which is at the top of our website,
507 answer for you and then, get back to the if there's anything we can do, firm answer for you and then, get back to the I'd appreciate them. Is there anything we can do to reach out to them and encourage them to move along? Because I'm very impressed with the numb the 311 response that we're getting. And but I also know I've had people say, well, that doesn't work. And so it's, you know, I don't know how, you know, how many people in our community that affects, but I tried it and it didn't work for me because I have AT and T. And I think that's the barrier right now. And if I may, the other thing that we're working on is getting simple communication tools both to our elected body and out to the to the community and adding some of that information
to other communication that we do. So I think, you know, we would always want to just for peace of mind because someone might have, I don't know, if Cricket or all the other ones work either or, a burner phone. So it always providing both options and that if for some reason calling 311 doesn't work, call the (507) 328-3311. So Appreciate that and appreciate the update. Mister Parrish, go ahead. Yeah, your honor. Also just reflecting on 311, you know, you certainly can call but we also have a great, system where it's omnichannel as well and so we have a chatbot online as well
as, you know, other features where people can get information and up just back to your previous question council president, the 23 parking numbers were 977000. Great. Thank you. So we have council member Keane and then we have Doering and Palmer on deck. So council member Keane, go ahead. Yeah. Hey, I do appreciate seeing, like, the update on the the the, specific action plans tied to the strategic priorities. But I really appreciate you tying in the operation stuff and the other things to it. I guess my question goes back to the the the we at one point,
and I'm going back years now, sort of drove like the strategic priorities drive down to these different action plans. Are they helpful from a staff perspective, or are they more an annoyance? So, president, mayor, members of council, I think it's very helpful. Right? I mean, you know, it's it's one of those things where, it's very important to understand like at a high level what your priorities are and then how we can operationalize those. And sometimes those are big hairy audacious kinds of goals and sometimes they're just pretty laser focused and surgical types of items. So I I think it is helpful to be able to help connect the team
from the work they're doing with the overall policy priorities of of the council. So, yeah, I I believe it to be helpful. Good. I I appreciate when I think of the numbers in that range of a hundred, but our staff staff size, I appreciate that. But I really appreciate you tying in the operational stuff too. That it's not just the people working on the the the initiatives, but it's also the operational stuff gets attention. And I wanna make sure through initiatives, we don't take attention away from operations. So thank you. Council member Doreen. Yeah. I just wanna thank, you and the entire team for preparing this report.
It's it's great. I really like the city operations plan. I am actually kind of a a data dweeb, so I I really like it. My question is in that plan, you know, all those metrics are listed out one by one, and it's color coded very nicely, met goal, did not meet goal, exceeded goal, all that kind of stuff. And then in the performance mo notes, so so you didn't meet a goal, it just reports why you didn't meet a goal. It doesn't necessarily tell us a plan to then meet the goal. And I don't wanna dig down into operations, but how does how does that work for those teams?
Do they then actually come up with a plan to meet the goals? Yeah. I really do think that that certainly could be a nice evolution, you know, of the document as, you know, we are taking and I do think there's some of that in there. But again, you have a number of teammates that are entering data in here. And so I'll just call out, I think there's some data in like community development and they say, well, we didn't meet the goal because it's early and we're ramping up, but we are trying to do A, B and C to further get closer to the goal. So I think that that certainly could be a good addition to this,
and ultimately an enhancement. Maybe this all stopped to you since you expressed appreciation. I'm sort of the pinch hitter here this evening. This is really a body of work that our teammate management analyst, Jessica Schuler, takes a lot of pride in and I'd be remiss if I just didn't acknowledge the great work that she does in both the survey as well as this in terms of how it comes to you and how it, you know, gets updated effectively. Just just and and I I I appreciate that very much. Just one follow-up question there. And so then in those areas where goals aren't being met,
I'm wondering if there's communication ever back to this body about whether we didn't give a clear enough definition of a strategic priority or things like that to not allow that goal to be met and what that feedback loop is back up to the council level. Yeah. I I think these conversations are important. So this is a great opportunity to provide that feedback. I think I'll I'll pull out and this is in the strategic priorities plan, not the operation plan, but like the goal that didn't get met was like, related to collection at the library. And you know, that's conversation if we have that goal as a community to not have eighty four
days of digital collection wait, which I kind of get excited about when I get on a long list and I finally get there. It's like a really exciting thing for me to like say I finally made it through the list. But you didn't need to hear that, I guess. But, but at the same time, it's really a resource thing at the end of the day. And so it really should just drive some of your resource conversations to say, yes, we want to invest in digital collection, and there's all these things to think about with that. And so it's somewhat situational. I don't wanna put an absolute up in that particular case. That's the reason until we invest further in that collection, those wait times will be there.
