I currently have Recording in progress. 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, Thank you, and welcome to our August 18 Rochester City Council meeting. We begin every council meeting with our open comment period. This is an opportunity for everyone, anyone from the public to speak on items that we will not be taking public testimony during a during a public hearing later in the agenda.
Each, each person has up to two minutes to speak for a total of twenty minutes. I will be keeping track of time through a couple of methods. One is the, the stoplight here and then the red, timer clock up there. I'd request that speakers be concise to allow more people to speak during the designated time, And you are also encouraged to limit comments generally to topics that are within the scope and jurisdiction of the council's ability to affect policy. Council members and staff do not respond to your comments during public comment,
but, instead, we'll follow-up on any specific request that you have. If you have any materials to share with the council, you may give them to the city clerk who is to our right here, my right, to distribute. You will be invited up to speak in the order that you signed up, and we will start, this evening with Casey McGregor. Please state your name. And then, Casey, if you could also push the, the button to turn on the mic. There you go. I think we're on. Good evening, council. Casey McGregor.
The city council should demand that mayor Norton, for as long as she may wish to remain mayor, may not be involved with or be involved with through her husband, Randy Stone, the dark money group and divisible five zero seven, which calls for retaliatory boycotts against businesses, including the mayor's political critics. Randy Stone being on the board of this infamous dark money group, Indivisible five zero seven, is unacceptable and presents a terrible conflict in interest and potential for the abuse of power that should be investigated by the city council to avoid liability and violations of
law. J one, removing the judicial branch involvement as first step of enforcement. This is unquestionably the shrinking of due process rights. Again, unquestionably shrinking due process rights. Very significant fines and penalties will be able to be handed out based upon one person's judgment or caprice, and the recourse for the affected business would be having to come before the body, the city council, with the burden of having to prove the city's agent was wrong or malicious. Regulations and training of inspectors and city enforcement should be reviewed and considered prior to
arming them with potent new weapons with a high potential for abuse. The city attorney is negligent for any and lack of such review on this matter. F seven. Creating a broker for the city property removes control of massive part of the city's finances from direct public oversight and control. This kind of thing avoids oversight and has massive potential for corruption and abuse. At h three, the codesigner must stop being operated as a secret branch of government illegally operating outside
of open meeting law. Their meetings should be recorded for the public. Thank you, miss other one. Miss McGregor, your time has Refer to the packet. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Molly Dennis. Alright. Well, thank you so much for the two minutes a month. I wish there was more than that as I think the resident voices are very important. I moved here in Rochester in 02/2007, so, close to twenty years ago, and I'm proud to say Rochester is my permanent home forever. I'm so I'm a very concerned citizen and want to say that,
I believe that due process transparency are both needed tremendously for government accountability. So for all of up on the dais, I hope that those two issues are taken very seriously. The three one one system has not worked for me when I have used it, utilized it, so I just wanted to put a friendly reminder that the trees that were promised to be replanted out in the parking lot have not been so and seem to be, put, you know, put grass over. So that's something that was maybe overlooked. And then parking spots,
you hear the commercials that say there's 5,000 parking spots downtown, Rochester, city commercial. However, I do not believe there's anywhere close to that of accessible parking spots, and so I would hope someone from city staff could get back to me and other residents who are curious on how many accessible parking spots are Downtown Rochester. So if those two issues could be addressed, the trees and the parking, that would be wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's all I have on the sign up sheet. If there are others who wish to be, heard, and, mister Krisel,
we do have you down for h one. Oh, you have f eight. Okay. Go ahead, mister Krisel. Mister president, members of the council, madam mayor, thank you for this opportunity to address you. With regards to h one, namely updates via city staff and DMC personnel, the citizens of Rochester do not feel their voices and opinions are heard. People outside looking in hear from DMC Board personnel that metrics indicate that such efforts
are providing anticipated results. Visitors and citizens of Rochester feel otherwise. A hearing with regards to such findings could provide a better buy in on the part of citizens. I've heard so many times from members of the council and from staff that transparency is so important. Well, then people need to be invited to the table at a hearing and not not a consent agenda item to be able to be available on the heard on the front side. That's why so few personnel show up at city council meetings.
They feel as though it's a waste of time. With regards to f eight, as to how to improve the economy of Rochester, must require robust community involvement by store owners as well as those most affected and not to invite only a select few to speak for the citizens of Rochester. So if you're gonna ask me, how do we increase vitality? It's a no brainer. You know, the Peace Plaza didn't work. Millions of dollars wasted. That's my opinion and those of the citizens of Rochester.
It's a no brainer to restore the the Chateau theater. I think we've got one movie house open yet. Let's totally restore the Chateau theater and have something we can be proud of. That said, I would also encourage the council to acquire Jan Daley's property and put the clock tower there and turn it into an inviting space. Thank you very much. Lisa. Anyone else who wished wishes to be heard during open comment period? Seeing none, we will close open comment period.
And, clerk Queso, can you call the roll? Good evening. Council member Keane? Here. Council member Miller? Here. Council member Wall? Here. Council member Fredericks? Here. Council member Palmer? Here. Council member Dohring? Here. Council president Schoebring? Here. Mayor Norton? Present. Thank you. Next up, we have the city administrator's report, administrator zones. Thank you, council president, council members, mayor Norton, members of the public. I always start this off by thanking our city teammates for acting with respect, integrity, safety, and excellence in everything that they do,
so thank you for that. Also did want to highlight a couple of things happening, in the next few weeks. There is gonna be a crop swap happening. You're gonna see that Cook Park is going to be utilized, fairly at least two slides here. 11AM to 12PM on August 30, that's a Saturday, at Cook Park 22 Seventh Avenue Northwest. There will be an opportunity to share your gardens garden goods with each other. If you have too many, cucumbers and a lot of tomatoes, head on out to Cook Park on that day. That's hosted by the library, but in one of our important public parks. Also did just want to point out another,
goodness, I'm clicking too fast, another opportunity, to engage with community public music has their forward concert series coming to Cook Park, 05:30 to 8PM on Wednesday, August 27. Space Monkey Mafia with the reach outs will be coming. If you Google that, it looks very exciting. And, please come prepared with your picnic baskets, coolers, etcetera. We want you to have a good time. Everybody's welcome. Another, opportunity for, the public music department and parks, to work together, and that will be in Ward 5. Public parking, we have some upgrades coming.
New technology and equipment coming to the parking ramps. So it'll provide you some contactless payment options, mobile payment convenience, unified hotel parking, upgraded cards, and, some other smart support features. So hoping to have have an even better experience for folks in our, parking ramps. That installation will start, today. So, we have that to look forward to. And then the dancing downtown is continuing. It's at Peace Plaza and, in the historic Chateau Theatre depending on whether, this, Monday, August 25, this coming Monday, six to 8PM,
the Argentine tango will be featured. So if that's something you don't know how to do or you do know how to do, you are welcome. It is, free group dance lessons provided by, the Rochester Downtown Authority. And that's all I have. And council member Wall just, informed me that the Ward three forward concert is tomorrow night. Is that in White Oaks Park. White Oaks Park. Oh, yeah. Wednesday. Excuse me. Wednesday. Moving on with the mayor's report. Mayor Norton, go ahead. Wonderful. Thank you so much. I'm gonna see if I can get my clicker to work here.
There we go. So we have a kind of an unusual start, to the mayor's comments, but I'm very excited to invite to the podium mister Paul Regatz, representative a representative of employer support for the Guard and Reserve, and, Sergeant First Class Seigenfeller as well. And so if the two of you could go up to the podium and mister Regatz is going to make some comments. Welcome. Thank you very much. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here. My name is Paul Raggitz. I'm with the ESGR, the employer support of Garden Reserve,
and I have the pleasure today to present the award, the Above and Beyond Award to the city of Rochester and, mayor Norton. This began when staff sergeant Seigenthaler put in our entry level award called the Patriot Award for his employer, Matt Crawford, infrastructure manager. And even though I won't read his whole narration, it's all based on how well staff sergeant Segan Seganthaler is treated by his frontline
superior because of the time that he is off and be has to take off as a member of the Army National Guard. So let's say army, navy, air force, marine, coast guard, there's about a 100 Patriot Awards that are, presented every year. And out of that, the committee then picks 15% of who goes literally above and beyond for this award, and I'll just read you the description of the award. The ESGR above and beyond award is presented by the ESGR state committees.
This is a we're a federal organization. Each state has their own. To recognize employers at the local level, we have gone above and beyond the legal requirements of the uniform services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, something that started back during the Vietnam era to defeat discrimination against any soldier, sailor, or marine. And then this is the positive side for those who go again above and beyond by providing their garden reserve employees additional nonmandated benefits such as differential or full pay
to offset lost wages, extended health benefits, and other similar benefits. The award is given in limited numbers by state committees to employers who have had at least one of their supervisors, managers recognized with the Patriot Award as mister Crawford was and who have signed or agreed to sign the ESGR statement of support, which mayor Norton has already done. Basically, signing something that says, I'm gonna keep doing or my company, in this case, the city of Rochester, doing what we're doing in terms of our soldiers and sailors.
State committees are authorized maximum discretion in considering an above and beyond award for Patriot Award nominations of smaller firms, those with no individual supervisor specified, and other similar situations. So every Patriot award is basically granted and presented. But to receive the above and beyond, you have to be literally a superior employer in the eyes of the ESGR and, of course, our, service members. So I'd like to present this to the mayor.
We already got our pictures in, so we're all set. And I want to thank staff sergeant Siegenthaler for everything he does and his service and his force in recognizing for this program. So thank you very much. And while, I brought this forward, it really is an honor, to have been honored and recognized by sergeant Seigenthaler, and I appreciate, mister Regat's, willingness to come here and and offer the award. And so the the statement of support, I'm gonna hand off after the meeting to our city administrator,
HR, and public works, because it is their, support that allowed us to get this, and and we really appreciate, the recognition. And thank you so much for that. So I did tell you they could leave if they want and not stay through our whole meeting, but thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. So next up on my little where do I need my is my monthly report, about the Rochester visioning, information. And this month, I've selected housing. And so I'm just gonna give you the top four or five housing topics that
came up in the Rochester Visioning comments. And so, affordable housing for low income residents had, one of the highest number of responses in the entire survey. And again, I wanna remind you that this wasn't select one of these things. This was open ended. What do you think we need to be dealing with in Rochester over the next ten or twenty years? And affordable housing and education were the top two. So this came up independently. Focus is needed for more affordable options, particularly for low income individuals and families,
and the role of city planning and public investment. Another highlight was homelessness and general affordability crisis, emphasizing, they emphasized rising costs, homelessness, and the lack of affordable housing for all residents. Comments surrounded the growth of homelessness in Rochester, especially as seen downtown. Apartment development and neighborhood quality was mentioned. Comments address the types and locations of new developments, often critiquing luxury buildings and supporting community friendly apartments. And again, it came back to a perception that we're building housing for people who can already
afford housing and not enough for those who cannot. Family and multi unit housing needs came up, concerns around housing for families, availability of single family homes, and the cost of rentals. Many of the comments are asking for affordable single family homes, larger housing units, and multi bedroom rentals. And lastly, I believe no, there's two more. Repurposing and Innovation. And they said, creative or alternative housing solutions, such as converting underused properties like hotels, into housing units. And the last one is rent control and homeownership support.
Many comments push for policy ideas like rent stabilization and supporting first time homebuyers or reducing barriers to ownership. Assist assistant needs to be given to people who need it. So that's this month's highlight of the Rochester visiting, data that we got back from our residents, and we're about halfway through that packet. And our summer intern has prepared packets for each of you, which I have in my office, and I'll get them to you. I wanted to make an announcement, and there's a QR code. I don't know if this will work with the thank you.
If anyone wants to use it here or, online. Royce is the Rochester Olmstead Youth Council. Participants, learn about local government, city and county in particular. They need to be between 14 and 20 years of age, and they need to reside in Olmstead County. And we are really looking for youth who are passionate about their voices being heard and about really learning about local government. The group we had last year, had several youth join us on our, sister city trip to Japan, and they will come present to you in an upcoming meeting.
And I will say they represented us well. When we were at our sister city, sister city. Both of them made comments, which, were were lovely and well thought out. So I appreciated their passion, and hopefully, they'll be able to do that in front of you as well. They do many activities every year, in the community, including they were just at Back to School Day this last weekend. One of the things you guys have asked for is a little bit of information about RPD and what they're up to. So I thought I'd let you know that four members of RPD made the Office of Traffic Safety's DWI Enforcer All Star Team for their exceptional efforts to stop impaired
driving. We have had someone on that list for years. We tend to be, we have a couple of folks that really work hard on that. So, con congratulations to Officer Barsch, Christiansen, Ulrich, and Fitzgerald for their efforts. Combined, the four of them made more than two thirty DUI arrests last year. And, the final Safe City Nights of the season wrapped up last week at Franklin Elementary. And over the summer, they're estimating 5,000 people went to the four events across Rochester, which is a great turnout and really works toward their community policing efforts.
And I wanna thank the council. Many of you showed up for some or all of those, and I know that's much appreciated by RPD. Since launching, it has become kind of a favorite for communities and many families come. And I'm always amazed by how many of our, older generation come, to the events. It's not just families and kids. It's really across the spectrum. So we have that. I wanted to let you know that I did go to the mayor's innovation, project and the themes this year, they had a couple day meeting, and it was, the right response at the right time,
rethinking public safety, protecting rights, strengthening cities and upholding democracy, hotter days, smarter ways, innovations and strategies for heat resilience in cities. Of course, we were in Albuquerque. Meeting the moment, mayor led strategies for addressing homelessness, and then we had a city tour of their public their public safety, which is a community they have a policing they have policing and they also have community, safety officers as well. And so we got to tour the facilities and learn about how those two groups work together and visit a homeless shelter as well. So it was,
very valuable couple days, and I just wanted to share that with you. And that's the end of my report. Thank you, mayor. Thank you for allowing me those few minutes early on to recognize the city for Much appreciated that you gave it the attention that it needed. Next up, we have our order of the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda? Seeing none, is there a motion? I'll move to approve. Moved by Councilmember Keane. Second. Seconded by Councilmember Doring. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed,
say nay. Moving on to our consent agenda, council member Palmer has pulled item f three and council member Fredericks has pulled item f eight. Is there any other items pulled? If not, I'd invite a motion to approve and block items f one and f two, f four through f seven, and f nine. So moved. Moved by council member Miller, seconded by council member Fredericks. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Moving on to our public hearings.
We have two public hearings on our agenda tonight. Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to clarify the process for public hearings. Staff will introduce, or or present the item. And then if there is an applicant or an applicant representative, they will have up to ten minutes to discuss the item. At that point, I will open the public hearing. Members of the public have five minutes each to, to, discuss the item, after which I will close the public hearing and invite the applicant back up to
address any, questions that may have come up during the public hearing. After that, council members will have an opportunity to ask questions of both staff and the applicant. And after that, we will have a discussion and vote on the item. So with that, I will move to item g 1, which is a zone change change by Veldt Co. And this will be presented by, Mr. Desmond McGill. Thank you, President Schuvering, Mayor Norton, members of the council. Good evening. My name is Desmond McGill.
I'm with the Community Development Department. The applicant is proposing a zone change, on a site that is about five and a half acres in size. It's located at the Southeast Corner, Bandell Road, Northwest, and Overland Drive, Northwest. The existing MXS zoning district and the proposed MXC zoning district are both compatible with the underlying P2S comprehensive plan, land use designation. And the two zones are very similar in nature. However, there are a few additional uses, in the MXC zoning district that are not permitted in MXS,
which include things like heavy commercial services, recycling transfer, facility, mini storage, wholesale storage, and, things such as vehicle related, uses, such as service and repair. So, the applicant is not intending to do any of those commercial uses. They are in the site development plan stage for, proposing or developing their plan for a 94 unit, apartment complex, for the property. The concept plan includes 94, residential units, contained within seven buildings, that are three story in height.
