City Council - workshop

A strategic plan and public safety goals.

We've got Sergeant Baker and Mr. Mark.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. So Sergeant Baker and I will be kind of doing this work together. In your packet, there's the city's kind of existing work plan with the Sheriff's Office. And I would offer it kind of reads a little bit like a position description. And so I think that was kind of the impetus for this conversation at the strategic planning level, but also coincides really nicely with the transition of that sixth patrol position to the sergeant's position, which Josh has taken on. So we're going to run through a little bit of the history of service, our regional partnership, patrol schedule. The work plan, again, is in your packet. That was included today, and then we also emailed it out to the council. And then we really want to get the council to start to think about public safety goals. And we have some, hopefully some graphics and some questions that inspire that. And then at the end of the day, we want to take the feedback that we get from you tonight and develop a draft kind of action plan and goals related to that, come back to a future work session and have you provide some additional feedback. And I'm not suffering from a charley horse. I was trying to talk to a little kid. No, luckily not. So just to get everyone on the same page, we contract for sheriff or police services through the sheriff's office. If you've spent any time in a community that has their own police department, by far I would offer as an editorial the most cost-effective model for especially a smaller community. I think Carver County does a great job with the contract model. As you all know, Chaska is really the only city that has its own police department. For many years, the city and sheriff's office operated under a town cop model, so a lot of folks might remember and think of Larry Lessard, traditional eight-hour shift Monday through Friday. In 2014, we added just over a half position. There was a school resource officer named Deputy Jeff Trick, and he was available through a partnership that we had with Lake Town Township. during the summer and then that school district in 2020 we funded a second full-time position did not add funding for community service officer position as kind of a budget conscious decision. Had a series of, I would say, unfortunate events. There was accidents, leaves, departures, etc. So that position never really received a whole lot of traction. In 2023, it's kind of part of that kind of, I would say, systemic kind of issue. The cities of Carver and Victoria transitioned to kind of a joint patrol service model, and you see that in other locations like Watertown, Mayer.

So our northwest corner of the county, Watertown, Mayer, New Germany, do shared policing. The southwest part of the county, Norwood, Hamburg, Cologne, have the same model that Carver and Victoria do.

And then as you know, this year we started with a deputy position that was converted, or a deputy position that's kind of second deputy that was converted to that. Sergeant's position within that framework of the regional partnership with Victoria. So if you can kind of recall in the past when we were without a deputy and we were funding two, if one went out on a leave, then 50% of our kind of force would be out. So in this instance now we have kind of one third more or less of each shift. Now they're not kind of like saying 15 minutes in Carver and 15 minutes in Victoria. But through that model we in essence get 24-7 coverage. And then we also have a 10-year staffing plan that shows an additional deputy in 2030. One of the things that we'll have to sort out, and maybe that's a conversation piece for this, that the more that we're kind of collaborating with Victoria and the Sheriff's Office, the more an independent staffing plan and investments don't work. Because if you think if we're funding a new deputy, it's really a third of that deputy, and so we'd have to have some... consistency with Victorian planning and speaking of consistency with that liaison's role with the sergeant rather than having maybe a younger less experienced deputy that might be on a track to move within certain positions to get to a sergeant's rank now we have a sergeant hopefully building on that consistency within the department and in the community Anything I missed in that, Joshua?

No, I think you hit it well. Everybody familiar with what the CSOs do? I know we don't have one in town right now, but they'll help us out on crashes, medicals. They don't carry a gun, so they're not licensed peace officers, but their bread and butter is dogs off leash, barking dogs. They do come to town when I request them. If we have dog bites, the CSO even though we don't have coverage in town for that.

Josh, we do the one-third, two-thirds, and I trust that it's working well and kind of working out to plan, but I think we have never gotten any data that is more solid than just kind of trusting. Is there any way of getting that?

Unfortunately, no, because there's no way to track exactly where everybody is historically. I can look right now, if I was in my car, and I can tell you where the other Carver Victoria deputies are, but it doesn't store that data. Take a day like this, hopefully Dana's not listening. I never made it north of Chaska Boulevard today, so I spent... literally probably seven hours of my day in Carver. My point in saying that, tomorrow I could end up in Victoria for seven hours of my eight hour day. I office most of the time out of the Carver Fire Station, so that's why I'm here more than I would be if I chose to office up in Victoria. We try to split it up where if the patrol folks see I'm down here, they go up to Victoria. So we have a little bit more broad coverage that way, so we're not all in one area trying to respond. A little bit, really. It's the honor system. When I first started, we actually kept logs. And that's just not really, I mean, I can go through and see what did they do and try to back it up and say, okay, well, if 80% of their calls were in Carver, then I'm assuming they spent the bulk of their shift here or vice versa. Yeah.

And I get it that there are variables. I was just wondering, I know that you could like tell where everybody is right now, but I'm just curious if the technology will allow us to.

I wish it did because it would help on occasion when we get a question about, well, so-and-so wants to know why it took 25 minutes to get somebody. And then I can go back and look, well, they were on a call of X and it was here and that's why it took longer. Um, I don't like it when I get that question. Then I look and they weren't on anything else. I'm like, well, why did it take that long? That's when we start having conversations about where are you taking your breaks, that type of thing.

I have a quick question about sergeants and deputies. So one of the challenges we've had in the last year or since, because we haven't had consistency and we're always kind of looking for that community engagement where folks just know who law enforcement is, a familiar face and tone. From what Brent has said, and I think maybe this was just discussed a little bit, the fact that you are a surgeon sounds a little like you're not hankering to be somewhere else. We have deputies come in, it's a brief stop in Carver, and they're on their way. And the end result is we don't have that consistency. Is that really different because of the position? You are stationed here. and not looking to be elsewhere. That doesn't mean you're going to do something some other time in your life.

Are you going to retire from Carver?

In general, is that what the sergeant position helps to bring?

