Recording in progress. Welcome, everyone. Before we get started, I just wanted to take a moment to address this weekend's horrific tragic tragedy. On behalf of my colleagues and our city of Rochester staff, all of us public servants, we were, as all of you were, shocked and saddened by this weekend's violent attacks against our dedicated Minnesota public servants. We grieve the deaths of former speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. We wish a full recovery to state senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette,
and we share condolences with all impacted by this horrible tragedy. Please rise as you're able and join me in a moment of silence. K. Please remain standing 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, Welcome to our June 16, City Council meeting. We begin every City Council meeting with our open comment period. This is an opportunity for anyone from the public to speak on items that we will not be taking public testimony during a public hearing later in the agenda.
Each person has up to two minutes to speak for a total of twenty minutes. I will be keeping track, of time through a variety of methods. The stopwatch here or the stopwatch at the red stopwatch up there and the stoplight over here. And, because of the limited time, we wanna be sure that others have an opportunity to speak. And I'd also request that each speaker, be concise to allow more people to speak during the designated time. Participants are also encouraged to limit comments generally to topics that are within the scope
and jurisdiction of the council's ability to affect policy. Council members and staff do not respond to your comments during public comment, but will instead follow-up on any specific requests separately. If you have materials to share with the council, you may give them to the city clerk to distribute. You will be invited to speak in the order that you signed up. Please state your name clearly and make sure that the clerk has your information if you need follow-up. And, we'll start with, miss Molly Dennis. Can you yep. There you go. Thank you so much.
So I had come with a lot of things to speak about, but I'm gonna scrap some of them. I did send an email, which I got acknowledgment that it was received, so thank you. It was, it's a long 15, page email. So, hopefully, all council members have been able to read that, and the clerk has, also received that. So thank you. I just wanna say thank you for taking that moment to acknowledge the horrendous tragedy that had happened in our state state of Minnesota, and, I give my utmost appreciation to everyone who served.
I know as an elected official prior, I have, received threats, and I know others have as well. And it's an incredible, service that people do who run for office. And I hope that this tragedy in our state has not caused others to, not run for elected office and, be part of the democratic process. So to say I just wanna say, kind of scrapping what I said, a lot of things I've addressed in my long email that, all of you have received. I do welcome, council member Doreen back,
who has been absent for a few meetings, and I do also hope that someone follows up with the accountability to taxpayers for how, city council members' time is being spent because hard working, paycheck to paycheck people here in Rochester who pay for the, salaries, your $55,000 a year salaries, deserve to know where that is being, spent. So if someone could get back to me on those, that would be wonderful. Again, here's my email. I I definitely wanna say thank you for those who show up to events.
The safe city nights, which went from, this is last year, six times a year down to four times a year. I talked to the police chief who stated that, the lack of, community engagement opportunities was due to the stress of on the department. Thank you. So I do hope that the city rep realizes that it's important to have, community engagement in the future. And Thank you, Ms. Dennis. Thank you. Next up, we have Denise Dupre. Thank you, counsel,
very much. My name is Denise Dupre. I am actually the President of the Rochester Area Pickleball Association. I am joined today by other pickleballers. Raise your hands in the back. There they all are. I am here because of the concern regarding the condition of Cook Park pickleball courts. Back in 2016, RAPA partnered with the city of Rochester to take two tennis courts and build six pickleball courts. It's been a wonderful collaboration over the years. They were resurfaced in 2021, and unfortunately, now in 2025, have become unplayable.
And in fact, some people would argue they are a hazard and that people are at risk for falling. So we now find ourselves in a situation where something has to be done urgently. RAPA is ready to step up. We are ready to commit funds. We are ready to go fifty-fifty and try to fix the problem. There isn't an easy solution. They can't be cosmetically fixed. You can't simply pave over the courts anymore. We know that. But we're ready. We're doing fundraising. We have been for the past year. We continue to do active fundraising to figure out how can we work with you.
RAP is at risk. We are already losing members because of the condition of co courts. We know that We have fewer members signing up for activities because they don't wanna play there. They're worried about becoming hurt. So we run the risk of actually having our membership dwindle to nothing and losing an important organization. People come to Rochester. They They come to Mayo. They have friends who wanna play pickleball. They have family members. And this is where they go. This is a center place for pickleball in Rochester. We're grateful that Slattery now has two dedicated pickleball courts. Everything else is marked up and striped up for pickleball,
but there aren't other pickleball courts. Eagles now has five, but they're private courts, and they could shut those down to the public at any time should they wish to. So again, I'd ask for your indulgence and consideration of helping us fund fixing Coker. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next up, we have Audra Gomez. Please. Please, quiet in the chamber. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Adri Gomez, Rochester Public Transit dispatch. Four weeks ago, Adam and I sat down with management, Todd Holm and Paul Johnson, with a list of about five names requesting payment for the money they were missing.
Both assured us they had submitted all paperwork to corporate and that a check or a direct deposit would take effect within the next day or two for all these drivers. To this day, I think only two have been paid, and we have added a few more names onto the list of missing pay. But you know this. You already know this. We've been telling you since Transstep doesn't care. ATU cares. Adam and I care. Do you care? Thank you. Thank you, miss Gomez.
Next up, Adam Busby. Adam Busby, ATU, our representative local ten o five. We're here again to speak about the train the about how Transdev has created the problem our passengers at RPT are facing. Transdev has mismanaged, and instead of addressing the issues, they have hired more supervisors while there is a driver shortage. We, the members of the ATU ten o five, have still not received payment for overtime, sick time, and vacation time. This has been an issue repeatedly brought to your attention since December of last year, and nothing has been done to fix the problem.
Transdev has created a hostile work environment causing drivers to quit. Instead of Transdev addressing this issue and creating an environment where people can work without fear, Transdev has terminated me, and Transdev has brought in a workforce from Kansas. The city's response is we want the temperature brought down between the ATU and Transdev. If you want the temperature brought down, how about Transdev pay their employees what they are owed? If you want the temperature brought down, allow me my legal right as a union rep to do my union do duties
instead of Transdev calling the police and now the city charging me with trespassing. Your inaction supports Transdev. Transdev chooses to spend money to ship workers in from out of state rather than pay their workers what they are owed. The city's role is becoming clearer as we get close to the contract negotiations. We see what you are doing to the city workers. You have chosen to lay off city workers and plan planning more layoffs. Within the while the while within the city, top administrators, some department heads have received pay increases up to 11% in some cases.
Workers across the country from Rochester to LA are under attack. Your continued your continual inaction is aiding and abetting this attack on the RPT workforce. This is union busting one zero one one zero one. What's disgusting? Union busting. Thank you. Union busting. Please wait. We will have order in the chamber. Thank you. Next up is, Ryan Timlin. Hello. My name is Ryan Timlin. I, am a member of the Amalgamated TransUnion Local ten o five, and I've been a bus operator for almost twenty years.
I'm here as, in part to stand with Adam Busby, who is under attack for doing the right thing, standing up for drivers and for passengers for fighting to make transit public service instead of a business handout. Adam has been accused of causing a disturbance. Did he hurt anyone? No. Did he exercise his first, first amendment right did he exercise his right to free speech? Yes. He also has been accused of, trespassing on public property, literally public property. So what is the what is this really about? Transdev are making millions out of working people of Rochester.
Like many big biz businesses, they view the public budget as their, trough to drink from. But ask those some same big businesses to pay taxes, and they act like they have no money. As long as we are, as long as working people all have to sorry. Apology. Apologies. As long as we, as working people, all have to work, then transit should be affordable or free for working people. Let's say it like it really is. Transdev is about profits. They hate the union. They want it gone, but we're not going anywhere.
Because we have dared to even talk about making, transit public in Rochester, they have brought in nonunion drivers from Kansas to prepare to replace us. Adam is, they're upset with Adam because Adam tried to sign those nonunion members up. That's what the disruption really was. One thing I will say as a union member, and being a former president of a local, one thing has become clear, the treatment of Adam has shown how this legal system is set up to protect corporations and not workers. And my last statement,
Rochester City Council needs to decide, are they on team job destruction or and privatization? Or are they listening to the 10,000,000 people who marched this past weekend in 1,800 cities around the country against troops in the streets? Thank you, mister What's disgusting union busting? Bring Adam back. Next up, we have Pat Ryan. Please, we will have order in the chamber. I if there's another outburst, we may, ask security to remove folks that are, speaking up. Thank you. Mister Ryan, go ahead.
My name is Pat Ryan. I'm here representing Ryan Rentals, a landlord. We're a small company of 60 some units. Today, we come across a situation where, we have a single family residential house. It's on Sixteenth Avenue Southwest, next to Second Street. We have no notification. No neighborhood notification, nothing. Now, Alcor Realty or Alcor Construction is in on the empty lot to the north of me, constructing a contractor's service yard. This lot is zoned three times,
called Building And Safety Today, is zoned commercial mixed fuse. A contractor's yard is not legal in a commercial mixed use area. So, in the first place, it's an illegal situation. Second place, no notification. The whole neighborhood doesn't know what's going on. I went through the whole neighborhood today with flyers and gave every neighbor and they all wonder, what is that going on down the street? Now they're building this 10 feet, 10 feet from my house.
The 10 feet is my buffer yard, so they're building it around the property line. They're not even giving me 10 feet buffer yard. So I have a nurse that lives in this single family house. She works nights. So when this construction yard goes, where's my where's my nurse gonna sleep? Nobody tells her that this is coming in. She wants to know where she's gonna sleep during the day. Because she's not gonna sleep when there's equipment banging around and stuff that's there and it's illegally there. I've been on the board of You could wrap up,
mister Mann. I've been on the zoning board for seven years and the planning commission for two years. I've never seen a situation where they can put a construction yard in next to a residential housing area. Thank you. Next up, we have I would I would like an answer on this or we can Give your name to the to the city clerk's office, and, we'll get back to you. Next up is David Monte I think I hope I I hope I have that right. So, my name is David Montequiou. I'm a member of AFSCME Local three nineteen,
and I am here tonight in solidarity with all the members of ATU Local one thousand five who have been facing vicious union busting and anti union maneuvers by Transdev, including trespassing a union rep from the Transdev office, not paying overtime pay, not paying PTO, and bringing in nonunion drivers from out of state. All of this while Transdev rakes in record profits year over year. I find it utterly despicable, but unfortunately not surprising that both Republicans and Democrats on this council would rather outsource
some of the most necessary labor to private companies that are known for union busting. The Republicans and Democrats on this city council are all representatives of biz big business, including Transdev. But none of this should be a surprise to working people. Whether in the city council or in the state legislator, both Democrats and Republicans are both parties that represent the rich, not working people. All public and private sector unions need to get organized to fight these attacks. All public sector workers in Rochester are facing cuts to our jobs by this exact
city council. But what is most shameful is that union members are being retaliated against by city administration for fighting back. This is completely unacceptable, and that is why we are here to demand an end to retaliation against union activity and to tax the rich to fully fund all of our needs, including a massive expansion of public transit that is free for all. That's also why I'm a member of Workers' Strike Back, a national organization fighting for a $25 an hour minimum wage. And I urge any working and young people who are here to email solidarity@workersstrikeback.org.
And instead of nickel and diming working people and bus drivers, we should fully fund a massive expansion of public transit by taxing the rich. Solidarity. Thank you. Next up, we have Emma Smith. Hi. My name is Emma, and I'm also a member of Workers Strike Back. I've been living and working in for nine years, both as a nurse and a yoga teacher, and I've frequently been a rider of our buses. I am here tonight because of the attacks by city council Democrats and Republicans on the working class in Rochester, the poor, and all who depend on public transit,
culminating in vicious union busting against bus drivers. ATU one zero zero five joined in solidarity with nurses last year as we marched together down Second Street during a time of outrage over the staffing crisis devastating our country, rotten system that privileges endless profits over basic needs. The general attitude towards a nurses union at Mayo wasn't positive either, and that's not the only issue that we share. Transdev and American health care are both sustained by CEOs and billionaires who dominate society
on the backs of our labor. Workers across Rochester have gathered here tonight to let the Democrats and Republicans on the city council know that we will throw you out of office in the next and subsequent elections if you do not use your position as a vehicle for working class movements. To all the working folks of all ages who are watching today, whether or not you are in a union, we have an urgent necessity to get organized and fight back against the war that billionaires and their political representatives are waging against us. Join Workers Strike Back. You can reach out at solidarity@workersstrikeback.org
to learn more. We demand that the Rochester City Council tax the rich to fully fund public transit and all services working people need. Solidarity. Thank you. Next up, we have Dave Butts. Made it, guys. Thank you. Alright. Point of order. Yes. Council member Miller. I'd like to make a motion to suspend our rules and allow the remaining speakers on our Mister Butts is the last speaker. Last speaker. Okay. Shall we motion to then, nonetheless, since we're at twenty minutes? That will work. Mister Butts, go ahead. Good evening. I'm here today as the vice president of the ATU ten zero five.
But more importantly, as a representative of the workers whose rights are under attack, after a period of serious tension at the Rochester facility, our union steward stepped up and helped restore calm. Communication and calibration between the workers and management, we were making progress. But instead of supporting that progress, Transdev, working in coordination with the city attorney's office, chose to target and removed that steward. Let's call it what it is, union suppression. This isn't just a bad management decision. It's a violation of federally protected constitutional rights. When an employer,
especially one acting under public contract and with the municipal support take steps to silence union representation, they are infringing on our First Amendment rights to organize, assemble and speak on behalf of our members. And when the city or its agents violation, even indirectly, they expose themselves to liability under section nineteen eighty three of the US code. We have tried to maintain peace. We have tried to work together. But if this is targeted, attacks continue, the ATU will not hesitate to file a 1983 civil rights claim. We will not allow our members' rights to be trampled trampled by corporate interests or
government actors hiding behind legal loopholes. We've also brought this matter to the attention of the city council because this has become a bigger than just one steward. It's about whether Rochester will be a city that honors constitutional protections for sorry, guys, the working people or one that con colludes in the silencing them. We are prepared to fight this in every form necessary, political, legal, and public, but workers don't surrender their rights when they are put on when they put on the uniform. And this union does not back down when those rights are under attack.
So take that into consideration. Take care of our members. Thank you, mister Butts. That concludes our open comment period. I will now call the meeting to order and ask, clerk Casel to please call the roll. Good evening. Council member Keene? Here. Council member Miller? Here. Council member Wall? Here. Council member Fredericks? Here. Council member Palmer? Here. Council member Doreen? Here. Council president Schubert? Here. Mayor Norton? Present. Next up is our city administrator's report, administrator zones. We'll be back.
We'll be back. We'll be back. We'll be back. We'll be back. We'll be back. We'll be back. We'll be back. We'll be back. We'll be back. Thank you, council president. I start the presentation each, day thanking our teammates for acting with respect, integrity, safety, and excellence in mind. And to this evening, I just wanna especially, thank our law enforcement and first responders in Rochester and across the state of Minnesota for their quick action over the weekend. So, I will go on to a couple of other things, that I think you've heard about, but we are ready to make more public. We do have,
save the date out for disability pride summit in July. So on July, there will be, virtual, viewing events from noon to 1PM central time. So those are opportunities, to learn more about, the topics that are listed here about the history of disability supports, lived experience, and, what happens next, within our community. And then, that will culminate on July 26 from four to 8PM, at a Disability Pride celebration that is happening at the Boundless Play Space And Activity Center in Rochester. All this information will be available on our website.
Also did wanna take note that, if you live in the Northwest, you are in Sidewalk District 1. So sidewalks and pedestrian ramps work is, underway, and it will be occurring through October 2025. You can see the districts, One-one through One-four. Again, you can find this on our website at rochestermn.gov/sidewalks, in order to get more information about your neighborhood. The Rochester Fest book sale is forthcoming at the Public Library Auditorium on June, so you can stop by and, check for used books of all sorts in the auditorium,
if that is your thing. And finally, did just want to recognize, two teammates that are departing after their time, with us as partners is coming to a close this summer. So Julie Brock, really appreciated her work on building up the, Bridges to the Built Environment program in partnership, with Workforce Development Inc. That now stands up as a model of inclusive workforce development for Rochester with all of the relationships, and pathways that were built there. And then Jacob Metz, is leaving us in mid July. Much of what you saw in this, report also,
was due to his, good work along with, Director Chao Mutuela on accessibility in city government. So language pay differential, reasonable accommodations process that's simpler for the public, language access, and then that work on accessibility. So, I just want to thank them both for their dedication in, building up those different systems Thank you, Administrator Zones. Next up is the mayor's report. Mayor Norton, go ahead. Thank you. I have a couple of things to cover today. I do want to mention, I was, because of the cancellation of the memorandum of understanding that was to be signed this
evening in Boston, it was canceled or actually postponed because of the incidents of the weekend. The governor couldn't get away and they felt it wasn't a time for celebration. So we are going to be doing that at some later date to be determined. I will be gone June as I'll be attending, a sister city visit with the WSU WSU students, in South Korea. We'll be visiting our our sister city there, and it's a very quick up and back, as as you could tell from those dates. I think it's two days of flying and a couple days there and two days
of flying home. So, So, I just wanted to let you know that I wouldn't be here. And, just to comment, also that it is not surprising that a mayor or city council members will attend conferences and, heaven forbid, have a vacation. And so I just want to acknowledge, I felt the comments earlier, disparaged an individual, which are against our rules. And so, I'm very sorry, that one of our council members was called out for something that's quite normal, which is a vacation, and they are entitled to that.
And, some of you will be missing for conferences and other reasons as well. So, it's not unusual, and I think the community should should keep that in mind. So, I added that, I'm sorry, but I felt like I needed to say that. This is hard to say today, but it is, Gun Violence Awareness Month. We held a, read a proclamation, we held an event with some gun violence, prevention advocates a week ago in the atrium. I'm wearing orange this week and will continue throughout the rest of the month, and I hope you'll join me. This is, unfortunately, a very sad,
real time example of what can happen. And unfortunately, we hoped it would never happen here, but unfortunately, it has, and the whole state is grappling with the results of that. So, thought I'd mention that. Also, this is the time of year when we do free concerts, and I wanted to just remind you, it's 100% chance of rain, unfortunately, on the eighteenth, but I think we just hold out hope that that window of time, in the late afternoon, 05:30 to 08:30, there won't be rain. So, if there's no rain,
they will hold the event, they'll cancel it by four p. M. If they need to, so just to make you aware. And also to let you know that the mayor's office, as part of our Year About Youth, is sponsoring an art stop at each of these events, so there is an art activity, for attendees, adults and children alike, although the kids are the ones that seem to run over and participate. But, that will be at each of these, and they're local artists that are hosting those, so it's really kind of fun. Swing by, if you happen to be around. It is, really close to Rochester Fest, June.
