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 for all. Welcome, everybody, to the 05/19/2025 City Council meeting. We begin every meeting with the open comment period. This is an opportunity for anyone from the public to speak on items on which we will not be taking public testimony during a public hearing later this in the
agenda. Each person has up to two minutes to speak for a total of twenty minutes. I will be keeping track of time through a few methods. First, the timer clock up here, the the one in red, and then the stoplight here. And so please know that I may need to cut you off. Because of the limited time, we wanna be sure that others have an opportunity to speak. And I'd also request that each speaker be concise to allow more people to speak during the designated time. Participants are further encouraged to limit comments generally to topics that are within the scope
and jurisdiction of the council's ability to affect policy. Council members and staff do not respond to your comments during public comment, but will instead follow-up on any specific requests separately. If you have any materials to share with the council, you may give them to the city clerk's office over here to distribute. And at this time, you will be invited up to speak in the order of which you signed up. First on our list is Tom Schmidt. Welcome, and you have two minutes. Tim.
I'm sorry. Hit a button until it turns green. There you got it. Better? Okay. Yes. Alright. I'd like to thank the the council for allowing the opportunity to speak. Specifically, I'd like to reference agenda item number f eight, which is a request for an extension of travel budget from by some of the council members. I would ask that, this item be given, extra consideration. The council, council members are given a budget for the travel and asking for an extension is going over the budget. And city, city departments and all of us, you know,
we can't go over budgets. So, ask the council, kind of as a leadership role, keep themselves within the budget. And as such, a full f eight discussion, hopefully denial and as a way as a way of kind of, enforcing, discipline, in terms of budget manager by the the something the council members can do personally. Alright. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next up, we have, Lorice Mortensen. I probably messed up your first name there. Larissa. Larissa. Okay. I think it's already on. Alright. Alright. Good evening, city council.
I'm a member of three nineteen, and I'm here in support of, my part time library coworkers as well as the community, who relies on these services that the same coworkers, work hard to provide. As a reminder from the last open comment period, it has been projected that the library will be over budget in their part time hours, which jeopardizes these city workers' total hours and their jobs as a whole. These are people who every day are working hard to get the books and other materials in the hands of library users, community members, and your constituents.
We are and, they are integral to library operations and losing them would be felt. We are a community with many diverse backgrounds. The city workforce should also reflect this diversity. Many folks who are most at risk of their hours being are people with disabilities, people with 2SLGBTQIA plus identities, and people of color. Losing their perspectives and labor will not help make the city more welcoming to all. Finally, at a time when our community wants more from the library and when the city
considers itself a community focused organization, I feel strongly that allowing these hours to be cut is not the solution. Part time hours are vital, and I want solutions that allow the city to help the community more and not less. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next up, we have Linda Smith. Hello. Okay. I was here last month talking about the parking meters. So they switched them. You know, they were, sixty minutes, I think it was or no. It was thirty minutes. Well, now they switched them to three hours. Three hours, way too much. There's especially now,
there's all that construction they're doing, they're parking in front of our businesses. Like, the people that are Nicholson painting, I went and talked to him, and he said, well, if they park in the Marriott, parking ramp, he's gonna charge them $30 a day. I said, yeah. But these are for our customers, not for, you know, working for businesses downtown. You know? And and and that's what I mean, I've been down here twenty four years and never seen I mean, people are so unhappy. People that come here from all all over the world. I mean, I got people that I sell glasses to, you know,
from the other country, and they said they've never seen a city change so much. You know? And and there's nothing for them to do between their, appointments and their they are very, very unhappy. And, And, you know, and everywhere we go, there is, you know, construction and nowhere to park. I mean, it's just, I mean, I love being downtown, but, you know, are they trying to get us business to go out of downtown? I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. I mean, they just, you know, I I and then I gotta show people how to use the meters, how to put their money in.
They come and ask me if I have change. I mean, you know, do you don't you think three hours is too much? I mean, you know, people that are working downtown, all they gotta do is come and put more money in, and then they can go back to work. I mean, that's I mean, I pay hundred and $82 for parking in. It started out at $77 20 4 years ago, but now it's $1.82 a month for my parking spot. But, I mean, you know, I love Mayo Clinic, you know, and I love everything. But this year, I mean, things are not good. And they tell me that they're gonna go for another five years before it's gonna
be able to, you know, have, you know, everything done. Thank you, miss Smith. Thanks. Thank you. Next up, we have Michael Wojciech. Good evening, council members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm actually here as part of my role in coordinating the, Med City Meander, which will be going on this next weekend. It's our second year of doing the event. We had about 800 folks show up the first year and we're expecting a similar turnout. It really does a great job of, showcasing the community in its best light. And what I really wanted to point out is, you might have heard a rumor there's some construction going on around town and,
we had to deal with no less than, like, eight eight to 10 different obstacles and detours. So I was stressing out a little bit because all three underpasses of US 14 happened to be closed simultaneously a few days ago. And just working throughout the process with your team, I just wanna commend them on the, good work that they did in trying to come up with a route. And we did, we did come up with a route that we're gonna be able to keep people safe. It's, not as scenic as sometimes we would like, but it's gonna work out. And, in particular, I'd like to recognize, Kelly Peterson from the Public Works Department and Ben Bolt from, Parks.
It's just really, going the extra mile to, make sure that our folks are gonna enjoy the event. We're gonna show the city in its best possible light, and folks are gonna be safe. And I think that, having folks feel safe on their bicycle and learning how to get around the community is especially valuable now when it's just a great alternative to, driving into the downtown. So, I wanted to recognize the teammates since I was here for other stuff anyways, and thank you for all the support for the event. Thank you. Next up, we have, mister Stack who, unfortunately, I cannot allow you to speak today because you spoke at our last council meeting.
So, I apologize for that. And next up is Audrey Gomez. Hello? I'm Adri Gomez representing ATU. These are words from a driver that quit on Friday. How would you like to do everything you were trained to do, to set up for a turn, be out in the intersection blocking the eastbound lane, get clipped by an angry driver, driving too fast for conditions from the east in the westbound lane, clip my bike rack, get out of his vehicle and say hurtful things, have to bite your tongue because you're a public sector employee who has to remain
professional, have managers come on the scene to tell me and the officer it was my fault, Tell the other driver, don't worry. It was our driver's fault. We have very good insurance, and everything will be paid for. Get a citation for failure to failure to yield to oncoming traffic and get escorted in for a drug and alcohol test without a full and thorough investigation. The same statute that he was cited for has wording in it to protect what
he was trained to do so, and he did. We have got to get back to working together to get the routes covered. They need to bring our union representative back. It's the only way the drivers are gonna feel comfortable and safe a little, I guess, with this company to work. We're not they're not even getting paid. We're not getting paid our overtime. Nobody wants to step up. We need our union representative back. We can help, to accomplish successful and reliable transportation.
We can help. Please just let us help you. We know the drill. Just let us help you, please. Thank you. Thank you, miss Gomez. That, concludes our public comment period. Moving on to our, to call the order. Call I will call the meeting to order and ask, Clerk Casel to 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. Moving on to our administrator's report. Deputy administrator Parrish has, incorporated a few items into the mayor's report. So we'll move on to, the acting mayor's report. And, mayor Norton has, provided me with a few items to share this evening. So first up, the Southeast Minnesota Peace Officers Memorial program is taking place right now, this evening at 6PM at Christ United Methodist Church.
The memorial program is the first program at the new, memorial site at Soldier's Field. The program is the last in a series of events and activities in recognition of National Police Week and National Peace Officers, Peace Officers national peace officers memorial day, which was May 15, a time to honor law enforcement officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty for the safety and protection of others. You may have noticed the flags lining the entrance of the Rochester Police Department,
which served as a reminder of this special week. And, we also want to, recognize, before, the captain here, we wanna recognize and pay pay special tribute to the officers, that Rochester has lost in the line of duty over the years. They include reserve officer William Freitag, officer Eugene Sutton, sergeant Lloyd Feind, and officer Floyd Halley, who all died while serving the Rochester community. Next up, we have,
Captain Jennifer Hodgman. Congratulations to congratulations are in order to Captain Hodgman from the Rochester Police Department. She recently became the first woman at RPD promoted to captain and is now leading the community services division, which is dedicated to fostering relationships in the community to solve problems and reduce crime. Captain Hodgman also recently graduated from the highly selective FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia. The ten week academy focuses on advanced communication,
leadership, and fitness training. Captain Hodg is one of only a few from RPD and the first woman from RPD to graduate from this elite, academy. And, unfortunately, I don't think captain Hodgman is here tonight, but, congratulations are in order. Next up, we have this May. It the city celebrates the contributions of our community development, public works, and historic preservation teams. During Building Safety Month, we recognize those who ensure our homes and workplaces are safe,
efficient, and accessible. Historic Preservation Month honors those who protect Rochester's historic places and fosters foster community through the power of place. And during National Public Works Week, we thank the team who who maintain the infrastructure that keep our city running. To mark these occasions, the city dome light was green on May 14 and will shine orange on May 21 and maroon on May 30. And next up,
May, we celebrated municipal clerks week. So congratulations to, to clerk Cassel and her team over here. And, finally, on the acting mayor's report, the mayor wants to remind members of the community that we have two vacancies on the board of appeals that she, has recommendations to fill and one rec one recommendation for a, commissioner slot on the Historic Preservation Commission and two park board,
positions. One for Ward 3 and and Ward 4. And that concludes the acting mayor's report. I keep saying acting mayor because I don't get to do that very often. So moving on to the order of the agenda. Are there any changes to the order of the agenda? Seeing none, is there a motion to approve the order of the agenda? So moved. Moved by council member Wall. Second. Seconded by council member Miller. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed say nay. Motion carries. Moving on to our consent agenda,
I have two pulled items from tonight's consent agenda. Council member Palmer has pulled items f F7 and F8. Are there any other pulled items? Seeing none, I'd invite a motion to approve and block items F1 through F6 and F9 through F21. So moved. Moved by Council Member Fredericks. Second. Seconded by Council Member, Keane. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Motion carries. Moving on to our public hearings.
We have three public hearings on our agenda this evening. And before I begin the public hearings, I just want to take a moment to clarify the process by which each hearing will happen. First staff will make a presentation. And then if there is an applicant, or applicant representative, they will have up to ten minutes to discuss their application. And then after that, I will open the public hearing. Public comment during public hearing hearings are, limited to five minutes of each.
And, again, encourage to, members of the public to keep comments brief, concise, and, not necessarily building on previous comp comments. And at that point, once everyone has their opportunity to speak, we will invite the applicant back up for a rebuttal. And then after that, council members will have an opportunity to ask questions of staff and the applicant, and, then we will move on to a motion. So with that, we will and there's a little bit of a change here. We have items g one and g two,
which are related to the same application. So we will hold one public hearing for items g two. But, council members, we will take two votes on, those items. So with that, I will turn it over to Community Development's Edward Capels to discuss the major land subdivision by North Rock Real Estate. Council president, council president, members of the council, Good evening. My name is Ed Capel with Mid Development. And tonight, I'll be presenting items G1 and G2. Item G1 is the first step in the process to subdivide 33.56
acres into 84 residential lots and two outlots. Development will take access from Fiftieth Avenue and Valley High Drive. Community Development recommends approval with 10 conditions. Item G2 is the annexation of the previously mentioned 33.56 acres. The site has an underlying land use of medium density residential along Valley High Road Northwest and low density residential to the north. Upon annexation of the property, it will be zoned R2 and R3 in accordance with the underlying land use. The planning commission recommends approval of both items. I'm here to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you. Any questions at this point? If not, I will invite the applicant up to, discuss the application. And, please reference both items, g one and g two, and, you have 10. Okay. Alright. Good evening, council president, council members. I'm Jeff Brown with Northrock Real Estate. I'm, working on the major land subdivision and annexation here. On both applications, we agree with the conditions, set forth by the, planning department and are here to answer any questions that you may have. So pretty straightforward. Alright.
We'll invite you back after the public hearing. At this at this point, I will open the public hearing. Is there anyone here who wishes to be heard on items g one and g two? This is a public hearing. Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. Seeing none, I will close the public hearing and invite the applicant back up for any closing comments that you may have. No closing comments. We're just, we've been active in this area for a while and recently acquired this project.
You know, we're following the land use plan that was, set forth for this property in 02/2022. And, we, yeah, we're just looking forward to bringing more, residential lots to the market initially and then have the two out lots for, potential commercial or, higher density residential down the road. So Thank you. Yeah. Questions, council members? Council member Keane? Question for staff. I I'm just procedurally, we're going to, do the land subdivision prior to the annexation. Can you just talk about why we would do them in the other order,
or is there a good reason here? Yeah. No. That that's a good question. The major land subdivision is really just the first step in the subdivision process. So it doesn't necessarily need to be within city limits. Once you get to the final plat, then the property would actually need to be within city limits because you're actually subdividing the property. This is more just a procedural step based on Minnesota state statute. Oh, okay. And so when we are here as a city council approving g one, it's really the county that's gonna update that, the the formal, legal documents of what is the property being subdivided? The subdivision process is a two step process,
the major lands division and then the final plat. The major lands division is just more conceptual in nature. Once you get to the final plat process, that's actually when the you're recording the plat and actually creating the lots. Okay. Thank you. Any further questions? Council members, you may be seated. Thank you. Is there a motion on item G1? Oh, I'm sorry. Council member Palmer, go ahead. I'll make a motion. Moved by Council member Palmer. Second. Seconded by Council member Fredericks. Any further discussion? Council member Palmer, go ahead. With the 10 conditions. With the 10 conditions.
Seeing no further comment oh, council member Wall, go ahead. I, commend North Rock Real Estate on, again, a very good project. I was at the neighborhood information meeting and the only one, that represented the public. I think that speaks of the trust that the community, has in North Rock. And they were kind enough to go through their entire presentation even though I was the only one. And I even ported in, from elsewhere. So thank you, Jeff. Thank you, council member. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, say aye. Aye.
