What you need to go? I mine was are you looking at your thing? Here. Here. No. Just need a piece. Thank you. I had the same thing. Mine was all the way on the ground. This is a larger conspiracy. Recording in progress. Welcome, everybody. We are going to get, started with our August 18 study session, and we have one agenda item, which is a quite lengthy agenda item. We hope to be out of here by, I believe, 05:00, so an hour and a half to discuss the 2025 action plan realignment.
And we have mister Aaron Parrish to start us off. As you recall, through the course of the year, you've had some conversations around what are the strategic priorities of the city council. You had the opportunity to evolve those, you had the opportunity to evolve your foundational principles. And the next step really is to then translate that into an action plan. So how are we gonna bring those strategic priorities to life? How are we gonna make make progress? But also, as important, how are we gonna measure, ourselves, with that progress? So we will go through some of that. Again, you have your five anchor strategic priorities of economic resilience,
housing access, inclusive growth management, responsible environmental stewardship, and transformational capital projects. And at the end of the day, this is, like, your vision for what you wanna see accomplished in the next two to four year time frame, for the city. I'm not gonna go through all those, but this is sort of the, time that you've spent on working on developing those strategic priorities. And we're here today, for you to consider the action plan. If you have some level of comfort with this action plan, then the next step would be to have it it be formally approved at a city council meeting, in September. Just, giving you a little bit of cadence,
for how we work with the action plan, and there this team also does some work planning behind this. But we will bring this to you twice a year, one time as kind of a midyear check. And then the other is sort of just toward the turn of the year after we've collected the data, for the year and just give you, like, a more of an annual update on how we did in '25. So the next time you see this will be that, turn of the year, how did we do in 2025 in terms of making progress on those action plans. And a lot of the content that's embedded within here really is sort of in this two to four year window,
realizing we have plans that go out fifty years, twenty years, ten years. We're trying to assimilate all that into, like, what do we really focus on in the next two to four years, that we can accomplish. And you all do some follow-up strategic planning as well, year to year also. So I wanna go through, just from a formatting perspective, what we do in the action plan is each one of the strategic priorities you have, we put goals under that. And with each of those goals, we put some tactics, like what are we gonna do to advance that work? And we've also, layered in some, KPIs, key performance indicators that will help us measure that.
So economic resilience, just starting off, in this space. And just for a note, I think I'll take a pause after each priority and give you the opportunity give you the opportunity to provide feedback on each one of these. And, we have the team here that'll, you know, kinda take notes and we'll evolve that based on the feedback that we hear. But from an economic resilience, perspective, so the first goal, really is to develop a cohesive city economic development strategy and staffing model that complements key economic development partners. The second is really to lean into a tourism strategy, particularly in that economic,
or that, evening and weekend space. And then lastly, and you'll see this one carry through all the, strategic priorities. Just what can we do to optimize city services in order to support the work, and and how we, help the community make progress on each one of these. So some specific tactics here. One is, really just talking about that role in staffing. So you've had a little bit of a light light conversation in this space around the, economic mobility, item that's on your agenda. But this sort of leans into that. Tactic two is something that you've all been, you know,
having conversation about too on an ongoing basis. Just like, what is our regulatory role? How do we balance, you know, doing well in the community and providing, you know, great development, but also, allowing for an efficient, building, and efficient, regulatory environment that allows people to move ahead with projects, both in the housing access and economic resilience space. Business retention and expansion, this really just leans into the idea that, you know, every solid economic development strategy that you've ever seen in a community relies on taking care of your existing businesses that are here well.
How can you lean in and retain? It's a lot harder to go out, get a a new business to come into your community than it is to support the ones that are here and and help them grow. And then the last tactic really focuses on equitable economic development. So we've had a lot of work in the in the disparity study that we participated in about how we do city contracting and what our opportunities are for that. We have, goals in the, WMBE and workforce participation space. And so this also sort of relates into how do we create equitable economic development.
Again, also another tie back to this economic mobility conversation and how we can, do work in that space ultimately in our procurement. Now just remember, these are always goals. We can't mandate, you know, certain requirements, encourage, encouragement. The tourism strategy, just kinda transitioning into that space. This is really exciting. I think there's a lot of council conversations sort of in this space. One is just events. You know, what can we do and, you know, reconsider existing events. What can we do to promote, current events? We have a lot of partners in this space. So just an opportunity to think about, events and cultural amenities that,
you know, will help strengthen the evening and weekend economy. We heard a lot of conversation both in the council's, space as well as just in surveys and other areas about trail development, both with regard to existing trails and maintaining what we have, but also exploring other trail connections. I think you also are seeing the county start to step out more in this space. They've renamed their parks team parks and trails. They are gonna be advancing a trail, study next year. So you folks on Rocog, that's an opportunity for you to weigh in on, you know, what a regionally based trail strategy might look like.
Park development investment, I'd say there's been an amazing amount of progress made in this park space, over the last number of years here. And I think you wanna continue that momentum, to see these kind of public spaces that people really connect with. But it also enhances the resident experience and the visitor experience, for for folks. So updating that parks master plan. I know the parks team has really successfully used that plan to translate, you know, an overall vision into getting funding and delivering projects. So it's time to update that. Reviewing parkland dedication, that's always a robust conversation.
There's a legislative layer to that. There's an organizational layer to that. But we wanna also just look at how can we finance park improvements. You know, there's a variety of options there and continuing to look at, what we might be able to do there. I'm gonna do a little bit of a feature on the regional sports and rec complex in a moment. But just tactic four really leans into that space of developing the final estimates and, moving that project forward. Tactic five really leans into marketing and focuses on marketing. We have a destination marketing organization with Experience Rochester.
A lot of our visitorship in Rochester kinda happens, through medical tourism, but you do have the opportunity to say, like, what else can we do in that space? How else can we market? What other experiences can we provide, to bring people to the community? And really also then thinking about sports centric tourism. This is an oldie but a goodie, but the chateau theater, or the chateau, I guess, really trying to get our final strategy, leaned into there. What do we need to do for renovations? What is our, best operating approach programmatically? What's gonna meet community needs? What's gonna meet visitor needs? And really trying to think about what the long term future of the Chateau,
wants to be. That then just trans transitions into this action You wanna for questions? Well, I can start. I had a couple questions. And I guess I guess, going back to goal a, and maybe overall, I kind of want to get a sense of how and when some of these will come back to us, for example, with, clarifying the city's economic development role. Now getting an understanding of how we work with Ready and others and
where are we in that space now and what is the goals for that? That would be one piece and I don't know if you want to answer these questions now or if you're I I can start and then pass around. I've got I wanna call on a lot of lifelines tonight here. Okay. Good. Okay. Let's start with that one. Because council member Palmer said you have a lot of questions and I've heard we've got a great team here to help me out. But, I would say in economic development so so one thing you'll notice later in the packet is we have all these goals and tactics,
laid out in the packet. And, you know, once we get some understanding that this is the direction you wanna go, we'll put specific departments, people, teams, and some, you know, timing information in there. Obviously, whatever we're doing administratively, we'll, you know, bring that to you more generally in the form of the updates twice a year on the action plan. But as you're gonna see and you'll have experienced, many of the items that are in here are gonna show up when they're ready on different study sessions and different council action items. And so, you know, that'll be the mechanism in which we sort of have a more ongoing connection outside
of the normal formal action plan concepting. I would say there's a good base of information in the economic development landscape, Reddy had commissioned a study maybe three to four years ago around the economic development ecosystem. And, you know, there's still a number of things, I think, that are reasonable questions that could be answered. I think part of the economic mobility process that you have on the, agenda this evening is also oriented in this space. And I guess with that, I'm happy for others to to weigh in there too. But And I I guess my maybe a specific question to, administrator zones.
