Recording in progress. We're gonna get started. If you could please rise as you're able for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice Thank you, and welcome, everybody, to our 07/07/2025 City Council meeting. As you may notice, council member Doring is, joining us remotely this evening. Can you hear us, council member? Can we hear you?
I hope so. Can you hear me? Yes. We can. Thank you. Unfortunately, council member Doreen recently suffered a serious bicycle accident and is currently undergoing physical rehab. On behalf of the council, we wish him a full recovery. Per a doctor's order, he is unable to attend in person. Thus, he is authorized to participate fully in discussions and votes, so we will recognize him. And, also, because of council member Dohring's remote attendance, we will conduct a roll call vote on all of our policy items this evening.
So with that, we begin every meeting with our open comment period. This is an opportunity for anyone from the public to speak on items that we will not be taking a public testimony during a public hearing later in the agenda. Each person has up to two minutes to speak for a total of twenty minutes, and I will be keeping track of time through a variety of methods, including these stoplight here and the red time timer up, above, staff. So please know that I may need to cut you off.
And because of the limited time, we wanna make sure that others have an opportunity to speak. And I'd also request that each speaker be concise to allow more people to speak. And, participant 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. If you council members will not respond directly to public comment, but if you have items or material or need to,
be in touch with, city teammates, please share with, our city clerk's office to my right here. With that, I will call on folks as they signed up, and we will start with, mister Chris Armstrong or miss Chris Armstrong. Thank you. On Ward 2, Ina, I started attending city council meetings to learn about how local decisions are made. Thank you for your civility and cooperation with each other, the high high quality of your questions, and especially your sense of humor. Plus, I learned we use community co design.
So cool. Thank you also for passing the sustainability plan. I like knowing I live in a city that thinks about the future. Thank you, City Council President Schoebring, for your letter to the editor recognizing there's a disconnect between the city and the people. And inviting us to coffee, I'm gonna take you up on that. The rest of my comments are about the disconnect with the regional sports complex. The site thumbs up. You did the best you could. My questions: Assuming that the city has already decided that being in the business of tournaments is a municipal service it wants to deliver, what kind of oversight will there be for the management company to make sure this
is not a drain on limited city resources? Question two: Assuming that every dollar the complex brings in will change hands in town seven times, like the PV reported, how is this different from trickle down economics, which we already know from history doesn't work? Three, how does the current proposal align with what we residents identified in the Rochester Vision 2050 survey as our top 12 goals? Four, as has been noted, the current proposal is very different from how it was marketed to the voters, and the community working group appears to be made up of people who are already
thinking well within the proposal. With due respect to Ben, who I hear is a good guy from the mother of a friend of his, is there a plan for additional, broader community engagement to out whether this project, which benefits a few, really reflects what the majority of the residents want, and the majority of the residents are paying for 70% of this? Five, do we want to maintain the status quo in terms of benefiting privilege, gender, and abilities as this current proposal does? Or do we want to be visionary in what this can be and how it can benefit a wider swath of our residents within the budget?
Because we're not too far down the road yet, we have the opportunity to do this right. Let's engage this city's fabulous imagination, expand community engagement, and be the city that inspires other cities with how it's done. Thank you. Next up, we have Brian or Mike O'Brien. Okay. I actually have some photos with me of evidence of things that I'm gonna speak about. You can hand them to, Clerk Casall over there. So, I'm Michael Bryant. I'm a resident of Rochester. I live in a disabled,
building. It's only with disabled people. It's, you know, the Oak Ridge Apartments. I'm what people call a disability advocate or civil rights person, whatever. But I've been seeing a lot of those LimeScooters blocking sidewalks a lot. And our friend is in a uses a walker like that one. And when they block the sidewalk, they can't get through. So, these things are being parked all the time on the sidewalk.
And there's geofencing, which I know you guys have it for events, but there should be distinct parking zones for these things and, identification, verification with these things and harsher penalties because it is under your authority under the ADA and Section five zero four of the Rehabilitation Act. So, other cities have been sued for this, for these violations. And I would just rather have this not happen and just have,
you know, your contracts that you have with Lime, what is it, Lyft or Uber, whoever it is, just make sure that instead of only doing events, have distinct parking zones for these things. I mean, there should be things where they're not blocking curb ramps or curb dips, and this has happened on numerous occasions. I have photos all over Rochester on sidewalks where there's a bike lane or sidewalks where there's a bike lane or other spots where they can be put at. Thank you, mister O'Brien.
Mhmm. Next up is Rebecca Gannonloss. I probably messed up your last name there. Ganaway. Rebecca Ganaway. Ganaway. I live in Southeast Rochester, and I, spoke last time about the, rotting sewer pipes in our neighborhood and surrounding areas. I would first like to start off tonight by saying how greatly disappointed I am that not one city council member reached out to me after I spoke. I believe that, that the disintegrating sewer pipes, should be something that everyone should be concerned about.
In South in Rochester, where we have the world renowned Mayo Clinic, we have raw sewage seeping under our city streets. I live half a mile from Mayo Clinic. As I mentioned last time, the Orangeburg pipe that we have is deteriorating, and many of my neighbors don't even realize that they have this problem and so they have sewage in their basements. People in my neighborhood can only afford to buy older homes. And we are not told when purchasing these these homes that the sewer pipes are
90 plus years old and in the center of the street, nor are we told that it is the homeowner's responsibility to repair any of these major repairs in the middle of the street. We need to get this information out to the people who live in this area and those who are interested in buying homes here. I'm providing the city council with a few numbers of, companies and excavators who can help with this repair in the city of Rochester with this catastrophic repair. I'm also giving you the number to the Olmstead County Housing Development Authority who can
help those in lower incomes, with this repair. Unfortunately, I make $420 a month, too much for this to help me. This has been a very time consuming and frustrating experience. So by giving you these numbers, I hope that you will be able to help my neighbors when they call for advice. Thank you. I believe that it is in the best interest of the city council to help the people of Southeast Rochester Galloprey. I know. But we don't really deserve to have raw sewage in our streets or in our basements. Thank you. Next up, we have Barry Skolnick.
Hi. I'm Barry Skolnick. I'm here to talk, about the Central Park proposal under Reports and Recommendations, it's H3. I support the mayor's initiative in this area. Central Park is the oldest park in Rochester and the surrounding areas had a lot of construction because it's really in the heart of the downtown. And I think that we need to have the HPC deal with it once and for all. It's been there for like eight years or more at this point. And I think it's time that,
they took a decision on it one way or another. The proposal that the Mayor has is not to tell the HPC what to do. We only request that they consider it as a priority and come back to you to sort of let you know, what the action would be. And at that point, you would then determine what the whether or not it's landmarked or not. But I think it's important the Mayors once correctly, I think wants to put a statue in the park. And I think it's important for people that are considering that and working on that to know whether or not it's going to be a landmark area or not. And I think we need for the good of the park too,
we need to know one way or the other. So I'm just hoping that the council supports that resolution. Thank you, Mr. Skolnick. Next up, we have Barb Hudson. Hello. My name is Barb Hudson, and I'm here to talk also about Central Park in Rochester, Minnesota. Did you know that it is older than the one in New York City? Probably didn't know that. Did you know that our Central Park is a 169 years old? How many cities and properties do you know in Rochester that have had the same function since its inception? Not many,
but Rochester Central Park does. It's also currently listed on Rochester's inventory of historic places, previously known as the potential list. The site was laid out as a public square. Previously, it was a cow pasture in Rochester's original plat in 1856. Due to the generous donation from William d Lowry, who was a Minnesota lumber baron. Mister Lowry built first brick residence in Rochester that was later the home of doctor Christopher Graham on the Dubuque Trail,
and that's near the old, Kmart. Since becoming Rochester's first ever public park in 1856, Central Park has served as a public gathering place for community events like picnics, band concerts, ice cream socials, and featured a central stone fountain and horseshoe pits. It has continued as this type of gathering place for the last hundred and sixty nine years. A banjo was added later in 1879. The park also provided practical amenities like hitching posts and water troughs for horses,
and there is still a hitching post in front of Heritage House Museum in Central Park. Various performances and speeches were given in the park including traveling shows, political speeches, plays, and concerts. During Rochester's hundred and fiftieth anniversary in 02/2004, there was a a department to restore the majesty of Central Park. This project included replacing the fountain, creating a brick plaza, replacing the sidewalks, and improving accessibility for everyone. Thank you, miss Hudson.
Central Park both say long history of serving Rochester and this community. Thank you. Next up is, mister John Kriesel. Thank you, mister president, members of the council. I'm here to address, Central Park. I'm gonna modify what it's gonna say, which is no surprise to me or to you. The I wanna ask this basic question. What community, would is is waiting for approval to turn our first park into a landmark. I mean, this this is beyond ludicrous.
Wanna point out some details about Central Park. Central Park was located there because it was a major thoroughfare for everything that took place in the city of Rochester, and it still does today. Wanna point out to you that that to the north of to the north of it was our, our Chicago Northwestern Railroad Station. All military from the the Civil War to the Indian War to World War one to World War two to Korea to,
I won't say Vietnam, used that corridor. The Civil War people would march from that was a gathering place right at Central Park and then they would they would march literally up to Fort Snelling. The others used the train. The train depot was right there that unfortunately was taken by West Circle Drive. So all the activity in the city of Rochester continues to take place on First Avenue. First Avenue has always been the Holy Grail, continues to be the Holy Grail because it connects with Fourth Street and the Dubuque
Trail. Now next to the train depot then was the armory because the armory also served the train depot. 1934, FDR stopped at the at the train depot, gathered with the American Legion, okay, at the at this park space and went down First Avenue and gave, accolades to doctor Charlie and doctor Will. Thank you, mister Reese. Forget. Thank you very much. That's all I have on, the public comment list.
Is there anyone else who wishes to be heard? If not, we will close public comment and I will, move on to, Clerk Caso who will call the roll. Good evening. Council Member Keane? Here. Council Member Miller? Here. Council member Wall? Here. Council member Fredericks? Here. Council member Palmer? Here. Council member Dohring? Here. Council president Schoebring? Here. Mayor Norton? Present. Thank you. Next up is our city administrator's report. Administrator Zelms,
take it away. Thank you. Council president, council members, we always start this off by thanking our teammates, respect, integrity, safety, and excellence in everything that they do. So a big thank you, to everyone who also, worked over the Fourth of July weekend. Appreciate their service. And did wanna point out that we are, apparently, my clicker there we go. We are entering Riverside, music concert series season, so that will kick off on, Sunday, July 13 with Blind Melon, and this got got a little bit confusing in a recent newspaper article, not local. Amateur is the name of the opening band,
so it is actually the name of the band. It's not just that we don't know. So I've heard great things about them, but throughout the summer on, the three Sundays, in July and then the first two Sundays in August, there will be free music starting at 7PM at Riverside Park. So we would encourage anyone to come out and join that event or that series of events. Also wanted to give a shout out to our partners at the History Center. Thanks to some generous sponsors, the History Center, access to, the History Center campus, the Museum Gallery and Research Center is free.
That started on June 4 and runs through August 30. They are open Tuesday through Saturday, 9AM to 5PM. So if that's something folks are interested in, you could try that out, and, get interested in the history museum of Olmsted County. Also, we are going to be starting, the chip sealing process. So if you are in a neighborhood where you start to see these yellow signs, come out, that means you are going to be receiving a chip seal soon. That is weather dependent, but we do ask you, to follow those signs and not park from 7AM to 5PM Monday through Friday, because we do try to go around the city and get that done as swiftly
as possible, and try to do that, in between rain events. Did wanna point out again that there is an open house coming up on July 17 from 5PM to 7PM, at the Silver Lake Station, so the former Silver Lake Station. It now now operates as a park facility. 702 West Silver Lake Drive, there will be, discussions and things that you can see and touch and feel, for the park improvements that are happening and also an update on, where we're sitting with the improvements for the lake itself. And at the library on July 12 from 10:30 a.
M. To 12:30 p. M, there is going to be, free support from cradle to career about how to fill out your, free application for federal student aid. So if that's something that you are, on your way to looking at, you can, head over to the library and learn more about how to do that. And then also one other note that traffic changes on the intersection of Fourth Street Southwest and the Peace Garden Drive Southwest and Tenth Avenue Southwest are changing, so there will be a change there with always stop signs, being put in.
So if you drive that route regularly, you will have a different experience. So, all traffic will be required to stop. And that is all I have. Thank you. Next up, we have the mayor's report. Mayor Norton, go ahead. Terrific. I have just a couple updates, tonight. PLAY BALL is a baseball league and U. S. Conference of Mayors, joint event. They do it every year and we have not participated since I've been mayor and with this being the year about youth, I decided, given that and the direction we're heading with the athletic, proposal, that maybe getting more kids involved in baseball would be a good idea.