Primary purpose of this zone change is that the MXC does not have a maximum footprint I'm sorry, maximum front yard setback, which would be Japan Del Road. The MXC zone will allow, more than a 15 foot setback, which works better for the applicant's proposed, design, considering the unique shape of the property. The PC unanimously recommended the approval of the zone change, and staff is recommending approval as well, and requesting the city council direct the city attorney to prepare a first reading,
of an ordinance. So, that is all I have on this intro. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have. We'll hold questions until after the public hearing. Is the applicant here? Please step forward. Please state your name, and you have ten minutes to discuss this item. Mark Wells with GQED Engineering. I am representing the applicant of VELDCO. And, the main issue is that the MXS zoning requires that the buildings be within 15 feet of the right of way. And, that would be really tough to do for the site, with the elevation changes. So we work with staff and the MXC provides everything we need.
So that is the purpose behind it. Site development plan has been submitted and, is in the review. So here to answer your questions. Great. Thank you. We'll invite you back up after the public hearing. This is a public hearing. Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. This is a public hearing. Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. State your name, and you have five minutes. Hi. I'm Kathy Donahoe, and I live on Bandal Drive. And I have been there for over twenty two years, almost twenty three. And since then,
I have noticed a lot of increase in noise. Noise and light pollution. It's the noise starts at three in the morning. Semi trucks, and they're using their, jig breaks and light. There's no dark anymore. And, safety. People are out walking all the time. People of all, you know, cultures and children and with more traffic and more people, housing, noise, lack of light, you know, it's just kinda concerning. And I guess that's what I have to say,
and I hope that there's changes in favor of all who live there because it is our homes. Thank you very much. And, this is a public hearing. If you wish to be heard, please step forward, state your name, and you have five minutes. Hi. My name is Alex Peterson, and I live on Bandel Court Northwest. My property immediately abuts the proposed zone change. Overall, I am not against the proposal, but I do have some concerns about the rezoning with the increased usage of the property if this site development does not go forward as planned,
if something else comes in, and in particular, the added 12 feet in height. What you're not seeing on that map is that that empty lot is about 20, maybe even 25 feet in elevation above the backyards of all of those houses next to it. And I am concerned about that possibility and I also don't believe that we've met the criteria for rezoning approval. If you look, it was on page two eighty three in the board or the agenda packet. It says, while both the present and proposed zoning districts are consistent with the comprehensive plan,
the proposed district better aligns with the policies and goals of the Comprehensive Plan or other adopted city plans or policies as determined by City Council. Looking at the notes from Community Development, they've said either the existing or proposed district is compatible with the Comprehensive Plan, The intended multi family residential development use of the property is also permissible in either existing or proposed zone district. Basically, it just says a lot. It doesn't really make any difference. The only key argument they present for why we should rezone this is that the
94 unit multifamily development project allowing more appropriate spacing between structures. Under the current MX zoning, having the 15 foot maximum front setback, structures will need to be placed closer together as to achieve the same 94 unit housing unit yield. The issue is, is that my understanding, and this is also from Community Development's, document that they prepared on July 23. Site development issues such as site layout, building orientation, the open space between buildings is not a criteria for rezoning and yet it seems
that we're saying we need to rezone because we can better meet our uses because of the needs for site layout. I hope that, you know, we're able to figure out something. I think that 15 foot maximum setback is an issue. I know it's come up before with other developments such as Southeastern Minnesota Center for Independent Living when they were trying to build their accessible playground, which is a wonderful thing. Ultimately, I cannot support rezoning when it comes down to what their desired site layout is when we explicitly say site layout is not a criteria.
Thank you. Thank you. This is a public hearing. Anyone else wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and invite, the applicant, to step forward and address any issues that you heard during the public hearing. Really just here to answer any questions. I've I've met mister Peterson in there as a site, or at the of the the property. He has valid points, but the point of the rezone was specifically because that 15 foot setback for that
property was probably not the best zoning to be applied when the UDC was adopted because of the elevation change, utilities, and other items that are out there. So the rezone, I think you'd seen come forward, whatever the site development plan layout is. We happen to have the layout completed at the time and has been used as the example for, of the benefits. But the rezone request, it would have been coming for any development on that property. So here, they really answer any questions you may have. You can sit down. Questions for staff regarding the the rezone and the setback.
Is, the rezone the only alternative in this case? It is possible that, a variance could be applied for as well. But, this was the the route that, was was chosen for for, some of the reasons that Mark brings up. And then also, there really isn't much difference between the two zoning districts as far as what's permissible in terms of use. So, I think, we were comfortable as a at a staff level with with supporting the application based on those, concerns and and reasons. What is the zoning on the adjacent properties?
Is it M X It's actually more intense. Up to the north, you on the vacant area, on the West Side of Bandell, that that is MXG, which is mixed use general, which does even have a few additional more a few more additional commercial uses. And then to the Southwest, there is industrial. So, or light industrial. To the to the East, you have single family residential zoning, r one. Okay. And then further north of 50, o Overland Drive, you have MXG as well.
Questions, council members? Council member Wahl. This is for mister Welch. I think I remember from the neighborhood information meeting that part of, this, setback issue had to do with parking as well. Yes. So, the MXS, because the buildings would have to be in the front, would require that the parking be in the backyards. Because the residences to the back are r one, we actually didn't want the parking lot to the back house because the site is elevated. If the parking lot was in the back behind the buildings, vehicles that are parking in the rear, parking lot would be shining their headlights towards the r one neighbors.
So by pushing the buildings further to the east, we get them away from cars having headlights shining towards the residential. And then also one other added item that's site development specific, not reason specific is these buildings will only have lighting, on the building in the back that's similar to a residential, doors and such. They will not be on consistently. They'd be like if you have a wall or a canister or not can't think of the name of the terminology that turned the correct light, but just the light outside of your porch. That's what can be on these buildings to the sides and rears. So so we kinda looking at the site layout and stuff,
we wanted to ensure that we weren't gonna have headlight, headlight shining onto the neighboring property even though they're a 150 feet away. It was just something that residents don't need to see that parking lot. And we will not have any street lights or anything else in the parking lot that would be visible by the neighbors either. So And I think I also remember from that meeting that, neighbors, while I think rightly concerned about any development in their backyard, you described as mister Magot, described a little bit some of the potential uses of, that or as opposed to the 94 residential units.
Could you, say more about that both in terms of, neighborhood reaction to, that revelation and, the proposed development? So at the meeting, most of the residents were not against the residential type use knowing that that could have been a commercial type use that could be approved as a site development plan without any hearings in front of city council or any other requirements. So most of them were very happy with the fact that it would be residential of this manner or this type. So, in fact, one person said that they're happy to see this as opposed to something commercial. Council member Keane. Yeah.
This is more for staff. Again, these are difficult for me because I I know that we're doing this with a specific site development plan in mind. But the fact is when we change zoning, we we don't control what ends up happening afterwards. Right. Can you talk a little bit about that idea of, that this would now I I I know it's not light industrial, but it had it appears to have more industrial usages. And that bothers me because it adjoins an r one neighborhood. Yeah. It's from a from a youth standpoint, it's not unusual to see MXG zoning next to even r one,
r two zone properties. Even right next to it, the MXC Zoning District is not the most intensive zoning district that we have in terms of the commercial zoning districts are concerned. So and as noted, there is, lots of MXG to the north and to the to the East there. We felt that if this was to be changed, that it would be consistent and compatible with the with the neighborhood as a whole. But you're you're I think you're basing that on the fact that you know what the site development plan is. Even if there were other commercial uses in there. You know, let's say this,
this project didn't proceed forward. I think that, the two zoning districts are are very closely aligned in terms of the the what is permissible zoning district except for those five that I mentioned. Right. But that that those are the ones that I assume that's why we zoned it MXS to start with because we don't wanna have that adjoining, our one neighborhood. Yeah. I I don't know the basis for the original zoning designation there. But, But but again, we know what the site development plan is. Is there any is there any reasonable request to have a, I don't know, a variance on that property to block those other industrial usage?
Or is that just a bridge too far? In terms of this application, a conditional zone change approvals aren't generally a good idea. That's that make that makes sense. Thank you. Council member Palmer. Yeah. I'm gonna go off what kind of mister Keane is saying. We've always been told that that a zoning change we're just gonna do a zoning change and and not bring a site plan to it. Doesn't that just mess things up when you do that? I I think it's good information for the council to have if there is a plan in tow, if you will, just so that you're aware of the you know,
what's happening, immediately behind But we don't have a guarantee that that's what's going to go in. And that's where the difficult part comes in. Yeah. Second of all, I mean, across the street's a truck stop. Correct? Across the street is a quick trip, and they they do accommodate, I think, some larger vehicles there at that site. It's it's a truck stop. Yeah. Okay. One of the things that we that I like to see done differently when we butt up against, R 1, and I don't know how we do this, is to have the parking lot be in the front and have R 1 next to R 1. We've had difficulty in Northeast with headlights shining on homes and stuff all hours of
the night. So is that a development change we'd have to make? Or how would we how would we achieve that goal? Yeah. I mean, like in the zoning district, it does, require that those buildings be placed towards the front so that the parking can be located on the backside of it. In a sense, the MXS zoning district would encourage that site configuration just the way it's all laid out. Mister Yetzer, did you wanna weigh in on this? Thanks, council president, Schubert. I also have council president Carson. Friendly reminder for the council just with the UDC to LDM switchover that this zoning
district was likely a product of a like for like switch from what was in the LDM to what is now in the UDC. So just keep that in mind that there could potentially be a more appropriate zoning district in the new zoning ordinance that is just a product of the automatic changeover that happened when we switched to zoning ordinances. Council member, you take more questions? And so, mister Yetstra, how would we get if we're up against r one in this zoning district, how would we get that the parking lot's not in the back? This this zone change would allow you that. Yes. This zone change would allow it to be in the front instead of in the
back. Okay. So we'd have to get rid of the MXS? Is that the one that when it's up against the r one? In this location, yes. Okay. Okay. My last question is, would you consider this to be infill then? You know, it it generally speaking, it is, you know, pretty developed around on all sides. I know this is towards the fringe of the city, but, you know, it it I always consider it to be infill. It has services to it. Is that kind of one of the the judgment? Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Is there a motion on this item? I'll I'll move to approve the zone change number CD 2025 Dash 004 ZC by,
VEDCO amending the zoning designation on 5.48 acre site from MXS, Mixed Use Street to MXC, Mixed Use Center. And part two, directing the city attorney to prepare an ordinance for first reading. Second. Moved by council member Keane and seconded by council member Palmer. Any further discussion? I I just say that there, you know, there I I do have those concerns when we're moving certain things there, but I think we the zoning, the way we have it set up, it has to have the flexibility to apply judgment, and I think that's what we're doing in this case. All in favor, say aye.
Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Passes unanimously. Moving on to G2, which is the 2025 Transit Program of Projects Federal Transit Administration. And Tia Zhang will introduce our speaker and speak herself too. Good evening, council president Schoebring, mayor Norton, council members. My name is Iya Shone, transit and parking director. And, just for the record, my name is pronounced Ea as in Maria, Sofia Mamamia. So Ea. And then my last name is pronounced Siong,
but I know it's a little harder to pronounce, so you can say song or shong. So I speak to or I answer to either one. So I just wanted to introduce my colleague, Roxanne Theobald. She's been with the city less than a year, and this is her first time here. So it is our annual, hearing on our federal transit program of projects, and I wanted to introduce, Roxanne. She will be presenting the hearing. Welcome. Thank you. So good evening, council president, mayor, and council members. This is a hearing for the 2025, annual program of projects to receive in federal funds,
which include operations and capital. These funds are federal apportionments that are distributed based on population and population density. And the description of the projects, were listed in the notice state transportation improvement plan, the step, in the Rochester Olmstead, Council of Government, Improvement Plan, ROCCOG, and then also the city's 2024 and 2025 capital improvement plan. I will be here again next year with the 2026, annual program of projects, keeping consistent with the city's, capital budget improvement plan of 2026 to 02/1931.
The program of projects does not include past or, future projects nor does it include discretionary grants. Discretionary grants are competitive funding that we can apply for, which we may or may not get. Some examples of this would have been the bus and bus facilities, North Broadway parking ride, and, Link BRT. In the program projects, the local match, you'll see that it's RPT revenue, it's fares, advertising, and sponsorships, and, state funding as well. There's city of Rochester, but it's important to note that Rochester Public Transit does not get any,
city levy, tax levy, and we are not requesting any. So in recap, this is a, hearing for the 2025 program of projects. Thank you. Questions? Is there a motion on this item? Oh, I'm sorry. And there is not an applicant to this. Thank you, Council Member Keene. At this point, we will open up the public hearing. Anyone who wishes to be heard on this item, please step forward. Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. Seeing none, I will close the public hearing and invite questions from my colleagues.
Any questions? Council member, Palmer. Yeah. I've got a couple questions. And I I think this is the appropriate time to do it. In in 2019, our bus ridership was 2,000,000. We're down to $650,000 What are we doing, to to downsize or do what are we doing to get that to be more cost effective? So, council president Schubert, mayor Norton, council members. So we do have another item on the reports and recommendation on our transit, RFP process request for proposal that we will be addressing it there. If we can hold off on that,
ridership, we do recognize, is down from our previous, pre COVID years, and more details will be coming in that. Okay. Any other questions? Seeing none, is there a motion on this item? Sure. I'll move to adopt a resolution authorizing the filing of the 2025 transit program of projects and the subsequent submission of grant applications and execution of grants. Second. Moved by Councilmember Dohring, seconded by Councilmember Miller. Councilmember Dohring, any more to add? Seeing none, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed,
say nay. Nay. Motion passes six to one with Councilmember Palmer voting in opposition. Moving on to our reports and recommendations. H1, we have an update on the destination medical center development plan, and this will be presented by, Cindy Steinhauser and Catherine Muhlberg. Miss Steinhauser, take it away. Evening. Council president Schubert, members of the city council, Cindy Steinhauser, deputy city administrator, strategic transformation and partnerships. We're here this evening to share with you an update on the DMC development plan.
It's a really important milestone for the Destination Medical Center initiative. We are in the halfway mark, ten years into a twenty year initiative. Normally, this is something that we would do at a study session. However, you are a very busy council. You have a very packed study session and so the timeline, which we have to complete this five year update, does not work and give us the ability to do it at a study session, so we're here before you under reports and recommendations. There's no action needed on your part this evening. This evening is really for you to provide you an update, for you to ask questions,
give us your input on how how you think the process is going. Tonight, we'll hear from Katherine Malmberg and there are other DMC representatives that are in the audience, as well as city teammates in administration and community development who have been a part of this process. Christiane, if you could advance, please. What we're gonna talk about and what we're gonna cover today, of course, is the five year update process and schedule that the team has been working on, this past year. Also going to look at kind of where we are to date, what we are looking at, going forward.
And, it's important for you to know that thank you. I can't I can't go prior. Not yet. No. Back back. There we go. It's important for you to understand that in terms of a, development plant, this is statutorily required by the DMC legislation, so, not only is it a helpful roadmap for, how we do planned investment or should make recommendations coming forward, but it is also statutorily required. Before I turn it over to Catherine, I wanna talk a little bit about the journey that we have been on as
a community over the past ten years. And this timeline is a really great snapshot and is I wanna emphasize snapshot because there are so many other dots that we could add along this timeline of what has happened. Obviously, Destination Medical Center started in 2015, that was when the twenty year development plan was created, and at that point, the vision was to position Rochester as America's city for health. I think you'll see through tonight's presentation, the work that has been done over the last ten years and the work that we hope to continue over the next ten years to really live up to that
vision of, Rochester's America's safer health. The other thing that I think is important as you look at this timeline, there's a lot of really great information on the timeline. The three colored dots are really important milestones in this ten year journey, obviously 2015, when the legislation created the ability for us to, make this happen in Rochester, 2020, when there was the first update, five year update to the plan, and where we're at now for the next five year update on the plan. But as you look at this timeline, I also want you to pay attention to the pace and,
amount of activity that's happened in the last five years. And that isn't without a great deal of effort and intentionality. When you first start out on initiative, there's a lot of planning to build towards what your vision is and you can see from 2020 to 2025, a lot of execution on that plan and a lot of results delivered. So, as we move along in the next ten years, again, a lot more dots will be populating this timeline. So, with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Catherine who will highlight, the last ten year look back and what we've got going forward.