Do we have economic development on our study session schedule now? And is it something that would be a topic for a study session? President, we do not have the, the study session right now. I think it depends on how broadly you want to discuss it, but we probably would again, some of these things are gonna require more work if the council agrees to it by staff to come up with more details to bring forward to you. So we didn't do all of the back work before we brought you Yep. The high level. So No. I I get it. I I and and in my my,
perspective, I think it merits a deeper dive. I'll quickly move on to a couple others that I have questions on. Regulatory commitment, there's a lot of good work that both Councilmember Palmer and myself have encouraged the city to work with, the Rochester area builders on. I'm hearing a lot of good work coming out of that, but I don't know that we have seen it in a public setting. You know, what and when I say good work, I'm talking about streamlining licenses
and permitting processes and making it easier for businesses and developers to to stay here and continue to, build here. And so I think that would be one that it would be good for us to see before a public setting like this. So no need to comment on that. And then, parks and rec, what I, one of the discussion items that I encouraged during our our overall discussion of the parks and rec model was to look at developing guidelines
and or policies around the agreements that we have with the clubs, associations and in particular, the agreements that would, encourage greater access and sliding fee schedules, sponsorships. So that would be what I would encourage on that. And then finally, from, my perspective, and then I'll let other council members weigh in on the chateau. The last, that this came before this body was we were going to see not a final strategy.
But from my recollection, we were going to see here is the, you know, top line possibilities, here's a middle line possibility, and here is kind of the maintenance possibility. And so, wondering when that will come back to, the Council. Any answers on those? So, Council President Schubert, thank you for the question. We are hoping to bring that back, for an update. The chateau. The chateau operational assessment. Yeah. Hoping to bring that back next month. It is well behind schedule,
I'll be quite honest. There's a number of reasons for that that I won't go into for today. But we are, meeting to look at the executive summary next week, try to see if it's in the space where we feel comfortable to bring forward to you for an update. So our goal is to bring that back next month. Okay. Thank you. Council member Miller? Yeah. Just a quick question on goal b within this. I'm curious about how you feel of the historic district and some of the work that's happening there, retail storefronts in that district as part of the tourism strategy evening and weekend, if there's a role to highlight that a bit more clearly since there are active
projects going on? Yes. I think that's a fair thing that we could consider adding. I don't know that it's necessarily reflected here, but I think that's something we could put on the list to, you know, level this up. Yeah. Love to see that as an emphasis. Council member Fredericks. Thank you. On goal a, you said key partners. Can you just identify what those key partners are look like? Yeah. I mean, I think in general, your economic development ecosystem, it's just to be part of your conversation, I think, that the council president was alluding to just to have, you know, some sense of, you know, what that landscape looks like.
But obviously, you talk about Destination Medical Center, REDI, we have a collaboration with the Small Business Development Center, your higher education institutions locally, Collider, you know, and many more. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but, you know, there's a lot of people that are working in this space, the acceleration work that Mayo Clinic is doing, the emerging sort of investments that are happening in the biobusiness center as well as the, discovery one, two, and all that. So I think that's all part of it, but I'm sure there's more. Mayor Norton? Yeah. Two two.
I'm two things. One, I'm pleased to see goal a focusing on economic development. As I've been talking about for a couple years, cities our size and larger often have a whole department focused on this, and we just haven't had that. Not that we haven't had staff that have done some work, we have, but we haven't really focused. I'm really pleased about goal A. Goal B, if we can switch to the next slide, and can you move the little black thing down, the little verbiage? Thank you. I'm going to suggest, implement a tourism strategy, period, or comma, that includes evening and weekend economic activity.
And I say that because we have medical patients that are here for medical tourism, but they're looking for things to do during the day, and there is nothing in Rochester for them to do during the day, that is meaning it's minimal. And we do have an opportunity, and we've talked about this at the Chamber and already years ago, we do have regional assets as well that we don't market quite as well as we could. So I would just say, is there a way to just implement a tourism strategy? And, you know, if you want to also look at enhancing even on weekends, fine. But I'm going to suggest if you do keep evening and weekends,
on there as including, that that there are things that are missing from this. And so, my suggestion would be on tactic four. It should say regional sports and recreation period, not focused on just a complex because we have multiple complexes in this community that could be activated for folks, whether it be out at RCTC or whether it be our rec center. We have swimming, for instance. We have other, sports and recreation, and I don't think we should limit ourselves to just a complex. And if you're going
to be honest, I think there's still question as to whether Phase two should really be Phase two and that I'm concerned that we continue to use Phase one and Phase two and the community has been very clear that they want us to focus on the community aspect of it, which I just want the whole issue dealt with. I really am getting frustrated with phase one and phase two because I don't know the timeline on that, and I think we need to get that community aspect, done sooner. And tactic six, I would say, Chateau Yes and, we have had a request in this community for as long as I've lived here,
that folks want more of a culture community center, which can include music venues and that sort of thing. It's a big item. I was approached just recently by folks from the Symphony Orchestra, from the Art Center, who really want us to consider, doing something that's a broader cultural center that would include all of the arts and and culture in the community, and that came through loud and clear on the RV 2050 as well. So I I think the chateau is something we need to deal with, and that's a really limited, look at that.
But I think if we're really talking about tourism and bringing folks to the community, this community values its arts, its theater, and music, and we should make sure that we're continuing to focus on that as well. Council member, Keane. Yeah. Again, I'm gonna just try to reset and just make sure I understand what's happening here. And these goals and that the economic resilience, this is we're talking about working on a strategy for this. I wanna make sure that anyone listening was doesn't think we're working on closing the chateau and doing all these projects in the next year. And I'm afraid by some of the language here,
we're starting to imply that we're not just trying to make a goal of trying to understand what our future is, but we're inadvertently making commitments to things that I don't think we have any plans to do. So, your honor, I I think a couple of things and maybe while also just walking back to the mayor's comments, you know, the phrasing of goal b, I think we certainly could take a look at that. I mean, we have a lot of goals in the tourism space. Right? As far as the Chateau, I I think in you'll see a lot of these goals are very much and tactics are very much written to, you know, articulate that we're on a journey to figure out what we wanna do with the
Chateau. So Chateau is develop a final strategy, and it doesn't say what that is. It just says it could be a cultural and community center. There's a lot of dimensions to that conversation in terms of operating support and operating models and, you know, name all the things. And it could be something similar something similar to what we're doing now or it could be any number of things. But I think that's the intent of, you know, leaving the language somewhat open. Any of those options has a different renovation profile and capital investment profile. And so that I think the Chateau is written open enough for you to have
a future conversation about what you think it wants to be without saying here tonight we are going to do, there. So I think realizing, I think it's good. These are in process. It these are goals and tactics. It doesn't mean we're gonna accomplish them all either. Like, I have a lot of goals that I don't always hit, but having them helps me make progress too. Good. I I just wanna have this discussion from the dias because I I'm afraid sometimes we get misunderstood when we talk about we're going to do this, that we're going to complete something. So thank you. Carry on. Alright. So and I saved this, portion from mayor's comments on action plan feature.
So we just wanna give you a feature on one of the items that's, you know, actively being worked on. You know, there's been a lot of, conversation and enthusiasm and energy around the regional sports and rec complex. Just wanna kinda ground you in some of the the history I walked with the project, since it was started, you know, even prior to legislation being introduced, as well as just want you to understand some of the very discreet next steps. We obviously have invested a lot of money into getting to where we are today. We're 6 and a half, $7,000,000 into phase one at this point.
Your next discussion points for this at the city council will be October 6, and we have two tracks that we're working on right now. One is the debt issuance. And as you know, there's actually quite a bit of work that goes into the debt issuance. We have rating calls with our, you know, bond issuing community, and we do a lot of work in that space. But on October 6, you'd be asked to set a sale date for the bonds, for that. There's we we spend money to go out and, you know, basically put our materials together to, look at that bonding process. And then November 17, you'd be asked to award the sale.