So, we're doing play ball. We, opened up registration several weeks ago. We were going to, have hope for 100 children to be involved in this. We had 100 children signed up before noon. In fact, we were closer to 150, so we reopened it and it is open for it was open for 300 children and that took about another half day to get that filled. So, we have 300 young people, signed up to, spend some time with the honkers. We're a little disappointed. It happens to be a Twins ball game and they were going to come down with some players and a mascot,
but it ended up being a day they're traveling away and could not help. So, we do have the honkers there. We have giveaways for the kids, as well as a half day of learning about baseball. So, it should be pretty exciting. It's at the honkers field this Thursday, the tap. July is Parks and Recreation Month. You've probably seen some posts about that. Our Park and Rec department has been posting in the city. Get out there and enjoy all of our parks. I think, a large crowd was enjoying them at the, Fourth Fest celebration this past week and we've seen great turnout, in fact, fact, bigger than I've ever seen at our forward concerts. So, that is having those events in the park is one way to get people to
come and experience a park that maybe they've not experienced before. So, get out there and, enjoy your parks and if you happen to see one of the employees, give them a thank you. I'm gonna share just a little bit about the, Rochester Visioning. I've been doing this once a month. This week's, topic is justice and law enforcement and there were, four or five themes that came out of the Rochester 2050 report. One, the first theme, the largest theme in this area was accountability and fair enforcement. This theme covers concerns about inconsistent enforcement of laws, lack of consequences for repeat offenders and the perception that some groups are not held
accountable, particularly those that are wealthy. Calls for equal justice, greater penalties, and consistent application of law, popped up regularly. And I will say, I think there is a lack of understanding of the division between what a city does and what a county does and a lot of these concerns had to do with sentencing and, release of persons not necessarily the fact that they were caught doing something they shouldn't have. Second, safety and crime prevention. This includes general, public safety concerns such as violent crime,
property crime, drug trafficking, traffic violations and road safety. We all hear about that. Many seek a visible active police presence to reduce fear and to reduce crime. That was another one. Third was trust in law enforcement and the justice system. A concern, is whether community members trust the police, courts, and public safety officials. Themes included perceived corruption, officer misconduct, lack of transparency, and demands for better oversight and professionalism. And again, this isn't necessarily what's happening, it is the perception of individuals that filled out the form and I think we
need to think about that, their perceptions as well. Racial equity and anti discrimination: respondents emphasized the need for anti racist practices, equitable treatment, and the elimination of bias in policing and legal proceedings. Some focus on the impacts of systemic racism and advocate for DEI efforts throughout our whole City structure. Social services, housing and root causes, were another topic under justice. Some believe justice can't be separated from housing, health care, mental health, support and poverty alleviation. These comments stress investment in social safety nets to prevent crime and support vulnerable support for restorative justice,
rehabilitation over incarceration, especially for non violent offenders youth diversion programs and social reintegration rather than punishment. And I will say, these were, identified as issues, but, as you can imagine, there were equally positive comments that were, that balanced this out, about the police department and, some of the efforts like Safe City Nights were actually, mentioned and, complimented. So, I have handouts for each of you with these and you have access and I have a link on those to the actual comments made by the thousand or so people that commented on these issues.
So, I wanna share that. Women Walk is this coming Saturday from nine to ten a. M. If anyone wants to do a little exercise, they can check into this. I will be out walking in the morning from nine to ten. I would love some company. We do have a couple openings yet. We filled a lot of positions that you're seeing tonight on the consent agenda. We still have two vacancies for Board of Appeals and I think the Board of Appeals is an interesting one because it does take people who understand, rules and regulations, and so I'm hoping there's some industry folks that might be listening,
or if any of you at the table know some industry folks, who might be or if any of you at the table know some industry folks, who might be interested in being on the Board of Appeals, which means someone may be denied something and they're going to appeal that request. So some level of expertise helps and our staff also train people. So, if you know of anyone, let me know. We staff also train people. So, if you know of anyone, let me know. We do have one, opening on Police Policy Oversight Commission and, Sustainability and Resiliency have, one and potentially two openings. We have one wonderful person who signed up and is not able to get off work because it starts at 04:30, and so, she's struggling and may need to resign and we do have a youth opening and
we have at least one applicant. So, those are the only to deal with. And then closing, as was covered and you all know, I was going to, to South Korea to visit our sister city, Seong City. I was there for three whole days. I was on the plane, I think longer than I was actually on the ground, but it was an absolutely wonderful experience. The folks, this is at City Hall, I'm standing next to, Mayor Lim and the council president on to the other side of me and then these were the Winona State University students who went as well. And on the far left and right were some of the people that were on
their international affairs office who I would say babysat me for my time there, provided interpretation and drove. I had a driver as well, he's not in this picture, that, made sure I got to where I needed to be at the same time. And I'll just say the food was marvelous, the people were wonderful and kind. They have a great interest in Rochester and will be here next year. The thing that I found, was my very last thing that I visited before I came home and it was, they created a lake out of the ocean, they've created an island out of some grass and dirt,
and I will share that with you because it's phenomenally interesting, and, they have, they have since opened the lake up to the ocean again, and they use the tide to produce electricity. So, they have tidal energy and, so every day, when the tide comes in and out, they grab that energy with turbines and store it in batteries. So, it was a fascinating tour, and in addition to that tour, they also had an absolutely phenomenal museum, that was really innovative. You know, the walls, if you touched them, things popped out and it was really phenomenal.
They have lots of that stuff over there. They use technology quite a bit. So, phenomenal experience and, I'll be happy to share more as we go, but I'm going to end it on the note that no city funds were used in this trip. That seems to be, all over, the Internet right now, so I just want to be really clear. I self paid for my flight and our sister city, hosted the housing and meals while I was there, again, for three days. So, I hope you all have experience to meet Mayor Lim when he comes next year. You will enjoy him and probably an entourage of people that will travel with him. That's all I've got.
Thank you, mayor, and thank you for being a champion for Rochester across the globe. We really appreciate it. With that, we will move on to our order of the agenda. There is, one change. We will be combining the public hearings for items g two and g three into one public hearing, but we will take, a vote for each of those two items. Are there any other changes to the agenda? Mr. President? Go ahead, Mr. Spindler. Craig? If I may, just on item F 22 on the consent agenda,
I emailed an updated attachment. Attachment. That license agreement now has a signature by PRE, and there was an exhibit b that was added, just a, a picture of the affected, parking lot space. Contrary to what I told you before, given that we have republished the agenda, you don't need to amend the order of the agenda when you approve it. But also, while I have the floor, I would just add appreciation, to PRE entering into this agreement, so that we can get this ramp repair work done as quickly as possible.
Thank you. Thank you, mister Spindler Craig. Any other changes to, the order of the agenda? Hearing no indication of opposition, the motion passes by unanimous consent. Moving on to our consent agenda. I have received no, pulled items. Is that correct? I, and I would invite first a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Second. Moved by, council member Miller and seconded by council member Wahl. Is discussion?
Council member Wahl. Because we go by it very quickly and it's who worked hard to get the best value, for our Rochester taxpayers. Great. Great. Thanks for pointing that out as you have in the past. Council member, we all appreciate it. With that, clerk Cassel, could you call the roll? Council member Keane. Aye. Council member Miller. Aye. Council member Wall. Aye. Council member Fredericks. Aye. Council member Palmer. Aye. Council member Noring. Aye. Council president Schubert. Aye. Motion? Motion passes seven zero.
Thank you. Council president Schubert. Could we get a motion and a second for the order of the agenda? Oh, we did not do that. Yes. Okay. Is there a motion for the, order of the agenda? I'll I'll move to approve the order of the agenda as presented. Moved by council member Keane. Second. Seconded by council member Fredericks. Is there any opposition? Seeing none, it passes unanimously. Thank you. Moving on to our public hearings. We have, two public hearings on our agenda this evening. And before we begin, just a moment to clarify the process for public hearings.
First, staff will begin with an introduction or presentation on the item. And then if there is an applicant or representative of the applicant, they will have up to ten minutes, to discuss the item. Then we will open the public hearing. Members of the public have up to five minutes to, discuss the the, the item. And then we will close the public hearing and invite the applicant council members to ask council members to ask questions of staff and the applicant. With that,
we will begin with G 1, which is a major land subdivision by Farmland LLC to be known as Mercy Hill Third. And this will be presented by Mr. Desmond McGill. Thank you, Council President Schoebring, Mayor Norton, members of the council, good evening. This is a major land subdivision, for Mercy Hill Third, which is the third, subdivision for this, subject project. It proposes to divide 13.8 acres into 50 residential lots within an R2 zoning district. This is a second recent plat,
associated with this project. Initially, there was an R1 zone property just to the west that was, was subdivided a few months ago and, this is a follow-up request for the 50 residential lots. That's pretty much all I have on this particular application. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Is there, is the applicant here or a representative of the applicant please step forward, state your name and affiliation, and, you have up to ten minutes. Okay. Thank you, council president, members of the council, mayor. My name is Craig Britton.
I'm a civil engineer with Widseth, 3777 Fortieth Avenue Northwest, Rochester. And I'm here representing Farmland LLC on their major land subdivision application. We have reviewed the conditions that, staff has outlined and are in agreement with those and, here to answer any questions that you may have. Alright. Thank you. We will invite you back up after the public hearing. This is a public hearing. Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. This is a public hearing. Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward.
Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and invite mister Winseth back to the podium. Any closing comments? I have nothing. So, they're just here to answer questions if you have any. Alright. You can you can sit back down, and, I'll invite my colleagues. Council member Wall. Thank you. If this is likely, for staff, I know that there are some known issues of, water up there. Does this particular, division or subdivision have some of the same problems that the neighborhood has? Are we when you say water,
are you talking about Groundwater. Ground groundwater. Not that I'm aware of. There is retention facilities associated with this project, on the South Side. All the storm water drains down to the south into that existing retention basin. I don't know of any issues. I didn't come across that in my review. I have one ward member who, has believes that because of, some developments around his home that his, groundwater problems have increased, and, he has renewed that conversation within the past couple of days. So thank you.
Any other comments? Is there a motion on this item? I'll move to adopt a resolution approving the major land subdivision number CD 2025 Dash 020 Flat by Farmland LLC to be known as Mercy Hill Third with two conditions for the subdivision of 13.8 acres into 50 residential lots. Moved by council member Keane. Second? Second. Second by council member Fredericks. Council member Keane, any more to add? Clerk Kessel, please call the roll. Council member Keane.
Aye. Council member Miller. Aye. Council member Wall. Aye. Council member Fredericks. Aye. Council member Palmer. Aye. Council member Dorring. Aye. Council president Schubert. Aye. Motion passes seven zero. Moving on to items g two and g three, which is, a major land subdivision by Leonard to be known as Pebble Creek 6 and an interim use permit on the same property to allow for substantial land alterations. Mr.
McGill? Thank you again, Council President Schubert. This is a request for a major land subdivision of, the subdivision of four fifty four single family residential lots and the interim use permit for the substantial land alteration for this 185 acre subdivision. The subject site is located North Of Barens Road and West Of Sixtieth Avenue, NW and South of 50 Fifth Avenue NW. It is all zoned R2. Pebble Creek development was initially approved under a special zoning district and general development plan
in 02/2003. There have been five previous subdivisions built within, Pebble Creek under the current GDP. The applicant, Lennar Homes, is, purchasing the balance of the Pebble Creek site, from the current landowner. In 02/2003, an environmental workshop environmental worksheet was approved for the east portion of this site, and the west portion is being currently worked on for an additional environmental assessment worksheet, that will be submitted here shortly for the west side of the project. On June 2, the city council approved,
the annexation of the remaining three twenty six acres of the project site, outside of the first five phases of the project. That was approved by the State of Minnesota July 2. Lennar has worked on amending the general development plan for Pebble Creek, which has been approved in concept. A new traffic study is required and has been submitted for the GDP amendment, and it is under review by Public Works. Public Works' approval of the study, but the GDP amendment will allow the GDP to become approved.
And the subdivision encompasses lots with that range from 45 feet wide to 75 feet wide. Also included with this request is a substantial land alteration, IUP, for the movement of 844,000 cubic yards. The movement of dirt, that would include cut and fill. And, the site generally balances out, though there is gonna be some fill brought in. The increase, will be, up to 25 feet in some areas, and, cut would be in the amount of about 25, feet in some areas.
And, that concludes my introduction for this application. I'd be happy to answer questions of the council. With that, is the applicant here or a representative of the applicant please step forward, identify yourself, and you have up to ten minutes. Good evening, mayor, city I'm Steve Trostki with Lennar seeking your approval for our first ground up project in Rochester. Lennar is Minnesota's largest home builder and believe it or not, at full build out, this will be our largest community we've ever built in the state of Minnesota. So, we're pretty excited to be here.
You know you've got a great need for diverse housing styles, so we've thoughtfully designed the next edition of Pebble Creek to encompass all of your needs throughout your life from townhomes to single family homes to single level living for retirees and empty nesters. And, after Ryan from WSE Engineers comes up here, I'm happy to stand for any questions. Just want to say thank you for your consideration on this project. It's really important to us. I know it's important to the city and we're really looking forward to getting started.
Thanks. Welcome. Thanks. Thanks, Steve. I just wanna highlight a few of the things. Can you identify yourself first? Yes. My name is Ryan with WSC Engineering. We're the engineering consultants for Lennar. Just wanna cover a few of the highlights on this project and the site that's developing for over twenty years under the DeWitts family. The intensity of the development's consistent with the general development plan that was approved before. We've updated the traffic study, wetland delineation. Those have all been submitted and under review by staff. We're finalizing the grading plan. We've completed and submitted a stormwater proof of concept.
And as Steve mentioned, this is a provides a diversity of housing that Rochester needs. These are for sale homes including, you know, smaller lots and also larger lots for, different home buyers. I'm I'm available for any questions that may be technical that you guys have. Great. Thank you. With that, this is a public hearing. Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. This is a public hearing. Anyone wishing 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
statements. Again, Ryan, I just wanna mention that we're accept all the seven conditions and understand what we need to do to get this project done. Thank you. Thank you. Questions. I have a question to begin with, and it, has to do with the, the, major, land alteration. It I I I just want I I wanna have a sense of the scope of that. I I believe it's a 159 acres, and we're moving 700,000 cubic yards of dirt. What is that as far as the scale for a a,
piece of land that size? Is this really a major, major land alteration, or is this that make sense? Yes. I think I'll take that one, council president Schubert. So looking at some other sites, on the north side of town, we took a look at Dakota Middle School. And that's one of the largest grading projects, that we've seen on a site in recent history. That was roughly a 40 acre site, and it had grade swings of 23 to 28 feet on the site, and the imported fill on that site was 236,000 yards. So scaling that up,
if we made Dakota Middle School the same size as the proposal in front of you, that would be 938,000 yards of grading. So kind of on the comparable scale scale to what happened on the Dakota site. Just just a larger site is what we're dealing with. Thank you. And so with the because we are moving more than, what is it, 10 cubic acres, we have to get an IUP. Is who is that a state?
