City Council - workshop

Good evening, everyone. It is now 530 and I will call this regular work session of the Burnsville City Council to order. All council members are present and the members of the public are always welcome to attend in person or The public can also watch us on burnsvillemin.gov slash meetings or Comcast channel 16 or 859. The public can also participate through Zoom by joining us at zoom.us slash join. More information is available. ON OUR MEETINGS WEB PAGE AND IN THE COUNCIL AGENDA PACKET. SO THIS IS A WORK SESSION AND WE GO DIRECTLY TO THE ITEMS ON THE AGENDA. AND THE FIRST ITEM ON THE AGENDA THIS EVENING IS THE CITY OWNED PROPERTY STUDY. AND OUR DEPUTY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR IS PRESENTING, TRAVIS. THE FLOOR IS YOURS.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council Members. The item before you is another in a series of capital improvement plans and studies that the city has been engaged in over the past couple of years. Specifically, this study is a comprehensive review and assessment of all of the city-owned properties owned by the city or the Economic Development Authority. Thanks, Mark. It's worth mentioning before I get into it, this study was led by community development, but it wasn't completed in a vacuum. Staff from the clerk's office, IT, parks, and public works, and the city attorney helped us with this analysis. So the initial purpose of the study was to evaluate all of the city and EDA owned parcels In terms of where are they all located? How big are they? How are they being maintained? What's the zoning status of all of those parcels and of particular interest to our department? Are there any opportunities for us to market and sell some of those properties to support housing or economic development goals of the city in the council? So breaking it down by the numbers, um, uh, city services, which are lands that, uh, contain parks, trails, um, city facilities or other open space was our largest category. Uh, 51% of all of the city owned parcels, uh, have that type of city service on them. Uh, the next biggest portion were the parcels that contain utilities. Uh, 23% of the 424, uh, parcels that the city owns, uh, have significant utilities running through them. Uh, 56 of the parcels, which is 13% of the total are vacant and don't clearly have, uh, uh, a city use, uh, occurring currently on them. And then another 13% are, uh, right away. Uh, properties used to support city right away is particularly for transportation needs. Couple of interesting notes. As we were looking through these parcels, five of the properties are currently owned by the EDA. We believe those properties were acquired by the EDA for assembly purposes in creating the heart of the city neighborhood, but they're still currently owned by the EDA. And then we also have, much to our surprise, we found two properties owned by the city that are not located within the city of Burnsville. They're actually located within the city of Eagan. And I did add a slide here that shows we have about 10 acres total of properties that are located in Eagan, which are primarily wetlands, stormwater ponds. These are not creating any sort of problems. We don't have any complaints. We're not doing any maintenance on them. But much to our surprise, we do own these two small parcels that are located within Eagan. WE DID CONDUCT MAINTENANCE ANALYSIS OF ALL OF THE PARCELS. 57, 58% OF THEM ARE CURRENTLY RECEIVING REGULAR MAINTENANCE BY PUBLIC WORKS, REGULAR MONTHLY OR BI-WEEKLY MOWING. THESE ARE SITES THAT ARE INTEGRAL TO CITY FUNCTION LIKE A PARK OR A MAJOR CITY FACILITY. THERE'S ANOTHER SUBSET, ANOTHER 10% RECEIVE MINOR MAINTENANCE. THESE ARE PARCELS THAT ARE vacant or might be trails where just a buffer strip is mowed regularly along that particular parcel. There's another subset, just another 1.5% that receive annual mowing. These are parcels that have significant utilities running through them, primarily down in the river valley, and the vegetation is cut back to prevent any interruptions or any damage to those parcels. utilities that are running underground. And then the other big portion is 30% are not receiving any maintenance at all except for when we receive a complaint. If there's a tree that falls down and it's impeding on a adjacent sidewalk or something like that, uh, public works will go out and address any complaints. We also looked at the property tax status of all 425 parcels, and the good news is 99.7, I think, percent of those parcels are tax exempt. We do have two parcels that are currently leased to private entities, and in those cases, the private leases are paying any property tax payments. The two properties are there's one little splinter parcel that has telecommunications building on it, and that company pays for any taxes due on that parcel. And then there's