Recording in progress. Please rise as you're able for this pledge of allegiance. I pledge Welcome everyone to our March 17 city council meeting. Happy Saint Patrick's Day or as those of us on the diocese likes to call it, happy Saint Patrickine Day. So, we begin every meeting with our open comment period. This is an opportunity for anyone from the public to speak on items that are not that we are not taking public testimony during a public hearing later in the
agenda. Each person has up to two minutes to speak speak for a total of twenty minutes. I will be keeping track of time through a variety of methods, the clock here as well as the blue clock over there. Because of the limited time, we wanna make sure that others have an opportunity to speak. I'd also request that each speaker be concise to allow more people to speak during the designated time. Participants are also, encouraged to limit comments generally to topics that are within the scope and jurisdiction of
the council's ability to affect policy. Council members and staff do not respond to your comments during public comment, but will instead follow-up on any specific requests separately. If you have any materials that you wish to share with the council, you may give them to the city clerk over here to distribute. You will be invited in the order of which you signed up. And, first on our list is John Manning. Good evening. Please state your name and go ahead. John John Mayes.
We live in in there for townhouses. A couple of years ago, when the Rochester utility sent me a mailing that they would the water bill they would add to the water billing, an insurance for underground pipes, and I talked to them. If I paid it and had a pipe breakage in my Meadowbrook townhouse line, would they come out and fix it? They answered no. I asked the Rochester Postmaster if I was solicited to pay for a service that the solicitor knows they would
not provide, is that mail fraud? The answer was, it would seem to be. Couple weeks ago, a letter comes in the mail from the city of Rochester stating, I will be billed for sidewalk repair. Will the city repair a sidewalk in Meadowbrook property? The answer is no. I pay property taxes of almost $3,000. Does a year does the city plow my street? No. Does the city repair potholes in my street?
No. Do they ever send a street sweeper there? No. I pay dues, couple hundred dollars a month to my townhouse association for those services and, of course, more. Also Mister Manning, if you could wrap up. Your time is completed. Try do one short One short sentence. I do not like the statement classifying my residence as nonresidence in the same letter. Can I say any more? Nope. Thank you. Thank you.
Next up is Molly Dennis. Alright. Thank you. Well, happy Saint Patrick's Day. I'm a little Irish. So I did wear intentionally a shirt that has a little green on it, maybe more intentionally on other things as well. It's it's been over a month and I still haven't heard from the response to the February 3 transparency request I asked for. As council members, you seven are the watchdogs. You are the oversight board. You are the ones who are accountable to every single dollar that tax taxpayer funds where taxpayer funds are spent,
including your own incomes and documenting the hours you spend to justify those incomes. I would appreciate a response so that citizens know, transparency of trust. There are many important issues on this agenda tonight, but I have to use these two very precious minutes to address, potential public fear mongering that occurred on March 3 under other business by council member Doreen. I believe if you rewatch that, I sent an email to the council. I can post that and I probably will on the community advocate Facebook page I
have and I would hope that someone will respond to the email that I sent either publicly on Facebook or, via email. That is a very serious issue about slandering a civilian. What most of you have ran for public office with a commitment to integrity, compassion, and government transparency. And as Rochester citizens are struggling, we deserve honest elected representatives who worked full time for us, and Rochester deserves to know where every single penny of their hard earned tax dollars are spent.
I have when I was on a council, I've asked for those not given. I hope that this council will find and be transparent where their tax where everyone's taxpayer dollars are being spent in our our city. So I appreciate a response to that email and I will make sure that's made public for everyone to see. Thank you so much. Thank you, miss Dennis. And though that, concludes our public comment period. Clerk, Queso, if you would please call the roll. Council member Keane? Here. Council member Miller? Here. Council member Wall?
Here. Council member Fredericks? Here. Council member Palmer? Here. Council member Doreen? Here. Council president Schubert? Here. Thank you. We will move on to the city administrator's report. We have deputy city administrator Aaron Parrish. Mister Parrish, take it away. President, members of council, just a few, brief updates this evening. Really, glad to see you all here this evening. Just a reminder grounding us in sort of our, RISE values that that guide a lot of the actions of our teammates that they live out every day. A lot of fun things in this report we have,
coming up at Cascade Lake. If the community wants to engage with the artists and residents, there's a number of opportunities to do so in April, so check that out. It's available, in all of our different outlets in terms of the website, social media, etcetera. But a really great opportunity to do something hands on that'll be meaningful and impactful, both for them as the experience, but also as the, you know, park evolves in the future. So definitely fun stuff to do there. Not to be outdone, there's salsa on Sunday, coming up March 30 at the chateau. And so invite anyone to come out and do that. It's a free event.
As always, parking in the downtown is free. You can come alone. You can bring a partner, but, it sounds like a really great opportunity to do something active as we lean into the spring season here. With that being said in the downtown, we also, based on previous council authorizations, have, ramp, work coming forward. So both Second Street, ramp as well as the Center Street ramp through October. We'll be having some work done, so just be advised of that. We're trying to keep those as open as possible as we move forward, with those projects. Lastly, or almost lastly, second to last, seasonal parking requirements suspended.
So I just wanna make you all aware, that we have made the decision to suspend seasonal parking requirements, which we have done in the past. Of course, last year, the weather was just a little bit different, and we are, you know, looking forward to an event here potentially Tuesday into Wednesday. And we are encouraging people should there be weather like that's projected this week, that they voluntarily comply, that they try to observe and adhere to, alternate side parking to facilitate snow removal. If we get into a really serious event in this time frame as well, we have the ability to declare a snow So I know the team watches that,
monitors that, and all these events are very fluid. And the range of snow accumulation projected is pretty wide, this event. So we'll see see what happens. But we do have some contingency plans in place, and I know the team's planning on communicating that out via press release too to encourage that voluntary compliance until, seasonal parking requirements start up again in November. And then lastly, just also committed to that ongoing communication with the community. The the team has done as well, with many of our partners an excellent job of creating downtown rochesterconstruction.org,
and we would just point people to that as their ongoing digital resource to understand what's going on moment to moment, with downtown construction impacts. And with that, I would turn it over back to you, council president Schoebring. Thank you, mister Parrish. Mayor Norton is away fulfilling her leadership role as a board member of the National League of Cities as acting mayor in her absence. I have one item to share. Earlier today, I presented a proclamation that the mayor, made prior, before she left declaring March as meals on wheels month.
Each March, meals on, meals on wheels celebrates the historic day in 1972 when a national nutrition program for seniors was added to the Older Americans Act. This legislation supported the rapid growth of the Meals on Wheels network that now collectively serves 2,800,000 seniors each year nationwide. Locally hundred meal Meals on Wheels volunteers, including, council member, Doring and I I believe administrator Zelms is also, and I'm sure others on the dais as well,
served as volunteers delivering over 33,000 meals throughout the Rochester region. So, join me in celebrating Meals on Wheels month. And with that, we have, the order of the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda? Staff, council members, council member Keane? I'll move to approve the order of the agenda. Second. The the order of the agenda is moved by council member Keane and seconded by, was that council member Palmer? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Motion carries. Onto our consent agenda,
council member Wahl is pulling items f eight and f 13. Is that correct? Correct. Are there any other items being pulled from the consent agenda? Seeing none, I would, invite a motion to approve the consent agenda in block items f one through seven and f nine through f 26. So moved. Okay. Let's do that again. I'll move. Moved by, council member Miller, seconded by council member Fredericks. All in favor, say aye. Aye.