I think it does. I think historically, and I know Brent brought up Larry, Larry and I kind of, when I say grew up together, I don't mean literally. Our law enforcement careers came up at almost the same time. So I was the Larry of Victoria. And I talk about that only because, to your point, the building those relationships, to going to some of those, to this day, hotter calls up there when you might have somebody that's ready to really lose it and go off on law enforcement or fire and I show up and they recognize me that almost brings the temperature down by itself I have no doubt I will develop that in Carver as well I have no intention of going anywhere else now that doesn't mean that I couldn't get a phone call in six months saying we have to reassign you to dog watch different day shift something of that nature but I think with a little bit more rank in these positions, we're not going to see the type of turnover. None of our cities like to see any of the deputies coming and going just because of everything you just said. They especially didn't like to see their liaisons, whether it was the Larrys of the world or his counterparts or the sergeants. I don't know if that kind of answers that question I think it just helps talk through that a little bit for our the two people or plus you know and the nice thing I will have not a final say by any stretch of the imagination but I will have a lot more input on who works the city um day shift night shift because I know who they are the sergeants help develop okay we're going to put this person I'm not going to look to bring somebody to Carver that I don't think would be a good fit in this city because that just is a recipe for things not to work well. Part of our issue, like all law enforcement, we're an extremely young department right now as it pertains to tenure. Our younger cops want to be busy. They want to go call the call. I don't blame them. I was a young cop once. Carver Victoria is probably not the best place to put them because we don't get the little number of calls that, say, Chanhassen does. So we like to put the... I don't want to say aggressive because that sounds bad when you're talking a law enforcement perspective, but you're putting the people that want to be busy in the areas where we can make sure they're successful with that. helps too. Yep.

Maybe a good segue, Josh, if you could just run through the service schedule and what that looks like and what kind of direction.

Oh absolutely. So there's been a slight change to this unfortunately that Brent's aware of but so you have me predominantly on Monday through Friday 9 to 5 so I like to say I've got banker's hours so seniority has some privileges. We have a team one day car which works sunday monday tuesday and we have a team two day car that works wednesday thursday friday and then they rotate every other saturday those folks work six in the morning to six at night Right now, we have our two power cars, which same days of the week, they just work 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. Matt Rosati, down on Team One Nights, was reassigned last week, probably through the end of hopefully August, to fill in a general patrol need with one of our folks that had gone out on surgery, and the recovery is just taking longer than what we were hoping for. so we unfortunately don't have that team one night car right now but we do have like today we have Nate Schumacher working right now so he comes in at 3 p.m. he works till 3 a.m. so we've got that 3 p.m. or excuse me that 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. every day right now where there's nobody in town because of that open spot when we looked at who could we move one of the things we looked at is when do we have downtime it was much it was better for both cities to move to have an opening from 3 a.m to 6 a.m than it would be let's let's not have a second car from say 3 p.m to 6 p.m if that makes sense because we were looking at when are the bulk of the calls occurring so josh this you know we were so excited to have you join the team and then kind of round it out and made it full made it whole for the contract

But with Matt being pulled away, it was my understanding that it was always kind of the town cops and those were untouched. And then kind of my terms would be kind of the county cops. And now there's this crossover of we've got a hole to fill and it feels like...

it's theft of identity right so why is it that they're pulling from our from here a couple of reasons and when we say we pull from the carver victoria slot so ultimately when whatever mats should be working in town that he's not the city gets credited back so we do keep track of that

And that's great, but if there's one bill that I want to use to pay 100% on, it's our law enforcement.

I get it. If I would have had my way, we would not have moved him. It came down to where do we have somebody that we can move? We had, no unfortunately Chan has, they've got a sergeant and they've got two patrol people. So there was nobody we could move. And those two patrol people are either day shift or night shift. There's no power coverage there like what we have here. We did have a power car in Waconia. That could have been something. However, when we look at where's the need to keep a full slate, Waconia needed it more than we did in Carver and Victoria to maintain our call level and respond to the calls that we get. So I think some of what Courtney's talking about is we have our general patrol coverage. Those are Folks that aren't assigned to a specific city. When I first started, I will not muddy the water with how we broke the county up. Now it's broken up into it's either the south half of the county or it's the north half. What's unique with Carver Victoria, Carver's in the South district, Victoria's in the North district. So we've got, typically we want to have one deputy always on covering just South or just North. And that's what we had to reassign Matt to do was County North because of that. And I'm hoping. that only goes through the end of next month at the latest, and then we'll be getting him back on that team one night rotation.

You know, I understand where this comes from though, because if we have a low call volume and another area has a higher call volume, we're obviously not going to leave a deputy here when the need is greater somewhere else. So I understand wanting to pay the full bill, but I think sometimes when people are out, life happens, and I'm glad that we don't have high call volume.

Well, and it's, you know, I pulled our call stats for June. And I also pulled them for a year to date through the end of June and I'm uh, you know You guys might wonder why do I always pull out traffic stop numbers and say we had this many stops? That's officer initiated stuff. So that doesn't mean I don't want to artificially inflate what it looks like our total call load is and the more folks we have working the more Proactive police contacts we have those traffic stop numbers go up. So if we had ten people working in Carver we're gonna make a lot more traffic stops than we do with one or two of us on it at times. That's why I like to pull out those traffic stop numbers and just point out of our 900 calls, this is how many were traffic stops, because that's an easy one to identify. And I appreciate you pointing that out. I wasn't happy when I saw that either, but unfortunately that decision was made a couple box tops above what my rank allows me to make.

So the model that we're suggesting the council consider is in developing goals and initiatives is to have that conversation here. We generate that action plan and send out the sheriff's office to implement that strategy Then report back and review, you know, I think in a perfect setting you have some type of matrix or data that tells you, that gives you line of sight to the information you're looking for to determine if you're successful or not successful. And then based on that information you look at your goals and initiatives. When you kind of walk through the details of that work plan, which have been, that same document has probably been amended for the last 20 plus years. I think in talking to Sergeant Baker and some of the other patrol staff over the years, it's so detailed that it's not connecting with the folks that are doing the work on a day-to-day basis. I would offer some unintended consequences when you highlight a dozen streets that you want to concentrate traffic enforcement on. What about the other 60 streets? And so there's that kind of unintended consequences rule and so, you know, without getting into all the details or pieces like, you know, go to this meeting and go to that meeting, check for locked doors. All those are tasks that any one of the full-time staff would do as a part of their job. I think initially when that contract model was put together, that idea of like do exactly these things is no longer needed. That's kind of the baseline. What do you want it to look like? What do you want it to feel like? What kind of data is most important to you? And so we try to generate some discussion topics that might flush that out for you. So offering these as a place to start, but certainly willing to go and help facilitate the discussion that you need to kind of determine what you want this to look like.

