City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, folks, we've got a green light. I think we can we can go to work here this evening on December 16th. So, um let me welcome all of you and uh as I mentioned, it is the city council meeting for the city of Vana. It is Tuesday, December 16th at 7:01 p.m. Uh we thank all of you for being here this evening. Uh getting close to the holidays. It's uh tough to take time to come to city hall, but we appreciate it. Uh as um our communication staff has indicated to you, we're doing these meetings in a hybrid sort of fashion, so people can watch remotely just like we did did during COVID and postcoid. We're continuing that practice. People are going to be able to call in if there's a public hearing or for public comment on things that are of concern to them. Uh and uh we've already been through how to do that. The phone number for community comment is up on the screen right now and that's important because it comes up fairly quickly in the agenda. Uh so having provided that information I'm going to call the meeting to order and ask our uh Carrie sending our clerk to call the role for the council. Thank you Miss Senning.

Thank you mayor. Council member Agnu here. Council member Jackson here. Council member Pierce here. Council member Risser here. And Mayor Hland here. Uh, and now next is the pledge of allegiance. 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.

Thank you folks. We've got a meeting agenda that's been published. Uh and um we've got a few things we want to modify this evening on the agenda before we go to community comment. Uh first of all, we've had quite a few council members or several council members that want to remove items from the consent agenda for discussion and I'm going to take one of them up in a moment. Uh and so what we thought we'd do is we'd move special recognitions and presentations uh up in the agenda and we'll move to have an amended agenda passed so that uh that immediately following uh the um community comment would be the special recognitions and presentation. So we'd basically be switching around uh section six and section seven of the agenda. Uh and then with respect to um uh the legislative platform that's on the consent agenda is item 6.30. Uh we decided in work session this evening that we were going to uh postpone the further discussion on that until probably the second meeting in January uh this coming year. Uh there's a couple issues there. One of one was uh in that in that uh legislative agenda was some discussion about uh potential seeking bonding money from the state for a potential passenger or pedestrian underpass under France Avenue. And we're we're that's way ahead of us. you know, we're we're not going to take up until the end of January the issue whether we want to go to the next step uh in that process of evaluating that project and and and think thinking about spending a significant amount of money to do that. So, we think that's going to be premature. I think the council has uniformly decided that shouldn't be in the agenda for our legislators. uh we're going to just hold off until we decide what we're going to do about the the future of the study of that potential pedestrian underpass under France

Avenue. So, that's coming out. And as we worked on it, there were other things that we talked about as well. Uh the potential expansion of spending authority with regard to sales tax to do the project at Brayar Arena. Some of our council members need to meet with staff yet on that. And so what we're going to do is postpone that matter, take it off the agenda and postpone that uh matter to um the second meeting in January. So I think we'll take a motion to that effect first. We'll deal with that and then we'll move then we'll have an amended agenda that involves moving items six and seven around or section six and seven of the agenda. Is there a motion to uh move the potential adoption of the 2026 legislative platform to the second meeting in January 2020 2027?

So moved. A second, excuse me, 2026. Year ahead [laughter] of myself here. Uh, let me get a motion, a second to move the uh, legislative platform discussion to our second meeting in January 2026. Any further discussion? All those in favor of moving the legislative platform discussion to our second meeting in January 2026, say I. I.

I. Opposed. Carried. Uh and then uh the uh we discussed the the change in the um agenda itself. Is there a motion to uh move the section dealing with special recognitions and presentations uh to a spot in the agenda placed in the agenda immediately following community comment and ahead of the items on the consent agenda? So moved. Member Jackson moves

a second. Member Agnu seconds the uh uh amendment of the uh city council meeting agenda to put uh special recognitions and presentations uh in line uh ahead of community comment, excuse me, ahead of uh the consent agenda items. Uh and then uh that's the motion that's the essence of the motion. So uh all those in favor of moving section seven ahead of section six in the agenda say I. I

I opposed. Carried. We have an amended agenda and uh we'll get to work on this. Now, uh before we get to community comment, I've been thinking about this the past few weeks and I think some of our other council members have been thinking about it as well. Um, we're just we're just seeing um a little bit more um I wouldn't say striden is necessarily the right word, but uh I think what we need to be thinking about as we address the council or dialogue with each other within these chambers is that uh uh that concept of kindness, the kindness and compassion and civility. You know, back in November, we passed uh a resolution on on kindness week and and the first two lines of that I went back and looked at the uh resolution. The first two lines were kindness is a universal expression that brings out the best in others and ourselves with overwhelmingly positive implications for health, well-being, and peace. And whereas kindness is the heartbeat of the world that like a life vest keeps us afloat and helps us to stay connected to each other, which reduces feelings of anxiety, depression, and isolation. This whole notion of treating each other with kindness and civility uh and a hint of compassion is really I think important as we as we go through life and particularly in this chambers where we want to be treating each other with the proper level of respect. And I know that sometimes people come and they have a particular staff person they want might want to single out uh maybe the city manager. And I think if we can if we can keep the level of discourse high uh and and talk about the problem that you see and not particularly attack a particular person or a staff member or a council member uh it's not going to jeopardize your first amendment rights to give us your opinion. But I think if we all think about handling this uh these conversations, these dialogues in in a more kind way, in a more

compassionate way, in a more civil sort of way, we're all going to be better off for it. And I'm going to I'm going to start the the new year this way too with the first meeting we have in January. But I just wanted to give people kind of a heads up of of the direction I think it would be beneficial for us all all to head. And particularly I think people in our town appreciate our staff and the people that are working out in the streets, the snowplow drivers, our police department, our firefighters, people that are working on uh broken water manes at 20 below. They watch what happens here. they pay attention to who's being treated with respect and who isn't. And so I think if we treat each other with respect, with respect to each other's opinions, honor those opinions, uh, and we treat the people that work for the city with the proper level of respect, whether they're in in a senior administrative position or or or some other position in the city from a staffing standpoint, we're all going to be better off for it. So, thanks for that uh uh that time to be able to talk a little bit about kindness, compassion, and civility. And now we're going to go to community comment and we're going to talk to folks that are here. Uh we're going to visit with folks here in the audience first that wish to uh uh address council on matters of concern to them and then I think we'll go to people that are online that wish to address the council. Uh this will be the first opportunity tonight to address the council on a matter of concern. We've only got one public hearing uh that people can talk about as well and their testimony will be welcome when we get to that point in the agenda. So now let's go to community comment and welcome our first uh fellow resident.