Any opposed, say I'm in favor. I I just wanna make a quick comment, if I may. Go ahead, council member Miller. So I just wanna acknowledge, I we have a couple items pulled of increasing costs. I I wanna acknowledge that f 14, f 18, f 19, and f 21 are all contract awards that in total have come under about $1,200,000 under estimates. And I just think that that's it's worth acknowledging as we, talk about the rising costs later in the meeting. So with that said, I Thank you. No pro thank you for pointing that out, council member Miller.
All in favor of, approving the consent agenda as stated? Aye. Opposed, say nay. Passes unanimously. Moving on to our public hearings. We have six public hearings on our agenda this evening. And before we begin the public hearings, I'll just take a moment to clarify the process by which each hearing will happen. Staff will introduce or make a presentation on the item. And then if there is an applicant or applicant representative on, here, they will have up to ten minutes to discuss the item,
and then I will open the public hearing. Members of the public have, five minutes each to address the, the item, and then I will close the public hearing. The applicant will be invited back to, for rebuttal for up to five minutes. And then at that point, council members will have an opportunity to ask clarifying questions of, the applicant and staff. So with that, our first public hearing is g one, which is the issuance of general obligation revenue bonds pursuant through conduit financing on behalf
of Mayo Clinic. And mister Brian Anderson, take it away. Yes. Thank you, council president, council members, deputy administrator Paresh. So on February nineteenth of this year, the council did set for a public hearing for the conduit financing on behalf of the Mayo Clinic, and that's why we are here. And with that, we are seeking adoption of a resolution for the issuance of the general obligation revenue bonds pursuant to conduit financing on behalf of the Mayo Clinic in the amount of $500,000,000 for the Mayo project consisting of renovations and upgrades to various facilities as allowed under
Minnesota state statute. And with that, basically, what they're looking to spend the $500,000,000 on is to start the Bold Forward Unbound project that we've been talking about since last fall. And it appears that the City has been on board with that. There have been other items brought forward by the Mayo in recent months as well too that the City Council has also approved. And the City has assisted with conduit financings for the Mayo Clinic since 1998. About every other year, they would bring forward conduit financing. And the city has always approved it for them.
With that being said, there have been other institutions that I've seen, other applications and other ones have come through. And usually these are for educational institutions or it could be for assisted living or some type of housing as well. That's also allowed under conduit financing as well. It was hard for me to go back to see exactly what was put in the packet because we switched over to a peak system in 2022. So a lot of the information I was looking for was down elsewhere. I guess it was hard for me to say. I could find the files, but it was hard to see what's actually was put in the packet. So I apologize for that.
Excuse me. And with that, what is conduit financing? So conduit financing, if approved by the city, allows for non profits, hospitals, assisted living and schools as I have stated too to access tax exempt bonds that only municipalities in the state can issue out. So with that, they do allow for lower borrowing costs because it's going to be tax exempt. So why would an investor want to do it is because they can achieve a higher after tax yield as compared to taxable investments. So it becomes cheaper money for them to go ahead and use for their investment
that they're looking to do. The city is being, again, asked to issue the general obligation revenue tax exempt bonds for Mayo as it has done in the past and simply because it is within the jurisdiction of the City. So they could do a host City and bring a host City, but the City Council of the City of Rochester would still have to set the public hearing and approve that. So, it only makes sense that the City of Rochester is going to approve a project that is within its own City.
And again, I've seen other scenarios where they do ask a whole City, but that usually is a if it's a bigger network, assisted living or something like that where they're a larger network throughout the state. And then the city by resolution is, you know, so approved the bonds. However, it does not do it in its traditional fashion. There's a lot of paperwork and agreements and stuff that go on behind the scenes. So you're not going to see the City go out and technically issue the bonds as you would traditionally. There is no liability to the City when they do conduit financing. And I've never heard in my twenty nine years of one of these coming back
on any City, I guess, where it's now the responsible or the liability goes back onto the City. So I just want to make a note of that, that it's not the liability of the City. And, been said that by a number of different attorneys and including our auditors. They simply make a note within our, app for that you have issued conduit financing, and that's basically it. It's not put in our books as a liability or anything like that. And the creditworthiness for the bonds will be the male's creditworthiness,
not the city's creditworthiness, and I think that's worth pointing out as well. The criteria that we took a look at when we were looking at this and that any city should take a look at too would be the public benefit and purpose of the project that's being done. And again, with both forward on bound and it seems like the city supports that. So that would be the public purpose for that one. The financial viability, the creditworthiness, again, the Mayo Clinic has AA bond rating. Risk management, again, there's no direct liability to the government,
to the City of Rochester. Legal regulatory compliance, we're talking about tax exempt status, so that meets that regulatory compliance. Economic and fiscal impact, again, this is for economic development and job creation. The transparency is for the public hearing that we are having here tonight, which is in accordance with state law. And the long term sustainability, again, we've been doing this since '19 or the city has been doing this since 1998 and the Mayo Clinic has been around since 1864. So I think that passes the long term sustainability test. With that, I would like Todd and his team to come up from the Mayo Clinic,
if that's all right. Council President, and you'd like to say a few words at this time? Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Anderson. And if the Mayo team would like to come up and please introduce yourself. And you have a total of ten minutes. Thank you. I'm Todd Heather with Mayo Clinic, a Senior Investment Officer. With me, I have Paul Gorman, Chief Investment Officer. Could you folks get really close to the microphone there? Hi. Paul Gorman, Chief Investment Officer and Treasurer from Mayo. And I'm Jennifer Hansen from Dorsey and Whitney. I'm a bond counsel to the clinic. Yes. I think Brian summed it up very well.
This is something that we do every few years. We issue tax exempt debt. We need to do that through an issuing authority. And we've had a long and storied history with the City of Rochester and being partners, alongside each other. So we would ask for approval as we move forward and we're here to answer any questions that may come up. I think we just add that the partnership with Rochester has been a very good one and one where our next goal here is to build the best hospital in the world is our hope. And this project is part of the financing for that. Alright. Anything else? Okay. We will, invite you back up after the public hearing.
Sounds good. Thank you. I will now open the public hearing. If anyone from the public public wishes to comment on this, item, please step forward. If anyone from the public wishes to, be heard on this item, please step forward. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and invite our applicants back up for any closing comments. And then, you may wanna stay there, because we may have some questions from council members. Alright. Just thank you for the time, and, and, nothing to add.
We appreciate the, the opportunity. Alright. Council members, questions from from, to the staff or to the applicant? Seeing none, I have a I not so much a question, but, one, I I see great value. Obviously, there is a $5,000,000,000 project that, Mayo Clinic, the number one hospital for the seventh year in a row is, placing in this community, and so there's great benefit. One of the things that, we hear a lot about is, city representatives is that Mayo Clinic does not pay taxes.