Any opposed, say nay. Motion passes. Is there a motion on, item g two, the annexation? So moved. Moved by council member Palmer. Second. Seconded by council member Doring. Any further discussions? Council member Keane. Just a point of order that it is a two part motion. The yeah. G two is. G two. Yeah. Again, it's it's understood, but I just wanted to say it for the record. Okay. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Motion passes. Thank you. Moving on to Item G3,
which is a municipal consent hearing for the Broadway Avenue, South Trunk Highway 14 intersection, improvement project. And this will be presented by mister Dombrowski. Good evening, council president, members of the council. We're here tonight. This is something a bit unique. We don't do this very frequently, to conduct a municipal consent hearing for a MnDOT project within the city limits. The reasoning for tonight's consent hearing is due to a change in access for the proposed project, which is occurring at First Avenue Southeast.
Currently, there's a two way access. You can get in and out off the highway at First Avenue. The project will change that to a one way northbound. So you can get off the highway on the First Avenue, but you cannot exit back onto the highway. That's one of the major crash locations over the years. So part of the project includes cleaning that up, but the project also includes a number of other improvements as we think about complete streets and connecting people walking and biking, in and around this area and creating a much safer intersection. So we've been working with MnDOT for approximately two years on this more detailed design
layout. However, it goes back over five years as we started to think about what this intersection could improve to, when we began partnering with MnDOT. So tonight, we met with each of you in some briefing sessions in the last month or so to just kind of lay out this process and share where we're at with the project and the proposed improvements. And tonight is obviously the municipal consent hearing where MnDOT will act similar to an applicant like, any other public hearing. They're going to provide a more detailed presentation.
And then, obviously, we'll have you open up the public hearing and, myself and the MnDOT team will be available for questions afterward. And again, tonight is really you wouldn't have to take action tonight, but if you do take action on the layout, it's an approve or disapprove. You can't make changes, so you can't present changes to your fellow council members and motions. It's really just the layout as presented, as well as there's options for if you don't take action. As I laid out in the narrative, action needs to occur within ninety days of this evening's hearing.
Otherwise, if no action is taken, the layout is adopted. So we'll talk through that as you have questions after we move through the hearing. But first, we'll let, MnDOT make their presentation. So Tom Austin is here. He's the MnDOT project manager. Cindy Morgan is also here from the MnDOT team. And, we should have the slide deck loaded. Thank you. Are we ready to go with the slide deck? Yeah. We're here. Okay. Alright. Go ahead, and you have ten minutes. Sounds good. So just help me get a start on this here. There you go. Oh, there we go. Perfect.
Alright. Well, okay. So super, thank you to the council for having us here tonight and allowing us to present. I just wanted to say a quick introduction. Maybe a quick comment is that I'm I'm not probably gonna get through my whole presentation with ten minutes, but that's okay. We'll we'll get back to some of the details too. But I just wanna say thank you, and we're really here tonight in a very formal process, municipal consent. But I'd like to think that we'd be having this conversation and we would be having this conversation regardless of whether we're not we have municipal consent because, as Dylan pointed out, this has really been a collaborative effort since day one.
This isn't MnDOT's project, MnDOT's saying you're gonna do this or you're gonna do that. We've worked very closely with Dylan and the engineering staff in Rochester to find what we think is a good project that meets many different needs, as well as the stakeholders and the businesses and the community at large. So, with that said, thank you again for allowing me to be here. There we go. So I've got a quick agenda here. My name is Tom Austin. I'm the project manager with MnDOT. Municipal consent process, a little bit of the history. We'll talk about some project costs. If we have some time,
we'll look at some of the layout, and then we'll look at the schedule, and then go for go through some quick question some question time. So, the definition is up on the screen. It's a statute requirement. What kicks off, as Dale mentioned, is a change in access. If the project increases or decreases the through, the number of through lanes, in other words, increases or decreases the capacity of the highway, we need to come for municipal consent, or if the project requires, a permanent right of way acquisition. So as Dylan mentioned, we're here tonight because of the access, and we'll just keep going. It's kind of a It's very sensitive.
It's a little delayed. I get extra two minutes, okay? I have actually ten minutes. And then you will have five minutes after the public hearing as well, so Alright. So on March 24, we give a formal, request to the city for approval of the layout, and that was done on March 24. Within sixty days, we need to have this hearing that we're here tonight to do on the nineteenth of, May. And then, as Dylan mentioned, within ninety days, the city either needs to pass a resolution approving, disapproving, or doing nothing. So by August 17, we'll have a a decision in one way or another. What comes out of this is if the city council approves it,
we're good to go. We move into final design. If the city disapproves, we have a few different options. We could meet city conditions if there's something that we could do to accommodate. We could go through an appeals process that MnDOT has, or we can just go do another project somewhere else because there's a lot of needs. So that's an option as well. The city can take no action, and like Dylan said, after ninety days, the right in the wow, it's going all by itself now.
Okay. Project history, real quick. Pavement condition is an issue that we're seeing. Why are we here? Pavement condition, last overlay was in 02/2011. The pavement is in poor condition. We all know that from driving on it. The other issue is we have a forty year old signal out there. In 1985, the existing traffic signal was put in. It's at the end of its life. It's obsolete. It needs replacement. Intersection design. That intersection at 14 And Broadway was designed in the fifties and built in 1960. It's a high speed rural design. It's terrible. That's what we're seeing,
those big sweeping right turns. And as we see in the safety data, there's a 52 crashes in the last ten years at that intersection. Most all of them are associated with those sweeping right turns, the mounds, and we've seen, one pedestrian crash and I think four bike crashes. And that's really more indicative of the fact that the in the next note there is that the complete streets approach is needed. The existing pedestrian facilities are inadequate. There's limited access, there's limited opportunities to cross. There's only two marked crossings of Broadway and 14. And then the last thing is that the city will have some upgrades that'll happen
on Broadway with water main replacement as well. So Can I switch to water? You sure can. Thank you. There we go. So quick, project development history. As I mentioned, this has been a collaborative effort. This kind of snakes through, back in June, July of '20 '19, it was really the beginning of the scoping effort for the current project, and we have had dozens of meetings with the community stakeholders, the city, and various, advocacy groups trying to find and listen to what the needs of the community are, the needs of the roadway, and, I won't go through all those details,
but I do have some more information on that if you're interested that goes through, comprehensively some of that engagement. This is just what we learned as we did a survey on the project. Most people view the current intersection negatively, and yet we found that most people view the proposed design favorably. And that is really across all modes of transportation. There's a lot of information on that chart, but what it's telling us is if you look at the overall first column there, there's two columns of information, negative. Currently, 59 view the current design unfavorably, while proposed is viewed
negatively by only 26%. So then, if you look at it from a positive standpoint, 27 people 27% of the overall people view the intersection positively, while 43% view the intersection positively as what's proposed. So and then that's just through, all the various modes of transportation, and we see that across all modes. Now we're not, you know, everybody's not jumping up and down and saying we got everything that we wanted, but what it does tell you is that most people are satisfied with the design. This is going through what we heard as we did that engagement and what we
did. So MnDOT went out and we actually listened to the community, and we responded by adjusting our design based on what we learned. What we heard right out of the gate was get rid of those mounds, get rid of those free rights, those big sweeping free rights. So we designed smart channels and we'll look at them more when we look at the layout. What we heard from multiple people in the public was that existing left turns on Highway 14 are inadequate. We're seeing backups that flow that back up into the through lanes creating an unsafe condition. So we've added dual left turns, and we'll dig into that more in a minute to help address that.
Slower speeds. We went back as a design team and reduced our lane widths to 11 feet to slow that down, to feel constrained, got rid of the big wide shoulders, we're trying to reduce that roadway width, make it feel slower. We learned that Third Avenue makes it difficult getting into Sunnyside Avenue. 1 of the first renditions that we had of the design closed that intersection altogether with the cul de sac. In engaging with the community, we went back and learned, no, that's not gonna work for us. We need access. We found a good balance between providing that mobility and yet addressing the safety issue,
which is the exit of First Avenue, trying to cross all those lanes of traffic, jump into the left turn lane, and go south on Broadway. That's where the crashes were happening. I think we have a design that helps address that. Connectivity and pedestrians, we did a ton of work with enhancing the pedestrian facilities in the, in the project as well. And then the last one is the crossing distance of the highways, which, we'll talk about that. As we reduced those lane widths, got rid of those big shoulders, we really did help to reduce the overall width of the roadway. Project scope.
Okay. So we're doing a complete reconstruction of Highway 14 from Crossroads to Third, from the, Crossroads intersection at Hy Vee to Third Avenue, and then from the other Crossroads intersection on Broadway up to Ninth Street. And I've got a list of all the things we're doing, but the bottom line is the cost is about $19,500,000 for that. Now, the city's cost, which is obviously a big part of this conversation, we've got a nice list kind of breaking it all down by different areas. But roughly $5,700,000
is what the city's share of that $19,500,000 is. In addition to that 5.7, there's an 8% cost on top for engineering, which covers administration, inspection, surveying, and materials, those types of things. So that would be in addition to the 5.7. The other potential cost is, for contaminated materials, which is an ongoing investigation that we're having right now. The project team doesn't see that as a huge risk, but there is a potential that if there was contamination on the South Broad on the, yeah, the South Broadway portion of the project,
that would be an additional city cost to clean any of that up. So, the layout One minute. One minute. Right. Well, we won't get through all this, but in one minute, let's do it real quick. So the intersection itself, we're designing with what we call smart channels. We're bringing taking those free rides out, bringing them in, making it more of a traditional intersection. And the raised crosswalks. I think this is the first time on a trunk highway we've done those, accentuating the pedestrian importance of the intersection. That raises those crosswalks. You can kind of see that where it's like a speed table on those right turns. The other thing that I mentioned was the left turn lanes.
We're adding an extra left turn lane on Highway 14. That does not add capacity. It's like a pipe that's feeding a garden hose, that the amount of water that goes into that pipe is not increased because you have another exit for it. Okay? The Highway 14 capacity is not increasing. What's happening, what we're gaining with those left turn lanes is a more efficient intersection, which allows us to give more green time to Broadway, so we don't need dual lefts on Broadway. It allows us to give more green time to the pedestrians, therefore elevating their importance at the intersection to helping it make more safe.
Am I running out of time? Yes. And, mister Austin, you will have another five minutes after the public hearing. So Okay. That sounds good. Alright. At this point, I will now open the public hearing, and I will start with the, sign in sheet. And our first speaker is, Laurel Podolke Smith. And you will have five minutes. Thank you, council president Schoebring, esteemed council members. My name again is Laurel Podolke Smith, and I live at 3 Eleventh Avenue Southwest in the Park neighborhood. As you know,
I'm also an Olmsted County Commissioner representing District 1. And while the Broadway And Highway 14 intersection is in my district and I share constituents with many of you. I'm here this evening as a community member who has passed through the intersection countless times, including as a kid on my bike all summer, as a pedestrian, as a bicycle commuter, of course, as a motorist and as a community leader with increasing concerns about the safety,
high speeds, and accessibility of the intersection. Over my lifetime, I've the intersection become increasingly dangerous to all who pass through it. As you know, the intersection has seen over 150 vehicle crashes in the past ten years and is the single most dangerous intersection in the city. I'm concerned about what the next sixty years will look like. We lived with this intersection for sixty years. Do we want a new intersection we can just live with for another sixty years?
Or are we ready to prioritize the safety of all people over vehicle speed and traffic flow? Now is the time to do everything we can to maximize safety for pedestrians, children walking to school, elders, families with strollers, walk commuters, wheelchair users, bicyclists and people who simply require more time to cross an intersection. The Broadway and Highway 14 intersection sits in a dynamic and growing urban area that includes three schools: Soldiers Field Park,
Graham Park And Future Expo Center, the Farmers Market, the County Fair, the Seneca Property, and residential and commercial areas. The proposed intersection redesign is not for today alone. It's for the people who come after us, a future we can and can't imagine chiefly the addition of the second left turn lane. Chiefly the addition of the second left turn lane. The introduction of a second left turn lane would add about 10 feet to the crossing distance,
and it would likely increase vehicle speeds and make crossings more hazardous. On this basis, I urge you to deny municipal consent on the proposed intersection redesign and ask MnDOT to remove the additional left turn lanes. The addition of the second left turn lane is based on MnDOT's twenty year traffic predictions and not necessarily on the realities, priorities and the future vision of Rochester, which I hope is increasingly walkable, bikeable,
accessible, and a livable city. And I thank you for your time and attention. Thank you. Next up, we have Adam Busby. Good evening. Adam Busby, representing the representative for the ATU, ten o five. I'm gonna apologize. I'm not as educated on this subject as I usually like to try to be before I come here and speak. However, there are some current concerns with, a turn lane that will be dumped right into a future proposed, dedicated transit lane. When when these projects come come to place,
we we definitely need to think about public transit. We ask our drivers to drive in pretty difficult situations already. We don't need to add to it by dumping a bunch of traffic into a transit lane. It doesn't make any sense, especially for a town that, prioritizes public transit. I heard, the MnDOT representative speak about community engagement. And on these projects like this, that's gonna affect us, I mean, we would appreciate being involved in the conversation. We are the largest transit union in The U. S.
And Canada. So that's my spiel. We really need to start paying attention to transit. Let's not make it harder on our drivers. Let's make it easier on them. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Lee Schneider. Thank you, council president and council members. My name is Lee Schneider. I commute to work through this intersection by minivan and sometimes bike. And many families, including mine, bike through this intersection to get their own to our wonderful farmers market. In MnDOT's redesign of this intersection,
their stated goals are to reduce crashes and improve pedestrian crossings. The current design does improve some of these crossings as mentioned, which I really appreciate. However, for people walking or rolling across Highway 14, they have actually made it less safe. The additional left turn lanes widen the intersection, increasing the car speed through the intersection, making the intersection less safe for people driving as well as people using the intersection through the crosswalks. And then these also these unnecessary turn lanes will also increase the cost of the
project and the cost of the long term maintenance. My daughters wanted to ride their bikes to the farmer's market. We are lucky enough to live, close to the multi youth paths multi use path system, and we can ride on those paths all the way until we get to this intersection where they are understandably scared to cross the busy streets. And as their dad, so am I. Mayor Norton has dubbed 2025 the year about youth. Let's prioritize youth independent mobility in our street designs.