That that's just covered under, the the, UDC. It's a requirement of the It's here. Okay. Okay. Any other questions? Council member Keene. Yeah. Question for community development. I noticed that the general development plan was approved in February. So that leaves a large gap and many things have changed. Can you just point out to us before we deal with this like what kinds of risks come with those sort of twenty two years of changing laws? Or is this thing is that all, that we should just look away and what was planned approved back in 02/2003,
it really isn't relevant to what's Sure. As far as what we should be concerned about, I think, one of the things, one of the important things is the traffic generation associated with the project. It is much less than what was initially proposed in 02/2003. They're talking about half the number of units for this project overall, as the 2003 plan. Although there has been increase of traffic in the area additional traffic study before we approve that general development plan is there have been some
changes. There was an environmental worksheet done. Again, we're looking at less density than what was previously approved, so there really hasn't been any changes in the environmental conditions to our knowledge. And, I think, one of the nice things about this is, you know, we have things such as the connectivity requirements now, that ensures that if you look through that development, you'll see that there's a lot of connections throughout the entire thing, to their centralized or their meandering open space that cuts through the development and through,
you know, next to the dry creek beds. So, I think the project, it's good that we're relooking at this, I think, and that the developer is as well. I mean, looking at this project. So Okay. The one that comes to mind for me, is that, I believe the original, general development plan was done as, like, a special, consideration. But I think we converted those things zoning wise when we did the UDC and this project all fits into the existing zoning. It does. It all fits within the R2 zoning district.
You're right. There was a number of different zoning districts in the special, development plan and, you know, one of them being, you know, there was like intended to be a mixed use center at the corner of 50 Fifth And Sixtieth. The applicant is looking to move forward with housing in that area now in the future. So, but it still fits within the existing zoning of that area. And the subdivision before you tonight, all fits within the R2 zoning district. Council Member Wall? Thank you. I was at the neighborhood information meeting, which was, both very spirited and positive,
with people asking, good questions about what this would mean for their larger neighborhood. At that neighborhood information meeting, we talked about, far more than the 400, 54 residential lots. The number, like, nine seventy six, sticks in my mind for the larger build out to which mister Trotsky referred earlier. Would you care to, make commentary on that? Steve Trotsky with Lennar. Good memory, yes. So there are some, environmental studies that are required by the State of Minnesota for projects of this size.
It's called an Environmental Assessment Worksheet. So everything on the east half of the creek or ditch area has a valid Environmental Assessment Worksheet sheet on file, which means, under state law, we can proceed with that area like we're doing now. Everything to the west of that Ditch Creek area, we are preparing a new environmental assessment sheet under state law and that'll come before you at a later date. And so the 09:50 to a thousand home sites is the total build out when
the entire community is constructed. So right now, we are only moving forward on the area that has been environmentally approved by the state of Minnesota. Thank you. Mister Trotsky, I have one more question. I'm gonna go back to the, major land alteration. Could you speak to what the, site will look like as far as the topography? I mean, you're you're moving a lot of dirt. Is it going to be flat, or is there going to be some grade there in that subdivision? It is a lot of dirt. Thank you for the question.
I would have to defer for some of the more technical answers to the engineering team on this. But it was referenced, that that a similar project of a middle school had a comparable amount of dirt. A school is one level, so you need to have it flat. The positive thing about developing a residential community is that you can step the homes down the street so you're able to capture a lot of that grade. So to answer the question, it's gonna have a lot of grade flowing. We need to have all the rainwater go to the basins.
So, it will be a significant topographic change from what's out there now, but it's not going to have, you know, the large cliffs and the big value. I know those aren't the right terms in Rochester, but, it's essentially going to be all smoothed out with just slight undulations in the terrain. We're able to build the homes going up and down those roads. Thank you. Any further discussion on this item? Is there a motion on this item? I'll make a motion go ahead. Oh, I think, Council Member Palmer kind of had his hand up first.
I'll make a motion to approve adopting a resolution approving major land subdivision, number CD2025-twenty 2 Platte by Lennar to be known as Pebble Creek 6 with seven conditions for the subdivision of 185 acres into four fifty four residential lots and 12 outlots. Second. Moved by Councilmember Palmer and seconded by Councilmember Keane. Councilmember Palmer, any more to add? No. Councilmember Keane? Yeah. I'll just say that it's kind of, really kind of great to see this sort of, approvals going forward with this large units.
When you look at, our housing starts over the last couple years, we have not been able to do it. Now these aren't housing starts or permits, but I think you can see that by having more of a an, statewide builder here, it does seem to help us get, start or get get a better, run rate on getting housing built over the next couple years. Thank you. Council member Wahl. I believe that, the statistics that Jim Miner sends to all of us indicates that Lennar is the largest builder in 2025, for Rochester. So we're thankful for that. I echo what Council Member Keane has said.
I, know two Lennar communities in the Twin Cities, really very well and have, an unauthorized fashion walk through, probably 30 or 40 of their homes, under construction. I'm excited. Well, I'm very happy for our local builders, very happy to have, Lennar coming to town and offering very large numbers, for us to meet our goals. Thank you. I will join the choir there and thank mister Trotsky and Lennar from for coming to Rochester. I think it makes all of us better to see a major,
developer down here with our local developers. It's a sign of things to come. So I will be supporting this. However, I do really, encourage staff and the city to really look at, sustainable land development and, and projects and what we can do to to limit the the number of clear cuts and and, really work with our our tip out topography and, and the ecosystem that we have down here. So with that
Clerk Queso, please call the roll. Council member Keane? Aye. Council member Miller? Aye. Council member Wall? Aye. Council member Fredericks? Aye. Council member Palmer? Aye. Council member Dohring. Aye. Council president Schubert. Aye. Motion carries seven zero. Thank you. Moving on to reports and recommendations. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you. Moving on to the the one that I had concerns with, the interim use permit, to allow substantial land alteration.
Is there a motion on this item? So moved. Moved by Councilmember Palmer. Second. Seconded by Councilmember Keane. Councilmember Palmer? I have a question. Go ahead. For staff, we've used two terms that I didn't know we could use. One is ditch and one is creek. Is this a ditch or a creek? I would call it a swell actually. I understand what a swell is and I agree with you. So thank you. It's just a natural water course that's intermittent. Perfect. That answered my question. Any further, discussion? Council, clerk Caso, please call the roll. Council member Keane? Aye.
Council member Miller? Aye. Council member Wall? Aye. Council member Fredericks? Aye. Council member Palmer? Aye. Council member Doring? Aye. Council president Schubert? Aye. Motion carries Seven zero. Okay. Thank you. Now moving on to reports and recommendations. Our first item is, the Rochester Sports and Recreation Complex, schematic design, and we have mister Ben Bolt and team here. Thank you, council president and council members and Maynor for, having us this evening. Ben Bolt,
And I have Jenna Bowman here with me as well. She'll be chatting a bit about the community working group that was part of the efforts that we've been working on over the last few months since the last time we were here. So the slide I wanted to start with this evening was just that timeline slide again showing where we've come along with this project and where we're headed to. We've been working over the last few months to continue the design process after the approval for the land purchase so that we could get specific with the design to
that site and developing that further. Also taking an opportunity to have a period of community engagement through a community working group. Again, that general will share some more details on. And now coming this evening to talk about the schematic design, where it's at now, along with that came a cost estimate, again, from our construction manager at risk Knutson to help us make sure that we're staying within the budget for what we're attempting to do here with Phase one, and we'll get into that a little bit later in the presentation.
But for now, I'll turn it over to Jenna. Good evening. As Ben said, here to talk about the community engagement portion that we completed recently. So as you likely saw within the council packet, we had the opportunity to pull together a group around 14 community members, that made up the working group. There were three different meetings, over the course of May or March, April, and concluded in in May. Those individuals are noted on the screen and within your packet. I'm closing in. And, Clerk Caso, could you move the captions to the yep. There we go. Wonderful. And,
really, the the conversations over the course of the three meetings, evolved, in terms of the the design. The very direct way that the community members gave feedback to the design team and how that feedback was used. Anything from the layout to the, various amenities to the maybe specific type of amenities when we're talking shade structures and whatnot, really to try to optimize, the overall design for the use of the tournament, type of uses as well as the overall community use. You know, this is I'm I'm always very appreciative when we have this opportunity to engage community members in this working group process.
You may recall we did something similar for Soldiers Field, aquatics. And, when you have the number of diverse perspectives in, a room and there's an opportunity to come together, in really good conversations around those perspectives, and the outcome that we had, it's always a pretty neat thing because you're seeing, you know, that community, really come together. As noted, there's a variety of different, things that came through through that process, related to the fields, the pickleball courts, the basketball the soccer fields,
the playground, the gathering space, and I think would be shortsighted not to omit that, through all of this, both the understanding, of the outdoor, portion of the complex first, but really liking and desiring to see the overall, complex complex completed and that including the indoor, portions. Again, would note that we had a variety of folks who participated, whether they have direct knowledge, in things like baseball and baseball, tournaments, to pickleball, to our age friendly advocates, and to youth, as well as, our accessibility advocates, thinking about our trail, our trail connectivity as it relates to Willow Creek. Again, really great conversations over the course of those three meetings.
But I think also, as we know, it's not just within those meetings, but the conversations that happen outside of those meetings, with, their fellow community, members and how that feedback was brought back to the, design team, how that was utilized as we move from meeting to meeting. So again, would just say that it was a very effective working group process, appreciated all the perspectives, even at time of differing differing opinion, as you saw with the memo to, the ability to come together, in a very respectful way and have those, discussions and conversations. So, I will defer back to,
Ben, but happy to answer any questions as it relates to the working group process. Thank you. Thanks, Jenna. So wanted to provide kind of an update on where we're at with the project so far and and with schematic design in addition to that cost estimate. So again, our overall project budget $65,000,000 at this stage of design, which is about 30% design. We are very close to that budget number, and we'll talk a little bit more about how we stay on budget as we
potentially get into the bidding process there. The scope of the work that's been designed and what we've gotten cost estimates on include the prep work needed for that indoor facility to come with a future phase, also includes some prep work for the commercial lots along the south of the property there. And we feel like that's an opportunity to, again, master plan and develop that full site and have those south lots be something that in the future can help us both to sell those sites or decide what we want to do with those sites
in the future to complement what's going to happen at the sports complex. We anticipate that when we put the packages together, we'll include alternates there, again, some different levers that we can pull to make sure that we stay on budget trying to deliver on that tournament caliber Regional League significant and community asset type facility that we envision here, but do that within the budget. The other thing we've been doing along with our operating partner through the planning process
has been developing that pro form a to see what our operating budget will look like based on the number of fields and pickleball courts and the other amenities within the site and how we can make that work financially to be operating at a neutral or positive way year over year as the complex opens. And with what we have within the schematic design, the estimates that we have in that pro form a or operating budget are looking like we would be successful with that goal. So again,
that schematic design level, a similar list of amenities here to what you've seen before, eight artificial turf baseball fields that would be full sized baseball fields and would have the temporary fencing in the outfields in order to bring them down to a smaller sized baseball field or softball field. Rectangular fields used for soccer, lacrosse, those types of sports, two of those fields, 12 pickleball courts, central building, which you can see there in between the two clovers of ball fields that would be our tournament check-in area,
restrooms, concessions, gathering space, place that community members could spend time on an evening if they have a family member or friend out participating in an event or also would be, very busy during a tournament weekend with that central gathering space. And that area would also include, playground, kind of patio space there when you've, been to have concessions and be connected with a trail system that would get you to the fields you were looking to get to, back to the parking lot, try to make it accessible and easy to navigate around the site.
We would also have, you can see the trail system kind of going circulating around the exterior of the site as well as through the midst of the site there, creating again that opportunity for family members or friends who are there while they have another person participating in the event or just be able to travel through that site along the Willow Creek Trail that will connect from the north through the site to the south at Game Haven Park. Again, and then you can see one thing I had a question on earlier in the
weekend was that space that's labeled Playfield right now, it's between the north and south parking lots. That is the site where the future indoor facility would be. As it is in this phase, that would just be a green space, a natural grass, field space there until the time came that we're able to develop that into the indoor facility. You can see the pickleball courts and basketball court there adjacent to the north parking lot as well, kinda laying out the full site. And then you can see the outlines of, the commercial lots there to the south, on the on the schematic design there to the south of that 40 Fifth Street,
southeast labeled road there. I think those are the points I wanted to make on that slide. And then, again, just getting back into that, how will the strategy to stay on budget as we get into the putting the construction documents together and bidding packages, things such as the number of batting cages per field, the potential to look at, do we put natural turf or artificial turf on the rectangular fields, the ball field quad buildings. Those would be the smaller restroom buildings that would be within each clover quad of
ball fields, and we could bid those as alternates as well as that South commercial lot. Do we make those pad ready where we're bringing utilities to the site and doing the grading to potentially increase opportunity for the resell later, but do we include that within this initial package, and we can have that listed as an alternate. Several things we've been looking at over the last few weeks since we received the schematic design and the cost estimates, things that we can that we've already done some of these things and others that
we're continuing to look at, to again stay within the budget there would be number of restroom fixtures, really contemplating how many patrons are gonna be there on a tournament weekend, how many, patrons and users would be there on a weeknight, what is the right number of fixtures and there's a few different ways to factor that. Always making sure we're within what the code requirements are, but trying to figure out what the kind of padding on those number of fixtures would be. So that's one thing we're looking at converting some of the concrete pathways to asphalt,
just a lower cost product there to use and getting the right mix there, again, wanting to create a very accessible site, but trying to do it in a cost effective way. Consolidating at one point, we had concessions a little more spread out between the three buildings, the Central Building and the two Quad Buildings. Since then, we've consolidated just to the Central Building to have concessions for a couple of reasons. One, it lowers the cost when it comes to equipment, but also makes it a little bit easier for a concession air to be able to provide concessions and prepare food and all that in one location versus moving it
around throughout the site and having it available. So and there are some other items there that we've also been looking at as kind of value engineering over the last few weeks, to to make sure that we are able to to be in a good position when we go out to bid and and be within budget. So that is the end of my slides and happy to, answer any questions. Answer any questions. Questions? Council member Wahl. Thank you, mister Bolt. Beyond the, obvious benefits brought to Rochester on the weekends with tournaments coming in, using our resources, our hotels paying taxes,
restaurants, going to our other recreational facilities, shopping in our places. Beyond that, can you remind us how this sports complex will benefit our community? Yes. I think there are several ways that it will benefit our community. One, in addition to all the items you just mentioned about having those visitors coming to Rochester and participating events. We also plan for the weekdays to be primarily local community users will be out there for games or practices or just enjoying the trails,
playgrounds, other things during the day when it's not hosting a tournament on the weekend. So and several of the amenities will be there and available all the time. The the trail system throughout the playground, basketball court, those type of amenities will be things that community members can use. They'll they'll always be open, in addition to the the rentable spaces of the the sports fields and pickleball courts. So, yeah, we feel like they'll really be a complimentary use there between local usage as well as the tournament usage. Thank you.