And, I know in checking with our staff that just last year, Mayo paid $7,800,000 in property taxes, which represents about 7.7% of our property tax levy. So I just wanted to get that on the record. And is there any comments, any additional information about that? Appreciate the comment. I would note that our employees do do pay taxes. We have been growing employees for a long time in this region. We're the number one employer in 17 counties in Southeastern Minnesota. So we appreciate the point,
and we're importantly doing our best to make sure we treat our employees well and treat the city well. Great. Thank you. You may sit down. Seeing no questions, is there a motion on this item? Yeah. I'll move to adopt a resolution for issuance of general obligation revenue bonds pursuant Mayo Clinic project consisting of renovations and upgrades to various facilities as allowed under Minnesota statute sections five two dash four six nine point one six five. Second. Moved by council member Doring and seconded by council member Palmer. Any anything else to add,
council member? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Passes unanimously. Thank you very much. And you may stay for the meeting or you may but I'm supposed to get us out of here because I think some of the members here want to partake in green beer or something like that. So moving on to our second public hearing, this is the reconstruction of Seventeenth And A Half Street Northwest from Nineteenth Avenue Northwest to 20 First Avenue Northwest, RPU project. And,
this will be presented by Public Works, Anne Krowfsky. Is Anne in the room here? Yes. Yes. Amy Krowfsky. Oh, Amy. I'm sorry, Amy. Yes. Good evening, council president, members of the council. As you may remember, in January, we presented a feasibility report, for 17 and a half street reconstruction between Nineteenth Avenue and 20 First Avenue. Following following that, in February, we held an improvement hearing, where the council, moved the project forward and ordered the preparation of the assessment role. So tonight is the assessment hearing,
which we are presenting the assessment role. The assessment role outlines the proposed assessments for the abutting property owners. So the action before council tonight is to levy the proposed assessments for the project as well as, we're also seeking authorization to bid this project. So, quick reminder, the assessment policy was updated in 2023. Our new policy really scaled back the eligible items, so and so, the items. So if there's any property owners here tonight who wish to object to these assessments,
they would need to do so in writing either prior to tonight's meeting if they're not in attendance or tonight at the meeting. Construction is scheduled for the summer of twenty twenty five. Just because projects typically have a punch list for things to get wrapped up, we would imagine that, these assessments would not appear on the property, until 2026. It's also important to note that the assessment role presented tonight is the maximum amount possible. So, if we were to see receive favorable bids, or, the amounts were to come unless,
they would the abutting property owners would only be assessed for the actual cost. So with that, you can go ahead and open up for public comments, and I'm available for questions afterwards. Alright. Thanks, miss Kroszky. This is a public hearing. If you wish to be heard on this item, please step forward. This is a public hearing. If you wish to be heard on this item, please step forward. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and invite staff I mean, invite, my colleagues to ask any questions of staff at this point.
Seeing none, is there a motion on this item? Sure. I'll make a motion, adopting a resolution levying the proposed assessments related to reconstruction of 17 And A Half Street Northwest from Nineteenth Avenue Northwest to 20 First Avenue Northwest, project number J7855 and second part, authorizing advertisement for bids and scheduling a bid opening on 04/22/2025 at 11AM for reconstruction. A a motion has been made by council member Miller. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by council member Wahl. Anything else to add, council member Miller? Seeing none,
all in favor say aye. Aye. I'm sorry. I simply wanted to commend the staff on the project and I'm very pleased with the assessments, which which compared to other recent projects are about half, obviously driven by the large value of the school on the south side of the lot. But, very good project. Thank you. Thank you, council member Wahl. Any other comments on this item? Seeing none, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Passes unanimously. Moving on to public hearing g three,
which is a public right of way vacation by TD Bulldog Investments, LLC, and this will be presented by Community Development's Chase Pater. Mister Pater, go ahead. Good evening, council president Schubert, council members. Jace Pater with Community Development. Before you is CD2025Dash002DAC by TD Bulldog Investments LLC. The petitioner requests a vacation of an approximate 130 foot long public right of way easement originally platted in nineteen o seven located on the northern half of 11111117,
And 11 19 Second Street Southwest. The public right of way easement is no longer in use as adjoining parcels have redeveloped and vacated portions of the original easement. Because of this, the remaining right of way that is being proposed being vacated tonight has become unable to be utilized. The development review team and planning commission are recommending approval with one condition, and I'm available for any questions. Thank you, mister Pater. Is the applicant here to speak on this item? I don't believe they're planning on attending.
Okay. At this point, I will open the public hearing. If, there are members of the public who wish it to be heard on this item, please step forward at this time. If you'd like to be heard on this item, please step forward. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and invite questions from my colleagues. Seeing no questions, is there a motion on this item? I'll, council member Keane. Yeah. I'll I'll, move to adopt a resolution providing a public right away vacation, number CD25Dash002VAC by TD Bulldog Investments LLC with one condition,
to vacate approximately a 30 foot long public right of way. Second. Moved by council member Keane and seconded by council member Palmer. Council member Keane, anything more to add? Council member Palmer, anything? Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Passes unanimously. Mister Pater, stay where you are. G four is a utility easement vacation by Rochester Title. Council president Schoebring, council members, Jace Pater with community development. Before you is c b twenty twenty five dash zero zero three DAC by Rochester
Title to vacate, an existing eight foot wide public utility easement lying in parts of Lot 1 and Lot 2 Block 3 Gooding's Edition, Olmsted County, Minnesota, which is 1107 Ninth Street Northwest. When this originally when this home was originally constructed in 1956, it was built within this existing utility easement. The property is currently being sold, and during the title search process, it was determined that the home was built within season. Therefore, the request to vacate and bring the parcel into compliance was made,
and the development review team is recommending approval with one condition of this vacation. And I'm available for questions. Thank you, mister Pater. Is the applicant here? Rochester Title. Please step forward. You have ten minutes to, discuss this item. You don't have to take it all. Please identify yourself. I promise I won't. My name is Sarah Batsloff. I'm the president of Rochester Title. I'm Sarah Goverick. I'm a staff attorney at Rochester Title. And there is only one condition that was brought forward, and that was that we obtain a replacement easement,
on the northerly sides of the property. And that request was made by Rochester Utilities. That has been done. The easement replacement easement was drafted by the city attorney's office, has been signed by all the parties, and has been recorded. So I believe we've met all the criteria. Perfect. Alright. Thank you. You you may sit down, and we'll invite you back up after the public hearing. This is a public hearing. If you wish to be heard on this item, please step forward. This is a public hearing. If you wish to be heard on this item, please step forward. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and invite the back up to say any closing
words that they wish to say. They are, not wanting to do that. So I'll invite my colleagues to, for questions of staff. We're a pretty quiet bunch today. Council member Palmer, thank you very much. I have a question for the applicant. Is this actually the first time this property has been sold since it was built? This property has been sold, it was originally built in 1958, has been sold in the sixties, seventies, eighties, in the February, many, many, many times with no one ever catching this. And unfortunately, our seller ended up in a place that that's when it was caught.
So it's been bought and sold many, many times. Same house. House. Thank you. Just curious. All right. Any other questions? Seeing none, is there a motion on this item? I'll make a motion. Adopting a resolution approving utility easement vacation number CD2025-threeDash003VAC by Rochester Title with one condition, to vacate an approximate eight foot wide utility easement. Moved by, council member Palmer. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by council member Doring. Any further to add? Council member Wahl,
go ahead. Does the, action have to include, the condition which has already been met? That's been recorded. Mister Pater? No. Not necessarily. It has been recorded, so we can move forward without the condition. Thank you. Okay. Council member Fredericks? I'd like the name of all the attorneys that missed it so I don't hire them. Mister Bader, make the list. Yes, sir. Okay. Seeing no further questions, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Passes unanimously. And, just in case we're not going fast enough, I am going to pull items g five and g six and hear them as
one public hearing. So, we have a zone change by Build Wealth Min, and we have a comprehensive plan amendment by Build Wealth Min. And, they will be presented in tandem by mister McGill. Go ahead. Thank you, council president Schubert, members of the council. Good evening. My name is Desmond McGill. I'm with community development department. The property owner is requesting a comprehensive plan amendment on 1.07 acres, from low density residential to medium density residential and a zone change on that same
property from r two, which is low density residential small lot to R3 which is medium density residential zoning for the future development of a 12 unit apartment complex or structure. The subject property is located North Of Willow Ridge Drive Southwest and West West of Sejmeadow Circle Southwest in the South Central part of the city. The applicant has submitted a concurrently running application for general development plan which encompasses 20 single family homes, 36 twin homes, 69 triplex units, 12 the 12 unit apartment,
structure and a six acre community center site and also 63 acres of environmentally constrained property. It should be noted that the original request for a comprehensive plan amendment and zone change was for an eight acre site, which included the, area that the owner intends to develop as a community center. The applicant requested, revising, their request to reduce that, those requests to just 1.7 acres upon presenting the proposal at a neighborhood meeting, for the future major land subdivision application,
which was held after the February 26, Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. The Planning and Zoning Commission has recommended approval, to the city council of both of these applications when it was the eight acre request. We will need two separate motions on this, one for the comprehensive plan amendment, one for the zone change. The comprehensive plan amendment does require a super majority vote for, a council, for for an approval of that application. And that concludes my introduction. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, mister McGill. Is, a representative from,
Build Wealth Minnesota here? Please step forward, state your name, and you have ten minutes. Yep. I'm Mark Welch with G Cubed Engineering representing building wealth Minnesota. And, we did just, additionally, I'm sorry, originally submitted that with eight acres. During the planning commission meeting, some of the neighbors are concerned about the community center being rezoned. We don't need the rezoning for the community center. And so, we then had a neighborhood information meeting getting ready for some of the major land subdivision permits. And that came up as a item that they were concerned with yet. So we agreed to reduce it to just the apartment area.