a more significant parcel that is located just south of Alley Magnet that the city owns that has a small group home on it. And in that case, the company that leases that parcel pays those property tax payments and any special assessments. We did also look at zoning classifications all of the city and EDA-owned parcels. And unfortunately, we learned that 46% of them are, the zoning is misaligned with the current use. So, for example, we have stormwater ponds that are zoned residential. We have some city facilities that are zoned multifamily. We have other city facilities that are zoned parks properties. And it's a best practice for and I don't need to tell you this, but it's a best practice for the zoning to reflect the actual use of those properties. However, fortunately, we're stepping into the 2050 comp plan update season, and this would be an ideal time for us to address those challenges. We did also look at all of these parcels to identify if any of them were available or readily available for potential development. And in terms of how we decided, this analysis is somewhat subjective, but we looked at each one of these parcels and identified, are they currently being used to support any city service? How big are they? What are the lot dimensions? Are they developable based on their shape? What is the access? Is there easy access to get onto one of these sites and develop it? Are the slopes manageable in terms of getting construction equipment out there and developing it? Are there any major utilities? Are there any wetlands? And then we also, in a very subjective manner, looked at each parcel and said, what would be the neighborhood friction if we were to develop any of these parcels? So again, that's a very subjective analysis. And from that, we identified 22 that we thought, uh, have the potential of, of being developed. I also want to point out that we did not consider any parcels that are identified as natural areas within the parks plan. So we immediately carved those out when we looked at our, where we conducted our initial analysis. But the good news is there's 22 that have potential in our opinion. And then we also identified 19 splinter parcels that are currently vacant and also undevelopable. The challenge there is our current policy doesn't allow us to readily transfer ownership of those parcels to an adjacent property owner. And the fact of the matter is the administrative cost and workload associated with transferring ownership probably outweighs the value of the parcel itself. So we might be looking for some future direction from council on how we might want to treat those. So from that, we have six kind of recommendations and next steps. The first is we need to share this information with Public Works, especially with regards to the maintenance occurring on vacant parcels. There's very little of that, but we want to make sure that Public Works is aware of those parcels. But then the second and perhaps the most interesting piece for our department is how do we want to deal with those 22 potentially developable properties? And our recommendation is that we come back to you in 2027 with a prioritized list of properties that we would recommend developing. This also would require us to do some due diligence on the title side of things and ensure that there's no Encumbrances in place that would prevent us from developing those but we would recommend coming back in 2020 2027 with that updated list We also noticed a number of encroachments as we were conducting this exercise where folks are building sheds or fireplaces or patios on city property and We need to take a closer look at our current ordinances and policies and if they're not in satisfactory, perhaps recommend, um, a policy change to address any encroachments. Should we get a complaint around any one of these, um, situations? Fortunately, that's not something that neighborhood services deals with a lot, but if it were to happen, it'd be great to have an updated policy to address situations like that. Our fourth recommendation is to address the, um, uh, zoning situation on city owned properties. And like I mentioned earlier, now is a perfect time for us to do that as we kind of step into updating our zoning code as part of the comprehensive plan. So we're anticipating that would happen in 2029, 2030 in alignment with our cop plan update. The fifth recommendation is to explore updating our land sale policy to address splinter parcels. and C, work with our city attorney's office to see if there's a economical way, an easy way for us to transfer ownership of those parcels perhaps to adjacent property owners that would be interested in owning them. And then the last recommendation is to consider transferring ownership of those five EDA-owned properties to the city in future years. And with that, I can take any questions or comments.