And so, you know, we're on a track for the financing piece of that. The other is the construction operations track. So the goal would be on October 6 for you to have a bid authorization saying we are ready to advertise for bids, and then approving the operator agreement based on what you saw at the July 28 study session, I believe. And then you'd be asked to consider awarding those bids on the seventeenth in order to, you know, keep keep the my project going. I will say a couple things. Just I think it's important, and council member Keane, I think, did a really good job of saying,
like, people attach meaning to what we talk about here. And and obviously, that's happened with this project. I would just say in in '20, '22, the first legislation that was introduced was for a $65,000,000 outdoor focus concept. It was very distinct in the transmittal materials to the state that said we are gonna have an outdoor complex with indoor supportive features, which generally means concession stands and bathrooms and things like that. So we were not committing to a significant outdoor component when the legislation was originally
introduced in '22. Nothing got approved by the legislature that year. The tax bill didn't get approved. Nothing happened. So it was basically we had hearings, but nothing happened that particular year. Move on to '23. The legislation was approved. It was didn't walk in the house tax bill. Never in the house. It was in the senate tax bill, and it was ultimately approved, you know, in the final omnibus bill in May. We had not yet contracted, and received any design concepts once that legislation was approved. You had that same time frame when the legislation was approved.
You had a gap analysis. That was it. You didn't receive a design idea for the project until July year. And so just, you know, realizing that ISG provided that design concept, with a range of 65 to 83,000,000. I put a little bit more on top of that just because of escalation now. But, you know, that's where you got the indoor outdoor concept saying we could do what we consider and talk about now as phase one and phase two for let's say it was $83,000,000. That was still an exceedance of our $65,000,000
budget. There was always a conversation of we need to bring more money into the project, or we need to we need to value engineer and scale the project back. It's one of those two things. That's kind of where it ended in July year. And then we went to the vote in '23. Obviously, we thought we had the potential to deliver an indoor outdoor project. That's not where we ended up. We ended up, with a new design concept, new project team, with with estimates that are much, much higher than that, where today, when you had to make that decision last February, to decide what project you wanted to bring forward,
you could have delivered the whole project, phase one and phase two. That's probably a 130 to $140,000,000 project. The indoor and outdoor components together and about a million dollars of operating deficit. That's the conversation you had in February. If you wanna do both, $130,140,000,000 dollars and about a million dollars of operating support for a year for a year from the levy. So again, to date, we've spent $6,300,000 and, you know, we continue to obviously, you know, have a lot of conversation about this. I will say, though, we are also committed last February to you that we are gonna identify options for
financing phase two or replicating that experience in other facilities in the community. And so how can we do that? We are gonna give you some high level well, I'm not gonna go through all these for you. This is really just sort of we'll call it the record. Like, here's every action that you've taken, on this item and just sort of a very just distinct sequence of of events, that have taken place on this project. As you can see, there are many. And before, just options. I'd also say, like, when you start a project and concepting a project in '21, kind of in the middle of a pandemic and,
you know, you're really starting to bid it out in '25, there's other things that happen. Many of you weren't here. We the YMCA in the course of this conversation closed. We had a lot of aquatics conversation in the original gap analysis. So, when we were talking about this very distinctly in the '23, there was a lot of energy around aquatics. But we've done Soldiers Field. We've done Silver Lake since then. Those are landscape level changes. The Eagles have created some pickleball courts. Not a lot, but but incrementally created some pickleball courts.
There's a lot of talk in that '23 indoor concept about an indoor playground. During that same time, November '23, Boundless is now open. It was just an idea. Public hadn't been in there. Boundless is now open and available to the public as an indoor playground. So, you know, just some things have have happened. And on top of that, there's tariffs, there's other items, certainly that are just more macro level issues. Moving on, I'll just say you have options for phase two. We'll continue to work and we obviously you know, none of these is gonna occur in isolation.
But if you wanna, you know, even do an indoor project today, you're gonna have to explore one of these options if you elected to not do the outdoor version. But, again, if you wanna do both indoor and outdoor, phase one, phase two, these are your other options you have. Food and beverage tax is an option, requires state, legislative approval at least. Doesn't necessarily require voter approval depending how the legislation is written. But, you know, you could put a food and beverage tax into into effect. Very typical thing that happens in jurisdictions like Rochester.
You could dedicate that to, you know, future regional sports facilities. Local sales tax serve some variations of that. You can get extensions. You can modify your terms. Our collections are very good. We gave ourselves a fair amount of room, to collect on this project. I would expect we would have the full $205,000,000 collected well, well, well in advance of the 24 that the legislation has given us. So, you know, there's conversations you can have there. State bonding. Again, these are these three first three all involve the state, so that's a whole another conversation.
Sponsorship and private fundraising, certainly another option. That was lightly explored. We didn't have anybody major coming to the table saying, I wanna close the gap of you know, even when it was $83,000,000. We didn't have anyone saying, I'm willing to close the gap to $83,000,000 back then. Now it doesn't say it can't happen. I think, you know, we wanna rely on philanthropy. That's certainly great. And the other option is, you know, local bonding or local revenue. I mean, that's certainly you're familiar with that. You ask residents to pay for, and they can, and that's part of what you do here.
A lot of levy percent increase involved in generating those kinds of funds. And then there's certainly other options, which I think is what the question mark is, like unknown or or what have you. So, I just wanna I wanna say, like, you know, there's a lot of conversations on this, and I and I think, you know, it's the nature of what we do in in the public environment is people attach meaning to things that are meaningful to them. Sports complex is a different idea than a community center. We did not reflect that when we introduced the original legislation as a community center. It's not what was said,
not what was represented. That hasn't changed. I would just say, like, you know, we're not ruling out phase two. You you have the opportunity to do indoor, features later. And I also think sometimes we get into dollar or nothing thinking on these things where if something accommodates competitive, you know, economically related or relevant items that it can't be community beneficial. I think our experience is that it can be. Our experience is that the National Volleyball Center, I'll use it as an example, attracts many tournaments, many people to the community, and it's really great for the local community to use.
So there's a lot of local people that make their way through the National Volleyball Center. It's very locally relevant, to our community. So just with that, I'll probably take a pause. I feel like you all have a lot of great questions on this, and I'm ready to ready to answer them. So Thank you, mister Parish. I don't have a question, but more kind of a comment of on kinda where we go. And from my perspective, I'm not here to relitigate how we got here. But where we are today is we have a $65,000,000,
statute that says we can't we, can spend that for a sports center. And we, in February, made the decision that we were we we got a cold slap in the face and said, this is what we can do for $65,000,000. And the community came back and said that's not what we thought this would be. We thought it call it phase one. Call it phase two. Call it, sports complex. Call it a community center.
They saw that what we were left with was the sports tourism piece of the complex, and the community piece was not there in, in phase one. So where we are today and I have talked to over a 100 residents in, Rochester about this. And, there really is a strong feeling that this isn't what we voted for. And, I look and say,
okay. Where do we go from here? And I look at opportunities for where can we bring in community access to parks and rec overall? That's why I keep pushing on on that access piece. And then where are their facilities that are maybe not used to the extent that they should be? And can we, in this six week period that we have between now and when we take our next vote on this item,
can we work to, enhance our partnership, for example, with our CTC? There are six, basketball courts in a field house that, that is underused from what I understand and the city has the opportunity to use that on the evenings. There are so so really what I'm looking for is and it and I wouldn't call it a phase one or phase two. It's in tandem with what we're doing with the sports complex that we really show
the community that we want to build, that that relationship, enhance the partnership, enhance the visibility, enhance the amenities, and the, potentially look at, you know, what kind of funding to enhance the facilities there. So, so I I wanna see that discussion started, during this period. That's my, thoughts on it. Other council members? Mayor Norton? Yes. And I appreciate those comments. And I think that heads in a direction I'm far more comfortable with. I'm kind of surprised that this presentation on strategic goals for the year has taken
a turn to be a presentation and rehash of this particular issue. I hadn't expected quite that today. But I think the idea that we don't have a phase one and a phase two, we have a responsibility to the community to give them what they voted for. And I'm sensing this inability, for staff to step back and say, yeah, we've been on this path, but it's not what the community is telling us they want at all. And hundreds is an underestimate. This has been nonstop, comments about this.