Please do not approve this intersection design without removing the unnecessary Highway 14 left turn lanes. And my friend, Shelly Rowe, was unable to be here, but she asked that I read her, letter to the editor for the post bulletin. She said, I'm disabled. I use a power wheelchair to go places on my own. I'm not a person who has a long history of public involvement, but I took the time to engage with MnDOT over the redesign of the intersection of Highway 14 and Broadway. I was saddened that my concerns for the safety of disabled people were not only
ignored, but the intersection is actually being made more dangerous to cross. I advocated for slower speeds and shorter crossing lengths to cross Highway 14. The MnDOT response was to make the intersection larger and add an additional lane to cross. When the public was finally invited to provide input, the intersection had already been designed and decisions made making this well known dangerous intersection harder to cross and maintain on safe speeds. The location where the public input session was held was difficult to ask access for a person who can't drive. Despite these barriers, I still made it a point to attend only to find my voice did not
matter because the design to build a bigger high speed intersection had already been made. I just want to be able to safely cross the intersection had already been made. I just wanna be able to safely cross the intersection and access the farmers market and stores not available in the downtown area where I live. The number of people being killed by drivers is increasing, but we still won't build safe intersections. I implore MnDOT to please consider input from the public earlier in the design process and prioritize safety over speed in all decisions. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have, Aaron Mead. Hi. My name is Aaron. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.
So I was a student actually, K through eight, at Lincoln, at Mann. So I spent a lot of time around that intersection. And, even then, I recognized that it was not an intersection that could serve me, as a non driver, obviously. And as it stands, the intersection of Broadway and Highway 14 is a barrier to the freedom of movement for anyone outside of a car, and dangerous for those in it, as well as outside. Many years later, I am really excited that it is getting another look. I think this is a real opportunity to improve the safety and connectivity of,
Rochester and this part of town. However, I don't think today we can talk about all the ways that we can make it safety, more safer. And, we can't talk today about how we make the farmers market or the county fair or the many other businesses located around the intersection accessible to everyone, regardless of how they get around. We can't because, we must discuss how Rochester faces the imposition of a design for MnDOT that not only fails to tear down these barriers to movement, but would create a less safe, more obstructive intersection in place of what already exists.
Russia should withhold municipal consent for any proposal that includes extra term lanes that would widen the intersection. In addition, the city should send a letter to the commissioner and state officials requiring that consent must not be bypassed and that the design submitted must be consistent with the transit oriented district, MnDOT safe systems approach, MnDOT context sensitive solutions, and the advisory on traffic safety's focus on roadways and fatalities at intersections. And I think it's not controversial to say that drivers certainly have a responsibility,
when it comes to safety. But it's also well documented in research that four street design and intersection design causes a generally safe driver, to make less safe decisions. Whereas, well designed intersections make all drivers behave more carefully. With the current proposal, by adding turning lanes and increasing the width of the intersection, that's the kind of design that will doom, sooner or later, a well intentioned driver to slip up and catastrophically alter someone else's or their own lives. I know every design has tradeoffs,
but I do not know of anyone who would take a slightly higher intersection capacity or efficiency for that cost. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Luke Dolsky. Thank you, council president. Thank you, members of the council. I'm coming here to, give my public, witness to this intersection as well as, like, the process of, providing input to MN DOT and our vision for the future of Rochester. So when I moved here to Rochester Eight Years ago,
I lived near Mayo High School on US Highway 14. It's lined with many small houses from the nineteen fifties, and I didn't have a vehicle because I was a student, and I had to walk to get a hair cut and sport clips. So I walked, you know, maybe two miles down a sport clips and I had to cross a trip, US Highway 14 and Broadway Intersection. There was only two crossing points. So then I had to walk all the way down to Hy Vee and then
cut back to get my haircut. But so this design as it is now is very not very good for pedestrians and we see that in the MnDOT's new design that is improving. There are new pedestrian crosswalks. However, there is added turn lanes to the one of their or two of their crossings and this is going to increase the amount of time that it's going to take to cross that intersection. So, there is some improvement but there is somewhere that there's some improvement that could be
done even more than that. Also, these areas, La Seneca food site, Kmart and all this area is going to be increasingly urban ized. And this is no longer a trunk highway in a rural area. This is going to be a vibrant center for Rochester. And we as a community want we should support all users no matter their ability because this is a city that cares and we need to see that in our
infrastructure. So I ask that you not have municipal consent to this design. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Michael Wojcak. Greetings, council members. My name is Michael Wojak. I am here as the executive director of the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota on behalf of our tens of thousands of members and supporters and a number of partner partner organizations around the state. There would actually be a lot more people here talking to you tonight, but for this is the scheduled end of the session of the legislature, so a lot of other organizations are there tonight,
and there is no, way for people to, dial in remotely to these meetings. That's also why Shelly had to have her letter read here. Our request, very simple. Deny municipal consent. You can do that. You cannot redesign the intersection tonight, but you absolutely, can do that. And you can absolutely direct that right to the commissioner of transportation and request a safer design consistent with the city of Rochester's policies and MnDOTs. You can certainly, ask questions of your, city engineer and he will, in fact, inform you that there are things in here that are actually not up to the standards of the city of Rochester.
But despite that, this is in front of you. So let's talk about context sensitive solutions because that's something that the, Department of Transportation talks about quite a bit and they look at the context. And you've done Incredible work in this area up zoning this area to be transit oriented development and node development and also creating a primary transit network. You should know that this design runs counter to the ability to achieve both of those things. Transit oriented development is awesome. You can do really incredible things. Here are some places that, are enabled by transit oriented development that I've been to around the world. The bottom line is if you build a seven lane wide intersection and a 40
mile per hour expressway, you're not gonna get the kind of, development that is already envisioned in your plan. And here's a lot of my colleagues have talked about individual things. I wanna talk about the big picture. It's just like, in what kind of world do you have a situation where the community is planning a transit oriented street, transit oriented development, and the engineering solution to that is we're going to build a 40 mile per hour expressway and a seven lane wide intersection that people have to cross.
It's ridiculous on the surface, but we can dig down and see the different policies that it does not align with. Let's talk about induced demand. A lot of people are using 14 because it's there. In reality, if you pull up Google right now, if you're going from Mijoto to Byron, it's never gonna route you on 14. It's not the most efficient route, and a lot of the traffic there is induced. And if you make smart changes to these intersections and projects that come up, the traffic is gonna take care of itself. The Department of Transportation is mandated to reduce vehicle miles traveled and they're not factoring this into their calculation. The city of Rochester has taken important steps to reduce peak hour traffic coming into
downtown. That is not not also not that is also not considered in the context. City of Rochester design speed, for this would be 30 miles per hour. I don't know if your city engineer told you that or not but that's certainly a fair question to ask for. We're not asking to change the design speed on this because we wanna prioritize what can be done and keep everything on schedule and that is going to be those left turn lanes. Let's actually talk let's take the MnDAS slides and look at what MnDAS is about this. MnDAS is they have a safe systems approach and that safe systems approach means they're
going to design safe speeds and safer roads. What does that mean? Well, first and foremost, in an area that you expect dense pedestrian and bicycle transportation like this, you would want slower speeds. The actual design speed here is such that, any impact with pedestrians or cyclists would largely result in a fatality. That is not what you wanna do in this kind of place. They take a, Swiss cheese approach that drivers make mistakes. You've heard that. The reality is is that, no one solution is gonna fix it all. But if you design for safe speeds and you have safe intersection, safe roads, along with other other interventions,
it can be better. The reality is this design does not factor in safe speeds or safe roads. There are great things that are being done on the Broadway crossing side, but it's just 14 as the, is the issue here. It's, it's gonna be absolutely proved deadly and it's gonna move traffic faster and induce more demand. There are a ton of issues that we have identified this, not the least of which is the fact that this was designed by the Department of Transportation and then they decided to do community input that, and surprised the design didn't change. We're only asking for one thing,
eliminate that added left turn lane, reduce the 14 crossing length to less than 70 feet. This is a life saving ask that everyone's doing. You can't mandate them to do that, but you can deny municipal consent. We are united. You've heard from school officials, county officials, state officials, disability advocates, and just about every bike, walk, rural transit, safety focused nonprofit in Minnesota, I can tell you, does not support this design. Your vote matters. By, not granting municipal consent, we can work towards a safe solution that will work for everyone. It is critically important to realize that for all that all that glowing review about
the community impact, not a single organization is here supporting this design. That's because it's a terrible sign. Next up, we have Greg Wright. Council president, city council members, thank you very much. My name is Gregory Wright. I live at 2230 Cedar Park Court Southeast, which, of course, brings me up to Highway 14 to go to any place in the city. I'm here as a citizen of Rochester even though that you know that I am a county commissioner. And part of my district also abuts to this Highway 14 project.
I'm here to tell you about, the demographics of the city, which is getting older. Getting older means is that they have a harder time walking and getting from place to place. This design does not help our pedestrians. I am very concerned that this project, as designed, will divide the city of Rochester into north and south. And the people that are going to be very intimidated of crossing Highway 14 because of the speeds and because of the distances. We do not want to divide the city into North and South.
Has this ever been done before? Yeah, we learned that lesson in, the Twin Cities when they divided the Rondo neighborhood. I do not want us to divide neighborhoods. I want the city of our kids as well as older people to be able to diverse the city as pedestrians. I'm very concerned that we have an asset in the city of, Graham Park. But we have to have people be able to get to Graham Park as pedestrians down Third Avenue where the city has other plans for development.
This is a very important project, and I think that other people who have been before me have told you that there are alternatives to this. I encourage you to withhold municipal consent as well so that maybe it, DOT would be much more interested in talking to the city about a better design that would protect our pedestrians, protect our bicyclists, slow the traffic down, and decrease the amount of of, accidents that could happen, as well as not divide the city into north and south.
Thank you very much. Thank you, mister Wright. Next up, we have Marty Cormack. Good evening, council members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Marty Cormack. I live in Ward 1, so I live south of, Highway 14. I would ask that you consider, not allowing, municipal consent on this item. And other speakers more eloquently talked about the additional turn lane making it more, a longer crossing. I disagree with, MnDOT's assessment that it doesn't increase demand. Adding a lane will induce demand. I know people who do not drive on that,
road during rush hour because of the backup. You add another left lane, you're going to add capacity. So I disagree with, MnDOT. The other thing is in the long term you really need to get this trunk highway out of South Rochester. Right now the, Bear Creek Trail is, which I use to commute into town is closed and now I have to cross at grade and I can't believe how busy Highway 14 has gotten over the years and it's just gonna get worse if you build this with the extra turn lane.
It's just gonna be worse. So, I really would ask first to reject, municipal consent and secondly, in the future, at any opportunity you have to get Highway 14 rerouted out of South Rochester, please do that. Thank you very much. Thank you. And that concludes the folks that are on my list. This is a public hearing. If anyone else wishes to be heard on this item, please step forward. If anyone else wishes to be heard on this item, please step forward.
Seeing none, I will close the public hearing and invite mister Austin back up, for, to answer any questions came up during the public hearing. And you have five minutes. Sounds good. Thank you, counsel. So a couple of things I wanna just touch base on. The project itself is being designed Highway 14 is being designed for 30 miles an hour. There's nothing in our design that inhibits us us from posting that road at 30 miles an hour the day it opens. What is preventing us from doing that right now is state statute that requires a process that we need to go through to post a speed limit to make a
change. Now, if there was a way to change that through the commissioner or some other means, the team is more than ready and willing to post that at 30 miles an hour. But that's out of our team's control at this point. So I just wanted to address that. It is a 30 mile an hour design. Nothing changes with that project if it's posted at thirty today. Number two, the left turn lane issue. There's six lanes on Highway 14, two throughs in each directions and dual lefts. So there's six lanes. Our design actually increases the crossing of Hwy.
14 by four feet from what it is today. What that four feet gets us is more green time at the intersection for pedestrians. Originally, all four quadrants of the intersection were just going to be designed with dual f's, Broadway and Highway 14. The city, in partnership with MnDOT, which is what it has been since day one, said, hey. We you need to look at that closer because we're not comfortable with that. We did another study, and upon further investigation, we found that if we kept the left turn lanes on high Highway 14, we could put more green time on Broadway Avenue,
eliminating the need for the dual laps by also increasing the length of the turn lane on high on Broadway Avenue. Unfortunately, on Highway 14, we're limited by Third Avenue and Crossroads Drive. We're not able to lengthen broad or the Highway 14 left turn lane anymore because we're bumping up against the left turns for Third and crossroads. So what happens is we we put the dual lefts on 14, allows the intersection to function more efficiently. 50,000 cars use that intersection. We're not going to increase the capacity. The design does not do that.
It allows it to function more efficiently. We're already it's not a future projection problem. It's a current problem. There's cars that are spilling back into through lanes today. That's not a future projection, that's happening today. What we see is when people get frustrated with how the system is operating, they start to do dumb things. And that's what's gonna happen if we don't build those two left turn lanes. You're gonna have people that are frustrated. They're already frustrated today. They start to eliminate the things the benefits that we're getting out of this design,
the smart channels, the raised crosswalks, elevating pedestrian pedestrian importance, all that flushes out the window when people start doing dumb things because they're frustrated because they can't get through the intersection. That's the key to remember here. It's not increasing capacity. It's increasing safety by producing a more efficient operation that elevates pedestrian crossings. I I'd love to be able to go through that smart channel and show you just how so right now, when that pedestrian crosses, there's there's gonna be no conflict with left turners.
So when a pedestrian crosses Highway 14, nobody on Broadway is gonna be turning left and conflicting with that movement. Nobody's gonna be turning right and conflicting with that movement. All the traffic, all the pedestrians are moving in the same direction. We engineer a crossing at 3.5 feet per second. The green time for the traffic is significantly longer than the time that we would have engineered for a pedestrian to cross the 84 feet on Highway 14. That's the same amount of time that is used to design the intersections downtown Rochester,
where you have the medical facilities with people of all kinds of challenging needs to get across an intersection. So the green time that we have more than accommodates pedestrian crossing on Highway 14. That four feet for that turn lane gets you an intersection that is actually safer, more efficient, and operates better. Well, one one other thing I wanna recognize is that the crossing of Broadway Avenue is actually gonna be going down by five feet from what it is today. So by not needing that left turn lane, that extra left turn lane on Broadway Avenue,
we're actually reducing the crossing distance on Broadway on Broadway by five feet from what it is today. So that's another added benefit. One other quick thing, if I can get to it, I just wanted to show you the pedestrian connectivity of this intersection is, I think, just amazing as we so we're reconstructing our path. We're rebuilding the path around Soldiers Field from a 10 foot to a 12 foot pedestrian access, path, shared use path. We're providing all those, access path, shared use path. We're providing all those new crossings or improved crossings at Broadway, Fourteenth, Third, and Crossroads. And then we're connecting to all those brown existing trails. So at the end of the day, what you have in that blue is complete connectivity in all directions,
in all modes of, the intersection. So pedestrians can move in every direction that they need to go out there. Thank you, mister Austin. You may have a seat, and we may call you back up if council members have questions for you. At this point, council members, questions for staff or the, MnDOT representative? Council member Fredericks. One thing that wasn't addressed. You said just in the South, portion of the project, there is a concern for contamination. What is the source of that contamination that, you're concerned to with? Sorry, yeah, that's good.