Our administrator mentioned one activity, but there's a whole lot of activities, and, they actually have a lovely brochure that's multiple pages. I think almost everything they're doing is included in it, and it's, in the city hall doorway. As you walk in, they have a display and there's some brochures there, and I think it'd be, lovely. They're having a, a veteran's memorial wall that I think will be of interest to many people in the community. So, the timeliness of this is either good or bad, depending on what you think here, but, every month, I try sharing one of the outcomes from the Rochester visioning,
experience that we did, the exercise that we did. And this month, I shared, because I didn't think I'd be here electronically, the transportation data. So, I'm just going to highlight quickly, the four areas, that came through on the public survey that was done. Expand and improve public transit, access was one of them. The overview is there's a strong community demand for more frequent, accessible and equitable bus services. Residents are asking for expanded transit hours, including weekend and late night services and better connections between residential areas and key destinations
like schools, hospitals, and shopping centers, and I would add airports. Additionally, there is interest in broader regional transit options such as light rail or high speed rails as well. So that came through from that section. Also, active transportation, infrastructure, biking and walking came out very high. There's a strong, consistent support for creating safe, connected bike lanes and walkable paths throughout the city. Residents emphasize the need for protected bike lanes, dedicated routes, winter maintenance and safer pedestrian infrastructure like crosswalks and bridges.
Improving sidewalk access and making streets more walkable are key environmental equity. Residents frequently connect transportation improvements to broader climate goals, emphasize the importance of reducing car dependency and investing in clean energy. There's strong support for bikeable and walkable communities as a way to lower emissions and promote health equity. Encouraging use of public transit, biking and carpooling is seen as essential in achieving a more sustainable and climate friendly future. And lastly, this won't surprise you, affordability and accessibility. Transportation is closely linked to affordable housing and social inclusion with calls for more equitable
access across Rochester. Residents advocate for housing near transit lines and safe walking and biking routes, especially to support non drivers, seniors, people with disabilities and individuals with lower incomes. There is strong support for expanding transit services to more areas and extending hours to ensure public transportation truly serves everyone. So, I'll continue to bring one forward every month, but, that was the one that I had for this month. Thank you for allowing me that few minutes to go over the very high level,
comments and you all have access to the individual comments if you so choose to read them. Lastly, again, boards and commissions. I'm happy to say several of these have we've received applicants already and we will put out a list of those, that we have not yet had applicants for and do some, publicity. I'm asking the council if you have people in your ward or you know of people, please suggest that they apply for a board and commission. And, so at the next meeting, on July 7, I believe that's right, that I will be here for that one, they will be having, we will be having some of these positions brought forward for your approval.
I'm gonna have to really try hard between the before and after the Korean trip to see if I can't get them all filled. I'll do my best, but I will bring definitely bring some forward at the next meeting. That's all I have for you. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. Next up is the order of the agenda. Are there any changes to tonight's agenda? Mr. Spindler Craig. Thank you, Mr. President. There is one last minute change on item F 34. That change, that edit has been supplied to the city clerk. That will become part of the full packet.
It's not a substantive change, but just wanted to explain there's no change to the RCA itself, the attached settlement agreement. We had a change in name as we were collecting signatures. We realized that one of the entities listed as Northrock Real Estate, they were just a conduit for CR22 Corner. So just that payer has been changed on that settlement agreement. It does not change the overall settlement amounts either in that line item or the total amount. Thank you, mister Spindler,
Craig. Duly noted. Yeah. I'll move approval of the order of the agenda with the stated, change in the wording for F32. 34. Set 4. F34. Thank you. Moved. The the order of the agenda has been, moved by council member Keane. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Councilmember Doering. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Thank you. Moving on to our consent agenda. I have received two pulled items from Councilmember Palmer, items f 13 and f 32.
Are there any other items to pull? If not, I'd like entertain a motion to approve in block items f one through f 12, f 14 through f 31, and f 33 and f 34. So moved. Moved by council member Miller. Second. Seconded by council member Wall. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, same or nay. Motion passes. Moving on to our, public hearings. We have three public hearings on our agenda this evening.
Before we get started, just take a moment to clarify the process for public hearings. Staff will introduce the presentation. And, then, if there is an applicant as a part of the item, their they or their representative will have ten minutes to speak about the item, and then I will open the public hearing. Members of the public have five minutes each to discuss the item. And then I will close the public hearing, and the applicant will return to,
speak for five minutes. And at that point, council members, may ask questions of staff or the applicant. And after that, we will invite a motion. So with that, item g 1, which is a major land subdivision by Stonebrook of Rochester Limited and Mr. McGill. Go ahead. Thank you, President Schuberten, Mayor Norton, members of the council. Good evening. My name is Desmond McGill. I'm with the Community Development Department. I'll be bringing forth this introduction. This is a preliminary plat or major land subdivision for Stonebrook's sixth and seventh,
for the subdivision of 63 acres into 83 single family lots. Approximately three acres of this site is located within zoning district. The balance or 60 acres is located in R2 Zoning District, which is low density residential small lot. The Stonebrook GDP was originally approved in 2002 and it has been revised a few times. The most recent amendment was in April of this year. This subdivision plat layout, open space and circulation patterns are consistent with the most recent iteration of the Stonebrook
plan and it's which was generally consistent with prior iterations. The proposed single family lots have 65 feet of frontage, the interior envelope lot widths for the fourplex attached townhomes range from 25 to 30 feet in width. The subject application received approval of a minor modification to reduce the R2 lot width and permit a lot size of 2,250 feet. This plan addresses the city's ongoing need for single family housing and is consistent with
the P2S comprehensive plan, low density residential designation, the underlying R1 and R2 zoning district and the updated Stonebrook GDP. And that concludes my introduction. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Are there any questions for staff at this point? Seeing none, is the, the applicant or applicant's representative please step forward, state your name, and you have ten minutes. But you as you know, you don't have to use it all. Yes. Mark Welch. I'm with GQED Engineering representing the developers Stonebrook of Russia LLC. They've owned the property since,
I think, 2005 and done a few other subdivisions, the fourth well, actually, the first through the fifth. This is the next phase. They have a buyer that's ready to start building houses as soon as we can get everything constructed. We've submitted the grading and construction plans for public works review, and, we'll be looking at a supplemental development agreement, which is a condition of approval. And I'm here to answer any questions you may have. Alright. We'll invite you back after the public hearing. Thank you. This is a public hearing. Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. Wait. Let me look. We do have, mister Tim Henke is
please come forward, and you have five minutes. Thank you, mister Schuberting. Mayor, council members, appreciate the opportunity to speak. I'm a homeowner out there, right up next to the new expansion area. And we understand that there is a great need for more single family housing, but this is a pretty big expansion and there's actually some high density going in there as well. There's some fourplexes. So I guess our homeowners' concerns directly dovetails with the mayor's comments about Rochester 02/1950, about the livability of our neighborhoods having green space,
having walking trails, things like that. With this large expansion, all these houses going on, there's really no additional green space that has been set aside to support the people that are going to be moving into this area. So that's a concern with the neighbors that are already there, including my neighbors. And, I was just asked the city council and, the staff if if this has been fully taken into account. There's even a a nature area in there alongside the construction road that's currently there that has, you know, ducks and frogs and all kinds of stuff.
And and I hear that's not really a nature area. I they're gonna bulldoze it over. Kinda got an Obi Wan Kenobi on that. This is not the nature area that you're looking at. So, we just have some concerns about the green space and the livability of this area as it goes into construction because we're on the edge of town. There isn't any support out there right now. It's just, you know, open country, no walking paths, no biking paths, that sort of thing. So that kind of wraps up sort of the the general feeling of the people that already live out that way.
And we would ask just for you to take another look at it and make sure it falls in line with the vision of where we want Rochester to be in the future for livable neighborhoods. Thank you. Thank you. This is a public hearing. Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. This is a public hearing. Anyone wish to step forward, state your name, and you have five minutes. My name is Rod Kosick. I live at 374 Brookstone Drive Southeast. Those of us that are familiar with the property and the planners
know that there is a section in there. It forms a triangle. It's woods and wetland. I don't remember how many acres it is. Somebody know? Is it 11 acres? We'll, we'll ask the staff that after after the public hearing. Okay. There are markers in there that say it is a wetland, and I can vouch for that. I've had several walks through there usually with a garbage bag picking up as I go. One of the reasons that we bought our property is that we're right on the
base of that triangle so that we have the lovely woods and all the wildlife, the birds. We've got everything in there except bears and, moose and elk. They live up north. They don't come down here. But we've seen it all. We've been there for nine years and we really enjoy, having feeders out and watching them. They watch us too. We have an eight foot glass door there on the patio, and, we interact with them.
We used to have pheasants that came up. And, it was very entertaining because the rooster would look at that glass door and think it was competition, and he would attack that door. About two years ago, we had some city workers come in and cut trees and bushes around the small stone retention, retention, ponds. I asked them why they were doing that, and they said that it would make them, much more feasible and that they would operate better.
But what I saw was the trees and the bushes that they cut, most of them fell into the ponds. I assumed they would come back and clean that up. That never happened. A few months ago, I could hear a lot of cutting and thrashing going on, and I went into the woods to see what it was. And it was two park persons who had bobcats with cutting saws in the front, and they cut a path about 10 feet wide working from
the middle of the east side right down near our back fence and to the end on the west side. I asked them why they were doing that. They said it was developing the city line. In other words, the property line. I had seen no surveyors. I saw no strings. I don't know how they got the path that they got. They told me that everything that was going north or in the main part was
city property, And everything south of that would belong to the property owner, which is a farmer. On the card that I got it, I noticed there's a little arm that stretches into the wetlands, And that's the path that they cut. Also, while they were cutting, they cut the stakes that said, this is a wetland. My understanding is that the wetlands cannot be interfered with. And I'm also wondering, are they with this arm that comes into the woods,
on the south side of that, are they going to put up houses? That is take away the view and the openness that we have now. There are several houses on Brookstone that are the base to that triangle of woods and wetland. And I have concern that, things are going to change. I hope they don't. I understand progress. I know what it is. But it it would be, I think, a really serious problem if they were to cut down the woods and the wetlands
and turn it into taxable property. Thank you. You, mister Kostick. This is a public hearing. Anyone else who wishes to be heard on this item, please step forward. Anyone else wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. Seeing none, I will close the public hearing and miss invite mister Welch up, for, comments and, any to answer any questions that came up during the public hearing. Sure. I'll try to do the best, explaining. The finger that Kasek was talking about is actually directly north of, the section of that is a temporary sedimentation basin that really basically is considered temporary.
If it's in a permanent easement, it will be there because it's, collecting and treating the stormwater from the second addition, before that water can reach the wetland that's to the north. That wetland area in the triangle he was describing is also part of the park. And so when we dedicated the park, we included the wetland area so that it's all owned by the public. We are going to be having a discussion with the parks that they will accept that little finger of, stormwater treatment area, that would actually go with the other treatment area that's within the park that was built as part of the,
second or third addition. So those areas that he was discussing and asking if they possibly be developed, they would not be. As far as the tree removal, I'm not familiar with what the city had done. There are some allowances for removing, woody vegetation in wetlands, but it has to be usually done within the winter months. Public works might be able to answer our parks might be able to answer exactly what was done in there. But, if they were establishing where the property line, that does make sense that they would have come in there and and cut down some of the trees that had come up over the last twenty years. So, regarding the, I think it's mister,
Hinken Key, the entrance off of College View Drive, there's also a temporary sedimentation basin there. That one is going to be removed. So right when you drive in on the temporary gravel road to the west, there's a small basin that's been in there for a few years. That's gonna be removed. It is established, essentially, wetland features, cattails and others, but, it is not it's it'd be considered an incidental wetland, and so it's not something that we are looking to protect. And as part of the construction plan, so we will be showing that we'll be essentially, yeah, grading that out to allow the stormwater to convey through there down to where we
will have regional ponds, which rolls into the next item that might address some questions. The supplemental development agreement is going to be addressing not only the lift station required to serve the roughly 200 houses that are gonna be built out here, but it also will address additional parkland dedication, whether there's credits for that. But we also have a regional Pond that's been in the plans, and we'll finally be able to build that regional Pond. Regional Pond is gonna run along the Far East edge of the property, before it gets to the big slough or wetland complexes there. And, prior work, our discussion with public works is maybe that Regional Pond would make the most sense
to be in the public's ownership. And between where the Regional Pond is and some portions of the development, there's two other small wetlands. That was one of the revisions. That was a condition of approval of the, major land subdivisions that we, modify our boundaries so we have no lots going into that wetland. That small wetland and one to the east would be portions that could be dedicated to the public if the public is willing to take those on. And in between those wetlands is an area that we have planned for a pathway that's gonna go from the cul de sac that's furthest to the south in the seventh edition up to a cul de sac that's in the, northern part of the seventh edition.
And, the pathway between there would be an area that would be considered to be, like a mid block connection, but there's also some green space along there that could be, if public works and parks are willing to take it, could be additional parkland dedication. That all has to be worked out as part of the supplemental development agreement. But we're willing to essentially grant that land to the public if there's a benefit to the public. If it is not dedicated to the public, it will become part of the homeowners association's property and maintenance. And, there's gonna be a homeowners association for the roughly 200 lots that will be on
that lift station. So Thank you. And, at this point, I'll ask my colleagues if they have, questions for the applicant or staff. Council member Keane. I'll start out with staff. I there's a reference to a connection you can sit down. Yes. There's a reference to a connection on Fortieth Avenue Southeast. I think it's the Highway 14, but I don't quite understand what the reference was. Or do you think I'm reading something correctly? My my apologies. There is a stub out at the south end of the development, that would be, allowing, connection to be made,
down to 14. I believe that's what I was trying to express. And help me out with how or when that would be built or why it's stubbed versus this is just a long term plan? Yeah. I it's it's another adjoining property owner, so it's not part of their development to the south. Okay. So, again, it's it's, is it sort of a transportation overlay that says these are where the roads are gonna be or it's just a wish that if we can get that, we'd like to have it? It's sort of a wish. Quite often when we move projects forward, we will ask when other developments have stubbed down.
There is regulations and provisions in the UDC that indicate that they are required to tie into those existing stub outs. Okay. And then for Mr. Walsh, I wanted to just make sure, we're communicating clearly. I see in one thing in the, Neighborhood Information Meeting you talked about a temporary lift station. But then you say, but it's really permanent. And I've had pebbles in other parts of the city where we have lift stations that are privately owned that the current land owners don't understand that. They thought it was gonna be city owned. Can you talk about what's happening here and the communication to make sure people who
end up living in these areas understand their responsibilities? Terminology of lift station, essentially in Rochester, is is that they're temporary until there's a gravity line that can be used to serve that area. And so the gravity line is something that may or may not happen anytime soon. It has to kind of follow the, railroad going back up to Silver Creek Road. So at this point, we're putting in a lift station. It is built as if it's permanent. And, we're gonna have a homeowner's association that will own that lift station and have to do all the maintenance on that lift station. Again, my my concern is I've I've things that were done like that in 2000 that
the current owners weren't a part of. They're they're not there's no homes there for them to own yet or association. But I'm trying to make sure we don't end up at a situation where they because we use terminology like temporary, they think the city's got a plan to come in and take that over. Where I would say it may happen or it may not, but there is not a plan. And even if there is a plan, it might be thirty or forty years from now. So because they're gonna be part of a homeowner's association, when they purchase that property, they're gonna get information regarding the fact that they are part owner of that location and that there are responsibilities for that.
And, there's usually also gonna be a documentation of what the funds are within that homeowners association, what the operating expenses are. And then, the state of Minnesota changed rules a few years back that they actually have to sure that there's a replacement fund and a key going towards, items that would go towards removing that lift station or upgrading the pumps. And so all of that documentation has to be provided as part of the closing. No difference if you're buying a a twin home or a condominium or anything else that has a homeowner's association. Okay. Again, I I just wanna make sure we have this public discussion that because I'm concerned
when I see the word temporary in there and that there's, like, a plan to do it. I I agree with meth the method of doing it. I understand the city, Public Works has a plan for what this agreement is going forward and it has to be worked out. But I I really hope that the communication to the future owners makes that clear and that we don't end up with the confusion we have on some of the Southwest areas right now that they feel like they were told it was going away and it's still theirs twenty five years later. Understood. Thank you. So, Mr. Rolfe, just I'm going to kind of back up with what Mr.
King had to say. So when you build this lift station. It's gonna be built as a as a permanent lift station and how long do they usually last? Public Works might be able to answer that better, but I mean, the actual structure and the pumps and everything is, they're stainless steel rails. The electronics and everything are built to last as long as possible. Pumps do need to be made every so often. There's usually dual pumps within the lift station, and, they probably have better record of, when they've had to replace the pumps. We we install them, then we never really hear about them unless there's problems within the first couple of
years. So So so you kinda hit a a a a item there. Is it the our public works department then then runs the the company that comes that the homeowners association contracts with to maintain them? So as part of the supplemental development agreement, one portion of that would be that we have a maintenance agreement for the lift station specifically. And then we are responsible, or the developers are responsible for, hiring someone like, usually it's Gopher Septic Systems. They come in and do periodic tests. Now the telemetry that's within the actual lift station, electronics and communications,
is sent to the city of Rochester if they want to be, notified of it. But, there's alarm systems and other things so that if there is a a stoppage, that somebody has made aware of it and that it's taken care of and fixed. And there's also generators, so if there's a power outage that the, natural gas generators kick in. And, I think Gopher Septic on their contracts are testing the generators at least once every month, and then they're doing usually other checks on the system periodically. Some of it depends on the life of the lift station. Is it two years old, ten years old, or twenty years old? Okay. That's helpful. Go ahead. Thanks,
Mark. I've got a question from from public works. Someday, soon, later, when is the sewer system gonna, you know, grab your feet when you get out there, do you think? Thank you, council member Palmer. It could be quite some time. I I think the time line that council member came through out there was thirty or forty years. That's that's possible. It really depends on, what's get what gets prioritized as the direction that we take sanitary sewer capacity for development in the years to come. Okay. So is It's not in our near future? It is not in the near future. K. A question for, somebody on parks.
So the parkland that's there right now, is that going to be the parkland for the new subdivision? Sorry, mister Whiteman. Now, what you see on the plans is the parkland that's been dedicated. Okay. Thank you. So back to public works. I have a, CIA coming up this afternoon or tonight about, this whole area in in in bike lanes and that. That. Is that part of this is that they'll be able to fund part of that or we how are they going to get a trail system to this to this subdivision? Council member Paul, I'm not sure I'm following your question. What do you mean part of that?
Well, they're going to add to the trail system. They're going to want to get into town. Is there funds there that we will get to help make that trail system work? Good evening, President, Mayor, members of the council. Are you saying funds from this developer? Correct. No. So that would have to be part of that feasibility study if it were approved later this evening that we'd have to identify alternatives, costs, potential funding sources, etcetera. And we can talk more about that, I guess, later. But this project is not funding a future funding. Okay. Thank you.
Any further discussion? Is there a motion on this item? Council Member Palmer? I'll make a motion, adopting a resolution approving major land subdivision, number CD2025-eighteen flat by Stonebrook of Rochester, LLC, also be known as Stonebrook sixth and seventh edition with four conditions for the subdivision. Moved by Council Member Palmer. Second. Seconded by Councilmember Keane. Any further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Motion passes. Thank you. Next up, we have G2, which is an issuance of multifamily housing revenue bonds related to the Rochester Civic Lot
affordable project, and this will be presented by mister Brett Senby. Good evening, council president, council members, and mayor. Brett Senby, community development. Here this evening before you for a public hearing in regards to the issuance of multifamily housing revenue bonds. At the close of the public hearing, I'm asking you to adopt resolution that would approve the housing program, authorize the issuance of the conduit multifamily housing revenue bonds, and improve execution of related financing documents.