And so what you're seeing is just the apartment area being rezoned and land use plan limit for that. And I'm here to answer any questions you may have. We did talk with a couple of the neighbors in the last couple of days, and, they're appreciative of that. They're not here today because there was nothing that they are going to be contesting. We'll continue to work with the neighbors on the other aspects of this development. So Alright. Thank you. We will call you back up after the public hearing. This is a public hearing. If you wish to be heard on this item, please step forward. This is a public hearing. If you wish to be heard on this item, please step forward.
Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and invite the applicant back up for any closing words. He has none. So council members, any questions for the applicant or the staff? Mister McGill, I'm a a little confused. So there was one neighborhood information meeting, and there's going to be another one. Can you clarify Sure. Absolutely, council president Schoebring. The there's has actually been two neighborhood meetings. The first meeting would have been, to discuss the comprehensive plan amendment and the zone change.
And then there was a subsequent, neighborhood meeting specifically to talk about the future, major land subdivision request which the applicant will be making soon. That meeting happened in between the the, planning and zoning commission meeting to discuss the zone change and comprehensive plan amendment and this council meeting. So, but there has been two so far. Got it. Thank you. Any other questions? Is there a motion on this item? Council member King, go ahead. I'm gonna make a motion. This is on g five, the zone change. And is that the correct order? We're gonna do the zone change first?
G six, please. But we have we'll do the comprehensive plan amendment first, g six. I'm gonna move to adopt a resolution approving the comp plan amendment number CD twenty twenty five-one CPA by Build Wealth Minnesota Incorporated consisting of a change of land use classification on 1.07 acre site from low density residential to medium density residential. Is there a second? Second. Moved by council member Keane and seconded by council member Miller. Any more to add?
Council member Keane, go ahead. Yeah. Just for for my peers here. There there has been the two, neighbor information meetings. This is, the the representative talked about that there's a 90 acre place here that we're looking at developing about 30 acres. The most of the issues have been about the other land there, that it's environmentally sensitive, it's got karst geology and other things that the neighbors are concerned about, and we're seeing if there's some ways to work through that kind of stuff. And we really I mean, I did notice that it was, people did notice that the representatives were reacting to the concerns, and, so I I think we're on a good path.
Alright. Council member Miller, anything to add? Any questions from council members? Council member Palmer? Seeing none, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. Moving to the second part, g five, which is a zone change by Build Wealth Minnesota. Is there a motion on this item? Sure. I'll make a motion approving zone change number CD twenty twenty four dash 002 z c by Build Wealth Men, changing the zoning designation on a 1.07 acre site from R 2 to R 3,
and the second part of the motion directing the city attorney to prepare an ordinance for the first reading. Moved by council member Miller. Second. Seconded by council member Keane. Anything further to add? Council member Keane, anything? Questions? All all in favor, say aye. Aye. All say nay. Passes unanimously. And we finished our public hearings in record time. And now we will move on to our reports and recommendations, and there we have only have two, reports and recommendations, which are the pulled items from council member Wahl. And we'll start with,
h one, which is council chambers AV implementation request for proposals. Councilmember Wall. Thank you. I pulled this for the purposes of exploring an RFP that will consider reuse of serviceable items from the current audiovisual configuration, waste stream. And when the chair finds it appropriate, I have other commentary and questions. Okay. Parrish, do you wanna start this off? Yeah. President, members of the council, we have Jeremiah Baumann and, Jess Schuler here kind of leading this project for the city, although there's many involved. As you as you know,
there's this is an ongoing source of energy with this project and trying to get us to a great spot where we can, deliver a high value, and do good production, with your council meetings. As you know, we've been challenged at times to deliver that when we're streaming and trying to deliver through three different mechanisms, cable, our Granicus online portal, as well as, you know, going out to YouTube at times. And so, you know, that just complicates our landscape for what we have to do. I would note that this facility was originally constructed in the nineties. The last substantive investment in the AV equipment here,
is 2014, and most of it is beyond, useful life and or, you know, within the the period of time in which, you know, we can functionally service it. So, I know it's not an insignificant sum of money. You could value engineer this to do something less, but, you know, you would do that at the expense, ultimately, of the production value that you're trying to accomplish. So we could go wide angle lens, one, angle lens, one shot, you know, be relatively static in our approach. Our impression is is you want a bit of a higher value production value. I'd also note that this is funded through our public educational and governmental funding source.
So this isn't necessarily levy impacted. This is a portion of cable franchise fees that we receive, that we can invest only in capital equipment for AV. So we have a pretty limited universe of alternatives that we can spend that, money on. We've had good engagement with the county. But I would just say, we're looking to kinda take you to that next level with your production, value and hopefully put us in a position to have a more consistent experience, you know, with the city council here. With that, our technical folks are here and certainly happy to answer any, questions that you might have.
Council member Wahl? Thank you. I guess when I see a number like 600,000, I just compare it to what else you could buy for $600,000 And, we talk a lot on this dice about affordable housing, and I think, golly, that that's two houses, on the affordable side in Rochester. And I look at the value of what we might get, for this particular expenditure of $600,000 versus providing a home, I realize you can't spend the money. I'm not trying to, create that parallel. It just and I said it on the dais before,
I think I said, I'm really surprised what $65,000,000 can buy or even $600,000 to buy. So I'd be interested in trying to reduce expenses where possible, including some pretty expensive items that would not be beyond serviceable life, monitors that seem to last forever, including two huge ones over there and one in a rotunda. We've got nine screens in front of us. We have brand new on and off buttons that took,
months to, function, and now they finally function. I'm not an AV expert to be sure I would simply like to be as conservative of public funds as possible no matter what funding source it comes from That's a long way of getting to. Is it possible to construct an RFP that would reward bidders for reusing items that do have yet a long shelf life? Sure. I can speak I can speak to that,
council president, council, member Wahl. So in the design process that we went through, one of the steps was to look at what equipment, we did have available in the chamber. And sadly, as, mister Parrish had mentioned, a lot of it is past its end of life. We pulled some of the numbers just recently, and some of the things that are past life, really barely holding on. So even, those mute buttons that we've still have a lovely, time with actually get reset before every meeting because they aren't actually working. So that kind of has been taken into account. It's just some of the bigger things are finally,
duped, specifically our our cameras, and a camera package to replace what we have, somewhere around the $50,000 mark just for hardware. So there's some of those kind of requirements that we'd have to have, but I do think in the initial design that that was taken into account of how we could manipulate what we have. If you remember, we did just get the cable fixed and that required some hardware. That actually is a part of the new design, so keeping that around as well. But sadly, it's just most of the large equipment that we have that that does a lot
of the configuration is just past due. Council member Palmer. You mentioned a couple of things that that are I have questions on this. Why do we need to do any more production than what we have already? I mean, I don't see us calling for that. Does that add a lot of cost to doing production? Sure. So I think the issue is to a lot of what we have, that we're looking for in the RFP is to maintain with a little bit further to kind of future proof a little more, but what we have is barely hanging on.