Okay. Questions for Travis. Okay. Dan.

What would be the purpose of transferring EDA property to the city being that if at some time the EDA property were to sell, the money would go back to the EDA who originally bought it as opposed to go back to just the general fund for the city?

Madam Mayor, Council Member, the initial discussion that we had was just to simplify, especially for property insurance purposes, that if we just consolidate these under the city-owned Category versus EDA that would be one piece of it is that we could just streamline our ownership portfolio But in terms of transferring back and forth, that's not something that we've explored.

Yeah, and the properties that he's talking about I know what they are, but in the future someday some of those properties might not be so property we're gonna have anymore and Well, it's a park and an AIM Center.

I get what it is. I know. And a parking deck. So those are the properties.

Just looking out for the interest of the EDA.

Yeah, but the EDA and the city are the same thing, but what Travis is saying, what staff is saying is that it is insurance purposes and making sure that everything is within one bucket. Any other questions for Travis? Yes, Vince.

Thank you. Are any of these properties potential for us to do something with, like a potential new park or something where we could get creative in-house instead of Selling?

Madam Mayor, Council Member, yes. I don't see why not. They're city-owned at this point. That would be a decision that the council would need to make, but yes, I think they could be used for a city service that's not currently contemplated on those properties.

They're not like tucked into, I mean, you don't have to review every single one of them, but there's some that would be in viable locations that we could get creative with. They're not all tucked into industrial zones or... things like that.

Yes. So, uh, yes. Uh, met a mayor council member. Um, a lot of them are, frankly, I don't know why there's not something a little bit more useful on those, on those parcels. Many of them are tucked away. There's, you know, sandwiched in between a couple of privately owned parcels, but there's a few out there that, um, potentially could be, you could do something interesting with them or if a park was something that the council wanted to explore, that's,

We don't get to do a lot of new stuff like that, just given that we're built out.

So it might be worth at least considering if it's... Well, one of the things that I've looked at, because I've walked all those properties, and we have the opportunity here in some of those properties, especially the nine acres down in southwest Burnsville, where we need single family development and it'll help to grow our tax base. And so there are other properties that I would say that staff coming back to us next year after you evaluate and really identify what the best use and I would say grow the tax base. One of the things we are in need of here in the city of Burnsville is single family housing. We have no single family housing land left, none. And so we have the opportunity here to grow the tax base and to have some single family housing. And that was 22 potentially developed, developable parcels. I would like to see some evaluation and investigation of all of those and to see if it is something that we can do, um, because it is something we need.

Madam Mayor, just a clarifying question. We did carve out any parcels that were identified as natural space within the parks plan.

Yeah.

The parcel that you're speaking of is identified as a natural space in the parks plan. Yeah. So it'd be good to have direction on that.

But it's natural space. I have walked that. It's just, it can be re-zoned to housing. Nine acres is huge that we can add more single-family housing. Now we have to talk with the neighbors around that because usually when something sits there for a long time, then it's taken for granted that it's going to be that way, but we have a need for single-family housing. Any other comments, thoughts? Yes.

Travis, I'd still think it'd be worth investigating if there is room to do something like a park. We had talked in our one-on-one about the bike parks at various communities. If there's a way to embrace those areas, if they are, in fact, going to have to stay natural areas, it'd be worth at least knowing That information? Sure.

Madam Mayor, members of the council, both the council member Gustafson's question and the council member Workman's question or comment. Six items, as Travis went through, in terms of next steps coming from this study. Really, our intention with all of our capital studies is to understand what we have, what condition it's in, and what we ought to do about it. In this particular case, we plan six conversations that will both address how we might consider use of some of those more usable parcels, as the council has discussed tonight. And then also later on down the priority list would be a discussion of city-owned or EDA-owned versus city-owned parcels. And at those particular times, we're going to plan out these conversations of what is the council's desired use or plans for the property, and then also questions, get more into the details of questions on city versus EDA ownership.

Yeah, and I like all of the six recommendations that you have here because that will give us more information as we look into it. Because if we're going to look at parks, we have 76 parks now, and I know we have three categories of how we fund those. on the replacement and Jenny the other is that you know how much money do we have if we're going to build new parks and how much is in that fund but you guys are going to do that that's going to come back when you're going to evaluate all of those properties because we have so much money in replacement cost and in Enhancement, what do you call it, Jenny, when we're building new parks? And I know that fund isn't big.

Oh, the parks investment fund?

Yeah. Correct. Yeah. Okay. So, members of the council, are you in agreement with the six recommendations that staff is presenting to us this evening and they're going to come back to us with more information on each of these items? Yes, 100%. All right. Thank you so much. And, you know, that was very good work. Excellent. Thank you. Really appreciate it.

Thank you, Mayor.

Okay. Now we're moving on to sidewalk and trails. And our public works director, Mark Ray, is going to be presenting.