So, just stepping back here. So, multifamily housing revenue bonds are tax exempt bonds issued by cities to help finance the construction of affordable housing. So, this developer approached us back in late twenty twenty three and the city actually applied for bonds in January of twenty twenty four. The project we were not successful in receiving those bonds. At that time, the project was a 60% AMI project. So then we applied for bonds again in July of twenty twenty four.
At that time, the developer had changed the project to a 50% AMI project. We were awarded, the allocation in July of twenty twenty four. However, we were not at the point to be able to close on those bonds. So those bonds were forfeited. So we applied for the bonds again in January of this year. We were awarded the bonds and and the developer now is at the point where they are comfortable in closing on the issuance of the bonds. So this is a quick project overview. It would be development of, 76 units of it's a five story building,
affordable rental apartments located approximately in the Southeast or, I'm sorry, Southwest Corner of the Civic Center North Parking lot. And the developer is Rochester Civic Lot Limited Partnerships. So financing detail looks like this. The bond amount that was awarded, to the city is, dollars $16,053,950 Again, they are tax exempt bonds. They were awarded to the city on January 14, and then they must be issued within a hundred and eighty days of that date.
The income target for the project is 100% of the units will be, rented to individuals averaging, AMI limits of 50% or less. So there could be some units at 30% AMI, some units at 50%, some units at 60%, but the averaging will be, a 50% AMI project. The, they will have rent and income restrictions for at least thirty years on the project. The bond structure looks like this. So basically, it states statutes, captures four sixty two allows cities to issue the bonds.
The bonds are, secured solely by the borrower's revenues and assets. So there's no liability on the cities. They are not general obligation bonds. There's no financial risk to the city. They are not backed by city assets, taxes, or credits and does not count against the city's debt limits. And the borrower does cover the city's cost in relations to the issuance of the bond. So they are paying for our bond attorney covering the publishing costs for these bonds.
So everything is paid for by the borrower and not the city. So the bonds, they do allow the developer to access to low cost financing. And to access to low cost financing and also to 4% low income housing tax credits. So this does support the city's goal of the creation of affordable housing projects. From memory serving you right, the last time the city did revenue bonds for, affordable housing project was 2019 which was, done for the Bella Grove project, which is located behind the Hy Vee off of,
West Circle Drive. And there will be compliance and monitoring on a yearly basis of the projects. So basically, they have to submit an annual borrow certificate, in relations to the bonds in addition to, certification documents as far as, income of the residents living there. And then the benefit for the city is it does expand our affordable housing supply in the community and the developers here this evening. That's all I have right now. Thank you. Any questions at this point?
Seeing none, is Council Member Palmer, go ahead. A lot of questions. So this is this is appearing. Is that okay? No. Do you want to wait until after the public hearing? Typically, you typically wait till after the public hearing, but I can wait. Okay. Well, I was just kinda, if there's technical questions, I think. Mhmm. So, is the, developer here? And, if you wanna step forward and you have ten minutes, And, please state your name and affiliation, and, take it away. Thank you, council president. My name is Dan Collison, council president,
mayor, council. It's pleased we're pleased to be before you and Carol Mette, senior developer on the project representing Sherman Associates, related to this proposal and generally to all of the projects we have in front of you tonight. And just want to say, as a firm, we really love Rochester. We're committed to long term growth in housing and housing affordability. To this topic, Sherman Associates owns and operates and manages about 60% to 70% of all of our units are income qualified affordable with instruments such as what we're talking about tonight.
And I'll just say, as we're seeking to bring forward a total of three forty one new apartment homes and 76 affordable for age restricted to seniors, that's born of the community. We spent significant time with the Coalition for Rochester Area Housing listening sessions, and we're very pleased to learn that was the priority and apply it to this project. And so, overall, we just want to say thank you for your consideration for this bond request but also for the other pieces of tonight. And I'm so pleased to have our senior developer,
who is working this project and has been since the beginning, to also share a few other thoughts. Thanks, Dan. As Dan said, I'm Carol Meddy. I'm a senior developer, for Sherman Associates, and I've been working, with city staff, DMC staff, and other organizations like the Coalition for Rochester Area Housing now on this project, and we're very excited to be, pushing this forward. It's 03/1941 units in total, market rate tower, and a 76 unit affordable, senior housing, which is the project that is, receiving the housing bonds.
Those bonds will close on here in July, and plan to start construction on both projects together, early next year. So with that, we're happy to answer questions, and we're very excited, for moving forward with this project and the city's support. Thank you. Thank you. We will invite you back up after the public hearing. This is a public hearing at this point. I will, we have two people that have, well, Dan and Carol. You are on the speakers list. So, at this point,
I will open the public hearing and invite any members of the public who wish to be heard on this item to step forward. This is a public hearing. Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and invite our our, applicants back up for a five minute closing statement. I'm not sure we have a lot more to say other than the project will deliver these downtown. And the commitment to downtown is a flourishing place for all,
the entire city, arguably Olmsted County as their downtown, is a special contribution that we feel privileged to be a part of and believe that these homes will contribute in a very meaningful way to multigenerational individuals and multisocioeconomic individuals to be able to call downtown their home. And I just wanted to say that. Thank you. Go ahead. I'll add, we're we're really excited as well, the fact that we'll be extending the public river walk as part of our project. I know that there is one parcel in between us and the civic center that will be,
connected in the future. But we're excited that we can incorporate and really bring that that that life to the riverfront as well as downtown facing. And, we're also very looking, interested looking forward to receiving the updated housing study that's currently being, procured that I believe we're expecting to have now, very soon. The last one that was from 2020, what we've been basing sort of our our, project and estimated demand off of. I think we all know that that those numbers are likely to be a lot higher now,
especially with the Mayo expansion. So we're very, glad to be helping to contribute in a big way to towards the housing downtown. Thank you. And, council member Palmer, you have a series of questions. Are they for staff or for you may be seated. At this point, I will invite my colleagues, starting with council member Palmer, to ask questions. Thank you. So we had bonds, we lost bonds. Is that correct? We had we had an allocation of bonds k. And we turned those bonds back. Okay. So it doesn't there's no, like doesn't affect the city at all.
Okay. This is Yep. Okay. And we have a piece of property that we're donating, for lack of better way of saying, that's worth about $3,000,000 Is that correct? Approximately correct. Okay. And how does I mean, that goes to 76 units or does that go to the whole 700 or three forty units? The bonds? The land purchase. Do they break it out? No. I think the seven lots combined is has an estimated market value of about $3,600,000 I believe. Or Mr. Nelson? Yes, customers. I'd have to check.
I can look that up real quick. I want to say it was like $4,200,000 total for those seven parcels. Okay. And we started with this project in what, 2022, 2021? Quarter one of twenty twenty two is when the city selected Sherman as a develop purpose site. The RFP process started in quarter four of twenty twenty one. Okay. So in tonight's meeting, we have f 32 connected to this. We have the economic development connected to this. Correct. Is that correct? And kind of the rush on this is that our agreement with this company is over with at the end of the month.
Is that correct? The current negotiation agreement has a date that expires June thirtieth of this year. So since we've been working with the Sherman folks since March of twenty twenty two on a project, Finally at a point where they have financing, through the issuance of the bonds, through potential TIF to be able to get a project to pencil out on-site. So they had the issuance of the bonds in January. Correct? The city was, allocated well, no. The city was allocated bonds in January.
You have a hundred and twenty days to close on those bonds. And that's sometime in the July? Correct. Yep. Probably not gonna have a meeting between now and then or between now and the next time that we meet will be after the, agreement is over with. Correct? Correct. Okay. More questions, council member? Yeah. I'm just looking at my notes here. Do you wanna take a break and I can go to council member Keane? That'd be perfect. Council member Keane. For staff, just to make sure, the public hearing the reason there's a public hearing here is that even though the city, you may go out of your way to say we're not really taking risks, it's not our money, it's somebody else's,
but we the the public hearing thing is is there a public good? Is that do I understand it accurately? And the public good, as I understand it, is the affordable housing units. Correct. And it's based on states. Actually, the requirement that we have have to have public hearing on the issuance of the bonds. But but what is it that we're approving then? Is it we've not taken on any risk. We would approve it because there's a public good or because we like the people applying or what what what is it? You have to you have to approve the housing program for the issuance of the bonds, which was included in your packet, and you have to authorize the issuance of the bonds.
That's that's coming up. That's coming up. Yeah. I I guess I'm caught up a little bit like Congressman Palmer is. Like, there's an order of this stuff that but but I I do wanna go back to this. I believe what's in front of me now is we're voting because we believe there's a public good. Correct. Okay. And that and that's really what's in front of us in g. Creation of affordable housing. Correct. Yes. And you went out of your way to say, the city taxpayers, we're we don't take on any risk with this. We do it, and we allow our name to be used to get these public benefits to the community. Yep. And that's the business of g dot two this morning tonight.
Correct. Okay. And then as you point out, then there's there's, the EDA work. There's the, there's other things which implies sort of there's this, funding stack for this project. But that's not what's in front of us right now. Correct. Yeah. So the council in December of last year created the Taxing Financing District for the property that was created in December of last year. Now this evening on the EDA is the development assistance agreement for the development of the site, which goes into the amount of taxing financing for the project.
Very good. But, again, I I part of this is this sort of complexity of there's four different things on the same project. Are they in the right order and that that sort of thing. But I'm I'm trying to basically disaggregate it and say g. 2 is about is there a public good here? And if there is, we want to support it even though and without you using our city's name but not taking on the risk. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Along those lines, given that I believe this is the only time on these four agenda items that relate to this property that we do have an opportunity to speak to the,
developer. So I I would ask, if, mister, Colson and, miss Mittie would come back up. And I one of the issues that nags at me on the, the development, I I I think it's a wonderful development. It's going to bring, a lot of, housing to downtown if if it moves forward. My question is the segregation of the market rate, component of the complex and the affordable complex. And if you can explain,
your reasoning for that. Hi. Thank you. So the reasoning, there's actually two separate buildings here that'll function independently. They have their own electrical service, and will be owned by separate financial entities. The reason for that is, if you take if you take a project as a whole and you say we wanna build 340 units of housing and we want a certain number of those to be affordable, it works it it it's very challenging to build one project that incorporates that affordable housing, because then you, can't necessarily utilize, the the same amount of funding sources that you can get by actually creating and
developing a stand alone light tech project. So the 76, unit senior housing, is we're because we make it financially independent from the market rate project, we're able to, finance it with tax exempt bonds and receive, light tech tax credits for it with tax credit equity. And if that wouldn't be possible if we had structured it as sort of one giant project with a certain portion of of affordable units within it. We'd lose that ability to finance it as an affordable housing project. I don't know if there's anything to add if I So to so I I
understand and appreciate the the financing, component of this. Can you talk about if the project moves forward, how you are going to ensure that, all of the residents there feel a part of the same community. Thank you, council president, mayor, council. The design function of a shared space, meaning the entire parking lot that's being redeveloped, as we've proved out in other similar kinds of developments where we have market rate and affordable next to each other are integrated in principle. Divided by finances and by building type and the ability to actually operate them as
separate functional buildings, they are nonetheless designed to weave as a whole. There'll be shared public amenities, of course, access to downtown, all of the transit oriented multimodal functions, access to and from it, but most importantly, the design and the investment. The actual costs for these products and the level of construction and design will feel seamless. It's not just the images that you see in your packet, but as we've shown and delivered in other cities across the state of Minnesota, it will feel like a beautiful place for those who are income qualified and a
beautiful place for those who are in the market rate. Also, our management staff will work seamlessly between the two properties to ensure amenities for the affordable. But the design, the sense of the whole will be a a single fabric, even though, structurally, we've needed to do this for financial reasons and everything Carol mentioned. I'll I'll add to that as well. The projects will have their individual senses of identity, so we'll likely have different names. You know, each project will probably have a different name in its own website. Since the affordable project is senior, we're only going to be marketing and leasing to 55 plus individuals,
whereas the demographic is is, all individuals at the market rate property. So each property has its own set of amenities. It will have its own management staff that obviously is both from the Sherman, management group, that will work together, as Dan mentioned. And, but I think there'll still be some sep separation between, for example, the senior project will have a focus within its community, geared towards those residents. So they'll be planning, you know, regular activities, get togethers, things like that that are geared towards those senior residents in that building,
and they're not necessarily going to be the same, you know, community activities that there might be planned for the Market Rate Tower. So while everything is, kinda cohesive from ownership standpoint, structurally visually looking, you know, you might not tell that it's two buildings, although they're, you know, different colors, but they're kind of part of the same superstructure. The we definitely wanna be able to gear the amenities and the programs that we put on at the properties towards those residents that are gonna be, you know, the different demographics that we have. Thank you. Council member Palmer,
more questions? Yeah. For Brett. I hear you. Thank you. You can be seated. So help me understand this. We're just told that these are separate buildings and separate separate financing deals and we're giving the land as a gift just to the 66 units but we're giving it to the market rate also. Is that correct? The land is the overall the entire piece of property is being given to the development. So that's a whole. So both projects are getting the land. Market rates getting Correct. And donation. Correct. So if you go down to the YMCA site Yep.
On First Avenue, we didn't give them any land. Correct? No. We didn't give them any TIF. Correct? Correct. Okay. So so you could you could and we also had geothermal that we had our TIF finances tied to. Now they're not with the geothermal, so did we reduce our TIF from the city of geothermal is tied to the GSA funding from the DMC. K. But it also was our TIF financing. We have TIF money in this also. Correct? Correct. How much is that? Do you remember it? Help me out. Sir well, it's it's on action for the Yeah.
If that's the future agenda. It also hasn't acted on the ED action item tonight. So Okay. And so so any one of these that we say no to, it stops the project, probably? Probably. Okay. So then you go down to the bonds. Are they are they for public good? And you get to the point where you say, the cost for the public good, is it worth the public good at this expense? And and that's where the tripping me up is that you can always say everything's for the public good, but the cost to attain this with the market rate tied to it when we
haven't done market rate before, that's where my difficult so can you help me understand why this The bonds are not tied to the market rate structure. The bonds are strictly on separate parcel that's going to be created for the affordable project. That's 76 units. Correct. Mr. Johnson? Yes. I think council president and council members. And just to kind of remind Brent and the rest of the council that these bonds do go through a rating system through the state of Minnesota. So they have to apply, and then they're rated as well as, scored, in order to to receive the bond.
So we're not the only ones that are dictating if there's a public benefit. I don't know if, Brent, you wanna expound on that any further. Yeah. I mean, the bonds when you apply for bonds to the state, they first issue bonds for preservation projects Then they issued bonds for 50% AMI projects. Then the 60% AMI projects. So typically, at least the last couple of times, the preservation projects and 50% projects have been allocated bonds and then the 60% projects get put on a list. And at the last time I left, I think the list had 12 or 13 projects on the list waiting to get
bonds that were six and all those projects were 60% projects. But we but they also the project before you Yes. They'll they'll get 4% tax credits. Before they applied, they didn't receive it? Correct. Okay. Yep. I guess my my rationale on this is that I just don't see the public good at the cost that we're doing it at. So that's where I'm I'm having my difficulty. Let's get a motion on the table on this if, I'll I'll move to, adopt a resolution adopting the housing program, the issuance of the conduit multifamily housing revenue obligations,
and the execution of related documents relating to the Rochester Civic Lot affordable project. Moved by council member Keane and seconded by council member Miller. Council member Keane, you have the floor. So over the years, but also and and, of course, in the last, like, four or five days, I've spent some time with both the DMC team and the city team on this specific thing. And it it some of it goes to what council member Palmer is talking about. Like, when you try to add up the stack of financing here and what the city is getting, at what point is it, like,
where the city is is giving more than what it's is, that they're getting. And that's sort of the back and forth with this. There is the confusion where there's the affordable part and then there's the the overall project, and it does get munged together. Some things get funded specifically for the, affordable. But I I don't think you have to study this too long to say this city thinks we need more housing downtown, and we are working with the developer to try to get that. That. And I think that's part of what's going on in front of me here. So, based on that, I and and what I've heard from,
again, the DMC stuff and the and the staff, I'm gonna support this tonight, and we'll see where the other ones come out. Further discussion? Sure. I'll I'll just add. I mean, on this item member Miller. Go ahead. Thank you. On this item, I I will also be supporting this. I I feel like, to mister Johnson's point, these bonds have gone through a rating process. This project has been evaluated. On this item, we are looking at the sort of the the use of 76 affordable units being created. This is a a needed segment. This has gone through several changes to make it more competitive.
I understand this is a complex funding process, and, yeah, look forward to supporting the the bond issuance. Any further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Nay. Motion passes six to one. Council member, Palmer voting nay. Moving on to G3, multifamily housing revenue bonds related to the Onward Civic Center phase one project. Mister Svenvi, take it away. Back again in regards to another issuance of condo revenue bonds. In this case,
the developer is not ready to close on those bonds by the, July deadline, but we had already published for the public hearing this evening. And in conversations with our bond attorney, she recommends that we go ahead with the public hearing, open it, take testimony, close the public hearing. It's my understanding that the developer will be churning those bonds back to the state and reapplying for those bonds, assuming that they'll get issued the bonds again, in the amount of like $24,700,000
of tax exempt, conduit housing bonds. This will satisfy the public hearing, for those bonds. And then if that happens and they do get awarded revenue bonds, we'll we'll bring back the resolution on the consent agenda and ask the council adopt the resolution at that point. So because the bonds are required to have a public hearing, so our bond attorney is comfortable having that tonight knowing that they're gonna forfeit the bonds, apply for them again, more likely to get a order to them, and this services the public hearing.
And then then the developer is here this evening. Thank you. So to be clear, we will be holding a public hearing, but we will not be taking any action. It's closing it. Correct. And, so with that, I will invite the applicant to step forward and, discuss the project and the bonds. And, you will you identify yourself, and you have ten minutes. Yep. Absolutely. I'll, try not to take all ten minutes. Madam Mayor, council president, council members, my name is Chris Hoskinson. I'm with Onward Investors. I'm, a director there.
I'm directly responsible for sponsoring this project. I guess, I'll this is somewhat related to the same process that was just being discussed, so, happy to stand for some of those questions. As Mr. Svendby mentioned, we've been a little bit delayed in assembling the capital stack of this project, mainly due to we are trying to utilize, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing, and a heating and ventilation cooling system that, is tied into a geothermal system. What we've been trying to do is make sure that we can, in fact, realize the subsidies,
that are available for that at both the state level and the federal level, if that has been changing, like, every day. So Not to not to be flippant about it, but, on my way down here, I got an email from the senate budget reconciliation, discussion that, it doesn't it does appear that things like the investment tax credit, solar tax credit, some of these other rebates that we're discussing related to geothermal are still in play. So that's all really good stuff, but it's taken quite a bit in terms of, bringing our other, capital stakeholders to the table to be able to realize,
the outcome of the investment that we're seeking. And so, as Mr. Svendby mentioned, there's kind of a strange process that you go through with the state of Minnesota, Minnesota Management and Budget, and Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, where, because the first project of these two projects, is a 50% AMI project, we have a very high probability of forfeiting our bonds, which, is not done freely. That'll cost us about half a million dollars in terms of a good faith bond deposit, and we'll immediately re up that good faith bond deposit and essentially grab those same
bonds since we're priority. Again, we're utilizing so the low income housing tax credit is the other piece of the tax exempt bond issuance. We're also utilizing the investment tax credit here, as well as the solar tax credit, a lot of tax credits. And then, we're also utilizing some, state rebates. And so, we've continued pushing those forward, even though they haven't been necessarily made available. But we've received some good news over the last two weeks that that process is working its way through the state, and we expect them to be available. Your continued support on this project, sort of better to be lucky than good.
