All right, good evening everybody. We're going to switch this up a little bit. We have a new announcement to make and then and then we'll get into the meeting. Um, this meeting is being recorded by True Lens Community Media. You can view city meetings live and replayed on cable channel 799. Meetings are also streamed
live and archived on the city of St. Paul Park's YouTube channel. Um, and at this time, um, I would ask everybody to stand. We're going to recite the pledge of allegiance, but before we do, um, due to the tragic events here in the state of Minnesota, we lost some community
leaders. Um, I'm going to try not to get too much in because it's been a long weekend for some of us who served at the capital. Um, but I'm just going to ask for a moment of silence and honor the Hortman families and their loss and the Hoffman families that have a long road to hoe right now. Um, and just ask
everybody to keep them in their prayers. So, we're going to take a moment of silence and then that will lead into the pledge of allegiance. So, thank you everybody. All right. Thank you. Let's open the meeting with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Good evening everybody. Welcome to the city of St. Paul Park regular council meeting June 16, 2025.
First item on the agenda is approval of the minutes of the May 19th, 2025 regular council meeting and wave the reading of the same. So moved. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor say I. I. I. Motion carries 50.
All right. Item number two, items from the public. Council member Hagerty is checking to see if anybody signed up that has nothing to do with this evening's agenda. All right, seeing nobody, we'll move on to items number three. We have a donation and a presentation from the
Lions Club. How about I'll come around over there, Zach, and I can bring this microphone and meet me over here. I'll just hand it over to you. Thank you, honorable mayor, members of the council. Tonight, we're here to present two AED safe stations to the
city of St. Paul Park. One is currently located and operational at the Lion Shack on the corner of Broadway and uh by the railroad tracks there and then the second one is at Heritage Park. So, with that, I just want to talk a little bit about the Lions Club International. Our mission is to empower Lions Clubs, volunteers, and partners to improve
health and well-being, strengthen communities, and support those in need through humanitarian services and grants and donations like these that impact lives globally and encourage peace and international understanding. Our motto is where there's a need, we serve selflessly. So, if you have needs, you make sure you let us know so that we can
see if we can help out. So, we are proud to partner with Teddy's Heart Foundation and the city of St. Paul Park to present these AEDs to the city of St. Paul Park. and we hope we never need to use them, but we also know that our community is strengthened a little bit more and we're a little more hearts safe uh with these units in place. So, with that, I'd like
to turn it over to uh Craig with Craig and Emily with the Teddy's Heart Foundation. Talk a little bit about their program. All right, thank you everyone. Um, this is Teddy's Heart Foundation and what we are is this is I'm Craig Dowel and this is my wife Emily Dowel and on May 4th of
2022 2022 at Woodridge Park in Cottage Grove, we lost uh my son Teddy, 22 years old, uh to sudden cardiac arrest on the basketball court. Um uh CPR was available um right away, but
there was no AAD. Okay. If there was an AED, we may not be standing right here talking about it. That's how important AEDs are. So, as a family, um, what we did is we came up with TA's heart Foundation. And what we do is we put
AEDs in public parks and places and we with help of Codgrove Fire Department and other fire stations um train on how to use that AED and how to do handsonly CPR. Right now um Zach talked about the two
in St. Paul Park. We have placed 24 in between Cottage Grove, Woodbury, St. Paul Park and our last one was in Stillwater. So that's what we're all about and we're not going to be stopping. We're going to keep going and
I'd like to thank the community of St. Paul Park who also helped out a lot in this and especially the Lions Club that did a great job. Thank you. Thank you. And City of St. Paul Park, sorry for your loss, but it has turned
into something and we do appreciate it. um and from all the communities. This what a great way to show and honor your the loss of your son. So, thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you to the Lions Club once again. Um Lions Club, St. Paul Park chapter. They just
do such a great job um for things in our community. So, we just wanted to acknowledge them, the great work that they do, and the great organizations that they partner with. So, thank you for those donations and once again, hopefully we do never have to use them. Thank you.
All right, moving on to item number four. We have a presentation from the city of Cottage Grove discussing ambulance service. Who would like to start? Just remember for the record, state your name, position.