It's the condensed time is hard. I just kind of spew things out. I'm so sorry about that. So contaminated materials, there is the potential for petroleum based, contaminants. When I mentioned South Broadway, so MnDOT is really responsible for the majority of the project. Highway 14, everything to the south of the intersection would be MnDOT's responsibility. Approximately where the left turn lane on Broadway ends, from there, north would be city responsibility. That's where your cost share is, included. So if there were to be contaminants in that northern portion, that would be a city,
cost to mitigate that. Okay. Like I said, the initial there was a bunch of investigation done for the Mill and Overlay project, and there's really nothing that's been found so far. I'm not saying there couldn't be still and there'll be additional investigation that's done. So I just wanted to make sure that was clear that there is a risk there that's not completely gone yet. I was just going over it in my mind and I thought maybe it meant at one time there was some kind of a spill in the source portion if there was a filling station there once upon a time. I didn't know exactly what you meant by that. You're just basically covering your bases is all you're doing.
Exactly. Yes. Okay. Yes. And Council Member Palmer. Mr. Asa, as you're up here, I got a couple of questions. But the first one for you. So if if the city of Rochester decides not to approve this, the money goes somewhere else? Yeah. So the basically, the money would be go to another project place else. And would you then the stop lights get replaced and then the road configuration stays the same? Is that what you're kind of alluding to? We would have to step back and and look at how we go forward. But, yeah, the signals, as you know as I noted, are at the end of their life. So I don't know if that would be a signal replacement where it is and
we live with the configuration as it is today or how that looks. Or we do, you know, a Band Aid fix on the pavement again and just mill and overlay it. Okay. And the last question for you would be, you're telling us right now that it's designed for 30 miles an hour after this project is done. So as I come in from town or I or I leave from Patchett Mall, is that also gonna be 30 miles? Or am I gonna hit 40 and then hit 30 and and go through that? That's a great question. So as you go west of the Broadway 14 Intersection, it's a much more rural feel. It has open ditches.
It's more open. It's wider, the roadway. I think there would be some challenges with posting that at 30 going to the west because it doesn't feel like it as you go that way. That's not that's not my area to make that determination. That would be a traffic engineering thing that would go through our district traffic engineer. I think in my mind, and this is just me speaking, from crossroads going east, 30 feels appropriate. You're getting into a very urban setting, you have a lot of residential, it just, it fits. And as the roadway would be redesigned in the future,
you know, the current overlay that's going on right now hopefully gets us ten, twelve, fifteen years. At that point, at the end of that, there's gonna be a reconstruct of the rest of Highway 14. And I think at that point, you'll be looking at a much more constrained design similar to what we have here with pedestrian facilities off the roadway, a constrained roadway that would really lend itself towards that 30 miles an hour going east to Camarion. For for mister Hrabowski, I got a couple questions for you. I I think I heard that if we wanted to, we could apply to have,
the BeltLine down to 30 miles an hour the whole way. Is is that something that the engineers you can ask? Or do we need as a city council to to ask for that? We cannot elect to change the speed limit along a trunk highway or a county road. We can only do that on our own city streets. But we can apply? You could Mister Austin made the inference that we could apply to the commissioner to have that. Yeah. And what happens with the current method is they would have to do a speed study post project to understand what the traveling public is driving along that corridor,
which could reduce the speed limits. And that's why, as Tom, mister Austin mentioned, the we everything we did with lane widths and the design, you know, as we worked with MnDOT on 14 was push them to make sure it's meeting a 30 mile per hour design speed such that it wouldn't require some reconstruction in the future if we were able to get them to change that speed limit to 30. And so you just said that you've been working with MnDOT on this design? Yes. Oh, definitely. We've again, I mentioned in my intro, we've been more intimately working with them for the last two years as part of
the project team where every month we're meeting, every sometimes weekly meetings, really pushing them. I'm pretty ecstatic in that, you know, considering when I started my career just over twenty years ago, to have Minh not even talking about walking and biking is tremendous now. That wasn't something that I witnessed early in my career. We've gotten them to change the five foot walk along, like, Fredell and the Seneca parcel to a 10 foot wide shared use path. There's no current walking or biking facilities on the North Side between Broadway and Third Avenue.
They're adding a 10 foot shared use path. We've reduced those right turn lanes with raised crosswalks. I acknowledge the concerns around the additional left turn lane on 14. However, the thing that makes me feel much more comfortable around the design is that we will never allow a vehicle to be turning left when those pedestrians are crossing 14. We have our broad the signal is designed you'll have the red arrow. So there is no car in conflict with a pedestrian or biker that's crossing those two legs of 14.
With the signal system, that's what we can do with the the signal controller. And and that's what we did at Broadway And Fourteenth Street Northeast. We got rid of the the free right. I can cross there, run across, or bike across and not have to worry about that traffic anymore. Is that correct? Yeah. And just from a just from a general approach around the community with our signal systems, we're eliminating those left turns where where we can. Some of the older systems, we we don't have the right controller, so it will have to happen in the future. But Sam, our traffic engineering team, to try to eliminate those conflict points because that's what creates potential fatalities and severe
crashes is we just control it such that that movement cannot occur if there's someone in the in the crosswalk. So if we don't consent to this and the money goes somewhere else and at some point, they might come back with single lights, you probably don't like that idea? No. Okay. Thank you. Council member Keane. Because I think there's some confusion on that. Council member okay. Go ahead. I just wanna make sure it's clear because I think he misunderstood maybe a little bit. I I was so Dylan correctly pointed out the process so that the city could request Minnath to adjust the speed on Highway 14.
That would initiate a speed study post project. And then the eighty fifth percentile of the average speed would be how we base that speed limit. What I was alluding to was that we're designing it for 30 miles an hour. Apart from some act of the commissioner or somebody higher than me, a lot higher than me, we can't change it today. So there would need to be an act by somebody in MnDOT's hierarchy to make that change happen today. Otherwise, we follow the process, like Dylan mentioned.
The city petitions to change the speed, then we go through that process. So I just wanted to make sure that was Got it. Thank you, mister Olson. Council member Keane. Thank you. Yeah. First, just on city staff, I just wanna make sure we talked about we're doing municipal consent because of one design thing with the getting rid of the access on First Avenue Southeast. So the question is if we if we had not had that design point, where would we be in this process right now? Would we would it be assumed consent? Or if we didn't have a public hearing,
do we still have to do municipal consent to the city? Or where would we be in this process? Well, as Tom noted earlier in the presentation, you would there wouldn't be no statutory requirement to hold this hearing. However, we would I would envision we have this geometric layout in front of you for approval like we do with any of our projects because we have a cost contribution, with the overall project. So we want this in front of you and allowing you to weigh in on on the layout. So we we could've, I mean, asked for a public hearing. I just wanna make sure.
But there would still be municipal consent if there wasn't, the need for the public hearing. I'm struggling to follow your question. We wouldn't have the municipal consent requirement per statute with with no change in access. Yeah. I mean, this project's gotten a little complicated because the city has joined in and done the work north of the project and sort south of it. So now it becomes this joint project. That's a slightly different question. But what I was trying to get to is I we are having it is my understanding, it's not just the public hearing,
but the municipal consent was based on the fact that they were closing that access to there. And that forced us to have both a public hearing, but I didn't know if it forced us to have municipal consent where we would not have even had that if it weren't for the, that access point. Correct. We would not have had the formal municipal consent, but we would have had more informal approval, bringing it in front of you for comments, questions and approval of the layout knowing that we're spending, you know, you saw the numbers,
5 over $5,000,000 on the project. Okay. And that leads me to a second sort of question. That city, that shared project, that's really based on work on Broadway. It's not that we're contributing to the work on, on Highway 14. Correct. So the the right of way that that MnDOT owns, it it bleeds a little bit north of the highway up you know, it's 100 plus feet. Yep. That's all within MnDOT's right of way. So as we look at the quantity of work occurring within that right of way,
that's all MnDOT's cost. The cost to the city is anything north of their right of way. So that point up to Ninth Street, you know, the snappy stop area. Good. And I just wanna make sure that was clear. I also just I'll I'll commend the staff working with MnDOT because once those projects are going on, it is a good time to do that work. And it is gonna be needed in the next ten years anyways, including the work from Sixth to Ninth. So those things will be happening. But I just wanted to confirm in our meeting here that that was the discussion. I had some facts that I wanted to see that,
mister Austin might have contradicted my understanding. I'm of the impression that right now from one edge to the other is a 65 foot crosswalk. I'm sorry. That's a 60 foot crosswalk, that will end up in the new project being about 65 feet, which makes it that much longer or that, like, 9% or 10% longer. Do you think I have my numbers right? Because now because right in the future, I'm not crossing those, the the right turns. The the number on 14 is approximately four feet longer. So while adding an 11 foot turn lane,
we are reducing the the width of by taking away the shoulder slash bike on road bike lane that exists today. So the net result is a is a four feet four foot longer crossing on 14. I don't have the Broadway numbers memorized, but we are reducing the crossing distance on the two legs of Broadway. But do my numbers of, like, 64 feet down to 60 or 61 feet to 64 feet, does that seem accurate? Because I heard an 80 foot number. I think it's a little bit it's more in the 80 range, if I remember right. And that the math turns out to be number of feet times number of seconds
to cross, that we're setting the lights accordingly. Correct. However, with the green times needing to be a little bit longer for the northbound and southbound traffic on Broadway, the pedestrian will have longer crossing time than what we would traditionally do on a traditional city intersection based on that crossing speed. Because the vehicles will have more green time, it'll thus provide more crossing time during that, you know, that walk phase for the pedestrian. Okay. I also, again, I just I've done some tours there. I've been to a couple of the meetings with MnDOT people.
I've been there with the bike groups. I I still believe one of our key design things right now is this, the double left turns. And and I've heard two different things. One is that since we're designing this for forty and fifty years out, we're gonna need it versus we need it today. I I wanna understand that better because I I think, I was under under the impression that there is the risk that over time, this will back up into Third Avenue, back up into Crossroads. Is that when you say it's happening now, is that, like, once a month or is that a, a concern right now? Let me try to if you can help me understand that better.
I can Yeah. Go ahead, mister Demersche. Looking at the level of service within the in the intersection, it's not breaking down, causing that requirement existing. But in the twenty year horizon, at some point, it will reach that threshold that it's essentially the intersection operations are breaking down if you don't include the dual left turn lane on 14. Yeah. Let's just spend a minute on that just to make sure because I think that is a key design point that we're dealing with here. Does that include, like, mode shift and things like that? Or is that just looking at population and saying,
single car traffic on Highway 14 stays the same and as population goes up, so does the traffic? Or does it take into account anything else? It's gonna going to be based on the the background growth model that that we utilize through ROCOG and their projections over that twenty year horizon, and the the traffic modeling. So it's it it really what I've seen is the the projections over over time have really reduced as far as the annual growth rate. So that's where some of that is taken into account, but it doesn't specifically
address mode shift on this specific corridor. Okay. I I think I understand what you're saying, that it it the numbers are take those into account, but they still have growth in in the future. MnDOT seems, for lack of better word, stubbornly dedicated that they're they're gonna do this project with two left turns. I I'm a little surprised. I guess I I haven't heard the strong defense as much as I've heard the strong concerns. Is there more that I need to hear that the reason we need this is, like, the the Third Avenue or the the crossroads?
Or is there other reason that I'm just not understanding the value of yet? I don't know, mister Austin, if you wanna try to Sure. Thank you. I can try to help with that a little bit. So a couple of things. So currently, the two left the left turn lanes at Broadway at Highway 14 to go north and south on Broadway, They're operating westbound at a level of service d, and the eastbound left is at a level level of service e. So they are currently not great. And what I was referring to is we have had experience, and I can't answer how often, whether it's weekly or monthly or daily,
but we did have comments in the public, surveys from people that have experienced left turners backing into the through lanes as they're wanting to turn left on Highway 14 to go north or south on Broadway. So we are seeing that. What we did project, and it's a half a percent is our projection, model for that twenty year forecast. And what we see is that in the twenty year model, those those turn movements break down to an e and f for the same, corresponding movements. So I don't know if that if that helps. You know, the thing I was as I mentioned,
and the reason it's not it's not so much that I'm in we're passionate about having the extra left turn lanes, it's the benefit that we get in the left turn lanes. The green time that we can take, that we would normally that we would otherwise need to clear out those left turn lanes, we can take that extra green time and put it into the Broadway green times. So we can eliminate the need now and in the future mentioned, we are not gonna allow left turning vehicles to conflict with pedestrians.
That's one of the benefits of those dual lefts, is it allows the intersection to operate more efficiently, so we don't have those conflicts with left turners and pedestrians. Does that help? I I think it does. You have a little more of a passionate defense of your design. That's what I was looking for because Yeah. Up to now, we're just like, that's how we wanna do it. So No. It's it's not. We we and like I said, we would be we would actually would have entertained just lengthening those left turn lanes, but we can't because we bump up against Crossroads to the West and Third Avenue to the East,
where we have the left turn lanes to use those two intersections. So we can't lengthen that left turn lane. And you're kinda you know, when the capacities of, when the when the amount of traffic that's on Highway 14 continues to, when it gets to the levels that it's at, there's only so much tournalling that you can add, you know, that because it gets so long that it becomes inefficient because it just takes so long to get through that cycle. So the dual f's allow that to flush out quickly. And then you take that time and you leverage it towards other movements and especially pedestrians to to elevate their importance in the intersection.