So I think what we've traditionally done when we have these kinds of questions is we just kind of, you know, question by question and go around the room. So question number one is, what do you think about law enforcement and public safety priorities? What major themes come to mind? Who wants to go first?

Okay, go ahead. I liked the slide that had the names and the team, the schedule. I think it'd be helpful to have pictures.

Mm-hmm.

So I put in a face-to-face. Face with a name. That, and then what... A theme that comes to mind is, you might answer for some of the other questions, is how many months has that person been in Carver? I just really want to start to be able to track and then like recognize how many. Like your start date of Carver. Yeah.

Like working in the city or working for the sheriff's office?

Working for the sheriff's office assigned to the city. Sure. So more location. It'd feel great to be able to go say, yeah, that's so nice we've had that overview.

One of the things, and it's predominantly been something only Chanhassen has done, they pick a night and have every one of the deputies come in to meet council and city staff and do it all at one time. Unfortunately, it brings up overtime because you might be bringing people in when they're not normally here. Unfortunately, the night cars, it's a little harder because by the time they come in, you guys are gone. The power car, the day cars, I will make a point of making sure they're stopping over here. I think everybody knows...

Yeah, I don't have a need for that. And I think just like the community engagement, that should just come natural. Like there was some that I hadn't met before at the ribbon cutting for the dog park. But otherwise, I'll let others answer the question.

priorities and major themes I think big one and we've been working on this all year staff has is the public and staff in the fire department is emergency preparedness making sure that our city plan is comprehensive and well integrated with the Sheriff's Department you know we don't we don't see it luckily we're not a very high crime area But being prepared for large events, I think is really, really important. And then the other major theme again is that kind of community policing, making sure that not just staff and not just city council are aware of who our deputies are, but making sure that they're getting to events and community things so that we can create those community partnerships and really make them a familiar part of the city of Carver. Kind of the things I'm thinking of.

One of the big things I drive towards with all of our folks is what to his community contacts and I can see when they do that because that's one of the metrics we measure their success I guess by how many times you just say it could be a kid with their bicycle helmet on and you're giving them that Dairy Queen coupon It is. Or it could be... How about carbon free marine?

Adults.

And adults. It could be even, you know, kids are out playing basketball. It could be dad mowing his lawn and you're just swinging by to say, hey, you want to mow mine? Whatever it might be. That's what I want to see them do. Sometimes that's easier said than done because it depends on... If they're going call to call and then they're not doing reports, it's being out there, being in the neighborhoods, being seen. I mean, that's the lowest level on our use of force continuum as peace officers is just officer presence, just being seen, talking to people, letting them know, hey, you're a person just like they are and kind of bringing down those barriers. So I want to see more of that. We will encourage that. more of that every time we get a city event if it's not me at them is me and somebody else or it is if it's it was Callie that you met that night at the dog park it is hey we're having a touch a truck thing and Callie you're working barring some reasons you can't be there I want you there from this time to this time and let people look at your squad car tell them what your equipment is whatever questions they might have

that that is exactly the line I wanted to go down into community engagement I do think sometimes it matters when you quantify it though so you just mentioned like giving out a coupon or an ice cream cone it is easy to forget all the those things that you'd like to be able to do when you're caught up in your day's work so I don't know what methodology you use but you do quantify it that you know we gave out X number of this and I don't know even if we want to discuss if we've got a little bit of money that specifically goes for community engagement and those kind of things a cup of coffee an ice cream cone a cup of coffee whatever it is so that there's actively something to give up so it is top of mind to Because that is the hard part, right? How do you ensure that's happening? But it is really important to ensure it's happening. And it goes such a long way in the community. I've had a little bit of experience doing ride-alongs with public safety. So I've seen the worst that could happen. But I've also witnessed exactly that and the response you get from the community when that officer just stops and greets. And it goes such a long way. So let's figure out a way to quantify it or a methodology to ensure that it's happening and maybe we can talk as a council.

make a decision what that looks like sometimes it's as simple as going into the cafe and a cup of coffee and then just standing there and talking to people or I mean Brent's been in there with me before I mean then he gets to see firsthand my doctor and BS come out talking to anybody but that's what

natural for me doesn't come as natural for the new cops because they're just they haven't built that I don't want to call it confidence but that ability yeah they've got some courage to give up and says you know thank you whatever it is you know they're getting handed out you know that engagement absolutely so um

a lot along the same lines. I think we're lucky that we're still a small community, that community engagement in the ways that we're referencing it can still happen. Obviously when you start to get larger and larger and larger, you can't have that as a personal touch, right? Because the population is just too high. So I think while we still have the chance that the population we're at, we should do it. Another theme, and I know we've had, well, we don't want to like pick out specific areas, but we have, you know, our major thoroughfare, right? That's coming through town now. And so, well, Laws can be broken everywhere. I think something that kind of rings for me is that we have a lot of folks who maybe are using that who are not carver proper, which is fine, it's a highway, you can use it all you want, but they may not have the same care about what they're doing because they're making it, they're going from a destination somewhere besides us to another destination somewhere besides us. So I don't know exactly how to flush out with that, what I'm trying to say, but that road as we get larger and we expand it and it becomes even more heavily trafficked is something that it makes, it worries me a little bit But also, I think it's kind of going to be a hot spot for us for some things.

I'm assuming you're referring to JCP? Yes.

Yeah. I mean, just gravel trucks through commute traffic, things like that. So I think that's just going to be busier and heavier, and there's more chances up there of things going pretty awry. Yeah.