I guess I guess I'm going to start off the bat here. Uh first of all, honorable mayor uh Frankie Council uh here in Sample Park. Uh obviously, I should say I'm the mayor of Cottage Grove. Uh very happy to be here this evening to uh share with you some information about the EMS service that we provide to uh uh
Sample Park as well as Newport Great Cloud Township and such and the citizens of Cottage Grove. I'm going to h hand you a flyer. I just want to kick off by sharing with you what this flyer is about or what we've been trying to do and then I'm going to turn it over to uh uh John Pritchard who will uh kind of lead you through a presentation that
we've provided this evening. So just to share with you uh the the challenge as we all are aware and I know uh uh Mayor Frankie has uh spent some time up at the capital. So he understands uh what what uh challenges are out there especially around uh
specifically Medicare and Medicaid. And one of the one of the big challenges that we're seeing uh is the cost of ambulance services are rising exponentially and it is causing uh some uh serious concerns as it relates to who has to pay uh the difference. So when
people are not able to pay and I think our staff will get more into uh the details here a little bit but what I wanted to share with you is uh the the last couple years uh the city of Cottage Grove other than going up to the the Minnesota capital we've actually spent
some time out in Washington DC and we're out there for a multitude of reasons. One is to, you know, champion for uh road projects in Cottage Grove, uh hope hoping for some funding uh for different road projects. But the other one is the flyer that we took with us this last
year uh this uh last September out to DC. And that was to make sure that our legislative uh officials out in in in Washington DC understand what effect um Medicare and Medicaid is having on uh local ambulance services. And we know
this isn't just a Cottage Grove thing. This is a nationwide issue and so we just want at least from our legislative contingent is to be able to share with them what are some of the concerns that are out there and and what is the financial impact uh to just the uh the ambulance service that the city of
Cottage Grove provides. So I just wanted to share that with you uh because we've been all we've been in this together before it became I think it was Sawashko I think uh Mayor Frankie and I have talked about that uh and then became the Cottage Grove Ambulance uh service. And so what I'll do right now is I'm I think I'm going to kick it over to John
Pritchard who will uh maybe get us kind of rolling on the uh EMS discussion. John, thank you. Mayor, council, thanks for having us to discuss our EMS system. My name is John Pritchard. I'm the fire and EMS chief for the city of Cottage Grove. So to
help understand the services we provide uh to St. Paul Park. We're just going to go over an overview of what level of EMS system we do, kind of some of the pieces that we provide and why we are very proud of the services that we do provide to St. Paul Park.
So, Cottage Grove and as uh Mayor Bailey had mentioned that um when this EMS service started in our communities, it was known as Southern Washington County Ambulance Service. And that um it sounds like until about the mid 80s it transitioned to the Cottage Grove Police Department where the police department
proudly served our communities providing paramedics and the fire department would typically drive an ambulance to the scene and the police department would provide that advanced life support care that paramedics do. Then in about the police our police department was taxed
with all the many things that police departments are have become responsible for which we all have seen throughout society and in our own cities. So we transitioned this to the Cottage Grove Fire Department to kind of be the sole provider of advanced life support both paramedics and EMTs to provide ambulance
transport to our communities. The other thing we're very proud of is the partnership we have with St. Paul Park Fire Department and really through the leadership of Chief Kramer, we've created a really good bond and are operating much better. We provide mutual aid, so meaning either one of us have a
fire, we're showing up to provide support for each other. We're doing a lot of coordinated training, which includes live fire training, fire officer training, and also helping each other learn incident command systems. And we also help we also help provide their first responder training and keep them up to date on EMS training as well.
We're very proud of that partnership. and you can see it on scene whether we're responding to Cottage Grove or St. Paul Park. We do a great job and we um so the EMS public service areas in the state of Minnesota are what kind of dictates how EMS care is provided in the
state. And this was created in the 1980s through state statute to kind of determine who can provide ambulance services to what areas. And really the goal of this when it was um created in statute is that there wouldn't be ambulance chasers. That when you call
911, you get one primary ambulance and you wouldn't have to worry about somebody else trying to jump in there and competing against you. So when you call 911, you get you know who's coming and you know who could help out. So currently the Cottage Grove uh fire department or the city of Cottage Grove
has a public service area for Cottage Grove, St. Paul Park, Newport, and Greycloud Island. And it is a incredibly complex process to modify and the state has looked at this over the last few years on different aspects of this but it still remains in statute.