And there are people who voted yes on the referendum who use the term bait and switch a lot. And I think that's how they're feeling. And so how can we put a pause rather than moving ahead so quickly? And maybe you can do it in six weeks, and if you can't, then we move it out a little further, and say, we want to address what the community wants, not phase one or phase two, but as the project. And if we need legislative language, which I think one of our representatives or one of our senators has mentioned, we may need legislative language.
We have a session coming up ahead where we could ask them to be able to utilize the funds in two places rather than one, because we were allowed up to five areas, and we didn't do five, we did four. So I think there's other options here to get the project that the community wants done and not be stuck on. It has to be the way we've been talking about it to date. And some of the ideas that council president Schoebring mentioned resonate well, with me and with what I've been hearing from the community, and it's RCTC and potentially even the,
the rec center. And so when you have that little question mark at the bottom of the one page there, I think there are other things that we can do. And I think those other things are to rethink what we're doing, and maybe this, complex that you have assigned could be something more or something different than you currently have it proposed. Maybe it needs to be a mild variation of that in order to work within the budget. And then your phase two is finishing that off, and maybe not having that all done at once, but instead working on the local community components that folks are asking for.
So for me, that that's the input I would give you on that question mark. Council member Palmer. Well, I've been involved with this for a long period of time and I don't think we're rehashing anything. I think it's a statement of facts that we're being presented today. Not everybody wants to listen to facts. We started in January 2022 on this project and this is what we've come up with. I think there's a definitions that are different here and there's one is community center and then community use. And this project has always been a community use project.
This has been one that people from Rochester will come and use. It's not totally set up for all that all the time, but it's not just for people who are, traveling from out of state. So it is a community use in the city council. When I was on it and we voted for this, was very that we needed community use. It is not a community center, never has been. And I think when people keep saying that, I think that they muddy the issue, which I think is what some people are trying to do. I think people forget that there's a difference between Park and Rec and how they've
operated for many, many years as partnerships in the community and then this is a different facility. We've right now used property tax for $700,000 for the rec center. That facility is there, it's been there for a long period of time and there are some people who've never been in the rec center. People like me sold candy bars to build the pool. And so, I think it's important for people to remember that. If pausing a project made sense, we wouldn't be continuing to do this. The city council voted last city council and this city council to advance this project.
And I think that to me when we go for bid that will be the combination of starting this entire project and providing it to the community as we said we were going to do. I was in 25 different hearings and presentations to the community. Some people here weren't at any. Some people had no support for this at any one time. And they still haven't got any support. And my understanding is if I lose five to one, it's a council decision the council of Marches has won. I don't sit here and scream and holler and say this is wrong continuously.
And so, I'm in favor of this, I'm glad that we had a fax that were presented to us today and I'm seriously hoping that the city council will continue to, work on this process. And if we need to look at Park and Rec, Park and Rec has a charter board. They're different than we are. We literally only give them money. We can ask them to look at that and maybe we need to give them more money to help out with scholarships. That's something that the city council can do. So that's my opinion on this this presentation so far. Council member Miller. I'll just add briefly,
coming back to the action plan and our strategic priorities, I do think that there is an emerging priority about how we're meeting recreational needs in the community. We've put inclusive growth management. I mean, this is potentially a piece of that, that, but I think that there is this broader conversation that has to be had. And the other missing piece of the puzzle or piece of the puzzle from your slide is is conversations about RCTC's operating model for their sports center. And so I think that there is a public conversation happening. I think this is a prime opportunity to talk about how we are addressing that.
And I don't know, that it's a restructured action plan, but I I do think it based on the communications that I've had would be a miss to not have the broader conversation doesn't solve. Yeah. And just to that point, I think, and also to the mayor's point earlier, we can work on the language in that that item that obviously, I think we I would recommend to you that you continue to have something in the regional sports and rec complex space and evaluating opportunities for other regional sports and recreational facilities and or community facilities So Okay.
Continue. Alright. I'm resetting the clicker. I wore that one out, I guess. Okay. So thank you for the indulgence there. Again, I think it's just good to you know, for you to understand October 6 is really the next opportunity for you to talk about that. And, you know, we're spending a lot of time every day on this. Also, really appreciate the idea and I know the team is very significantly working on, what you talked about in terms of, you know, what talked about in terms of, you know, what can we do at the rec center, what can we do with RCTC. I know Allison's, you know, really made a priority. Mister Arzellum, excuse me, has made a priority, you know, around around, you know, making sure we're doing that.
I also know the parks team is looking at, like, what their after school programming looks like. And, you know, right now, there's a strong adaptive rec component to what happens there, but it's a big building. And so maybe there's some opportunities for a few days a week, to, you know, use pools, engines, and try to find the sweet spot, where we can at least meet some interim need there as well. Okay. Thank you for for that. Back to economic resilience. So again, this is that optimizing city services. I won't go through each of the tactics here. I think some of this is already talked about, when the you know, their previous conversations. But again,
permitting, how do we maximize economic vitality investments? For the for those that may not know, we own the BIO business center, which is a very significant asset in the downtown. There's some critical decision points coming in that space. We have mail leases there till, I think, '29, but those will be over, and we'll have to think about, you know, is there adaptive reuse potential for that? Is there other, you know, things that we wanna think about for the mission of that building, long term? And then you've all recently talked about city parcels as well. So with that, I think we got a lot of the economic vitality or economic resilience conversation talked
about. But is there anything else before we transition to our next strategic priority? I think we're good. Okay. Alright. So housing access. Again, some of the same themes. You'll see, economic resilience and housing access really sort of lean into our community development team and some of the things they work on. Goal a is promoting construction of owner occupied homes. B focuses on neighborhoods that support infill, adaptive reuse, and accessible housing. This is our first real goal that's reflected accessible housing. Then we have, c supporting, county and nonprofit efforts to effectively provide resources to persons experiencing housing instability.
And it's often you do in a action plan like this, you're trying to forecast, you know, where we lead and where we support, and so we do try to put some definition to to that. And then again, we have this broader optimizing city services goal. So, again, promoting construction of owner occupied homes, regulatory environment. For example, with the collaboration you have going on the West 80 development with the affordable single family homes being constructed there. We're trying to look at lessons learned. And so, for example, one item was, maybe we don't need to do boulevard trees in the boulevard. Maybe we can just require people to put one in their front yard instead.
And so just might seem like a small thing, but it, you know, it end up could end up being, you know, the little things that make a make a difference on this. Where are opportunities for homeownership innovation? Again, there's challenges with condoing properties, but, you know, where are our opportunities to rethink what a a single family owner occupied home or an owner occupied home looks like. Then I think, you know, a big a big area for us is really leaning into the legislative environment. I think there are you know, this is a very active conversation at the state level. We want this to be done with cities,
not to cities. What can we do to incentivize, responsible, housing policy at the local level, while still encouraging that good strong connection between housing and land use. And, you know, the state allows and provides cities lots of transportation money. How can we align and make linkages there? So just thinking about legislative environment, partnering with the league and our delegation on that, as well. There's, like, minor little things like when you plat a lot, the taxes go up right away on it, so there's a disincentive to plat lots. You're only gonna plat what you think you can sell in a year or two. Might be some things to to think about there in the regulatory space.