So we did a lot of very targeted enforcement patrol on JCP earlier this year. We had, I don't know, I talked about it at a couple of past meetings, our unmarked Silverado truck that nobody in a million years would think was a law enforcement vehicle, but it is. And the lights come on and they're like, what is this? One of the issues we would run into up there is where can you sit to actually watch for red light violations? The difficulty being if I'm sitting in the median of JCP in my fully marked car, which then I might as well not even be there because people see it, that's going to change driving behavior by itself. And I see any vehicle, and I'm facing southbound. And then I see a vehicle come northbound, but I have a red light. I don't really have a way of knowing. Maybe they had a green arrow or something else, as I can't see the light that they're looking at, if that makes sense. So that worked well, but it almost works better when you just drive up and down the road. And we did have most of the infractions we got were because we were behind something and saw it as it happened and knew, okay, that car went through or that truck or whatever it was went through that red semaphore.

I just had another resident complaint about the... dump trucks or some kind of truck like that. They're running the red lights. It was just recent. It was within the last two days.

Sure. And I don't doubt that it's happening. I don't think it's happening at the epidemic that people think it is. I've seen it a few times myself, and I don't drive that road. I think somebody sees it, and then it's an issue. We don't want anybody to do it, but our observations... We were not getting trucks going through the road. We just weren't. Whether we were sitting or we were driving. We sat at Ironwood. We sat on Monroe. We just weren't seeing it. When we had the unmarked truck, he'd be up there for 90 minutes at a time.

You should probably switch because they probably radioed each other to say there's a cop sitting at the road. They go to Irontown for a period of time.

I don't doubt it. I get what you're saying.

So my items were this. Staffing levels, we kind of talked about that with the deputy getting pulled to be one of the county cars. I think the crimes of opportunity, every single summer we will have a rash of break-ins, the folks who left their car unlocked and are shocked that something is missing the next morning. Heaven forbid the folks who left the keys in it and are surprised that the car is missing. But I think whatever help you could be with kind of the PR, the social media on that that we could share to hopefully do whatever we can to prevent it because I think the warmer temperatures just bring more of those crimes of opportunity. DUI enforcement, the community engagement that everyone has said, school safety, building the relationships, that picture that you showed, the relationship building that we talked about. And with that, again, kind of back to the staffing, not being so much of a... We've seen a lot of different faces in the city of Carver, so hopefully getting a little bit of consistency in folks who are recognizable to our residents. And then it hasn't been as much of a problem here, but I'm anticipating it might be the e-motorcycles issue that I'm seeing in communities in Carver County. So I think what we'll do is, in the interest of time, we'll do the rest of the questions, but we'll all go and then we'll let you... provide feedback at the end if that's okay? Absolutely. Okay. So question two is, what are your communication expectations and what information are you interested in? I'll go first for that one. Early and often, there was a super traumatic incident that I'm sure you're aware of. It was almost two weeks ago. And Brent and I were out of town at the League of Minnesota Cities conference. And the only communication we got were from folks who are bystanders or social media. And in a theory of no surprises, that's not something that we want to learn about from social media. So the more communication, the better, as far as I'm concerned. Do you want to go next?

Sure. I know I mentioned this before. We used to get a much more in-depth report about what calls you have been on. I don't obviously want addresses and things like that, but just real quick. ones or is that stuff right now?

I break that out. Okay. If we have a DWI, I will note that there was a DWI.

But I also like the little bit, again, the more information that we used to get. It doesn't have to be as extensive as we used to get, but maybe a little bit more of an area or a detail about it or something, because when we just read that, okay, this many traffic stops, does that mean it was warnings? Does that mean it was for... this, was it for that? So I'm just feeling a little bit light on the information we're receiving in the report. So that's not, I know we changed it over to try the different direction with it. I don't care for it as much.

Kirk?

Insight. You've got a lot of experience. You can see patterns developing. You can tell us where, you know, there's always a request for signage. All sorts of unintended consequences when you put signs up. But your insight in patterns you recognize, whether it's speeding or violations, if there's something that we could do or if it's a change that signage would make or if it's Extra enforcement that we're not asking for that we should ask for or press for. So, you know, share your expertise with us. I don't know that you don't do that, but Courtney and Christie already communicated kind of what I had on my mind in addition to that.

Thank you.

Just to echo Eric, I think everybody's kind of touched on my issues. I did want to highlight again what Christy was saying, that I appreciate just a little bit more information in the reports that we're getting so that we can kind of have an eye on where there might be patterns that people might bring up to us and concerns that they may have. So that would be my one comment.

How do you say, and it is helpful to, if somebody breaks something up, to be able to say, yes, I know about that, or what but also just as much to sometimes correct them, be like, no, it hasn't happened that many, or just a lot of times people just want to, they don't have information, they start piecing together. So kind of the communication early and often. And we can just, maybe it's not really important, but each of us will have a different threshold of what's relevant. Very disappointed in not knowing more information about that, I think it was a I know it was a weekday, anyways, afternoon that JCP had on collision.

Yeah, which part of the frustration on that one, A, it happened in the township. It didn't happen in city limits. It's actually Dahlgren Township where it occurred. The intersection is Dahlgren. It's not City of Carver. It still impacted the city. I wasn't working that day, so I was not here to even know that occurred, unfortunately.

I think it's more... who's on the road, who does it impact? I don't think that's a...

Right. No, I agree. And unfortunately, some of these are, when I'm not here, those situations are so fluid, they're not thinking, I need to call Brent. I think Brent can attest I'm usually pretty good at calling him immediately, going, hey, we just had this happen, and there were eight of us, and if you get calls, it's now done, there's no threat to the public. But if our first response, like if the fire department was there?

Mm-hmm.

wouldn't one of them say something to whoever was in charge there possibly if we use the the situation as a learning opportunity so i connected with yeah i know that yeah i don't yeah i connect with chief walsh and like embedded within our emergency operations plan and a past communications plan we have a list of i would say just over a dozen like i would say situations no i have conference that

Yeah, that's already being worked on.