Wonderful. Thank you so much, council president, mayor, members of council. I'm really excited to be here, with you this evening to share this update at this critical inflection point, midway through the twenty year, DMC development plan. I'm joined by several of my colleagues, both from DMC and the city in the audience, and online as well, with Michael Johnson, who's from the Smith Group, our lead consultant. So should you have questions to address to him, he's available as well. So, DMC began with a bold vision, right, to position Rochester as a global center for health and innovation while also enhancing the
quality of life for everyone who lives, works, and visits here. So this 2025 development plan update is a key part of that legislation that helps keep us transparent, accountable, grounded in community input, which informed all of those great initiatives that W. E. Administrator Steinhauser just went through. So this is our moment to reflect and to sharpen our focus as we look towards the future. And it's not about starting from scratch, it's about deepening our collective understanding of what guides our decisions and how our values
are showing up in the built environment and in daily life. So these are the requirements that you see here. To meet and exceed them is obviously a fundamental part of this, but it's also really an opportunity to build upon our existing momentum where we are today, confirm those strategic priorities, make sure those are still resonating, and then that helps inform, annual commitment considerations. And, also, I think, it was mentioned in the earlier study session about planning for post 2035 is also kind of out there on the horizon. So back in May,
when we were also in front of you all, with at our joint session on May 22, we, had the results of our look back. And that was really the first phase of work, right, to say, okay, what happened? What did we say was gonna happen in the first ten years and what did happen? How do we measure ourselves against our five major goals? And you see those very high level findings there. That's gonna continue to inform and be rolled into the final update so that data will be available, for everyone in the community. And, really, it was about some changes that we can all see,
the before and after of different locations around the district, and what they where they are today. And, those fall into different types of categories and priorities as you see here. We've also been able to leverage additional funding sources outside of the, funds that were allocated in the DMC legislation. Some examples of that are the, Main Street Grant Program, the setting up the Historic District Commercial Fund, the various FTA, projects that we've been involved with. There are also some capacity Building tools that have been, emerging over this first ten years,
things like co design, prototyping, the Housing Coalition, and others. And, importantly, our public realm investments. The original DMC development plan called for six subdistricts and a signature public realm investment in the heart of each of those. And here we are halfway through, and three of those have been completed. Very exciting. And there's several more still on the horizon. So as a reminder, at that May 22 meeting, we also highlighted opportunities that, our consultant team and staff identified, as they looked back through the data, as we looked forward. And you can see a summary of those opportunities identified here.
And you can see a number of those are about amplifying what is really unique and special about Rochester and this identity for America's city as America's city for health. And how do we lean into that? That's an authentic, authentic brand. How do we use that to leverage, other employment opportunities when we're talking about job growth? But this didn't come out of nowhere. As Deputy Administrator Steinhauser, demonstrated. There's a host of planning initiatives that have been happening over not just that ten year period, but especially the last five years and this year. And those concurrent plans,
you can see a representation of those in this center line. And so when we talk about what we're building this update off of, we are integrating and coordinating across all of these other efforts that have been happening throughout the community over that time period. So we're not again, we're not just engaging around specifically the DMC update, but also building off of all of the findings that have occurred through these other planning processes to make sure we're coordinated. And we were set up initially to be that way and we're continuing to do
that work and build those partnerships and that coordination. We've also been tracking, this council's, conversations around your priorities and strategic goals because, again, we wanna find those points of alignment. And then what has emerged from all of that review are the themes that you're seeing up here on this slide. So this is the work of our team in going through all of those plans and sort of surfacing what those common themes are that we see that thread throughout, many of those community planning processes.
So we wanted to highlight those as well and make sure those are something that you have the opportunity to reflect and comment on. We are also doing public engagement specifically around this plan, including stakeholder focus groups, community events, and online survey opportunity as well. There are a couple of upcoming opportunities I'd like to highlight. The, DMC annual meeting in September will be centered around the development plan update, and we'll highlight a number of the other plans that showed in that, earlier slide so we can celebrate and also identify the intersections
opportunity in September. And then there'll be a timeline a little later where I talk about some of the other, upcoming opportunities. So looking forward now, this is some of what we heard at that 2025 joint session that some of you were able to join on May 22, and that is the once a year convening we have of both DMC boards, and the city council and the county. And you can see that there are a lot of really great ideas and vision, coming out of that discussion. This is that timeline that I was mentioning here just to kind of highlight where
we are today in the work, and what lies ahead. So we are gonna have that, public meeting, our annual meeting, on September 18, as well as the DMCC meeting on the twenty fifth. Will be, another opportunity for us to share where this work is going. There will be a public open house, at the October, and then we'll come back, before this council in November with another update. And then the DMCC board will take up and have a public hearing, at the December meeting for the plan update,
which would be followed by another return to this council. So now looking forward in what we think the look forward portion of this update is pointed towards. So a reminder that we are grounded in the 2015 development plan, and this process is really about helping shape the why behind the decisions that we and our partners make over the next five years. So the goals and the foundational principles remain the same. And we see this moment as an opportunity to really shift from thinking about America's City for Health as maybe a descriptor or a tagline into a strategic advantage and
focus, as we look ahead. So how can we think about that as a strategic advantage? And that is, falling into three categories. Just one second. There we go. That right now we're calling health excellence drivers, so sort of three drivers that might shape our strategy moving forward. And those are health innovation as an economic engine, health excellence as an attractor, and then health in the built environment. And we're thinking about these as a unique opportunity. The highest and best opportunities probably happen at the intersection of all three of these.
There are certainly going to be programs or projects that might lie more in one of these, pillars or strategies than the others. But really, those only in Rochester unique opportunities that center health innovation, health excellence, and health in the built environment, how we do our work, how we make our infrastructure investments, is really what we're most excited about. And this is where we're headed in terms of the organizing principles for the update. And I think with that Yes, I'll hand it back to Stan here.
Yep. So that was a very brief overview of where we've been and where we're headed. We wanna stay on this slide because I think this is where we want, the biggest part of the conversation to happen. As, Ms. Muhlberg indicated, these are the drivers that we want to use to guide going forward in the next five year update. Again, this is not any action required on your part, but really an opportunity for us to have a conversation, and for you to react to, the work that we're doing to really activate the label of America City for Health into three very key driver components.
And where we can see ourselves, obviously others, people in the community can see themselves as part of the health innovation as an economic engine, others can see them in health excellence as an attractor and how that plays out across the community. But certainly also where, people see themselves in health in the built environment and particularly our role as a city body in terms of as it plays across all of those, but in particularly health in the built environment. So, tonight is really an opportunity for you to give us your feedback. And with the whole Thank you. Feedback from council members, mayor mayor Sure. I'll I'll start out.
I, had an opportunity to to meet with them earlier about this today, and I'm actually quite excited about this slide. And as we talked about it, I'm excited about it for several reasons, not only because we do want to continue to talk about Rochester as the destination place in this country for health. And so, it plays in nicely with the idea of being an economic engine in that, we we need to think about, and I'm I'm gonna get some information for them from something I got back from Harvard a number of years ago. And we heard from the community in Rochester 2050 about,
it it's not always just Mayo Clinic we need to think about. We need to think about other jobs. And this is what this is about. It's about looking at our largest employer, the world's best health care, and building off of that. And as as the Harvard study suggested, finding employment factors that support the community and and who we are as a community. And we are a community for health. So it's not it's it's taking what we already do well, and they're working on making it even better, but also us looking at the ecosystem around that and continuing to find ways to
build it in not the exact same product, different products that support the work that we do here. So I'm really excited about that, and I do think we are seen as that city for health, and how does that role entice other people to come here? Why, why, why Rochester and not somewhere else? And I think, you know, that's great. And, of course, I love the health and the built environment, and, this is gonna lead in really nicely to my next move with the mayor, which is gonna be a challenge to all of you. And then you can be a part of health in the built environment,
by helping, participate in that. So I'm really excited about what I heard today, and, I'm really anxious to see how we move this forward, into the community and help it be a solid foundation that we talk about moving forward for the next ten years. Council Member Keane? Yes, thanks. Yes, I too appreciate that I had a chance to look at this in a small group, setting where it was more of a a discussion. And some really interesting things came out, like trying to compare our comprehensive plan. And what is this? Does this fit in? Is it like something that's underneath it or is it something different? And it leads to good discussions,
and it's again, I think you've captured it here with this idea of what are we trying to do? Are we trying to, you know, kind of put down our direction and this becomes a plan? Or are we trying to communicate to the community? And which and and you do those two different things very differently. But I I really appreciate the thoughtfulness that DMC is doing with this and that idea of this very difficult part of our jobs of that outreach and trying to capture what's on people's minds. And if you come up with some good techniques, tell us about them because we're struggling with it. I'll just add, I I really love the health and the built environment piece.
I we talk about, Rochester being Med City, but it's all kind of Mayo Clinic's, focus. And this really broadens it to the entire community. So I'm I'm, I'm anxious to see more in that area. Health excellence as an attractor, I think that is a given that we can really bring new innovative organizations and, and experts here to Rochester. Biola Labs is a perfect example of that.
So building on that. And then the health innovation as an economic engine, I think that, my initial and I I'm not sure you're asking for kind of brainstorm feedback, but it's a little bit on the edge of are we looking at, you know, health care as a moneymaker. So and we wanna kinda stay away from that response to that. Obviously, you read the the the text. It really is about innovation and innovation to save lives.
And so kind of look at that in in that context as well. So that's my unvarnished thoughts. Other council members? Council member Miller? Yeah. Thanks for the presentation. I I, unfortunately, didn't have the chance to have a briefing before this, but at the same time, the mayor and I and some community members got the chance to visit Japan recently. And I I think one of the things that I most noticed there was how active community members were, people moving under their own power out in the community, and it seems striking that it was a much healthier active.
You would see people at all ages participating in public place. And based on our conversation and the look back, in the May session, I see much of that discussion reflected here, and I'm glad to see that and that focus really on preventative care, all the things that researchers say all the time and yet doesn't fit into a billing model of health care or a a service provider model of health care. But I think that that is our opportunity as a community, as public policy makers to build preventive health care policy into our community so that we become a healthier community as a whole and a great place to receive health
care services when needed. So thank you. Council member Wall. Thank you. Mostly, what I appreciate about this particular slide is that we are stepping into our strengths rather than trying to invent something that we are not. We are using what we are to make ourselves, even better at what we do. Most of you know I love sports a lot. Rod Crew is one of my favorite hitters of all times. He was a spray hitter. He was one of the best pure average hitters, for the Twins. One year, he tried to do power hitting,
and his, average went down 40 points. Well, we could try to be something we're not and reduce our average by 40 points, or we can do, what we do and do very well. So, thank you for that. I think that we need to step into that strength as the city of Rochester. One question I have that's not on this slide. Is that acceptable? Absolutely. To go back to, slide five, I think it would be helpful to me to, hear a breakdown of the $1,600,000,000 in state and local tax revenue if there was some breakout,
a message that we could bring to the community. Yes. Yeah. I'm having oh, there we got the Thank you. Almost got back to it. Yes. So we will, as we advance the, the work of this update, have ultimately the full set of data. I'll we're kind of still scrubbing, double checking, making sure, but that's, an analysis that was completed, for the May 22 meeting, and we can certainly follow that up with all the detailed backup of how those calculations were made. Thank you. Can you come to the microphone? Thank you. Council president, Sherwin,
Mayor Norton, Council Member Wall. On that point of 1,600,000,000.0 in net new revenue, the largest part of that is payroll taxes that have been garnered as a result of new employment. And so the largest percentage of that 1,600,000.0 is the wealth creation that's happened because of the growth in jobs and the payroll taxes that have accumulated. Thank you. Council member Doreen. First, I wanna say I never realized that, council member Wall was a fan of sports. I really appreciate the fact that in this update,
you have blown out the definition of what it means for Rochester to be America's city for health. I think that with the the expansion of that definition, you've allowed our community to really find themselves in that definition. And I think that's something that has been, lacking in the past ten years, with with, with a perceived focus on Mayo Clinic. So I really appreciate the expansion of that definition, and I look forward to, continued work as we continue to define that together. Any other feedback?
Thank you. Is there is this the end or you have to get the end. And so just a just a Usually, there's a thank you or questions You know, that that kind of gives me a cue that I'm I'm the wrap up. So, we'll be coming back to you. It you won't see it on the study session schedule, you don't see it on today's study session schedule because we've submitted it. But, from a timeline perspective, coming back in November, I think it's November 24 study session, we've got a request in to come back with an update that will get us near will be near completion of the plan,
I think, at that point and, and lots of engagement in between now and then. So hopefully, you have a chance to participate in the in the other opportunities. But thank you for this time. We really appreciate this feedback. It's been really great. Thank you. Great work. Moving on to item H2, which is a request for proposals for management and operations of transit services. And this will be presented by miss Iya Sheng Shuang. Alright. See, now you gave me three pronunciations, so I didn't know which one they land on.
I will answer to either one or all of them. Again, good evening, council, President Schoebring, Mayor Norton, council members. I'm Iya Shiong, transit and parking director. So with you tonight, similar to the previous reports and recommendation, we are here to give you an update. No action is, required. And, again, you all are very busy and so we're using this opportunity to give you an update on our progress and where we're at with the request for proposal. Alright. Some of these slides you will have seen from previous presentations before. Before I get into the different types of services that we have,
I just wanna remind that back last year in 2024, through a MnDOT, support, we had a consultant come in and do an analysis for us in regards to our transit, how we, service. And so there's four different options that they provided and they analyzed for us. One being keeping it the way we are currently servicing with the contractor. Second option was to bring everything in house. And then third option was to just bring BRT in house, and then the fourth one was to, just bring maintenance in house. And so the direction that we got last year was to proceed with the request
for proposal with the option to bring maintenance in house. And so that's what we're moving forward with, with this request for proposal. We are providing three different types of services in this new contract. Just to I'm gonna give you foundation of each of these services. For the fixed route, you'll see I'm not gonna go through the top part of it, but wanted to address the ridership as, Council, Palmer had asked about earlier about ridership. You'll see here the 2022 and '24 ridership. I actually wanna go back way back to 2017 or 2018. Back then, we had about 2,000,000 ridership annually,
and we were projected to grow. So in 2018, we had about 2,000,000, in 2019, two point one. And then, of course, in 2020, as we all know, there was a pivotable point in our, time. And in March 2020, we had to pivot. And so our total annual ridership for 2020 was 890,000. Now if you think about that, we had three about two and a half months of true ridership that we had previously, and that really carried us for the rest of the year. And so we were projected to grow,
almost, like, exponentially from that 2.1 in in 2019. This becomes a little bit important as I carry on our story of other things such as vehicles and service planning. So in 2020, we did go back. We reverted to what we called our core services, working with Transdev, and at the time, they were called First Transit. We worked with them on pivoting and making sure that our services were still met for those that were in need. We were, actually in the process, in fact, it was, like, 2020 we were gonna expand 50% of our services.