So one of the things we're incredibly proud of for the um Cottage Grove Fire Department is we provide advant advanced life support care on every call that comes in. Some systems do a tiered model where you might get two EMTs and a basic life support ambulance and hopefully the
dispatcher gets that right. However, in our system, we're going to send a paramedic all the time. And the difference between that is almost tenfold on the training that they have. Um, EMTs do very basic stuff while paramedics can do things such as ventilators,
using ultrasound to see if a heart's beating. So, it is a much higher level of care and we provide that on every call that we respond to in our communities. The College Fire Department is incredibly proud of the level of care we provide. We've been recognized for the
level of care we provide, including a gold award from the American Heart Association for Heart and Stroke Care. We continually, actually, the last three years have been recognized by the Minnesota Office of EMS for clinical excellence. Again, we give a paramedic on every call for service. We have
phenomenal response times, which you'll see in a moment. We really are proud of the care we provide to the St. Paul Park community. As you can see in 2024, so data that we pulled, our average response time to St. Paul Park was about 6 minutes and 46
seconds with a median about 6 minutes. That's actually better in a lot of areas of Cottage Grove just because of geography. Our station is right off 80th. So we can get to um large part of St. Paul Park in a very quick time. And 90 90% of the time we're going to be
here in less than about 8 1/2 minutes. When compared to Minnesota as a whole, 2022 is the last year that we have that. The average response time is about 9 minutes and 43 seconds, which when you look at and that includes metro areas as well. That's just not rural areas. And
when you look at the 90th percentile, you're looking at 16 minutes. So when we look at what Cottage Grove can can provide and what maybe another service could provide, we are superior in that. And we are very proud of the response times because as in any medical emergency, time matters.
And then just an overview of the um level of response or how many times we're coming to St. Paul Park for EMS. We're kind of around that 400 to 500 area, but it does represent about 8.5% of our call volume as a fire department. And that's just for ambulance response
to the community. So, how EMS services are traditionally provided in the United States and it this is almost one of the exclusive ways it's um funded in the state of Minnesota and the metro is we bill for EMS services and we bill whoever your health
insurance provider is and over 70% of people in our communities are Medicare Medicaid recipients. But the goal is to self-fund EMS so we don't have to pass that cost on to taxpayers. And how we do that covers the labor, so the paramedics that are staffing the
ambulances, equipment such as things to restart hearts, those ultrasounds, the ambulances, and in Cottage Grove, we use an enterprise fund because we restrict that money that we receive from billing to our enterprise fund. So, it only can
be used for EMS operations. However, um we've seen the cost to provide this high level of high quality of EMS care is rapidly increase and difficulty keeping up with it. As you can see that as paramedics and as
we have advanced care in the prehosp world, which means we're getting more loved ones back home with their families, the cost of these items have rose incredibly. And just some of the things we have listed on this slide just as like a monitor defibrillator to
restart your heart or to see if there's damage to your heart is over $60,000 for one. We operate three ambulances. So when we go through each one of these, we have to do that times three just to outfit our ambulances. And of course to full-time firefighter paramedics and that market is getting
more and more difficult to find those folks. Is that annual wage with benefits is well over $120,000. And again, as many things we've seen in our society, that's rapidly increasing as well. Well, mayor, members of the council, Jennifer Levit, city administrator with
Cottage Grove. I get to talk numbers. He got to talk all of the um wonderful stuff that we do on an ambulance. And unfortunately, I get to talk to you about numbers. So, um right now, we've seen a lot of challenges with uh skyrocketing pra practices and prices.