Good evening. because there's been an issue in the past. I've asked Miss Bader to kindly if she would please zoom in on this overhead and leave it up on the screen and viewable by the TV audience until the 30 second yellow warning light comes on. So, thank you for that. Good evening, Mayor. Yes, good evening.

My name is Ralph Sickert. A year ago, this council voted to approve the projected 17.34% levy increase for 2026. And then in August in the August work session, several council members asked for a schedule not dissimilar to this to this schedule right here with the ex expectation it include the details. Some might say those details over $50,000 to support the millions of dollars shifting from one scenario to another. I contend that if such a detailed schedule had been created, council members and even residents unschooled in finance would realize that the 2026 budget does not reflect the claim that Adina's tax burden is somehow $5 million lighter. Rather, total spending reflects a number closer to a 16% burden. A message masked by the millions of dollars shifted to other taxing entities and the city tapping into reserves all in a vain attempt to show a lower number. Looking no further than the now 11.3 11.93% call it 12 increase in the general fund. a number masked by the 25% reduction in the construction fund. Another slight of hand in budgeting optics, one that again kicks the can down the road, setting up residents for another pool pump or Bramer Ice Arena emergency. And so here we are tonight and your August request is still

unfulfilled. Why is that, manager Neil? But the important question is for the council. If you know the details, if you don't know the details of what was added, and if you don't know the details of what was subtracted, how can you, as the leaders of our city, say you are sufficiently informed to fulfill your oversight role? Or is it that millions of dollars are considered merely in the weeds and unworthy of discussion? Finally, towards the end of the November 18th city council meeting, member Risser announced she would not be running for reelection. She further elaborated on her decision in the Adina Suncurrent. Among her reasons, in her opinion, too often she was not being provided the information she needed to fulfill her oath of office. A perspective that was almost universally shunned by her fellow council members. I for one need look no further than this year's budget process to say yes, member Risser, this council is not getting the information it needs and this council is not even getting the information it asks for. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Zickert. Anyone else in the audience wish to address the council on a matter of concern to them in the public comment portion of the agenda? David Frankle. Uh, I wasn't quite sure I was going to say this today, but you know, I don't appreciate being lectured as a resident. I spend a significant amount of time volunteering for nonprofits. This morning I spent half the day at the VA hospital volunteering. I get more positive feedback from veterans and VA employees than I do from employees of the city of Adina. I sent an email this morning to the city staff and the city council about what's going on at Burar Arena and I get absolutely no response. I have to tell you, I was in Canada last summer and I sent a email to Transport Canada, which is their version of the US, US Department of Transportation. I was looking for a yes or no answer. The next day, they sent me a very exhaustive answer to what I was looking for. The next day, I seldom get any response to my emails from anybody in this building. The reason I'm here is what's going on at Braar Arena. Why is all the things going on at the South Arena not posted on any city vina website? Theina hockey association sent out conflicting information initially that a compressor broke and the city says now that a chiller broke. I mean it doesn't really matter but we need a concise messaging to the residents of Edina who are paying the bill on all this. The other things is does Braar Arena have a digital facilities management

system to track what needs to be maintained, what needs to be replaced, mechanicals, including the AEDs in the building, which are external automated external devices. I talked to the vendor on that a couple years ago, and Brabar was not doing annual maintenance on their AEDs, which is a different subject. But if you look at the email, the refrigeration systems need daily, weekly, quarterly, annual maintenance. And I don't know if that's being done. And again, that information should be on the city website. If you're really looking for state-of-the-art, you should go over to the Eden Prairie Rec Center and talk to their facilities manager. They have a electronic facilities management system they use to track everything. And to put it in simple terms, that whole building gets painted every year in a cycle. They know every day what has to be done because they have a checklist on their electronic facilities management system. The other thing is given that they've flushed out the refrigerant out of the south rink. Evidently, there's an incompatible refrigeration system being used from the rental unit. Probably Freon, which is now is production of Freon's banned, but it can still be used. But Freon is also a a greenhouse gas um producing refrigerant and if it's being used, you should be aware of it. Also, was there any consideration to purchasing ice time from other arenas around the Twin Cities? I mean, we're ice time is tight in the Twin Cities, but it's not to say it's not available. We're spending a significant amount of money for a relatively short period of time for ice time at Braar Arena.

Mr. Franklin, I need to have you wrap up. Okay. The last thing I'm going to say is what's going on with velocity as a tenant at uh Braar Arena. If that slot's empty, who's paying the bond payment? Right. Thank you. Anyone else?

All right. Um is there anyone online? Mr. Mr. Mayor, we don't currently have any callers, but we are going to put up that graphic again. Let's put up the phone number again and all that information. It's a little bit complicated, so we'll wait a minute.

Yep. Yep. I'll come [clears throat] back to you here if we have a caller or when it's been a minute. It's coming up on a minute here and we still do not have any callers.