With that, we were planning on additional vehicles, additional staffing, and the support of that. We had to pause and, kind of take a look. We looked at core services and we looked at different, expansions that we would be able to not knowing when ridership would come back, we started looking at models where we could say, hey, if ridership did come back, these are the services that we would provide. And then another option, if if it came back again as if it was pre pandemic, how would we pivot really quickly? So we did look at different options to ensure that we could, move quickly on that.
Of course, as we all know, timeline moves forward and we are not back where we are, obviously. 2021, our ridership, was at 740. And then if you look in 2022, it did increase. And, of course, the work from home and hybrid working, impacted everything. You'll see the dip from 2022 to 2023. The reason for that was a little bit, there was a parking ramp that was open downtown here and that really converted a lot of our riders. Mayo also had a lot of ridership or parking changes that they were doing at
the time, and so that impacted our ridership. Most of our riders are from our, what we call our express routes, which is our commuter routes. And then you'll see another dip down from '23 to 2024. That was due to the opening of the 70 Fifth Street Park And Ride. We also closed our IBM Park And Ride at the time. That caused a little bit of a, lower ridership as, again, Mayo opened up another parking, lot that impacted our ridership, so you'll see that dip. As we're looking into 2025, we're on track to project about 650 again based on where we're at with ridership.
We did see a little peak, increase in June here. Again, due to some changes that we have, in the downtown parking area and Mayo's ridership and parking policies that they're trying to, do. Ramps are coming down, new services are putting out there. And so we are looking at that. Now when you ask about what we're planning on doing for services with ridership, we are looking at our, ride, services. Earlier this year, I think it was April, early April, we made the shift from our transit center over to the Center Street, or Central Park, moving our transit center.
And so that was a big major service for us. Previous to that, back in fall or late twenty twenty four, we also made some service changes. What we're looking at now is all the detours and all the routes that we have. Like, where is our efficiency? Are there a lot of, there may be stops where we have a lot of service routes to it. So can we, like, reduce some of these, routes? And, the stops may still be serviced, but maybe we don't have three routes there. So our, I do have colleagues here who can help, answer detailed questions if you have,
but, we are looking at the planning piece of the services for efficiency, frequency. Do we still need to do, again, previous to this, there was a lot of feedback when we did our transit development plan on increasing services and, other, locations that they wanted us to service. So we're looking at the low riderships that we have in our routes. As a maybe a little teaser for the rest of the year, we are gonna start public engagement. We will be coming back to the council, for your input and and just, to provide an update on where our services, opportunities can be.
We also have our citizens advisory on transit committee that we will be, leaning into them also to provide that feedback. So, a lot more to come later this year as we try to look and see how we can, still provide service to those, that are in need at the same time knowing that our ridership is starting to dip or at least staying stable. So, so that's about ridership. And then in regards to vehicles, I did wanna touch on that. And if you go back to the history of how I explained our ridership increasing, we were, we had quite a few grants,
in early twenty eighteen for additional buses, and these were all diesel buses at the time. At the same time, our park and ride was really, expanding. Our ridership was really high. So, we looked towards the Federal Transit Administration loan grant, and we were awarded to we went to 2018, we were awarded two EV buses for 60 footers. We typically only have 40 footers, and that was our first two sixty footers. And then we went again in 2019 for another low and low grant, which we were awarded similar to the first one with two more additional EV buses.
So that's why you have the four, EV buses. Those were to service the park and ride up at 70 Fifth Street where we had high ridership in the peak times. Moving a little bit forward in that, 2018, 2019, we got awarded, but then 2020 hit and everything was on pause and demand and supply, you know, played into that role. And so our delivery of those two buses were in 2022 and 2023 was when we put it into service. So we've had a few years of experience with these buses. Also going back to 2018 and 2019, there was a little, more manufacturers that were providing or starting to dabble into the EV bus.
So, Proterra, as an example, was doing 40 foot EV buses at the time. Gillig is starting to do EV buses. The situation that we have right now is that New Flyer is our current EV, for the 60 foot and they are local. They're up in Saint Cloud, and they are the only ones that are providing the 60 foot EV buses. So, we are working on these four, that we have right now in regards to, just getting our our expertise in house. All these vehicles are owned by the city. Going back to the RFP, there is no, vehicles that are,
First Transit or Transdev owned. All these vehicles are owned by the city. Moving on to paratransit. Paratransit was actually on the flip side of our fixed route. Prior to the pandemic, our ridership was starting to dip. And then as we come back out of the pandemic into 2022, as you see here, it's starting to increase. 2024, we're at about 50,000 riders. We're also trending to be at or above that, actually probably above that in 2025. So our ridership for paratransit is increasing. We're expanding on that. Going back to vehicles,
we don't have enough vehicles. And so we are, heavily federally and state grant funded. We had we don't have any additional funds from the state or the feds to purchase additional vehicles. We have replacement vehicles, but not for additional. And so in 2023, I think it was, we looked internally, to see what we can do to provide additional buses. Looked with our, Transdev at the time, working with them collaboratively to see how we can support that. What Transdev did then was, like,
looked at some of the other agencies that they serviced and they were able to find two additional vehicles for us. And so through that partnership and through their, resources, they were able to provide the vehicles that we needed because we didn't have the funding and we didn't have, the capital funding to purchase more buses. So we do lease two vehicles, through Transdev. Otherwise, all the vehicles are for paratransit are owned by the city. We also received some grants for microtransit, which, allowed us to purchase some electric vehicles. And those, Microtransit Go, ended in July,
and so those vehicles are now being used for paratransit. So just on the flip side, paratransit is increasing in ridership, and we need to support that. Onto bus rapid transit link. As we all know, it's coming, and, it's gonna be, estimated ridership is gonna be about 10,000 a day, estimating about 3,000,000 a year. This is a little bit, a lot of planning that needs to occur for this the service. We do have 12 EV buses planned for this. We have procured those 12 EV buses. We went through the procurement last year, and we actually have one EV bus that arrived a couple weeks ago.
And so these EV buses are, the next generation. I think it's generation four. The first two buses that we had were generation one and two, so you can kinda see the progression of that. So we like I mentioned, we do have one EV bus that got delivered. Now our biggest dilemma with that bus is, trying to figure out if we, need a mascot or a new uniform. So if you're not familiar with our colors, this is the color of the bus rapid transit. This is Roxanne here, and, she blends in there. But if you're curious to know where these stripes occur on the bus,
like I said, it is in our garage, so let me know and I can show you, around. But, anyways, that's, we've got our first new bus, that arrived. So I also wanna say we do have thirty days to accept the bus, and that's what we're going through right now. So on to, just some background information is our operations funding. As I mentioned before, we're heavily funded by state and federal funds. Typically, these are just, historical. State has historically funded 80% of our operational minus the federal. And then our federal apportionment,
which you just heard, at the hearing, earlier, those are the federal apportionments and federal funding that we receive and we can use those for operations or capital. We typically use about 50% of it for operations. And then any, revenue that we receive through fairs, advertising, sponsorship, those are all our local match. Last year and this year, the state was able to, increase their share to 95%. And so that has really helped us, in regards to the partnership that they have and the support that they want to see us succeed in our transit system.
So, next year we will not have 5%, but we will have 15%, as a local match. So not back to the 20%, which I think is very generous from the state. Just looking at, this was projected, net operating revenue. Our as you can see here, our revenues, ranging is, set to increase again. The 5% local match was a huge, help for us for last year and this year. And then we did not put the link, cost in here, but, as you added in in '26, '27, that will look a little different. So on to the contract.
I wanna give you, just a current status of what the contract is. The contract ends at the end of, 2026. It was initiated in 2037 for a five year term, and then it was renewed or, extended in 2021. Prior to 2017, there was another request for proposal for the same services in 2012 and they were also First Transit was also awarded at that time. So they've been our, contractor since 02/2012. So through two different competitive requests for proposals, they, have, been our contractor.
This contract includes the fixed route, paratransit, vehicle maintenance, and the bus rapid transit. It also was amended last year to be included in this contract. That was a requirement from the Federal Transit Administration through the Small Starts grant, for the BRT that we, ensure that bus rapid transit was gonna be supported. At the time, the projection of opening date for, bus rapid transit link was, 2026. And because the contract for First Transit Transdev was still gonna be in place, we needed to make sure that they they would be servicing it.
So we did amend it last year and we came to the council for those amendments. This is a provisional milestones that we put in place. As you can see here, we're in August coming to you for an update. And then we our plan is to release the art request for proposal later this year, going through the evaluation or the, proposals, to be due, like, early next year and then going through evaluations, and having interviews with the proposers early to, the first quarter, second quarter of next year, and then coming to council with, a recommendation mid next year. We're we're working to shift these provisional milestones up sooner as we,
do more, like, initiation of, our research. The big part right here at the beginning, as you see in green, is, we're doing a lot of research looking at different agencies on how they're doing theirs similar to ours, any improvements that we could do or so we're really looking into it, not just, using the previous, template to be put in place here. We also wanna provide, at the end there, enough transition time for our for our new or for the contractor to shift into 2027, we also wanna provide enough,
time for us, the city, internally to prepare for the link. So for the new contract, similar to the previous, we will, keep it at five years with the actions to extend up to a total of ten years. That's what's allowed by the feds. I I forgot to mention that, this procurement is federally, regulated. The state will also review our request for proposal, so there's a lot of state and federal oversight through our procurement process. As mentioned before, we will include the three different types of services with the vehicle maintenance option,
in that contract. We again, the the request for proposal is, a huge document. It's it was over 200 when we first started. We're streamlining some things in there, so it's it's a very large document. And, looking at what would be important to point out is, just other terms. We're gonna get into the performance metrics or requirements later in a little bit here, but other terms that we're looking at is just the risk and liability on how we can, shift that risk, to process claims, with the contractor. Also looking at the performance standards like I mentioned.
We'll talk about each of those performance standards in a little bit here. Service changes. I mentioned a lot of service changes that we had over the years, that first transit transdev was in place with us. Just outlining, like, who's responsible for what, what the planning looks like, and, the coordination of that looks like. So having clearer terms, in the contract. Compliance reporting. We also, as you, may or may not know, we are implementing a new technology, the CAD AVL that will be our automated passenger counter, automated vehicle announcers, and, just updating our technology.
This we're still in the process of implementing that new technology. And so with that, there's gonna be, better data, better reporting, and through that we wanna ensure that there's clear and better expectations with our contractor on what is needed to be reported and what is compliance. K. So on to the performance metrics or requirements. As I said, we're still in the process. Council member Keane. Hey. I I don't know if it's a good transition, but I know you're gonna get into more detail. And I just just staying up at a higher level, the charts you just but I I do wanna spend a minute just on this chart five. I think it's page three sixty one when you talk about the funding.
And I've tried to work this out on my own and see if I know I I'm getting confused by the words because it starts out with saying 50% of something and then 80%. So if if I could just, like, oversimplify and say, the starting point of this would be that we come up with an operating budget that we say, this is the estimate for year 2026, and then somebody pay so then we use the process to get 50% of that funding? Because I I I can't see how it starts. I can't see how this process starts. We're talking 80%, 50% of something, but I think it starts with us making a budget.
Correct. So, I can't move this. Oh, there it is. Okay. Let me see where you at. This one? Yes. Yes. Okay. So just to back up, so we, work with on the capital improvement project, program with Don't just I hate to interrupt you, but this isn't capital improvement. This is the operations model. So I'm trying to just stay tight and understand what it means when I say funds 80% of expenses. We must estimate that upfront that this is what we say it is. And that's work that's done by you and your team. But is it based on a contract that we signed?
Is it so this is what I I wanna have, like, a mental model so I can go to the next chart and understand what's happening. I haven't gotten there yet. Sure. So, as you all know, we're going through the budget process right now. Mhmm. And that budget process is then translated to this here. So we work with, the council, the city in regards to, like, that whole process of what, we will have for expenses, and that's the same process that every that we're going through. Yep. So we're all part of that. The 80% of that is so if you think about it, we have our own process and our own timeline.
Our fiscal year is also different, than the state's fiscal year and and federal fiscal year. So it's a little bit confusing, in regards to that. But in general, let's just do, like, a a calendar year. So based on what our expenses are, through our city process is what we send it to the state in regards to what the expenses are. And then they, in turn, every on an annual basis, we will apply for an operations grant. And, again, I work with the state, very closely in regards to, like, projections of what their future funding is.
They will, again, this year and last year was the 5%, and that was through a lot of, like, coordination and feedback from agencies like us to say, Where are we hurting and what do we need? Our ridership is not back yet. So if you still, do only the 80%, we're we're gonna be Yep. Yep. I You know? Yeah. So so but it it's interesting to me that it says 80% less federal. Like, the federal has already been closed. It's like we start with our budget and then we the federal seems to be covered, and then we go to the state. Is that do you think I'm thinking about it the right way?
Yes. It's it's it's actually, it's a little bit more dynamic. It's not like one is done and then the next and then the next. What the state will do is, like, they will anticipate how much apportionment we get. So as you heard in the hearing, we get an apportionment based on our population density and our performance. And through that, on a we won't, get those apportionments announced until, like, second quarter of the year. Okay. I and this is too quirky now. I didn't mean to get into that, but but I am seeing that it's not like a b c. It's sort of like, but the but it really is based on a budget that we've made Yes.
Using MnDOT and federal rules. We don't just make up a budget. Correct. Yeah. Now within the city of Rochester, do we run transit as an enterprise that, you mentioned right up to that we're not using, levy. But do we run as an enterprise and that if there's extra money, we keep it? And if we're under budget, we have to cover our own expenses? Correct. That's correct. So, it is an enterprise fund that, anything that is any revenue driven from that is then spent and reinvested back in transit. And so it's it's it's it's within the transit. Okay. That that's what I thought,
and I'm just trying to make sure I understand it right. I I guess when I'm thinking of this, going out for bids and this whole RFP, I mean, obviously, it's it's a very controlled process by federal and state law. It's not like we're just coming up with new ways to do things. But do we have, like, known three or four bidders that are gonna be working this, or do we just have a very narrow set of like, what what's the outlook? Yep. So, of course, we have our current, contractor. We do have some local, Okay. Potentials. We have been, there's been outreach to us, asking about our,
services and and about Rochester public transit. Okay. That's helpful. There is a competitive environment out there. Yeah. It's not it's not that we're gonna deal with one bit or the that's helpful for me to understand because I I'm trying to understand your stuff here, but but I don't know the context of it. So this is helpful. My last question, or it's more of an observation is, the timeline things here is, like, I feel like we're against the wall. I when I when I think of, you know, accepting bids a month or two before we don't have a contract, that feels dangerous to me. So I can walk through the timeline. It it I don't it's not one or two months before.
Okay. So you feel like we're we'll be locked in, and I'll make up a date here, like, six months before the other contract ends. Correct. Yep. According to this, if you just look at that, we will be coming to you in August year with that contract award. Okay. And and it's my understand or I should say my understanding. Based on this discussion, you expect it to be a competitive bidding thing. It's not like okay. That Yes. We do. Yeah. I I yeah. I appreciate your time on this. I just wanted before we get into more details, I thought it was good to just all set. Right. Yep. Thank you. And I just wanna also say that,
even though it says August, we're working towards an earlier time frame. So Why don't you move on and and, we'll have questions at the end. Okay. So on to the the contract terms, the performance. Just wanna, give you some basis of this. We did, look at different the different, services and then broke it out into the different, types. These performance, requirements are not are just for the contract to provide a transit service that is convenient, safe, reliable, cost effective, has a lot of other things that is not measured in this,
in this contract. So things such as walkability, equity, ADA compliance. Those are things that we continuously work on and, it's on us, the city, to ensure that we have that community engagement, public engagement, looking at the growth and development within our city, just the transit efficiency of of it. So what you see here is just based on the contract. It doesn't mean that's the, the, report card for our services. What you see here are the metric categories. There is one new metric category that we're looking at is the customer complaints.