The the brain, I guess, I could call the unit, the crush run that runs the entire room, is is past end of life, and we reset that, weekly. And if that goes down, nothing will work in this room. And so the replacement in the RFP is to maintain that standard, best as we can. So I go back to production. I understand the old equipment's old. Yep. But, I mean, we if we have one camera now, is there any reason to go to more than one camera at a time? I don't hear people calling for I hear people calling for it to be, consistent and working,
and and we all want that. And, you know, the buttons, I think, were added within the last two years. Correct. So I guess I'm I mean, we have updated some stuff. The last question, I guess I'd go back to what Mr. Wall, I think, is getting at is I'd like to see it done with what we have to have, not what we want. And and I think the what we have to have, I think, is where I feel more comfortable at. And I see that we're not doing Room 104. Room 1 0 4 has been, what, a two year adventure that we've been working on? So so we had a contractor who didn't do their job.
Are we going back on them and and recouping what we paid them? Yeah. And I may address a few of these points. First and foremost, I would say that a lot of what you're seeing in the investment here isn't in this room. It's in the backroom and really designed to help make a lot of these things work. And so it's, you know, back end kinds of things. That all has to work for one zero four to work effectively. We feel feel like we have the opportunity once, you know, the the programming is done correctly, where we have the opportunity to do one zero four in a good way, even with more limited technology and and lower production value with the the owls like
we used at RPU. We've recently invested in a number of those, that you all may have experienced when you had your strategic planning session out at RPU. We now have those for 01/2004. We have them for 03/20. We brought them for the DSIC. For a moderate production level, those are gonna be serviceable and and meet expectations in all likelihood. And it would allow you that opportunity to do, you know, the roundtable conversation in 01/2004. But, a lot until we get the programming and all that figured out in the backroom here, we can't then make that leap into the next room. And there is some investment required,
particularly if you wanna continue in the cable space. And most of the increase in cost for one zero four will be if you wanna continue to broadcast over cable, and we'll facilitate that policy conversation. I also think this is gonna be a really interesting time when you have to leave these chambers for two months while this project happens to say, you know, could a streaming only option be just fine for us as a city? Now that's always been a delicate conversation where we wanna maintain the three channels, and there's commitments in all spaces, and people like to receive the city differently.
But that period of time will give you the opportunity to say, you know what? Streaming to YouTube is working out just fine for the vast majority of folks. We're uploading to cable later, and that works for people. It's just that getting live to cable. And we could then take that and probably be, you know, much more broadly, distributed. I would also say there are some things within these estimates, that are expensive, that are kind of proprietary to rooms like this, particularly with the assistive technology that the team's been working on. So, Jeremiah and Jess could maybe give you a better perspective on some of the cost
numbers that we're carrying there. But some of it is to provide, you know, that accessibility to the in room experience that that we might not be currently providing. So there is some numbers embedded in that for particularly for assistive hearing, but also to get our captioning kind of in a a better spot, than what we are in terms of instead of moving it all around like you see, here, now. Lastly sorry. I'm talking so much here. But lastly, I'd also say we have the opportunity when we bid this. We can bid the items discreetly. And when we bring back a recommendation to you, if there's things that you don't feel that merit investment,
we could peel that off. I mean, we obviously will make a recommendation. This RFP makes a is a reflection of the staff recommendation as we partnered in the design process. But when you get the bids, just like you all know, 600,000 is our estimate right now. We wanna get the bids to tolerance and test that. And, we could certainly bring value engineering ideas forward at the time of award when we have real numbers for you as well. Thank you, mister Parrish. Go ahead, council member of the loan. You just skipped over my question on 01/2004 and the last contractor. How do we go back to to recoup some losses on that deal?
Yeah. May Is that a city attorney question? Or Yeah. President of this council, I'll start, and and I'd certainly encourage Michael Spindler, Craig, because this has been a staff level conversation. It's just how much effort do we put into that in order to potentially achieve accountability? And I don't know. I think we defer to Michael a little bit more, but we can. It's just is the time worth it at the end of the day. Mr. Spindler, Craig. Council Member Palmer, Council Members, I don't necessarily have much to add specifically about that contractor conversation. I have not been very specifically involved.
Like all situations, all projects, there are oftentimes bumps along the way and our teammates problem solve, with contractors. I just don't know the details of the 104 project and where things went sideways. I certainly haven't, haven't been part of a conversation where there have been identified deficiencies of the contractor. Obviously with the end product, we have concern about that. But I'm just telling you in part that I haven't been part of that conversation and nobody has brought it,
that direction so far. Go ahead, Councilmember. I would encourage us to at least get the facts to us so we can make a decision. I'm not trying to bad mouth somebody not knowing what's going on, but I don't think anybody is happy with the end product, and I believe we ended the contract. So I would be encouraging to at least Some report back to us to say these are your options. And I like I believe Mr. Parrish said that we can almost go with a menu of we can pick this as the level we want level A, B and C, I'm adding that. But I would encourage us to have that come back to us.
Understood. Council Member Keene. Yeah. Again, I want to kind of confirm some of the things I was thinking of as I went through this. But first, I do want to say that I, again, I consider myself maybe part of the problem here because a couple of years ago, the staff wanted to drop the need to go to, to Charter Cable, because it was causing so much technical difficulty. And I consider it a problem because kind of an age discrimination because it's, you know, all the YouTube and the thing is good for the 50 crowd, but we had a bunch of people that would lose contact with the city if we took it off off cable. So time marches on,
and over the years, it gets to be less important. And maybe it is something that, as, deputy administrator Parrish says, that maybe we'll find out that it's not as as missed as much as we thought it would be. One thing when I was going through this that maybe I read into it, it isn't there, but I view this design was going towards a single vendor versus a collection of parts. Did I read too much into that? I think I think you're on the right track. It's because everything has been piecemealed since the 2014, '20 '15 install.
This is the chance to unify a lot of the equipment so that it's the most compatible, where right now we have a lot of different brands that then require different adapters and different programming and and makes it much more complicated and therefore, more costly. The one thing that I was reading into this was that, you know, for lack of better words, it's it's one throat to choke if things aren't working. It's not that someone says, well, that one doesn't work. And I think we've all had some of this experience at home with connecting different parts together, and then who who's to blame when they don't work? So I'm hoping we're getting that.
I was thinking that. And that integration, I'm I'm gonna say, you usually have to pay for. And and again, I'm glad we're partnering with the county on this, that it isn't just for the city. At least we're spreading the cost over this. I do consider this the county's room that they own this and we share it. And and again, I I hope that that, partnership can go forward. Council member Miller. Just a question Council member Miller. Just a question about the county's role. When would they approve their portion? Have they discussed it beyond, like, staff level engagement? Yeah. President members of council, council member Miller, you know, we've worked with the staff. I know they have had engagement with their board. They're carrying funding in their budget a little bit less than what's recommended here,
but, you know, maybe $50,000. And we agreed once we got the bids back that we would, reconcile and just make a final determination, moving forward. The other thing I would note, as part of this project, assuming it moves forward, while you're out of this space, the county also is planning to make some fairly substantial investments in this space just to do some renovations on the the drapery, the carpet, some state legislation that may change the remote participation beyond this body of boards and commissions that an additional technology investment would help facilitate community member engagement in boards and
commissions should that pass? Yeah. President of council council member Miller, I think that's a great question. That's been a hot topic at the legislature for many, many, many years. It's opened up a little bit after the pandemic. I mean, there's even a little bit more runway with that than what there used to be. But, yes, that could be, more of an opportunity. It is there's bill there are bills exactly doing what you said and, being able to facilitate the remote experience. And I would also say, these investments, while while they sound challenging and they are expensive and they're they're hard to, you know, connect with, we've we have been saving money by being able to bring people in remotely.