I just want to share this out quickly for situational awareness. There are some items that the sheriff's office, the fire department, et cetera, will let me know about that I can push out to you. But I think that's an area that we can grow from what I connected with. chief walsh and josh and i talked about it too so that's not an area like it's good that the council is bringing it up it's not an area that i expect to like occur again uh without some type of because even a communication that would have been like you know lane closed or to reconstruct okay so let's say that this were to happen again so what and you are not here so do we have a kind of

Quick fix on it until we get it all laid out that what would happen?

Yeah, so like I would like when chief Walsh and I talked about it today You know, it's an item that he's gonna review with his officer group And then say like okay, these are the items, you know once you have The scene under control and situational awareness, you know, shoot Brent a quick text or give him a call, etc. And I'm sure Sergeant Baker will talk to his team and say, hey, if, you know, these like major items come up, it's a little bit harder with the sheriff's office because you never really know, depending on like sometimes it could be Chaska PD shows up first to that scene. But in most instances, like for the things that I think the council, I'm hearing from the council, our fire department is going to be responding. I think that's something that the fire department will be able to do. It's just we've had a turnover in officer positions.

Yeah. Josh, you can't be here 24-7. We understand that. So I just want to make sure you have it laid out.

And I have directed our folks. I said, look, if it's a big incident, I would rather get a call at 2 in the morning and let me know something happened so I can make sure Brent's aware. But more importantly, I don't want to come to work at 9 o'clock the next day and have no earthly idea that we just had X occur. And now I'm trying to learn what occurred at the same time I'm trying to keep Brett and all of you guys in the loop as well.

And one thing I didn't mention, you guys all mentioned the weekly reports. I think we probably all have the same notes and neighbors. So, heaven, forget there's a squad car in your neighborhood, or they want to know, and they're reaching out to us. So it's good to see, like, in the 400 block of high street, this happened, you know, so. I would appreciate more information there too. Okay, number three what perspectives or experience would you like to share but not addressed in this discussion? Go first Question one and question two covered my comments.

I Can't really Again back to who you know You've got friends all over the place. Let us know when you know, there's a Catalytic converter that's have taken a sharp up to control have you know maybe we it's time for us to make a little announcement on our new Carver app hey this is going on in neighborhood communities you're gonna hear about it long before us from your peers those kind of things if we've got a little leg up we can communicate about we don't know what we don't know

We love communication.

So the level of detail on calls, I have been specifically vague on a lot of that because of the nosy neighbor aspect where I have to worry about protecting privacy of people as well. If we have an incident that involves a number of patrol vehicles, I normally will include that and say, hey, we were searching for somebody that fled. We had... Luckily, that doesn't happen very much, but I think you guys have probably seen that on some communications from me. Doesn't take me a whole lot of time to parse the data that I send you, but it will take me exponentially more time to go through it and call a little bit more detail. But if that's what the council and staff wants, I can do that. It's just going to keep me in the office more than being out in patrol, trying to pull some of that. And a lot of it is extremely boring. It could be we had a 911 call.

I don't think we want it down to the detail like every call that you have. But we really some of these highlight ones where there's been a significant disturbance that people are going to have noticed or something that we're going to want a little bit more on those. If you stop someone and you gave them a warning about their seatbelt. I don't care. Unless it's Christy, we don't want to hear it.

With the exception of the injury crash up on JCP over 212, is there a specific instance you can think of where it's been an issue that you didn't know anything about?

I think some of these disturbance ones where you're getting called because of suspicious activity and things like that where, I mean, if I... live down here and I hear that, you know, there's been some suspicious activity, I might want to be able to, I mean, to know that, I guess. I don't know. It's hard to explain which one I would, in fact, want to see because I don't know because all calls are different.

Well, I think that, unfortunately, this is a case of we literally don't know what we don't know, right? So we can't say, oh, that one, you know, but, like, when somebody posts, like, there was a stabbing in an apartment building and... And when they post that on social media, we will naturally have questions. And regardless of what that turns out to be, because sometimes the game of telephone, it devolves a little bit, or evolves, with just kind of those higher level, higher intensity kind of calls.

I think a search, where you had more than two cars respond, it's probably good for us to know that, well, they were searching for a dog. or not that that's necessary.

But I know what you're saying.

Yeah, you know, that allows us to help you in a bit to just kind of quash people's concerns that, you know, we've got some convict hiding out in Carver. But, you know, that's multiple units responding.

And we know it'll be a little subjective, right? We know it'll be a little subjective. But, like, we've... We maybe don't need to know that grandma fell and you went to a medical to help grandma, but we do need to know if grandma fell in the river and you went to a medical to try and find grandma.

And I think for the most part that's happening right now, or at least trying to make sure that that I'm sure there's going to be instances that slip through the cracks but my goal is if it's a significant response or a significant incident that once it's handled to at least get that message out that you know hey we had and I hate because it's always one street so it's why I am generically prone to not share that information from a privacy perspective. But if we had eight squad cars, that's the kind of thing I have tried to get out so that everybody's aware that that's what had happened. So two things, if I can jump in.

So one, I think there are we can let this marinate a little bit. There's a lot of great information and part of it is just thinking about it and maybe communicating in a different way. I think something that might help you is the council's experience. I think we're talking about maybe two different things. The updates that Sergeant Baker is providing are similar to everyone else that we've had on the major themes. I think what I'm hearing the council talk about is previous liaisons have written pretty extensive of calls and that I think what I'm hearing from you is like, it's maybe not all of that, but it's more than like the numbers.

Right.

And so I, I think it's, this is more like the weekly update that you're talking about and not like the calls for service. So I think if we. if we put our if we think about this strategically I think we can come back to something that doesn't take a lot of like bandwidth for you and your team but it's also meaningful enough for you to feel like you've got your pulse on trends and maybe areas of concern I do I do want to know about hot spot areas and I don't care if it's Mount Hope or it's 3rd Street East or if it's Hartwell I think

I think trending hotspot areas are important for us to know. Yeah.