Um, obviously this is probably no surprise to you guys. You know, you buy a dump truck and you're seeing what used to buy a dump truck for $250,000 is now $370,000. And that's really no difference than an ambulance. So, we've seen a 77% increase in ambulances. Um, right now, our last
ambulance we purchased was 293,000. And here's the thing, we haven't even received it yet. So, it's taking us over three years to actually get an ambulance um from when we order it. I'm sure it's no different from you guys. You see the delay on squad cars and you see the delay on buying uh large dump trucks and
things of that nature. And so right now we are in need of replacing our third ambulance. But currently um we don't have the funding uh to move forward uh with that. As the mayor alluded to at the beginning, one of our largest uh shortfalls is really caused by Medicare,
Medicaid. We had saw that the federal government was uh in involved in a study to look at the reimbursement rates. Unfortunately, that study has been halted and so now all we're hearing about is cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. We thought honestly that with that study being completed um our system we could
kind of be on life support until that new rate came into place. Unfortunately, we don't see a new Medicare Medicaid rate coming in uh to play for us in the near future, which is really difficult because 71% of the transports from St. Paul Park um are on Medicare Medicaid.
And so that shortfall um is actually passed on to the Cottage Grove taxpayers. So for example, um as John went through that basic life support, we would bill out uh $2,200 and unfortunately Medicare Medicaid only
cap the reimbursement to us at $452. So the advanced life support would be $2,800 and we're only getting $537 back. So you can see a private insurer is paying the closer to the full weight of the value
of the transport and with Medicare, Medicaid, we are continuing to run short. Um when it comes to our deficits, we've been running significant deficits the last three years and I did bring our annual report because I know the mayor is very concerned to demonstrate my
negative uh value in my account. So, um, we did have our audit presentation at the last council meeting. Um, and we did continue to fall short, uh, meeting our operating, uh, revenues, uh, for the year. What's caused us to be in a serious situation, as John pointed out,
all of those instruments and equipment that we run on the ambulance, uh, maintaining the ambulances and being able to fund staff has actually put our account completely negative. So, at this point, um we are running a deficit position for 24 um per our audit. And I
did bring a copy of the audit report. So, just to put it in perspective for you, uh St. Paul Park required uh $817,000 of EMS services. Uh Cottage Grove only received $27,000.
That means that the city of Cottage Grove had to write off over $610,000. The difference of that is actually being borne by our taxpayers to keep the ambulance running. So right now we run two ambulances that we roll out of the
station and we maintain a fire response. So what we are here tonight to seek is a way to share a subsidy between two communities. We recognize there is no way that you would be able to bear the full burden and weight of the entire value. Um so what we are here is to
offer a place to start. um if we took what a Cottage Grove resident paid in a reimburseable rate compared to what we're receiving from St. Paul Park. So that's the difference between $823 and the 633 on your screen, that amounts to about $190.
So if you take the 327 runs we had to your community and times that by the difference of what our residents are subsidizing, what we're asking for is for $62,339. So, you can tell that we understand you're a small community and you can't
bear the 610,000, but we're asking to start somewhere. Um, what we're asking is to consider that 62,000 starting spot um and with a contract to increase by 9% each year and we'd propose that for 26 and 27. And so, with
that, I'll be happy to stand for any questions. Um, one other thing too before I I step away is, you know, one of the challenges that we're facing is a negative position. And so we're reviewing all of our options right now. Um, we do have a large study underway,
uh, to look at our standards of cover, uh, and how we can provide services. And, um, one of the things that we are looking at is, you know, do we have to subleasase out our our PSA area as an option and look at how we can recover,
um, those costs. And so with that, I will step away, mayor, and answer any questions if you have any. Thank you everybody. Appreciate it. At this time, do any of the council members have any questions for any one of them? Um, just ask whoever your question is
specifically to that person and they'll step forward. All right. Council member Swson, this is for any of you. Um, are Newport and Great Code Island in the same condition as St. Paul Park with regards to the billing issues? uh mayor and uh council, the answer is yes. Um
matter of fact, we've had uh already had pre-pliminary meetings with uh Newport. You know, I'm not jumping ahead too much, but it they're they're willing to work with us on the proposal that we had. And believe it or not, we've also had a meeting with uh St. or uh Great Cloud Township. And on the day that we