Administrator zones. Go ahead. Council president, council member, if I could just add, one of the things that we're also looking at is op the operating model being significantly different than the existing sports facilities that we have in town. And so, mister Bolt touched on this, but, being able to have, those weekend tournaments also, we are hopeful will allow, and the pro form a suggests that that we will be able to operate in such a way that there's ability to have some of those weekday, experiences be different than what people experience now, more access, not being operated by a specific club sport potentially being utilized.
But, we we we haven't had that model in probably forty years in Rochester, and so this presents a different opportunity for people for us to be able to have programming there, potentially low or very you know, or scholarship, opportunities for, summer programming camps, etcetera as well. Thank you. Council member Miller. Could you tell us a little bit more about the pro form a, because I I'm hearing, you know, neutral or positive in year one. But what are some of the assumptions? How many tournaments need to be booked for that to even start to be neutral? Yeah.
So we are planning for somewhere in the sixteen to eighteen weekends of tournaments that would be, run two to three day, mostly three day to Friday, part of that. We'd be, renting the ball fields on evenings for practices and games as well as renting the soccer fields for, practice as in games there as well. There also would be a, a daily charge for the the pickleball courts. So a person would have an opportunity either through a,
like, a day guest pass similar to what we do at Kutzke Park when it comes to those tennis courts or they could have a monthly or season type of membership that would get them access there to the pickleball courts. Another option we're looking at would also be the ability to reserve a court for a period of time to bring in a group of people to be able to play pickleball together. And I guess as a follow-up, when was the pro form a developed and how has it been updated since we would have heard about this move to outdoor in the February meeting? Yep.
So the pro form a was developed in October, November of twenty twenty four initially to look at both the outdoor and indoor components and updated, tweaked over the course of those few months until we came to the council with the information in February. Since then, we've had additional conversations with that operator with our local sports groups to talk about usage. We've done more market study on what tournaments are out there, what tournaments we can host here,
what tournaments we can expand that already exist in Rochester that we can utilize multiple ball field locations. And so the most recent pro form a I received was about two weeks ago from that operator, again continuing to refine where we're at with what our estimates would be. And is there a sensitivity that's been done on this? I mean, we heard in February that the reason for moving away from an indoor Phase one was that it would require tax levy support. How much confidence can we have that this pro form a ends up neutral?
It's a great question. It's hard to look into the future and feel super confident about it. But I would say, again, through looking at what tournaments in the region, as close as, like, Wisconsin Dells area into Wisconsin down into Iowa, what they're doing even to the point of what their admission fees are, what their team registration fees are, talking to their concessionaires about how they're doing. I mean, we're trying to get very granular with developing that, pro form a. And we've been working hard on that over the last several months now.
And I would say our confidence is growing that we feel that pro form a is pretty solid. Okay. Council Member Doring. Yes. Thank you very much for the presentation. I'm thinking about the questions that I get about constituents, and it has to do with the pro form a as well. And I'm wondering when the pro pro form a will become more public information rather than, numbers that are or or the vagueness that are presented is presented at at council meetings like this. You know, the skepticism that I hear from constituents about,
this, regional sports complex being, built for the benefit of sports tourism rather than a casual community benefit is pretty high at this point. I would say about 75% of the the folks who reach out to me are wondering how they as a a community member of Rochester who's not play who's not paying to play in a highly competitive sports league will have access to a resource coach center, can utilize the facility, is, is is is overwhelming my inbox at this time. And I I I think it's a compelling argument to to show that the performer
shows that that, terminate left terminate left permanent level play, booked 16 weekends out of a year, even though those might be the prime weekends of the year, that everyone wants be out playing baseball, might be able to fund the complex. I think there's a compelling argument there that it will make it a cost neutral endeavor or or will not, take more money out of tax payers' pockets. But it's hard to to kinda make that argument to folks without having, facts and figures in hand.
So I'm wondering when we can see the pro form a as, as, as the city council, so we are equipped to have those conversations in a more meaningful manner. Who's gonna take that one? I'm I'm I'm gonna share it with you. On a friend. Look. I will answer. So we will, have this in front of you, I believe, two more times, and we can make sure to bring that. We can provide it. I think the key that we would wanna share is it's there we're continuing to update that. We also need to be bringing you an operating model, and that's part of what we've been doing. But I, would say even in February when we were talking about this,
it was very clear that in order to make the financial mix work, you really needed the outside. Otherwise, there were significant cost, and we did provide that. That doesn't change, unless you are able to provide the positive the neutral or positive exterior, components. So, we can probably send that out to you tonight. It's just that we would wanna have the caveat that it we are continuing to make sure that if we think something needs to be updated or if something changes, for example, on the, how we're going to build something, it might tweak something $10,000
but that's how granular we're getting at being able to adjust the pro form a. I would also say that the operator at risk that we've been working with operates this type of facility and provides community use time, programming, and summer camps and other places that they both operate and own facilities. So I I feel fairly confident that what they're really looking at is a model that includes that public use. Yes. It's for baseball, softball, different ages, etcetera, as in addition to pickleball, which we are we don't have that much pickleball here in comparison to many other
places. And, again, having a different manner that we operate this facility is very different than what people experience at most of our facilities in Rochester because, gratefully, we partner with different groups. But, again so we can provide that. I just would provide the caveat that we're always continuing to update it to make sure that it is literally as accurate as possible down to the minute. And when we come back with the operator, model, that will include an agreement that may have some requirements for them to be able similar to the civic center operation,
for them to be able to meet those, goals. So just to clarify, administrative zones. So the next time we're gonna see this is, with the operator model. Is that correct? Believe the operator model will be next. You will have the, up you'll need to just like every project, you would have the approval to bid and then award of bid. And at some point between now and then, we need to finalize the operating model, but we have to build it in order to operate it. So there's I can't I don't know that the next time you you see this item will
be that, but you will see it at least two more times. So I guess where I'm going is because this issue really has a lot of public sentiment to it, if there is, the possibility to have a, a, study session agenda item in connection with the pro form a to really, kind of flesh that out. And then as opposed to hearing the item and voting that evening? I believe that based on the changes that we made to our calendar, you we had been planning to try to have a study session,
but we changed the calendar for August. And so with the timing of moving this forward and being able to get to construction, the next time that we were planning to be here was on reports and recommendations. But we can certainly provide a more robust presentation. I unless we wanna try to schedule a meeting, but there was a lot of challenges in August with trying to get get the city council together. So in order to continue to move forward with the timeline and cost escalate every single month as you often see in your packet, that would what would that be? Packages, expected to be voted on?
We're looking to bring those back in September for authorization to bid, and then there'd be the period of time to do that. Okay. Council member Doreen. Yeah. Just for for sake of easeness with this awkwardness of being online, I'm gonna ask a couple more questions and then just not talk again for a a little while. Go for it. There's a there's a huge delay for me, and I'm sure that there's a day delay for you as well. I have a question about the schematic design itself. The footprint for, maybe the proposed indoor design, and I know I'm going way down the thing,
looks relatively small. Is that just a placeholder? Because, again, I've heard overwhelmingly from community members about expectations of design one, design you know, phase one, phase two, really looking for a more robust indoor space. Could you alleviate some of that concerns that that's simply a placeholder and not really the actual footprint size of a indoor space at that facility? Yeah. Happy to answer that question. So the indoor space that's footprinted onto the schematic design about a 120,000
square feet is what's estimated there. And it covers that ball field up to a little bit of that north parking lot. So it gets pretty close to those pickleball courts to the north. Right. I'm just I'm going back to the to look at the slide in my slide deck, which is different, a different process than looking at the slide deck that everyone else is seeing. It's the same same slide deck. I see that. So looking at the just looking at that schematic, it looks like it's the size of all the pickleball pickleball, courts combined.
Correct? It it would be larger than that. It Okay. It's that it's the kind of black, dashed line. It's not a Oh, I see. Perfect rectangle, but it it expands all the way over to about the n or the d of the end of playgrounds and then goes all the way to the east, to the to the landscaping where the road, you know, would go north and south. Are you, council member well, are you clarifying? Yeah. Would it would it be fair to say, just, just comparing, it's a little bit bigger than an entire baseball field?
It's getting close to the size of a full size baseball field. Yes. So it's a 128,000 square feet capacity. Right. You council member Doreen still has the floor. Go ahead. Yeah. I I really appreciate that clarification. On the small map version that I'm looking on at my computer screen, it was really hard to see that dotted line. All I could see was the green playfield Sure. And that caused me a little bit of concern actual indoor space. The last question I, received via email today, and I think that our public speaker, miss Armstrong,
brought it up earlier this morning, is how were the the people on the advisory committee picked? Were were was that put out to the public for people to offer their expertise? Or were, did you go out and recruit people, for that advisory board for this, project? Be happy to take that. Thank you, council member. So, we worked with local organizations, to identify individuals within these categories, so whether it be Rochester baseball, or our accessibility community. The youth that were, participated, communication was provided to all three public high school,
activities directors. So, again, worked with our connections through community organizations, and I think as you have seen through the timeline as well, building on a variety of, public engagement that has included, another working group, various surveys, and other conversations. But to directly answer the question, no. There was not a direct call put out to the community, but we did work with our community partners, to try to identify a diverse group of representatives. Also, as you see within the chart, trying to not only have sports representation,
but representation, across the community in a variety of facets. Thank you very much. That's all the questions I have right now. Any further discussion? Council members? Council member Keane? Yeah. I got just a couple of, questions. Looking at the eight ball fields, it appears to be they're all the same. Is there a concept of court 1 or the main field, the finals games? Is there any build out of, like, bleachers or anything in one place? Or is it all, uniform? Yep. Thank you for the question. So there are a couple ways they'll be differentiated. The four fields to the south,
so on your rendering, they're shown with having green in fields. Those fields are slightly larger in size. Those would be, fit the requirements right now for NCAA or collegiate baseball. And the field that is on the I really should have does this have a pointer on it? It does. It does. Okay. So this one right here, the northeast of that quad, that would be our championship field. Some reason for that with with the topography of the site, it makes for kinda some cool knolls where you can sit on and watch,
the games from the outfield. Also works well with the way the sun, sets and those types of things, so it'd be a good field for that. And, that field would have some upgraded seating, not not necessarily a stadium, but more bucket seats versus a bleacher seats or things like that. That was one of the points of feedback from the community working group was the types of seating, how accessible it is, where it's located, is there shade, nearby or over top of the seating. So those are all things that are were added into design. So, yes, looking to have shade, looking kind of your five high aluminum bleachers are generally the least accessible of all
the types. So how can we get seating that would be more comfortable for folks in that field especially would have, more of the bucket style, seating and more comfortable seating for a championship game. Okay. So the other fields but they do have that I mean, there is seating for each year is just expected to be lawn chair sort of. No. There will be seating for each field. From the feedback we got, from other term and organizers, those who are part of the working group, there is some utilization of existing seating. A lot of people will wanna bring in
their own seats. So we set up places that are part of the paved spaces where they can easily set up their lawn chairs or pop up tents if they bring those types of things like a a tournament, family or spectator or team often does. So it'll be a mixture of both, existing seating as well as spaces where people can set up their own seats. Okay. When I look at this plan and think of the, you know, the the, starting out with this idea of like this, tournament central and this, economic development investment. It seems to me that we settled on baseball for that. And the other amenities here are much more community or less tournament and more,
like the the soccer fields. There probably isn't enough here really to be like a tournament central. I would say though, one caveat to that would be, 12 pickleball courts all in one spot with the caliber of court development there. We feel like that'll be definitely a tournament site for us for pickleball and and the local, pickleball folks that we've talked to feel it would be a good site for that also. But, yes, the ball field, whether it's baseball or softball, is is more of the anchor when it comes to the tournament traffic. Can I just, as far as that, I I really like the idea of the turf mainly because I think of the
troubles we have here in the spring baseball season and even fall type of things? So I like that. But I also have the side the other side of it that there's concerns specifically with soccer more than baseball with with the turf. Is there a concept of we're gonna have a sort of turf that's, gets watered and gets changed it is maintained such that there's not the burns and things like that or that's not consideration? That's more of an operational consideration. Well, that's one of the reasons why we put an alternate to be do we do artificial turf or natural turf on the soccer fields. For example,
one thing we wanna continue to evaluate is what is the best surface there. But as far as being a bit more weatherproof, the artificial turf, is more weatherproof. The artificial turf manufacturers and companies that I've, talked to over the course of these couple years of this project existing. They they talk about the advances that are being made in turf, the different, qualities and characteristics that different types of turf have. We would be looking to have, you know, the the right styles of turf installed here. So it it would be different between the the soccer field would be one style
of turf compared to the ball field would be another style to try to to use the best product we can when it comes to artificial turf on the on the fields. Go ahead. Council member, I think the other, piece to that as well is, I mean, to note that, differentiator in this, be it the the baseball, softball fields, the pickleball courts, and the soccer lighting. And I would say that was something that came through strong with the working group, that when they heard that lighting was included, in, the project in these various areas, that was definitely seen as a positive. So to what you're also articulating, both with the spring and into the fall, So to what you're also articulating, both with the spring and into the fall Yep.