Right. But that doesn't necessarily mean you need the, like the call. I don't want you number two from no, you're looking for this in the context of like, maybe like a monthly report or a dashboard of like, okay. similar to like maybe a the monthly water report maybe there's a month like the monthly sheriff's office report is in your head to do it well with the ones that come up whatever we'll figure it out but right but that's kind of the total is that's what you're looking for I think that what Christy said about hot spot areas is kind of what my brain is going to too that we need to be aware of if there's trending areas in town that we need to have

putting up more lights, you know, if we're seeing a lot of calls to a park or something like that, or if we've got a neighborhood that's having a lot of vandalism, maybe we need to have something, you know, if we don't have this information geographically, if it's just a, hey, this is what's happening overall in the city, we can't address some of these problems.

would like to keep the cadence of the weekly yeah because i don't want to hear about car break-ins like a month later for a monthly report yeah i agree i have a clarifying question sergeant baker you mentioned in the reports you don't always just have one street do you like right now if you add a comment here do you feel like it's primarily one street in terms of city of carver location depends on the i mean

There's three addresses in town that probably take us, we probably spend 50% of our police calls at three different buildings. Hartwell? Correct. And Fleet Farm? Not even Fleet Farm anymore. Can you share what those are, please? We spend the... We spend the bulk of our time at three properties, two specifically on Hartwell Drive. So that's why I am generically prone to not share that because it just puts a target.

Are they single family homes or are they both multiple? Correct.

I disagree that it's a target because I think it's public knowledge anyways, right, that these calls went out. I mean, you can find it somewhere.

We don't need the apartment number.

Yeah, I don't need the apartment number. I don't want their names. But I think that is important to us as the council to say, if 30% of the calls are going to Hartwell, okay, 30% of the calls are going to Hartwell. Maybe there's also something that we end up talking to the management company about or whatever it looks like. There's kind of a rich call in there. And I understand that... Is that the third one?

No, you're talking senior living? Yeah. We get a lot of medicals there. And that's part of the concern. I mean, a lot of the calls when we go to any address, it's not a public safety matter. It is a medical. It is a mental health situation. It is...

And we have living there that is more central, right? So you have more people living in a closer space. So your percentages may are partially due to that. If you have them spread out, it could be down in the bottom of 4th Street and at the top of 4th Street. I don't see any issue with... knowing that that's a hot spot in town. It just is what it is.

That's what I want to know. Some of the calls we've had there are the ones I've shared. Hey, we had this situation. There were multiple squads. We had dogs. We had whatever the case was. But if we get a call of someone in a mental health crisis that draws three squads, I don't think that's the kind of thing that needs to be shared.

Depending if it's a violent crime, yeah.

I appreciate your treating us delicately, but we're going to hear. This is Harvard. This is a safe community. It's also a neighborhood, a community of curtain twitchers, right? That if they see three squads in front of their house, they're going up to the neighbors. They're going to want to know. So I think if it's a, I think we can paint in broad brushstrokes where it was a non-criminal situation. health call that we can't talk about because of HIPAA violations, that's something completely different, a non-criminal medical call.

So I don't know if you guys are aware of this, you can look at every one of our active calls going on right now.

and see it won't list the street it'll say carver it'll fire call medical whatever whatever it might be right but we're not what we need from you is to have that condensed for us um because i don't know that we're going to watch that but having that weekly update where we have that info at hand for us now i'm not saying something that's been you know five, six hours on, but expanding on some of these so that we do know where the hotspots are and things like that, I think will be helpful to us as the council, um, just so that we are in the know and it's good information to have. And I think it's great that we can look up all the calls and find them all, but I can't, I don't get paid to watch. So I'm going to ask one more time.

I'm going to share what the third address says.

Well, there's three large multifamily dwellings on Hartwood Drive.

Oh, there's... Laura, let's move on. Yeah.

I just want to add one thing. The three large multifamily addresses, there are 70 homes in one of those buildings. So, like, I... I know you're not saying this, Dr. Baker, and the council isn't saying, but for the record, not every home, like I live in the Spring Creek neighborhood, not every address is Spring Creek. It's like there's 70 different people there, so I'm a little uncomfortable just saying that. Everybody that lives in that one address is part of some adverse impact to public safety. So I just, if anyone's watching, I think that's not the intent.

100% that. You know, Zach called in a suspicious person that he thought was dealing drugs on our corner last night. I think, like, there's also the component of, like, okay, we know where these hot spots are. kind of back on you of like, what are we doing? Are we building relationships with the managers? Do we know Deborah and the managers that are up there by name? Are we connecting with them? What are we doing to decrease these numbers?

And there's a reason we've seen a decrease to certain properties because that is all happening. It's just not stuff I can publicly share that it's happening.

Okay.

All right. We good? We're good? We're good? Okay. Thank you. We are going to move on because we still have a pretty robust agenda to get over within the next 20 minutes here. Up next, we have the strategic plan for commercial and industrial development discussions. Thank you. Do you need a dad joke? I don't know what was up.

It's just a classic. Do you have a dad joke? Plug out.

Plum out.

What? Plum out.

Long weekend.

Did you say curtain twitchers? I don't like that term. Okay, don't want to steal a thunder. Is that something you learned at Lee in Minnesota? Are you sure? I really have a friend who uses it quite a lot. I wish we had curtains in here.

I said definitely remember one time when I was growing up looking for some lights driving through a neighborhood and so and you know because you're looking at the lights you're not like driving the best and my dad got pulled over for a possible DUI he had not had anything to drink he was dead sober but because he was kind of doing Christmas light watching And it was the funniest thing because it was right outside my best friend's house. And her neighbor came out and started adjusting the light bulbs on his Christmas lights so that he could see what was going on.

And I told her that and she goes, let's turn it back.

I'M GOING TO SNEAK OUT. THANK YOU. YOU GUYS HAVE A GREAT NIGHT.