But also if we can do a better job of creating the right experience, and it can be a little bit better of a two way experience when they're remote. Right now, as you know, people that are not in the room tend to feel like they kinda drop into the conversation, and it's a little bit more challenging. But we used to fly people in here like crazy, for different consulting engagements. And over time, I think that's going to make a difference, if we can have a better experience for those folks, whether they're onboards or, in most cases, consultants that we hire that aren't local. Okay. A different question still looking forward.
What would we expect the useful life of new equipment in this package to be? How how long would we future proof ourselves for? That's a great question. So most of the new AV equipment you'll see is four k, eight k rated. I don't personally believe we're gonna get to an eight k streaming anytime soon. But that's kind of the biggest thing is really in this space is digitalizing. So our all of our, speakers that we've had problems with are all analog. Everything now is digital. So we can control that, dial those in. So I think a lot of it's moving in that direction,
and then having that four k capable, if streaming really moves into four k as the new standard, then the equipment will already be able to do that. But the equipment itself, like the controller that's reset every week, the verge of failing, how long would we safeguard ourselves from a a tenuous streaming situation? Should this investment be completed? Yeah. So I think, it's kinda hard to try and pinpoint that. I believe, like, IT make sure that we replace computers within every five years. Looking at, you know, a lot of the warranties are maybe three year guarantees,
so you kinda think warranty plus one gets you to four. So probably five ish. I think the biggest thing is our mix right now being partly analog, partly digital just makes it so much more difficult to swap. And with a full new design, we'd at least have a little more feature proofing with swapping individual things as they, die in that that timeline. So we would not be looking to make half of a $600,000 investment every five years. I don't believe so. No. And a question about the fund, how frequently or or what money is coming into this with what frequency?
I know cable franchise fees are the funding source. Perhaps there's some decline there. How long would it take? Right. I mean, at a roughly $400,000 fund balance there. How many years of cable franchise fees is that? Councilman for Miller, thank you for the question. Currently the PEG account, I we receive, payments through there quarterly. It is tapering off as, you know, the number of cable subscribers does decline. Currently, it's about, 60,000 a year that we're seeing for, Yeah. In in those payments. And should we make this investment at the recommended level?
Would that fund be available to cover the necessary improvements potentially in Room 104 to bring the standard up there? Or would should we expect other funding sources to be recommended? Yeah. It certainly is an option. Obviously, you know, depending on the bids we get back, we are utilizing a fair amount of the fund balance, but definitely have the potential to use PEG for 104. We have a number of committees and commissions that utilize that and, ultimately upload their broadcast to our cable TV channel for people to enjoy. So definitely an option. Any other questions on this item?
Council member Is there a motion on this item? I'll make a motion here to authorize the release of request for proposals for the implementation and maintenance of advanced audio visual and conferencing technologies in the council chambers. Second. Moved by council member Keane and seconded by council member Miller. Council member Keane, any further to add? No. I'm I I do appreciate this discussion of let's make sure we stay you know, keep track of our spending and what we're doing. And I I get I I'm struggling to think of,
the staff presenting a list of options to a council. That sort of scares me. But, I think we'll we'll be able to work through it. Council member Miller, anything else to add? Thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate council member while pulling this to have a bit more discussion about it. I think in the nature of understanding how little we appreciate about the work that goes into understanding how little we appreciate about the work that goes into keeping the system up and running, I I understand that we're hearing from the people who, Jeremiah, I appreciate all the work that you do to keep us able to be transparent to the public. So I think it's a reasonable time to coordinate this investment with the county, and I'm glad to support the the chief audio visual engineer, of a large building in my office,
and had to, work through a lot of, equipment difficulties over the years. So I understand entirely. I'm not disillusioned that somehow this is not going to pass, even though I will cast a nay vote. We'll look forward to value engineering so that we can make this the most cost effective, for the city of Rochester. Council Member Palmer. Yeah. I'm gonna amend the motion to, have the staff bring back options, so we can pick a tier. Is there a second to the amendment? I'll second. Moved by, Council Member Palmer, seconded by Council Member Fredericks.
Council Member Palmer, go ahead. I think that it'd be nice for us or good to have good, better, best and give us the reason why they rank them that way. In that way, we can make if it's a five year investment, we can say we're going to hit the five year mark. I think it gives us a little bit of clarity on the production value. I'm not sure that that's what needs to happen. So that's why I made the amendment. Council Member Fredericks, anything else to add? I like to have options to make our best choice. Having just one in front of us, I don't think is ever a great idea. Council Member,
Miller, go ahead. Just a question. Should we move forward with this? Should this amendment motion pass? How much time additionally would that take to redo the RFP and bring back to us to then get out? Yeah. I would maybe just I don't know that if you give us that direction, I think we have enough latitude to move ahead with the RFP. I mean, we would sort of indicate. And there were some of these conversations in the design. I think we would just bring them back. I mean, I'm just gonna make an example that we have assistive hearing technology that's sort of embedded as a system in the room versus a here's a handheld device that you
can be provided. So we have the ability to sort of track back into some of those options. And I I think we could I'm not saying we get, like, five tiers or something, but I think there's gonna be a few options that we would be able to present to you, and probably fairly short notice. But Jeremiah, maybe you clarify that. Yeah. I think so. With the with the design that we, were provided, there is elements, like mister Perris mentioned, with some of the accessibility items, some of the pieces like our, captioning system. So the recommendation was a ten year contract on the software because it was more
affordable. So there's definitely some different levers that we could look back and and probably, bring to the table pretty easily. So looking at our calendar, we don't have another regular meeting until April 7. So how might we expect this time project timing estimated dates to change, our projected completion dates? Should we not authorize RFPs to, today? I'm I'm just going to take that one. Mr. Parrish, go ahead. Your Honor, I think based on the amendment, I don't know that that would significantly adjust our timeline. And we would still, I think,
be able to keep cadence, but we would have to just do some slight modifying in terms of how we're presenting, you know, the bid documents out to people. And we intend to get multiple bidders. We did work with our designer is also a potential bidder. And so I think the the one thing that you hopefully can have confidence in is the the people that will likely bid on this project are all have also provided us an estimate. And so we should have some confidence in that. Okay. But, Jeremiah and and Jess, please, you know, disagree if I'm off point here. Yeah. I think if we're working off of,
that information that came in that, original design, I think we've got that information. Just pushing to the next council meeting, we're looking obviously at that two week delay from the, calendar that was provided in the RFP. Anything beyond that, obviously, then just starts delaying when the start date and end date for the project could be. I appreciate that. That's what I'm thinking. And I I know we've had quite a few projects that have gone beyond original timelines. And so I just wanna be cautious of how far we get into the year when we're affecting not just our body, but also the county board,
boards and commissions, others that use the space. Yeah. Council member Keane, just to, comment. Yeah. Sorry. Council president Schubring. Go ahead, mister Parish. I would just say if the council was so inclined, I I don't think we would have to bring back the RFP in April. I I believe if you give us the latitude just to make some adjustment to bring you options, I think we could receive that direction and make that adjustment and keep the cadence of the schedule. Is that in keeping with your amendment, Council Member? That was my expectation. Okay. Council Member Keene, further questions? Yes. Again,
I'm glad to hear that the staff's taken this. I may have been picturing it as a much bigger change than what the staff has taken it to be. So that's good. But I do want to kind of ask, when you portray forward and say the council's going to do good, better, best, how does that coordinate with the county now or with since we're only making 50% of the decision? Do you I'm I'm trying to I mean, we we're up here trying to say we want something to be streamlined or better, but I think we're making it more complicated. I'm worried about that. So if you can just put me at ease, then I'll know how to go forward.