Good. Thank you. Um [snorts] so our practice is for folks in the audience that uh the city manager will address these issues that are raised at this meeting. Uh there'll be something online by Friday of this week in response to those uh concerns that were raised by residents and then he will follow up at our next regular scheduled council meeting uh with verbal comments that respond to the uh comments that were made this evening. So, a couple weeks from now, we'll be responding to Mr. Zickert's uh concerns and the concerns of Mr. Frankle. Uh, and I think that email that was received by M from Mr. Frankle today, you'll be responding to that in in due course and and our regular schedule of doing it by Friday, I would imagine. And then let me turn to you, Mr. Neil, to get affirmation of that and then also to uh turn to you to also address issues that were raised two weeks ago.

Thank you, your honor. Uh at our December 2nd meeting, we had two comments or two questions. Uh first question is what is going on at Bremer Arena? What did the repairs cost? What's the plan to repair permanently? Uh on November 1st, we had uh a pretty significant uh equipment failure uh for the South Rink chiller. City staff immediately secured a temporary chiller to restore operations as quickly as possible. You remember this is happening early in the season. I think it was even during tryyouts. Um, so we needed to get ice back into that ice arena as quickly as we could. On a parallel path, staff quickly got the backyard rink up and running, uh, two weeks ahead of schedule to help mitigate some of the impact of losing the south rink. Uh, staff provided regular, sometimes daily updates to all the Braar user groups throughout the closure. They knew what was they knew what was happening and what the timeline was for repair. Uh, we're working we're this is in past tense because this was the answer from last week. We're working to determine the the total financial impact. We're going to tell you what that um total financial impact is tonight because that item is there is an item on the consent agenda um that deals with that. Uh we hope this this will this temporary chiller we expect to have through uh March 31st of 2026 to u during in that arena. This is a high priority to ensure our users uh can rely on the south rink. We need to replace probably replace the freezing system and possibly even the floor in that arena. Second question was what is the schedule for ADA remediation of the Grand View pedestrian bridge? Uh the federal government shutdown really had an impact on the on the lawyers at the Department of Justice who deal with uh ADA claims like this one. Uh since the federal government is working again, the city's legal council re-engaged the DOJ attorneys. Uh we had a meeting out there a couple of weeks ago. Uh Director

Milner and a couple members of his team, our the legal staff from uh the the insurance trust, League of Cities Insurance Trust, and representatives from uh the DOJ met on site, got a chance to see for for themselves, maybe some of them for the first time, uh how this bridge works compared to the parking ramp, compared to the parking lot. So that was a a productive meeting. Uh we're looking now uh to put together uh a summary of that and bring that back to a close session of council for further discussion. And that was it.

All right. That prompt any uh thoughts from council members or queries for manager Neil. Okay. Well, let's then go to uh the special recognitions and presentations portion of the agenda. And the first thing there are tree uh on that portion of the agenda is the tree recognition campaign awards. This is the second year that we've done this. This is something that's being done by our energy and environment commission. Uh this initiative, the tree recognition campaign, recognizes and celebrates the dinosa tree canopy. And we've got some good things to talk about tonight. Uh Marissa Bear, our sustainability manager, is here. And uh do you have some of the members with you from the energy and environment commission that want to join you at the DSL? Here comes the chair.

Yes. So, thank you. Good evening, Mayor. We haven't seen the chair for a while. [laughter] Uh so again, Marissa Bear, sustainability manager. Um so introducing this first special presentation we have tonight, which is the tree recognition campaign awards. As the mayor noted, this is an energy and environment commission initiative from their work plan intended to celebrate the value tree canopy here in Edina. The commission will be recognizing 11 trees tonight. Um so Hilda will do the presentation and then following her presentation, we have several folks here tonight who are part of the nominations and recognize trees. And so we'd like to do a photo opportunity at the very end. So I will hand it over to Hilda who will walk through the presentation. All right, Miss Bear. Thank you. And um what why don't you give folks your full name, Madam Chair?

Okay. Thank you, mayor, city council members. Um thank you. I was a former chair. Former chair. Only a member of the We just think of you as kind of a virtual chair. Well, thank you. But no, no, I'm only I'm only Yeah. Forever [clears throat] chair.

Yeah. So as Marissa mentioned, I am here to present the true recognition campaign awards. This is um this is as she mentioned the second year that we do this uh initiative. I have to say that I co-lead this initiative with John that is here also. And I have to say that it's a very fun initiative. We really we really appreciate and and are grateful that we have so many members of our community nominating trees. um because I think we both well we the commission think that it's really um like we have a very beautiful canopy in the city and we want to celebrate them with them. So I before I move on I want to thank I don't know if all of the the nominators nominations are here but I want to thank all the people that participate because it's really it's really fun to read uh the connection they have with their trees. So this year we have 15 nominations. We are going to award 11 recognitions and we have four honorable mentions. [clears throat] Here you can see the awards, the tree species and location. And I'm going go uh quick to all of them. So you can take a look at the at the trees. So the best the first one that we have is the best shade tree. As you can see, this is a Norway maple. And as you can see in the picture, I think the picture talks by itself. It's located in 4701 Middle Road. The owner think that this tree has between 80 and 120 years. And so she this I'm quoting her words. This tree has provides shelter, shade, and warmth to generations of human birds and animals. Um our next three is the best is the best elm and the climbing tree award. Um this is an American elm located in 5713 Cambridge Drive. These three um you know