met them, they were actually ready to write a check uh just to cover the the difference that they had at that particular time too because they understand the the importance of the service. And if I might, and I know uh the mayor and I were together in a
meeting not that long ago, uh but uh one of the one of the things where we were talking about looking at service and subleasasing service, that's really what we I would love to avoid that to be frank with you. Um, subleasasing service would mean if certain communities don't help us figure out how to shore this up
until something changes more federally, um, we would have to look at subleasasing out, um, cities or portions of cities. And of course, that means that there's a different ambulance service that would come. So, if you ended up calling 911, you might end up getting an ambulance that's going to
come from West St. Paul or Ingroveve Heights from a private ambulance company versus our ambulance service that we provide currently in in Cottage Grove with for St. Paul Park. So that's when she talked about that area. I want to make sure that that's what we're talking about is clearly we don't want to do
that. Uh but at the same time, you know, the citizens of Cottage Grove uh are uh boring all the cost on this. We're just asking not even for the whole amount as as uh our city administrator just mentioned but something to help us at least get to the break even point and
then hopefully uh obviously we'll continue to press in the at at the federal state and federal level in the future here is how can we shrup these uh whether it's Medicaid Medicare Medicaid or other types of opportunities to shrup these these losses otherwise more and
more uh uh cities and counties uh in the rural parts of Innesota literally are saying they're going to go they're going to go out of business and there won't be ambulance service uh in those particular areas. Thank you, mayor. I guess I have a question that kind of revolves around that. Um when when you
talk about subleasasing out the area and this is a um legislatively directed, you know, the PSA, does that PSA give you the ability to section out? Do you want to take that bylaw or
would you have to subleasase the entire and then just become part of that? Uh, mayor and council. Um, I would just share with you that we're still kind of working through all of that, but it appears from what we've been told that we can subleasase out portions of it. Now, you have to have I'll be honest
with you, you have to have an area or a ambulance service that would be willing to cover it. Um, so that might be part of the interesting thing, but that's where when I mentioned earlier, it could be a situation where if a particular ambulance service that's based out of, let's say, West St. Paul says that they don't want to do it, but the one in Egan
does, um, well, then that just means that the time of an ambulance getting to a resident uh, is going to be that much longer. And of course, we don't want to see that either, right? Um, two more questions. Yeah. Um,
you talked about a third unit currently have three. Is that correct? Now, the one that's coming, would that replace one and or would that be adding to the fleet? Uh, mayor uh and council, it would replace one. Uh, and matter of fact, what we're trying to do is we're
trying to uh obviously we don't have the funds as was mentioned earlier right now. We really need to replace another ambulance ser another ambulance. Uh, but we don't have the funds available at this point to be able to do that. So, uh, they're get some of these ambulance that we have are getting up there in age. Not that we're worried about them breaking down if you know, but you know,
after time things start getting tougher to to fix and the expense of the ambulance becomes more. All right. And then maybe um, Chief Pritchard can answer this one. Um, currently you guys don't respond to every call in St. Paul Park. I mean, I know this for a fact.
And I don't know what the percentage is. um what are the um because honestly in the last since we've started these discussion I've started paying attention and I've seen more other um agencies servicing our community than
Cottage Grove. So then we would still I mean regardless if you subleasase or not when Cottage Grove's fleet is busy we are still then getting that level of service. We are not getting the Cottage Grove level of service. Correct. That's
correct. When we're we don't have a truck available, that does go to one of our mutual aid partners in the area. And that's typically M Health from Ingrove Heights or West um South St. Paul or Woodbury Fire. Okay. So, those are that was the next part of my question. What are the main um services that you do
contract out with and those are the three that I've seen right off hand. Are there any others? We have a with our dispatch protocols there's like a list and then it would typically start with Woodbury M Health and Hastings Fire and then we start looking even beyond that
who would cover those. All right, that's my questions. Anybody else? Yes, Council Member K. I don't know who like to take this question, but my question is um if there's a call out and it's not needed, what happens then?
you want to do. Who determines whether it's a call out and you actually send a unit or cuz I guess I haven't called 911 and had the experience with an ambulance, but who determines that an ambulance should be sent or just a police officer, EMT, I you know. Yeah.