As I mentioned, the physicalness of this building is actually two vertical capital stacks. So what's before you is called Loom Apartments. It's 141 units at 50% AMI. Another part of the project, which is related to more of the entitlement elements, is a 132 unit, 60% AMI project. And right now, it's looking like we most likely will receive those bonds in July, just sort of by, the matter of we we split the buildings apart, and that actually makes the system a little bit more beneficial for us.
So, right now, we're hoping that we will actually be breaking ground on both of these projects bonds, Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, this project specifically, the second phase. Those pieces will also be moving through this council, in in different ways, shapes, and forms. But I'll stand for questions after the public hearing, and I'm here for anything that comes up. So thank you. Thank you, mister Asmanson. With that, I, will open the public hearing. This is a public hearing. If you wish to be heard on this item, please step forward. If you wish to be heard on this item,
please step forward. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and Point of order. Oh. I I just wanna ask staff. I I know we have the public hearing tonight. Is there any risk of closing it right now and not and when the when the actual thing comes up and we're taking the vote that there might be people who would want to speak on it then? I I can't think of the example, but I'm just before we Thank you, council member. Great question. No. Because we've published this evening for a public hearing, so public notice was. So when when the details would come out, they wouldn't there's no reason to believe that would somebody would then wanna speak on
it. No. Because the housing program is not gonna change from the housing program that's in your packet. They're it's the same number of units, etcetera. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for that, detailed consideration. I appreciate it. So with that, I will close the public hearing and invite, the, applicant to step forward and, state any closing statements that you have. Madam Mayor, council president, council members. I probably already issued my closing statements, but happy to do so again. I I appreciate, just the willingness for a little bit of flexibility here. We have,
been successful in assembling other, local municipal subsidies, such as, Coalition for Rochester Area Housing. In the last council two council meetings ago, I should say earlier this month, the support from the Destination Medical Center was, approved in the amount of $4,000,000 primarily related to the installation of the geothermal system, which, will be for it was technically approved for the first building. There will be geothermal for both of the projects, so spread out amongst the two eighty three units. And I think, to the discussion that the Sherman team was having earlier,
there's very few sites in Downtown Rochester that are available for affordable housing opportunities, and I think both Sherman and this project, as well, are kind of doubling down on the fact that if you are in downtown, I think you can take advantage of a lot of, actual, modal transit, bike systems. So, we've been engaging with a lot multimodal transit, bike systems. So we've been engaging with a lot of groups here to, understand if we could do, like, an e cargo bike sharing system or something like that because it's a lot easier at scale when you have 200 or 300 units to facilitate those systems.
We do have a retail area, which I know is sometimes a discussion point. However, what we'll be doing is master leasing that, as the sponsor, and then, ultimately, we're working with a few local organizations to try and install, this kind of bike sharing system. I bike a lot in Twin Cities, which is why I'm super casual. I got poured on today, and my jacket got ruined. So, but it's just a it's a nice way to, I think, get people to actually look at, okay, what are you paying in rent? What are you paying in car payments? Could you potentially not have a car payment?
There's other sharing car systems that you can use. And so, with projects of this scale, we have the ability to investigate some of those things and figure out if we can make them work. So, I appreciate the support tonight. I'll stand for any further questions. It is a complicated process, so, I appreciate, you know, the questions that council member Palmer had on the previous project because it's a little bit of like going to the roulette table in, Las Vegas and trying to get bonds and do all these things, and staff has been extremely helpful. So thank you. Thank you. At this point, any questions for staff or the applicant?
Seeing none, is there a motion on this item? Oh, you're right. You're right. Thank you. So with that, we will move on. I'm gonna well, actually, I'm gonna try to blow through a few of these if, the council because we've got a pretty heavy agenda going forward. So, we're gonna move to reports and recommendations, h one, FEMA SAFER, grant applicant, application submittal. And we have chief chief Poehler who is going to present this for us. Alright. I've been given two clickers. I'm not sure which one to use. Yours? Oh,
okay. Alright. President Schubert, mayor, members of the council, thank you for the time. My name is Mason Pooler, and I am your fire chief. So I'm here tonight to there you go. There we go. Seek permission, to apply for a FEMA SAFER grant on behalf of the city. So the request would be to apply for a SAFER grant to fund eight additional full time firefighters for the city. The application deadline is July third of twenty twenty five, and I can I'll get into the details about why the tight timetable. I do apologize. It's not my normal operating stat, style is to come to you, on short notice like this.
But this grant opportunity does align with our our city's core values and public safety priorities and, the grant would support operational flexibility, increase in public safety, and would accommodate future fire station, growth. So quickly, I know a lot of you are very new, you might not know what the FEMA SAFER grant is, this is a federal grant from FEMA, stands for the staffing for fire staffing for fire adequate fire and emergency response. Basically this grant, is for cities to increase the number of full time firefighters to meet industry minimum
standards. Important note, it can't be used for other purposes, it can't be used for EMTs or paramedics, It can't be used for support positions within the fire department such as admin staff or mechanics. It's only for firefighters, and it's aimed at cities that don't currently meet the minimum staffing, requirements set forth by the National Fire Protection Agency. Protection Agency. So in preparation for this presentation there's a couple of quick visuals about where our city is as far as, fire department staffing and 911 usage. So starting in the upper left corner, we're looking at the sworn members of the fire department, since the year 2000 based on the city's population,
shown in thousands. So, right around year February, we had about 85,000 residents, we're up towards about a 125,000 right now, and our fire department staffing has remained fairly stagnant since then. One blip up in the early two thousands to to accommodate one new fire station that was built in that year. This graph below that, shows firefighters per thousand of population, so while our department staffing has remained steady, the population has grown so our ratio of firefighters per thousand has trended downwards. Upper right corner, we're looking at the number of fire calls,
how many times the 911 phone rings for something fire related, in relative, to population in to 1,000. And the red line on the bottom is our overall department staffing, so staffing has remained stagnant, but yet our population is calling 911 for fires more often. And the graph below that is that same data, but for EMS calls. So we don't provide the ambulance service here in the city, but we do support, Mayo Clinic's EMS, ambulance service. So we go on quite a few ambulance calls and that number continues to rise year after year. So, like I mentioned, annual calls for service are continuing to increase.
In addition to that, we're looking at unfounded, horizontal growth, so we're pushing the boundaries out as we annex land, so every two weeks I I am either here in this room or home remotely watching these meetings and you're annexing more and more acreage every meeting, and then we're also experiencing vertical growth, so new high rise, growth in our in our city. All these, pose new challenges for the fire department. So this is looking at the horizontal growth, so since 1997, this chart comes from data from our comprehensive financial reports, so they're on the city's website. Earliest one I could find was 1997,
the latest was 2023, and you can see that we've, grown from 37 square miles in 1997 to 57 I have a typo there, it says acres, it should say square miles. So we've got a 51% increase in the footprint of our city since 1997, and then the, the column to the right, I just picked a random piece of city infrastructure that was in that same dataset, the number of park acreages has almost doubled in that time, so we've been investing and growing our parks at a, you know, 100% growth rate, but not supporting the fire department in the same in the same fashion.
You could pick any number to stick in there. They've got miles of streets, miles of sewers, number of street lights. All of our infrastructure is incrementally growing to meet the needs of our community, but the fire department numbers have have stayed pretty steady. And the challenge for us then so we've got two main types of fire trucks in our city we've got fire engines that's the big red truck that's got water and hose in it, primarily what you think of for a fire truck, an engine, I'm sorry, a ladder truck is the big long truck with the big ladder on top, no water, just a big rolling toolbox. So a big ladder on top to get to the top of buildings, a bunch of ground ladders to get to windows,
the jaws of life for car accidents, and a bunch of tools. So in the eyes of the National Fire Protection Agency, the NFPA, they set the industry standards for fire for fire departments in the nation. They feel that, fire departments should staff five firefighters on an aerial ladder truck, and we currently staff three. So we're two positions per day short, and we have two two aerial trucks. So this grant I'm proposing would allow us to staff four firefighters per day on both of our aerial trucks, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. So not quite in line with the national standard yet, but quite a bit closer than where we are now.
And that extra body per day gives us a lot of flexibility operationally. We can reimagine the way we respond to EMS calls, other lower acuity calls, and not always sending the big lighter truck down the road. So why now? Like I said, this would increase our staffing from three to four on those lighter trucks, and then from there you've got some flexibility. So at a fire scene, you can never send one firefighter by themselves to do something. It's very dangerous. They're operating in conditions where they can't see, the atmosphere is not safe to breathe, so you always work in a minimum of team of two. But when you've got a lighter truck staff for three, you can't split three in half because you can't send one and a half firefighters
this way and one and a half that way. But by increasing it to four, now we've gained extra extra flexibility with that ladder truck where we can send a crew of two one way and a crew to another other way and work on different tasks at the same time. Could also help us reimagine, the ever increasing EMS workload in our city. Right now, when we go to support Mayo Clinic EMS, we're rolling down the street on a fire truck that gets 1.8 miles to the gallon to go help out on a medical call and then come back to the station. If we were to staff two, four people per rig, we could split that group potentially and then we send two in a smaller vehicle
and help mail that way versus sending three in a big fire truck. Now we'll talk about the vertical growth. It's no no hit mystery here, you look out the window you see cranes everywhere, we're building at a tremendous rate. Right now we have at least 42 buildings that are seven stories or higher in our city, by definition those are high rise, structures and they pose a very unique problem for firefighters, they're very difficult to fight fires in. Number 42 is very disproportionate for a city of our size. That's something you see in a part bigger city typically with a much bigger fire department. And I wanna draw your attention to the the graphic on the right is a
a snippet from an infographic from the National Fire Protection Association. And in their opinion, the minimum number of firefighters you should send to a high rise fire is 42 firefighters. We only staff 25 every day here, and we have 42 buildings that meet that definition, which means in the case that we get a a structure fire in a high rise building, we're gonna send every single firefighter we have in our city, be calling back everybody that's at home hoping to pick up the phone, and then we're we're gonna lie on our mutual aid partners, which is fine. That's what they're for. But what's unique here, what what scares me, because I'm new to the city, I'm from the Metro Milwaukee area where we're surrounded by all career departments,
these are all volunteer departments. So if we get a fire, let's say we're getting a fire at the Grand Kaler Hotel tonight, we're gonna send our 25 Rochester firefighters. And to try to get that extra 42, we're gonna call Byron's volunteer fire department. They're a fifteen minute drive time away. It probably takes them ten or fifteen minutes to come from home to the station, so we're talking thirty minutes to get their six firefighters. They were calling Iota. They were twenty minutes away, plus another fifteen minutes to get to the station, so that's a thirty five minute delay to get their six firefighters. And they were calling Stewartville, who's twenty six minutes away, plus another fifteen minutes for them to get to the station.
That's a forty one minute delay to get their six firefighters to the station. So that process gets us our forty two. So that's what would would take us to get our minimum number of firefighters to a high rise fire today. This graph is not an all inclusive list, but these are some of the taller buildings in town with their height and feet and floors and the year they were built. About nine of these were built after the last time we saw an increase in fire department staffing, and there's probably six or seven more that are in the queue and various planning stages stages in the city to be built. The graphic on the right is just a a quick simplistic look at a high rise fire,
and what makes these difficult is one, getting to them, right, so you gotta this example, you gotta fire in the Fourth Floor, that's not that bad, but in this case the elevators aren't working so we've gotta hump all their equipment up to the Fourth Floor. You put you, stage for your attack on the floor below, and you go on, you attack the fire with two crews on the Fourth Floor, and your priority becomes rescue of everybody else that's in that building. You prioritize the floor that's immediately above because heat and smoke rise. The hottest floor is gonna be the one right above, so we go to the Fifth Floor, we search that with ladder trucks, and then you go all the way to the Top Floor because heat rises and
you work your way down floor by floor. So in the case of like the Broadway Plaza Hotel, if we've got the same Fourth Floor flyer, we've got two crews in the Fourth Floor fighting, we got two on the Fifth Floor searching, we already had a cruise. But then we've got to, at some point, go to the 20 Ninth and work all the way down, which is why two more folks on a ladder truck every day gives us the ability to create two more crews and search that much quicker. So I'm the new chief. I started January 6, like most of you did here, and I inherited an eight step plan that was approved by this council in roughly 2023.
We've been working hard to try to get that plan in motion. This can still support that plan with a few minor tweaks, but the end goal of that plan would be to open a new station on the Northwest Side of town and then relocate, resource from downtown at Station 1 where we have two engines right now and move that engine out to the new station. But we still have to accommodate for the risk downtown, which would include all the nine one one usage and the high rise buildings that we have, as well as the EMS work. Well, we've got a tremendous amount of what goes on to the downtown fire station, and I feel we can do that with, with the increasing ladder staffing.
So this is a snapshot of the eight step plan. Step one was complete before I was hired, that was adding an assistant chief of operations to the department. Step two, was accounted for in this year's budget by the council last year, so that's adding a supervisor, on eight hours to oversee the EMS division. So it's budgeted for us in our org chart. It's not gonna get filled, but it's currently vacant. I'll come back to step three and five. In my mind, those are up in the air. Step four is purchasing land for North Northwest fire station. You've graciously helped us out with that. So that is done. Step six is add three additional battalion chiefs.
So right now, we have one a day for a total of three. This would add three more, giving us two battalion chiefs a day. At a high rise fire, I'm telling you, you need at least five battalion chiefs. We in Milwaukee County where I came from, we went to a county wide response for high rise fires and we had three high rise fires, in my time as chief there, and I can tell you that we needed all 42 of those firefighters that the NFPA recommended probably and then some. And in that 42 are multiple chiefs because you need bodies on all sides of the building watching what's On. You need somebody in the lobby communicating with crews as you're sending them up the
stairwell. Right now, we have one battalion chief, and there is no way one battalion chief can effectively ruin a high rise fire. Chief, can you pause for a minute? Could you move the, captions to the, right corner up upper right corner? Thanks. Go ahead. Go ahead, chief. Alright. So what I would like to do is leverage current vacancies to add that second accomplishing sex step six out of order. So I mentioned the the, supervisor for the EMS division that's currently vacant. I would like to repurpose that to help accomplish that step six now. And then we had an unforeseen vacancy at the,
deputy chief level, Holly Mulholland left our city employment for another opportunity. We did promote, Chris Ferguson to that role, but we never backfilled his spot. So we still have a a organ an org chart position at the level of assistant chief that's vacant, and then I would propose repurposing our battalion chief of training, who's currently an eight hour employee, to put them on the line in a twenty four hour role as that third battalion chief. Step seven and eight are well in the future, can, you know, constructing the station and opening it, which leaves us three steps three and five up in the air. So step three would be add three EMT employees to the organization.
Those would be FTEs that are budgeted full time salaries. And step five is add seven plus another supervisor, so that's eight more FTEs. So those two steps together are 11 FTEs that were proposed that were EMS only in nature. And I'm an EMT, I'm a paramedic, I've got nothing against EMT or paramedics. But when you're trying to run a fire department, they can only fill one role. They can run EMS calls. A firefighter who is also an EMT or paramedic might cost a little bit more, but I can put them anywhere in the yard chart I need to put them. And I can put them in the back of a ladder truck. They can still respond to EMS calls on an average day,
and they can respond to a high rise fire and give us the extra crews that we need. So what does the cost for this look like? So this is $20.25 right here, fully loaded firefighter, that's salary, that's benefits, health insurance, that's pension contributions and everything, so $130,000 this grant would be looking to add eight of those, So eight of those over three years would be $3,200,000. The SAFER grant would cover 75% of that cost in the first and second year and 35% of that cost in the third year, bringing the total federal share to just just shy of $2,000,000
and the City share just over 1 and a quarter million dollars. After the third year the funding would go away and we'd have to make a decision if we're gonna keep those positions or not and if we keep them they would come out of the tax levy. I feel this proposal aligns with all of your foundational principles that you talked about earlier tonight, environmental stewardship, nothing that pollutes the environment more than a burning structure fire, the amount of carbon and toxins that it dumps into the atmosphere is unbelievable. Fiscal responsibility and sustainability, here we're leveraging $2,000,000 of federal funds to help offset costs that I feel that we need today. Public safety,
obviously, this this plays into public safety. Social equity, it ensures fair and reliable emergency response to all parts of the city, so this helps us take care of the need that we have downtown, both in fire and EMS, but also as the city grows to the Northwest. And then compassion, priorities prioritizing the well-being of both residents and first responders who safer and more effective emergency operations. Now we get to the timing of all this. So FEMA does a safer grant round typically every year and normally either late winter, maybe early spring. It's usually February, March that they announce this. This year, a little bit of turmoil at the federal at the federal level,
and FEMA was mothballed for the first quarter of the year. So there was no FEMA business going on, and there was no grant opportunities presented. Fast forward a couple of weeks ago, I think every fire chief in the nation just figured there'd be no FEMA grants this year. That wasn't on our radar and all of a sudden a email drops saying, hey, guess what? SAFER is open right now and it's closing on July 3. This is the only council meeting between that announcement and the closure of the grant. I feel our team, we're ready to pull the trigger on this. Been working hard the past couple weeks trying to figure out what the ask would be and how much that would cost. I don't think a lot of other cities are are in that boat right now.
So I feel that if you were to apply, the applicant pool would be very small and our likelihood of getting accepted would be very high. So this probably wouldn't hit our budget until at the best late twenty twenty six, it takes probably six or nine months for FEMA to make their decision on who's gonna get the get the money, comes out multiple rounds as well, so there's no guarantee that would be a first or second round pick. Once they give you notice, then we have to come back to you, ask for permission to accept the grant, so there's some time built in for that, And then they give you, I think it's ninety days to do the recruitment. So at best, we're thinking end of twenty twenty six,
more likely even into 2027. So there's time to accommodate this for a a budget amendment in the 2027 budget if it moves forward. And then kinda parsing out or pricing out the two different plans. So the plan on the left, that's the current adopted plan from 2023. From this point forward, it would move or would add 11 new EMS only employees to the tax roll. I haven't priced them out, but I went with an assumption that they would make roughly two thirds of what a a career firefighter makes, which brings their annual salary and benefit package to about $86,000
You multiply that by 11 people, we're talking about $950,000 a year of new tax money that we'd be asking for when we're ready to move forward with that step. The version I'm proposing tonight can accomplish most of those same things, but only adds eight career firefighters, so they are a bit pricier. Over the course of a year, this is just over a million dollars in ask, so it's about $87,000 more a year than what the plan that it was approved in 2023 is asking for. So in conclusion, I feel this is a strategic investment to meet our growing public safety needs. It's gonna give us great operational flexibility. It's gonna increase our EMS capacity.