elm trees live between 300 and 400 years. So this one it's mid age is I think the owner says it's between 150 and 175 and it's located close to where the Cahill school was uh built in 8064. So the tree was growing up at the same time that the school was built. Then we have um the best oak. But for this for this award, we have two oaks. You can see both of them here. They are really um a majestic tree. So we couldn't decide between which one was the best one. So we decide to give them to the two of them. Which one? One was located at 616 Halifax Avenue South and the other one is at 720960 Drive. Then we have a a new award which is the best mature tree cluster. This is a group of six bur oaks trees that are located in the Burmar golf course. Um uh they are really huge trees. They are between 100 and 150 years old. I don't think that this picture do the justice to these trees but anytime you go to the Bremer G you should try to see them. there in in Glisten Road in the right hand side. Then we have um the best city trim. This is a majestic cotton wood located in Melody Lake Park. um this um the the person that nominate this tree make um this says that the the the cotton [clears throat] woods have a significant cultural significance because for the Dakota people the cotton woods were the tree of life. So I think it was good that she mentioned that. Then we have the another new category which was the best transplanted tree. It's a red red oak located in 471260th Street. This uh tree was planted by the

owners in mid 90s and they brought it from their cabin when it was just an acorn with some couple of leaves and you see 30 years later we have a beautiful tree. Then we have uh this beautiful ginko which has a full colors of wart. This is a globe ginko compared to the ones that are more like vertical ginkos. This was also was planted by the owner. I believe that when his son was two years old. Now 33 years has passed. And you see we also have a beautiful colorful Genko. Um we have the fullest canopy award which is an elm located in 5316 Interlacan Boulevard. Then we have also a new category which is the best waterfront tree which is a cottonwood located in 5501 Woodrest Drive in the Minaha Creek. And last for not and but not least we have the best history. The story this is a Norway sprrow uh planted in Utley Park. So these two Norway sprouts were planted two years ago but they were they were planted h in substitution of um this is Mr. Arnold who planted 62 years ago. He planted an original original Norwegian Norwegian spruce but uh the tree start to die a couple of years ago. So his wife surprised him and when they cut the tree she went and plant these two trees and that's why we chose this as the best tree his story of the of the nominations. And then we last have the honorable honorable mention which are three mature trees. Uh two of them in the Arnson Atris Park. One is a Genko and the other one is a European chestnut. And then there's an elm tree located in 7712 Wooddale Avenue South.

And last we have a honorable honorable mention for the young tree. This is a common service berry tree that was parked in Cornelia Park School. I think it was around the pandemic. It was part of the next generation program of the city and I think it was planted together with umina high school project earth club. So this is it for the trees award. I just want to thank all the participants because it's really a very fun initiative and I wish next year we have much more participants. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. And so how are the award winners being recognized? Are some of them here this evening or

I think some of them them are here and I think the city send them their award. All right. And do we have we have something that we're going to give them as a gift? Okay. So, you want the council to come down with everybody and and we'll pass out those

ask everyone who's here for tree recognition to come up for a group photo. The council Come on in the middle. Congratulations. Yeah, we made it. We made it. have to have. [laughter]

All right, here we go. That should be good. Congratulations. [applause] Good anticipation, Miss Bear. Next thing up is going to be a presentation uh with regard to the climate action plan work uh get an update on that work and uh and then also we've got a an advisory opinion. I think that's important to be thinking about as well.

Great. Thank you, mayor, council members. Again, Marissa Bear, sustainability manager. Um so now I'll be talking more directly about our climate action plan. Typically, I'm here in the spring to give an update on the work plan, the conservation sustainability fund budget. Um, which I will be back next year to give that update. But I'm here tonight to talk about a major project my division oversaw in 2025 related to the climate action plan and implementation, excuse me, imple implementation work plan that we'll look forward to in 2026. So, as a reminder, our goal in our climate action plan is to reduce emissions 45% by 2030 uh to achieve a reduction in our total greenhouse gas emissions across our community. As of our latest greenhouse gas inventory, which was completed in 2023, we've achieved a 17% reduction in emissions. That's been largely attributed to grid decarbonization. So, Excel Energy investing in carbon-f free generation on the electricity grid. and 17% is a positive progress towards our goal. But there's still a lot of work to do to achieve that 45% reduction by 2030. And what we need to do is maintain our current emission reductions and reduce even more emissions on top of that. A lot of those emissions will be in that transportation and building energy sector. And the way our division is supporting staff, our community in this work is we are finding ways to build capacity with our existing staff as well as identifying temporary capacity opportunities through the green green core program, working with interns as well as consultants. We are securing grants to fund this work and further leverage the conservation sustainability fund budget. We've created new policies, programs, and incentives to support our community and our cap goals. We've completed several internal studies related to facilities and fleet which have resulted in capital investment in those uh assets to increase efficiency to electrify. And then through all this work, we've been actively collaborating with local partners, regional and national partners to really maximize the impact when it comes to our climate

action plan. So the climate action plan was created as this living document. We know that the the goals are not going to change. We still want to achieve a 45% reduction by 2030, but the strategies to get there need to be adjusted. New technology, new funding, new policies, new programs, those things are going to change. We have things that aren't in our climate action plan that didn't exist or are not in our climate action plan because it was created in 2020 that now exists today. And so there's an action in that document in our uh crosscutting actions that charges the sustainability division to review the climate action plan actions and adjust as needed to continue to work towards that 2030 goal. And that was the process that was completed this year. So what this process entailed was a thorough review of all 219 climate action plan actions over the last 12 months. And so the way this was achieved is the sustainability division reviewed other agency plans from the state of Minnesota as well as Henipin County to understand what top-down strategies have come forward since they've adopted their plans that we should be considered as part of our climate action plan work. We facilitated internal staff discussions and met with all divisions and departments that have some responsibility for implementing the climate action plan to understand from them their perspectives on feasibility, capacity, budget, um to really understand what we need to do and what has been done. And then all of that work was put together and staff reviewed with the EEC to gather their review and comment as part of their 2025 work plan. So gathering their perspectives as well. What we learned through this process is uh we've accomplished a lot but there's still a lot to do. So the majority of the climate action plan actions have been either completed, operationalized or are underway and being actively implemented. We know some action descriptions needed to be adjusted and refined for clarity, grammar, scope, inclusion of new best practices that we've since learned and then also feasibility.