YOU TOO. BRENDA'S GOING TO BE MY SLIDE SWITCHER. SHE'S GOING TO WORK THROUGH IT. TODAY WE HAVE A DISCUSSION ABOUT WRAPPING UP OUR 2023-2026 STRATEGIC PLAN. SO IN THAT DOCUMENT THAT WE HAVE ADOPTED AND WE'VE BEEN WORKING OFF OF FOR THE PAST COUPLE OF YEARS, THERE WAS AN AGENDA ITEM TO DEVELOP A MARKETING PLAN FOR DEVELOPMENT IN THE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT SECTION. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that, what that looks like today, what it may look like in 2023, which was a different condition, and then some ideas moving forward. So obviously we all know what development drivers are, and Carver rooftops is the number one thing that we hear. It's the resident population. We also hear internally a lot about the daytime population. So there's such a focus on having folks that work in Carver, so people that would go grab lunch somewhere, stop somewhere quick on their way home. The daytime population is a space that we are working really hard on. A couple new projects coming in is definitely going to help that. Besides contractors, the quick trip at noon is wild with the contractors. So we have a ton of folks that are transient in their work, but looking for a more robust daytime population. Availability of land and utilities, and then also having a city process that works well for both sides of the table, the city as well as a developer. Slide. so the city's role in all of that is mostly responsiveness so it's when someone reaches out for a business idea or if they are thinking about something getting in front of us is usually something that we take pretty seriously just so we can hear people out give them information that's appropriate a clear and transparent process we hear it fairly often from developers saying like the city it was so great to be here because it was a pretty easy process for us So having fair expectations for them is really meaningful and impactful. Respectful discourse. Everybody has a right to their own opinions, but having it stay respectful in the council chambers, I think is a big piece of why we're seeing development success is that you can disagree on some minor things, but typically we're moving towards the same direction respectfully. And then information sharing. So connection and conversation. So it's conversations you all have, it's conversations we have. Storytelling. So telling people about the projects that we're working on Our commitment to the projects, I think, is really impactful. And then online resources, which the city's app is a big piece of that right now. So since 2023, when we sat down for that strategic plan, I don't think we would have imagined a lot of the projects that we saw or that we are seeing right now. So since 2023, we've seen the Enclave Common Line, Summerfield, the Ion Business Park, Hometown Bank, Monkey, Les Schwab, Taco Bell, Carver Oaks, and Carver Place. If you sit outside my office on any given day, you'll probably have a chance to hear me have a conversation saying like, well, we don't have any property that's in the city limits right now that could develop that way. But if you do XYZ, you might be able to find something. We get that call a lot. It's brokers looking for any available land. It's residential, it's commercial, it's industrial. We don't usually know the details. It's not a broker calling saying I have end user XYZ. They're saying, do you have commercial space available? And typically our conversations are about what's available in city limits water annexation process looks like and then, if we know any folks kind of on the fringe of cover city limits that are interested in the process or folks that we've engaged with recently. So thinking about where we are growing in which direction. Again, we're growing in some places that I didn't see coming in 2023. So obviously a big conversation was had about trunk charges, which we'll talk a little bit about. And then moving west was a little bit of a foggy crystal ball for us, not knowing when that was going to happen. But we're also seeing a lot of development north of 212 right now. So recent projects obviously are Lakeview, the Ion Business Park. And then the school district is working on some applications for their transportation facility. There is an additional 60 ish acres on the Wickenhauser piece that we field calls on fairly regularly, but we need Commerce Drive to extend there. So we need a construction season to get us to that site to make it developable. But we're getting questions kind of in all directions and we're moving in directions that were unknown in 2023. And I want to highlight the work that we do here that supports the conversations that we have with developers on a weekly basis. So obviously the trunk fees was a major piece of getting Summerfield, which you'll review at the next meeting, up and running. So trunk fees were established to support GAP projects. So began in 2026. And because of that, we're seeing our first project because of it. So Summerfield is coming online. It's the utility extension of the Southwest growth area. And then something we've had a lot of discussion about is the highway crossing under 212. So some cities might take the approach that we don't have to do those things. We don't want to think about them. They're long-term projects that someone else can think about. But you are committed to continuing development in different directions. That allows us to have conversations with developers that are impactful and meaningful and show that when they bring something to the table, we'll meet them there. They'll say, we're thinking about this. We're working on a utility plan. We're planning for the work that you might do. Like I mentioned previously, the extension of Commerce Drive is another major one, so the Ion Business Park can come online, the District 212, and then the remaining 60 acres. Levee certification is a massive one. I am really excited to see what kind of renaissance downtown can have once the levee is certified and folks don't have the requirement of flood insurance anymore. The fee waiver program that you used for the Carver Oaks and Carver Place projects. And then also the respectful discourse that you have about growth. There are exciting parts, but there's also really hard parts. It's talking about what water rates are going to do and tax impacts of different projects. So the investment that you have in those conversations is impactful to the development community to show that you're thinking about it. You're allowing that conversation to happen where some places don't. So we also are committed to development. So at the workshop that we just had, we started talking about the 2050 comp plan. We're starting that work. Uh, we collectively decided to call it full steam ahead, which in that room, it was, uh, cute, but even since then I've had a lot, I've had time to think about it, but the commitment of the planning commission and city council to say full steam ahead on these projects we're working on, I think is a really great idea to be able to say like, we're ready. We're thinking about it. We're continuing to grow. We know that that's going to be our future. And at the work session, we also talked about increased property guidance for commercial and industrial development, specifically north of 212. So thinking about some of those areas that we traditionally have guided for residential, what would it do if we flip some of them to a commercial industrial guidance, not only to our market, but also our tax base. Obviously, an industrial project has much more meaningful impact to our tax base and some relief for residents if it's a larger project with a larger investment. So thinking about what those different things can do both for our comp plan but also beyond. I also will say you have a really great commitment to a diverse housing product. So we talk about it in council chambers. We talk about it here. It's not just the starter family homes that you're looking for. It's the full range. So what does it look like if you have a million bucks to spend? Where could that go in Carver? What would that look like? We work really hard on our relationship and the orderly annexation agreement with Dahlgren Township, which we are, it works really well. It's a really slick process. We know what to do. We know when we need to connect with them, invite them in to have conversations. And then obviously our annual review of staffing plans, CIP documents, et cetera. So not only are we committed to development with some of the infrastructure work and the financial components you are working on, but also with the plans that we're working on, the support that we're seeing across the board. So I've been thinking a lot about this, and I would say I don't think we have a development problem. If you Google Carver, Minnesota, you're going to get headlines that say the fastest growing communities in Minnesota, and we are seeing just a boom of mostly residential projects, but Carver, I would say specifically, is seeing growth in other spaces too. So thinking about Carver Commons, seeing the Hometown Bank project since 2023, Les Schwab coming in Taco Bell. Those are three projects that have come in in that time frame, which I think is for Carver's size, I think impressive for the commercial offerings. And then we're starting to see that industrial work too with the Ion Business Park. That group is looking for additional space in Carver to figure out if they can find... Are you laughing about the snackability? I just noticed that.