Yeah. Your honor, I mean, certainly, we have to engage with our partner on whether they're acceptable and open to that idea. So, yes, anything we bring the bids back, when we bring forward a recommendation to you, whether it's good, better, best or option a, b, and c, you know, or maybe something we, you know, don't consider, that the county's perspective would be informed in our recommendation to you on what to award. Okay. So you would come with a recommendation, not with a list of of options? I think we would come as a staff, we would come with a recommendation, but then we also have, you know,
some items outlined that said, you know, we did evaluate this and went with the lower cost option or we did evaluate this and we went with the higher cost option because of why, and it was important to our partner, and we just No. This is important to me because then it means that what you're recommending to us, whether we accept it or not, it would be the same thing that the county would be getting recommended whether they accept it. That that's what I'm trying to make sure, that we don't end up, you know, having some sort of back and forth. I think that's how we would work it, but we would just at least give you some insights into this this decision points, the options that were considered.
And then for some reason, if you wanted, you know, to deviate from the recommendation, we would have to understand that we have to engage our partner on why we're deviating from that recommendation. Okay. Again, based on this interpretation, I I think I can support the amendment. Council member Fredericks. For mister Parrish, for, clarity for the public as well as us, what is the minimum requirement? What is the minimum that we are required to do for the community? So, president, members of council, council member Fredericks, you're not obligated to do any of this. This is really, reflects your commitment to open government transparency,
but we are not statutorily required in any way to broadcast these meetings. Okay. So a streamed option, a live streamed option to the Internet would be sufficient. Is that wrong or right? Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you could go from anything from not doing anything to asking someone to stream from an iPhone to a higher production value, like, in anything in between there. Okay. So I'm gonna go from I'm gonna go from I'm gonna go from I'm gonna go from I'm gonna go from I'm gonna go from I'm gonna go from I'm gonna go from I'm gonna go from to a higher production value, like, and anything in between there. Is the cheapest option to record it and just upload it? I mean, that certainly, takes some of the complexity out of the equipment you need in order to to
do that. Certainly, it is an option. It would be likely more cost effective. I know there is a lot of value in people being able to see the live meetings. It does help facilitate remote participation on any number of folks' part. I think the turning point really is because streaming isn't really that complicated, you know, generally. It's when we have the three and cable in particular is what complicates it. So I think we could be much more efficient, and sustainable, if we didn't have to provide a cable option, and we uploaded only to cable. We streamed live, uploaded to cable.
But again, I know there's just a million opinions on this, and this is well traveled ground, for prior members of the council here too. You do a great job of following down the trail I'm trying to go. Right. So I just I just think it's important we look at that. We can fight it all we want and say, yeah, cable's important. Wow. I don't I bet you if you had our show of hands in this room tonight who watches TV via, streaming versus cable, I'd be willing to bet there ain't any probably hard to anybody in the room that uses cable anymore. But I've heard it from my constituents. They want it and stuff, but we know where the future is going. And I know having things assessable to everybody is important,
but I just wanna see the breakdown of the costs of all that. Because then you can make an educated decision. It's like, okay. Is it worth 300,000 more just to have that ability? I hear the most important thing I hear on the out in the community is taxpayer dollars. That's the thing I hear the most is people wanting to save money. So that's that's I just wanna be cognizant of that. To, just to kind of, add to council member Frederick's point. So we did hear that, cable revenue is down. As we get to this point of making decisions that you talked about earlier,
mister Parrish, is there an opportunity just to do some kind of survey to look at cable versus streaming versus YouTube and all of those different options to give us greater knowledge as we go to that decision point? Yeah. President, members of council, we can certainly give you some information. We did try to provide some context when this last conversation was last had. I will acknowledge that, like, you know, getting views on cable is difficult. We aren't given sort of,
you know, that kind of data in terms of how many people are logging in to watch the live Rochester city council meeting. But I think what you can use is a good substitute. There are some industry norms, that you can apply to cable subscribers. So there's your universal cable subscribers, then there's the percentage of cable subscribers that actually watch public educational and governmental TV. It's pre law. And then you, can So what you're saying is you can get us some Some analysis. Okay. Council member Miller. Well, I think that was gonna be my question. Is it Go ahead, council member. Thank you. Is it possible to correlate a number of subscribers to the franchise fee and show
that change over time? I, we've heard that the revenue coming through franchise fees is declining. Could we see how many people or how many households are associated with that franchise fee? Even if we can't see viewers. Thank you for the question, Council member Miller. There is the fee is calculated based on the number of subscribers. So we can absolutely, so theoretically, we could see the percentage of households in Rochester and how that's changing over time. Correct. And I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this as well because I would think of some of the options are what is the cost of that cable live option?
What is the cost of rebroadcasting a recording to cable? And what is the cost, how we as which technology implements what level, how we make these solutions work, I don't feel comfortable being the person to evaluate that for longevity. So I I wanna find a balance in there, but I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this. Council member Palmer. I'm gonna piggyback on what mister Miller just said. If you could come back to us and say having livestream cable costs this, and I'm assuming you all can figure that out out or get us a ballpark. I think that would be very helpful because if it's $2 everybody's going to say,
let's do it. If it's $200 there's no one's going to do it. So let's come back. If you is that possible for when you bring your recommendation? I believe so. Most of our cable equipment is more than likely going to be reused, because it's newer, because that did all die before. So we can kind of factor that in as well. Okay. Thank you. Further discussion on the amendments? Seeing none, everyone familiar with the amendment and where we are, all in favor of the amendments, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay.
Okay. Amendment passes, onto the, main, item. Council member Keane. Yeah. Again, I just wanna make the you know, you're at the point where you're, like, doing doing a bigger project. This is usually where things are more cost effective than if you do something and then say, what would it cost to add something onto it? So I I don't wanna get caught up in this thing that we're gonna try to do the cheapest thing we can do right now and then over the next two or three years ask for add ons. I I hope I mean, I've had the same thing with putting an addition on the house. You don't try to do it. You don't try to add things on later because when you're doing the work is
with the time to to to to to do those bigger things. So I hope we can keep that in mind. Council member Wahl. And I would like to just, reframe it a little bit between cheapest and most cost effective. Council member Doreen. Yeah. I I really appreciated, the perspective that, council member Keane Keane just provided. That's what's been going on in my head during this entire conversation. And I just I just wanna commend our our staff again for including, some ADA assisted audio, products in in the RFP. As someone who relies on assisted audio devices to operate in my everyday life,
I have found sometimes being on the Dallas dais even challenging for me to hear everything going on in the room. So I really appreciate the intentionality of that. Thank you, council member. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Nay. Passes six one with council member Wahl in the, opposition. And moving on to h two, the former f 13, which is professional services contract amendment with SRF for architectural and engineering design downtown,
Link Rapid Transit. Council member Wahl, you pulled this item, please. You have the floor. Thank you. The additional extra consulting money amongst a 19.4% of the predetermined to be an additional ask, while $700,000 something's happened to my thing here is devoted to the extended bidding time. I've received good information from staff last week about the expenses, information that I would like shared with the public through this venue, and I have questions when the, Thank you, council member. Is it mister Samson Brown that will take this item? Go ahead. Good evening, council member,
council president. Tonight's amendment is amendment number three for the, our city's contract with SRF Consulting with the Link BRT project. This project will be starting construction and has in fact started the West Transit Village construction and we have planned for a period of time to do a contract amendment at about the time, construction was starting earlier this year. I've been here just about eight months. So going back to last fall, we assume that,
contracts B, which is the streets, civil utilities along with contract c, which is the vertical construction piece, would also be under construction. Based on our, last full council meeting, those bids were rejected, and we're working, quickly to get the contract b work back out to bid. So, tonight with the looming deadline on SRF's multi year contract with the city delivered the Delink BRT project, we are asking for this contract amendment. Council Member Wahl, questions? Yes,
thank you. I do thank staff for good information over the past four or five days on this specific item. If we always knew that there was going to be a predetermined additional ask and consulting fees, was that communicated to us at the time in which we hired a consultant to, do this project for us? Miss Steinhauser? Sure. Thank you for the question. I'll jump in since, so he's only been here eight months. This is his first, contract amendment. So, just for some, history, the contract actually goes back to 2019,
I believe. So at that point, we Steinhauser, can you get a little closer to the mic up on there? Absolutely. So the contract goes the original contract goes back to 2019, I believe. SRF was selected to provide services. Since the original contract, and and when they submitted the original contract, it it contemplated not only design services, bidding services, but also, providing construction management oversight as the designer of record for the project. However, the project, has been extended for a number of reasons.