some actions were outside the scope of the city services may have been infeasible or duplicative to other actions and so those actions were discontinued from the work plan and then the remaining cap actions that we have left through these conversations uh we know there's about 39 actions we still need to kick off implementation and about half of those need staffing capacity or funding to successfully implement and so what this table on the screen represents is that 2026 2030 work plan by sector by status. And so you can see we have 88 actions that we've operationalized, which means we have dedicated staff capacity and budget to continue to implement those actions from now through 2030 or earlier if there's an earlier end date. 20 of our actions are underway being actively implemented by staff again with existing capacity and budget that has been allocated. We have seven actions that we've put on hold just for various external or internal factors, but they're still part of our work plan. So when those barriers are resolved, we can start implementing them. And then again, 39 actions have not been started. The transportation and land use and the local food and agriculture sector sector represent the most actions that we need to start implementing. And as noted previously on that last slide, more than half of those not started actions need staffing or budget capacity to effectively implement and be successful. So as we looked ahead to 2030, the sustainability division is really focused on maintaining those current emission reductions as well as achieving additional CO2 reduction to meet our 2030 goal. And as you can see on the the pie chart, so the majority of that emissions reduction needs to comes from the transportation sector followed by the building sector with a very small portion from waste and water. Our priorities moving forward is to leverage this updated 2026 2030 work plan to really focus our efforts. So we know comprehensive plan update is coming. That is a huge opportunity for us to integrate the climate action plan goals and strategies into those policy

uh structure. So we thinking land use, transportation, housing, the capital improvement plan. We'll continue to identify those key infrastructure investments that are needed and we'll connect it to our sustainability values. And then we've learned a lot in the past four years with implementation, a lot of lessons learned of what works, what doesn't work, partners, opportunities that are out there. So, we'll continue to leverage that. And then as we're we're working on the on this, we need to start securing additional funding and staffing. So, we've been really successful in a lot of our grant administration. To date, it's 4.5 million in grants secured to support climate action plan implementation. Uh we want to continue to do that work if funding is available, but also we'll have to think through additional staffing capacity or other budget allocation to really be successful as we implement our climate action plan. So, that's the presentation I had tonight. I just really wanted to to highlight for all of you this major project that was completed by the division as we look forward to 2030 and in achieving our climate action plan and happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Questions for director bear. Yes, member Jackson. Thank you and thanks for the summary. This is really helpful. Um I know the my takeaway from the communication from the energy and environment commission is that how the role that the climate action plan takes in especially in our zoning decisions and stuff and so it's really I've got two questions and you may not have the answer. One is we have imple uh purchased a zoning study to update our code. Are you in communication with those consultants and staff as they're looking to upgra up update our zoning code?

Yep. So, I'm connected with the the planning team working on that which is to align the zoning code with existing comprehensive plan. Um, as I understand, no major zoning code changes will happen through that process, but have spoken with them to make sure we have streamline uh zoning zoning ordinances related to sustainability. So, clarity within our solar ordinance, EV readiness, etc. Okay. So really going into the comprehensive plan is where the changes will occur.

Okay. And then similar to that at the legislature there's been a lot of talk about um changing the authority of cities to uh to do zoning and also to streamline that process. So if they building would be a certain size, it could be zoned right away without going through a extensive process. For us, that's a problem because our uh green building policy is implemented through the PUD process where the the public has to come to us for approval and in order to do that they have to comply with our policy. Um, how I'm not, you don't have to answer this right now, but I would appreciate your guidance is as we look at how we respond to changes on zoning at the legislature, how we can continue to have that authority to try and push uh people as they build the private sector as they build buildings to do so in a sustainable manner, especially their um heating and cooling systems that may take a longer time to pay off, but in the long term really reduce the carbon footprint of that building. So, that's a a worry that I have and I I charge you with that and uh and I look forward to your feedback.

I agree. Thank you. Okay. Thanks.

Yeah. Thanks for that comment. Other comments, questions from Miss Bear, you you you accompanied the updated report with a communication from the commission as an advisory uh communication and and in the action requested uh you suggested that city staff develop a list of priority actions and detailed budget for its implementations with the aim to achieve the cap goals by 2030. uh specifically in the transportation building sectors. Is there more to come on that for us in terms of us giving staff guidance or or or your department or even the energy and environment commission on on on the recommendations that they've advanced based on that advisory communication?

So currently any new program policy would come forward to council specific to that uh proposal at the time as we come forward. So um for example when you see on your item reports there's financial impacts resource impacts we would detail it then um I don't want to speak for the the EEC but as I understand from their advisory communication the ask would be to have that information earlier uh then as staff would might bring it forward to council to be able to have a essentially kind of a spreadsheet or a long list of by action that's to started what would be the estimated budget needed as well as potential staffing capacity um so that could be readily available now um we wouldn't be able to get into the the firm details for all of that because some of those actions are high level. We wouldn't be able to go into the weeds of exactly what might need to be uh allocated, but we could definitely make a a best guess estimate um and and then bring forward actual formal requests to council when those items come.

All right, good. Thanks for that information. Any that prompt anything further for council members? Okay, good. Thanks for that update. That was, as member Jackson says, really important information for us to get.