Council member, do you have more questions? No. Okay. That does that help? Yes. Thank you. We're going to move to council member Wall. Mister Austin, if you could stay there. It with mister Palmer's question about if we, don't approve, the money goes away, slide five in your presentation seems to indicate that there might be three options going forward to meet the city's conditions, appeal process, or stop the project. Could you comment more on that? Is there no room for further negotiation in the next ninety days? I think there's some room for negotiation on,
some items that would be negotiable. The and for the reasons I just explained, I think the point here is the left turn lanes. That's the tripping point, right? That is such a vital part of making the intersection function and be successful, that it's really non negotiable for us. And it's not because we want more cars there or we're trying to do induced demand, a situation like that, where we increase capacity and it works for a little bit and then it breaks down. It's because we wanna take that time and leverage it for those other movements, so the intersection is successful.
And and so that's that's why I say that. If there's some small thing that is, you know, we can adjust, absolutely, you know, if the council were to say something like that. But that that's that's a that's a that's a nonstarter for us because it has such a significant ramifications on the functioning and the performance of the intersection. My second question is on slide nine. You report on public engagement, and, it looks to me like bicyclists and pedestrians from your data have a higher positive, approval of this than motorists.
What's the raw data on that? Is this 12 people showing up in a room, or is this 500 people? Yeah. I I do have that. If you would like to step forward, miss Morgan. Hello. My name is Cindy Morgan, and I am public engagement coordinator for MnDOT. Speaking to the microphone there. Thank you. So what we did in the last, stakeholder event, our last design, was we asked people at the open house and then also online when we released the survey to tell us what they thought of the, current intersection.
Then we asked them to tell us how they used the intersection and then what they thought of the proposed design. So those are the numbers that you see there. It's just kind of raw data. So if they said that they never use the intersection by vehicle, they didn't receive account, if they said rarely, so on and so forth. And we chose to do that because there were some pedestrians or bicyclists who said, I don't like to use this intersection as much because of x, y, and z. But the idea was is we are seeing quite strong opinions, from motorists,
also pedestrians and bicyclists as well. And so the idea was to kind of gauge if this still was considered a general improvement. And so these are the numbers that you see here. We did notice that there was quite a high pedestrian and bicyclist identification versus, like, maybe the survey that I would run-in other areas. And I would like to think, obviously, there's a very strong bicycle and pedestrian advocacy group here in Rochester, and I think we saw that come back on that online survey especially.
Does that kind of help direct us? A little bit. Again, could you tell me about how many, this, survey or online, represents? Gosh. I think the in person meeting, we had about 75 individuals. And again, I asked this, in person, we had people fill out this at the in person event and then also online. Oh, online, well into the hundreds. Sometimes we see lower amounts because of the size of the survey. When you start asking really detailed questions and people to really get into the details, we do see lower participation when that happens.
If we had asked a simple question like, do you like chocolate or vanilla ice cream, obviously, we'd have a higher response. And and so that kind of was reflected here too as well. So overall, you know, approaching 300 or so. But when we look at the sampling of, again, who we saw returning back on this, we saw a very strong return, which is why I decided to of the pedestrian which is why I decided to kind of break them out in the category, just to see if we saw, a noticeable return, a difference between these groups. And this is the numbers that came out of it.
Council Member Miller. Sure. I have a couple of questions for staff. So one of the items brought up was the zoning designation. Can you talk about sort of the zoning surrounding this MXT node, what that means for future development over, like, looking at the comp plan, what, 2040 is our outlook? Yeah. So the at cable speed development, the portion of the property or the portion located North of Highway 14 is located within the the TOD. And then once you go go south kind of outside of Crossroads, you kind of transition from TOD node down to to MxS.
And, really, the the zoning is for a, transit oriented development. So, the zoning itself is in place and usually, is there before a future transit network, but really building the the spaces for, to support, future essential of the transit line. The comp plan itself, as most recently approved and adopted, is consistent with the the zoning. So it's not as if the zoning and the underlying land use are inconsistent, but really just kind of waiting, for development to to spur there and support our future transit system. Can you talk about what sorts of buildings,
like, what setbacks, how how might it we understand the the zoning as it's developed today? Like, what kind of zoning would that be versus what is shown in the current MXD node? Like, what is the difference between what we see developed there today versus what would be built? Sure. I would say based on the current TOD, and the setbacks associated with it, it requires a 15 foot setback maximum. So, essentially within the front property line, a building would be placed within 15 feet. Just with the size of Broadway and the right of way, I think it'd be difficult to accomplish that.
And also, really, the orientation of the, buildings itself as it lies East of Broadway is kind of centered not or oriented not towards Broadway but more or less within the the residential streets within there. I would say it, you know, it would really take, you know, just as future development, begins and to really, I guess, support a a transit system there would would just take significant not significant investment, but future investment, and just we just really haven't seen a developer tackle that yet. So is it fair to say that looking at a sixty year trajectory,
which is the time since this last intersection was rebuilt or built for the first time, that this is locking in the this design roughly for sixty years and it would continue to be incompatible with 15 foot setbacks? I wouldn't necessarily say that it would be incompatible. I think that as development occurs in the area, you know, we would perhaps see redevelopment of the streets or whatnot. I'd say that it's perhaps not necessarily suited for TOD as is right now. But as I previously mentioned, the zoning, you know, comes before the the future transit system and then, kinda reacts to to what gets developed there.
Okay. So I guess a a question for the MnDOT team. I I see the the types of users surveyed, vehicle, pedestrian, bicyclist. Is it fair to assume that vehicle is is really driver person driving their own vehicle? Yeah. You know Can you step forward to the microphone? My apologies. Yeah. In order to, again, reduce those barriers for survey fatigue, we we didn't ask them to identify additionally or more. So the assumption here is is however they choose to identify, whether that's freight, you know, minivan driver,
whatever, you know, motorcyclists. There was a comment that was brought up about transit planning, transit users, or transit system. Can you talk about how you consider transit access and transit planning in the city? So, typically, what we do with public engagement is that we begin here, you know, asking some of those early questions about who should be involved. So we leveraged the city to be able to allow us, to bring in folks who needed to be and those points of information. We did not directly engage with RFGT excuse me, branches or public transportation,
just simply because we assumed that that was going to be, done through the simply because we assumed that that was going to be, done through that that stage. And so I guess a question for the city, I'm not sure whom, but there was also a comment brought up about the possibility of extending an express bus, bus rapid transit system, having a bus priority lane there. What is your comment reaction to that availability to do bus access if there are two vehicles turning from east or west onto Broadway. How does that affect our ability to provide increased transit capacity and reliability along that
corridor? We we definitely don't currently have a plan for a dedicated bus lane on Broadway. However, it is a primary transit network. Mhmm. So what what that future design looks like, I guess I can't speak to if it's exactly like Second Street, which if it were that, then, yes, the second left turn lane would be in conflict with that that bus access, or the business access and transit line, the bat lane that we have on Second Street. But, right now, we don't have any plans for a dedicated bus line along South Broadway. But we do acknowledge that it's identified as a primary transit network in the long
term. Okay. I already keep calling both of you back up. I guess, also, I think about the other planning that the city is doing, and I I know you said that you engaged. But when we think about the addition of a Sixth Street bridge and East Terminal for the bus rapid transit line phase one, then is accessible from Third Avenue, how does that factor into the traffic model? Like, shifting patterns, maybe fewer people are choosing to even use this intersection. Like, how does the traffic model do that? It sounds like you're just assuming that traffic grows at a steady half percentage point per year no matter what else happens.
Is that fair to make that assessment of the traffic model? I can I can take that? So the the the roll call model has been updated to account for the link project in our our bus rapid transit. So that the overall background model that, you know, the team starts with, it incorporates that those projections into the model. Okay. And I guess I'm curious then with our city projections for BMT reductions, I'm hearing that at MnDOT there are also future mobility planners. There's an updated bicycle plan coming.
It sounds like BMT strategies are being built in but not yet applied to the plan here. Recently, I was at a presentation where the Metro MnDOT office is presenting about TDM strategies that they're planning for a project that's currently under construction and post construction. Do you just assume that traffic demand is what it is and you build capacity for your model's demand? Or are you trying to modify it in in other ways through programs, etcetera? I I see other offices in the state doing that. Is is that a factor here?
Is that to mister Austin? I believe so. I'm looking at him. Step forward, mister Austin. Yeah. I don't I don't know that I have a really good answer for you on that. Vehicle miles traveled reduction is I I think we aren't doing anything directly in the project to address that. I think, intuitively, what we are doing though is by, again, those two left turn lanes in the design really reduces idle time, and so in a sense, you're reducing the congestion and those greenhouse gas emission effects.
But as far as reducing vehicle miles traveled, the policy, the law was passed, but there's no policy that's actually been implemented or direction given from MnDOT upper management to how to implement that new law. And I would also note that the project doesn't actually add any capacity. There's no additional through lanes, so it isn't even meeting the requirements of that law. Not that it shouldn't address vehicle miles traveled, that should be a goal that we have no matter what, but like I said, there's no directive given as to how to achieve that with this project.
Does that help? I think I would just acknowledge that there are are certain mitigating factors though that are being incorporated into this project as we think about the added, shared use paths along the corridor where people do have other options for that trip that they're going to take. And can they safely cross the intersection to go from the neighborhood to the Aldi to grab groceries or, you know, whatever it might be to go go to a restaurant along the corridor. But the project does allow for additional travel options by incorporating that connectivity as we
think about people walking and biking. K. So I guess my my final question, you mentioned 50,000 daily trips and that this intersection design increases efficiency. So can you talk about the got twenty four hours in a day. How many hours are at an unacceptable level of service? I don't have with me the exact hours. It's the peak hours that are typically what we arrive at our level of service designation upon. I'm assuming that it's the AM and PM peaks. For twice a day on weekdays? Yeah. I would say that's most likely.
Without that data in front of me, I don't know if I don't know if you remember off the top of your head. Yeah. It I mean, the the traffic study is going to identify that peak hour in the morning and in the afternoon. So really, it's a couple hours. And I guess I have just a couple of follow-up questions on capacity. You have traffic models and then we have construction projects, which in some ways are are pilot projects of what can we reduce the capacity to. Can you talk about what's actually happening now with backups on Highway 14 with effectively a reduction of lane in both directions.
I mean, every time I've seen it, the cones are closing that same portion of the lanes you're talking about. And I don't see people backed up there all day when I pass. So I mean, we're running a pilot now to have capacity so the mill and overlay can be done. Where you're saying there's a need for an additional left turn lane in both directions. Can you talk about that? I actually I don't know what the process is. How it's been going with Mill and Overlay? Right now? So, I don't have a lot of information about that. I tend to be more isolated on the, construction way out ahead. My team members handle more of that.
You know, it could be due to a number of factors including messaging of getting out of, hey, you know, consider that there is going to be a lot of congestion. I I can't speak to to what is causing that or not. So is it fair to say that there's traffic demand management happening right now with construction that's not built into this project design for post construction? I'm not a traffic person, so I would not be the correct person to answer that. I I I would just add Dombrowski going ahead. Anecdotally, we are getting calls about complaints about traffic on 14 in the queues.
And I'll be honest, I live in Southwest Rochester. I'm just avoiding 14 right now because I don't wanna go there. But so, yes, it is a very good point. With some of our construction projects, Broadway is another example, you can understand the impacts from if we do reduce a lane. I I would never advocate for reducing 14 down to one lane in each direction. But if there's something we can learn from the Mill and Overlay project, I guess, we need to try to understand that. Well, I just feel like I'm learning that maybe the left turn lane projections when we're running a pilot project on travel demand management and reduce capacity for
a period of time, maybe that system can function because we have a system of roadways to absorb and allow people to make other travel options. Further questions? I I've got a couple questions. Kinda I'm gonna dig down a little deeper into council member Miller's line of questioning on the TOD and the neighborhood nodes. So when we designated that area as a TOD, route, and then it's also been designated through the comp plan as a neighborhood node, So could you talk about,
the principles of a neighborhood node and what principles that the changes to that intersection are in line with it, and what may not be in line with the the, the long term objection objective of a neighborhood node for that area? Council president Schubert, I can take that question. So I just one slight correction there. I wouldn't call it a neighborhood node. It's a transit node. And and so the the what what we're getting at when we call it a
node is that that is sort of the the destination of travel. So a node is intended to be I guess I call it a neighborhood node because I used to live in the neighborhood. Right. So it was a neighborhood, and we had pedestrians and bicyclists going to Crossroads. So so the difference in in zoning between the the corridor and the node is that the node is is more intense zoning designation. You're allowed to build taller, more dense buildings in a node than the corridor because in theory, that's where the bus is stopping.
So that's where people are getting off, and you can have more dense development at the node. So I I'm not sure there is a direct correlation between node and corridor in this intersection, except that in TOD in general, the goal is to make it friendly per for pedestrians, and I think that's the core of the debate that that you're having here is how friendly is it for pedestrians and which is the most, efficient for pedestrians. So, again, TOD, TOD in general, more development, more intense development, and and pedestrian friendly development is kinda what you're after.
Thank you. Other questions, council members? Council member Wahl. So I have, three questions, which are very short and easy, I think, for mister Dombrowski. Do you believe does the city believe that this intersection will be safer for pedestrians? Yes. We do. And that's why we're recommending that the council approves it. Do you believe it will be safer for bicyclists? Yes. Do you believe it's going to be safer for vehicles? Yeah. So if we did a ten year study, ten years from the completion of project, you would expect fewer than 152,
car crashes. Correct. You would expect, less than four bicycle crashes. And you would hope for zero, pedestrians. Yeah. I would hope for zero on all of that. Yes. That was a poorly worded question. I'm sorry. Thank you. Any further questions? Council Member Miller, go ahead. I guess related to that for the MnDOT team, perhaps, or staff, could you talk about the direction of traffic fatalities and trends of serious injuries across the statewide system? Mister Austin? I I can't. That's not my I can't answer that statewide. So when we look at the statewide highway system,
the trends that I see are that rates of fatality and serious injury are increasing. Is that true? I I I would say that Need people at the mic, please. I believe that those numbers that are released by Towards Zero Death, TZD, monthly are state reflective and not just on the highway system. Okay. So on our roadway systems, despite no change, right, and some safety improvements, we're still seeing an a stubborn increase in serious injuries and fatalities on our road system. Yes. They've seen a an odd Increase, since the pandemic, that that has a noticeable trend.