Did you have something to add? If I could just go on what you're saying. Go ahead. I do think in a couple other people even on, like, tying the operations and to all we have operations and initiatives. They all have to happen because if we're not doing operations, like, we will hear it. So I do think it is really important to to hear this because the our our organization hears this. But when I sometimes see something that or I hear that something sort of off track, that's also when I say we need to get an update to the council. Let's put it in one of the Friday updates just for awareness.
And I still think we need to try to figure out, is this urgent enough that it needs to be a report on the regular meeting, or do we have room within the study session schedule to talk more about, you know, is this a resource issue? Is this something where at least the council and the elected body can weigh in on is it important enough to need to resource it differently potentially if you want to accomplish it within a certain period of time? So I would say it does guide leadership's perspective of, like, we need to come back to the council. It certainly guides some of,
the discussions I have about budget because using the digital collection as an example. Another way to address that is, like, who is able to access your digital collection? Is it everybody across the entire Selco region? Or is, you know, should there be some there could be different levers that could be pulled from a policy perspective, surrounding do you, prioritize, someone who is living within Olmsted County because Olmsted County residents do also, pay a a tax to, that supports the library, or is that the entire region? So I'm there are some different levers that I'm you generally asking about.
Like, if this really is a goal, like, we can't just look at resourcing it. Or what are all of the different ways we've looked at? If we've looked at all of those, then maybe we need to be have talking about this other lever that needs to come forward to councils so that you have the full picture of of what options have been looked at. So I find it valuable, and I would just say, not everyone loves putting the data in. But if you don't, like, like, make it something that becomes a process within your city, it starts to unravel and then we don't actually meet your goals because people are
off chasing their dreams. Thank you, Administrator Zelms. Council Member Palmer. Thank you. I'm confused a little bit. So so we got kilowatt hours of energy savings and we get gallons the council, I believe that to be the case but we can certainly confirm that with you. I think like it's not necessarily like we we have growth factors in there too but I think there's conservation efforts and other programmatic activities that helped, you know, but for those things, we would have potentially been there. I know last year, we sold 5% less electricity in Rochester. Our view did.
So, I understand that but what did the city of Rochester do? Not the citizens but the city do to save the gallons of water? Yeah. I don't know if I could try. Again, I don't have a specific answer, but there are demand An RPU for us. There are demand management programs run out of RPU and they do try to keep track of but for, like, we have a program to try to redo. It's a lot of it at the bigger commercial sites. But it's also when they give out light bulbs, they just take, like, they try to measure those and that's where they do that measurement of how much
isn't being generated because of that. It is different than saying demand went down or demand went up. It really is seeing the programs that are run out of a and this isn't something our Pew decided to do. This is the public utility commissions make you do things like this. I I know it better on the electric side. Similar things happen on the water side. Okay. So but I mean, we sold 5% less electricity last year. I know that. So that means our revenue is down on electrical part of it. So, I don't know how they balance their budget on that. The the other thing that just here takes me is this is this zips on
time at 92%. I I I mean, I think of this poor person sitting there waiting for it to come and it's a day late or an hour late or three hours late or some story that we've been told. I understand you're trying to tell me that it's meeting industry standards. I want to meet our resident standards. What do they expect to have? And how does the program set up? So how do we, as a city council, get up to to 98% or or a %? What do we have to do to get to that point with zips? Yeah. So, president, mayor, mayor's council, I think that's certainly something we could look at.