That helps us uh start thinking about what's ahead. All right. And now we've got one more item on this portion of the agenda and it's it's an award and uh it's folks that I know personally that uh did something quite heroic and we're going to hear about it from our our police department. We're going to bring the bazols up and uh member Jackson and I know uh the bazolves from our Rotary Club and uh members of St. Steven's Church and and happened to live down in Bloomington, but here they were doing something really important in Edina other than other than remodeling houses. Good. Or in addition to remodeling houses.

Mayor, council members, tonight uh as the mayor said, we're honored to recognize two of our residents for uh some great work they did uh extraordinary courage and some selfless actions back uh November 20th last year. uh words can't capture the heroic actions and uh efforts they did out there, but I'm going to try to put it into some words here so everyone can hear what they did out there. Uh on November 20th, during a icy and hazardous road conditions, Jim and Susan encountered a serious motor vehicle accident involving a vehicle that was on fire southbound Highway 100 near Benton Avenue. Despite the danger of the growing vehicle fire, the slick roadway, Jim and Susan stopped to help. Jim retrieved a fire extinguisher from his vehicle and used it to temporarily suppress the flames while both he and Susan attempted to rescue the driver who was trapped inside the vehicle. He was awake but unable to respond. He was gripping the steering wheel tightly as the flames continued to spread within the vehicle. Working together and under the extreme conditions, Jim and Susan forcefully freed the driver's hands, removed him from the burning vehicle, and then dragged him to safety. Just moments before fire overtook the vehicle entirely. Responding officers noted that even just a few seconds had pa, if a few seconds more had passed, the opportunity to rescue the driver would have likely been lost. The actions taken by Jim and Susan unquestionably saved the driver's life. In doing so, they knowingly place themselves at great personal risk. On behalf of the Dina Police Department, we present the citizen award to Jim and Susan in recognition for their heroic actions. Thank you for your bravery, your selflessness, for exemplifying the very best of our dining community. [applause]

[applause] [applause] And if you guys want to stand here, we'll do a whether you and Susan want to comment first and then we'll take a photo and tell us a little bit about that that rescue. And there's a if you stand by the microphone, it'll work. Stand over. Use that one. Yeah. This one. This one. use the one that's on the on the podium there.

Um I we never thought that we would get an award for this. We were doing what we hope everybody would do in a situation like that. Um it it was seconds. I mean, we were just talking about it on our way over here tonight and it was probably minutes from the time we pulled over till the time that we got him out. Um, and I just I just hope that everybody would stop and do the same thing. And um, I you know, we we were completely surprised and shocked to get this award and was not, you know, nobody does that kind of thing for this kind of thing. So, [laughter] right,

that's a good quote. Nobody does this kind of things for that kind of thing. We didn't remember that. Uh, yeah. valuable lesson I learned. I needed a bigger fire extinguisher. [laughter] So, I now have a bigger one. I had one of those what I thought would be useful fire extinguisher and uh I was amazed how quickly it ran out. So, I now have a bigger one in my truck. Hopefully, I don't have to use it, but it's there. And so, was was the person just kind of frozen with tension and fear? Yeah, I think he was in shock. Total shock and panic. Literally, I open the door, smoke rolls out the door, and we could not get his hands off the steering wheel.

Took one I had to have one hand. He had to have one hand, and we grabbed belt loops, and we just just pulled him out of the car. Yeah, it was I couldn't believe how hard I was pulling by myself as hard as I could and he was just locked onto that steering wheel. That probably happens. I'm sure you guys hear more of that, but just total shock, I'm sure. Well, we're really grateful for this and um Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you. We're really grateful to you and let's come down with the whole council and take a picture of our our latest we'll call you hometown heroes even though you're next door.

All right. Should we look at?

All right, we'll look over here now.

Thank you so much.

[applause] We can't even talk about this at Rotary for three weeks because

right we don't have Rotary meeting till next year. Well, let's go back to the uh consent agenda. That concludes the items on the special recognitions and uh presentations portion of the agenda. So, let's go back to the items that we pulled off consul consent. So, we have uh folks check me up here. I have items 61.10, 6.14, 6.15, and 6.2. 29 we dealt with 6.30. Uh any further to remove from the consent agenda other than the ones I designated? Okay. So with the exception of items 6.10, 6.14, 6.15, and 6.29. Is there a motion to approve uh the items on the consent agenda and pass approve them in a single motion?

So moved. Second. Member Jackson moves. Member Pierce seconds the adoption of the items on the consent agenda in a single motion with the exception of the items designated uh which are items 6.10, 6.14, 6.15 and 6.29. Any further discussion? All those in favor of adoption of the items on the consent agenda with the exception of those items name say I. I opposed carried. Let's take these up now one at a times. Item 6.10 10 was uh the uh potential receipt of a petition to for stop controls at Brooks Brookview Avenue and West 55th Street and that is Julie Risser that had that matter. Thank you. Member Risser.

Um briefly I would like to know more about when this is going to come to council if we've got that date. Well, our typical practice is those petitions get forward to engineering department. Then it goes through a traffic safety committee which meets once a month. Then it goes to the ETC which also meets once a month and when that's done we bring it back and put it on the agenda here for council. Okay. Thank you. So it's a few months out. I haven't identified a meeting yet.

Um follow up. This is a intersection where a yield sign is now there and I am going to be doing more research on the appropriateness of yield signs in residential areas. And I do think that this is an area where we need to figure out how we can come up with a process that is responsive to residents concerns aligned with safety standards and engineering standards but um is done in a more efficient manner. And I am concerned. I think back on the September 2nd, 2025 meeting if people want to look at how that went. Um, you can see that we spent quite a bit of time talking about stop signs at four intersections and so it just seems like we could kind of tighten things up a little bit and I'm hoping that that could be something that happens in 20 26. Thank you. That's all I have on that one.