Goal b is that kind of neighborhood vitality goal. ADUs, I mean, you've got a lot of great conversations around ADUs. I won't like to go in-depth on that. We haven't generated a ton of momentum there. And it's not the be all, end all, but it's, you know, a good thing to talk about. Very strong conversation you all had in the short term rental space, so we wanna continue to balance out the economic opportunity with short term rentals, the visitor experience piece with short term rentals, with the neighborhood vitality requirements. Also, accessible housing. Is there anything we can do to incentivize the construction and creation of accessible units? The state building codes don't really pick that up right now.
I mean, there's general, you know, things for commercial structures, not as much in the residential space. But, is there anything we can do to, you know, articulate best practices and or just keep track of, you know, the units in general? Rental inspections and code enforcement, there is this, like could we explore the idea of proactive code enforcement? Right now, code enforcement is complaint based. There's problems with that type of system, unmet expectations by neighbors, harassment of people, like, they're in a complaint based model. So could you look at a proactive model? What would that be? And we can have the tall grass conversation.
I know people love talking about tall grass. So, that was my joke for the day. So lead service line replacement and then, wastewater lateral replacement. Could we do something similar to what we're doing, for water with, like, wastewater, in that space? And then, lastly, the goal c is just, supporting nonprofit county efforts. Again, this is sort of our support role. There's a goal in here around, facilities. So is there a need for a different type of facility in the community? You've all sort of talked about that in different spaces. The county has, you know, been talking about what do we wanna do in the the mental health, housing space, other things.
So I I think that's certainly a space, not necessarily something we lead, but do we wanna have them, you know, supportive, location, you know, that we want thoughtful location on facilities. It makes a difference in terms of how services are provided. Public safety, I think, you know, we have a strong role to create a good environment for our residents and visitors in the community. And so, definitely, you know, we certainly have that public safety role across all of our goals, really. So just kind of that really picks up, here. And then supporting those individual housing stability efforts, kind of being engaged with Any Path Home.
And, we have a lot of investment we make in housing stability in our utility programs. That sort of flies below the radar, but there's a bunch that happens through RPU and donations they make to third parties to help, help people, stay in their homes and with their utilities. And then lastly, again, second, first, same as the first here. For housing access, you can definitely, you know, look at city parcels. How can they be repositioned for housing? We've done that, and we continue to do that permitting, like we've talked about, and then, again, those thoughtful economic vitality investments.
So with that, would pause if there's other feedback in this housing access space that people wanna talk about. Council member Miller. Just a quick comment. I I appreciate seeing some of these things come up, especially accessible housing as a priority, within this. I know we talked quite a bit about that. With ADUs and some of this infill development, I wonder if there's an opportunity as well to evaluate the the financing landscape. You know, thinking about the thirty year mortgage is not typically being applied for ADUs and some of that infill development. So is there a role for the city to play in bringing down some of the barriers to financing, whether that's revolving loan funds and the economic development,
sales tax funds, but just understanding that as a barrier beyond the regulatory space? I mean, I think we could, like, tie that into the barriers part of the conversation. You know, I think, like, a lot of these things too, it's, you know, what do we have to put in the accept the things you cannot change bucket? And, like, we're not moving the needle on national mortgage rates. Right? Like, that's not something we're gonna be able to do or commercial lending and, you know, certain respectfully, I wouldn't ask that. I'm just thinking about sort of the oversized role that the thirty year mortgage plays and what types of housing is able to be financed and how that's scaled up.
And just understanding as a barrier beyond permitting regulatory barriers to ADUs or conversions of existing structures, what role financing is playing and what gets created versus what doesn't? And I mean even to the economic vitality, economic resilience of is there an opportunity to understand how we invest in existing owners creating infill and getting some economic benefit, but not scaled up to the highest return that investors are looking at, but understand the role that we create some economic activity even through infill housing.
Yeah. I think we could certainly evaluate the financing landscape, what barriers are created, certainly something we can put in here. Thank you. Council Member Palmer. Well, ADU is a romantic idea on the problem that we're having. It's right now, we have an incentive program form and we don't have anybody taking the incentives. We haven't had, to my knowledge, any ADUs built infill in downtown around this area and one of them is just it's not cost effective for them. One of the requirements we have that is delaying that is that somebody has to
be the homeowner, has to live in one of the two units. If we took that away from that, you would have more people wanting to build ADUs, in the infill areas because then somebody who has a rental could build one in the backyard. The disincentive to that is that some people think it disrupts the neighborhood and the neighbors don't want it. So, it's not that we haven't tried to get ADUs. I believe the only two we've had built was built by Bigelow and they're new and it's a little bit easier to do that, but that's a tough one. One of the things you had on here, Mr. Parrish, was the incentives for lots and people don't realize is that it used to be
$50 for a lot tax until you sold the house and built on it. And this legislative people needed to grab some money, so they decided to tax a lot, a bare lot at the price of the lot. And the problem with that is a builder would go, instead of putting in 50, I'm only going to put in 10 because that's what I think I can sell. So, he goes to his contractor and say, I want to put 10 lots in. It costs a lot more to do 10 lots per lot than it does to do 50. So if he did 50, the lot prices would be down and then we could sell houses cheaper because the lot prices are down.
So the the fallacy about it is that the legislative people thought they were gonna get more money, they didn't because nobody's putting in those extra lots. And so that's one of those things that is tough and it's tough for us this spring to watch the state come down and tell us what the state was going to do to us as a city and demand that these are the things we're going to do, adding cost and less local control. So, that's something on a legislative perspective that we don't want to have happen in my opinion. Any other, Mayor? Mayor Norton. Thank you. Just a quick one. On the last slide,
I think, you have, lead no. Back one. Lead service line replacement. I'm thinking back to a grant, the federal grant that we got that was more than just lead line replacement. It was also just lead abatement in homes and healthy homes. Is are we still looking at participating in that? We were part of the state the the statewide grant. We were just one component of that. Yeah. So two different grant federal grants. One is our few administered lead service line. Yep. You know, really trying to target,
you know, lead to drinking water. Then the other is lead in the homes. And, like, Cindy, do you have an update on healthy homes that's been I think we're out of that now, but for Irene or I can answer that. I think we have expended those funds at this point. So I I think if other funds become available, we would seek those out. We also still have our housing rehabilitation program. That some of those, costs can be associated with. And we also work with ARPU on funding that they have available and coordinating, to be able to to help different homeowners. Okay. And I would just recommend I don't maybe it doesn't need to be in here as a tactic,
but, we do have many homes that have older paint, older homes, and it it does affect particularly children living in those their homes when they have, lead. They can get lead poisoning and and affect their intellectual development if we don't get that out of there. So administrative zones. Maybe just, thank you, council president, mayor. I think that's a a good point to remind people that this is the high level, and then we'll build out the work plan, which could include advertising that, making sure we're partnering with the right agencies, those kinds of things. So there'll be,
like, I don't know how many hundreds of sheets after this once the team gets done with it. There you go? Yep. Alright. And then, next, inclusive growth management. So, really four, leading goals here. The first one is integrating active transportation, and transit efforts to support inclusive growth, management. Part of this is just a staffing conversation as, as, you know, there's been an evolution in some of the modeling and other things that have been done at the county level. You know, it was really at one point more distinctly focused on ROCOG, with some of the traffic modeling that might be changing. So we wanna certainly be thinking about that.
Mode shift and travel demand management, there's a lot of opportunity here, in this space. Really, our whole downtown strategy really does rely on the idea that people are gonna utilize transit and alternative methods to get to work. I think focusing on Mayo Clinic as a key partner there, I mean, there's this, you know, significant portion of your your population that attaches to the the clinic's operations. And so having them as a strategic partner, can be is very important. This you'll be all blessed with the conversation later around transit and our fee.