It's gonna support strategic growth within the city, and set us up for future success. So I welcome any questions you have, and I I thank you for the consideration. Council member, Fredericks. Thanks for your work on this, chief. Question for you is, what do we do if we don't get the grant? Well, if we wanna stick to the eight step plan as published, we still have to find a way to staff those other 11 EMT positions. I would probably put my nose to the grindstone to come up with alternative plan. I just I I I understand the goal of that plan because the EMS workload is huge. I think there are other ways to tackle that problem.
I feel that we are overutilized on EMS calls, and I think if we get a bit more involved with mail's dispatching process, we can parse out a lot of those calls and not have to respond to as many. But end of the day, opening a new fire station still comes with a need for people in some way, shape, or form. So we we're gonna be having this tough conversation at some point in the future. Mayor Norton. Thank you. That was, you touched on one of the issues, which I'm gonna ask just a little different way. You mentioned that you can get, firefighters that are also EMT trained. Yes. So, was the pricing that you had on that assuring that we're going to get that?
Because in my mind, that eases up the need for the original plan if you can fulfill that with your new plan. Yeah. I would say well, so right now, all of our firefighters are at minimum at EMT. And a lot of them are paramedics as well. We're not built up to be a true paramedic system. I think there's a lot of potential there, to be had as well, maybe trying to tap into our the the licensure level of our existing workforce. We're going through a round of new hire interviews right now for entry level firefighters, and I would say probably a third of those that we've interviewed have been licensed to the paramedic level.
So yeah. Yeah. And I think that's in this community in particular, when we are a medical community and we have a lot of medical call calls, that makes perfect sense. So I'd encourage you to look at that. I also, I guess I was also trying to get at this, What are you by doing this, what are you not going to get if we're gonna increase the amount of budget that you're gonna get in particularly in '27 and '28? Are there other needs that you have that you're willing to just give up that might have been on that list, but for this movement or this action? Right. Yeah. So I'm not sure how much we can give up yet.
You know, I'm I once in here working through efforts budget cycle, trying to be the best steward of taxpayer money that we can. But I can tell you, I think there is room this would be a separate conversation altogether, but I think there are ways that we could look at increasing revenue to help offset some of these costs versus cutting other costs. Where I come from, we were a a tax desert. There was not a new you could not increase the levy at all. So literally, you had a stagnant budget year after year, but yet you still had to account for increased health care costs and employee raises. I'm proud to say that I was able to do that for eight years by
focusing on the revenue. We we had a lot of creative billing things, and billing's not always the most popular when when you're talking about public safety. But when it's that versus sacrificing services, I'd rather have that conversation with you first. I appreciate that. And and I ask that partly because it's always concerning to me as we get ready for a budget cycle that we start spending money outside of that budget cycle, and that happened a year year well, it happens often, actually. So I ask that. My last question, and this is not for you, but, and I know it's going to be not popular and very uncomfortable, but I would like to ask,
probably the attorney and the administrator that federal grants are now coming with stipulations regarding, ICE and diversity, equity and inclusion. And, I guess I'm I just would like some assurance that we're not stepping in here, getting ourselves into a situation that might be really uncomfortable with regarding those two requirements. So I guess I'm looking for some guidance. We haven't had this discussion publicly yet, but it is a real one, not just for this, but for the whole city moving ahead. Miss, who wants to start? Council president,
I guess I could just start off with that we have been looking at all of that different information, for all of the other grants that we are continuing to move forward. And so we we don't have draft language for any FEMA grants, but that would be a future discussion for this. We don't know if all of the grants will have the same language, but the drafts that we've seen have been very clear, and I'll start with the, diversity, equity, and inclusion statement talks about not having programming that does not comply with federal law. And so federal law talks about not having preference and not,
having just creating a disparate impact in, say, your hiring practices. So we just look through all of the different things we do and ensure that we are in compliance with federal law. And so, say, for that one, that's what we've been looking at just like a a lot of these grant agreements change every four to eight years. So, we're always sort of navigating that. And, of course, maybe what's slightly different, this go around is that there's a significant amount of ongoing litigation that's also happening, about that space. But, we've been looking at that. And then I guess I would,
maybe ask, city attorney Spindler Craig if he has anything more to add on the other component. Thank you, mister president. I would echo a few of the same, the same points that the city administrator made. We've been sorting through various iterations of, of some of these clauses, that we've seen in just a variety of settings at this point. And I think what, you referred to, mayor, as as an ICE setting or having some sense of ICE implication, frankly, that's that isn't a new conversation. We went through we had
the same topic, some six to eight years ago, I would say. And the focus for us is assuring some separation that has been historical, of course, between local law enforcement and federal authorities that are pursuing interpretations of federal law. That has always been important to us, continues to be important to us. We're in close communication with the police department as you know, related to that topic for the most part. The language that we see reiterates the point that,
local law enforcement does not assist or impede, in enforcement of immigration actions locally. Again, we continue to monitor that and see how that is put into practice, on the ground elsewhere, but that is the ongoing discussion here and appreciate the attention to these council and the city. Thank you. And, Mr. Chair, can I just say, I I hope, and I I guess I would just ask that if you do see things that seem different and concerning, that that be brought back to this body for discussion?
Yes. And this, if we were successful, would be part of the requirement of grant acceptance is for the city council to actually accept and enter into a grant agreement. So we would have more information, and, also, that's a ways away. We would also have, I think, more information about the rest of the legal landscape. Council member Keane. Yeah. So I should first, thank, chief Pooler for spending some time with me last week to try to understand. One of some of the things that had in the pitch but jumped out at me more was on that ladder truck. That idea of the the two the pairs made it much more useful to be
able to do more from there. So that that was something I wouldn't have known about. And then all we didn't talk as much about dispatch. But can we improve the EMS calls by, trying to get a get a better qualifying thing on what needs a fire truck or what needs a person or what like, most times, it's just a wave bye instead of going there. So there there was some of that stuff that I think I'm glad to see you're kind of throwing yourself into this. But I do have some concerns with this and and a lot of them actually. But one of the things I wanted to ask the staff, and I you threw up some business some business case numbers.
It really surprised me that this is only, like, 10% more than doing the, EMT thing. And I I guess when I saw the cost for a fully burdened fireman, I I was kinda surprised. I think that, in my view, that felt really low. And not not just this idea of what their salary is or their benefits, but, you know, to outfit a a fireman and to have the training and all that other stuff. Do do you feel pretty confident that those numbers are accurate to use for a business case? I do. Yeah. I I I I guess I I'm concerned here that I I I would've I
yeah. And and that part of my concern too is this, like, we what what I feel like I'm walking into is we've got this, like, must act because this grant is out there. And, we've been on this path path before, but now we're gonna change it. We have the new guy in there, and it does it does scare me. Although, like I say, if the numbers are that close, then but but there's a there's a policy thing underneath this that says we're going away from a direction that we had accepted about eighteen months ago. And and I don't I'm not wedded to it and saying, like, nope. We're gonna stick to that no matter what.
But I don't like the way it's coming to me and this idea of, like, act now. The other thing is, again, you're you're saying you really are gonna get four fire I mean, this idea of eight new people on staff, and it's gonna have about a $1,100,000 impact a year. I I I just can't I I just feel like I'm not buying in on that. And nothing you can anything you can do to say, this is how it's done? I guess I'm gonna look back at, deputy chief Ferguson just to verify the numbers. Got a thumbs up, Chris. That was coming from, HR. Yeah.
So deputy chief Ferguson did a deep dive into the numbers with our HR team here, including the the cost, like I said, of their retirement and their fringe benefit package and everything. That that's the cost. Council, administer zones and then deputy administrator Paris. Thank you, council president. I just overall, typically, if I had heard about this opportunity, like, a week in advance of the council meeting, I wouldn't have put it in front of you. But because chief Pooler has been looking at the eight step plan and I'll just say the 2019 strategic plan and the 2021 strategic plan actually talk about aerial fire
support and ladder truck response. So I felt like it was important for the city council to be able to have this discussion, recognizing that there's this short window of time where you might actually be able to fund something that within the next five years, I think we would have a goal of opening a fire station, which if you don't move an engine, is nine firefighters plus a $2,000,000 I don't know how much it'll cost in five years. It didn't cost $2,000,000 four years ago, fire engine. And so being able to look at this, I guess my concern would be
firefighters to address aerial support, and we would have had the EMS division stood up, moved the engine, opened the station, and be asking for eight firefighters for ladder trucks. So, typically, this would not be the glide path that I would bring forward, but because, we have had the eight step plan on on the plate, which primarily is to be able to open the Northwest Station within a period of time, which will require at least a million dollars worth of some version of people, It seemed important to let this body have the discussion even if you don't approve
moving forward with the grant tonight. Deputy Administrator Parrish. Yeah. Just confirming. I think the numbers are fairly on point here. It may just reflect that you're projecting entry level salaries, and so I think that's a part of it. We always never know what the insurance election is, so that's a variable in this conversation. But it seems like there's some flexibility built into the estimates to accommodate that. So for an entry level firefighter during the duration of this window, I believe the numbers are on point. Count are you Yeah. I'll hold it. Thank you. Council member Wall, and then we'll go to council member Doran.
Thank you. If, five is the best in the nation, why are you going for four? So in my observation of this body for the past five months, I know that increasing the levy is a point of contention as it should be for any elected official. And because this is a very truncated timetable and I have not had the opportunity to build much rapport with all of you, I feel that a bigger ask would probably not be that well received. So I went with what I felt, While it's still a large ask, I would say it's a moderate ask. And largely, I'm I'm in favor of,
this proposal. But like mister Keane says, it comes to us so extraordinarily. If this, were lumped in a budget process, we would be saying, how does this compare to adding four police officers or adding the Third Fourth Floor to the library, or we would have to balance it. In this case, we're working outside of the budget cycle, and it makes it quite a bit more uncomfortable. Council member Doring. Yeah. I just wanna follow-up with a, a question that mister Keen had that I didn't hear the answer for, and I would love love to know the answer.
And that's the equipment cost per outfitting per per firefighter. Right? So that's also an increased cost that this ask is is putting on, to the council, and I didn't hear that number. So that's a good point. I guess yeah. When I first heard equipment, I was thinking vehicles. Right? There's no additional vehicles associated with it. We have all of our our our fleet of vehicles. But we look at maybe that mid level equipment. So protective turnout gear. Right? That's an expensive thing. So we're adding eight people to the organization. There's eight new sets of turnout gear. At Chris, roughly, what's the set of turnout gear?
How about 34 Yeah. I can say $3,500 maybe. So $3,500 times four, probably a couple new breathing apparatus, thermal imager cameras. But relatively, in the scheme of, you know, I think our budget's roughly $1,516,000,000 dollars. In the scheme of a budget that size, it's it's really pennies that we're talking about additional. Some uniform costs, but nothing there's no, like, hidden fire engine ask coming six months later or anything like that. Further questions? Is there a motion on this item? I I I've just wondered again. There's all the the the thing in front of us is we're gonna get it
it just assuming we get the grant and we go forward, we're basically going to get a 2,000,000 infusion to to get us to the point of, you know, what this what this plan would be. And that's that's what we're that's why we're dealing with it tonight as opposed to in a more, like, elongated thing. Is the fact that we're doing it tonight, doing it now, actually escalating the time frame? Because if you're doing it for the Northwest Station, it probably doesn't have to be done in the next two or three years. It really is the other reasons we're getting forced to do it right now. The the efficiency of the four on the ladder trucks and,
that that idea of, of basically getting closer to what those recommendations are. Right. So I guess two ways to look at it. One, new guy in the room, fresh eyes on it from outside the organization, and I would describe our department not prepared for a true high rise emergency. Right? So that's that's my the last five months, what has kept me up at night. Like, if if that phone rings and it's a high rise, it's gonna be an interesting night. And this helps alleviate some of that. But coupled in then with the the time crunch here, I think because this is an unannounced grant application period from the feds,
there's gonna be very few in my opinion, very few cities that are gonna be positioned to apply apply for it. So our odds of getting accepted this year, we would be better than any other year. I would also add that there have been major changes. So up until this year, SAFER grants have been a 100% funding for three years. But now that there's new administration in the White House, they're reimagining funding options, These numbers are drastically less than what they have been in the past. So this this, reimbursement at 75, 75, 35 is vastly more expensive for the city than it had been for the past twenty five years of safer grants that cover to a 100 of costs.
And there have been news reports now that the White House is considering in future years, maybe starting to shut FEMA down, so the future of these grants is up in the air altogether. So I would say, let's apply while while there's still an application to apply for, because next year, the year after, who knows if this application is even gonna be available to the cities. So there's a couple things behind my question. One is the timing of, like, the, we're we're basically we can go forward and and give you, like, authority to go forward and apply. And and the the positive side is a $2,000,000
to offset. But the question is whether and and and it really is addressing your concern with the with the high rises. It's concerning the efficiency of the trucks. It's really not addressing the future thing because that can be addressed at a later date. And we wouldn't have the $2,000,000 expense because we'd be doing it later. Oh, maybe I could take this. Sure. In the future, you would be if you don't ever have a grant at some point talking about absorbing a million dollars into your budget. Yeah. I This still allows you to, in the future, move the downtown engine potentially. But, yes, you've absorbed the cost sooner,
but with some of it paid for for and addressing the aerial response concern that the chief is describing, I guess, this may be another way of looking at it. Okay. I again, I'm I'm trying to just position this before we go to the point of votes because I I'm still trying to get comfortable with the the numbers there. You're basically it's sort of like this by now or, you know, and and I just don't like the feel of it at all. But I'm also trying to be, you know, I I understand why it comes in front of us. So, but I but I am trying to differentiate that. I I actually believe that I I thought the old plan addressed the idea of
the the the team from downtown going Northwest, and that included the the EMS. And it can I am not wedded to that? If it has to change, it'll change. But I'm trying to understand that I I try I'm fighting the idea that I wanna do something I'm gonna I'm gonna commit money tonight because I I gotta grab that thing off the tree, and it makes it bothers me. So if I can maybe paint it a different way. So I think that the ask in the currently adopted eight step plan would be for just under a million dollars of new money allocated for EMTs at some point
in the future. This plan is for just over a million dollars for eight firefighter EMTs, but sooner than projected. Not too different, but, yes, the timetable moves up a bit. And the EMTs ask that you showed doesn't include you would have to have vehicles if you're starting a new EMS division. Right. Yeah. We'd have to figure out a way to get them to these EMS calls. Thank you. Council member Miller. I appreciate the presentation and and the level of detail. My question is about the logistics of timing the budget. It's come up several times of this being out of sequence.
With the review process, I'm assuming there's some uncertainty, but how might this possibly line up with other budget discussions we're having this year? Because we are authorizing potentially application but not guaranteeing acceptance of that. There are some terms that we don't know what might come with the grant. We are opening the door to have a future discussion, perhaps. Is that Yeah. Fair? Yes. So there's nothing guaranteeing that you have to accept. Even if we were to to be granted a grant from FEMA,
you still have the right to review it at the end and then choose to move forward or not. And so the this would not hit the 2026 budget. Right? This would be 2027 beyond. So there would be room then to figure out how are we gonna accommodate that that increase in 2027. I I guess my question then to administer Salms is the point of other considerations as we look at trade offs in the budget. How might this process interact with that, and what flexibility might we be able to expect or not? Council member Palmer,
just like any other thing that comes forward, the 2027 supplemental budget could have other requests, in it from other entities. We typically what you will see in the recommended budget in August is both 2026 and 2027, both recommended decision packages and not recommended decision packages. And the requests are far generally in excess of what I think would necessarily be reasonable to bring to the city council. But, if you think about 25% of a million dollars, we're talking about $250,000.
It's not small, but it's not huge in the grand scheme of, being able to move forward towards what eventually would be a fire station that's gonna require staffing of some sort, either backfill downtown of EMS, something else, or you have to just add a whole new engine to instead of moving the existing engine and and crew. So, I guess, yes, it's out of sequence. However, had have if we weren't requesting, like, a authorization of a grant, you might be very much out of sequence in 2027,
2028, or 2029 with these concerns coming forward. So I would say it's $750,000 less out of sequence than what it might have been depending on the conversation I would be having with chief Fuller for a supplemental 2027. I I appreciate that. I think about similarly, we had a a discussion about the facilities condition assessment and what deferred maintenance there is. This is deferred staff maintenance perhaps in some ways. Thank you. And if I could add, mister president. Yeah. You know, if we come to this point where we're now having to address the 2027 proposed
budget and we're $250,000 off. That's when maybe we sit down and we have a conversation about the revenue side of things and say, is there a way that we can that we can offset some of these costs? Council member Palmer. Can I make a motion? Absolutely. Okay. I'll make a motion adopting a resolution authorizing the fire department to apply for FEMA safer grant to hire eight additional firefighters increasing the ladder company staffing citywide from three to four personnel personnel per unit. Second. Moved by council member Palmer, seconded by council member Fredericks. Council member Palmer, you have the floor.
I do I just shortly, I think that, asking for the grant and seeing what the details are later on makes sense. I hate to see this get passed up, but we don't pass it tonight. We we don't get an opportunity to look at, future grant with it. So the support. Council member Fredericks? If our chief tells us there's a safety concern he wants to mitigate and we have the means to do it right now, I don't see why we wouldn't do it. I will also be supporting this. I appreciate both chief Poehler, his very detailed, presentation and very down to earth common sense.
Probably comes from Southeastern Wisconsin roots there. And I also appreciate, Came from his last six weeks in Rochester. Yeah. I also appreciate, administrator Zelms and, stating that this is not your usual glide path, and that we, do want to be able to kinda, machinate on these things a little bit more. But I do also understand that we have to be flexible. And when these things come up, we have to respond to them. I think that there are some escape valves that we can take,
and, I'll be interested in watching as it gets penciled out. And, good luck with the application. Council member Keane. Yeah. Thank you. And, again, I've spent some time on this. I've voiced some concerns, but I too am gonna support it tonight. This is, one of these things that is, you know, public safety, but I I guess I do want to especially my newer peers here. I mean, this idea of, you know, going from, you know, the three to five or whatever those numbers are. I mean, something like the fire department, that could never end. Someone could say, we don't have four minute response time in this part of town. We have to do the I mean,
that never ends. We have to get to the point that says, like, are we doing are we are we doing our due diligence here? Add up. And I think this is what it's gotta be. Add some sort of reasonable stuff. Someone will always recommend you could do this better or you could be better prepared, but we have to get to the point where, you know and then looking back at our statistics and saying, are we doing the job? As opposed to just going, oh, someone says or or if you were in Milwaukee, you'd have this sort of coverage. We we have a unique environment, and we have to cover that. But, I I do appreciate the work you put into it. I I think that idea of having the flexibility of having,
you know, like, fully functioning firefighters, again, does make your job easier. But I also again, again, I am surprised to hear that it's, you know, nominally different cost. I thought the cost would be different. And I I also don't didn't let I'm I'm trying to get comfortable with the idea of, like, new chief, new strategy as opposed to so that that those are things that come to mind tonight. Further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Passes. Thank you. Thank you for your support. Thank you, chief. We will take a too quick.