Yeah. Upward. So I would love to see this too go go towards zero and these factors, but I just question whether or not we that's a realistic expectation when we look at statewide trends. And I just think sixty years into the future, what might viewers from the future of this intersection be thinking on the horizon of what was safest at the time? It sounds like we're kinda moving into discussion, so I'm gonna ask, if there is a motion. Council member, Palmer, go ahead. Yes. I'll make a, motion adapting a resolution to approve the geometric
layout for Broadway Avenue SouthTrunk Highway 14 Twelfth Street Southeast Beltline intersection improvement project number J6073, State Project 5502Dash109. Moved by council member Palmer. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by council member Keane. We we're we're not there yet. Council member Palmer we'll do that when when you're ready. Council member Palmer, you have the floor. I think this has been a good discussion. I think that, looking out in ten years, I think mister Dabrowski's made it very clear that it's a safer intersection,
and I And I trust his opinion. And, I'm obviously going to be voting yes for this. Councilmember Rekien? Yeah. Again, I've struggled with this too. I've been to the intersection with, I've been to the meetings with the MnDOT people, with city engineers. But I've also been out at the intersection with the bicycle people, that lengthened. This was sort of there was some insights tonight in this discussion with the efficiency of the two left turns in trying to clear the intersection. I I wanna make a point that's probably not, real helpful in this discussion, but I'll make it anyways. There's been some changes MnDOT has done on Highway 14 in the last year where
they have started doing the red lead to a green left turn and then turn it to red during the while the while the other traffic's going on. We've talked about it here as a way of protecting pedestrians crossing. But it is a frustration for cars who sit at red lights when there's no traffic coming in either direction. But I think I understood now the reason we're doing that is to make it clear that when there is bicycle or pedestrian traffic, that there is no, no, conflicts there.
And that's the trade off. But the point is there there's efficiency going on in these intersections, but there's also certain points council member Miller made the point of through the day, there's lots of times you're gonna be sitting at a red light with no traffic going the other way. That's the outcome of some of these things. They're efficient. We're looking at all the different users, the idea of pedestrians, the idea of, like, bicycles coming through there. But there still has gotta be some sort of factor of 50,000 cars going through there. And those drivers feel like they're being efficiently moved through these through these,
conflict points. And I trust MnDOT engineers to try to make sure that happens with that safety in mind so that we don't have those conflict points. Points. Other discussion? Council Member Miller? Sure. I'll just preview. I'm not going to be supporting this motion. And despite the mention of safety, what I hear is the highest priority for this intersection is efficiency. And when I look at the factors that we can design around, we look at the speed, the volume, the safety, and the cost of the project. I've heard discussion about all of these. I think if you asked anybody in the community how they would design an intersection,
they would probably pick safety as the first and then look perhaps at the cost. Right? What is the burden to the taxpayer? And then you look at, you know, speed and volume. Probably set a lower speed that accommodates the same volume. I see that volume really seems to be driving this. Right? How many cars can we get through at two peak times of day? And over a sixty year horizon, I'll be 99 at that time. I probably won't be around to see this intersection. And when I think about the responsibility that we have here to our community to
look at the comprehensive plan, to plan for how we see this community growing. I'm thinking about those people that even my daughter, who is now 10, will be a senior citizen at that time. She will move from the kid vulnerable road user to the senior citizen vulnerable road user in her lifetime in the lifetime of this intersection. And what I see is most difficult to undo in this project when we see lack of safety prioritize or in as the outcome of a project like this, it is the second left turn lane. It is the additional right of way.
And I understand the traffic models that are driving this and that that is a nonstarter in office district office six. I don't necessarily hear that when I go to statewide conferences and hear, future mobility planning, bicycle mode shift planning that's happening at the the statewide level. And I just wonder if doing this project this year under the current standards, Mister Austin, you talked about BMT reductions. You don't have a a framework to implement that. If we were two years in the future, would we get a different project?
Will we get a safer project for that matter? And if we push now, is there an opportunity since that already is a legislative priority to MnDOT? Might we accomplish the same thing sooner? So I will not be supporting, the municipal consent process today as designed. I I've got a a couple of things. One one, I think that what you're presenting is better than what it is now, and it adds a lot of, elements. The raised, pedestrian crossings are, an improvement, but I think we can do better.
I look at it in, in relation to the future. And I haven't heard anything this evening that says right now we need two, left turn lanes there. And I think it's inconsistent with our, plans for a transit oriented node in that area. I did mention I lived in, the Slatterley Park neighborhood for fifteen years, and there is an urgent need by those residents to be able to very safely
cross that node to get to what we've heard, the Farmer's market, three schools, Soldiers Field, Crossroads, and, and, the barbershops that are in that area. And so I wanna see the vision for the future, and I I see it, a vision for the future of more density in that area. We heard that from our staff that, that plans for that area is more dense development. We know that more dense development means less vehicular traffic.
So I'm really looking for something that looks to that twenty year period. And, and so I I will also be voting no on this, item. Other council members? Seeing none, there has been a call to call the roll on this item. So clerk Kaysil, 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. Nay. Motion passes, was that four to three? Four to three. Thank you. And we will take a five minute break. Okay. We are at, reports and recommendations. And our first item, h one is the, potential 2026 state bonding priorities. And this is a discussion that we will be led by deputy administrator Aaron Parrish. This evening, this is really a two part conversation for you all. First,
tonight is really just to introduce some potential priorities for the 2026 bonding. And then at your June 2 meeting, we'd ask you to, consider a resolution supporting those priorities so we can submit those into the governor's system or the office of management and budget system, for consideration. Now you might say, why are you here? The legislature's in session tonight. They may or may not adopt a bonding bill. There may or may not be a special session, coming up here. But we are obligated to submit our request and despite the fact that we don't understand if there'll be a bonding bill adopted this year. So it's just part of the sequencing of the system.
We do this every year. Really, what this provides the opportunity for is for us to be considered for a visit, when the house and senate and governor do their bonding tours in the fall. So it's really just kind of gatewaying into that. I'd also know, these are submitted into the state system so they're aware of their requests. But at the end of the day, we work with our legislative delegation on drafting legislation in order to advance whatever priorities the council adopts through its legislative priorities process. So, again, it's a it's a bit of a sequence. Just move on to, what we're gonna ask of you tonight is just are any of these particular projects
interesting to you and supported? Do they align with your city council priorities, or are there other projects that you'd want us to consider, going into the June 2 meeting? So, again, this is an opportunity for you to engage with your constituencies as well to inform what we do, in this space. So, again, I'm not gonna read these, but, you know, there is, some cadence and some, you know, key points on what makes it good to get bonding projects. Generally, you wanna have something that is ready to go. You want something that has some significance beyond your community. So there is a regional significance element that we're asked to speak to when we
submit requests. Oftentimes, infrastructure, projects are are very, well received at the legislature, and I and we did include in your materials that were distributed today, just some examples of what other what we submitted and been funded for in the past, like Willow Creek Trail, improvements at Cascade Lake, investments in our bus facility, just any number of different things we've been successful with, regional sports and rec complex excuse me, sales tax. But we also have the, public works, and parks facility expansion. So, again, a number of things, that we've been successful for in that space.
You do have to provide 50% local match, so that's an important part of this conversation as well. Working list of the priorities. I'm just gonna click through these very carefully. Some of these are gonna be very familiar to you. A couple of them are new ideas for your consideration. I won't go through in detail the ones we've covered before because I think you're generally familiar with those. So airport infrastructure and energy components, that's been our top priority. At the legislature, we hope something happens here. This has been one where we have to, at some point, make a decision on whether we're gonna continue to advance this, or just move ahead with a more conventional project at the airport.
But at this point, the team thinks it's still worth, having in the conversation as we evaluate this year. This will that would provide solar and covered parking out at the airport. Sewer infrastructure for housing investment, so a lot of housing conversation at the legislature. Obviously, it's one of your top strategic priorities. This provides the infrastructure necessary, excuse me, for us to, advance and and develop, housing and and hopefully mitigate some of the cost and expense, both to the city as well as to potential purchasers of housing. We have the riverfront redevelopment that's been in the queue for a while.
We've been talking about that more on a phased basis. Generally, this year, we've been talking about it more as a design ask to further refine and and define what it is we might be able to do and how we might impact the community. But, again, something that the council in the past few years has had a a lot of conversation Third Avenue Southeast Street and sewer infrastructure upgrades. As you know, there's a lot of activity between maybe Fourth and Ninth, and even Fourth all the way to, 14. But, the corridor, yeah, needs some some work and opportunity to think about how that integrates,
with the waterfront Southeast, development, and, you know, the redevelopment of the Kmart property as that emerges, and transitions out of its parking use, and, also, thinking about sewer capacity and how we can support, the expansion of the sewer capacity. It's kind of a a bit of a bottleneck in that area. So a significant economic development project, not insignificant funding wise, but, again, could be a design ask, could be something that, you know, we collaborate on with DMC. These also we try to, you know, advance the idea about what we wanna do, and then we,
you know, develop a capital stacker approach on how we're gonna fund these projects. So we may pursue federal funding. We may pursue state funding, local funding, etcetera. So we try to create a bit of a network on how we, think about that. This is new. Not really new as an idea, but, new as a legislative priority potentially for bonding. As you know, we have the BRT project, which is rapidly advancing. We'll be in service likely in '27. That will then bring Second Street Southwest down to one lane, for vehicle traffic. And you'll have your,
you know, your bus access lane or your business access lane, in place there. The ITS studies, which were done, and we spent a fair amount of money on those in, 2028, or 2018 rather, it showed the need at some point to think about how can we create Civic Center Drive as a quarter that both is a complete street, but also, helps, vehicles move into the downtown. And so trying to find the right balance, no different than the conversation you just came out of. What might that wanna look like, and how can we provide something that is a great gateway, into our downtown and supporting the transformative development that's happening there.
So, that would be a design ask, and then we have a portion of South Broadway, that is unfinished at this point. And this would create, an opportunity to think about both of those two, together as a gateway and a design that would be cohesive and integrated and something we could then probably face construction around over time as funding is, provided. Law enforcement training facilities. So this is kind of pulling it into a different form of infrastructure, but you'll hear more when you get received the facility condition assessment, that we do have a challenge, with our law enforcement training facilities.
We have a range that is currently out at our WRP property. The collective reinvestment needed to basically replace the current uses is estimated at $10,000,000 out there. Now there's many things you can do in that space, and turn you can partner with other providers. You can rethink how you do things. But this would potentially give us an option to, pursue some design money or acquisition money that would allow us to have a conversation about how we might meet that need locally. More conversation required here. Again, the county does have a facility.
We wanna obviously continue to, have conversations with them about, you know, what's the most appropriate use. But we do have some real deficiencies in the existing space, and it's something, you know, we need to be thinking about, either way. So with that, kinda puts this back to you, and I'll leave you with the the list. And, if you have feedback on any of these particular projects, and or any others that you want us to consider, happy to do that and then try to roll that feedback forward into the your June 2 meeting. Mister Parish, I have a question to start regarding the airport parking and solar array project.
So, I know we don't know if the legislature is going to do a bonding bill this year. Will that deal will can we still put that on for '26? I know that we have to get started with the project. Can you talk about kind of the the cadence for the project itself and potential waiting on bonding for that? Yeah. And so, I mean, we've really had a strong message that at some point, we have to pick a a direction here on this project.
And so if we don't have a funding strategy in the foreseeable future for this and and that could be coming out of this session, which we really think would be you know, provide a lot of clarity for us, you know, we'll we'll have to make a decision on whether we can wait for next session, which, again, gets you into, like, next May. Right? I mean, it's you know, that's you're basically a year out at that point. Otherwise, we have to proceed with the project that doesn't feature the solar, doesn't feature the covered parking, and really is just a more conventional paving project out there. So we very much would love to see,
funding this year. I think what I would recommend to the council if this continues to be a priority is that we submit it, as part of the, required timing in June. But then we have until October to make some judgments on whether we wanna advance that, you know, into the legislative session in January. So it would just be a a you know, put in, placeholder it, and you could continue to evaluate, you know, what makes sense and if other federal funding options for that project emerge or or don't. So Then I had a question on the,
the sewer infrastructure for housing and the sewer and street on third near the link BRT East Terminus. So and talk to us a little bit about how legislators think about projects. In my mind, I I think of the the housing opportunities sewer infrastructure as a little more nebulous and not as focused as the, the sewer and street on Third Avenue. And I know we did get some traction for the for the sewer infrastructure for
housing opportunities this year, interest in that. But I'm wondering if legislators really are more kind of attracted to projects that can be very easily defined. Yeah. Council president Schubert, I I think that's a great both question and observation all in one, you know, and Brian and, assistant mister Yetzer and deputy administrator Cindy Stenhauser here. They both live in those projects a little bit more. But I I think, I'll be honest, like, going into it, I thought,
well, yeah, this is going to be a challenge to explain to the legislature, you know, where's the value proposition. But as you, I think, very correctly pointed out, we did get more more receptivity, you know, this session. And so I think there is some potential to build on that. And the legislature has certainly funded many sewer related projects. Now this is a very targeted type of sewer investment that supports development. And then, of course, you know, they do more conventional funding things like they did for a wastewater treatment facility at Orinoco or those types of things. But, I think with the housing issue being such a a big issue all around,
there's been more receptivity. There's been more communities submitting bills like this. And so I I think it is one of those things that, might be an emerging idea and could have some success, but you also have to put it in the bucket of, like, we probably need to get down to about three or four of these, you know, ultimately, that we wanna both put your time into because you all have the opportunity to testify on behalf of these, as well as just what is reasonable for us to ask the delegation to support you. Council member Palmer. Well, going off, President Schubert's question,
I think, is a good one is what's the appetite to get bonding for? The airport one is inquisitive to me because if we don't get the money, we're not going to do it. What would it take for us to do it? I don't know literally what we charge for parking. I never parked at our airport. I usually get dropped off. I mean, would we have to double, triple the cost to get to to get this? Do we do we self bond that, to do the solar panels and and get it done right? Or or is it so expensive to put parking in at this time that that
if we did it on our own? Council president, council member Palmer, I I don't believe we could, increase rates to support or justify the additional investment there. And so then the question would be is, like, where is the additional investment come from? We could further explore that going into your June meeting just to give you a little better definition of what a self finance project would look like there if we're not successful. But I don't know that parking rates would support that. Okay. That's a good answer. And so the other ones that I'm familiar with is is the riverfront, and that seems to be one that just does not get any traction with with
our legislative people. Are we having better luck getting them to buy into this, or is this are we are we just swinging at something? You know, I think when you, go to the legislature with the project and back to that list of, you know, what makes a successful project, riverfront reinvestment certainly has happened in Minnesota. It's not an, you know, uncommon thing. I'll say, you know, the fact that we received Destination Medical Center funding can be challenging for downtown related or adjacent investments. Testified understand that when you go up. They say, can't DMC just fund that?