I I mean, I think, obviously, there's investment required if you wanna do that. You know, we're in a federal funding and state funding model that you have to think about there. But, you know, ultimately, it gets down to availability, in terms of, you know, being able to to meet those needs most effectively. But, we've had conversations about zips in the past, looked at strategies to, you know, increase from 89 to this, and I think it might have been tougher before. But if that's a priority of the council ultimately, I mean We certainly could, you know, try to say what does it take to get to, you know, RPU has got I'm not saying this is achievable here,
but, you know, RPU is 99.9, you know, percent reliability. That's their goal in the electric space. These are all laid out here for your reference and, you know, we can look at strategies to be more efficient, but some of it also requires investment if you wanna have that higher level. Just a a follow-up. I I have a follow-up on your question there, council member. So it my understanding with the zips on time, we have a goal of 93%. So maybe a question is why is our goal 93% not 98% like the council
member had suggested? Well, I don't think the goal was set by us. I think the goal was perceived to be how much better can we be because last year, we made a a hire, an early hire to hire another person for Zips to get it on time. My other understanding is that the expectations are oddly set that if I call up for tomorrow and you don't show up or I'm not ready, we don't care. Well, we should care. And so I think some of the program, items are a little bit misguided there. So that's the reason I don't know what the right number is,
but I would if I was calling for a bus ride and I wanted someone to come pick me up, I wouldn't wanna know it's almost a 8% chance you ain't showing up. So Administrator Zones, did you have something to add? I'm sure she does. Well, one of those was what council member Palmer said which is that this that the city council actually made some investments in staffing and zips and had some conversations about that. And I believe, although I would need to confirm with parking and transit, that this also is something that they were building into the the RFP that is out to better,
like, to have better controls about, our contractor and subcontractor subcontractors to make sure that how you design your future renewal not renewal, new contract, for, for for public transit, which includes zips, could have more clarity or teeth, if you will, in it for the requirements for on time, etcetera, and what that might mean for the, overall contract that we have to provide that service. The other challenges that we have are just the availability of drivers.
And I think what we've tried to do is to make sure that there isn't the perception that if you don't call ahead that we don't care, but really clarify for people. They need ideally, really need to try to call ahead of that twenty four hour window so that we can provide them the confidence that they're going to be picked up because we know that there's going to be x number of drivers out on the Zips routes. So trying to improve that communication so that Zips users have a good sense of why is it so important to call ahead of time and to be there because it starts to influence the rest of the system and the other scheduled pickups.
And so we all have a role to play in making sure that it's on time. Okay. Any other questions? A lot of data here, and we all can delve into it, especially council member Oh, council member Miller, go ahead. Sorry. I'm trying to preserve my one most important question. We heard earlier, at the last council meeting from a resident who was concerned about the number of single family or owner occupied homes being purchased and converted to rental properties. Is there a way we can track that? Because I I see, you know, this homeownership creation program creating 289 units.
I also hear in, past conversations that the most affordable housing is already built. You know, we need people to step up to the next level to to release that rung. And I also have heard anecdotally people saying it's really difficult to buy a house because they were putting an offer after offer after offer and being outbid. Is there a way that we can track the loss of owner occupied units in the market? Yeah. So, mayor, president, members of the council, we certainly have a bit just the basic demographic data available to us that says this is our percent of housing stock that's owner occupied,
this is our percent of occupancy or housing stock that's currently provided to renters. So whether that be the census Minnesota demographer, we certainly have that information available and we can track the trend on that over time. Some of the more granular data could be challenging to say like this particular property went to this type of investor, like those are a little more But I guess something like, I mean, people would need a rental permit to rent the the housing. Correct? Yeah. We can certainly get that's Right.