People in the audience. We have a thunderstorm coming, and it might be nice for them to get home before, we get a lot of thunder. Is there a motion to That's my motion. Do do we need to suspend our rules? And is it a, does it take five votes to yes. Okay. So at, so, I too, you want to place Next. Because of the break. Okay. So make your motion. I'll make a motion that we move I2, now before our break. Okay. Is there a second? Okay. So there is a motion to suspend the rules to move
I two after h one. And do you have any more to I've just because of the weather. Okay. Is there further discussion on this? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Thank you. We will move to I two. And it is a council initiated action on the Cook Park pickleball urgent repair funding, of $75,000 to the city. And council member Palmer, this is your CIA. Thank you very much and thank you for making it move.
The conditions of the courts at Cook Park are in bad condition. If they're gonna go on the CIP for the park department, it would have to be moved up about 02/1931. RAPA, the group that's helped funding this, would probably lose a lot of their members and then we'd lose a lot of our partnership. As everybody knows, what we do at Rochester with our Park Department is that we do a lot of partnerships. And so the nice thing about this was that, the park department or park board voted to, come up with 75,000 out of their budget. I'm proposing we take $75,000 out of our budget,
out of our contingency fund so that we can match what the, RAPID group will be doing. And the nice thing about this is that, instead of just redoing it, we're going to be, taking out the quartz. We're gonna add, drainage to it, drainage pipe to it. We're going to add a little bit of room to it so that there's more movement there. And as everybody knows, pickleball is a big factor in Rochester. And I just think that moving this ahead, makes sense. So my motion will be that we, move $75,000 out of the Contingency Fund, for the pickleball course at,
Cook Park, out of the Contingency Fund. Do you wanna wait on your motion for questions? Okay. I'm going to invite, our Parks Director, Paul Widman, to come up and give us a little more detail on, this proposal. Thank you, council president, mayor, and council members. I think council member Palmer gave a really good summary. This actually came up as we were discussing with RAPA the next iteration of our agreement, and, also the court maintenance. And, I agree that, well, I'm somewhere in the middle on the timing,
but you have to realize that, that the recreation standards for a court is a lot different than our RAPA members who take the sport very seriously. And I do agree also that we are getting close on some of the cracks shown in in the pictures I sent out, being more of a concern than, than we would be comfortable with over the next few years, especially with the amount of play that, Cook Park gets. The funding breakdown is as Council Member Palmer stated. We're asking for $75,000 for contingency funds.
The parks and recreation department would, need $75,000 in reserves for the project to go forward and then $50,000 from our pavement, maintenance fund and $187,000 would come from RAPA and that's, slightly less than 50%, but we rounded out the figures to to come up with that figure. I have a I have a couple questions just to start with. So I look at this and I so is this
a maintenance, proposal, or is this actually taking our what we do have there, six pickleball courts and building six brand new pickleball courts in the same space. And a question on kind of the funding, it looks like they're about $60,000 a pop. That to me, in looking, it seems to be kind of the gold standard. So are we actually in this proposal saying we're going to remove these pickleball courts
and, and put in gold standard pickleball courts in the same location? Very good question. Thank you, council president. We started out with the discussion based on a study we had by, conducted by WHKS that took a look at the courts kind of the good, better, best. And, it started out at the low end of resurfacing, just the, top coating, trying to level it out a bit and and resurfacing. You can do that three or four times over the life of a court. We're kind of at the end of our life expectancy of that. So then, we look at what's next,
a recoating with asphalt. One of the things that, W the study, shared and that we know from experience is the cracks that are in the courts would have a tendency to reflect, through. And, in our discussions with RAPA, we agreed, when we look at a concrete court, which this is, a concrete base that's being proposed, we would be going from a seven to eight year life cycle to a fifteen to twenty year. And, this is not post tension concrete, but if you compare it to, the tennis courts at at Soldier's Field,
I don't know when those courts went in. I've heard '70s, '80s. We've not had any issues with those courts. We we the only maintenance they require is the recoating of the top surface, the green surface. And, this is a lower standard than that, but much higher than the asphalt quartz. So hope that answers the question. Another question. In, so my understanding is in the priority list, it was to to do another maintenance in the 2027
time frame. And so I guess my question is, when it comes to the pickleball, and I I really appreciate the enthusiasm in pickleball, how does this fit with the increasing access to pickleball throughout the city? Thanks for that question, Preston. Does it impact? Right. I I the the level of play, amount of play would remain the same. There would be more convenience with the the quality of the courts being being lifted,
for sure. And, this along, we do have, new courts that we build at Slattery in Allendale, and that has, taken a little bit of the load off the Cook Park Courts. What that does for us is one thing we've learned is, pickleball, is a very social activity. And, the multi courts at Cook Park provide a fill a very important need and and that, both competitive play and the social aspect are met at Cook Park. Where, smaller groups and families that want to play and not as serious, the,
Slattery Courts, the Allendale Courts meet that need. I'm gonna ask a, council member Palmer type question. So with the Allendale and Slattery Park, how much were those per court? Oh, good question. I'm, I I actually, I have that. It may take me a minute to get to it. I'm gonna I'm gonna go to if, do you have a colleague that can do that while we're taking questions? I have a colleague here. You don't have a colleague here. I Okay. Go ahead. Look for it. I I do not. So I I it like I said, it I do have, several pages open here.
If I can get to that, I will. But, I just wanna know know how it compares. Council member Keane. Yeah. Thank you. And I appreciate, mister Whitman getting your, thing on Thursday kind of explaining this. But I I wanna make sure I understand. The the the funding is coming from if it comes from the council and RAPA, but it's a parks project, and I believe it's sized at that just under 400 ks? Yes. We have an estimate now, which is subject to change, but, we fill this pretty accurate estimate at $387,000
So I just wanna understand, it's a park project to do this and, you're taking the funding sources from the if the city council does it and RAPA does it, but you if it's less or more, is the parks covering that or is it not getting done? We've agreed with RAPA, and we've, kind of set this as the standard that whatever happens tonight, we would, and the and if the price was to increase or increase, we we would, work that out with RAPA. We we would not be coming back to council Okay. For more funds. Yep. And then, as far as I see the schedule that you posted,
and I I again, it it again, these are always difficult because you have public resources being, you know, controlled by certain groups. Is that arrangement, like, at a twenty year life on it or a fifteen year or a ten year or is it just an agreement that goes on forever? In the original agreement, thank you, Councilmember McKean, in the original agreement, it's, stipulated that the schedule would be set, every year. And I do want to make a comment about whether we consider how we consider RAPA users of our facilities. It's much like the swim club providing swim lessons.
RAPA is our users. They that is a community use of the facility. If you if you look at it another way, if we did not have RAPA and it was up to the parks and recreation team to provide programming for pickleball, there would be a fee. There would and it probably would be higher than what RAPA is, charging their members. No. I appreciate what they're doing there, but I also am trying to say if I've got public resources like public parks, I wanna make sure that the public can use them at least sometime. I I think I do appreciate the fact that other times they're being programmed by
another group. And if you wanna use them in those times, you work with those groups. But so my my questions are still the same. Is the the agreement like, if they come up with this money, does that give them an, access to this from, six a. M. Till noon for ten years and then we'll we'll it's a reset of the contract or is it does it imply forever? I it doesn't imply forever, but I think we're we benefit from having the partnership with RAPA. And, I've laid out the current schedule, which seems to be working well,
with their increased investment. We have not asked them if well, actually, we did. And, with their increased investment, we have not asked them if if well, actually we did. And, they they said that they would be, looking at a very similar arrangement. Okay. I again, I'm I'm just trying to this is this isn't wrapping that, but I'm talking about we don't want to take these sort of public accesses and make an agreement that goes on forever. There's always got to be some sort of sunlight sunset on it. Just so we sometime in the future, we it's not perpetuity. I appreciate the question. The original agreement was actually part of a contribution agreement where their funds, the $15,000
that they contributed to the last rebuild of Cook Park. And then it did stipulate that, the scheduling would take place on an annual basis. K. Thank you. Council member Doran. I have three questions really quick. First, can you outlay that that schedule for usage publicly? So what I understood from the email is that, that RAPA has, has access or preferential access from, 6AM to 12PM, public twelve to 5PM, and then RAPA again 5PM until dusk. Is that correct?
I think it's 7AM, but you roughly that's it. Okay. Because I share very similar concerns as mister Keane about access to a public amenity by the general public, not by a specific group. What does, what does the pickleball courts included in the regional, sports complex, how is that being involved in this conversation as well? Because it seems like we're building new courts out there. Why build additional sports complex will have public use. They'll also be designed for programming and and regional events.
I, I believe there's enough demand, in, in just that the, the, this would still be a valid project if, if the courts at the sports complex were doubled. And, and by that, I mean there, we we've got, when I started my, adventure with RAPA twelve years ago, it was a, people my age and older. And, it's now trending much younger, and the the demand is increasing. I was gonna say, I play pickleball, and I might be a little younger than you. I'm just guessing that.
So, and then the the third question was regarding just timing of this ask. We are in a budget cycle, so what is the importance of having this decision made now as as opposed to just as part of our regular budgeting cycle? Thank you, thank you, Councilmember Dorian. That's a good question. I think the, the, it's we we we fulfill, with our partnership with RAPA, we agree with them that we are the end of the life cycle of this court. We have an opportunity to to, go into next spring with the current court and then be ready for construction following.
I think, just the timing of not missing an additional season would be beneficial this time. Council Member Miller. Just one question. You mentioned that the usage players' demographics are trending younger. I'd be remiss to not ask about the mayor's initiative with your about youth. How is youth development incorporated into wrap up as programming, and how might this investment be available to youth as we expand pickleball courts in neighborhood parks? Thinking about perhaps this is a contribution to a system of pickleball courts,
but how are how is this expanding access more broadly if it is? I I don't have the specifics of their outreach to youth. We were just talking, actually during and, and, before the meeting, with, the, the RAPA folks. And, we acknowledge and they acknowledge that the, that the, that the age is trending younger. A lot of high school tennis players, because it's, play, pickleball, it's easier to get on a court. It's easier to find somebody, to play on a moment's notice rather than having to schedule a court.
And, so I I I can provide those, details. I know it is a priority with the RAPA group to to expand to all ages. Okay. Just Just as far as when I see pickleball being played on tennis courts, I'm sure that that's a much lower standard than competition play. But I would think often as we've heard about other sport development over time, there's often a youth development component and how the amenities across the system benefit people of all ages and abilities. And I just would want to make sure,
to some of my council amenities because it is youth development component so that this opens the sport to more community members. Thank you, council member Miller. I don't have to turn around to get the head nod how the group feels about tennis courts, and pickleball being on the same surface. But, that that court does fill an important need. And, the, actually, the John Adams uses the court for their programming. So I do know there's youth development in the community for pickleball. And, again, just the,
lower level of play with families, that and and the fact that we had community inputs wanting to keep tennis in Allendale was an important factor in that, project. Mayor Norton. Thank you. My, so I have a question first, which is, has this presentation come before the park board? Yes, mayor. We, at our June 3 meeting, we had a discussion. I was made aware that there was a pending, council request for the funding. We talked about the reserve funding. I don't believe at the time we were that we put together the entire funding
package because this was, moving forward, at the time. Thank you. That's my concern here. I have spoken over the years about the use of CIA's council initiated actions to get things done in particular districts or for somebody's particular favorite project. Some of them haven't worked very well at all, others have been more successful. But I have an issue with how this is being done, and I'm even more concerned now hearing that this was brought up, but you waited to see if you could get extra funds through CIA. My preference would be that these things go before the Park Board,
which has authority. As someone who worked with you to get a parks referendum passed a number of years ago, the promise of passage of that referendum was to be able to do repairs, enhancements, and all that through parks across the whole city. I can't tell you how many times I said that, when I talk to people. And and so I guess I'm struggling with why that if this is a priority, and I am all for pickleball, Cook Park is used all the time. I'm over there and see hoards of people there, so it's not that I'm not supportive of the project.
I am really questioning why we're doing a CIA as opposed to having the park board sit down and reprioritize, if they think this is a priority, and it sounds like you guys think it's a great idea, and reprioritize the money that you've been given in a different way, rather than coming here and asking for more before the budget. And to Council Member Darragh's point, it could be done in a few months during the budget, and that also wouldn't bother me quite so much. But again, we've had two items here tonight prior to a budget,
you know, taking money out of this year that's not emergency, and I'm just really struggling with that. So I'm I guess I'm disappointed to hear the park board didn't take this up themselves and reprioritize this and move it way up on the list because we know pickleball's popular, we know it's Cook Park is always busy, and we know we want people playing on safe surfaces. So I'm I'm just really struggling with that. Appreciate that, Mary. And and, may not have given the whole picture. The park board has been made aware, of the conditions of the court,
both by RAPA and and our our team. I this, came up, largely, because of advocacy from RAPA and, both, to the park board, to parks and recreation staff, and, council. We, have experience in, other projects that have come up like this, and, we find it better to listen and work with the group and, see if there's a way we can, accommodate. Some examples were save the track and save the pool. And, this, is to be fair, we've had really good discussions with RAPA,
but That's, how it came forward, and that's how it landed at the park. I've got a couple couple more questions and, I'd like to follow-up if I could. Oh, I'm sorry, Mayor. I thought you were done. Go ahead. I I didn't realize I would have a a follow-up. So is there not a possibility that if you took this back to the park board and said there's not extra money that for a CIA right now, but the park board could reprioritize this. Is there no way they would do that? Mary, that would be based on staff recommendations. And we, we've already identified other funding besides the reserve funds,
to to apply to the project. Yes, that's always a possibility, but it's always, the experience of finding out what we're not going to do in order to do the pickleball. And I realize that's a fair response for us to to go back, but that that would be the reality of of, we'd be looking at other other projects that, we would have to take from. Absolutely. And that's what I would expect. Thank you, mayor. Con administrator Zelms. I just wanted to, share an answer to a previous question that you asked that there was a friend
phoned, and the Allendale cost cost was $250,000 and Slattery was $180,000 not including designs, and both of those were asphalt. And the and those were two courts apiece? Or That was not phoned. Slattery is two courts and a basketball court. And, the, Allendale Courts was a tennis court converted. Well, not converted, but multi use. Okay. Okay. My question is and I do have some of the same concerns that the mayor addressed as far as the the process. And,
I even though this project is at a far lower scale than, than the one that we just spoke about, I feel like this is our one shot at it where that one, we still it's gonna come back to us. So my going forward and I think council member Keane asked some questions along this line. As far as access going forward, are we locking ourselves into what we have now? Or what do you see as components of that contract moving forward?
Sure. We in our discussions with RAPA, we talked about the current we really need to update the contract because at the you know, twelve years ago, we were RAPA was a newly formed group and, did not definitely, obviously, did that does not have the didn't have the numbers at the time, the membership numbers that they have now. So their, ability to contribute and and, leverage resources towards this project and ongoing maintenance, was, much less at the time.
So we didn't ask. We didn't ask for them to contribute to maintenance. We did, we don't have details, but we did share that we'd, in the updated contract, we would be looking at, contributions to ongoing maintenance. We've not even, come up with numbers or discussed details yet, but we've just, touched on that as that that would be something that And those contracts will go back to the park board? Is that They would be approved by the park board. Okay. Is there a motion on this item? Council member Palmer? Yeah. I'll make a motion to move up to $75,000 from contingency funds to match the park department's funds that will match our partners at
Palma. A motion by Councilmember Palmer. Is there a second? I'm sorry. Second by, Councilmember Fredericks. Councilmember Palmer, you have the floor. I I think there's a few things that need to be clarified. One of them is that we're expanding the courts at, Cook Park because right now, it's hard to walk between the courts and and it's gonna be extended, I think, five feet. I'm not sure of the measurement, but the idea is there'll be a center aisle down the spine of the court. Right now, if you if the far court opens up for play, all the other courts have to stop so you can because you have to walk
across the courts to get to it. So, it's just an added convenience and keep more people moving through the courts. And as Mr. Wittman said, we had the track and we have the track club that provides funding every year to maintain the track. We have the tennis courts at Kutzky Park that were rebuilt with the same type of, arrangement that there was, I think, dollars 400,000 raised in the community and then the park board did that. I worked with the park board to come up with this. Originally, they wanted to do $150,000 but we decided that it would be best to split it with with the park
department if that was their case. So that's why I went to the June 3 meeting at Park and Rec, and that's why they approved going ahead with it. So those are my comments from what I've heard everybody talk about. Council member Fredericks, anything to add? Nope. I'm good. Council member Keane. Yeah. Again, I I heard council member Palmer's motion. It's different than what's in front of us and that I guess that's okay. But I I there's wording in here that says or proportional share, and there we're not voting or approving any sort of proportional share.
I just I I don't think it I mean, we didn't say we were, but since it's written in there, I wanna make sure staff knows that this is $75,000 that we're gonna vote on from the contingency to be, and I in my view, routed to the parks to do this project. And if the project doesn't happen, the money comes back. And if the project does happen, it happens to that amount, not more. And that's, I think, what you understood. Remember Paul Merkel. Clarify the motion was for up to. I I heard that, but I I also want to get it stated on our thing that since it's written differently, I wanna make sure
everyone knew what The clerk has that. Council member Doreen. I would also ask for some additional clarification if we read the item in our packet a little further. It says there's no cost to this quest request initially other than the cost of staff time to create a policy for review. Are we voting tonight to actually allocate the $75,000, or are we voting to have the have, the staff create a policy for review. Administrator Zelms. Council council member, council president, all of these council initiated actions are different. So when the actual motion gets made,
if this is the motion, what you are simply doing, it it just doesn't feel simple, but the simple action that's being taken is to allocate up to $75,000 of general fund contingency towards this project. There would not be a future action. So had your conversation gone differently, there could have been no I mean, it all depends on what the council's motion and action are on any of these. So it's really up to the body if you want to do it that way. It wouldn't be coming back for any further discussion, but there would be not a way to increase beyond 75,000
unless there was a future conversation of counsel for how your budget rules work. Administrator, I have a question regarding the contingency fund as a new council member. What is, how much do we have in our, usually, in our contingency fund, and how much do we draw from that on an on an annual basis kinda on average? Council president, council members, mayor Norton, you annually budget a million dollars in the general fund contingency. You only spend from that if you make different votes throughout the year like this.