We increased the distance of the project. We increased the number of stations for the projects. So it's been through a couple of iterations and a couple of submissions. And, amendments, we were always able to amend, SRF's contract within the existing approved amount and just move money from, task eight, for example. Task eight is the is the task where they associated a line item for but we were able to move money out of task eight over to address
additional costs related to design changes as a a result of doing of this project, design changes happening a couple of times, cost escalation as a result of the completion time extending first in 'twenty five, then into '26. Now we anticipate, in mid year twenty seven. And so we had always the original contract did identify construction management services, but those dollars were absorbed into additional design needs when the project designs changed over the past, design needs when the project designs changed over the past five years.
And, so now we are coming for we had always intended to come forward with an amendment. I'm not sure that we, made it completely clear in prior study session updates that an amendment would be forthcoming in construction management services that would be in the $2,500,000 amount. Now that number actually is significantly less than what we had originally anticipated because Steve was able to get those tasks negotiated down. However, the number, the the amendment that's before you is higher because it also then then reflects about
$700,000 of additional cost for rebidding value engineering. So, it's a little bit longer question, but, yes, we'd always anticipated in the original contract, and we had anticipated, as Steve indicated, we knew we would have to come back with a contract amendment because those dollars had been absorbed in design costs prior to, the bidding of the project. Council Member Wall? To put it less congenially, we robbed task eight to pay for previous tasks, and now we have to come back and replace the money. Replenish task eight. That's a great way of putting it.
Okay. And it just seems like 19.4%, seven hundred thousand of it due to rebidding is quite a chunk in additional monies. Do we believe that this will likely be the last of the consulting asks through the end of the project? Yes, Councilmember. Well, if the project goes planned, we do not expect to have an additional request. And just want to mention in regards to the the dollar value, quick numbers I'm estimating.
There's about 15,000, human hours of work consulting work going in to come up with those numbers. So there is a lot of time and resources spent looking at things like shop drawings and meeting with contractors to make sure construction goes smoothly. Myself and project manager Josh DeFrank spent a measurable amount of time with SRF, evaluating the estimated hours of work and where we think they had overestimated and where they, line item number two would possibly underestimated. But the city only pays when they do work,
so this is not a lump sum. This is just a time and materials expense, and we will be managing their time as closely as possible to arrive at the loaded lowest total cost about approximately two years from now. I I really do appreciate that information and the previous, emails that have been sent. But really wanted to make this a public discussion, so that it didn't just fly under a consent agenda item. And by the from $823,000 to $407,000 I was so shocked at that.
I sent a question about that last week too. So the staff does really great work on both sides of this issue. Council member Palmer. Thank you. I do appreciate the response I received from my Thursday questions. It's always good to have those. Where I'm disappointed is that this is a bid renewal. And one of the questions I ask asked, if we don't do it tonight, then we don't renew it and we're going to have to have a different company or call for bid. So I don't know why we couldn't have done this a month ago. Maybe you have an answer to that. And then the oversight that we're getting, this is the third time we're bidding this.
And that's really frustrating to me that we're having to rebid and rebid and rebid and now it might take the start time and push it back. I know after the first time that you worked hard with the contractors answering questions. So those are my two disappointments, I guess. And I don't know if you have a response to why it was done tonight due by the end of the month. So I'll just respond to that. Council Member Palmer, Council president Schoebring, and, rest of the council, that was obviously, that was my call. I indicated to, mister Sampson Brown that let's bring it as one package as opposed to split it
up because it could seem confusing. It could seem, confusing to the public like we amended and here we are amending again. So, I will own that that was was my call to we had talked about taking it last meeting. We didn't have quite all the numbers. I said let's just take it as one package or one one amendment as opposed to bringing two overtime. So I apologize if that, misled anybody. Other questions from council members? Seeing none, is there a motion on this item? I'll move to authorize the contract amendment to the professional services contract for SRF Consulting
Group to increase the contract amount by $3,288,000 to a total contract amount of 20,217,000.000 for architectural and engineering design and construction administration services for the Rochester downtown Moved by, council member Wall I mean, I'm sorry. Council member Keane. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by council member Miller. Council member Keane, you have the floor. No. Again, it Hey. It probably is we we we could spend more time on this.
I look at these things on the consent agenda mainly because they're things that we had talked about in on the other parts of these contracts, not specifically SRF, but this whole thing of not getting our bids. And then was the project gonna be so I took it as an extension and that's why I was in here, but it probably is worth the time both as council member Walsall says. Not not just to make sure we have an understanding, but to present it to the public. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Passes unanimously.
Moving on to, we have no council initiated actions. We have one, or ordinance first reading. Go ahead, mister Spindler. Greg. Thank you, mister president. Item j one, an ordinance designating the Pill Hill historic the City Of Rochester. Thank you, Mr. Spindler Craig. We have three ordinance second readings. Go ahead, Mr. Spindler Craig. Item K1, an ordinance annexing to the City Of Rochester approximately 1.03 acres of land located 300 feet north of Wilder Road,
Northeast, City Of Rochester. I'll move. Councilmember Keane. Second. Seconded by Councilmember Palmer. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Go ahead, mister Spindler. Greg. Item k two, an ordinance rezoning approximately 38.88 acres of land located East of Sixtieth Avenue North and approximately 500 feet South of King Arthur Road NW identified by pin number zero seven five four five six, zero seven eight five five one,
zero seven three eight three four zero seven five four five seven zero seven eight five eight four from R1 mixed single family residential to R2 low density residential small lot and amending ordinance number 4,478 known as the unified development code of the city of Rochester, Minnesota. Move. Approval. Second. Moved by, Councilmember Palmer, seconded by Councilmember Miller. All in favor say aye. Aye. Jose nay. K3. An ordinance annexing to the city of Rochester approximately 28.84
acres of land located East of Sixtieth Avenue NW approximately 500 feet south of King Arthur Road NW identified by pin number zero seven three eight three three. I move approval. Second. Moved by, council member Doring, seconded by who was that? Palmer. Council member Palmer. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Seeing none, we have no tabled items. We I have no listed other business. Is there any other business that council members would wish to bring up or staff?
Seeing none, is there a motion for adjournment? So moved. Moved by council member Palmer. Second. Seconded by council member Fredericks. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Thank you. Everybody enjoy some green beer. Especially Saint Patrick's geese.