And it can be multiple different pieces like the 911 caller themselves calls 911 and then our dispatch center understand that's a medical call and they'll send the ambulance out. It could be a police officer that's on scene like most common one a welfare track. They haven't heard from somebody and the police officer
would typically respond and then they would request our help or even like a bystander and then if we start and we're headed that way, we would get what we called canled. But what happens more frequently is that we actually make it on scene and of course we start having
symptoms and you're like, you know, I feel really bad. I'm going to call 911. But every time we go come to a patient that's conscious and you know they're awake enough to make a decision, we do offer them like would you like us to take you to the hospital and after um informed consent they can decline to go
to the hospital. Um we see that a lot in motor vehicle accidents those sort of things. However, we did that about 122 times in 2023 and we didn't charge really for any of those. In 2425 we started creating a charge if we made patient contact we
check vitals and those sort of things just like a baseline charge for that cost of response but a lot of those and that $500 even is even less than some of that as well. So we are coming to a lot of those and of course we always give the patient or that person the option to
go to the hospital or not. All right then I have another question and then we'll let you guys go. That's all right. of those calls, who pays that? I mean, is there a Medicare Medicaid subsidy or baseline payback for those type of calls? I guess so. Many
times like private insuranceances may cover those, but currently the Medicare Medicaid typically will not pay for the majority of those. There are some circumstances in which they would and then the individual person that received those services would then be build for such services. So, it's kind of a hit or
a miss sometimes. Some insurance companies, some not. Insurance company might, but you got to fight the insurance company, you know. Yeah. And it's probably the most common discussion I have from folks that receive our services about just that on, right? Why isn't my insurance cover covering this?
And I always typically say that's a very complicated question. That's got to be even more frustrating dealing with that type of a discussion or bill than we did take you to the hospital. Exactly. Exactly. All right. One more thing. Um maybe it's not a
comparable situation, but do you see most more calls from like senior living centers in a day than you do private residents or were you areas of age versus areas of non? Yeah. and really by you know and unfortunately I don't have
the exact statistics but you can kind of infer it that the majority of our Medicare Medicaid when we give you that 71 72% are older folks on Medicare. So we definitely see that of course in our community we have some senior living facilities but also in St. Paul Park. A
lot of folks are aging in their homes and so we do see a lot of utilization from our older population and that's probably the one of the major factors of where we're at is we have a very or we have a rapidly growing aging population that needs more of these cares and
services and then Medicare just hasn't been able to keep up. So when 70% of our calls are Medicare that's really paying us less than a fifth of what it costs to offer services, that kind of is where we are landing now, especially with the boomers that are aging in their homes
and other places. All right. Well, thank you. Thanks for coming and giving us all this great information. Appreciate it. We'll be in touch. We'll talk. All right, item number five, the consent
agenda. This evening on the consent agenda, we're going to adopt resolution 1746, um the enabling resolutions for the EDA, which are all going to stay the same. Um approve our interim police chief agreement with Craig Elgen, approve our usual contract with youth service
bureau. Um we will be approving the resignation of Steven Kenyonus and approving a rehire for the police department. um pay request for McNamera contracting. We're going to do a few switches for the mayoral appointments for commissions. I
am going to be switching council member Hagerty and council member Swenson. Um council the Jeff for the Jeff. I'm not saying it's an upgrade in either way, but um council member Swinson will be moving to public safety and council
member Hagerty will be moving to public works. Um, approve a temporary liquor license for the Lions Club. Uh, for Heritage Days, uh, lawful gambling permit for Ducks Unlimited down at Willies. Um, special
event permits. Um, Broadway Bar and Grill is having a celebration of loved ones lost July 19th. Uh, American Legion Ripfest July 26th and the American Legion for Heritage Days August 15th through the 17th. We will be approving a
conditional transfer of onail on sale intoxicating and Sunday liquor licenses for Broadway bar and grill. Once again, this is conditional depending upon um the everything coming in. All right. And the background checks and everything
else. So, we will revisit that. Um this is just some paperwork that needs to be done for them to complete their transaction. Uh appoint Jack Lutz to the public safety commission. term to expire December 31st, 2027
and approve our new contract with GDO Law through June 30th of 2028. And that is the consent agenda this evening. Mr. Mayor, yes, Council Member Swinson, I'm just uh verifying we did talk about item B where
we're approving the payments of bills for period May 21st through June 17th. Um, yes. In case you may have forgotten that, sounds like uh item B, approve bills. So, pay the bills. For the inclusion of paying the bills, I uh move
that we approve tonight's lengthy consent agenda. Second. I have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda as listed. Any further discussion? All in favor say I. I. I. Motion carries
50. All right, on to new business. Geneva Meadows Preliminary Plat. Nate, please step forward. You're the next contestant. Good evening, honorable members of the council. We have before you tonight
a preliminary plat. Um, that's the wrong I may have inadvertently opened the wrong PowerPoint unless you'd like to revisit uh tax increment financing. Um but what we have before you is a preliminary plat uh for a 61 unit single
family residential subdivision located in the southeastern corner of the city. The proposal is to generally extend uh Lincoln and Ashland into the property.