Everything else is in the existing, current contract and, the metrics that we is defined there and then our target and how we're doing it. There you see a lot of to be determined. Those are things where we're still looking at it to see, does it make sense to still continue, doing it this way? We do not currently have incentives. We just have the we call it here liquidated damages, but it really is about unsatisfactory performance fees that we would look at. And so does it make sense to do, liquidated damages or does it make sense to do an incentive?
So that's why we see, some still, like, determination there. An example of that is the, trip completion. So our metrics is 97%, for trip completion. The current contractor, Transdev, is meeting that. As you see in the quarterly report, they are exceeding that. The question might be that why don't we have it at a 100%? Mistrips can occur due to not the contractor. It could be because if there's an accident or a bus breaks down and they miss a trip, that's all part of this mistrip, or trip completions. Also, there could be detours, things of that nature that delays them to get to that point of their trip.
I should also back up and and explain that a fixed, route is not a trip. So, there's within a route, there's multiple trips. So we have about 30 routes right now and about 626 trips. So, just to explain that. Service disruptions, as you see here, is about, their failure to report to us. It's kind of related to the trip completion piece of it. We wanna ensure that, if there is gonna be a trip that's not gonna be completed, if there's some kind of disruption, like I mentioned, there's an accident or whatever.
We wanna know that immediately so that we can let our, our riders know. So that's a metric that's in there. On time performance, again, this is about ensuring that, what we say that is on our, schedule is is being done. So council member Miller. So a question, specifically with on time performance and trip completion, that's measured across all routes, all trips for a day. Are there are there agencies or is there a a reason to look at high priority routes, particularly those express routes at commuting times when people are really relying on that to
be able to get to and from work on a schedule? Should those be valued more highly than a trip where perhaps somebody has more flexibility during the day? So I would think if if we're looking to make sure that we increase our ridership, we need to guarantee that people can get to and from the places they need to be when they expect to. And I'm just curious thinking about those measures because I think some of the disruptions could be hidden, so to speak. You could still meet 90 or 97% but have a high disruption at some of those peak times that people rely on. Right. So, currently,
we do, avoid, those, we wanna make sure that the high ridership, routes are being completed, and those trips are being completed. And that's one of the requirements. We meet with our operator, our contractor, every day in the morning. We assess, the situation, if there's gonna be any potential trips that won't be completed. And so we meet with them on a daily basis. We, work with them, and make sure that our express routes or our high ridership routes are not missed. We have had situations way in the past where, we know that in whether it's an emergency or weather,
emergency, we don't want people stranded. And so we have had where our supervisors and managers have actually cars and picked up people. And so there's, you know, things that need needs to be a little bit off the book a little and not like but we we do yeah. So we we meet with them and on a regular basis and ensure that we those, expectations are met. Yep. Continue. So for paratransit. Paratransit is, a different type of, service. You you do need to be eligible for this, based on disability and accessibility to fixed route. So it looks a little different,
although similar. Some of them are similar. Again, we've got incentives on here also. On time performance is gonna be, similar, defined a little differently, but it's also on here efficiency requirements. As you can see here, we're looking at, the target is 2.8. And what that means is that we wanna be efficient about our, the way, our scheduling is worked, where, the riders are picked up, and we want to ensure that our contractor is doing the best they can in the efficiency of it. We don't want them to just go pick one person up and then that's it.
So we want them to make sure that they're, like scheduling it, and using the best tools that they have in order to meet them. Overflow is something that we are looking at for paratransit. We wanna ensure that, overflow is only used at a very minimal amount. We do have a requirement of, like, no we can't deny rides. And so, we do need to be flexible and we do need to make sure that we can do it. So if we are in a pinch and we need it, we will need to go to Overflow. But that also ensures that if we have this kind of metric,
our contractor is gonna ensure that there's bad enough staffing. And then some of the issues that we had previously also was due to vehicles. As I mentioned before, we didn't have enough vehicles. And so, making sure that we have enough vehicles, again, that's on us. But through our partnership with Transdev, they were able to provide some vehicles. So that overflow is important for us. And Council member Wall has a question. Mhmm. Well, it backs up one slide. I'm not sure I understand the difference between a passenger trip and a passenger. So the passenger trips were, say, ten ten thousand passenger trips.
How many passengers is that? That's 10,000 passengers. Okay. Yep. So then my question is, based on two validated service related complaints for 10,000 passengers, if this year we have 650,000 passengers, we expect, fewer than a 130 complaints for the entire year. Yeah. So I can't do math on the fly. But when we looked at this, it would have been about two, complaints per month, I think it turned out to be. What we're looking here and validated,
it has to be validated. It's just not a complaint. Is it a true validation of of a complaint in regards to, like, customer service or, vehicle or route not being, like, deviated for unknown reasons. So it does need to be validated. What we're doing right now is tracking our customer, input and issues, with our contractor and ensuring that they address that appropriately. So what we found with other agencies is, like, this is typical of what other agencies use. And through through our research, we're kinda leaning on to some experience that other agencies have used.
It just seems to me that there'd be more complaints than that if if, only 97% if not if 3% I'll use it the other way. If 3% were not completed, I would think we'd have more than a 130 complaints a year, but, you've got us. Thank you. I have a quick question too. Council member Dorian Yeah. I was waving down here. I, can you briefly, again, define what a validated complaint is for me? Yep. So I don't have it in front of me, but a validated complaint would be,
something that is valid, that if, if they were waiting at a bus stop and the bus didn't come, a complaint that, the driver, did not let them on the bus. Something of that nature, that was, not just someone saying, Oh, I didn't see the bus. But the bus did come, you know, so, they could have, like, not seen it. So we we just need to validate that it was Okay. And does that include timing? So does that include late arrivals and late departures of buses as well? Late arrivals and late departures. So that would be covered in
On our on time performance. K. So those aren't complaints. Those that's a separate issue. Right. So Okay. If if they are gonna complain or if there is an issue that is brought to our attention, yeah. Okay. Thank you. So paratransit, and we have the trip completion. This is at a 100%. There is no ifs, ands, and buts on that. So we want to make sure that all our riders get to where they need to go. Bus rapid transit, these measurements that you see here are based on the negotiations and, coordination with the mail.
Our mail agreement with them, is these are the metrics that are in there. So we worked through with them on the on time performance being at 90% and then, service disruptions as mentioned before. Customer complaints look a little differently, through through that process. We categorized it into different, types of issues that were brought and the response in regards to that type of issue. So they didn't want or we didn't want, an issue to come and it would not be addressed for weeks on end. We wanted immediate response. Doesn't mean that some of it may not be resolved within that time frame,
but that it was responded to and addressed. So that customer complaints looks a little differently. And then for the trip completion, it's similar to our fixed route. So with that, those are the highlights of the performance, metrics there. Going back to the provisional milestones here, looking at, a release later this year, looking to move that release earlier as we continue to do our research and refine our tools here, looking at different agencies. Again, the state will review our request for proposal and our request for proposal is,
federally, there's a lot of federal requirements and regulations that get put into the RFP. So I'll move that. Well, I have a question, as since you mentioned the RFP and I know you, discussed it earlier. Have you, looked at, the potential of including labor peace provisions in the RFP? I know that these are provisions that many state agencies and, municipalities use that with contractors that creates a neutral neutrality from the employer standpoint,
and then the, the, labor organization then gives up, work stoppages and other elements. And so it's very, valuable when you have end users of of services. So, and I know that there are some trans, transit organizations that have entered into them. Yep. So we we have, we're starting to look into that. We're doing our research on that, looking at, like, existing, examples or other agencies. So we have not made that determination, but we are looking into it.
Council member, Keane. I I have just as we go out with this, I'm assuming we're trying to do, like the City of Rochester transit would like to have one contract that does all three services. Is that something that we've decided is the best way to go? Or have we looked at saying, no. The bus rapid transit could be a separate contract and we I mean, can you give me any of the logic behind that? Or is it really the, like, the, strategic direction is to have one company? And if they do a sub, that's okay. That that like, can you can you react to that?
Correct. Yes. So we we did, present that in our analysis last year, and, the direction was to go with one contract. Now that doesn't mean that they can't subcontract. Like, right now, they're subcontracting some of the paratransit out or the paratransit out. They could do that too with VRT or with, whatever service that they're looking at. We would evaluate the proposal based on its strength and and how they would respond to the the, the requirements in the proposal. And so it's up to the proposer on how they wanna structure it.
We are looking for all three different services, and then providing that maintenance in house. Whether that's gonna be part of that contract or not, will be part of the evaluation. Okay. But anybody who would, like receive our our request, they really can't say, hey, we don't want, PERA, we only want BRT. We're not accepting those bids. Correct. Yeah. Okay. But again, let me just ask it slightly different. Have we we've thought that through and said this is the because I do think a BRT is a different animal and it's brand new,
and we're just gonna group it in there. So I I'm trying to get comfortable with that. It could did you guys go through much back and forth, or is it just it makes sense to have one company? Sure. Sure. Yep. So, keep in mind that our technology is all encompassing. We won't have one technology for BRT and one for fixed route. We it will be for both. So even though, BRT is, gonna be more frequent and a little bit different type of service, still gonna use the same type of technology that we have. That's the equance that I mentioned earlier in regards to our CAD ABL, our automated passenger account,
all the other technology that supports it. So it would make sense to keep it as one. Otherwise, we'd have two separate services that we need to manage differently. What about the complexities that we've worked in with BRT where there's a security aspect to it that we don't have with the other bus lines? That'll be held separate from this contract? Or those, because I believe those security people are going to not be, a contractor to us. Right. So for the security, Rochester Public, the department is actually hiring, RPD officers and, superintend or supervisor.
So that's gonna be in house and those positions are, budgeted to the BRT and it will be in house as far as city goes. Okay. So it's not part of these bids at all? No. Is that the only one off or is there other things like that? Well, transit is not just I mean, we we do we are part of the city and the city other cities, departments also support us from time to time. We have transit attendant, that is being supervised by our by our public works, department and that person is for transit,
shelters and staffs. Oh, okay. Yep. And we used to have, like, again, our department's transit and parking. And so we do have two parking technicians that used to go out to our park and rides and do the counts and maintain that, keep our keep an eye and ear out. So we do have other positions within the depart other department. Not not, like, specifically saying they are transit staff, but they support us in different ways. Okay. I'm gonna ask staff and council members to be brief in their questions and answers. I do have council member Miller, council member Palmer,
and council member Wall in the queue on this. And so please be brief and look to your questions to to educate the entire council. Council member Keane? Good. Thank you. I'm I'm Mike, I'm done. Thank you. Council member Miller. Just two questions. One, you mentioned research that you're doing for this RFP. Do you have peer agencies that we should know about, either regionally or nationwide that you're benchmarking yourself to? I know that BRT would be different, but at least fixed route and paratransit. Yes. We do. So there are some local agencies and some,
like, other agencies similar to us in different states. And could you mention some of the just, like, for our education, who do you think of? So locally, we've got Duluth Transit Administration, DTA, Saint Cloud, Mankato. Mankato is very similar to us as they are part of the city. There are some agencies and I may not say it right, but out in California, I don't have the other ones off the top of my head, but there's a lot of other agencies. Okay. That's fine. That's that's helpful, at least the in state ones. And secondly, earlier today, we had the study session looking at our action plan.
Transit optimization was one of the action items. Does that happen in parallel or as part of this RFP development? So we are in the process next year to do our to update our transit development plan. And through that, exactly what you just said will be part of that transit development plan. So the RFP can happen whoever bids it. The the transit optimization would be a next year process. That's correct. Yep. And that would be done by city staff, not the contractor. Thank you. Council member Palmer. Well, I'm gonna go off of what mister Keane was trying to get to.
And I think that, the BRT needs to be a separate, bed and run separately because we have a contract with the Mayo Clinic for twenty years to to to make sure it runs right. So that's one of the things that I would do. I'm gonna ask you a quick question here. Male employees, do they just show a badge and a ride for free now? That's correct. That's been, so previously, they they would do that on the park and rides. And, what we have in agreement with Mayo right now is that they do flash their badge, and then we mark them down as a Mayo staff. Okay. And we then fill them. And then, money wise,
we get all our money from the state and the feds, basically. What I've been reading on transits throughout The United States, and Philadelphia is one of them, is gonna go bankrupt. And and, obviously, we don't want our system to go bankrupt, but yet we're getting money from the feds, which we really don't know what they're doing, and the state's gonna be, under budget constraints. My my earlier question was and I've not heard this answered at all. We went from 2,000,000 riders to now 650,000 riders. I would think your routes would go down, your buses would go down, and your and the cost would go down.
And yet, I've not heard one sentence on, yes, we're working to to to do that. What what am I missing? Yep. So the the efficiency route efficiency that we're looking undergoing for the rest of the year that I mentioned about the public engagement is to make it more efficient. So that would reduce some of the service. If you, look at the budget itself, it's not a one to one ratio of, like, we reduce this, to meet the ridership. We still have a lot of riders that are dependent on transit that, when you look at the cost per ride is Okay.
I'm getting that. The point I'm getting to is is at some point, if we don't get the money from the state and the feds, it's gonna come from our property tax. And and I know people on the city council don't want that to happen. And we've had three years of ridership that's gone down. Now we're gonna start doing efficiency. We didn't do it three years ago? We we have been. Okay. So what's the effect of that? What what have we cut routes? Have we where we say we've laid off bus drivers? What have we done? Well, to to get to the point, we've had, service changes, earlier this year, last twice two times last year.
We've made multiple little service changes as we adjust, based on what we hear from our riders and the ridership. So we consistently, update our services. Okay. Well, I'm gonna go a little bit off of of some other questions. And one of them was the the the complaints. Now dependability is important to me. If I'm gonna go work at Mayo Clinic and I gotta be to work, I have to be to work. I don't I don't get to say my sis doesn't my my bus doesn't show up. I know that we've canceled because it was too windy. I know we've canceled because it's too cold. And I know that we've canceled because it's too snowy.
I still have to get to work. So if I have to buy a car because the bus system isn't dependable, it's like a death spiral. So so is that a complaint if I'm on the bus and it dies because it's too cold? Do is that a complaint? Is that a legitimate complaint? Well, yeah. I mean, if Hey. So so in the go back to mister Wall, There's a 130 of these is all we can do. Let's say, on a Friday afternoon, you have too cold, the buses don't run, you're gonna have a 130 complaints in that day. So does this does this operator gonna have problems? Yeah.
So I, will take that back, and we'll take a look at it. I don't know if I have the true validation, definition of that, but we will look at that. K. And and and we this is it's about going out for contract. And and, obviously, I'm I'm in favor of separating the BRT, and that's just my opinion. But we also if you put in this complaint thing as something new, it then then someone's gonna bid this higher or they're not gonna wanna bid it. And if you go with mister Schubert is saying, and I'm not agreeing with them, but if you add something about labor in there, they're gonna bid this higher.
I mean, is is that what most contracts in this area have at this time? In regards to the customer complaint? Com complaints in in in labor, niceties, for lack of a better way of saying. Yeah. I mean, I I I would say there's any complaints that can come in. So, what we want them to do is to make ensure that the services are provided the way we would want, that efficiency and, reliability. And so these metrics are driving to that. Okay. And my last question is is that we had the, federal grant for out in Southwest Rochester that that was individual cars.