Good evening. Excuse me, Mayor and council members. As with all of our studies, this one looked at kind of a comprehensive analysis, the conditions, operations, maintenance, and system connectivity. Again, what do we have, what's the condition it's in, and what do we need to do to maintain it going forward? Taking a large kind of step back, look at the city. We have 70 miles of sidewalk in the city with a value of just over $70 million. 12 miles of trails, generally those are asphalt trails, just over seven million. And then just for the community's reference, a little over 21 miles of sidewalk in Dakota County right away, a little over 18 miles of trails in Dakota right away are just Dakota County trails. I do want to note that we do plow both the county sidewalk and trails. Looking at funding for our existing sidewalk and trail system, preventative maintenance, kind of those day in, day out routine things, is a planned expense that's handled through the operating budgets. Snow removal is funded through a bill on the utility bills. And then we do work with our partners, generally Dakota County, and then use state aid to fund some trails we have in the city. Otherwise, grants are another big option too. So Greenwood Sidewalk, for example, was a grant. We got a regional solicitation. We got another grant for the trail on Williams Drive for that corridor, for example. The condition rating that you see is the same as what we used for our payment management plan. That was very intentional, so we have this consistent methodology that you all are familiar with. As we look at the system as a whole, the vast majority of our system's in a good to fair condition. We do have a little bit of poor and critical needs in the system, but as a portion of the large system, it is a pretty small percentage there. This, for example, is a shot of one of the sidewalk panels. One of the realities with sidewalks is you can replace one or two panels and address the worst part of it, and the rest of it might be fine. So while we scored sections of sidewalk based on the worst panels, it's not like you need to replace the whole thing to address the critical need. And so that's why you see the condition of the sidewalks is in that fair condition, but it's pretty easy to address the panels through normal operations and maintenance. This is a shot of the paver section in the heart of the city right off Pillsbury behind the AIM Center. As you can see, pavers are sliding off. There's a lot of undulation there, and so this actually is a scheduled replacement to be replaced with concrete. Overall, our sidewalk conditions have a score of 61. Again, that is lower than the trail conditions score of 81, through fairly routine things we can address the problems with our sidewalk and that life will extend much longer than the normal kind of deterioration that you see with asphalt trails. We do rate all of our asphalt trails consistent to our streets every three years. Our concrete sidewalks do not deteriorate the same way as asphalt and our snow removal operations clearly identify issues in the sidewalks. So for example, trip hazards, so anything roughly a half inch or more As we're clearing them, our drivers will come into adverse contact with those trip edges and then we'll either replace the panel or grind the trip edge down to address that need. So the sidewalk system is, because we're plowing it, we're very familiar with where the problems are and we get them addressed. Fundamentally, the goal is to maintain an off-street trail and sidewalk network that is accessible for all users. Looking at the different management methods we use, we are on the right half of the screen, so rehabilitation and maintenance. As you can see, sidewalk, again, it's just panel replacements, trip edges, and then sweeping. For asphalt trails, we might have a mill and overlay, sweeping, crack ceiling, some kind of similar things that you'd see with street pavements. Overall, the recommendation coming out of this is pending what we see for the comprehensive plan for 2050 that you all see. That would inform any plan on future potential sidewalk or trail things. I do want to note we are working with the county on some gaps along County 5 as well as County 42 where there's not off-street facilities on both sides of the roadway. Very clearly, we do not want pedestrians in the road on county roads, and so we're working collaboratively with the county through some grants to close those gaps in the system. So that is within the next five years, those are planned. But beyond that, any new sidewalks or trails would be informed by the comprehensive plan. With that, I'll take any fun questions.

Any questions for Mark and the plan? And it'll be updated in 2025. But any questions, comments?

Just want to comment. Generally speaking, these comprehensive plans are just as the city. manager pointed out, and I think from all of our perspective, they're one of the best tools for us to really make a good, thoroughly educated decision, not just a cursory review and some basic information and we're making a decision. These are phenomenal tools for us.

I love it because I have the information to evaluate and make good decisions from. And especially when I'm looking On the strategy you have presented in page 17 and 18, Mark, of your plan, that really gives us a lot of good information about how you're going about all of this. And also, I didn't know, but we are... snow removing and taking care of sidewalks that are on county roads, 5 and 11 and 42.

Cliff Road as well, yeah, that's correct.

Cliff Road, yeah. So good job because it's about our vibrancy. We say one of our, the vision for the city is a vibrant community, but if the county's not doing it, then we're doing it. But we don't get reimbursed. We don't bill them, do we?

That is correct. We do not. We're good partners. We do things.

We're going to get to be better partners pretty soon, I have a feeling.

Yeah. Any other comments for Mark? Thank you so much. Thank you. Well done. Travis and Mark, great information. And Greg, I know there are 13 of these studies. They're very good. So thank you. OK. Council members, we're at round table. Vince.

Don't forget to vote tomorrow.

Okay, yeah, yeah. Any reports from you?

No, we've got a going-away party, I think, what, next week for Amy? For Amy, yeah. At the Med Cruz at 4 o'clock. Is it next week or the week after?

I think it's a week from this Friday, I believe, or is it this Friday?

No, it's next week. Next week, yeah. It's a going-away party at Med Cruz for her at 4 o'clock. I think everybody should have gotten a message on all that. Well, but... And it's on Facebook, so I think the city got invited.