You know, as you indicated, like, with the soccer fields, we're we're limited in what we have for turf turf options compared to our surrounding neighbors and into the metro. But then especially adding in the light both for, baseball, softball, soccer, and then the pickleball was a very big, deal for the working group members and felt like in their conversations that was, you know, a feature of the complex that was appealing given the added hours and the day that that would allow for throughout the course of our seasons. Very good. Thank you. My my last thing, just listening to my my peers' questions about the combination of the indoor,
the future space, and also the idea of, like, what the operating model is. Going back to February, my memory is that one of the reasons we went this way is this is the best chance for the best operating, model we can have. And the idea of the risk of building indoor and having a much higher, carrying costs and things like that. That's one of the the main reasons we ended up where we're at. Is that did I understand that right? Or is that something that I I over over interpret it? No. Council member, that's that is the information we shared and we still,
believe that to be true when we've compared the two pro formas, the indoor, indoor only versus outdoor, only to start within phase one. The pro form a was was better with the outdoor focus. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Council member Miller. So if I'm remembering correctly, were the members of the Soldiers Field, pool working group invited to address council? Were there two preferred and an alternate plan? Could you clarify that? I I guess I'm I'm just noting that we don't have any members of the working group who have been invited to address this,
and I, you know, we get a summary report. I would like, and then we're moving more into discussion, would have loved to hear some positive support from the folks who were engaged here. Understood. We have, been keeping them up to date and aware, throughout the process. But if that is I'm kind of looking to city administrator zones, but as far as any particular participation, I guess I was welcoming a baby about the time we were finishing the working group of the with the Soldiers Field Aquatics, but, maybe somebody can jog my memory of the exact participation. Or there's specific clarity you're looking for with Well,
I guess, what I remember from the Soldiers Field was that group members were invited to address counsel if they would like in a similar format to this of just sharing about their experience and what they were, you know, grateful for of having participated and what changed. And I guess, again, I don't really have a question, but just a note that I I don't feel that from folks who are in involved here. I appreciate the staff report on it, but it is striking to me that we're not hearing from community members who said, this is how I feel like my group that I'm representing is reflected in this
plan, which makes me go back to a concern about the operating model and the trust with the community and how we're navigating that space between trust and revenue positive from an operating model of pro form a that we don't have. I guess, again, my question is, why don't we have a little more information of saying, like, this is in line with community needs operating model? Yeah. I mean, I can say we really tried to, summarize the feedback from the group throughout the various, steps of the process, you know, going back through emails that were provided to the design team,
between the course of the meetings, capturing the feedback that was provided in the meetings, including maybe where there's difference of opinion. I think if there's feedback about the process in ways that we can standardize, especially how you as the council are hearing from those participants, that's welcome feedback. I think we know, you know, whether it be through, exact community co design or various forms of it, that it's always, growing, evolving, and that that's feedback that we can take within the process. So if that's, feedback that we can take within the process. So if that's, you know, a place that we can get clarity from the council as to how exactly you might like to see more consistency with that participation, including their direct interaction with you through more of a formal process like the meeting,
we would welcome that feedback. And I guess my other question is, you know, recognizing that we have four new council members coming in to this process very early in the year. I think this was our first meeting in the second month. We've gone through the strategic priority setting and we've adopted both foundational principle and a strategic priority that include community feedback, inclusive growth management, inclusive decision making. And I guess my question about this is how do we square these two processes, one that was already in place and one that we are talking about with the
budget? How do we square these together and and rebuild some trust here with the community about this project? I'll take that one as well. Oh, administrator Zelms, go ahead. Council president, council member. I think, like, any project that has been ongoing for four plus years, it's continuously repeating accurate information, which I appreciate the questions that were asked today. It's very hard to like, not everyone is paying attention to the four years of everything that has happened and transpired. For example, all the way back to when we were first at the legislature, this was only supposed to be an outdoor facility,
and that's what we priced. So we went through the process to try to get more community feedback, and the feedback was that their appetite was bigger than the budget. And so, I I do think it's really important to continuously repeat accurate information, which doesn't mean it's not gonna feel still strange to a person who maybe envisioned something different when they were either voting or hearing the information, or getting information. You know? Not everybody got direct information. Nobody almost nobody gets direct information from source anymore. If you look at the statistics,
they're reading Facebook. They're not actually going to the new source, which is concerning. But it's just a act that's just how people are getting their information across the world these days. And so I think it is important to continue to provide that information. We'd be happy to have the work group as part of something, but, again, we were trying to navigate, ability to have the meetings and use your schedule and keep moving the process forward in the timeline that we had talked about in February. So I would say continuing to provide that information,
we can, for example, provide the pro form a. Again, important to have the caveat that it will continue to change just like any budget, because we wanna get it as accurate as possible. And then going through, with the operating model, we have to go through a process in order to get to a point to be able to even have a glide path to present that to the city council or the community. And and so what people would really like to see happen also isn't always in alignment with the other thing that we generally hear, which is we don't want our taxes to go up. So, it's challenging. I I don't have a perfect answer for you.
This is the art part of public policy and not the science part of public policy. It's just continuing to repeat the why. And so I think all of you have done that very well this evening through your questions and through your statements. And I'm sorry. We were only on questions. Your your statements that were asked as a question. And, but I this has changed significantly. We've had probably maybe as many as 10 iterations of how this might lay out on the site. And so this changed significantly where things were located as, the community working group talked through,
through what they were concerned about and actually, much better design than what we started with, I would say. Yeah. I appreciate that. I I guess a follow-up question then would be, just to clarify for the community, was going into this community working group, was it nonnegotiable that there would be eight turf baseball fields? Trying to remember if there if there was eight specifically identified. I think we were close to that number going into it because within that first meeting, I believe all eight baseball fields baseball, softball fields were shown in the initial rendering. I mean, I think basically all of the components that you're seeing in the final well,
in this in this, step of the design were there to city administrator Zelens' point. Specific design details came over the course of those three meetings as you saw in the packet, like, with the pickleball courts in particular, that initial design versus the feedback of, separation, delineation within the space as well as those, you know, water fountain features or water access features, evolution. Same with, the outdoor gathering space and the playground. Now we didn't get into, like, final details within the playground features, but, you know, that it's all ages, abilities,
those types of conversations. But I'm yes. Yes. Ben's giving that. Yes. And it was part of the importance of operating as a facility and the pro form a for outdoor. Yep. Which I appreciate, but we still really haven't seen it. I I guess, again, that question, I I'll just reiterate some other comments that have been made. I would love to see an operating model before we move forward. What might happen to other baseball, softball assets in our park system? How might community members be reassured of access to other spaces? Yep. So couple things.
We think there'll still be activity at those other ball fields and talking with both the youth softball association and youth baseball association that they still they're at the point where they have more, players to use their, primary facilities than they have fields at those primary facilities for. So we still, think those, complexes will be busy. And I think with other community members or smaller groups or individuals or families looking, for those ball field access opportunities. Okay. And last question, but a big one. Yeah. How many of these materials are produced in The US?
I mean, how much impact are we potentially considering from uncertain tariffs, larger economic uncertainty, price changes? I mean, I guess, how much confidence can we have that $65,000,000 if we do it quickly, right, doesn't end up in a situation where we're an alternate bid that doesn't include some of these community features. Yeah. So when we've, done the last cost estimate with Knutsen, they spoke to their trade partners and estimating what that cost is gonna be for primarily the twenty twenty companies are taking things into account if there are some components that need to come
in internationally that that they account for that. They do build estimator contingency within the numbers that they provide us as well, trying to cushion for things like that where there could be a spike in a particular material cost or something like that. So I'm trying to utilize as much as we can that's within the region or or nearby, but they were trying to prepare the numbers in such a way that accounted for, potentially those spikes that you're referring to. Thank you. Council member Palmer.
Thank you. Mister Bolt, how many artificial turf baseball fields do we have right now in the park system? Zero. And by having those, you extend the season on both ends. How how Yeah. So we'd be able to get out there in March. We're now we're waiting till the frost comes out of the ground, and we can get out there and play, hopefully, by early, to April for those high school seasons to start. So I I would say we're adding two to three weeks on the front end and then we're adding, two to three weeks on the tail end of the season as well when we're and the other thing we do in the fall is try to,
use some of those natural grass fields less so they can rehab and be ready again for the next year where where you don't have that with artificial turf. So the the surrounding communities, high schools, do they have artificial turf baseball fields that you know of? Or is it is it pretty few and far between? Few and far between for baseball fields. There are more of the rectangular sports fields that are artificial turf, but baseball fields, there's not. Okay. And then the the I was impressed with the with the working group that it was such a wide ranging group.
I've not seen that done before with Bark and Rec as this much. Is is that would that be a true statement? Council member, I I mean, I think, as we integrated, folks within the sports communities as well as others with knowledge and expertise in overall advocacy, you know, be it accessibility, etcetera. I think building on what we did with the Soldiers Field Aquatics, I think the secondary, working group, I think really building on that. So, again, it's always a really fantastic process when you see folks with different opinions and perspectives come together and get into conversations around where they can fill up their water bottle
and proximity and and but use the space in a way that, really all users can be happy with. And some of the concessions, you know, of the give and take, I think that came through. Even, you know, again, in noting that there was a strong desire by the working group by way of their conversations with their fellow community members that, ultimately, they'd like to see both the outdoor and then indoor. And as you've heard, you know, from community members, just the piece of wanting this to all come together, and ideally it'd all come together at one time, but understanding the the phasing and also to the same conversation you're having,
the due diligence that has been and will continue to be done around the use and the, financial aspects of it. And so you had seniors in there also, two people from senior that were helpful and two from handicapped that that were helpful? Yep. And covered one And they sat they sat together and had that discussion? Yes. One in particular that's in, heavily involved with Special Olympics. So that was a particular perspective that they brought. Okay. Well, mister Bolt was was we did presentations for the sales tax, and and you were a part of that sales tax extension that we got,
just one part of it of the four. Is this I mean, I was at 25 different presentations. I'm sure you did more than that to the community. Did you? Probably. Okay. That was a long time ago already. Well, I've been accused that my memory is not the best, best, but I try hard. And no property taxes are going to build this. This is just going to be paid for by sales tax. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. And originally, this is set up as an economic development investment. Is that not what it is? Yes. And go back to Park and Rec, most of our Park and Rec programs are done with partnerships. We're pretty proud of that partnerships with all the different groups in Rochester.
Is that correct? We have a lot of great partners. We don't I mean, we used to do some lessons. I know at the rec center, we don't do some lessons anymore as a park and rec employee. Correct. We used to teach tennis. We don't teach tennis anymore. We partner with a tennis pro. So it yeah. There's a partnership there as well where they bring in, the pros to do the tennis lesson. Okay. Thank you. I've got a couple questions regarding the, potential phase two, where the play field is. A little bit, more space than that, a 128,000
square feet potential. Can you talk a little bit more about, between when we made the decision to in February to pick the site and to, to lean in on outdoor for phase one. What kind of strategic planning or work or partnerships have you been engaged in regarding planning for down the road with Phase two? It's a great question, council president. We've to be honest,
we've focused in on the developing the design of the outdoor components. We've continued to have some preliminary conversations on that Phase two. I think one detail about Phase two is the potential for that the bulk of our time trying to continue on the design path and the development of the pro form a on the outdoor components over the last few months. Council Member Palmer. Motion? Oh, go ahead. Yes. I'll make a motion approving the ceramic,
design for the Rochester Sports and Recreation Complex, project number J2870. Motion made by council member Palmer. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by council member Wahl. Council member Palmer, you have the floor. Well, I I'm just excited that this is moving forward, and I and I'm excited to see it, come together. And and thank you for all your hard work. I know that it's been, hard for you to to to, figure all this out, but I'm excited to see us move forward. Thank you. Council member Wahl. I have, some prepared remarks, but just a couple of before that,
I looked up the average size of a baseball field. It's 108,000 to 120,000. So a 128,000 would be slightly larger than your average baseball field. Second, unprepared. It just occurs to me that I have one granddaughter who's playing in a statewide tournament in The Twin Cities this, this weekend, another granddaughter who's playing in a similar tournament but a different place in the Twin Cities, and that second granddaughter playing in a national tournament hosted, luckily for them and us in the Twin Cities, teams coming from many states.
Their first game is 8AM on Thursday morning. So, people who come from Nebraska and Wyoming will be here for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, really a great boost. Onto the notes that I made prior to coming today. I'll be voting to approve the design as I'm convinced this will be a regional and community asset. Yeah, I'm disappointed that we can't have it all, both indoor and outdoor. It is unreasonable to suggest that we could do it all when the money raised by sales tax will go exactly to what was proposed originally.
Community input will be valuable as we enter phase two. Some have suggested that we halt the process. Any halting of the process will add dollars to the project monthly, reducing the good we are able to do with $65,000,000 entrusted to us. It has been Said that we scale back the outdoor facilities and build a more modest indooroutdoor facility. That will mean failure for the regional aspect of the project. We will not be able to recruit teams to a venue of scaled back facilities. That means fewer dollars for city businesses who will cater to visiting teams and it
means more dollars from the city to support a facility that will now provide a break even bottom line. It's easy to find naysayers on the project. Just look at Facebook. It's always the people who are against who post their opinions on any subject. I do appreciate the one community member who took time to come this night and ask very reasonable questions. Thank you. I've sought out the opinions of many on this project, and the prevailing attitude is one of excitement. I serve on the Rochester Sports Commission. That commission is eager to add its muscle to the sports complex.
I want a facility that will enjoy success from day one, success that will inspire moving on to phase two. If we pare back our plans, we will have built another nice park for the city, an admirable goal, but not the scope of a project that will benefit the city in many ways, including our community's use of the facility more days of the week than the tournament offerings. We have had professionals who have helped us hone the plan over four years. We have staff who have given blood, sweat, and tears to the project. We have a well rounded community group, help in refining plans to make it an even better sports complex.
I urge the council to move ahead with the design in anticipation of the great things that lie ahead of us. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Council member Miller. Thank you for your work. I'd just like to say I know a lot of work has gone into this. And I'd also just like to recognize that I've also reached out to quite a few community members, and I've yet to encounter a community member even in the sports community who's excited about this. And I've said, you know, it would save me a trip every now and then, but I'm concerned about community access. And I think there's a broader case to be made first.
And so I would really like to see an operating model before I feel comfortable supporting this. I feel like there are a lot of assumptions that are built into how many tournaments we need, the cost of the project, and what the benefit is to the community, whether that's the combination of sales and lodging, tax, and other benefits. Maybe it's just that I'm new to this process being on the council this year, but I don't feel like I have enough information just yet. I've heard from a variety of people in a variety of roles who aren't, you know, excited and and see themselves represented here. And I know we've also gone through the strategic priorities setting process and come to
inclusive decision making, inclusive growth management, really centering this idea that we have to go with the community and bring the community along in these projects. I just feel a gap here. And I also, despite the Soldier's Field pool being a really successful community engagement process that designed elements of that pool and changed it significantly. There was a real risk in the operating model that wasn't considered in that process, and we ended up last year with several $100,000 operating loss on the staffing, which wasn't considered in conjunction with the construction elements.