All right. Good. And that uh just so further for further explanation, this is to receive the petition for stop controls at Brookview Avenue and West 55th Street and refer to the engineering department for consideration. Uh member Risser, would you care to move the matter? So move. Second. Second. Member Pierce. Member Risser moves the uh receipt of the petition for stop controls at Brookview Avenue and West 55th Street. That'll be referred to the engineering department for consideration. Any further discussion on that item? Uh, all those in favor of receipt of the petition to for stop controls at Brookview Avenue and West 55th Street, say I.

I. Opposed, carried. That petition is received. Uh, the next matter is the uh request for purchase. Uh we periodically go through our city parks and and on a regular cycle we replace playground equipment and member Jackson has uh requested that we remove item 6.14 which is a request for purchase for park park playground equipment replacement at Coteen Park on West 44th Street. I'm going to turn now to member Jackson.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, when we first moved to Edana, this was our park that we went to and after we bought our moved to our second home here, um it seemed like immediately it got upgraded and time passes very quickly. So, when I saw this on the agenda, it looked like, well, that's brand new equipment. And we've been talking a lot about wants and needs in our budget discussion. And I reached out and director Veter told me the story of why it needs to be replaced. But I thought it would be a good example of to me it felt like a a want, not a need, but it's not and and I'd like to hear uh the why this is a need that we need to replace it. Absolutely.

Director Veter, thanks for being here with us this this evening.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council, Council Member Jackson. to kind of go in the the questions that you asked about, you know, when was this installed and what's our replacement value schedule? I'll kind of just maybe take a step back and when we started looking at the playground replacement schedule, I think you often hear me talk about it as this the neighborhood parks are kind of the backbone of our park system, right? Um we have a lot of wonderful amenities in this community, but when people think about their neighborhood parks, that's kind of what you associate with, right? That's our park. Um and we have 23 playgrounds in the city of Edina and we started looking at the age and condition of those structures. Um we always consider kind of two things when looking at playground replacements. The first is obviously the health and safety and maintenance um practices that we need to do on a playground system. So, um, people always, um, we always have to kind of spend some time and explain to people when we install a new playground because you'll often hear us refer to there's a 2 to five, uh, structure and a 5 to2 structure. And that doesn't necessarily mean that we are limiting ages on those structures, but that's what it's designed for from a safety and practicality standpoint. So, we look at that fiveyear-old. We want to make sure and this uh, we have a number of wonderful staff on our our team that are certified playground safety inspectors. So they study these things and are certified in them to put them into practice. So we want to make sure um you know a lot of people are concerned that a fall may be that you know we are more concerned about entrapment or strangulation on that. You have to think about those things. So when we think about that 5 to2 age group the science behind it is a fifth percentile's uh 5-year-old's waist if that can pass through something the 95th percentile 12 year old's head has to also pass through that. Right? So there's a lot of science and things that um that go through our inspections. So we want to make sure first the the safety and the health of that that participant is taken care of from a maintenance standpoint. And

that's when we kind of look at those age of those structures and specifically for Coteen Park. Um that structure was installed in 2005. So next year when we do replace it, it'll be 21 years of age. And a good um marker for kind of projecting plagon replacements is around 15 years. um some may go as fast as 13 years or could be environmental or wear factors you can get 17 19. So it all depends on the type of use but a good marker for planning is around that 15ear mark. Uh the other thing we then look at also is why we engage the neighborhood on the type of equipment that's there is kind of that experiential play um mental health play active play to get people more involved in their neighborhood park and playground and kind of there's a lot of theory behind that. If you can get kids with a more enticing playground equipment, they may want to stay a little longer. Um, which may mean you may meet more neighbors, you may um provide more friend groups and play groups. So, there's a little bit of that both aspects. One from the the play standpoint and the other is for the uh health, safety, and maintenance of the equipment.

Wow, that's a wonderful description. Thank you so much. Thank you. Uh, member Jackson, would you care to move the matter or did that prompt any questions from any of the my colleagues on on the matter? Okay, member Jackson, I will move the matter. All right, member Jackson moves the uh purchase request for purchase for Cotine Park playground equipment. So moved. And member Pierce that request for purchase. Uh, any further discussion? All those in favor of approving the request for purchase of new playground equipment for CO team park, say I.

I opposed. Carried. that uh equipment will be replaced. And uh the namesake of the park is here with us tonight. Our former park and recck director, Bob Cotin. And uh ever vigilant at age what, Bob? 93, 94. You're keeping an eye on things. That's good. Yeah. Thanks for being here. All right. And I think to go down the slide first. [laughter]

Yeah. Um All right. I think you've got the next matter as well. And Member Risser wanted to talk a little bit about the um uh followup on the Bremer Ice Arena and the temporary chiller and installation that took place at the South Rink due to some equipment failures there. So, member Risser, thank you. Okay, so this is a request that council approve an expenditure of $280,471.95. True. Uh, mayor, members, uh, council member Rister, that is correct.

Okay. And, um, this is going to be funded, I'm confused, it says out of the operating budget, but then it also says out of the Braar Arena Fund. Uh, correct, Councilman Risser, those are um kind of the same thing. So, the Bremer Arena operating budget is the Bremer Arena Fund and and and that is supported. Where does the money come for the Brear Arena Fund? uh it comes from the revenue of ice rental and other revenue sales there. Also the ability to build up a fund balance has been by depreciating assets over the years. So good financial practices that has allowed Brimarine to have a fund balance available for these types of scenarios.

Okay. And my concern is we're being asked to approve this. It's way beyond the $20,000 expenditure limit. And could you explain how that all aligns?