I don't see that. Four out of ten for snackability.

So what we've been thinking about at a city level is that The city probably doesn't have a role specifically in marketing just with the amount of growth that we're seeing Private property owners can often be working on a project for a month before it comes in to us So if we were working on marketing property, we might be a couple steps behind We also talked about it We reach out to commercial users that would be of interest for folks in the city of carver the city council pending Commission staff as well. And we're not sure that postcard with carbon information will be more impactful than some of those conversations that we're able to have. So, in my opinion, I don't think we're lacking development, I think the patient's piece is the tough part like waiting for those other users to come, but I think we're starting to see a shift with the amount of rooftops that we've added. growing business in Carver as well to allow the daytime population to increase. We have clear strategic goals and plans to support both development and long-term maintenance. And there's people looking at Carver just with new residents, new businesses, visitors. I think the Merriam-Junction Trail is going to bring a bunch of new people here. I think the app is a great way for folks to get information. So thinking through that. I think that there could be an investment in some professional photos or drone work. So that could allow us to market the city in more professional ways. If you look at the city website or the city app or anything that we push out, it's staff pictures that we've taken on our cell phones. And I'm going to throw Brent under the bus, but I'll sometimes take pictures and he'll be like, you cannot use that.

You know, what's funny on the slide, slide eight, the snackability slide, I took a look at that picture and they pulled it from a Wikipedia user. And it's like, oh, we could do a better picture of them.

yeah that and that was like my first reaction that's like and i think even like the commitment to the app um the information is great but if we could get some great photos on there on there too that are showing some of the professional work that we're doing i think it would be really impactful so we could use it on the website social media the city app comp plan parks master plan etc etc what prevents us from doing that We haven't budgeted for it, historically, to have someone come in and take photos previously. So we don't use a city algorithm to do that? We don't have one. Okay.

And we can't use the fire departments for a project like this.

I would say the level that we're working with, I don't know if we want me... out back with the drone flying around us, trying to figure it out.

You know, there's a lot of people for drone, like, there's a lot of droners around who, like, I don't know what to call them. Yeah, in town who might just be willing to have some fun with it. We don't really have to pay a fee to, or a large one.

So thinking about that, improving our online presence, we can showcase some projects. We can show strong examples of development in Carver for the private market and highlight both private investment and city investment. You'll notice throughout the slides, I didn't have any pictures because everything I came up with was from my iPhone and not great, but there are a couple more slides with a couple of pictures. So if you ever hear us talking about a person named Michael Jobs, he was an engineering tech with Voltimic and he was fantastic, but he was really talented at some drone work. So he was able to give us a bunch of pictures of projects. He was also in town all the time. So he was getting these pictures fairly consistently of different phases for the projects, which I think tell a good story to show the type of development that we're doing, like what it looks like that Carver is doing some of this work that we're seeing projects. So he has moved into a full-time fire gig. We are thrilled for him, but we miss him for a variety of reasons. One of them that several days a week, we would just get random development update pictures.

So there's one more slide. Yeah.

So some examples of more professional photos that we historically have had, but we've probably used that one on the left in every single city publication we have ever put out so i think it's beautiful yes it sure is but i think that there's an opportunity that we could capture some additional it's beautiful so i'm thinking through that item if maybe we could swap it from a marketing item to maybe a more professional online presence with photos and drum work for some various projects that we can use them for all right I don't have any issues with that. That seems like a good advice.

And you budgeted for that already?

Lori, thoughts? No, good idea. Any concerns? No.

Okay, approved. Do you need, like, that was quick, and I feel just like we're a little stressed for time, but I, you made a really good point. Like, it isn't our job to market this land for the land owners who aren't going to say, like, hey, thanks, City of Carver, here's some money for all of your hard work. And I just use the example of a postcard. That also will not be that carrot that we're looking for to draw work in. I think what is a really good carrot is how easy it is to work with you and the feedback that we've gotten from developers already about how fantastic you are. And I think that with maybe some nice pictures that we could use for multiple other purposes would be great.

Great. If you know anyone who has a drone, let me know. We can do a contest.

I have a comment on, I think it was slide nine, the stuff that we're working on. I really like the third bullet point, the long-term maintenance. I feel like we're just making a good shift with the street maintenance.

Agreed. And when I'm looking at this, and I know this article is for 2025, Have we dropped at all? So it's like in summary, it's less carver farther down.

So have we moved down a little bit on a few of these or are we still considering them? I don't know. I would say none of them are official. Like it's folks. digging around on demographic data, so I would be surprised because we've seen like our growth has been really consistent year over year, so it's usually us, Rogers, Corbin are the top three.

And I also think it's like a fun math equation, right? Like whenever we go out for Carver County mayors, it's between Victoria, Cologne, carver who are like we're the fastest growing no we're the fastest you know we're the fastest growing so i think like when you take your pick it's still very safe there so just have like incrementally our percentages are higher and my land area i would say with recent annexations that we've done we're blowing everybody in carver county out of the world i was curious that around the state if

Okay, um, do you know what you need?

Okay, let's hold everything else for the regular meeting. Make it a motion to adjourn. Please.

I'll make a motion to adjourn.

I'll second second by Sarah discussion. Hi.

Texas claims it by overall.