And so for those reasons, I'm not ready to support this tonight, and I appreciate that I might be in the future. But I just I'm not feeling the, you know, even from folks on this community working group that I reached out to today, they said they felt like it was a fair process. They had some input within the confines of we're doing eight outdoor baseball fields. Council member, Keane. Yeah. I guess, again, I I have the advantage of being around for since this started and kinda have a a full view of this. I do come tonight with the idea that I wanna support this and move it forward, this vote.
And as, City Administrator Zelms points out, and there's going to be two or three other ones coming up. And we can't reopen it each time and say, How do we want this to be different? Well, and I shouldn't say we can't. We can. It's just not an efficient, operation. I I guess my take is our city did ourselves a disservice during some of the sales, tax information and putting things out that I think we we ended up in our hopes of getting the sales tax approved we sort of became whatever anybody wanted underneath
the guise of the Sports Foundation. And I also think we do ourselves a disservice because we're not of one mind on this. And that also confuses the community. So I, this has always been to me this always started out as first and foremost this idea of, like, an, economic that also could benefit the community. And I think we're still working towards that high level goal. And, again, I'm, the one thing I'm uncomfortable with tonight is we still call it phase one. As if we're ready to do phase two. And I just don't think that's the case. We're ready to do phase one and we're going to spend our money doing that.
And we might get a little bit more money by selling off the part that's going to be, you know, commercial or the part that's gonna be residential. And that should go into this fund then. But I don't know where the funds come from for, phase two because we're not gonna do another sales tax. We're not, you know so I don't think of this as phase one and have to get done with that so we can start phase two. Phase two is the first part of that is fundraising. So I don't care for the language, but it's not my language. But I'll just share that and, and where I'm at tonight. Thanks. I'll just share. In February,
I supported this, and I want to support this, and I want to support it enthusiastically. But I feel like we are losing the expectations game among our community members. They had expectations, rightly or wrongly. It, it was out there in, in the community. And, I hear council member Palmer, and I know that, three, four years ago, there were numerous communications, events, and, forums. But we need that now. We need to sell what we have here to our community and and,
tell them about that this is an economic development project, that baseball is a niche for us that will attract, attract tournaments here. I agree with council member Miller. I really want to see, you know, stronger evidence of that operating model as to, you know, the success of that. What what I fear the most is given that we are playing the expectations games with our community,
that what we're looking at tonight, when you come back with those bid packages, we're gonna have to pare down more. And that is not what I want to be able want to do without us going out in the community and meeting the expectations that we ex what we expect that we're gonna be able to deliver. So I need more of that. I will vote for this this evening because what I see here is, when it comes to eight ball fields to,
sports fields, the pickleball courts, it's all the same. We've moved things around, and I appreciate the community impact on how that that design is. But it it is $65,000,000. It is, what it is here, and the site is the site that we selected in February. So I will support it, but with nervous expectations. Council member Doreen. You're muted. You're muted. Council member Doreen. Thank you. You wish you know, you think you'd figure out Zoom by now, right, or Teams.
I I appreciate the comments of all my colleagues, and I appreciate the passion and any insights that you've brought to this conversation. I really appreciate the presentation as well. I came tonight with an open mind hoping to be able to support moving forward. I simply cannot, at this point. I agree a lot with council, council member Miller's point of view that I would really like to have a cleaner and better understanding of the operational model, before, proceeding with with the schematic design. I appreciate city administrator Zellm saying that,
we need to know what we're going to build before we can decide how we're gonna operate it. I would argue that we need to know how we're going to operate, a a community assay asset before we build that community asset. I I think it's just a, a philosophical difference that I, am simply, not in a position tonight to overcome, especially listening to those members of the community who have reached out to me, who are also, cross cross across the sports community in a variety of of subjects who aren't particularly excited about, this particular, facility,
simply because they are worried about access and that it isn't really, for the community. I appreciate council member Keane. I I appreciate your statement saying that you understood this as as a, to be a a a regional economic driver that could benefit the community. I would argue that this is a economic driver that absolutely should benefit the community, and I wanna see that should before proceeding. So, I plan to not support this this evening. I'm excited, to see what comes back in the future.
So maybe I can more enthusiastically, support it in the future. But, that all being said, I really appreciate the hard work of the community members as well as the city staff, who have put, their energy into this project so far. Councilmember Fredericks. Mr. Bolton, staff, thanks for your hard work on this project. It's been a long road. I just got a quick question for you. When we went to the taxpayers with this a few years ago, whatever it was, a year ago, two years ago, is this delivering on what we presented to the taxpayers? A loaded question. I would say, potentially,
you know, I Is this what was presented to the taxpayers? This specific design is not what was presented to the taxpayers. Okay. It was indoor and outdoor components for an athletic or sports complex that was presented. And it was always shown as phased because even in that very, very odd percent of the pro form a, it was not penciling in the $65,000,000. Right. Let me reframe the question. Is this is this proposal a phase one? What was what was shown? It was outdoor sports fields. At that time in 2023,
it was shown as to be more rectangular fields than both both fields, but it was artificial turf, outdoor sports fields as part of that. And it takes eight and it takes eight ball diamonds to make a tournament weekend profitable, attractive. Yes. K. Mayor Norton. Thank you. I've remained quiet, and I think all of you know where I stand on this issue, but I don't want to let it go, without adding my voice here. It is it has been my opinion since the beginning that we failed to involve the community at the very beginning, that we went to the legislature and asked for something the community didn't understand and
frankly, we didn't understand what we were asking for. There were some that wanted a competitive economic development component to it. That is true. When we finally got around to talking to the community, they told us they wanted something for them. They wanted something indoor and outdoor. They wanted all their wants and needs, which they poured into an entire summer worth of community input on little sticky notes that we had all over the place, and this is not what they told us they wanted. I do understand and will agree that there were some,
a small handful, who had decided of the competitive group that this is what they maybe not baseball, in fact, the first ones I saw weren't baseball at all, that's come around a year or so after we started this process. But it's not what the community believed they were voting for, it's not what the community wants. And so, you know, I always, as you know, have urged that we take a pause and we go back and we build something that will be for the community as well as, as, you know, if we want something that has some economic development advantage to it.
The community did not understand that Phase two would be the part for them. They did not understand that and that's been clear from the comments that we've gotten, all of us gotten and the feedback of the committees as well. So I think the community is having a bit of a shock. It's clear to me that from the very beginning that despite my concerns, the community's concerns, we've moved ahead with the initial want of that group of sports folks folks that wanted a competitive field. That's what you're giving us, that's what we have. I will say, I think your proposal is going to do, hopefully, what you think it will.
I think it is going to be beautiful. I think, if you can get people to come to Rochester for these tournaments, knowing that we can't support this locally, we don't have enough baseball to support this as a competitive it's not for Rochester. It has to bring people in from other areas. If you can do that, and again, that pro form a is so important on this, we have to know that they will choose Rochester over anywhere else. And I'm not convinced yet that you've shown us that, so I'm hoping you continue the work on that. So I guess I'm concerned it seems like this is moving ahead,
but I just want to say to the community, I understand this isn't what you wanted. I think some of the council members understand that this isn't what they wanted, but we are moving ahead with something that will provide some economic development for wanted, but we are moving ahead with something that will provide some economic development for the community. I do worry seriously about you're not going to get phase two from the legislature, so you have to have a way and I want to know what that way is for the phase two before we keep moving ahead. That's part of the internal fight I have. People want to know how you're going to pay for phase two to get all the things that they're maybe willing to wait for now until this gets built,
but it can't just be, Oh, we'll get to it. We hope we'll have money or the legislature will give us money. I don't think you're going to get it there. The legislators have told us how disappointed they are that we're doing phase one without a community input part of it. They thought they were giving it to the community. So I want you I guess I'm asking you, have that plan for phase two. Where is can you sell the rest of the land that you have or budget for phase two that can be done when phase one is done in a timely manner. Question has been called. Clerk Casel, please call the roll. Council Member Keane? Aye. Council Member Miller? Nay.
Council Member Wall? Aye. Council Member Fredericks? Aye. Council member Palmer. Aye. Council member Dohring. Nay. Council president Schubert. Aye. Motion carries five to two. We will take a seven minute break. If folks can take a seat, we are going to get started. Mr. Skolnick, we are getting started. Our next, item, under reports and recommendations is our, RPD drone program update and contract with Exxon Enterprises. Chief Franklin? Yes, Council President,
Council members, Mayor and City Administrator Zelmes. Thank you for this opportunity to present, really an exciting opportunity that we have in front of us. I'm here with, captain John Turk. I'm gonna go through the presentation, then we'll stand for any questions at the end of it. Can you stop chief, can you stop for a minute? Council member Doring, can you see chief Franklin? Do you mind chief coming to the podium so that, council member Doring can see your presentation? Sure. I appreciate that. Not at all. How's that, sir? Yep. Alright. I still can't I still can't see the chief,
but that's okay. That may that may be because he shares the height that I have. I'll I'll just use my imagination. There we go. I you're a good looking man, chief freight. Thank you so much. I'll trade that for a yes vote, sir. Go ahead. Thank you. Alright. To put some context in here, this is not a new concept, for the Rochester Police Department. This is, truthfully, just an expansion of our current drone program. Rochester PD, one of our core values is innovation. I'm very proud of that core value, and we've, quite frankly, been leaning into we've been flying drones,
since 2017, through the purchase of our first drone in 2017, so we were an early adopter of this technology. I can tell you that, you that, several advancements in this technology have been made over the last eight years. Fast forward to today, where we have a total of nine drones as outlined today, and 15 different drone pilots within the organization. I'm very proud of that. And then, to to where we're headed to is this new concept called drone as a first responder here, quite frankly, being rolled out across the country, and we're super excited about this opportunity in front of us today.
Kinda how we got here, if you remember, that we, that back in March, we asked for your permission to apply for a grant, to get funding for what I guess I will call a pilot a pilot project to provide proof of concept for this drone as a first responder project. And we were happy to be notified in May of this year that we are in fact were approved for the full funding for our pilot project, which will give us full funding for a five year pilot project, which is a little bit long but I can explain that towards the end there.
And that's thankfully to some of our partners here in the community, specifically Mayo Clinic. We received that grant from them, and I'm very thankful to them, for this opportunity. I have just a little bit of a video here to just kind of give you a visualization of what drone as a first responder looks like, and I'll ask Christiane to push play. For the people with the toughest jobs in the world, having the right information at the right time is the difference between success and failure, between life and death. And every second counts. Skydio dock for X10. Station docked X10s where critical work happens.
Get airborne in twenty seconds. Operate remotely You are trespassing your private property. Doc keeps your drones ready to fly even in the toughest conditions. For public safety agencies, Skydio DFR Command is the ultimate software suite for drone operations. It's all at your command. So this is a technology that we're, embarking on and asking for permission or for approval to it to, to, use here in the city of Rochester. Again, we are already using drones. We're already using them. The difference here in the main is that hive concept or the docking station concept
kind of strategically placed throughout the city. This particular pilot project includes two different docking stations with two drones strategically placed within the city so that we can auto launch them from there. The difference being, for example, if if, we're gonna launch a drone today, the officer has to make sure that they're in a safe space to operate the drone. They have to make sure that they have kind of a spotter for the drone. It's a little bit more time intensive, resource intensive versus the concept as drone as first responder is that auto launch two calls for service with that rapid response,
getting, that real time situational awareness, for police officers responding to incidents in the city. It's a pretty incredible technology. We're as much as I would love to sit here and say that we are the first, in the country doing this, we are not. In fact, Chula Vista, police department in California, has been on the cutting edge of this, from day one. And and they're an agency that we've had multiple conversations with on how they have rolled out their, DFR program. There, as you can see, some of the numbers here. Chula Vista is is launching the drone about 1,100
times between the months of March and June there. So they're significantly launching the drones, in getting that real time situational awareness for police officers, seen. Although they were the first, this technology is increasing, across the country. As you can see, though, the drone response time that they're experiencing is Priority one calls for service, three point seven minutes to Priority one calls for service, four point nine to priority two. So again, what what they're finding is the drones are definitely beating the police officers onto the scene, providing that real time information back to the officers responding.
As I said before, again, this has been rolled out across the country. Different, agencies that have it, this is just a quick snapshot. Quite frankly, just representing from East Coast to West Coast, it doesn't really matter, that there's several agencies adopting this technology. Again, I'd love to say that we're even the first in the state of Minnesota, but we're we're not. The city of Minnetonka just voted seven o, council support about a month ago for Minnetonka to roll out their program, and Brooklyn Park PD is is very, very shortly behind us. So, if if all goes well, we'll be number two in the state here. This is not a concept that we've just kinda willy nilly stumbled upon.
We actually tested this and tried proof of concept, with, one of our drone pilots, actually, testing, drone launches from different locations in the city to see test this proof of concept, to see if, that our drones and our drone launches could, beat the police officers to the scene and, again, provide that incredible information. And what we found is, is based on different locations in the city, that we can get a drone on scene with eyes on a critical incident, a priority one call for service, a crime in progress, oftentimes violent crimes. We can get a drone on scene in under three minutes.
And I got three different case studies that I want to highlight because I think this is incredibly important. On one particular, gunshot call for service, we launched the drones. We located a party of intoxicated subjects slamming doors, and we were able to deescalate that situation. So think about this from the perspective of the officer that's responding. They're called to a shots fired. That's how the call came out. But by launching the drone and getting eyes on that real time situational awareness, they were able to say, no. That's not a gunshot call for service. That's just somebody actively being loud,
slamming doors. And the officers were able to deescalate, like, kind of bring the tension down in in in their response to that in that call. I have an example of increased situational awareness. There was a violent domestic suspect, a domestic assault suspect that fled on foot. The drone was able to locate that suspect in under ten minutes, allowing officers to, you know, the use of minimal force to have to take that person into custody because we knew right where their location was. We knew right where to locate that individual taking him into custody. And then increased officer safety. We received information of an armed subject with a gun inside of a car and
possible threats to use it. A drone was able to locate the vehicle and the associated individuals, allowing officers time, again, because information is power in these very complex fluid and dynamic situations. Information is power. So in telling, the officers, responding so that they were able to accurately, plan their approach, securing both the suspect and the firearm in that particular call for service. Again, our proof of concepts that we tested last summer, again, I'll just point out that we were able to get kind of that real time situation awareness in less than three minutes.