Put in rented an address, can we see was it a recent sale or or track some way and Yep. New rental permits that come on board, you know, each year, we certainly can. Council council president, council council member Miller, I believe we also, can well, I believe that this is also tracked through Exela, and so it's something I could be incorrect. But I think it's something that you could you could even access by looking at what where the permits are happening within, each area of town. So I think it's something that we could provide some hands on for you to
even be able to go track. Not that we couldn't provide the report, but if it's something where you were wondering if this had flipped to be, renter versus owner through a rental license, frankly, or if you are getting word that something is appearing to be a rental and does not appear to have a rental license. I think it's actually tracked within, the online, accessible database where the however many hundreds of thousands of permits also go in. Okay. And I just say that because I I I see the number of units that we're saying these were new starts or these were completed ownership opportunities,
which is great, but we also see in the studies thing we one, we need a higher number than that, but also we're not looking at necessarily the net impact to owner occupancy opportunities in the housing space. And I also just have the personal curiosity if some of those houses being converted aren't more likely to be the smaller starter homes, the the cheaper properties that are in existing neighborhoods, on existing transit lines, connected infrastructure. And it's a worry of mine. Thank you, council member. Any other, questions, comments on the,
the report? Oh, go ahead, council member Palmer. And I'm troubled by what Mr. Miller just said. And I you can track the numbers, but then there is what do you want to do about it. And I don't know you still have a single family dwelling. There obviously is a need to be rented. We're building new single family dwellings. We know we need more. But I don't know if you find out there's X percent that are investor owned, then you turn around and go, well, we don't want investor owned, but who's the investor? Is it somebody with an extra house? Are you going to say, oh, jeez, you could only own four houses?
I know this is kind of a national thing for people to chase, but for me, it's an issue that's not an issue in Rochester. And let's move on. Council member Miller. I think it's just important information and council president, I would just add that I I think then we we start to look at are the other policies. I mean, we'll have the UDC annual text update, like, are are we looking at areas? I mean, council member Palmer has mentioned, the interest in in looking at removing parking minimums from residential projects downtown. Do some of these other strategies of success when the net impact is is potentially lower?
And I I think it's just something I have a concern with. I'm not suggesting a policy at this point. Thank you, council member Miller. That's how I, I took your inquiry as well. And I think just to kinda summarize, I think there's a lot of data here and council member, Palmer interested in the zips on time, others interested in wrap ramp usage. If we have inquiries that we, have regarding this data that we can't find in the online?
What is the process for us to find that information and, and get a little bit more research? Council president, council members, it would be the same process as any other item. If it's going to be substantive, a significant so I would say reach out to to me, whether that's in our regular meetings or if you have a specific question, feel free to reach out. If it's pretty clear that there's another director that also would be involved, please include them as well. And then if it is a substantive thing, so for example, the conversation here about getting information or even about zips,
like, we're not going to run and change everything to be a hundred percent unless we have further direction. But we have to its council over time has talked about the importance of that. And so it is something that we keep in mind, the conversation about could we get data if it's data we already have and we can report it without significant change to our processes, that is something that we could do. And so I would just say reach out with the same kind of communication process, and then we can connect you to, the right folks to be able to have the question either simply answered or have
a little bit more conversation about what you're looking for to understand is that a council initiated action, or is that something we would recommend that you bring up during your strategic planning process, the budget process, etcetera. Thank you. With that, I think, unless, administrator Zones has any information on our future study session, schedule. Thank you, council president, council members, mayor Norton. Our next study session is on March 10, so you're back to typical days, of the week on Mondays, for a while throughout the year. I don't know about you,
but that was throwing me off significantly. When Wednesday was happening, I didn't know what day it was. So, we do have a couple of items, related to, people experiencing homelessness, how we interact with that in our city services, RPD, homeless outreach initiatives. And that will also include other ways that different departments interact, and their services, interact with people experiencing homelessness, a conversation about any path home, and where that how that is progressing, with Olmsted County and other partners. And then, it seems important to have both of those conversations. And then a conversation about sidewalk gap fill prioritization,
which has been on the list of things to bring to the city council for some time. So that is broadly about, we don't have significant funding for sidewalk gap fills and traditionally, sidewalk gaps are filled and paid for by the, adjacent properties. So that has a bit of spice to it depending on, the conversation. And then, again, as mentioned by, deputy administrator Parrish on the March 24, we would be, having that follow-up strategic planning and, we haven't determined, the location yet, but we will let you know. Great. Thank you. Any other business?
If not, we are adjourned.