This year, you had a previous expenditure, that was on a prior agenda in May, and that was a budget amendment to, authorize an expenditure of $92,256 So you have about $9,900 a little a little over $900,000 left in your current twenty twenty five contingency. What that's intended to do is if something comes up throughout the year and really up to the policy body, whether that's something that you choose to surprise yourselves with or that we surprise you with, that, some of those things are unknowns, that could happen that,
you know, cost overruns of a project or we have a little bit longer that's gonna be happening until we have the BRT up and running. That was that initial action. And so but it is also critical that we try not to spend all of our budget every single year, even try not to spend the, you know, allocated budgets because each year that your general fund grows to reach your 42% of, of cash flow, if you will, throughout the year, the dollar amount that you have has to be larger because 42% of $10,000,000 larger of a budget is
a larger number. So typically, we have been adding to the reserve, but again, the contingency is there for sometimes staff comes forward because we need to ask you for an adjustment, and sometimes we have these council initiated actions that come forward in a variety of different ways. Thank you. Further further discussion. I this one, I am really struggling with, and I'm struggling with the process as the the mayor, spoke about. I would have rather seen a more,
of a commitment from the parks board and, more information on, the prioritization of this. And, and also for us to have this land on us and have to make a decision tonight. The stakes are lower, but as we talked about with the the last item, we we wanna have a glide path to making decisions, especially if they are out of sequence. And so I'm having trouble with that. And then the second part that I'm having trouble with is,
that I don't see it adding access to, to park space, across the city. It's, I and I appreciate the the enthusiasm of Rapa and Pickleball, players, but have have trouble with it going all of it going here and not maybe adding two more Pickleball courts to Cook Park or some other creative thinking. So those are my struggles with it. Any further discussion? Council Member Miller. I
mean, any points of the urgency of tonight of not having another chance to discuss it. I'm reading in a review of the park board or even in the comments that Mike Dangber made after that meeting that it's unlikely that construction could even start this fall. Is there a reason that we would have if we were not to approve this tonight but have it go back to the park board for consideration, what what is our deadline to get it like, should this ultimately move through to be playable in 2027 or or beyond or whatever
the schedule is. Right? Is there urgency to today as a decision point? The, if if we well, we need to to have the funding in order to to develop the project and move forward. So, whatever delays on this end, we it would, it would delay the landing of the court, possibly in the twenty eighth. Council Member Miller, council president, can I just say from a putting this on the agenda perspective, the reason that it is on your agenda is because it was submitted through the council initiated action process? And in your council rules, I am required to put this before the body. Thank you. I appreciate that. And this is why my question is about the logistics of bringing this to fruition. Window?
We have it outlined in the information that I are you talking about the window of construction or development of the project? The window of decision making. So if we were to table this discussion to another date when, and to facilitate maybe further discussion at the park board level. What is our window from that standpoint? Is that what you're saying, council member Miller? Yes. We would, if we were looking at a spring construction, we would need, ideally, by the fall in order to prepare,
the project and, and move forward, with the spring, '26 project. May Mayor Norton? How often does the park board meet? Monthly. And, and we do study sessions as as needed. So you could call a study session or the park board could meet this next month, and they could choose to reevaluate their priorities and move this up and keep the same timeline we're talking about right now. That, Mary, that is a possibility. Thank you. We we meet, July 1. We could meet before then as as well.
Council member Palmer. The decision for us tonight is is these courts are are not gonna get better over age. And if the because the park board looked looked at it already once and it and we've been asked and I brought it forward, for the city council to help fund this because in their contingency, they didn't have $150,000 but they could come up with $75,000 we could delay it and then have the same discussion. There are some people who don't like CIAs. It's part of our rules and regulations and that's why I brought it up.
And I think, working with the park department on this makes sense. I think that this is the time to do it and move ahead with this. Our contingency is almost six months old. We haven't used very much of it. And so I don't think $75,000 is going to break the bank on the contingency fund. So, I guess I would, call the question. The question has been called. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed, say nay. Nay. Nay. Motion passes five two. Thank you. Thank you. We will take a ten minute break.
Take their seats. We are now, folks can please quiet down. We are, now at h which is the Downtown Historic District Property Prevention Program funding. This item is back before us as the mayor has exercised the veto on this resolution passed by council at our June 2 meeting. The city charter requires an item that has been vetoed to return at the next meeting for consideration and a vote. The item must be taken up as is and cannot be amended or changed at
this time. Approval of the item by overriding the veto requires a super majority of the body to pass, which is five a aye votes. Otherwise, the veto is sustained and the item fails. With those guidelines in mind, I'll turn it over to the mayor to speak to, her veto message. Mayor, take your way. Thank you, mister president. I've asked that on this the screen is the the veto letter that I wrote, and I'm not going to read the whole thing because you've all had an opportunity to read it. One of the reasons, and this past, six nothing.
So I understand that there was strong support for this, but I was not here, at the time of the meeting, and I felt, I had shared my position at the DMCC meeting. I had hoped when, the two local representatives, Mark Tine, myself, had voted no, and our council president had abstained for that, that it might send a message to the council that there were issues with this. And so my hope had been that you would send it back to the DMCC EDA and DMCC, not that I suppose it would eventually get to the DMCC board. But they had even mentioned at the time that they had,
you know, heard our concerns previously when a similar, piece of legislation came through here, and that they, were going to take it up under consideration, at the before at the next meeting before September. And so my hope had been that, we would send this one back so that we weren't setting, a continued a veto, and I'm going to ask that you uphold it. I do want to just give a little background. None of the members of this council were serving in elected office in 2013. And frankly, most of our staff weren't working here in their current roles in 2013,
and many, some of you didn't even live in Minnesota in 2013. So you may not know the history and why I have as strong a feelings as I do, and so I do want to explain that. And so I understand there are going to be different viewpoints. But I authored the DMC legislation for Mayo Clinic. When it when it came forward, there was considerable discussion and consternation, not only by, the legislature, but also by the city of Rochester, who was not given a final say on and and wasn't even aware that this was going to be brought forward. So there was a lot of work that was done with the administrator,
the deputy administrator, other staff people, to make sure that the city council had the ultimate decision about DMC decisions, all all of them. And so that was added. It wasn't part of the original legislation. It was added. In addition to that, I went to the table at committee hearings that whole year, as did Senator Sanjem, who has shares my concerns for this, and we went and convinced our colleagues over the course of the year to support the Destination Medical Center initiative. And when we did so, we sat at that table,
and we said that this was to build infrastructure in a district, the Destination Medical Center district, that would support Mayo's growth as a Destination Medical Center and would encourage additional private investors to move here and to invest here, and that the spaces that we created would be great for visitors, staff and the community. That was our goal. That is what we told them. And it's been frustrating for me to hear discussions come up about even housing, which was never part of the goal,
was never talked about at the table. So I understand that times change, but when you're a legislator and you say to your 200 and some colleagues that this is what we're going to do with that money, you, as the person who carried that, feel a great deal of responsibility to do what you say you're going to do, to hold it true. And in fact, the reason I ran for mayor, and I talked about this the entire time I campaigned, was to assure that the Destination Medical Center was done in a way that we said it would be at the legislature,
and that was not just good for Mayo Clinic, but that was good for the people who lived here. And so, I feel a great sense of responsibility, to make certain that what what I said, what Dave Sendrim as the author in the Senate, said, is what we do in this body. And as I mentioned in my letter, I have particular concern with how the adaptive reuse grants program was put in there. It had always been my my thought, and it was a misunderstanding on my part, which I mentioned, during the first, piece of, grant,
the application that came through that I thought it would be zero interest loans that were repayable and could be on a rotating basis as opposed to cash grants. I have a serious issue, concern with, as do legislators, frankly, about giving cash to an individual that will benefit him personally, or them personally, whomever it happens to be, rather than something that is for the public good, like an affordable housing process. I wouldn't have even been thrilled about that, but at least that there would be at least some, public good done from that,
rather than both of these are single use, one one one apartment complexes, that are getting remodels of between 500 and around $500,000 on this last one. And as I said to some of you, we have constituents. We're we're talking about a $250,000 DMC gift. We have constituents who will not see $250,000 in their lifetime. Period. And I would love to tell you, and I'm pretty sure I'm true, that there isn't a homeowner in this city that wouldn't be thrilled to have a $250,000
grant to fix up their homes, whether it be to add an apartment, put an ADU, I always say that wrong, in their backyard, or just fix it up for resale, so they could make money. That was not the intent of Destination Medical Center funds. So that is why I vetoed it. That is why I'm asking you to uphold it and send this back to the DMC to redo their program and take that adaptive use grant money out and make it a zero interest loan or to utilize the city's zero interest loan and allow
the individuals who own the property to put more of their own cash behind something they'll be making profit from. Thank you, mayor. Discussion? Council member Wahl. I I really do appreciate the mayor's historical rendering of the the money that was given through the legislature, but things have changed, including, the Historic Preservation District that we did. And some of us voted for that only because we were going to be able to support, people who own buildings downtown. I guess no matter what we would put into a building downtown,
it would benefit the building owner to a degree. I ran some numbers on this. It's a sir it's a $250,000 grant, but they're also putting in $250,000. I don't expect them to ever see a profit on that. If they took that out, on a mortgage for thirty years at 5% interest, their monthly payment would be $1,342. If they charged extra for utilities and other things that brought it up to 1,500 and could rent that apartment for $2,000, they would clear $500 a month, and it would take more than forty one years before they would see a profit.
So the actual kind of money transaction is, while important, probably not the reason I would vote for it, it would be to activate, that space as we are hoping to do with some downtown buildings. Council member Palmer. Well, I'll I'll second what mister Wall just said. And historic preservation was passed because we we had funds, available. The DMC has already approved this. They voted, to approve this. We approved it in January. It got vetoed. We overrode the veto. It's a consistency thing for me unless DMC wants to change their formula,
that's great. But, for consistency perspective, we approved an apartment. These people applied for it. They were granted it for the DMC. We voted on it and so I would like to see us uphold the, or override the veto. And I think that, it takes a lot of effort to apply for these grants and to have and you have to remember, it's a grant but it's also 50% match. And these apartments that they're building on these, are very expensive to do. I mean, they have to separate it for fire and separate it for sound. They have to, have separate furnaces and air conditioning.
They to have a new stairway. There's a lot of stuff you have to do to make this apartment done. The other item on it is that Mr. Quasil got money for duct tuck, pointing. You know, we had a wall, he didn't do maintenance on it, and so now we're giving him money to have a wall. Now what we're doing is that we're actually getting something. We're actually getting an apartment downtown that will give somebody some place to live and we're adding something we're adding something to the tax base. Fixing a wall, you didn't add anything to the tax base. You didn't increase anything. So for me, it's very simple what we did.
If DMC wants to change the rules, that's great. They haven't done that yet. We've already voted on this once, so I will be, hoping to override the veto. I'll just say a few words. One, mayor, I really respect your, determination on this, and I want to assure you that your message and, did get through to the DMCC staff and, board, and there will be a reevaluation of the program, that we will see in, in September. And, I I think also really looking at the precedent,
this council has already set a precedent. And, we have, we have, approved, one adaptive reuse, grant already. When it comes to, you know, use of the space, whether it's an apartment or retail space, I think, I'm agnostic on that. I think, property owners will see value in either of those. I do, have some concerns about whether or not a, owner occupant is using that, that apartment. I've gotten some,
assurance from staff that these are nonhomestead homestead properties, so, that would not be, a benefit to, to them. And I also look at it from a sense of that increasing the value of these properties through adaptive reuse will increase their assessed market value, and that will then add to our city property tax base. So, so I, I will, vote to override as well, but I do, respect your determination and,
look forward to the discussion at the DMCC table. Council member Dohring? Yes. So I have a a different perspective, and, I actually I not actually. I agree with the mayor's point of view on this. And to be consistent, alongside my, initial vote on a, a similar project, I will be voting, with the mayor, and in support of her veto. That being said, it brings me great comfort that the DMCC board is reevaluating this particular, part of the DMCC project. Council member Miller.
I I appreciate the opportunity to engage on this again. I recent DMCC corporation board meeting where this came up. I've reviewed the resolution that was passed in 2024 that clearly outlines in the memo the historic district was adopted by the prior council, against the wishes of a majority of downtown property owners in that district, the the complement to that that district was a program to maintain the buildings, which we've approved roof repairs, we've approved tuck pointing, we've approved things that keep those buildings viable and persisting into the future as a historic district.
And I think as, council president Schubert said, the use of that building, whether it's benefiting a property owner as a residential unit that can draw rents or as a retail space that also can draw rents. We recently heard from community members about the importance of four businesses together in the same block and that the sum of those businesses has more impact than any one business. And I think activating the space, as others have said, is a way that maintains a public good of a historic district and that
unoccupied upstairs spaces that are unusable to property owners in their current forms adds vibrancy and activation and economic vitality to that district. And I understand also that this project or these types of projects are particularly expensive. The uniqueness of updating, historic buildings to code, also bringing in some of the requirements that the DMC funds have of prevailing wage and other factors that might not apply in the same way to other projects. And so I I hear the community's concern and I hear hear the mayor's concern
about the specific cost of this project for one apartment. And I think there are unique factors contemplated here, and I look forward to the DMC report on what private investment has been generated. We've received numbers that there has been private investment generated through this program, and so perhaps it's not at the level that some would like to see. But I plan to support this override of a veto to move this project forward because I see that property owners have come to this, process in good faith,
brought projects aligned with the process that's adopted, and I look forward to the ability to re engage with that with the DMC Corporation Board in the September meeting. But I think at this point, I believe that we have a responsibility to honor the program that has been adopted in conjunction with the district that is adopted. Thank you, council member. Mayor Norton. Thank you. This is what I expected. You voted once. You're gonna stick by your votes, and I'm disappointed. I will tell you that. A a couple things I wanna say. The money that we're using is not our sales tax money or our our residents'
money. This is money that the state of Minnesota has taken from taxpayers from across the state, income tax. It's their income tax. They've given it to us, and we are using it to enrich two individuals in a in a one apartment each project. I just do I just will will tell you, as a person who carried that bill, that is not what we said was gonna happen with this money. And it's really it hurts for me to see this happen. I will say, and to the point that was made, I too lobbied DMC for the Heritage Preservation.
If you go back and look on record, I supported a fund for Heritage Preservation. I've been behind it the whole time, just not for adaptive reuse, for non affordable housing that's in the public good. I do not think what we're doing is that, so I just want to be really clear about that. I support historic preservation and I support the use of funds. I will also say, and I appreciated Norm's mathematical exercise there. I don't know that I agree with all of it, but whatever, you gave it your best and I thank you for that. There is a 50% match.
Part of that 50% match is coming from Citi. Sales tax money, not out of their pockets. I mean, are we I just want to clarify. It's a loan that has to be repaid by the proprietor. I'm just saying, it's not their own cash out of the individual's pocket. We're allowing a 50% match using city funds, city sales tax dollars, which I actually think is a wiser use of a revolving loan fund, but it's not they're not paying it out of their own pocket. They're using city funds to city sales tax to mix with state income tax in order to fix up their
property that they bought. And also, some of that property could still be used, just not as an apartment, and I would I would agree with that. So, I I just my final point is, I spoke out the first time we did this. So this, just to be clear, this isn't new, this isn't a surprise. I spoke out when we did the first project. I had support from one colleague on on the council here. And I thought at that point, the DMC said, we hear you. This is problematic. We'll do something. And it's disappointing to me that it's gonna be two.
It's gonna be harder to say no after two than one. And it's there are going to be people lined up. If I if I owned a property downtown, believe me, I'd be lined up and asking for adaptive reuse myself. Well, no, I wouldn't have because I carried the bill. But if I hadn't carried the bill, I might have. So, anyway, I appreciate you allowing this discussion. I anticipated the direction this was going, but I have to stand on what I said to the legislature, how I said I would use, the state's income tax money, and it's not for this. And so thank you for letting me say my piece. Thank you for letting me,
veto. I'm disappointed that you're not gonna support it, but I do appreciate that you've tolerated this, tonight so well. So thank you. Council Member Fredericks. Yes. I appreciate Mayor Norton's passion on this subject and but there's just there was one thing she said that I want to, put out there and strongly disagree with. These these projects for these two property owners is not going to enrich them. It is not going to enrich them. I promise you that. This is gonna improve their property. It is not going to enrich them.
Thank you. Any further discussion? Is there a motion on this? Council member Palmer. I'll make a motion adapting a resolution authorizing downtown property preservation program funding GSIA in the amount of $245,185 the property located at 325 South Broadway. Moved by council member Palmer. Is there a second? I'll second. Seconded by council member Fredericks. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say nay. Nay. Motion passes six to one with Councilmember Doering voting nay.
We will move on to H3, contract award for Heart of the City Peace Plaza paver modifications. This is a consent agenda item pulled by Councilmember Palmer. Councilmember Palmer, you have the floor. Thank you very much. I had questions on F13. I believe the math is up to 160,056 for, the contract to redo this. We have $20,000 for design, dollars 13,275 for survey and then $20,000 for wayfinding. I'd like to have the in the packet, I would like to have the design included in that and also the survey to
show us what was wrong with what was done before, and I didn't see that. So, I'll make a motion to table this until we can get those items, presented to us. A motion, by council member council member Palmer to table. Is there a second? Seeing none, I will turn it over to miss Steinhauser to give us a little bit of a, a deeper dive into, this item. Sure. Thank you, council president Schoebring, mayor, members of city council. Just, wanna clarify, the items that were identified in the budget, and I'll also ask our director of construction,
Steve Samson Brown, to Oh, he I didn't see Steve. Provide as well. Yeah. I was gonna go to him first, but I didn't see him. He was hiding behind mister Parrish. Yeah. I I do just wanna clarify that the survey work wasn't intended to, indicate that something had been erroneously installed or that there was a problem with installation. It is not unusual to have a settlement and so the survey work was to, look at if there was settlement since the project had been installed. But with that, I'll turn it over to Director Samson Brown.
Just to follow-up, as, Ms. Steinhauser said, WHS was simply surveying. We're going to do it we did it once, we'll do it again in July, see if there's been any movement. We use the first survey to inform the design that's being recommended for award tonight. And to clarify the RDG design consulting fee, there's basically four parts to their $20,000 fee: design assistance, developing from ADA compliance, things like that. Providing input on walking zones. They're architects and landscape architects, so they have an expertise beyond what our project management team holds in house where
they can advise us on that. Did a little bit of stakeholder participation as an independent third party to solicit feedback from, people with mobility challenges, to inform the final design that's being recommended here for implementation tonight. And then the part of the DMC action was they asked us to come back, in August with a more of an all in project budget with a more, expansive fix. And RDG, who does many paper projects around the country annually, will help, the PM team develop a final cost estimate for that DMC requested.
Thank you. Further, questions? Mr. Samson Brown, could you, just briefly, discuss the, the construction process? I thought it was a very thoughtful and, summer friendly schedule. I would like to have that maybe out there for the public to hear. Sure. So the goal to create more flat walking space that's more friendly to people with mobility challenges, is to take the existing paver, which we found to be most cost affordable. We will turn the paver over. There's a flat side to the back of the paver,
that's currently face down. Those are quarry cut, so that surface needs to be roughened before we leave it in place for people to walk on. That process, those are granite pavers. That process requires heat treatment with a plasma torch. We have prototyped this to make sure we were confident it was going to work before we bid the project, so we know that's a methodology that will provide some traction to the new walking surface. And And generally, we've worked with a contractor to do 10 foot by 10 foot, maybe a maximum of the 20 foot,
area by 20 foot areas. They will demobilize at the end of the day, pack up and go home. They will use the alley, adjacent to the chateau for the to use the torch, so that's safety out of the way. We can cordon off that area so the public can still use the plaza. And there's other work happening, so we're working around, the Marriott is currently placing a crane on First Avenue to, repair their rooftop and also, on the South End of First Avenue at Second Street Southwest, Mayo Clinic, Gilbane is their contractor performing work.