As we expand our program, again, what we're looking to accomplish here and what we have funding to accomplish here is to take two permanently docked drones strategically located in the city. We're working through FAA waivers to fly beyond that visual line of sight. It's that rapid deployment technology, that live feed back to dispatch, to officers, giving them situational awareness. Why should we do this? We should do this for officer safety. And again, these stories are compelling. These case study stories that we've already produced are pretty compelling.
Just from the, again, just from the tension de escalation standpoint, I think, is incredibly powerful, but also from the standpoint of we're gonna get eyes on real time situations is is incredibly powerful as well. Response times, and again, the company that we wanna contract with, Skydio, will come out and help us strategically map kinda where the best, most optimal radius for these drones are to give us maximum coverage. I will tell you that two drones does not give us, a 100% coverage for the city. I think two drones gets us about two thirds of the city.
We would need three to get about 95% of the city if we really wanted to have full drone coverage in the entire city of Rochester, but we figured we'd start with two and that's what we got the funding for. And then just again those safer outcomes and that better real time situational awareness. This is, this is not just a police tool. We're we're kind of the owners and the champions of the project, but this very much is a city tool. I know that other entities, RPU is flying drones, for line management. There certainly is an emergency management component with this with damage assessment,
most recently on June 26. The storms, we could have used drones, for, you know, road closures, damage assessments, things like that. The drones today have incredible FLIR technology on them, for firefighting applications, including, like, being able to look at a house fire and see, certain hot spots within the house and giving real information for firefighters saying, Hey, you might wanna avoid this section of the house and etcetera in looking for people in there. Missing children I can't tell you enough how valuable this would be,
for missing children. And then I'll just finally end with, one of the main tools that law enforcement used to catch, Vance Bolter in the recent legislative shootings and homicide, was the use of a drone as he hunkered down in a field. They used drone technology to, help facilitate his capture. We have spoken with both, fire chief Pooler and emergency management, and their support of this project is kind of a citywide initiative as well. Some of the public safety concerns, because I know those are out there, and I'll just maybe address the right side of the slide here. It's just kind of a little bit of a mock up of the radius if
the drones were positioned in those particular locations. But again, some of the safety concerns and the privacy concerns that need to be addressed is we're not gonna use them for general surveillance. We have already been flying drones, as I said before, for several years. There are nine warrantless, exceptions to when you can fly a drone, as outlined by state statute. It's very similar to there's four exceptions when you can warrantlessly, and there's seven exceptions when you can search a vehicle. So all of that stuff is outlined in state statute, which we are in compliance with. The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension requires that we report on this annually, which we do in the drone deployment,
which we are in compliance with. One of the other things so, again, kind of what we're not gonna do with them, this is not gonna be, like, infringing on people's rights. This is going to be deployed, for crimes in progress, in particular violent crimes, to give us a real time situational awareness. We plan on creating kind of this data transparency portal that we can have online so that people can know when we're flying and how we're using, the drones. Again, as I alluded to the annual reporting for the BCA. One of the other things, that in talking with my team, and actually I think it was Captain Turk's idea,
is, you know, one of the ways we can safeguard some of this privacy too is we can when the drone launches, instead of, you know, kind of having the camera at a 45 degree angle, kind of videotaping its route, we can point the camera up until it gets to the location that it's supposed to be at. Again, safeguarding some of that, data collection piece that we're that we're trying to avoid. And then just, bullet point five, this is actually outlined in state statute. I think that was one of the council members' questions in reference to, why does it take seven days to delete data? Our goal would be to delete it earlier.
The way the statute is written is it's, all the non criminal data is to be deleted as soon as possible, no later than seven days. So that's that's the language that we adopted, and put into, into our policy and into this presentation. And then obviously we're balancing that, with responsible airspace use. Obviously, we have, Mayo Clinic, helicopters coming through the area, and so we've had discussions, with them as well of what this looks like. Obviously, Mayo is in support of this. They're very excited, as I believe they have plans for use of drones in the future. And so they're very excited to kinda,
learn from our pilot project here as well. And so what we're looking at here in the request that I have, or the request for council action that we have, is you've already approved the, the application for the grant. We've been awarded the grant. I ask that you prove the funding, that we can take the funding in and actually execute a contract. The nice thing is Skydio Company is separate from Axon, but there is a partnership there, so we can actually just kinda piggyback this contract into our Axon contract as well. One of the things that I think was very wise that fell into place is
the fact that this is a five year pilot project. I know I understand that's a long time, but actually the five years really kinda lines up very nicely when our Axon contract is gonna expire anyways, and we'll have the discussion then. And by then, I hope to have proved the value of this program. If the value is not there, then then we won't, we won't re up the contract. But all the technology, that we have with Axon, including this, will have to be reevaluated in 02/1930. So I will stand for any questions, I guess. Thank you,
chief. Great presentation and, just yeah. Exciting exciting ventures. My question has to do with the staffing of the drones or the operating and monitoring. Does that entail additional staff on your part? That's a great question, council president. Thank you. We're going to use a crawl, walk, run approach. And I probably should have thrown a slide in there. This capability is probably not going to start out as 20
Slow walk it, build it out for a set of days with the staffing that we have. We are going to appoint and take one officer that we have and make them point so that there's ownership of this project, build, buy and champion this initiative within the organization. We have already inquired some of our dispatchers are interested in becoming drone pilots. I would welcome, dare I say, even some firefighters as drone pilots. So I welcome that partnership as well. But, again, we have 15 pilots. We're building out our pilot pool.
The nice thing about this program versus what we do today, right, so again, as I said before, today, we're still launching drones. We did launch the drone on the most recent homicide that we had, on July 3. The difference is the officer had to drive to a safe location, get a spotter, launch the drone, and it was very time intensive and resource intensive. This will actually save us on resources where, a detective working, the drone can auto launch. The detective can pick it up from their desk and actually fly it from their desk, or from or a dispatcher could pick it up and fly it from their console
or whatever. So we don't have a 100% of the staffing model built out. Again, we're gonna start small and then expand it. There's also an opportunity to perhaps hire retired police officers that are already drone pilots as seasonal part time temp employees in the future. That's an idea. And then the staffing model utilizing on duty patrol officers that are just saying, hey. Today, you're flying the drone, and you're taking a shift as the drone pilot in kind of a real time crime center. Thank you. Council member Wahl. Thank you. Chief Franklin, Chula Vista is about twice as big as us in population,
about the same size in terms of square miles. In their case study, they, sent drones out almost 10 times a day. Can you imagine us sending out five times a day? That's a great question. Again, we would, we'd follow those nine warrantless exceptions on when we when we would launch the drones. We recently attended a Benchmark Cities conference, with other agencies that are launching drones. I think there's an agency with other agencies that are launching drones. I think there's an agency in Texas that was doing about eight to 10 a day. I would suspect it's going to be, in that range of five to seven times a day.
I can't speak for certain, but, we're fairly busy. Councilmember Palmer. Thank you. On 40 First Street, you have a camera center. Is is that still there? Correct. So would you not use that for your drones to to to follow those there? Sure. Council member, thanks for the question. Yes. So we still have the kind of real time crime center video monitoring room. We would use that, primarily when we wanna maybe have, like, dedicated hours. So let's say example, we did some studies on when we have calls calls for service and the best
times of day to to staff. And so there's been a lot of data collection, done. So an example would be Friday night from 5PM to 3AM. And we have a 100% dedicated pilot that could be sitting in that room ready ready to go to to fly, watching the calls come in, making sure one meets the criteria, and deploy the drone. If if if I remember from from presentation there, all of our officers have cameras and all the supervisors can go into those cameras and see real time data right now.
Is that correct? That's correct. And and one of the reasons for that is for safety of the officers and also safety of the public, but more for the officers that they can, hey. Look at this or are you okay? It it it might kinda following that. That's correct. One, opportunity with this particular, drone program is that we're adopting a new piece of software that gives us a dashboard of a map of the city. And with that, it will actually bring in you can pull in the officer's body camera, their squad car camera,
and the drones will actually show up also on the screen at the same time. So as somebody working in the center flying it, but as supervisors in the field or others, we can draw kind of a map or a a square or something or a circle around all of those three things like a a squad car, body camera, and the drone, and it'll instantaneously put them all up on a dashboard and we can watch all of those things happening in real time all all at the same time. So there's significant information gathering and decision making capabilities that this system and the corresponding software that's gonna allow
us to get some very, strong situational awareness for for response. So so in the public, you don't really have an expectation of privacy, do you? Not when you're just out in general kind of, you know, walking around in public areas. And and we have quite a few cameras that you can look at at any one time now, fixed cameras. Correct? Correct. You also can go to someone's house and say, I know you have a camera. Can we look at your your your feed? And we do that for for, efficiency? Correct. I mean, many cases now obviously, it's well known people have,
you know, camera systems in their homes. And so when we're doing investigating and canvassing an area after a crime has taken place, we will start knocking on doors asking if people have cameras footages available that they're willing to provide to us. Okay. And I had that experience with the sheriff's department. There was a death in a a dead body, and and they wanted to see it to see if they could track the car. So I thought that was pretty efficient. The the question I have for the chief, since you're the money person and miss you know, captain Turk's not, just two? Why not get three, do 95% and do this right the first time?
I appreciate that question, Councilmember. We felt that two was the more judicious approach when going for the grant. I think we felt if we went for three that it would have priced us out of competition. And so to really get us to a point where we could zero cost, zero budget levy increase to the city, we asked we only asked for two budget levy increase to the city, we asked we only asked for two. We we did price it out at three and and looked at it and just said, it looks a little steep to ask for. Do you remember ballpark number what the third one was? So I mean, if you divide it out, it's about it's about $50,000
a drone per year over five years. Okay. Thank you. Council member Keane. Yeah. Some of my questions were answered and I know they're difficult. Like council member Wall looking at, like, number of times it happens. Part of that is whatever we want to use them for. Right? When you talk about priority one, priority two, priority three, that and that's gonna be the judgement. And I've had the tour with, with your your team about the, all the other cameras both, that that thing. But I'm still having an operational trouble thinking that what would who's the decision maker that says this is a drone opportunity as opposed is that
a dispatcher? Is that a, you know, I don't see how it works. Yeah. So dispatch is a pretty complex environment where calls are given different priorities, obviously in progress, violent calls for service versus maybe priority two where a person had just left the scene and so the scene is a little bit stabilized and all the way down to priority three and four where four would just be, hey, I got home from the weekend and my garage was burglarized. Obviously, we wouldn't launch on those, but, we'd we'd be primarily launching on on priority ones and twos where we're actually In
process. In progress, certain violent certainly violent crimes for service, in in progress stuff. And that would be the the dispatch call to say say this is a thing or is this a, a duty officer? I I'm not Yeah. So there'd be a whole protocol put in place that, we'd work with dispatch on pushing the button for auto launching, for the calls. And there's a whole CAD integration so that basically the CAD system communicates with the drone to tell it where to go based on the incoming call for service. And I think you're you're touching on a little bit of a point, if I could maybe digress for just a quick second.
I mean, if you think about how 911 calls for service actually work, you know, the the crime happens or the incident happens, it takes, you know, sixty thirty to sixty seconds for somebody even to dial 911. The dispatcher's gotta type in all the data. And and so we're always why this is so important and and why I'm so excited about this is it's it it gets us to the scene that much quicker to give us real time information when we're already behind the curve just based on how life works in the whole reporting system.
Okay. Alright. The other one, again, I appreciate the getting the grant and maybe able to do this out. I understand the five year thing, but I did look out in 02/1930, and you're gonna we're gonna come upon this Accent contract. And like so many of these things, these are new, and very helpful technologies, but they're all additive. I haven't seen one yet that we're gonna do that's actually productive and it reduces, either staffing or other technology or reduces the number of units. Where do the do any of these things come with the idea of making things
more efficient as opposed to, you know, adding to the capability? Yeah. So that's a great question. I think I'm gonna answer that in two different ways. I I think that's the challenge for law enforcement right now. It's actually a discussion I've had with the CEOs of Axon, saying you guys are innovating this technology faster than law enforcement can actually adopt it, number one. Number two is you're kind of pricing us out of the market here, and it's coming so fast and furious. Where law enforcement is today, it's it's super exciting but also somewhat scary.
Where law enforcement is today, is is I equate it to, like, the the dial up era. And you're gonna about to see an s curve of technology, this wave of technology that's about to hit public safety, government here. What law enforcement looks like today is not what it's gonna look like in five years. And so, it's up to us, like you're saying, to balance what technology do we really want and need that's really gonna make for the more efficient and effective officer. And I can tell you we are doing those calculations. One of the approvals that you guys have made in the past was the use of the body worn cameras and the AI technology for report writing.
We are finding that there is a cost benefit analysis that we're saving about twenty minutes to twenty five minutes per report. The officer excuse me, the officer has a net gain of twenty five minutes back of his time savings on reports. Now we have not quantified that into, well, can I, you know, can I cut cops? But, you know, we're trying to be judicious about that and balancing our asks with all the other city asks as well. An example of that is we only ask for one additional cop in this 2026 budget and that's for an issue that is really emerging and that's some of the
CSAM, child sexual assault material stuff that's really kind of peaking, if you will. And so again, we're judicious in our asks, but we are doing those internal evaluations of how do we build out the more effective and efficient police officer for the future. I will also say that, we've been a little bit judicious on what we've come and asked this council for. I know the mayor had the opportunity to go out to Axon and look at some of the technology. There's There's some stuff out there that I want, I'm I'm telling you, but, that that I haven't come asking for yet.
But it's because I understand that we have to balance that. And those discussions that we're having internally is, do we really like, we can only one of my concerns, we can only adopt technology so quickly. Can we as an organization even even adopt, like, implement this to to leverage the full efficiencies? And so we're having those conversations and we're weighing those, I appreciate having the discussion. I remember the thing with the report writing and I didn't view that as something that we're gonna save officers. To me, that was a really important job, satisfaction thing because that was one of the lowest Yeah. Satisfaction things on our officers. So and I think that's a valid thing for us to invest in.