And we say, no. It's got lots of other great ideas and plans for it, but, it is a real perception challenge to manage. We also want to acknowledge, though, a few years ago, the council was pretty enthusiastic about the project, and we are trying to find strategies in order to fund it. But I think of all the ones on the list, that probably, is the the one that's probably the most challenging, to get lift at the legislature. I'd also say, we to reflect and respond to that, we've put in a design ask so we could build momentum for the project versus
coming in with a big you saw the the slide, you know, I mean, it's significant funding required. So we've tried to bring that down, and then hopefully, you could cascade that up. But it's it's challenging. Didn't we originally, think that we're gonna sell the sites across the street and tie them into this project here and and and get some bang for the buck doing, you know, here, build this and then some of the money will go to the riverfront. Am I remembering that correctly? I'm going to ask Cindy to jump in, to that part of the conversation. I think that's part of it is the riverfront can mean a lot of things.
Sure. Thank you, Councilmember Palmer, council president Schoebring, and members of the city council. I just wanna build off of some of, w administrative parish's comments just to take you back when the river the number of years ago when we did the riverfront bonding bill ask. It was a big ask. It said go big. Right? Go big or go home kinda. We took feedback from the, state bonding committee about break it down, make it more manageable. It they didn't have a bonding, a successful bonding bill, so that's where now we're coming back with that smaller ask again.
We had an ask, and we wanna keep it, give it some life. To your question specifically about the what the parcels around the government center, so we have, we have parcels, the west parcel and the east parcel, and we're currently working with Hunden, who's done some analysis on what makes sense in terms of do you offer both parcels at one time? Do you do one and put the other one in a holding? Do you need both to make the project land? The idea is if we sell those parcels, the the the proceeds is likely needed to be come back in terms of an incentive to the development,
not unlike, I'll just say, project to north, the Sherman, Sherman proposal gave them the land free as part of their financial, pro form a and and their financial incentive packages, free land plus TIF. So we anticipate that something similar will likely be needed for the parcels right next to the government center, that that goes into the financial package and not necessarily, dollars that we would collect and then turn around and put in a riverfront public realm. But, the expectation that public realm would be part of that development,
so in a way, that cost is born as part of that development because we would want to make that a, a factor in awarding a development like we did with Sherman. There's a public realm component along the riverfront as part of their project. So that's a long way of saying, if there were proceeds from the sale of that, it likely would be part of the incentive package that the development would need in order to make the development, be successful, at least to have public realm components. We do, anticipate asking, DMC DMC for match that might be required for a bonding ask.
So, you know, to administer deputy administrator's comment about the state saying, you know, well, you have DMC correct. And we do say DMC is the potential match for these bonding bill dollars for Riverfront. Last one. And it's an interesting one we were talking about, for homeless opportunities here in Rochester. And one of the things that came up is at some point, someone's just going to have to say, we need to build a mental health facility. And I know that the city typically doesn't do stuff like that. But if we if we could get a building built,
to help out with mental health, then the county or somebody else could be running that. Is that something that we could bond for? President, Councilmember Palmer, certainly, the state has a history of bonding in the health and human services space. Some local example for is the Southeast Regional Crisis Center, which, you know, really is, I think I'm not exactly a % sure what what need you're talking about, but, that facility is designed to meet some of the acute mental health emergent mental health needs in the community. But there has been state funding provided for buildings like that,
which is out on the county campus, or, you know, different different types of, facilities for for, folks experiencing homelessness. And and I guess with the the the questions to me that were were asked was is how do we build on that? What do we do to get this? You know, because the answer comes back as well. We had the state hospital in 1982. We closed it. Well, that was fifty years ago. You know, I mean, we should be able to do something in the last fifty years to get this problem taken care of and help all these people. It was probably four or four or five fifty. It's close, Jimmy.
It's close. I, I think that I think that not disagreeing with you. It's just like a few other ideas in this space. So there I'll just acknowledge on behalf of the mayor. You know, we had a good conversation, and, you know, she had talked about a cultural center, which has been an idea. It's been part of the mayor twenty fifty, efforts and, you know, interesting idea. It's just, is it ready for, this? Do we have a partner? Do we have the partners? Do we have the combined request that might be needed in order to help that proposal be successful? So sometimes,
that readiness piece is an important piece of advancing on these initiatives too. Thank you. Council member Wall. Thank you. Just a germ of an idea that, I floated a little bit, at our legislative working group, a couple of weeks ago. A couple of weeks ago, when we heard from a lot of downtown people, it was the same four or five businesses that were, mentioned all the time about, destinations for locals or places of interest for visitors. When we are privileged to travel to places like,
St. Augustine, Savannah, Charleston, Boston, even Sedona, there's quite an eclectic opportunity for seeing different kinds of shops. Is there any way that we can bond for a stronger downtown with an opportunity for people near and far, to find, great joy in coming, to our downtown. And I know that has a lot of challenges to it, including lack of specificity and the DMC in downtown 09:00, but just bringing it up. Yeah. Council president, council member Wahl, I I think that's a really, you know,
great idea. And I, I'm gonna just also, shoot this over to deputy administrator Steinhauser. I know there's an, strategic initiatives director John here too. There, you know, there is energy about, you know, what does the historic district like and some evaluation of those improvements and, you know, the Third Avenue Corridor and so on and so or Third Street, rather. Excuse me. And, I think there there could be a lot of potential options in that space, whether they're DMC focused projects or whether they're bonding projects. But, you know, the physical infrastructure to create that environment and build on what the historic district is
in a way that's sort of complementary, to it, I think certainly could be. But I also know that, like, we're at that point where I think we would benefit from some of that additional context and planning. And so I don't know if you wanna give any updates on where that's at. Based on the planning, is that what you're saying? Sorry. Historic district planning. Sure. Yeah. No. I would echo what Deputy Administrator Parrish's comments are. I would just say in the year of doing the, DMC's establishing the historic district incentive funding that you approved, coming before you at the next council meeting is four more projects that will bring
total 2,700,000.0 of investment in in just shy of a year of you approving that historic district and DMC and and the city council directing dollars. So we have a good model there in terms of the kind of impact that you could make in, generating investment and, business revitalization, the eight or 10 or it's eight or 10 very distinct business and property owners. So I think that serves as a good model. I think what we've learned from the downtown task force, and the roles that we play along with our respective partners,
it's very much about how do we support the built environment, and then our partners supporting what we call the programming side of things that that create the energy and the kinds of events for people to want to come to downtown. So I think as admin W. Administrator, Paris has indicated, I think there is an idea around there that we've got a couple of successful models we could build off of if there was interest for us to pursue. Yeah. And I would just maybe also add to that. The the South Broadway planning in terms of, you know, what kind of streetscape and urban design that wants to complement,
you know, whatever improvements are made there, that could all that idea can integrate with that request as well. So if you start to think about it being more of a corridor planning idea and concept, certainly, urban design, public realm, you know, streetscape are gonna be important elements of that, and state bonding is a great way to pursue both goals. I'm gonna jump in with my germ of an idea. Well, it's not mine, but it's, so and it kinda combines what, council member Wahl suggested and, the mayor's idea, and it's looking at the historic Chateau Theatre.
I know that we, as a council, sent mister Johnson back to do some, kind of planning and visioning at the very high level, medium level, and low level. And I really think given that the chateau is going to be celebrating its hundredth anniversary next year, that looking at that as a potential for '26 or maybe even '27, and really looking at what can we make of that to it, being a destination site in the middle of,
downtown, including looking at culture and stuff. So that's my idea. And I will go to council member Fredericks next. You trumped me. You Is that yours? Is that what you were gonna say? No. You're okay. You're right. You've been following up. Thank you, president Schoebring. Thanks, mister Parrish, for all the information so far. I've been around a little bit now and you probably I'm big on needs, and I don't really have a big want list. I'm big on needs. And we've all expressed a need for housing and not just single family homes and stuff,
all forms of housing. So anything that supports all forms of the infrastructure, I think two Bullets two, four and five allude to that. I think that's close to the number one concern in this community. Because we need we need the people in this community to have housing to support all the things that are going on in this community. So people need a need a place safe place to live and call home. Second of all, we do have a rising, number of people that are struggling the most is what I'll say in this community. We do. And no great solutions have been come up with a place to a safe place for these people to go for speaking with law enforcement,
places for them to bring them to get help the help that they need that is a lot more in-depth than maybe volunteers and so on can offer them. And, you know, having a Sean, Council Member Palmer brought up a great point about having a place for people with struggling with mental health and various other, struggles in their life that get way beyond my expertise. A place for them to go. A place for them to, be. So those things like that are obviously very important. And not last on my list is anything that's gonna enhance our safety in this
community, law enforcement training spaces, I'm all about I'm all about supporting that. Thank you, council member. Council member Keane? Yep. Thank you. I get a little distracted during these discussions because, of course, we're talking about we've got to get 2026 in. 2025 is sitting in the works. We got nothing in 2024. But the fact is, in 2023 was a big year, and a bunch of things came through. And it is this sort of feast or famine, and so it's important to be ready. The other thing that I you know, if you talk about when you're going through the process that part of this group went through,
and maybe this group as new group will go through again, is when we look at sales tax, that was a little different in that we had to come up with zero match. So this thing has this other aspect that we have to have 50% match. So it makes it it really puts some onus on what deputy administrator Parris said about it should be something that you're ready to do. It shouldn't be like, well, that'd be a good idea. Because we it sort of happened to me that way with the park stuff where it was a good idea to get them out where they were. But I don't think I really realized we had to come up with $14,000,000
then after we got their 14,000,000. So keep it in mind. This isn't a matter of, you know, what they're going to do for us. We're gonna have fund half of it. So if we weren't planning and doing it and we put it on this list, we're gonna try to come up with that money. And sometimes it can be enterprise money and sometimes but other times it's like, no. We have to figure that out. And we have to bond ourselves for the good things to do sometimes, but make sure we're ready to do them. I think I've been very, heartened to see the reception we've got on the sewer infrastructure for housing opportunities.
And I think it is something that plays well with the nature of how the bonding works with the idea of both parties have to support it, and the idea of it's it is housing, but you really can't be going and asking for funding for housing because that would be across the entire state. State. So I think that's one that's end up having good infrastructure, I think so. So that's one I wanna continue on with. As far as this idea of, like, I think there's one that's public realm. And, I I think we should continue on looking for this redevelopment or this next phase
of this planning money for river riverfront. I would rather not carry that and something for Chateau. So whatever those are. And maybe I need more education on what those outlooks are coming from Mr. Johnson's, like, analysis of that if that is going to come back. But right now, I would be worried of getting a state bonding thing surprisingly passed and then looking at us to come up with the rest of it. So those things sort of bother me. But I've my take would be is I like to have that one bigger infrastructure project. I really did think we were going to have good luck with the airport parking
cause it was smaller. It was reasonable to fit into a $700,000,000 funding bill without being, you know, 1% of it. And those things turn out to be important sometimes. So, again, we'll have to keep that in mind as we go forward. The other one that does bother me right now is like when I look at Second Street and what's happening there and like looking out five and ten years, this idea of Civic Center Drive is going to change. And whether we're going to plan for that way in advance or have it just come upon us is, that one I don't know how that would play.
I would rather get the sewer infrastructure money and sort of beat on that. But that one is also interesting to me. So that, I I think we're just doing these comments today. There's no votes or anything. You're just trying to Yeah. Consolidate it? That's exactly what we're looking for. We really appreciate the feedback. Good. Thank you. Council member Miller. I'll just echo a couple of things. I do like the sewer infrastructure. I think it's interesting, and I think it supports our pitch to be able to activate the underlying foundation that we can build housing on top of, which I I think is really exciting and meets a lot of stakeholders that I'm
hearing. Also, being new to this process, I I'm intrigued by council member Palmer's, question of what it looks like to cooperate with, say, county partners when we look at regional regionality being an important, consideration in bonding priorities, what it looks like to go in jointly on regional impact where there's mix of county and city support. And I I'd be interested to see to hear what our county peers are considering so that we're not competing for dollars that ultimately benefit the whole region of Olmsted County. And I also think about,
our other priorities of driving this economic, impact for weekend tourism, particularly. We have the sports complex coming through sales tax that has some trail connection to it. And I also think about as a community just south of us at Lanesboro and how much economic impact they built around the trail system. We have regional assets, Oxbow, that wouldn't be too par to connect in coordination with the county to, the Douglas Trail, potentially other destinations east or south. There's been plans I've heard about a big Bluestem Trail to connect to Stewartville.
But where do we start to increase access for recreational opportunity that also drives economic impact that's in alignment with other projects we have going on? Similarly, I would be supportive of looking at the South Broadway corridor connection to Civic Center Drive. I think that, in my mind, that's almost a bigger factor to redeveloping the waterfront than, the planning for the waterfront area itself, because we often hear that Broadway itself is quite a barrier between two sides of downtown. And so I I I could be very supportive of something like that as well. And final thought, just being new to this,
is I would wonder where we might incorporate more community input. We often hear that, community engagement is an area we struggle in on our community surveys, and this seems like a a key opportunity to gauge some community input on our our bonding priorities that represent ultimately the people we serve. Go ahead. Yeah. Your honor, just a you. Yeah. Your honor, just a few immediate pieces of feedback there. I I think we certainly, I think, are trying to use this council process as a way to get some initial feedback realizing, you know, the state sets the cadence for how we submit into the system and,
you know, we have a window to to navigate that. But, also, each one of these, you know, I think as we go forward and get to October and get to next legislative sessions, I think we certainly can bear that in mind. And I think that's why we also wanted to have this be a two meeting conversation so you all have the opportunity to get feedback between now and June 2 as well, on what's speaking to your constituents. So I think so definitely more thought to be put there. We did talk and can continue to have good conversations with the county. They are adopting their priorities at their next meeting is my understanding.