Um and then to and then to uh place uh 61 single family units around the property. Um you see here we've got the this is the subject site. Um, it's at
the southern end of where Ashlin Summit and Lincoln all end. And this property and the property to the south is in St. Paul Park. There's property to the east of here that's in Cottage Grove. And the
concept is to take uh Summit Avenue, which is the street that's further west into the site and then take Lincoln Avenue and then bring Lincoln Avenue into the site. They proposed to do this by a slight curve. The property owner is
Gordon Neesvig. The proposed developer is Lenar. And the idea here is to bring the two streets in, create this connection to the south of the two streets and then have a stub road that continues to the east and uh then place
the lots on it. Uh your comprehensive plan calls this property lowdensity residential which is your single family designation. And so the zoning would be and it is R1 which is your single family low density single family residential
zoning district. These lots were all designed to meet the standards of that zoning district and they all do meet that zoning standards uh for that and so it's consistent with the comprehensive plan and it is uh meets your zoning
ordinance in regards to that and it's uh density is within the permitted density range within the comprehensive plan for this type of development. Uh so the proposal to bring Lincoln is a collector
road so it's a wider right of way and so what they would be doing is bringing the road due to conflicts with pipelines and topography and whatnot. The developer proposed this alignment where Lincoln would curve into the property which allows them to put two rows of houses on
either side of it. And uh so they're proposing to do that and that would be then a collector road through the city and because our collector roadways we asked for pedestrian ways on those they provided a trail along the side of that
road for that purpose. Um so with that uh they proposed the landscaping plan and uh that meets your code requirements. Uh then grading, drainage and utilities. Uh our engineer provided some comments that they will
need to meet to proceed to final plat. Those comments were provided you for you to look at. There's a lot of comments there that they need to address and they're working on that with the city engineer and we believe that they will be able to come up with a plan on that.
Um then with this approval, it's planning commission recommended this for approval at your last meeting by unanimous vote and so that would be reflected in the resolution that you have before you. And so if you so choose
to approve that, then uh they would have to proceed to final plat which would be the next stage. And at final plat there's a development agreement and before they can get final plat approval. You guys would need to ensure that they're meeting all the requirements of the preliminary plat approval which
includes all the engineering comments. And uh there is a couple oddities with this property. It's a very complex property actually. It's got a lot of topography on it like I mentioned before. It's got a lot of pipeline easements and whatnot on it. So it's a difficult property to develop. So there
was a lot put into this. A lot of considerations went into what you see before you here. And when it's completed, uh, then they can receive that preliminary the final plat approval, but they have to meet all the
engineering comments that we have. And there are there are some things that we will be working on because there's one of the oddities is there's the half rightway for Geneva which is a road in
Cottage Grove in uh St. Paul Park. Uh we we have uh no right ofway adjacent to this property. It is a private road that's in um it's it's a private road for two
property owners over the Nesvig property and so with that we have to you know we can't abregate their private agreements or anything it it exists and so one of the options that we have is to place that area within a public right of way
and because then that public right ofway would then potentially be shared with Cottage Grove. We've discussed with the city of Cottage Grove a joint powers agreement for that would govern that right of way and we got a draft a
proposal from Cottage Grove at the end of last week and that's something that we would need to iron out prior to the final plat approval. But that would be in the best interest of both cities to have a joint powers agreement governing how that roadway would work. We know
that there are some goals that the city council has that we would ensure are reflected in that joint powers agreement. But if that right of way is dedicated, we would be looking for that agreement to take place and we would be bringing that forward to you at a future