But but I'm also watching how much, you know, the the old holdups at the liquor stores just don't happen anymore. There's no policing has dramatically changed. But the only thing I see in this meeting is where we're gonna get involved in something new as opposed to we're gonna do less of something else. And so I'm I'm watching for that. And, apparently, I'm glad to hear that you're watching for it too. Council member Miller. Thanks for the presentation. I'm glad that some data elements have come up, and I'll I'll just echo what I I think council member Keane was getting to, what sort of regular reporting we might expect out of this.
I see the pilot, data from both Chula Vista and in here. Like, how how can we expect to receive updated information about where this is engaged, what what savings or what efficiencies it's building? Yeah. So as far as, like, the deployment and the use, again, we plan on using that transparency portal to really communicate that as our forward facing, communication methodology. And, again, we're gonna continue to do that, internal analysis of of of what this is saving us or how this is making us more efficient. And quite frankly, to be really honest with you,
I think it's going to be in the stories. I think that the proof is going to be in the pudding. And And from a police chief perspective, knowing that visceral, physiological, feeling that police officers have going to a shots fired call and then being able to go, Okay, it's not shots fired. I can relax a little bit. I don't know how to put a price tag on that. I I really don't. And and, but I know that there's a value to that. Sure. Well, and I also appreciate that the, the portal seems to be community facing too. So building trust that these are being used in a very narrow set of high
priority calls. And I really hope that that can be a priority to to proactively communicate to the community what this program does. And we're obviously, you know, making this decision, but helping us to to make the case with the community of of what additional public safety this builds and and other aspects of how it's being used. So people don't I mean, I'm sure people will post on Facebook, drones are flying around. Right? But just however we can proactively, make that case to the community. I I I did have another question about safety and just maybe technology. Obviously, Rochester is in a unique place with Mayo Clinic.
Lots of emergent, helicopters flying into through downtown. What sort of safety mechanisms are in place, or how does these at different heights, or how how might we think about these with other things in the airspace? Sure. I'll go ahead and touch on it. And in the case I miss something, just, you know, one of one of the drone pilots is here tonight. Detective Alex Kendrick is in the back right here. And so what we've been doing right now is leading up to this is we wanna be as prepared as possible. And so when we fly it, we're coordinating and calling Mayo Clinic's dispatch center that runs the helicopters in and out
of Rochester, including visiting ones. And so we actually set up a radio communications link between the pilot, our drone pilot, and their comm center. So they will call and give us a heads up and say, either we're taking off or there's a helicopter approaching from the Northwest. And then as they've had the other FAA training, they know to bring it in, land it, allow the preference, I mean, the priority, I should say, of that medical evac helicopter to come in or just even other aircraft, manned aircraft in the area, they get a that gets a priority. So, the the training that goes in,
all the pilots have to be certified, by the FAA. And so there's a of in place for a pilot just to take control and command. So we just had a meeting with, last week with Mayo Clinic's, helicopter, staff, and we further refined the communications. Matter of fact, we established a now very dedicated, radio channel that will be just between Mayo's dispatch center and our pilots, so we have constant communication all the time. So we're in active talks with them all the time to make sure that we will not conflict with, air air traffic. Last question. For I appreciate the
the anchoring to state statute why, seven days is the window. How how is that video access controlled internally? Right? Who has access to video footage of noncriminal? Right? How can people feel reassured? Yeah. So that's a great question actually and this dovetails into a previous decision that you made in council when we switched to the Axon RMS system. Because we are on Axon, actually this video was uploaded in something called Axon Evidence and it's automatically classified as, drone or UAV footage and so it is actually auto set to delete.
If nothing else, it is set to auto set delete out of our system after seven days. But I can tell you that we will our records department will do it sooner if possible, but I think that's a source of strength, for being on Axon RMS I'm sorry, I used the acronym. The records management system that we're currently on, that's a source of strength. And you have access records of, like, who's engaging with the video, who's accessing it, that history while it's stored? All of that is 100% tracked, yes. Thanks. Mayor Norton? Well, a couple of things.
One, the tour I had of Axon recently was quite eye opening. It's not in, you know, I work with the police department often, but it's not often that I get to try a taser. And just so you know, I hit the target in the chest and the thigh and put him out, so beware if I ever have a taser in my hand. It was actually quite an interesting, experience. They also have state of the art, as has been described, records management and it's mind boggling what they can do. I do worry a little bit about the escalating costs of this stuff and I
think that's something that we've talked about. We have find a way to manage that, take what is good and works and we have five years in this instance to figure out if this is really gonna make it better or not. I did wanna know, if you could talk about when when you use the drone and you are capturing what's happening on the ground and charges are filed or an arrest is made and you put that information into the document and say, don't erase this in seven days, is that document,
the video, usable in a court in a court of law? Yeah. So that's a great question. The short answer is yes. In in all of that, police, it's it's classified as police data under Minnesota state statute. So all of those falls into the same governing rules. It's not dissimilar to, as Captain Turk says, we have officers with body worn cameras, so there's video footage there. We have squad camera videos. I think there's five different cameras in every squad car, so there's multiple cameras in squad cars. So all of that, this would just be another component of video, that would fall under that governing management under the state statute.
Yeah. And I appreciate that. I think when you can get to the scene that quickly, and you're talking about two minutes, very short period of time, and you can get that high level view, it would make making your case easier because it takes a while for the officers to get there. You already have some of it set up so then it all feeds it together for that, hopefully, solid case that you can report. So, I really appreciate that and I, I think I I do think I I appreciate the points that were made about collecting data, giving us feedback as we go. I think that'll be really helpful, over the course of the next five years and then managing the budgets,
with what works, what doesn't, what's a fun toy, and what's really making a difference in, catching the bad guys, if you will. So thank you. Is there a motion on this item? Council Member Palmer? I'll make a motion adopting resolutions supporting the acceptance of the quote from Exxon for purchase of two drones and related equipment, hardware, software and services Councilmember Keane. Any more to add, Councilmember Palmer? Just a little bit. In your conversation, and I know that you're trying to get us to buy into this, but I really want to see a report on how often we use it with
the fire department and how often we use it just for the police because I think, you know, we can always charge them then for for using the phone. And and and I think that that might be The answer to that is I would welcome the partnership, sir, for a third row. I know you're big on partnership and I appreciate it. Point of order, it's all tax levy. I think for me the number one thing is just safety of our officers and and what that brings and efficiencies from from the report. So I'm I'm glad that, we're gonna do this. Thank you. Thank you. Any further discussion? Clerk Queso, please call the roll.
Council member Keane? Aye. Council member Miller? Aye. Council member Wall? Aye. Council member Fredericks? Aye. Council member Palmer? Aye. Council member Doreen? Aye. Council president Schubert. Aye. Motion carries seven to zero. Thank you, counsel. Thank you, chief. Moving on to H 3, which is local designation for Central Park as a historic landmark. Mayor Norton. Thank you all. I most of the information and history, was shared in the report narrative about Rochester's very first park.
And you had some really great, public comments that have more history than even I provided that was fun as well. So, it's a simple ask. I'm asking that the Central Park be put on the, Heritage Preservation's list of potential landmarks and asking them to prioritize, looking at this and, then they will come back with their recommendation at that point. So I'm not asking for your decision. I'm just asking for you to, put this on the consideration by the HPC. Thank you, mayor. I guess I have a question. So if we do,
then give HPC the authority to put it on their list? What is their process? Will they go through an evaluation? And what will that look like? Thank you for the question. So if it would end up being city teammates, it would probably do most of that evaluation and kind of going through our process of looking at historic significance and the period of significance and the historic integrity and do that analysis and share that with the Heritage Preservation Commission for them to make a recommendation to move that forward. We do that in two phases,
like a phase one, which we generally, do a briefer one, making sure that it meets some of those criteria and then kind of doing a phase two, which is really documentation of all of that information and putting together a report, and that's usually what comes before council. So, miss Wood Woodward, do do you have a sense for if a council tonight does, move ahead with this, what kind of timeline and what when would it come back to us? When would you expect it might come back to us? The phase one should be fairly quick to do that part.
I would say the phase two is probably gonna take about thirty hours or so, and I think, our heritage preservation coordinator, she spends about twenty hours a week on urban design and twenty hours on heritage preservation, so we would just prioritize that work. The only other thing that we would have to prioritize above doing that work is any applications that come forward to make sure that they're kind of going through. If somebody is doing something to their property that needs to be reviewed, we would prioritize that, but then we would, kind of move forward with doing this analysis. So we're looking I I guess where I'm kinda going is I know that there
is a statue that is coming, and, and so how what's the time frame for the statue and what's the potential time frame for a historic site? I can speak to the statue portion. We have because someone has asked earlier, I know you've been given the information, but for the record, the statute has now been fully paid for. We are raising funds for the shipping yet. I think we're there or very close, to being able to have that and we do have a little bit of issue
with tariffs and some other stuff that we may have to pay that was unexpected. So we're just kind of holding our breath, on that at this point. The hope was that this would be put in this fall. The Rotary Club donated money for the, area and the park and the Parks Department has put in some funds for that as well and the hope was we could get it in before the snow flies this year, because the Rotary was doing this as part of their one hundred year anniversary. So, that was the hope. If for some reason it doesn't look like the phase one is not looking very positive, you know, we can stop and think about this.
What I don't want to do is invest the time and money in putting a, you know, know, dollars 80,000 statue in a park and then having the park be not utilized you know, torn down for a building, right? I'm hoping to preserve the park so that, we are assured that the statue, the history, museum, the heritage museum with the home there and the fountain and all the other wonderful amenities in there including, as Councilmember Palmer, noted, the broken clock that we need to have fixed, that all those things will remain in place and be protected with a local historic preservation designation.
So, miss Woodward, is will those, come together in, prospectively? Yeah. I mean, I think we can complete a phase one in the next couple of weeks and provide an update to city council. And then if if there is that information, then we could proceed with that phase two, and probably provide a bit of a better timeline at that time once we kind of evaluate what what needs to be documented. Thank you. Council member Palmer. Yeah. I have, a logistics question. I think we asked this one time before with Soldiers Field and Silver Lake, Park when we, made those historic. Can't the City Council just make it historic tonight and not have to waste,
staff time in looking at this? I think one of the speakers said this is the first park in Rochester and it's obviously historic. And is there really I mean, I'm assuming we'd get a 07:00 vote to to do it tonight. So within the UDC, there is a process outlined that we have to follow to landmark anything, any properties. And so that is an ordinance that we need to follow. And that includes the review by HPC and then coming back before city council and includes public hearings. Well, that's disappointing because, I mean, it this is like one of the speakers said, this is a no brainer. So,
okay. I'm disappointed in that. Council member Miller. Just a question as a new council member. How does HBC navigate a priority of this potential landmark list? I mean, is this bumping other things? Or the priority is kind you know, HPC identifies a number of things that they've, wanna kind of see work being done from teammates. And so if this is kind of prioritized with council, we will take that to the next HPC meeting and share that with them and get some feedback, but also prioritize that work. I think we really haven't seen that before, so we'll see, and we'll have that conversation with the HPC.
Okay. I just wanna make sure, like, we're giving them leeway to do their work too. I I think this is a great project. I I just don't really understand the interaction of, how we should be interacting with HPC and directing reprioritization of what I would assume should have some input from them of what they wanna work on in a given year. Does that happen? There is, but it there's also an opportunity, and I think we kind of outlined it in the UDC, that council can also provide recommendations for HPC to undertake certain work. So I think this falls within that as as something that they'd like that you would like to see as a body,
and we would share that with HPC and reprioritize some of that other work. Okay. Great. Thanks. Council member Wahl. I think mister Kriesel already has an example for all eight criteria on the back of an an envelope that you give us and just have it all done. Thank you, John. Is there, council member, Keen? I I guess I'll just again, I I think I know where this is going, but I just wanna ask if there's no staff recommendation on here. Is there any concern at staff side that this is, like, changing priorities or this is the right way to go about it or anything you
wanna add to the process? I I think we've included a bit of that process in the UDC where, the this body can provide a recommendation to HBC to kind of undertake that work. I think this is the first time since, in my experience, it's happened here, but I think we outlined that process in the UDC for a reason to give that feedback to HPC from this body. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Council member Palmer. Yeah. I'll make the motion to approve, initiating the evaluation of Central Park as a local historic landmark and asking the Historic Preservation Commission to prioritize its review for,
designation. Second. Second it. Moved by council member Palmer, seconded by council member Miller. It that's what I heard first. He he wasn't necessarily the loudest, but he was first. This microphone is louder than that one. So, any further discussion? Clerk Quaiso, please call the roll. Council member Keane? Aye. Council member Miller? Aye. Council member Wall? Aye. Council member Fredericks? Aye. Council member Palmer? Aye. Council member Dorring? Aye. Council president Schubert? Aye. Motion carries seven zero.
Thank you. Moving on, we have no council council initiated actions, no ordinance first readings, we have an ordinance second reading. Mr. Spindler, Craig, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. President. Item K1, an ordinance annexing to the City Of Rochester approximately 33.56 acres of land located north and east of the intersection of Fiftieth Avenue NW and Valley High Road NW. Move approval. Second. Moved by, Council Member Keane and seconded by Council Member Palmer.
Clerk Caso, please call the roll. Council Member Keane? Aye. Council member Miller? Aye. Council member Wall? Aye. Council member Fredericks? Aye. Council member Palmer? Aye. Council member Dohring? Aye. Council president Schubert? Aye. Motion carries seven zero. No tabled items. No other business that I have received. Council member Miller. Just to bring up the the point about the LimeScooters, could we perhaps expect an update on how the virtual parking zones and other even
as a written update? And and I've experienced that, and I appreciate the access concerns. I would just love to know how that's being managed. Thank you. Council member Doring. I I just wanted to take a moment to thank, city team teammates and and Oh, you froze. It's Oh, can you hear me now? Yes. We can. Yeah. Just wanna say thank you to the city teammates and city council, members, to mayor Norton, to, city administrator Zellms, to everyone who has reached out during this, recent, little mishap. Thank you for the parks department for making it easily accessible for emergency personnel to
reach, fallen cyclists on bike paths. Thank you to my new friend Carl who called emergency personnel for me, and I look forward to joining you back in the council chamber soon. Thank you, council member, and get well soon. With that, is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Councilmember King, do you have other business? Oh, I'm sorry. So, moved by Councilmember Walls, seconded by Councilmember Miller. Seeing no indication of opposition, the motion passes by unanimous consent.
We are adjourned.