So we're also coordinating around them. And project manager Josh DeFang, who's available online, has coordinated with the Chateau Theatre for any special events we need to work around. So, we're trying to work in a small area, make the plaza open for folks to enjoy it throughout the summer, but get in and get out and, accomplish the project work. And and the overall time time line? So we're estimating we can do it in about twenty eight working days. The polymeric sand in the joints, needs good weather. So we can't like, a day like today when it's raining, we wouldn't be able to have a working day. We'll probably lose a few days for special events.
When there's music and things like that going on, we may have to have the contractor not work a full eight hours. So, hopeful to be done by as early as, around August 10 approximately. If we run into two weeks of rain, it may be closer to the August. But we're gonna twenty eight calendar or four working weeks is approximately what we're aiming for. Thank you. Council member Keane. Yeah. I think I'd like to get a motion on the floor adopting a resolution awarding the contract to CD tile and stone in the amount of $160,056
for the Heart Of The City East Peace Plaza paver modifications. A mo a motion by council member Keane. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by council member Wahl. Council member Keane, you have the floor. Yeah. Again, I I know we spent a lot of time on this earlier in the year. This is a a more of a, compromise solution. This isn't what everybody wanted to do, but, I'm, I think this is the staff has implemented what we had talked about and what we what was presented, so I'm ready to go forward with it. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, say aye.
Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Nay. Motion passes six-one with Council Member Palmer voting nay. Next item is H4, DMC strategic development funding for the Civic Center North Apartment Project. Councilmember Palmer, this is an item you pulled from the consent agenda. Yeah, I'll be voting no, for I think the reasons I said before. So I'll let somebody else make a motion and listen to the discussion. Is there a motion on this item? I'll make a motion to adopt the resolution authorizing utilization of up to $500,000 in general state infrastructure aid from the strategic development capital improvement plan budget for up
to $13,500,000 in tax increment financing to support the Civic Center North Apartments project by Rochester Civic Lot Limited Partnership and Rochester Tower LLC. A motion, by Councilmember Keane and seconded by Councilmember Miller. Councilmember Keane, anything more to add? No. We're gonna go into this in our EDA, to a little more detail. But, again, this is, again, a major project that we've been going on for over four years now coming coming to a head tonight.
Further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say nay. Nay. Motion passes six-one with Councilmember Palmer voting nay. Moving on to our, Council initiated actions. We have I one, which is a CIA on the Stonebridge subdivision connectivity feasibility study. Council member Palmer. Thank you. I was, approached by the neighbors in that neighborhood with no way of getting a path to their, from from their subdivision to,
our PATH system in Rochester. And so I talked with, Public Works, and they're really gonna take some time for them to come up with a plan and a funding source. And so that's why I did the, CIA. And so source. And so that's why I did the CIA. And so, I'm just asking that we ask the staff to come up with a plan on how to get a trail system from Stonebridge, out to the main city path line. As you saw today, we already approved a subdivision to the east of this and adding more people to this area with really no safe way to get them into town.
Thank you. Any, questions to staff on this item? I, any is there a council member Keane. Go ahead. Yeah. Again, I looked over the council initiated action, and there's an interesting statement in there that at one point says, if the council initiated action is not approved, the work will still may be considered through other planning mechanisms, though it's not the same prior not with the same prioritization or timeline. And and I'm looking at that as that is what our process is for how we close these gaps. There, you talk about, people that are isolated from this.
I've had a section on Eighteenth Avenue Southwest that's had these complaints for years. Now it took five years, and now we've got a project coming up in 2026, 2027 for Eighteenth Avenue to work. But that should work that way. It shouldn't be this one getting favored nation status because somebody brings it to us. I feel better or more confident that these things be prioritized through staff work and which ones are, you know, come up in front of us versus, using council initiated actions to pick one area over another.
Council member Miller. So a couple of questions. I I appreciate the the intent of the council initiated action. I agree that we heard and approved additional development in that area, which will bring additional people into an area of the city without access when we heard comments on transportation for the need for connected access to all parts of the city and not just by driving. So I'm very sympathetic. And I also, I guess, I have a couple of questions. One, has the Pedestrian Bicycle Advisory Commission Committee been engaged in any way in this process or an update to the active transportation master plans prioritization?
Because, again, there's been additional development approved. That plan was adopted in 2022. I would assume that there's some need to consider changes, and I I wonder what that role of that committee is in this. I don't know who that question is for. Who is going to take that one? Mister Dombrowski? I can try and take that one. This specific project has not been before that committee for feedback. It is identified within the active transportation plan, a connection to this neighborhood in this area. It's not the highest priority as you read through that plan.
But specifically to this conversation, they have not discussed it yet. So my second question is about funding source. We also heard about parkland dedications, and I've often heard that parks and trails are part of our parks system. Is it true that parkland dedication could not be system. Is it true that parkland dedication could not be cash in lieu of land and used for trail connections? Could it be? Council member Miller, not the way our ordinance is currently set up. Under law, it could be, but not the way our current ordinance is written. Okay. Council member Keane. Yeah. I I I wanna just kind of,
piggyback on this because I I think, I've seen other areas like this too that, a lot of times staff will say, like, well, we sell this out in the Mayo Wood project that, you know, could you use could you build these sort of trail connections? And the answer is you can if it fits what the definition of sidewalk is. But now you'll get into this parkland dedication and that cannot be used these ways. And I think that's something that, my take would be my sense would be that this council would be interested in, like, looking at trying to expand the definition of what parkland or could could be used for.
Now I I I don't know what the ins and outs of that is, but I think that's what council member Miller was suggesting. And and I would, wanna, like, second that. I think it's an interesting thought that, there are places when we put up one that's gonna be in front of us in the next six months where would it be valuable to use the parkland dedication or that as a way of of extending or connecting trails as opposed to saying no. This has to be, you know, a five acre or more green green space for city what is we know as a city park.
And I I think there's places where we could be more creative and and improve the trail system and connectivity these neighborhoods using those sort of, funds. Councilmember Palmer. There's two subdivisions coming up and one of them is across from the apple orchard in, they're gonna have to put in sidewalks. The problem we have on the on the north part of this is, the school district owns the land that that goes down to the corner of County Road 22 or East Circle Drive. And so, the the ask is is is to have public works look at it. We can, I'd be happy to to send it over to the transportation committee and have them
look at it and see if it comes to their priority. This is something that the last council member who served that area started and, we just haven't come to a conclusion of what's the best way to get this orphan subdivision, a way to get into Rochester. Did you propose a, process forward, council member? And is that something that staff wants to respond to? Council president, I think we need to understand from city council if there's a majority of folks that want to move forward. We tend not to do much on this until we hear from the city council,
which is the purpose of a council initiated action. Thank you. I I guess I have a question then. So I I'm looking at and I heard, mister Dombrowski talk about, kind of the master plan. And I'm looking at the the CIA here and its, conduct a feasibility study to assess trail connectivity options for this specific subdivision. I heard that it wasn't the top priority, but if it's in there, isn't it also then being studied for feasibility?
I guess I I guess where I'm having trouble with the CIA is I would think that this would be part of both the the process that, the council member Keane referenced as far as the the sidewalk gaps and the the trail connection master plan. So I guess I'm missing something as to how it is not on on, rate the radar now. It's it's definitely on our radar, but it hasn't risen to the priority to our annual work plan that this is the focus and we're spending time in house with our team performing the feasibility study
that's being requested here. We have plenty of other areas that are also, you know, ahead of this that we have to look at. Another thing we're looking at is a long term just pavement maintenance plan, not only for streets, but paths as we inform not only the ongoing maintenance, but where do we build new paths and how are we gonna maintain them over the life of those paths. So that's something our team's working on and we're hoping to bring back to you in the future as we rate all of our pavements currently that we have in the city. Thank you. Got it. Mister president, can I add to that?
Mister mister Neimeyer. Thank you. So I also wanna point out that the active transportation plan is, if you wanna call it more of a conceptual document, that's a very high level planning document that doesn't get into the specifics of what might be required for a project. So in concept, a connection out to those neighborhoods has been explored and included in the report, but none of the specifics that would be required to actually lay in a trail out there. Also wanna point out when we were here and talked about our sidewalk gap, scoring system that this connection to this neighborhood would fall outside the definition of what
a sidewalk gap is. Yeah. Council member Miller. I I appreciate the city administrator's, question to us of what we're asking for. And so if I might, I'll just propose two things that I would look for. One is to engage the the Pedestrian Bicycle Advisory Commission to look at this concept of an orphan neighborhood, see which ones exist, and create some sort of work with staff to create a a prioritization perhaps, identifying what those neighborhoods are, how many people live there, what is the distance of disconnection? Because I think of this neighborhood particularly in its proximity to Quarry Hill,
and I would suspect that that amenity feels like it's across a major highway. Secondly, I would want a a review of our park dedication parkland dedication policy to consider that as a potential way to Advance sidewalk trail closures, not not as sidewalks, but as multiuse trails or connections to these areas. There's a potential funding opportunity to to move this forward. I I don't want to prioritize tonight a single neighborhood, and I appreciate council member Palmer's advocacy.
I've heard from other neighbors in different parts of the city who've shared concerns of not being able to leave their neighborhood and access our trail system or access regional parks. So I am fully supportive of the idea, but I would look to the established mechanisms of feedback and establishing a reliable funding source to make progress on these gaps. I'm gonna go to council member Keane and then Palmer. K. I I I'm concerned because there's a specific council initiated action in front of us, and then there are these other discussions. So what I wanna do is make a motion to deny the council initiated action
action requesting that Public Works conduct a feasibility study to access trail connectivity options specifically for Stormbridge Stonebridge subdivision. Motion by council member Keane. Is there a second? I'll second that. Seconded by council member Miller. Council member Keane, you have the floor. Yeah. I I am worried about our discussion because when you start getting into, you know, we could do, sometimes I I've held I feel like sometimes the staff might interpret that we approve the council initiated action or we approve something. So I want to make sure that if we end these discussions about parkland dedication
or using other things, it's not the same as saying, Yes, go work on this one. Because my take would be that this is the one that I looked at the narrative and said, I think this needs to be considered as one of the many things as opposed to the one that we're directing staff to work on. Council member Palmer. I like what mister Miller said, but there's a motion on the table, and I'll let see how that rides. I have a a par a parliamentary question. So if, this current motion, passes, do we have the opportunity for future for other motions in this item?
Who wants to take that? Council president, can I answer it in a how this could come back in a different way? Because I don't think you have an opportunity to vote again this evening. But what I'm hearing people say is that what they're more interested in having a conversation about is very different than what is on the table. And there the way that you would do that is through study session or through planned study sessions that we have ahead of us, like the action plan update and trying to align with what your strategic priorities have adjusted to. And what I was hearing getting discussed is actually a fairly significant departure to how
we have been prioritizing our work and not a small lift. Thank you. Well, I I guess I I will support the the the motion by, council member Keane. I do want to, weigh in that I would like to see, most most certainly, council member Miller's first, proposal, which is the having the ped and bicycle advisory Committee do do some kind of study of orphan neighborhoods and, and including the distance and, and,
disconnection issue. And, so I'll leave it at that. Council member, Fredericks. Well, in layman's terms, I guess, what I'm looking at is we wanna connect that whole area out there. We're not just looking at doing one division. We wanna look at a bigger plan to connect that whole area eventually. Is that what I'm hearing? Eventually. That's what we wanna look at? I I guess I'll take it and then let my, other colleagues I guess I'm hearing it even broader than that area. I'm hearing it citywide. Council president, I just wanna be clear that if you vote to deny this, we aren't going to be doing any work other than considering how to bring this
before you in a different way in a we're not gonna start working on any of these ideas until we have brought it for before the council in some other way, probably a study session. Understand. That was a lot. I guess I guess, administer Zalms. I guess if, if, so I guess that goes to to council member Miller's first point on, the, plan of the pedestrian and bicycle advisory committee, do they have a work plan? Is would we have to, get a proposal into their work plan, or is that something that the members of that
advisory committee can, have input on? I see, deputy administrators Steinholzer. Sure. Thank you, council president Schuengeringer, members of the council. I will try and answer and, obviously, if, others want to chime in. The, PBAC committee, we use the active transportation master plan as the guiding document for this committee. So when the team comes together with our annual work plan, we go to the active transportation plan as the the tool just like the comp plan is for the planning and zoning commission,
the historic preservation district strategies for the historic commission. This is the this is the road map. It is a fifteen year plan that helps us understand what we need to do to connect this community. And so that becomes our template for prioritizing our work for the year. Got it. Council member Miller. Then I guess a question is, what is the mechanism or frequency of update of that plan? We heard from chief Fuller this evening that the city continues to grow outwards, which is changing some of the strategic considerations. So if the active transportation master plan is a living document,
that sounds great. If it is a static document adopted in 2022, then I I'm concerned. So I thank you, Councilmember Miller, for the I think there's a question in there. I I think it is fair to say that it's been a living document as far as staff is concerned. I would say that the rapport with PBAC has maybe not been as met met their expectations, and that is something that both, my team and, Tyler Niemeyer's team has worked on because it's a joint effort. Right? There's representatives from Public Works and our strategic transformation partnership team, staff that that commission. And, recent months in bringing updates back to that,
and we will continue to do that. One one additional question. Since the active transportation coordinator position is not currently filled, when might we expect to hear a plan for the future of that position? Would that be an action plan in a budget in what way? So we are actually every time there's a vacancy thank you. Every time there's a vacancy position, we evaluate it. We actually came together last Friday, impacted teammates that work closely in active transportation from public works, community development, transit, and strategic transformation to talk about the current job description.
Is it still relevant? Does it need to be modified? And so we are in that exercise right now along with our partners. It's a DMC funded position. So, we are at consensus. I anticipate that, a job description update will be coming forward to our HR department to to evaluate, make sure it doesn't need repointing, and then we can proceed with advertising. That is the that's the plan. Great. Thank you. Any further discussion on, council member Wahl? I read the action requested as really quite benign, and it seems to me like we're spending money or putting in trails when all
it asks for is a feasibility study. Feasibility study could say, you know, it's in the plan, it's just hasn't risen to the top. It's just asking for consideration of a specific ask from a neighborhood, a community. So, I I I don't I don't see all the angst that might be expressed on the part of some people. Any further discussion on this item? Seeing none, all in favor of the motion, council member King, can you repeat your motion just so we we know?
I I, move to deny the, council initiated action. Got it. Alright. So all in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. Nay. Clerk Caso, can you call the roll? Council member Keane? Aye. Council member Miller? Aye. Council member Wall? Nay. Council member Fredericks? Aye. Council member Palmer? Nay. Council member Doreen. Nay. Did you do me? I did not. Oh, okay. Council president Schubert. Aye. And it's My pass is four to three. Okay. Thank you.
Moving on to, our ordinance first readings. Thank you, mister president. There's one first reading. Item j one, an ordinance annexing to the city of Rochester approximately 158.2 acres of land located North Of 40 Eighth Street Southeast, South Of Fortieth Street Southeast, located East of the east terminus of Orchard Orchid Road Southeast identified by PIN number zero eight nine zero eight nine, eighty nine-ninety one, eighty nine-eighty seven. Moving on to the second reading item K1,
ordinance rezoning approximately 55.48 acres of land located West Of Broadway Avenue North, East Of East River Road Northeast, South Of 40 Fourth Street Northeast and North Of 40 First Street Northeast from LI, light industrial to SI, special Industrial, and amending ordinance number 4,478, known as the Unified Development Code of the City Of Rochester, Minnesota. Is there a motion on this item? I'll move approval. Moved by, Council Member Keene. Second. Seconded by Council Member Wall.
All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Motion passes. Moving on to other business. Is there a motion to, recess to the EDA meeting? Moved by council member Miller. Second. Seconded by council member Doring. All in favor, say aye. Aye. We are now in, back to the city council meeting. Is there a motion to adapt adopt the findings of the Rochester EDA? So moved. Moved by council member Miller, seconded by council member Fredericks. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed,
say nay. Seeing none, is there any other business? Seeing none, is there a done. Oh, go ahead, council member. I I just did wanna do a follow-up to that discussion we had about, parkland and connectivity and things like that. I I did hear a couple of people suggesting that so I I again, I don't know if there's a consensus discussion here, but is there something that we should be looking at that I think I heard the staff saying, like, we're following these I think it was ordinances as opposed to policies. Is there something that, we the staff would look for us to do either through a council initiated action
or some other way to get something, like, looked at or does it is this not well formed enough? We aren't asking you to do anything. But, you do have an upcoming study session where you're talking about your action plan. I just would like to say the things that were discussed are not simp like, those will reprioritize other work that you may be expecting to happen, or you may need to add more to your budget in order to do those things. The parkland dedication has been looked at multiple times since I've been here and hasn't aided anywhere other than to the legislature,
and then we now have some additional opportunities that still haven't even been taken. But that would be very heavy lift. And so if the council wants to prioritize it immediately before we even have the the budget conversation and the study session about the action plan, you are more than welcome to do a council initiated action. I would say that, typically, that would come forward, and we we would need to it's typically, I don't start creating work on something that didn't come from a council vote. No. No. I understand. And I I'm not yeah.
I'm trying to think of how to I I heard enough consensus. I thought there was some direction, but I'm not talking about changing run the fly. It's more or less as we go forward and look and, go through the year, what can we be doing to say I know the work we've done on Parkland Dedication had a lot to do with what the funding sources are and should they be more and should it be less. I think this had to do with, can we use those funds differently? And is that state law or is that and, again, I'm not looking for answers on the phone. And in order to do that, you need to go through a whole process to update your unified development code.
There's, like, 15 pages that talks about parkland dedication. So it's not a simple process to go through, plus I believe that it hasn't come forward before because the park board hasn't asked to really change it, and so you got a lot of there's just a lot you'd need to do, which isn't saying you can't, but we if we don't have priorities, then And and I would just add to, administrative Zelms. It's incumbent upon us. Council member Palmer brought this before us, I think, for various reasons. A majority of us did not agree to that, but we all heard that discussion.
We can all look to those commonalities that we saw and have the opportunity, to bring forth something else with another bringing along another council member and, continue the the discussion. Thank you. Mayor Norton. Just quick before we leave, I wanted to let you know that the ambassador for Luxembourg came to Rochester last Friday. They gave us a gift of Luxembourg, apparently, is known for its roses, so she brought this along. There were three staff along with her, and it was a fascinating, very quick discussion.
They were leaving our meeting, and, council member Dorings stayed with me. We had just finished our meeting, so he joined in the discussion. They went to Assisi Heights after that, and to Mayo Clinic. And the link there is, that sister Alfred Mose, is that I'm saying that right, and the doctors Mayo when the tornado hit Rochester and they decided, that a hospital needed to be built, sister Alfred was the, was part of the Luxembourg diaspora that came to Rochester, Minnesota.
And so they have a near and dear place in their heart for our community, the nuns, and Mayo Clinic. So just thought I would I did not I was not aware of that history. I thought I would share it. It was really nice meeting, and I will say she followed up, this weekend with condolences to our community and our state, because of the, murders and shootings. So it was very sweet. Good meeting. Thank you for that, mayor. And with that, is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Moved by council member Wall, seconded by council member Fredericks. All in favor, say aye.
Aye. Any opposed say nay. We are adjourned.