Yeah, well, just let our residents who are listening to us say, what?

Oh, Amy is the executive vice, or the executive president of the Experience Birdsville, and she's leaving us for a job in Green Bay because, like Dan Keeley, she's a Green Bay fan. And so she's going home. She's going home to represent the pack. So there's something dodgy about her, but it's a, it's really a good opportunity. You know, she's been a one person show for a long time, ever since COVID. And it's an opportunity for her to work with a big staff and a, in an organization that's so much larger than our organization is. And so it's, it's, it's a great opportunity. And just so you know, we already started our executive search for our new director. So that is out there and, I'll update you that. I'm part of the search committee. Big shoes to fill. That's some big shoes to fill. I mean, she did a lot from payroll to marketing to e-mails, you name it, she did it all. So she will definitely be missed.

That's it? Okay.

Madam Mayor, members of the council, just so the date for Amy's farewell is Friday, August 21st at 4 p.m. Thank you. At the Met Cruise. Yeah. And the board shared that information with staff, asked us to invite our team and to invite you, so I think you probably saw it in my weekly email to you. And anyone who is interested in wishing Amy well and farewell is welcome to attend.

Okay, very good. Kara, you have anything to report? I do not. Okay. Dan?

Just a few quick things. The Chamber Public Policy Committee was last Friday, and it featured our new Chief of Police as the guest speaker. Chief Smith gave a really good presentation showing the history of the department going way back. I DO REMEMBER THAT SOME OF THOSE PHOTOS WHEN YOUR PREDECESSOR TOOK OFFICE. BUT THE WAY YOU DID IT AND THERE WAS SEEMS LIKE THERE WAS SO MUCH MORE INFORMATION AND IT REALLY WAS EXTRAORDINARILY INFORMATIONAL FOR EVERYBODY ON THE CALL IN THE VIRTUAL MEETING. IT WAS GREAT. REALLY GREAT JOB. AND I THINK HOPEFULLY THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY HAS TABS ON ALL THOSE PHOTOS BECAUSE THERE'S SOME GREAT PHOTOS OF SQUADS FROM WAY BACK. The meeting, it was recorded in his presentation, so I think you can get the link on the Chamber website or their YouTube channel. Metro City's Transportation General Government meeting was held in July, our first one, and next one's coming up in late August. So far, no major contentious issues within the General Government section or transportation. Transportation got a big shot in the arm with the additional sales tax boost, so a lot of projects are getting funded IN BURNSVILLE, IRONICALLY, LATELY. NLC ANNOUNCED THEIR LEADERSHIP APPLICATIONS OPENS ON MONDAY THE 17TH AND WILL RUN OPEN UNTIL SEPTEMBER 28TH. THAT INCLUDES THE BOARD, FEDERAL ADVOCACY COMMITTEE CHAIRS AND COUNCIL CHAIRS, SECOND VP AND MANY MORE. THEY DO NOTE THAT YOU HAVE TO LOG IN TO YOUR MY NLC TO COMPLETE THE APPLICATION FOR THOSE INTERESTED. AND THEN NVTA WRITERSHIP REPORT CAME OUT. I SENT IT TO GREG TO SHARE. AS HE DID, IT JUST REALLY SHOWED STRONG GROWTH ACROSS THE SYSTEM. WE DID, I WANT TO POINT OUT, WE DID REFINE SOME ROUTES. AND IT'S REALLY GREAT TO SEE WHEN WE CHANGE A PARTICULAR ROUTE BASED ON SOME STUDIES AND FEEDBACK, WHEN IT GETS A BIG JUMP IN RIDERSHIP, LIKE INSTANTANEOUS 20%, 30% JUMP IN RIDERSHIP AFTER CHANGING THE ROUTE IS REALLY GOOD TO SEE. OBVIOUSLY IT AFFIRMS THE DATA POINTED TO MAKING A ROUTE CHANGE.

THAT'S IT. I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO REPORT, BUT WE HAD A GREAT TURNOUT, I THOUGHT, FOR THE DISTRIBUTION OF SOCCER BALLS FOR OUR NEW EMERGING YOUNG SOCCER PLAYERS. SO THAT'S IT. Burnsville Savage meeting was canceled because nobody had anything to report. So that's it. And so if there is nothing else, Greg? Nothing from the staff, ma'am. Okay. We stand adjourned by acclamation and then reconvene at 6.30 for the budget meeting. Okay, very good. Thank you.