date most likely either before or concurrent with the final plat for this subdivision. There'll need to be a development agreement at the final plat. That's when they have to post securities. But again, I mean, we're looking for some design changes, mi
minor design changes to this layout, which would then allow that to receive final plat approval in the in the future. And so those are all reflected in the engineers comments. And um you know, there's some infrastructure that has to be put in, namely like a lift
station, um trail, roads, and all of those would be under a letter of credit with the development agreement. And uh so we're trying to take care of all of those needs and balance all of these things together. So what we can do is
you can rest assured that you can grant this approval, but then we will be back with more than probably is typical with a usual final plaid application because we need to resolve a couple things with like that right ofway and the joint powers agreement and uh and then make
sure all the engineering comments are met. And just based on how it's gone through working through this process, I feel confident that we can uh take care of that. There's any questions for me, I would be more than honored to answer them. Otherwise, I'll turn it back to
you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Nate. Council member Spencson, it appears you have a question. Thank you. Actually, it couldn't can be for Nate. Does this require action this evening to approve the preliminary plat? That's the action before you is to approve the preliminary plat. And it's a separate action to
approve the final plat authorized signature enter into the development agreement and any other agreements that may come attached to this which would be coming at a future time which we don't know exactly when that would be because they have to make some tweaks to meet the engineering comments. So well with
that thank you Nate. Um I move that we approve the Geneva Meadows preliminary plan. and second. All right, I have a motion and a second before us. Any further discussion? All in favor signify by saying I. I.
Motion carries 50. All right. Thank you, Nate. Thank you, everyone. [Applause] All right. Item number B under new business, approve special event permit for heritage days on August 15th through the 17th, 2025.
Mr. Mayor, council member Conrad proposed that this be tabled for the time being as I believe there's a few issues yet to be uh ironed out and agreed upon with the uh permit just to resolve those before we move forward
with the approval. All right. Can I get a second? Second to table. Yeah, to table. All right. I have a motion and a second to table the heritage days permit. Any further discussion? All in favor say I. I. Motion carries.
5. Officially tabled. Item number seven, reports from the council. At least for now. Council member Swson, you're on public works. Thank you, mayor. This is like we stated, I'll be switching to public safety um for our next meeting. And so, uh nothing new to report from
public works at this time. All right. Thank you, council member. Council member Hagerty, public safety commission. Yeah, public safety. So, we met on uh June 5th. uh at 6 pm. Uh had a very good meeting, had a couple of citizens come into the meeting and
shared a few concerns. Uh Lincoln and ninth uh stop sign. So, we're going to be working on uh trying to get a flashing uh stop light stop sign, you know, put the flashing lights similar to what Cottage Grove has uh in Point
Douglas. Yep. Right. One of those uh cuz it is it is pretty bad in the morning when you're coming to that intersection. Okay. And then uh our next meeting is September 4th at 6 p.m. Thank you, Council Member Heerty. Council Member Conrad, planning last planning
commission meeting was cancelled and the next one will be July 14th at 7 p.m. here at city hall. Thank you, Council Member. Council member Whit Hemson, Parks and Wreck. Um Parks and Wreck, uh we do have three movies in the park on
the calendar. June 27th, July 25th, that's a Friday. And we're going to have one for um Heritage Days on Thursday. That's August 14th. And our our garden is looking great. If anyone's been down there, um we have two
deliveries to basic needs so far and it's looking really good. So, thank you for everybody. Do you know which and where you'll be holding the Movies in the Park? Oh, movies in the park are the the one in June and the one in July will be at Dingle and the one in August will be at Heritage. Okay. Check out our
Facebook page. Uh we'll get the movies out to you. Thank you, Council Member Whit Hemson. Um I'm just going to cut it short this evening. Item number eight. Anybody have any other comments or requests? Nothing further before this council. This meeting's adjourned.