We're also saying in this period of time that we need to look at transit optimization. You know, is our system doing what it is we wanna do? Is it meeting need? Ridership is down precipitously since the pandemic and has not yet recovered. Some of the federal fundings that were stabilizing that effort are changing. And so, you know, we really need to think about what our long term strategy is in transit. And, you know, there's some principles that go into that, but that's an important thing. And then the team is also, looking at updating our twenty thirteen eighty eight transition plan,
which physical infrastructure in the community and what our plan is to make it accessible. B is really just ensuring those strategic investments are integrated with inclusive land use planning to support development that is tax, land, and service efficient. This is sort of the grow smart, concepting here for tactics. So really just continuing to make sure if we're investing in sewer, we're also aligning it with where water wants to invest, where the electricity is efficient to exist. Just making sure all those infrastructure items are, maximized and that we are doing it in a a smart and strategic way.
And then we have some ongoing funding requests, both federally and at the state level in this space as well. Just continuing to review those growth areas. Again, that kinda walks with a lot of these all really interrelate. Annexation, you know, as you can can tell, like, part of our conversation is how do we, you know, strategically maintain land availability for us to grow in the future, having some annexation priorities based on the market need, improved plans and really looking at our existing orderly annexation agreements will be important. I think the tactic four is really a financial conversation,
but just helping people understand, you know, what, is the fiscal impact of different types of development in the community. And so there's different measures for this, but and we've done some work in this space in the past at a high level, particularly in the DMC area in terms of, you know, property tax per acre and, you know, how, you know, density is more efficient from an infrastructure perspective. But obviously, there's, you know, things you gotta balance out with that in terms of, you know, consumer preferences and things like that too. But it's important to understand, you know, when you grow, the way you grow has an impact on your your levy and the way you
provide services and all those things. So that's tactic four. Services, this just kinda picks up with as we grow, what are some things we have to think about. So you have the fire station, you know, idea in here. You'll be hearing more about the library in the coming, you know, weeks and months as they are starting to kinda hone in on their master planning. That might even be something you wanna talk about in the budget, conversation. And then, really just looking at deferred maintenance on our police training facilities and other shared training spaces. And then as we've talked to you,
a variety of times, we just need to always have a strategy for investing in our liabilities. Right? We have a lot of facilities out there that need investment. We have a lot of streets that need investment, in other public spaces. And so just really taking care of those things that people know and expect. C is supporting, infill and TOD development. You're making about a $200,000,000 investment in a BRT corridor. It would be a big miss if you don't follow that with a certain kinds of development behind it to help the ridership, to help that transportation and land use,
connection. So maximizing the link investment also, is really important and thinking about how you can incentivize TOD development in our TOD corridors. And then lastly, just looking at a variety of other items, just that dry we do we're in the growth management business generally as a city in many facets. So, you know, what are the things that we can do here with our TIF policy to encourage the kind of development you wanna see and your strategic priorities? And we have a couple of of items in here about how we do business. So, like, one water, one team is an idea that says, should, RPU or public works environmental services,
you know, be more interactive or engaged or connected and and one team. You know, you're dealing with a kind of a common resource, water and all different forms, but that's something to think about. Wanna be sensitive to the idea, like, that we have people that are out here doing the work. And, you know, there's change that comes along with these types of ideas, but it's also, like, can it be better for the resource? And that's something we wanna think about. How can we make it better for the resource in the community? Kind of a integrated utility planning. We sort of captured that in previous items. And then lastly, this organizational services optimization.
Really just starting to take a look at, what's the next step for us to think about how we do our administrative and organizational services. You know, right now, I'll just say, like, as examples, you know, services? You know, right now, I'll just say, like, as examples, you know, we have a finance team at RPU. We have a finance team with the city. We have an IT team with the city, an IT director with the city. We have an IT director at RPU. Is there a way to really rethink that where we provide common support? And I don't wanna, you know, say that there's not a lot of important things to think about when you're having that conversation, but there is sort of an efficiency effectiveness. How can we best provide organizational services, for the betterment of of the community ultimately,
and and potentially save some money, as as well as doing things, in an amazing way. So that's that's a focal point, that we'd like you to consider. And I guess with that, that, before we transition to environmental stewardship, I'm happy to take any questions or consider any evolutions that you have in this space. Council Member Palmer. I have a chicken and egg question. So you keep talking about a traffic study and we're doing a large investment in Downtown Rochester. Don't you wait until that investment is done and kind of know where the traffic is going to go and the needs we're going to need and with the BRT
to see, you know, are we gonna get 10 riders or 10,000 riders or 10,000,000 riders or how how this all works out. So, I mean, to do a study now during 18 blocks of construction, does that make sense? Yeah. I, and maybe if you're talking about the staffing and the transportation space, I think we're always trying to have a good model in place for how we look at development, whether it's in the BRT area or whether it's elsewhere in the community as you're evaluating development. So I think there's constant transportation needs. And I think it's the answer is yes and yes.
And this may be not a helpful thing for you, but the answer is yes and yes. Like, in some regards, you're not gonna know, you know, how much traffic might migrate over to Civic Center Drive when Second Street Southwest goes to one lane. Because that's part of this project, by the way. Like, it's gonna be one lane. And so people are gonna wanna drive somewhere. So I think you gotta think about that, but then you also it's the hockey analogy, like, I gotta think about where the fuck is gonna be, so I'm not, like, chasing it behind all the time either. So I think it's yes and yes. Yep. Kind of I mean, you look at the buses, and you mentioned bus ridership, it was 2,000,002
riders in 2019, we're down to 600,000. And, you know, nobody thought about COVID, but this year, have we reacted? Are we changing what we're doing? And so if you change this downtown, my analogy would be, how do you know, when do you need to know where the traffic flows and, you know, you go back to they'll say in parks and stuff, open a park and let people walk and then put the sidewalk where they walk. And so there's a chicken and egg and and and problem. The other problem I'm having is and we keep saying infill and we all want infill,
nobody doesn't want infill. But I don't know exactly where infill would take place in Rochester. And we've asked for maps, we've asked for ideas of where infill is. Describe to me where an infill spot is in Rochester and give them to us so we know we have 20 acres or 200 acres and this is where they are and why aren't they developed? I mean, I would assume the infill and what is the description of what infill is? Yeah. I think without going into it, I some of the KPIs we have on this really are about where are acreage that's available for development with services,
right, or with limited services that need to be extended. I think that's how you're targeting it. Like, why pay twice if I have acres available and it it has services? Why would I extend more? Now the answer to that is, like, we can't control private landowners and we never will be in a position to control private landowners. We can encourage, lots of things, but sometimes people just aren't not yet ready. And we've seen that conversation, you know, play out in different different spaces. So I think it's just maximizing, where you have services, and and really trying to prioritize your development within that. Thank you.
And to that point, at our last week's, council meeting, during the presentation on the UDC, we I did ask for a map of infill, and I think miss Eden said at some point we would get that. So Right. Council member Miller? Yeah. Thank you. I I'm really glad to see some of these areas come up. I mean, to council member Palmer's question, I think, the question is, is demand flexible in transportation? And I would argue that with staffing, it can be, with integrated programs, working with Mayo Clinic, making sure that our transportation system works to move people around and gives them options.