Call them up. They would come get you, and they would take you to a bus stop. That got changed to we'd take you to, I think, Mayo Clinic. Is is that a successful program that we did? Is it not? Are we not gonna repeat it? Or do we drop those routes that that in Southwest that didn't work out? So I think you're referring to Micro Transit Go. Yep. That's correct. Okay. So RPT Go was a pilot program that was funded through some, state bonds. Yep. And that was a one time thing. We are gonna we're in the process of putting that final report together and we will be sharing it with the council in regards to the ridership and the success
or, like, the the results of that. So we will be, sending that to council. We did see that as we, introduced this pilot, it's a new thing, and it took a while for, the education piece and people to to understand what it was. So the short time frame that we had, was a little too short, but we were, restricted by the amount of funding that we we received. Okay. And my my my final statement is is no property taxes have gone to the the transit system. I don't want it to happen. I don't wanna have somebody come to me in two years and say,
oh, by the way, you're gonna have to put property tax into this. So that's not an acceptable thing for me. And I know how the other people in this council feel. But, we need to run this efficiently, and I don't believe it's being run efficiently. Council member Wall. Thank you. Twice you've, referenced public engagement in terms of the RFP. What does public engagement, look like, and how extensive is it? So I believe I referenced public engagement in regards to the services that we're gonna be providing, the changes coming this year, which is separate from this request for proposal. So the request for proposal is strictly a,
procurement process that we will, again, use federal and state requirements and, oversight to manage through that process. Okay. So how extensive is your public engagement, and what does it look like? Who who's engaged? Yeah. We, so we have the citizen's advisory on transit that, we, use them to, help provide that feedback to us, bring it to the council here. Our services are, again, going through public engagement through that process. So things that we have heard previously in regards to our routes and and what we have heard.
So It doesn't doesn't sound like many people. How many would you say that is when you count the council and your advisory board? Yeah. So the the procurement piece is not going through public engagement. I wanna be clear about that. The procurement is strictly a requirement that we need to do to meet the requirements of federal and state, and that's what we're going through right now. I'm I'm still not sure I got kind of the number. When you do public engagement, it doesn't sound like there's many people that are engaged. We do a lot of public engagement in the transit development plan that was approved
a couple years ago, extensive public engagement. I don't have those numbers out there, but we have several, meetings virtually and in person that we have done. We had good attendance on those. We had previous, public engagement on some of our service routes that was done earlier this year. In one of them, we had a room full of, residents that attended. I don't know the number count, but it was full. We did receive good feedback from that. So our public engagement is pretty, I think, Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Council member Miller.
Yeah. I guess, to build on just a couple of things that my colleagues have said, with engagement, it is true that the citizen's advisory on transit meets once per quarter. Correct? And that's been canceled at least once this year. Mhmm. I would agree with mister Wall that I I think that when we say public engagement, there's more that could be done with that commission, particularly as we look at efficiency in the system as we've talked about. I would love to see more engagement there. I know that's not part of the RFP, but just our transit operations generally. You know, it's a changing community. I think that there are a lot of changing travel patterns,
but that's an important group that I would love to hear more from, in a a meaningful way. On on ridership, I know that's come up a few times just annualized. Are there ways that we could have more detailed breakdowns of ridership from quadrants of town around commuting times and better understand is ridership down across all routes, or are there very productive routes that are growing or stable and these other routes are seeing very limited ridership? That would be really helpful to understand. Sure. And then I I guess just philosophically, it feels like we keep keep talking about ridership, and then separately,
we're talking about transit efficiency. Would it be fair to say that we haven't designed a system for high ridership? Okay. So three you had three points there. So for the Citizens Advisory on Transit, we do used to meet regularly on a monthly basis. We've had a lot of turnover for our, that those membership and so we're still trying to get our cadence in place. It was shifted to quarterly because we found that, a lot of the we couldn't get a quorum going. So, with this new, membership, we will definitely bring that back and we've got a new, well, so we'll bring that back.
The other one was More detailed ridership information. Yep. So detailed ridership. We have started providing quarterly reports on transit and in the last report, we did break that down into, like, segments, I think it was, or areas. Mhmm. We can certainly look at that. There's a lot of data, so we can certainly break it down into different, metrics that you wanna see. So we will reiterate that and, take a look at the next report on that. And then have we we keep talking about ridership as, like, a a goal of how we're scoring our transit system. Would you say that we have designed a system to have a high ridership,
or are we prioritizing something else, perhaps coverage of the city? Yeah. So I I would say that, our planner probably can explain it better than I can. We do have a planner on staff here, and I'm not a planner. But, our transit, we we designed the the transit system I think we have a planner coming up behind you. There you go. Sandra. So we Sandra Nara is our planner, and she can help answer that. Hello? Please state your full name to us. My name is Sandra Nara, and I'm the transit operations planner. Great. Nice to meet you all. So in transit planning,
it's difficult to make choose coverage or efficiency. We need to serve people. People need to go where they need to go. So it has to be a bit of coverage and a bit of efficiency as well. Currently, most of our routes have a lot of overlaps. So we have one stop that has three routes serving them. In my opinion, that is not efficiency because our buses are not even half full. So in the forced service change ER referred to, I'm working on how do we make sure that our high ridership routes have more frequency because they are the ones people are using the most.
In the low ridership routes, we reduce the overlaps. So if we have three routes serving one stop and the bus is half full, can we have just one route seven that stop? And just looking at how much it's costing us in general to carry people, so cost per rider, cost per hour, and looking at those changes on how to make our routes more efficient. So definitely in our full service change, we are all gonna see a more efficient public system. Thank you for that information. And that's what I suspected. I'm just bringing this really to to our our conversation here because I keep hearing
the the the the metric of ridership, and it doesn't feel like that's what we're trying to maximize here. I mean, the mayor and I and some other community members were just in Tokyo. We never looked at a schedule. We walked to a stop, and we expected that within a a short amount of time, there would be a vehicle coming, and that was reliable. And I think that that's what's driving higher ridership, particularly on high utilization routes. And so I I'm glad to hear that we're working on ways to improve the the reliability and frequency of of those routes because I think that that's really what we have to
understand in a system that's working for people and giving transit a chance to be competitive in a a transportation option. It has to be reliable when you need it. And especially along this high frequency or high ridership potential routes, high frequency is is a key metric. And from what I've read, those are where you really see increases in ridership is when you increase frequency so that people don't have to memorize a schedule or know that a bus is only coming every thirty minutes or every hour, which is not reliable for how life planning works. So thank you. Thank you too.
Council member Doring. Yeah. I just, wanna reflect a little bit on the, citizens advisory on transit. I'm I'm disappointed to hear that it's only meeting quarterly too and especially when we're gonna be talking about, community engagement as a, we've talked about it as a, a goal, a strategic priority. We're gonna talk about an item here in a little while. And I I I think, I think their input is is is central for our, public transportation system. And I think, maybe we should be asking questions why, why there's been such, turnover in that group and why,
why we're only meeting quarterly. I also agree with the idea of maybe separating the BRT out of of of this particular contract. And if if not, I would maybe commend, to you in the RFP process, again, with customer complaints to not then treat the regular fixed routes differently than the r than, than, BRT. I would hold the regular fixed routes to the same stringent standard that you're holding the BRT to to in terms of addressing customer complaints. Any further questions? Seeing none,
thank you so much. And we will see you next. Is it with the RFP in December? Yep. So we were we are going to come back. We're gonna solicit, get that out there, get the proposals in, evaluate it, go through contract negotiations, just typical like any other request for proposals, and then come to the council before awarding it. Alright. So, council president, just just to be clear, just to make sure everybody understands, our our intent is to post the RFP and then bring back with the results, not to have another So we will we will not see and weigh in on
the RFP. Correct. The next time you see us is, next year in the city council RCH award contract as you see in the August date there, which we're trying to push forward. Mayor Norton? Yeah. I wasn't gonna weigh in, but I'm a little concerned with what I'm hearing because I'm hearing some people, several people on this council saying they're concerned about a single RFP. And so I guess I'm a you didn't hear that? Okay. I heard that there was concern because Yeah. I think there was, definitely some concern about, whether or not the BRT would be included.
And there was also the, proposal of looking at labor peace as a option. So I I do think we'd like to see it again. Yeah. I I'm just a little worried that you're gonna move forward with a single RFP. It's gonna come back here, and everybody will be scratching their heads saying we kinda wanted So I something else. Wanna state that last year, we did get direction and approval from council to move forward with one single contract with the option And I'm not arguing about that, but this is a different time and a different council. And so I'm just wondering is do they so you're bringing this forward,
but you're basically saying we can't weigh in and change anything, if that's what I'm hearing. And I'm seeing the administration. We're we're hearing from, I think council member Yeah. I mean, I I don't know if I I assume some of this is based on my questions, but I was asking my questions just to understand that I wasn't trying to redirect. Okay. Was there staff wanted to Wing in. In? I heard from, I think, two council members or three maybe that were interested in seeing it separated. So, president, there there's an interest in seeing it separated, but when we're talking about putting if I may. Go go ahead,
Administrator. Asking for someone else to talk. Yeah. And and let me clarify what I'm hearing is there's a question of whether or not the council has another opportunity to weigh in before the RFP is published. And I'm getting a sense from council members, there's not a vote here, that there is interest in seeing that because there are some issues around what's going to be included in that RFP. That's not correct in your standpoint?
I'm I'm hearing it. Okay. Go ahead. Image administrator. If it would make the city council feel better to bring additional information back, there it that is why we have a city council is to provide that. And it sounds like it might be valuable because I think that would allow the staff to explain why separating RFPs versus taking a lot of clarity in the RFP about the different types of services that are being provided and the expectations for those services, some of which have a direct contractual relationship with a business partner that's making something
fair free and others of which do not have some of those same considerations, could be valuable. I would be concerned if we left here today thinking we were doing multiple RFPs versus creating an RFP process that allows for some of these concerns to be fully reviewed in a response to a proposal process. Conversely, I think the staff is concerned about making sure that they're bringing you the most accurate RFP, and it still may not be fully in its final form if you wanna meet the schedule to come back to you with additional information on that item.
So here are the concerns. Also concerned about the idea that separating RFPs will provide you better service, And we have experience with that in a building across the street where when we had multiple operators in the same building, it was very challenging to actually get positive service for both of those because they have to figure out how to work together. So just those are my 2¢. 10¢. Mayor Norton? I reiterated this because I was sensing not unanimity in in, in the conversation. And I guess a question I didn't ask,
but maybe needs to be asked is we currently are having lots of missed routes, and they're happening. We're getting calls from Mayo Clinic staff saying I'm not getting picked up. If we do one bidder and we have this service with Mayo Clinic, a specific provider, I want to be I and I would think they would want some sort of guarantee, and and I I don't even know how to say this, but they can't be having missed routes on a bus rapid transit line. The the the whole purpose of bus rapid transit is a continual,
you know, reliable, as, you know, we were just hearing about seeing in Tokyo, service. And if that isn't going to happen, if a a driver calls in sick and we don't have a replacement on a b I BRT service, to me, that's a different beast than and and maybe a a more frightening one with the relationship we'll have with them, as opposed to what we're dealing with now, which is still frightening for Mayo Clinic staff, right, quite frankly. But that's it's a it's a whole different type of ridership. So I just I wanna make sure we're not gonna double a problem by having a lack of riders or a lack of consistency in two separate,
I don't know what they call it, provider services because we have one provider. So, that's why I raised it. Yep. So, I just wanna say that, as far as, like, the trip completion, and what's perceived or what's real is, obviously, if you are the person that is expecting that right, it's important. Right? And I'm not, negating that. But they have met the metrics. They have not gone down 97, which is the metrics. So in regards to what that is, they are still meeting it. Now for bus rapid transit,
you you could still get the same issues that you're kind of bringing up, in regards to, the staffing and that can happen with any contractor. The metrics that we are putting in place is to ensure that they do that. That might mean that their proposal, whoever's proposing, may want to ensure that and it might impact what their staffing count is. We're not telling them, like, how much staffing that needs to be done, we're just telling them these are their services and this is our expectation. So you you need to make sure that you do that. So if if,
for example, we don't want missed trips and, they might have to structure their staffing a little differently, in regards to what they currently do. So those are things where where these performance metrics requirements are put in there so that we know we're gonna get the service we want. Council member Miller. Yeah. Just to weigh in on, what I'm thinking about, I I don't have any concern with this being one RFP. I these are integrated transit operations that will be nodes for each other. I do think that it would be helpful since we've had some discussion, talked about various factors to see some update
ideally before the RFP releases, because it does feel like a long time to wait roughly a year for us to talk about this today and then award it a year later with no conversation in between. I know we'll talk about optimization. And then finally, my question would be because it's come up about Mayo commuters and Mayo transportation between facilities, How does Mayo weigh in on this RFP and get their feedback on these performance measures for BRT? Yep. So these performance measures were identified in our Mayo contract. So we have talked about this with Mayo, like, long before, and we it was over a couple years negotiation.
So we have really looked into this. Weighed in. Right? Yep. I mean, so their their their needs are reflected here in the BRT performance just Correct. For our information. Correct. Thank you. Well, I I would agree with, council member Miller. I don't feel that we need to separate them, but I I I do also agree with, him that I think we'd like to see a little bit more on kind of some of these issues. Some council members may need more information on whether or not it's one RFP or
or, there's a sub RFP, component to that. So I think having another time to push those things out, I think, would be beneficial. Yep. We'll take this feedback in and come back. Alright. Thank you. And we will have a seven minute break. Seven minute break. We're gonna get started if folks can come come back into the chamber. Council member Miller, council member Palmer. Can they hear me out there? Can't hear. We're starting. Please put that over. I'm not I'm not You guys resolve for coffee when we're done.
Not Britney. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. We're on to item H3, which is support and commitment for the Democracy Innovations for Public Meetings project. And this is presented by Mayor Norton. Thank you. I'm excited to finally bring this, before the city council. This particular item started almost a year ago, I guess, a year ago this fall, when, council member Wall and I were at the National League of Cities, meeting and ended up sitting next to each other in a workshop. And the workshop was hosted by the National Civic League as one of the main
speakers. And, we started talking then. And I'll just I wanna give you just a a tiny bit of information about the national the National Civic League, which is with NCL and NLC. It gets a little confusing. National Civic League is a hundred and hundred plus, year old organization. It was actually one of the founders was Teddy Roosevelt, believe it or not, and other reformers, back, founded the organization back in 1894. And, the mission of the National Civic League is to advance good governance and civic engagement
to create inclusive, thriving communities. And so that's that's their sole purpose, and that's what they do. And they've been trying to be creative, in helping councils, county boards, school boards, whomever is interested, I think, in, running better meetings and running and and really having, supporting a democracy. And so, there have been a number of concerns have been brought up over the last number of years, actually, since I've been on the council, about frustrations with public comments, with civic engagement. And, so through that meeting,
we followed up with National Civic League. I joined the organization as an individual, mayor and had some subsequent meetings. And they called and said, we have received a grant. So if you're interested in moving forward, initially, we had talked about having to help fund, you know, the, their process. But they received a grant. And so, we started a few information sessions. A couple of you attended. And, really, the goal is to, assess public engagement and public input,
here during our public comments section. I know there's been interest on some of the the city council members about looking at boards and commissions. I heard that again tonight. Are they running as efficiently and well as they could be? And other, ways that we do civic engagement, to so what they will do is come in and they will measure. They will do measurements about what you're doing. They will be evaluating our current processes. And then that takes several months. After that is done, we, and during that time, we work cross collaboratively with a team of, three city council members, three staff members,
I believe. And, myself and I've committed, after talking to Michonne, to having her be there because we all know we have busy schedules, and if someone cannot attend, we will have a note taker there that can share the information, after the meeting, with anyone who might have missed. We know that it'll take a couple hours a month at the beginning of the process. There will be, after the assessments are done, there will be a time where the, investigator, who I think is on the line here today, will go home and work out the information and come back and share what they have learned through the assessment process, and then bring forward ideas and brainstorm with us about how can we do things
better and differently. And so that will be and it's iterative. We have control over the process. We will it will be Rochester specific. There's not a cookie cutter, outcome that is expected. And, there there have been a couple questions raised about, you know, what happens? How can we make this our own? And and talking with, Nick this weekend, not this Nick, another Nick, this weekend, he he assured us that this is going to be using your information the way your city works, and you will decide what you wanna do moving forward, if anything. So, a couple questions had come forward.