They're pretty reflective of the priorities that they currently have, and they're focused on the MRF. They're focused on the bridge in on '14, and maybe one other one if I recall correctly. And because we've had some light conversation in the law enforcement training space. And as they deal with some of the, impact of this budget that they're anticipating, and, you know, just their kind of historical needs. They're really focused on that right now. But I think we can continue to have those conversations. And I think the regional trails ideas are very successful, at the legislature. They provide a lot of opportunities, to be funded.
I think it would be great to have something, you know, in the Met Council in the Twin Cities. You wanna connect regional asset to regional asset. And so if we can think about how do we connect great assets like, you know, to the Douglas Trail, you know, out to the Park in Byron, you know, I think those are all, you know, very important things, you know, and well, good for the community, but good for tourism. So at Oxbow, I don't know why I was blanking on Oxbow, there. But it's great. It's a great great park. I think the county is in the process of doing some trail planning, and I think that's the starting point to generate momentum in that space.
So I think definitely we'll stay tuned with that and try to encourage that. I think that's a good roll call conversation for our roll call representatives too is to just continue to encourage that trail planning, because I think we would benefit from that overall. Council member Doreen. Thank you. I really appreciate the the, the progress that has been, done with the sewer infrastructure for housing opportunities bill, and I hope that we continue to carry that, especially given the, the forecast, that bonding is all in likelihood not happening this year. So I I I I think it's really important to carry one of those huge
infrastructure. I I agree with councilman Keane on that. Looking at at public realm opportunities, I appreciate the the thoughts about the Chateau Theatre, but I also wonder if the library could be one of those bonding opportunities. We heard a a a few weeks ago now during during a session, from our library staff and a reimagining of a library system here with, satellite branches, all that kind of stuff. And I wonder if if this would be an opportune time, to seek some state dollars to really create that system in our community to make
our library a little bit more accessible, for different pockets of our community. It would also, be an an an opportunity to do some, capital, project improvements to our current library facilities. We hear that too, or I hear that as, from constituents as well. So I just wanna throw the library in there as maybe a possibility as well, but I thank you for your work and thank you for the presentation today. Council member Palmer. Yeah. I would just be real quick. I've been on the the bonding helping with that, and and one of the things I've been most impressed with is our state legislative people and the feedback that they've given us and what works,
what doesn't work, and how they advocate and and and really work hard for Rochester. And and that goes across for every one of our our legislative people. And it's a tough job and and they're out there pitching for Rochester and they're doing their best. So I just wanna make sure everybody understands that too. Great discussion. Thanks, everybody. Do you have Yeah. No. Appreciate it. To get us to the June meeting. Okay. Right. Item H2, approval of out of state travel and training. This is an item pulled by Council Member Palmer. Yeah, I'll move to approve. Second. Thank you. You have the floor.
One of the reasons I'm I'm voting to approve it is that it's all within the mayor's budget, and I think that's a big item for me. But I do have some questions. And and city attorney, if you can help me out with my questions. The police department gets a gift. It comes to city council, and we vote on that. Is there a reason we do that? Council member Palmer, council members, council president Schoebring, yes. As a as a best practice, we try to assure that any departments who are receiving any any gifts of significance that that is formally approved through a council process.
So then my next question is if there's a group that wants me to go someplace and they want to give the pay for it, does that have to then go through the city council to be accepted? Or why not? I I would want to say yes, though I imagine you have a hypothetical or not so much a hypothetical in in mind. So it it'd probably be better for me to address a specific scenario, than than a general. Well, I wanna keep a general. Sure. Okay. Because last year, we didn't vote for anybody, to to go anywhere extra.
It all was within budget, I'm assuming. I I know that for a fact that city clerk sent that to us when I asked mister Parrish for it. Sure. And and I just I'm trying to catch up with the with the line of questioning and how you might be thinking about this. Maybe one distinction that may be important is the difference between a gift to an individual versus a gift to the city. So the scenarios where we're formally accepting a gift to a department, we are receiving that gift on behalf of the city.
There could, in theory, be other situations where an individual, assuming no conflict question, of course, may be receiving a a gift that wouldn't be viewed formally as a gift to the city. So the question I guess I'm asking is if if somebody says, I want Palmer to come speak to our group and we're gonna give him this x amount of money, do I run that as a check to the city or do I run it to me as a city and have us accept it or do we not? I think we do we do not.
I I think I'm understanding your question. We we do not, because that would not be viewed as a as a gift to the city as an entity. We would encourage you, to have that conversation with potentially administration or with me just to assure again that there's no conflict, in play. So but we do have a rule that I can't accept anything more than $5. It has to be $5 or less for for conflict of interest. Right? From an interested party. So some caveat to that.
Okay. So you understand what I'm asking? Kind of. I believe I do generally. Okay. Thank you. Any further discussion on this item? So there's a motion on the floor to approve out of state travel and training. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Motion passes. H three, city council travel and training budget. Council member Palmer. Yeah. Well, thank you. And and I'm not trying to make this personal, but to me, we as city council members work within a budget. We want our staff to work within a budget.
I want us to stay on a budget, and I I I will not be supporting, going outside the budget for, travel. I personally pay for a lot of stuff I do myself, and everybody's well aware that you can pay for it yourself if you wanna go over that budget amount. So that's my statement. Further discussion? Council member Keane? Yeah. I had a a staff question just on we're we're doing this, allowing two of the seven people in there to go over their limits. It makes sense to me because they're newer people. They're going to these different trainings. But are we also I mean,
are we assuming that we're staying within the overall seven person budget, or is there an assumption that this vote would allow us to go this dollar amount over our overall budget? President council council member Keane, I I don't know that there was that level of detail put to the the review. That that's what I would say. They're we probably didn't do that level of it. But my assumption was that this was a matter of disaggregation, that it was the individual things, and we weren't gonna go over our overall. But then I didn't see any sort of controls in place to make sure that
didn't happen. I think that's a fair assessment. I I would support this today, but I guess I would like to think that if this council goes over their overall amount and that and I I don't know how to address this. Could the staff have to manage that? Because then I think we we should either have have to do use contingency or not not support that. So that that's how I would take this vote. That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Mhmm. Council member Fredericks? Can I contribute my training money to these gentlemen if they wanna further their knowledge in these said subjects?
Is that possible? I think that's what this would do, and it would allow you to then to stay under the budget if you were or others that have not fully used the funding, you know Council member Miller does a great job at educating me on things. If he's gonna go take things in and brings it back, I mean, that's that's good. So he you know, he's very motivated to go out and do a lot of different things. So as council member Doreng, I don't have the leisure I don't have the time to get away as you know, very easily. So I, you know, I'm not gonna I'm just gonna be frank. I'm not gonna use my training money.
I I stay within the city limits here twenty four seven. So In that case, we would not bring forward a a budget amendment. You would be under budget, and this would be fine. So, to to council member Frederic's line of questioning, so so, if, let's say, I went over my travel budget, would we see that come back to us? Or or, or, under council member Frederick's scenario, only if we go above our $15,000
travel budget would it come to us? Your honor, in any case that you're gonna go above the your your one seventh, you would have to bring that forward. The individual. Okay. Council member Palmer. Well, under mister Keane's proposal in January, I signed up for $15,000 worth of travel and everybody else would be out of of travel money. And the other side of this is what I'm trying to say is is I'm a chamber member. I pay for that myself. I go to a chamber event. I pay for that myself because I pay for something myself where I go to travel to to to go to the to a seminar.
That doesn't mean it's it's my privilege to do that but I'm also trying to save the city money. And so, my take on this is when you go to do an education the seminars and I look at the National League of Cities and I don't see a class that I would benefit from. And so, I don't attend those. And so I think from a leadership perspective from the city, if you want to say it that way, we tell everybody they need to work within a budget. I still think we need to have that be the message to the staff. Further discussion on this item. Is there a motion?
Council Member Keane? Again, further discussion. If Council Member Palmer brought back a $15,000 we wouldn't approve it. So it wouldn't go anywhere. So, I I mean, I think what we're dealing with is we put something in place in 2024 addressing a certain problem. We probably didn't think it all the way through. I still think this is kind of a nonissue because I don't think the at the at the, council level, we'll go over our numbers based on what I see as our norm the normal behaviors of this. So I think we're okay approving these individually. But, again, if we got I I I could foresee a problem where
council president Schubert comes up near the end of the year and says, oh, I'm I'm gonna go to this thing. And we say, no. We're out of money. And he goes, like, how did that happen? Well, we gave it away to other people. And those are the kind of ugly things, but it's based on poorly thought out things where we're doing we were reacting to somebody spending too much of the budget. Before, we passed rules, and now we're we're dealing with what the outcomes could be. I think we're still in good shape as far as the overall seven person budget, and, that's why I think we'll go forward with that. With this discussion, that staff knows that we don't imply that we're going over the seven person budget
with this. That that's my understanding of it. Is that correct? Yes. Council member Wall. That would have been my impression too that we are within budget if we stay within, the 15,000. I agreed, with reducing the budget, by half, so that we could, present a better package to the community. But I also understand that by doing that, we absolutely took, any opportunity for any member, old or new, of the council to attend the National League of Cities, function. I did attend one of those functions. I'm glad I was there.
I will never go back. I thought it was valuable to see how that is run and what might possibly be for us. That may be true of, these two council members. I I don't know. But I I don't believe we should take away every opportunity for them to attend the National League of Cities event, at least once. And I too would want to stay within that, 15,000 that that, we approved. Is there a motion council member, is there a motion on this item? Not yet? I Sure. Go ahead.
I will move to approve council member Daring to, exceed $21.47 annual travel and training allowance by approximately eight fifty nine and council member Miller to exceed annual allocation by approximately one one one seven point ninety eight. Second? Moved by council member Wahl, seconded by council member Keane. Any further discussion? Council member Doreen. I plan to abstain from this vote. Thank you. Yeah. Any further discussion? I just would add, I I appreciate the opportunity to have this discussion. I think it's important, and I appreciate the the context as well.
There are events that I pay for as well to attend locally that I don't feel like are always city representation. But I think in these larger conferences attending, the League of Minnesota Cities, new council member training was very valuable in Plymouth to just meet colleagues, hear about the functioning of the city, be more effective in this role. I've heard positive comments from both council member Wall and the mayor about the the value of National League of Cities and, also the League of Minnesota Cities event in Duluth. I feel like in many ways, this is a decision that's impacted because of prior council action,
and here we are living with it and maybe would make a different decision today. And I appreciate that my colleagues are willing to support variation, particularly in this new, start of a term. And I I look forward to representing the city at those places. Should this motion pass, I guess, perhaps there's a way that I I evaluate other alternatives to be able to go myself. I do find this to be valuable. And I'm grateful for the opportunity earlier this cycle to have had council support in applying for Smart Growth America's Champions Institute,
which had no cost to the city and is a similar format. But I've learned a lot, and I look forward to bringing back some of those pieces of information about our Complete Streets policy. So, again, some things cost the city money, some things don't. And I think that from my experience, there is great value. And in my interactions with meeting other council members, other mayors, in differing settings and the information that we can bring back here to this council and to the community. Further discussion, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. Nay. Abstentions? I abstain. Passes five to one with one abstention.
Moving on to, ordinance first readings, mister Spindler Craig. Thank you, Mr. President. Item J1, an ordinance rezoning approximately 55.48 acres of land located West Of Broadway Avenue Northeast Of East River Road Northeast, South Of 40 Fourth Street Northeast and North Of 40 First Street Northeast from LI Light Industrial to SI Special Industrial and amending Ordinance No. 4,478, known as the Unified Development Code of the City Of Rochester, Minnesota.
Moving on to one second reading, Item K1, an ordinance annexing to the City Of Rochester approximately 28.84 acres of land located East of Sixtieth Avenue NW and approximately 500 feet south of King Arthur Road NW identified by pin number seventy three thousand eight hundred and thirty three. Is there a motion on this? Move approval. Second. Who is the move approval? Either one. Take your pick. Or Doring. Doring. Council member Doring, has moved the item, and council member,
Wall has seconded. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Moving on to other business. Our first item on other business is, I didn't invite a motion to recess the council meeting for a meeting of the Rochester Economic Development Authority. So moved. Moved by council member Miller, seconded by council member Fredericks. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Thank you. We are now reconvened as the city council. And is I'd entertain a motion to,
accept the findings of the, EDA. So moved. Second. Who moved that? Okay. Council member Walls, seconded by Council Member Palmer. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Moving on to our other business in the council agenda, we have, Mr. Spindler Craig, who is going to set up our executive session. Thank you, Mr. President. Consistent with the posted agenda, I need to make a record leading to your motion to move into closed session.
Litigation has been threatened by attorneys representing several businesses that have paid or incurred fees related to transportation infrastructure serving properties that they owned or once owned in the City Of Rochester. The city's responses to this threatened litigation should be informed by a confidential briefing of the Rochester Common Council, by outside counsel, and me as the City's counsel on these matters under the attorney client privilege. So under Minnesota Statute Section 13.05, Subdivision three,
I respectfully request the presiding officer to make a motion to close this meeting to the public. To more clearly describe the subject of that closed meeting, the targets of the threats of litigation relate to publicly made decisions by the Council including: one, the adoption of a Transportation Improvement District policy in 02/1942, the adoption of the Westside Traffic Improvement District in 02/2006 and three, the adoption of development agreements or amendments to them in public council meetings. The closed meeting I request will not include action by the council to settle or
refuse to settle the threatened claims, but will be limited to the consequences of those three types of decisions. Absolute confidentiality is necessary so that the members of the council could make an informed assessment of options. The need to have confidential discussions with specially appointed counsel and to discuss strategies regarding regarding the threatened litigation outweighs the purposes of the Open Meeting Law and is permitted by the attorney client privilege and Section 13.05, Subdivision three of that law.
On the grounds just stated by the city's appointed legal counsel, I hereby move to close the Rochester Common Council meeting under section one three d point zero five, subdivision three, b, and the, and the, attorney client privilege to discuss the threatened lit litigation as described more specifically by mister Spindler Craig in the request that he just made. With this motion, we would adjourn, the meeting to Room 104 at 09:45.
Is there President, I'm I'm sorry. If you would just take a second to move on to the next going to do. Is there a second to Second. Seconded by, council member Keane. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Thank you.