And I think that that's I see some movement in that direction. I'm really glad for that. I would also just reiterate that I I think that transit optimization is key. We've designed a ridership or or a model of transportation to cover the city and then scored it on ridership, which are just fundamentally different goals. So I think that's an important conversation as we design a a new version that works in the total landscape of where we are. And then to goal b tactic four, I think it's key that we more clearly report and communicate both to this council and to the community,
the long term impacts of how we develop. And I'm glad to see that coming up. I've been asking for an update to that DMC revenue or property tax per acre and would love to see that go further and further analysis of services. And I think to the point of some of the prior council meetings and how we communicated subsidies of both our EV charging technology and our parking structures and pass those costs along, I think clarifying where there are subsidies in our system and where there aren't helps us to make better decision and often changes the perception of that consumer preference and
taxpayer preference if they really understand the financial implications of the decisions we make. So I think that's really helpful direction there. Council Member Wall? Thank you. Thank you. One of the things that I don't find anywhere in the document, at least to my recall, but might be assumed in many of them, probably best fits under goal D tactic four is the use of AI to better maximize the work of the city in order to better serve, the residents. I think it's a fantastic point and I think that's worth,
thinking about how we could reflect that better. Yes. And I think an example, so Mr. Wall would be our three eleven system, so that we invested in and is helping us out and I find that they'd be effective. Mr. Schoebring, I asked for a map a year ago and I've not seen one. So for some reason, we're hesitant to give us a map. As far as outreach, what Mr. Miller was saying, if you look at the simple numbers it costs about $300 a year to maintain your roads for your single family home in the intake for property taxes about $1,200
so there's a large spread there between what it costs for single family to be there and what the added benefit it is to Rochester. Some people will say that, Oh geez, you have to add a fire station. We've had one fire station since 1974, so, it's important to realize what real numbers are and not just what I think we we have two goals to go in twenty minutes here, so just give it a I can do it. So I also responsible environmental stewardship. Again, a lot of these things work together, but this one is really, you know, how can we, you know the goals are aligned around transportation and buildings,
the normal areas of greenhouse gas emission. So, you know, investing in active transportation, thinking through a lot of that, city fleet electrification, you know, it's always about balancing out financial viability, like, what are costs there? But, like, we we don't have a strategy there. And then what our community transportation electrification would look like. And then this again is, in the building space, so focus on that. Huge effort, obviously, with RPU's twenty thirty plans. You'll hear more about that, in September. And as you are aware, you know, they're doing some surveying and studying about rates in that right now.
Just continue to look at our, you know, things we're doing already with energy savings and advanced metering, like, how can that be relevant to people to make good decisions in their buildings? Same with commercial benchmarking. That's a legislative requirement for buildings over 50,000 feet. They're doing that. What are we gonna do with it? And how are we gonna, you know, make progress and educate around that? Community commercial energy commercial and residential energy efficiency and beneficial electrification is just, you know, how can we switch people from fossil fuels to electric you know, that's gonna be eventually renewable and carbon free.
Then city facilities, as we, you know, we we have a significant facilities portfolio. As we're doing renovations and constructions, how are we gonna bring our footprint, down? Lastly, not lastly, enhancing, Rochester's natural resources. So really thinking about what we can do in that urban forest and, you know, canopy. I know there's a couple investments you'll see in the budget process related to this. Air quality, you all had a great conversation about that. Water quality, there's a lot of conversation you're gonna be having in water over the next couple of years. And so just be ready for that, in terms of our portable water supply and what we have to be thinking about
there, as well as our our surface waters as there's some additional planning happening in that space. How can we optimize city services? I wanna just say that, natural gas franchise fee has been a has been a a funding source for potential sustainability investments, but also many other investments. So, that's a topic, you know, that we would bring forward and you can think about how that, could work and or what it might be invested in. I wanna just, you know, calm councilor Palmer's nerves on the waste management one here. This one is basically saying, like, I think it's good to pause in this space until the county's Murph comes together
so we have an idea of what conversations might be helpful, from a city collection perspective. The county will take a while to deliver that project. We need to understand what our opportunities are, in that space. We also have just reviewing, this is a council question, just pure implemented best practices for single use plastic bags so we can bring some information back on that. It's a pretty tight window of what has really happened out there, but we're happy to give you information there. And then just always, you know, leaning into that data driven decision making. So, questions or thoughts on how this might be evolved?
And you? Good. Good. Okay. Oh, Again, I would just encourage you to throw some environmental goals in with the land management stuff as well, so to be conscientious that, environmental stewardship also goes with how we use the land. I know that we're conscientious of that, but just to make that very, clear and very, transparent in Yeah. In those plans. Lot of these are synergistic across the the things, but definitely important part of that. Transformational capital projects. So, the the four areas here, just let's focus on excellence and delivery.
Let's give you great information. Let's be neighborhood aware and cognizant, and and just give you, you know, good project reporting tools. And I think the team has come a long way in this space from the time I started here about eight years ago to now. And we can always keep doing better given the level of investments that we're continuing to make here. So system and process alignment. Again, these some of these are internal, but, just, you know, getting people to collaborate. But this is a lot about being on time, on budget, close to engineers' estimates, and making sure that, you know, we're not having to have tougher conversations than we need to allow the conversation we
we just had a little while ago in this space. And then, again, I think you don't wanna be stagnant, during this time. We have a ton of delivery to do, but we wanna be preparing for those handful of projects that are really gonna start transforming the community in that twenty thirty, twenty thirty five time frame. If you think about bus rapid transit as an example, we started working on that in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, and your first rider might get on the bus in '27. So long lead time, lots of funding, lots of planning, and, you know, you wanna think about,
like, what are some of the things we wanna look at. So, we've got Civic Center Drive, I mentioned that. We've got South Broadway, phase two bus rapid transit. Really thinking about what we can do in the trail space. So another trails reference here. DMC two point o. I mean, it's a DMC, it's a twenty year legislation. What does two point o look like? It's I mean, we're year 10 now. So start to think about when the legislative environment might be right to wanna reconsider that. Probably not right now, but start to think about what that one might wanna look like. Then water quality, and this is back to the municipal water supply that we kinda referenced here.
And then this is all this I'm not gonna go through all these but really just, making sure we have the team, the processes, and people necessary to, develop things. And also, tactic eight being really important, like, what's our life path of these items? So, you know, how do we keep a good cadence with council education update? You walking with the decisions, but not being overburdened with details. So in making sure you are we're, you know, doing our best to put you in a policy making role. So with that, happy to answer questions in this space. Question. Council member Keane. Thanks. Yeah.
So I it's not surprised to some of my peers here, but this is the one I'm most interested in today, this new strategic priority and, again, how we approach it in the, you know, in the coming year but also in the coming years. This is a four year four and a half year outlook. When I think about the projects in front of the city and the and some of our community partners in the city of Rochester, I see a lot of risk for delay. I see a lot of risk for sloppy handoffs, and I see a lot of risks for future finger pointing about who did what wrong. And I I'm trying to head that off. I'm really I I'm worried about when I when I talk about these projects,
I there's there's so many of them. There's the bus rapid transit. There's park and rec relocations going on. RPU is developing this major thing with the power supply plan for 2030, the Sixth Street Bridge, water treatment plant upgrades going on. There are so many huge things going on right now, and that's when I think of these transformational capital projects that are going on. I do support the four goals, that we're that we're approaching and how we're doing this. But I also wanna just, put forward my view of the two main goals for this strategic priority. Number one is I do want city staff to feel a heightened sense of personal
responsibility and professional commitment to this work. Every department head should have the goal of not being the person who comes in here to tell us why things aren't going to work out. We we just have to head it off. And that doesn't happen without thinking about it in advance. The other goal, number two for me, is I want to communicate to my peers and to my future peers that this work is about the work in the coming years. I want us to respect the commitments that we've made in the past, and not change them as we're moving forward. Again,
I support the four goals and I and I that we're doing enough, but I do want to restate that this is so important The business of the city continues tonight. We're gonna have talking about new processes or improvement things, and that'll that'll happen for the next four years. But I think we have to keep in front of us as a council, not not this is not for the staff, that we can't just go on to the next thing because we've committed to these things and they don't get done without focus and attention. And that's why I'm so pleased to see this on our strategic priorities to help it keep that keep it in front of both the staff and the council.