So it'll be Rochester specific. They had initially, suggested, that the city might need to, provide some funds. But as I mentioned, they did receive a grant for all the costs at their end. So his the the researchers travel, all the informa you know, all he'll need to do, will be funded at his end. And if there are funds needed, at our end for whatever pilot projects we do, whether we need to rent gathering space or have food or provide flip charts, that sort of thing, that will be funded through the mayor's office. And so no city direct city funds,
city budget funds will be used. They will be mayor's budget funds for the this next year. Also, the the question was raised about, is there a concern because we're going to be vacating this room, and that might make it harder to collect accurate information. I talked to them about this. We can do the evaluations. Actually looking back because and I I had a talk with the city clerk about this. We actually do we ask people when they come to speak to give their their address and their, and or email. And so we actually can utilize speakers that have already come if we wanted to
this venue, then they will, the research will have to be taken while we're at RPU, knowing that that's a different venue, but, maybe less people will find it. We don't know. We will watch for that. And he is willing to extend it so he can do some, sampling for his research when we come back into this room afterwards. So he's willing to extend the front end of that to make sure that we are getting an accurate picture of public engagement at our meetings. And then, the other question that came up was about the timeline. And as often happens with grants, there is a timeline for the grant.
They received the grant. As I recall, it was back in April. By the time we went through our processes here to have some folks learn about it, be able to ask questions, and have the meetings that we had leading up to it, here we are now, kind of at the end of the time period, we really need to get approval to move forward. The resolution does not, require that we follow through doing something we don't want. As I mentioned, it's iterative. We will do what you want, and you can be involved in the process as we go along. They are just there to do the assessment, provide the results of the assessment,
and bring forward some best practices they know about, but also to learn about our best practices because we know we have them, here in this community, and make sure that we don't do anything that will undermine the good work we've already done, but that perhaps we can make improvements in some areas we're still struggling on. So that's the goal of the resolution is just to let them know officially we will participate in this over the next twelve months. And, and, again, our our involvement as staff and as, city council members will vary over the time depending on whether it's research,
the time, late, and if we do a pilot, there may be, at the beginning and the end, a little more staff time needed, but, or your time needed for the meetings, which she said would be between thirty minutes and an hour every other week. So that that's what I have for you. I'm hoping, this was brought forward, at the, really, at the interest of the council in doing better in our public comments and public engagement. Thank you, mayor. Yes. And the mayor did invite me to one of those sessions with the team from, the civic group.
And, my, well, it's a setback, as I've said to the council when I took this role six months ago, that making sure that we have quality public meetings is my top priority, for this year. I think just looking back over the six months, some of the priorities that, I've had, I've seen a lot of good progress on. And and I thank Administrator Zalms for, giving us longer glide paths on some issues and bringing,
topics that are of great interest to our citizenry, to our study sessions for us to deliberate on. And from my perspective, I think we're we're a, a quality group of elected officials who want to discuss public policy, and we also want our processes to be the best they can be. So I'm very, comfortable with having a group come in and and help us make what we do here on our regular council meetings and our study sessions.
And, I also do like the idea of adding the, boards and commissions. I think they're they are part of our inner infrastructure here. They are public meetings. And the the the connection between, the council and the boards and commissions, I think, can be strengthened as a group that feed up and down, issues and issue information. So I I will be supporting this. Council member Miller. Yeah. Thank you. I also had the opportunity to,
participate virtually and then as a follow-up with staff about this project, review some of the documents. And I also went on to review, some of the reports from the National Civic League with other communities that they've worked in, and then I looked at, particularly with Boulder, Colorado, how they structure their public meetings. And I just see a lot of differences with what we do, and I I would love the opportunity to work with a somebody with a broader perspective of public meetings more generally, who's working on public engagement, and I think we have a real opportunity here. You know, with the national community survey results that we reviewed earlier this year from 2024,
we see inclusivity and engagement It's the lowest, scoring area where people expect a higher 62% as importance, but it scores 46%. And then our our discussions about strategic priorities, we highlighted the need for inclusive decision making and inclusive growth management. And to me, that means a lot of bringing the community into our processes, educating, involving, and and making sure that we are representing the community and all that we do and particularly in these public meetings. So I too look forward to supporting this. I'm grateful for the mayor and council member Wall for kicking off this process,
a year or so ago, and I look forward to participating at the National League of Cities as well. So I think we do have a lot of opportunity to learn. It's a category of one community with a a lot to learn and grow and innovate, and I think this is a a step towards that innovation as a value for our community. Council member Keane. Yeah. It it would be difficult for me to sit up here when when they go through, like, strategic priorities we went through and say, yeah. There's something in front of us that, has to do with better community engagement, better public interface, things like that, and say I'm against it.
But but I do have my concerns too. It says there's no expense involved in this, and there isn't any money being paid. But we ought to consider the expense of how we engage our staff and what we ask them to do. And and again, there's a lot of this falls into the realm of what some of those jobs are. I guess I'm wanting to listen to this discussion because I see words like participate, facilitate, collaborate, and consider. So there's things that are saying I and I can all I can read those very differently, and so can everybody else. Somebody could say what you passed said that your communications group must now do a
bunch of things. And I I'm not interpreting it that way. Somebody else could interpret it that now you have given over control of something to someone else. And I'm not interpreting it that way. And I wanna make sure that if if there's a vote up here right now, we all have the same sort of things in our mind. That we're actually going going to engage with an, someone who has some expertise and someone's gonna bring some ideas to the table. But he's not going to drive our city to do things differently. He's not going to take control of you you said you would,
run these surveys and it might I don't care, you know, if it takes as much time. I want the staff to be able to decide that. Well, I should say, what I want to vote on, and I wanna make sure I'm voting with my peers' same assumptions, is there is still a lot of the the control on this is whether it it fits in with what the staff's doing. And I get worried about that because when I, you know, when I read the alternate thing there, it had this idea that, like, this isn't gonna work right now because we're it's going to churn us during bad times. And I think some of that could be resolved by,
like, an agreement that these words, like, participate, facilitate, are we all understand them as, getting this expertise, getting this help, and then going forward with what works best for Rochester. Someone's interpreting it differently. I'm I'm interested in that. Mayor Norton? Yes. And and we I called this past weekend and had a lot of this, clarified for me. We are going to be the drivers of what we do. We are going to collaborate with the person doing the research. We're going to discuss amongst ourselves and with them about where we wanna go at
the end of the process. They and this was one of the questions. Is this a cookie cutter approach? Absolutely not. It's iterative. We have control over what we wanna do. They may provide some examples of things that have worked in other communities. Have you thought about this? I think one community was focused on youth engagement, for instance. And I don't know that that's gonna be our focus. I don't I don't think it is, although, certainly, we want youth engaged, and we have ways, you know, that we could talk about it, but that's not going to be our focus. I think the, the point is that we make the decisions about where we're going to go.
No one else does. Right? We will. Our and that's why it's important the staff is involved because we don't they have to be able to say during the process, you know, I don't have the time to do that. That would be too much. I could do this, but what you're asking me is a step too far. They will be at the table for those discussions. And just to my understanding, and I I think I would hope we all have the understanding, in that any recommendations that come out of this process, that those recommendations would be decided on by this body as part of our rules
and guidelines. It's nobody's deciding anything for us. Council member Wall. Thank you, president Schoebring. I was going to make precisely that point that, we can accept or reject whatever findings, that, are brought to us. My interest in this, came from a couple of years of experience with open comment. When I first started, we had so many open commenters that regularly we were asking for permission to extend that time, perhaps reducing the number of minutes,
by each speaker so that everybody had a chance. Really, a lot of, that was unhappy. They were diatribes, which had very little to do with, anything on our agenda or anything within our scope of jurisdiction. Just really not not productive. We changed some rules, whether that coincided with, some of the public's disinterest in, being on TV, every two weeks. I don't know. But they stopped showing up. And tonight, we had two, commenters. And I'm not certain that we're engaging the public in, the most robust way that we possibly could.
So to hear the, National Civic League, talk about a possibility, and that would have to be tailored to, Rochester, a way to better hear a greater voice, of of the city of Rochester. I would be very open to that, and, administrator Zelms has given me a couple of examples of, communities that have done some various things. I think that we are I am open to any number. With with mister Keane, though, I certainly want to protect staff time. And I believe that this process,
the onus and the reward belong to, the council. This is on us if we choose to, move move ahead. Is there a, is there a motion? Is there a comment? Question Council member Palmer. I've heard I've heard in a conversation that we can do better and that we're struggling. I'm hearing that there's no cost to us. There's no cost to the staff. We're gonna just volunteer, I guess, to do this. Going through the planning and zoning update that we just did three years ago, we had a lot of engagement. And we had free tacos. And we had people in the park,
and and and very few people ever show up. I think, mister Wall, you've mentioned many times that you've been to playing zoning means neighborhood means that no one shows up. Part part of it is that you have to have a public that wants to be engaged. And and I don't know if this is going to get us to do that. North Broadway is a great example for me. No one knows what's going on until the road gets ripped up, and now they wanna know what's going on. We've been planning this for three years. So I don't know how this company is going to come to us and say, oh, jeez. We're gonna figure out how how people are gonna be engaged.
And and my fear is it's gonna be the same old same old people who show up, and we're gonna talk to them. We're not gonna go out in the public and find them, to do it. You know, I I I'm not particularly sure this is good use of staff time, and we have very little of that, staff time available. Mister chair, could we have if he has a question for the the Nick, if he's on, maybe Nick could address council member Palmer's concerns that it's the same old, same old. Well, I I I let me make an effort at it first.
I I look at this and and I we we talked about our meeting. It's better public meetings. It's the city council meeting. It's the study session. It's the boards and commissions. And on the boards and commissions, and I believe, mayor, we have 20 plus boards and commissions. There's probably 60 plus, citizens that have proactively said, I want to serve on this, commission. So that is and 20. So those 120 folks,
there is already engagement there, but I don't know that they're engaged In what we're doing. So I look at it as how can we, as a council, either at our meetings or before or after our meetings, do the, the engagement to really fulfill that inclusive decision making. It doesn't always have to be at the meeting. And then our deliberative process. How are we deliberating? How are we working together so that we are bringing up the best public policies?
So that's that's how I look at, it, and I've got ideas. I'm not gonna share them now, but, I I have ideas that I would share with the group as so how about this? How about that? So so so so I'm just gonna repeat what I think I heard. Council member. And and you're basically saying to to us is that this is for our study session. This is for our city council meeting. This is for our open comment period. And then it's also for our our, committees. That's what all this is for, and and that's what you're telling me. This is what it's gonna be for.
It's not gonna cost us any staff time. It's not gonna cost us any money. Is that what you're saying? Well, I didn't add those last two points. You did. But that's been said. I I mean No. Okay. I would like to clarify. Mayor Norton? It will any funds it takes on the pilot project or whatever above and beyond the work that the National Civic League's staff do to look at the data will come from my office, not out of it will be my city budget. I'm willing to give it up next year for this process because I am that
much committed to better meetings and civic engagement to work on this. The staff get paid their normal salary, and we are asking for an hour every other week or an hour or two every other week from the two or three staff members that might wanna be involved, and I know there are some that do. So is it going to cost us extra? No. Is it going to mean they are going to dedicate an hour every other week to this at certain points during the process? Yes. And I also wanna say, our we sent our staff to a civic engagement training at Harvard this year.
And so they have lots of great ideas. And the nice part of all this was Nick has worked with both har Harvard and Bloomberg on civic engagement in the past. So he's well aware of the type of training materials and the work that they went through and has every intention of making sure that the the staff training that they went for will be utilized in an appropriate way. Council member Keane, did you have a question? Yeah. I I again,
a a couple points. I, I did bring up this idea of the staff stuff, and I think this has been a good discussion that if we approve this, I think we'll have put a set in record what we think it is, and I think that was an important thing for me to to do. Council member Palmer, I mean, I remember watching the, the the public or the community development team trying to get people out to talk about the UDC because how important it was, and the ice cream things and the party at the park and things like that. And it was difficult. If, when you try to get input on policy, it is a very difficult thing for the average citizen to come in and and
wanna talk about that. Council member Wahl talked about, you know, some other meetings, but, with, miss missus Young miss Young here today, I went to a meeting that had 30 people in it because they changed the bus route. Yep. And, boy, you tick people off like that, and they're gonna show up. There and it was it was a very interesting thing. It was a you know, look at the where the route was changing, but there was 30 people in that room because they had an extra twenty five minutes of sitting on the bus. And that's not the kind of public engagement I'm looking for. I mean, that's important that we hear their concerns. But this idea of that to me, the one big thing I've seen in my time is the is the code of,
co designers. And it is it's a very dedicated, very, like, focused sort of public engagement, but that's a process that seems to be working for us. But with those caveats and this idea that now I think I know what to do. I'd like to make a motion to adopt a resolution for support and commitment for the Democracy Innovations for Public Meetings project. Second. Moved by council member yeah. We'll get it to it after the motion has been put it. Council member motion made by council member Keane and seconded by council member Miller.
Council member Keane Miller, any more? Council member Fredericks. Go ahead. Thank you. Administrator Zelms, how do you feel about staff time being dedicated to this endeavor? Council president, council member, mayor Norton, I I think the key is we do not have unlimited staff time. So know that if you are prioritizing this, there may be other things that don't end up happening. And the same people work on this that work on many of the other things that you just saw in your strategic priorities. It doesn't mean that we can't do it, but it means, like, the timing to be able to get this done, suggesting that adding an hour every other week is not significant when people are already
working sixty to eight out eighty hours a week is not insignificant. So I'm not concerned about if this is a priority and if it's narrow as it's been described, but I am concerned if we're suggesting that staff does not have good feedback. I would say in the front row alone, we probably have worked in 10 to 15 different cities with many different ways that public meetings happen over the course of thirty five years of service, a 100 if you add them up collectively. Any, further comment? Council member, Palmer. Yes. Yeah. I'm I'm not I don't wanna be wrong that that I'm I'm for trying to
do better, and I'm for better meetings. And so I don't know if this is the proper way to do it, but I see the the NRA in the wall that is gonna pass. So, good luck, and and, you know, we'll see what we can do. Mister Spindler, Craig, did you wanna Mister president, council members, mayor Norton, if I may, given that we're gonna have some further discussion later this evening on contract language and interpretation. I do just have some concern and I did mention this to the mayor, the resolution that was in your packet and before you,
does seem to indicate that you are entering into a contract. I don't think we've seen that contract. I haven't seen that contract. Maybe it's a nothing contract that is fairly generic and doesn't say much, but I I don't know that. It's not even exactly clear to me through the resolution who the party is that we're contracting with. So there there are just a few concerns there that maybe can be cleaned up on the back end.
But to the extent that this resolution that presumably is being approved by this motion references a contract that none of you have seen, and your legal adviser hasn't seen just does cause me a bit of a bit of concern. Mister Mayor, do you Yeah. Will there be a contract? We're today, we are signing a resolution. If there is another contract that needs to be signed, it would come back to you. If you wanna ask Nick, who is online from National Civic League,
if there is a formal contract or if the resolution is the contract saying just an an MOU, he could say that. Nick, are you on the line? Yeah. Hi. I'm definitely on the line. This is not a contract. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. We can hear you. Can you speak to contracts? Yeah. No. This is not a contract. What you have before you is an example resolution by another community. Specifically, that's gonna be the second cohort of this better public meetings ground pilot. That's Anchorage. And so this is just the language showing a little bit of commitment that the community wants to,
they wanna support the work. It doesn't mean that you're gonna be implementing anything that's part of it. It's just that you support that we're gonna be undertaking that work. And and and we find that it's actually helpful, helpful, because at the end of the day, you know, we're gonna be having a look at the different types of meeting aspects. And and having, you know, yourselves show a little bit of support for the work and a little bit of buy in goes a long way, especially, you know, for for any sort of intervention or or work that happens, that you you decide to to to undertake at at a future date.
Thank you. So so this is a resolution showing that we will support it if we need I'm looking to mister Spindler Craig. If you feel that there needs to be some form of contract between the entity and the city, we can follow-up with that. Thank you, mister president. I was not trying to assess the need for a contract. I was trying to read a resolution that I thought was presented as your resolution to be passed tonight.
Mhmm. Now I think I heard the speaker indicate that it's not your resolution. It's an example No. Resolution. Yeah. But it's our resolution taken from an example from Alaska. We used their framework Okay. And took out all the references to Alaska and made it ours. Council member resolution. Council member Doreen. Can I make so then there's some grammatical errors in the resolution then? So it's it's dated August 11, and then it also says project and is hereby approved in execution of the contract.
Right? So I just yeah. I mean, so we just have to change some of that language, right, before we sign it. Is it in the Yeah. Right? Contract resolution. So is the mover, mister Keane, and, the seconder, approve of those grammatical changes to the resolution? I I I would have made a motion similar, but I I don't know if, I'd like the attorney Spindler Craig Duane if you want me to change the resolution so that it includes language that says or do are are we really doing the thing that we're amending the resolution in front of us to take words out of
it? I'm I'm not sure what what we're doing yet. I I would suggest we amend the resolution before us and take the words out of it and fix the date and go forward. Yes. That's what I heard council member Doreen suggest. And from my perspective, that is fine. I think with that clarification that the reference to a contract was not intended to be a reference to a contract. There is no anticipated separate contract. The resolution is the only thing. Yes. Okay. We're clear? Yes. Just I I would just clarify that we would strike and execution of the contract
is authorized from the resolution and amend the date to the eighteenth. That that's my understanding as the mover. Yes. Okay. So That is helpful from my perspective. And seconder agree. Mister president, if with your patience Go ahead. Just maybe one other point of clarity. Maybe it's clear to everyone else. But, the motion and the resolution is anticipated to cover boards and commissions and to involve them in this review process. I've I've heard a mix of things from the council tonight.
At They will determine that when they meet with this individual. But what I was told was boards and commissions, public comments, all of it is there's nothing written in stone that we have to do at a particular way. It will be iterative based on what they wanna do. Okay. Is there more? I must be just to clarify just to clarify who they is when we're talking about who they will decide. The city council, three members from the city council, the three staff members, myself, and Michonne, are the committee that we'll meet.
Okay. Miss Selms? Do you need to appoint the three council members in order to understand who's meeting? And to my knowledge, according to your charter, they can't make any decisions that don't come back to the city council. True. Providing input. If you would like me to designate three, I could. I would prefer to wait and send a memo out afterward rather than doing it on the fly. Okay. That, mister Palmer, go ahead. Well, if it was the tables were turned and I brought this to you, and we have a city attorney that's telling us that we have problems, we have motions made and people making corrections to the motion,
and and not knowing what we're doing, I won't get very far. And and I'm not particularly sure why we're rushing into this. So I'm gonna make a motion to table this, resolution. I'll second it. So, does the motion to table supersede the original motion, miss Kaysle? Is that correct? Yes. I believe so. Okay. So we have a motion to table by council member Palmer and a motion and seconded by, council member, Fredericks. And so I'm not trying to to Go ahead.
To mess this up. What I'm trying to do is make sure we get this clarified and then that it's as legal as we can get it so we all know what's going on. That's my rationale for tabling. It's not to not to not vote for it. But Mister chair? I'm gonna weigh in here first. And and maybe you're noting a note of frustration on my part to the level of detail that is being asked here, and it behooves me to understand that we had another issue last week's council meeting
where staff brought us an issue, and it's back on our on our council agenda in, the two items from now where we did not get all as much detail on a $100,000 expenditure of that was a match to a $400,000 grant that we're being asked to give for this item that is at a far less, level of, commitment. So that's where my frustration is on this,
need for so much detail on it. And so with that, mayor Norton. Thank you. I appreciate that. And as I mentioned before, we are already, the the grant that, the National Civic League got was in April. It has taken us this long to get there. We we do need to move this ahead. My apology for the date change. I actually thought this would be such a no brainer, if you will, that it would come while I was gone. And it became clear that that wasn't going to be the case, that I needed to be here to provide the explanation.
I didn't wanna leave poor Norm, Wall Norman Wall, council member Wall, alone on this, trying to do it while I was gone. So I did change it, and I'm sorry that that didn't get caught. It is not a a contract. It is a resolution, and I would ask that you vote on it this evening, please. Okay. We have a motion on the table. To table this item, I'm gonna ask, clerk Casel to please call the roll on the tabling motion. Council member Keane? Nay. Council member Miller? Nay. Council member Wall? Nay. Council member Fredericks?
Yes. Council member Palmer? Aye. Council member Dohring? Nay. Council president Schubert. Nay. Motion failed. Call the question. We have the original motion, which is, the mayor's, resolution. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say nay. Nay. A motion passes six to one, is it? Council member Palmer, did you vote? Yes. Okay. We have, council, six to one with council member Fredericks, voting nay. Moving on to item H4, which is a contract with SRF Consulting Group for professional services for 60 Fifth Street
Northwest and Fairway Drive Design and Moore, intersections. And this is an item that was pulled by council member Palmer. Yeah. I I've got quite a few concerns on this and and, I sent out a note this morning about it. And I'm gonna kinda go off what mister Keane's been, kinda harping about lately, and that is is, you know, how do we do things and are we doing it correctly? And I'm just giving you a small example of today during the the meeting. You know, Cook Park isn't at 22 Seventh Avenue. It's at 722 Seventh Street.
You know, it may not be a big deal, but but but it's the details that bother me. And so now I'm reading this that we have a road that was improperly built, 18 feet higher than it should have been built. And instead of fixing it, we decided that we're gonna have the same consultant come back, and he's gonna do more work for us. And it just doesn't sit well with me that we would have a consultant that's already made a mistake turn around and is gonna do more work for us. And so, I can't in good conscious vote for this, and I I I I don't understand it.
Maybe public works has a better, explanation than I been trying to, figure out. But, again, I won't be supporting this. I is there any other is there a question in there, council member? I didn't hear a question. Okay. Any other discussion on this? Is there a motion on this item? I'll make a motion authorizing a contract with SRF Consulting Group for in kind services in the amount not to exceed a $197,598 for professional engineering services associated with 60 Fifth And Fairway Drive,
designed at 50 First Street Northwest traffic calming design, Civic Center Drive intersection and control evaluation reports, and 50 Fifth Street Northwest And Fiftieth Avenue Northwest ICE report. Motion made by council member Keane, and thank you for reading the entire motion. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by council member Doreen. Council member, Keane, you have the floor. Yeah. I I do understand why the concerns council member Palmer brings up, and I I would I knew about this because of an accident that happened out
there. But I also looked at it and said this this idea of, like, how are we working with our consultants? And I I did not I found this to be, like, probably a a savvy business decision by by Public Works to both ex you know, basically, get these other things done at a reduced thing and and get our get this intersection resolved. So I I looked at it different than he did as opposed to a, like, a failure upfront that we shouldn't deal with the company again. And I looked at it and said, like, I I I liked the way it was resolved. Council member, Wall.
With just a few different words, I think that I would pair it exactly what, mister Keane just said. I I can appreciate what mister Palmer said about, the mistake that was done before, but I would believe that, somehow the staff really highly values what we're going to get in return for, that mistake and, correcting. Would that be correct? Mister Neimeyer? Yes. That's correct, council member. Council member Palmer. You but here's here's the problem. Here, we have a mistake that's made. We have a lot of big projects coming up,
and and, to me, it doesn't make much sense. So if I'm living out on 60 Fifth Street, I had this road that was ripped up for almost a year. Now I'm gonna have a a a roundabout, a mini roundabout put in that I didn't want or didn't think I needed. And now I'm gonna have that road closed again because we got a contractor who didn't do their job. This is not the first time this has happened in Rochester, and and we somehow don't wanna hold consultants to to doing their job. And if I'm wrong, somebody please tell me I'm wrong, but but I don't think I am. Is that rhetorical? Well,
I don't see my talking. What's their name? Sorry. Council president, do you mind if you late, but we've been here for a long, long time. So I I would counter that just a little if I could. SRF is, as a consequence of that error, they are offering a couple $100,000 worth of engineering consulting services at no fee to the city. So it's not that we're not holding them accountable. It's a matter of what other council members have said. We tried to find a way that we could auss up some of the costs that were caused by that error, to the funding sources that fund streets around the community.
So, the situation got a little bit more complicated than it might look at face value. I do wanna, correct for the record that it wasn't 18 feet of height on the hill. It was 18 feet of sight distance. So the hill isn't 18 feet different than it should be. So that's maybe an important thing to note. But we had a complex situation where we had multiple issues going on with the corridor, and that complicated the resolution with the consultant. So the consultant's actually been working with us to resolve both issues, a speeding issue on the corridor as well as the original design flaw.
So since they had so much invested in helping us diagnose the issues on the corridor, this solution became a little bit, more attractive, as opposed to, as council member Palmer put in correspondence earlier today, just writing us a check, and moving on with life. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say nay. Nay. Motion passes six to one with council member Palmer voting nay. Moving on to item h five, which is a subaward agreement with the International City County Management Association,
and this was pulled by council member Fredericks. Yes. I just wanted to open it up a little bit to have a little more discussion just for clarity and to see where the rest of my, council members are at. And then after we get to the, there's a motion on the floor, I'll add some more. Well, I'll ask a question of, mister Spindler Craig. At our last discussion, we talked about including the Minnesota data privacy portion into the contract. Can you talk about that process and that it's in there now and and, your level of satisfaction with that.
Thank you, mister president. Council members, mayor Norton. Yes. Did appreciate the pushback, frankly, last week that was helpful. Maybe context matters a little bit understanding that, this contract template from ICMA, I think, goes back some period of time and did did, did prompt some cleanup work for them. So there were two particular areas that I heard the council's primary concerns focused on. Really, it was mainly about that article 16, which talked pretty generally, and somewhat rigidly though about proprietary information.
We have the concerns about the Minnesota Data Practices Act making clear that that is a requirement that's somewhat unique, to Minnesota but needs to be an exception to the extent that that language was generally controlling and seemed to confine the ability of, us to have conversations within the community and even within council meetings themselves to discuss this project that was concerning. That's what I heard from you. And I think the language that was changed accomplishes that very clearly.
We do explicitly reference now in sixteen four, the Minnesota Data Practices Act, application. The header to article 16 explicitly, indicates that the scope of work, exhibit a is an exception to the proprietary information control concept. And then maybe most importantly, what should give you reassurance is sixteen five, in the in the new language, which is really the catch all, which just makes crystal clear that the subgrantee, which is the city,
is permitted to disclose and discuss in any public or private meetings all information reports or data derived from the work that directly or indirectly stems from the identified exhibit a scope of work. So I think that addresses the concerns that were voiced by the council appropriately so. And then the second item was article 25, which council member Keane referenced. I just wanted to make clear that both parties can exercise the termination right, within 30.
So I think those are the issues that you, rightly focused on and are fixed with the new language. Thank you, mister Spindler. Craig, council member Doreen. We're gonna make a mo motion to authorize approval of a a subaward agreement with the International City County Management Association, ICMA, for the award of 416, thousand $500 grant to support economic mobility in Rochester. Motion made by council member Doering. Is there a second? I'll second. Seconded by council member Keane. Council member Doering, you have the floor.
Yeah. I I appreciate, I appreciate the explanation by the city attorney. I think it, I think it met the criteria that I was asking for last week, so I'm happy to support, moving forward. Council member Wall. So it's become a kind of a theme tonight, maybe for me or for others. Last week, we talked about co design, which has a little bit different, connotation in this agreement. And we talked about collaboration or collaborators. We talked about stakeholders. Do we have any sense of, how how much public engagement will be done in terms of completing the work, of of this?
This is Steinhauser. Sure. Thank you for the question, council member Wall. As shared last week, the the biggest, collaboration will occur with our partners in economic development, the stakeholders in economic development. They are the, that's the group that's already been convening, that I think miss Woodward, discussed at last week's meeting. They're they are the group that we intend to tap into to help build out the work plan that's defined in the scope of work under, exhibit a or one of the exhibits. So, for the purposes of this work, the those most greatly impacted are the providers of the services around economic development,
and that's who we intend to be the group that we reach out to. So just Joe and Joan walking down the street are not likely to be touched. Council president. Go ahead, miss Souds. Council member Wahl, I think this probably is good to hearken back to the discussion you had at your study session about all of the economic resilience work and maybe some of the housing access and, I'm gonna totally space it on the other one, inclusive growth management. Got them. And so I do think that there as we build an initial work plan,
we'll probably be a lot more engagement because depending on what some of the more detailed aspects of that are that we shared will come after your comfort level with the strategic priority goals and tasks are. I think that will inform more work. Why we're starting with the economic development partners, though, is that they are doing really important work, and we don't want them to feel over shadowed. Like, we have to start somewhere to show all of the different opportunities that are happening. Maybe the mayor is gonna share a little bit about some work that she had done already two years ago,
which seems more recent, but really making sure that that is a piece of it. And we had always also intended to talk to some business owners that either are newer or maybe longer term to understand how they've been navigating the system. Also, some of the more informal business ownership that happens. There are any number of different business owners that are not necessarily traditional brick and mortar, that we consider sometimes in our economic development. But we wanted to start there in order to have something to hold on to in order to then say,
how else are we building out some of your strategic priorities, the strategies and tactics associated with that? And how can we prioritize those recognizing that's very helpful to have partners that are supportive of that, and and feel like they're represented in it because they also have important resources that are for I can't remember their names. Joe and Jill Citizen. Joe and Joan, I think. Joe and Joan. Citizen who might be, they'll talk to Jill too. But so I think there will be. I just don't wanna predict exactly what that will be because part of the goal
of this grant is that you don't predict the outcome. You which is outlined in the scope of work that's attached, which is why we attach the scope of work. Mayor Norton. Yes. I wanted to give just a tiny bit of history because we have a new board from two years ago, and it is kind of shocking it's been that long. With I was involved with National League of Cities, and, we received a $45,000 grant. And I supplemented that grant with $15,000, which is one half of my annual budget, to give each of three nonprofits $20,000.
So Reddy got $20,000 to do ecosystem mapping. I don't know how far they got on that, but they should have at least some start in thinking about this issue. We got $20,000 to Collider, who worked on informal entrepreneurship, which I just heard mentioned again. And we gave $20,000 to, Cradle to Career to look into the child care, entrepreneurship and child care issues in this community. So what I'm hearing here is hopefully a building on some work that started a year and a half to two years ago,
that has had a little bit of funding to, you know, wet their whistle, I think, and hopefully, you know, increase their interest. And I'm hoping this can take it even further. I do want to just give my 2¢ worth that childcare is part of the important work of workforce. And so please don't leave out cradle to career, as the work that they're doing is vital to just as Collider and just as REDI and just as the other organizations you'll be working with. And they have worked together before. They're aware of each other's early work through the the National League of Cities grant,
and I'm hope hopeful that they'll be very helpful to the efforts here. There's a motion on the floor. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Motion passes. Moving on to ordinance first readings. Go ahead, mister Spindler Craig. Thank you, mister president. Item j one, an ordinance amending section one dash two dash three of chapter one dash two of the Rochester code of ordinances relating to administrative enforcement procedures. Thank you. Any other business for this evening?
Seeing none, is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Moved by council member, Miller, seconded by Councilmember Keane. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. We are adjourned.