So with that, I again, I appreciate it being on there and I I'm, I'll I personally want to stay focused on this and help us get these projects done, and and work with our community partners like Mayo Clinic, like the like, we talked about Olmsted County with the Merced stuff. We've gotta be good partners with this stuff, but we also have to make maintain make our commitments that we made. Thanks. Council member Doran. Oh, probably surprise no one that my question is about the absolute last tactic that you have listed, and that's the glide path. Right? So in my day gig,
I'm a communicator, and I wanna know, if you have ideas about communication. Right? So I looked at the, the report, the project report, and there's lots of words there with lots of of tactics listed listed, star states and dates, all that kind of stuff. And I realized that that was just a a draft of a report, that we there's no depth to that report at this point because you wanted kind of us to proceed. Is that the kind of document that we can expect moving forward to then be able to communicate to constituents?
These are where our goals were identified by the staff. This is where progress is happening. This is where where, the status of these transformational projects are. Does that make sense? Yeah. I'm I'm looking for communication tools to utilize. Right. Yeah. Maybe three things in that space. One, definitely, the action plan will get to you twice a year. You saw the initial framework. We'll have verbal narrative updates within there. This is how it's going. We've, in the past, have adopted sort of a, you know, yellow, green, red sort of flagging for you to think about,
so you can see where things are going well and maybe not where they're going well. I'd also say, like, strategic or inclusive community engagement. I'm trying to remember the foundational principle. I think I got it. That's an overlay to everything we do here. So we just think about that, like, that's an important part. So we don't have a set of tactics under that because that's sort of a who we are, are, and how we do things, type of type of thing. So we'll continue to reflect that. But agree, macro level action plan will be a reporting tool, and then I think we'll also have other mechanisms to help you understand day to
day what's going on with projects. So my concern is that we'll only see that action plan update twice a year, and that's not an ongoing living document where we might be able to see progress throughout the course of the year, whether that's not a not a a formal not a formal report. Right? But where we might be able to access something to say, hey. I'm concerned about air quality monitoring systems, and I'm just kinda curious when that I'm just making up an issue. When, the website will be updated again, instead of me saying, hey. I gotta wait until April to tell you when that is going to be for
me to on go to a dashboard board to to look that up or not take city staff time to say, hey. When is that going to to happen? Is there some sort of tool that we can use so someone can just type something up? I think there's yeah. So I think I understand the interests. I think we'll evaluate how we can best meet that, and it seems like a reasonable thing to do. I I do know there's different iterations of things within the teams that have been developed already that could be easily expanded. Cindy's got a very nice sort of chart of all the projects and the Yep.
The general sequencing. And then it might be just to what level of detail, we might wanna talk about. But that is sort of embedded in this timely effective projects and reporting piece. So I think the intent is to have something more than twice a year, that I see Allison wants to. And also, it might be a yes and yes. Right. Because not all the way updated because someone's focused on doing the work. I wouldn't want someone to say, oh, nothing's happened here. But in in reality, we still want you to connect and ask the question because that might have been the week that they made progress and they didn't put it in to the to
the document yet. So we still it's an iterative process. Council member Wall. Thank you. I I appreciate mister Keane's fervor for, the last goal and sign on to that fervor. There's lots of ways that one can write, the history of a city. We have that going on in the Star Tribune right now as regards Duluth. About a week ago, a large editorial about who's gonna shut the lights off in ten years or so. And, then today, a couple of editorials by the mayor and,
and, the city council president as to why that, observer of Duluth council of Duluth city life is wrong. Well, that we might double down on, how is it that we all might contribute toward ensuring that we, actually accomplish the grand visions, that we have, and I really would underscore that with mister Keene. Mayor Norton. Two comments. One, I guess I'll just because this came up last. The one thing I don't want us to do is to become so that
when things change, whether it be the COVID pandemic or we do a plan, and we don't get it implemented for multiple years, and things have changed since the time we started the plan, I've seen this happen in the city, with long range plans that were made back in 2015. I mean, those it's a different world than 2015. And we become so inflexible because, well, look, the plan says X, that we have to do X. So while I support the idea of moving forward on a path on on these important projects, I just want to say we we have to always remain flexible enough and and
curious enough to make sure that we that the path we started on is the path we need to continue on, and not be afraid to say, well, wait a minute, things have changed and that idea from ten years ago isn't relevant any longer. So I'm just asking for you to continue in the years ahead to to question things, be curious about is this still the right direction, and are we still headed on the right path? So I want that was one thing I wanted to say. And the second is, this was on the one prior to your last one. You don't have to go back.
It's alright. We're talking about I'm using the wrong word. Condensing is the wrong word. But, when you have different departments that have a staff, you know, communications, we'll use that as an example, and this isn't the one you were talking about. But, you know, oh, well, this department has communication. That, you know, RPU has communication. If it's all you're doing is bringing folks in house when it's there's one person over there and it's gonna be replaced with one person over here, that's not really, an improvement. So I hope we're looking very carefully at not just condensing for the to say we've condensed,
if it really isn't going to give us more efficiency and less staff. If the staffing is too there and too here, then why are we even doing this? If it's working, you know, the what they work on over there is so specific to their role that it wouldn't really benefit us to have them here. So I just you know, that's just a cautionary statement that look very carefully at what we condense. And I I think back years ago in the city of Rochester where the city and county tried combining things and we did so only to find out after the fact that it wasn't really what we should have done.
And in fact, at that time, there was a lot of pressure from the community and I think of some of our business partners who were pushing us to do something, because it seemed like it was going to be more efficient and more cost effective. And in the end, it was not and did not work. So, just to be really careful about what we choose to and the wrong I don't have the right word. It's not condensed, but you know what I mean. Centralized. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments? Mister Parrish, why don't you wrap us up here? Oh, oh, I'm sorry. Council member Miller, go ahead. It's okay.
We can do it after the wrap up. I No, your honor. I believe that's it for this this evening. And, we'll Oh, I thought you had some timelines there. Did you go through those? Yeah. I think, I think we've covered enough of that. Okay. Council member Miller. Sure. Just a a couple of questions about, a couple of things either here, clarification, or a couple of areas that we reviewed this year that I I didn't see here. One was you mentioned fleet electrification. I know there's also been conversation about fleet centralization, operations of is there an update on that? Where where are we, and where might that fit in the action plan? Yeah. So I think you could put that under that broader organizational services.
Okay. I'll just say we're proud to report that, with the conversation I think we're, like, 90% there, and it's really just been organic and natural and felt good. I think people saw that it made sense. We have a little bit left to do there. Okay. But I'd say the vast majority through attrition, etcetera, we were able to make some of those changes. Great. My other question was about, we received an update from Mr. Metz, about disability access language access plans. Do those incorporate here, if so, where, I know there's talk about accessibility under housing and Yeah. I think some of that inclusive growth management.
I but I I'm just curious where, the work is on that now that he has finished his fellowship. Yes. We passed on some of the work, you know, for we'll just I'll give you the example of the language incentive that we have for our teammates, you know, that's being administered differently now but still being administered. I think, you know, we'll continue to manage accommodation requests. The forms are still there. One of your budget conversations is in this space as well to discuss continuity and how that might work. So they'll continue that. And I think we'll also pick up some of these items that were still remaining, as we scope the 2013 ADA transition plan update.
Certainly, some of those things might be relevant for that too. Okay. Thank you. Alright. Thank you, mister Parrish. Administrator Zellms are schedule of study sessions. Budget season is here. So we have held a lot of time, for you not hour and a half before you have a council meeting at 6PM. So we do have that scoped out. We will have the presentation done by Wednesday to go out in the, packet and then, some links to the detailed book. The book is, like, 600 pages long, so don't get too well,
maybe get excited. But that has a lot of detail in it. So the intent was to provide the overview information, get some feedback, and then have those other study sessions available depending on the conversation at the dais, to be able to provide you more detail, on the things that, you have questions, concerns, ideas, or just want more information about. Thank you. And, I will not be here next Monday for our study session, but I will watch it. And, council member Wahl has graciously, agreed to serve as presiding officer next week.
So thank you. With that, we are adjourned.