Yeah. Uh, Council Member Risser, this is a request that we have incurred the expense on, right? The um typical process when we are not in such an urgent fashion is to um go out and plan that replacement um secure the necessary quotes and presses and then bring forward a request for implementation. In this scenario, because of that urgency um of losing a chiller, um we tried to spring into action to create a temporary situation that didn't have any long-term risk to us beyond this expense with the ability to get operations back up and running and then bring you that expense this evening.

I understand that. Uh, I'm just thinking about this in terms of state statute, our rules, and kind of feeling as if what I'm being asked to do is to greenlight an action that went against state statute. And so maybe our attorney could weigh in on this. Uh, council member Risser, I don't think this violates state statute. It sounds like there was money available in the operating fund and I'm not sure I mean this is not a a contract. It's an expenditure. I'm not sure that it I mean sounds like an emergency situation. I think it's it was fair for staff to take action to prevent potential damage and loss of money. And um I don't think it violates state statute.

Thank you. I just wanted on that one. Um that is all I have. Uh, does someone uh on council care to approve move to approve the request for purchase for the Braar Arena South Rink temporary chiller rental and installation in the uh amount of $280,471.95. So moved. Second.

All right. Member Agna moves. Member Jackson seconds the approval of the request for purchase uh as stated for the Braarce Arena to take care of the problem situation in the south rink with respect to the temporary chiller rental and the installation thereof. Cost $280,471.95. Any further discussion? All those in favor of approving that request say I. I. I opposed. Abstain. I feel like I need more. I can I can go there next. Extensions. One. One. Yes. Four in favor. One abstension. The motion passes. Thank you. Thanks for bringing us to our attention. Um, all right. We completed the uh consent agenda. There's one more.

Oh. Oh, excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Yeah, I knew that. Uh, 6.29. Uh, yeah, I didn't mean to skip by this one. I guess it relates to some travel that I'm I'm proposing to take for the US Conference of Mayors. So, 6.29 29 is approval of out of state travel for the mayor to attend the winter meeting of the US Conference of Mayors. And I'm going to turn now to member Jackson.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, um I learned that we have in the budget discussions um one of the things that comes up a lot is staff and city council uh taking trips. And uh I thought, boy, we should have a policy. And and our city manager said, yes, we have a policy. And when I read it, um I thought it was worthwhile bringing up some of the things that are in it. Um primarily people come to city council meeting for a specific reason and then they pass on with their lives. People not everybody studies what we do every day and so issues will come up that are are fresh and new. And for instance, this was revised in 2020. I didn't even know we had it. So I think it's good to refresh some of these things occasionally. um and this gave me an opportunity to do that. One of the things in the policy is that the council will cons the council will approve um the travel and at the time of the approval they will consider um uh other consider among other things the following uh what kind of training will be guiding be happening. if you'll be meeting and networking with other elected officials um whether elected official will be viewing taking a tour and um whether they have been specifically assigned to testify. So I think it's worthwhile we've kind of gotten out of the practice of talking about what these trips are for and I think it's might be worthwhile to bring back the practice of saying I'm going on a trip. this is what I intend to do and this is what I'm hoping to learn and then when they come back and the other part of the policy is that when you come back to make a report and I don't you know the mayor's always very generous and in telling us what he's done. Um but I think if we had some sort of just rhythm of doing that regularly that the general public would understand that we're that's where we get new ideas that's where we learn what is um

something that's universal or something that's unique to our community. And so I I find these to be very helpful, but I think it's also helpful to bring the public along as we do that. So I just wanted to highlight the policy and um I will uh move the matter. Oh, thank you. Uh member Jackson moves the approval of out of state travel for the mayor for the uh winter meeting of the US Conference of Mayors January 28th through the 31st, 2026. Actually, I think it's January 27th through the 30th, but it's in that uh last week in January. Is there a second to that motion? A second.

Member Agnu seconds the motion to approve that travel. Uh any further discussion? All those in favor of approving that uh item approving out of state travel for the mayor say I.

I opposed. I'll abstain. um or one uh abstension four and then one abstension probably appropriate that I not vote on it. So uh that's approved and I can tell you in advance that um some may know it in the audience some may not uh that we've been an active participant in the US Conference of Mayors for probably the last half a dozen years or so maybe a little bit longer than that because time goes by fast. So I sit as the um chair of the standing committee on transportation for the US Conference of Mayors and so I'm part of the leadership team as well and so it requires uh regular contact with our staff people in Washington to work on our federal strategies with respect to transportation transportation investment reauthorization of the surface transportation act. Uh, and it's kind of an unusual position. We should feel pretty good about it, I think, because the predecessor to me as the chair was the mayor of Denver. Predecessor to him, I think, was the mayor of Atlanta. So, um, I I I've been doing a lot of transportation work for a number of years, including work over at the Met Council. Uh, it's nice to have that recognized, and it's been a pleasure serving [cough] both our town and the US Conference of Mayors uh, in this capacity and being part of that leadership team. So, thanks for approving that travel everybody and I'll report back when uh I return from Washington DC from the winter meeting. Uh that's also the opportunity to meet with a lot of the uh folks that are department heads uh and I hope we can do that secretaries from different u bodies that are working there including the transportation secretary. So, we'll see if we able to get him to a meeting. Uh, all right. We're going to move on to on the agenda now to um the public hearing, the sole public hearing matter that we have. And uh Carrie Sinning, our deputy city clerk, has this matter. Uh, and this is a

request to approve a new on sale intoxicating a Sunday sale liquor license for an organization called NMA Hi-Fi LLC DBA. NMA Hi-Fi. Thank you, Mayor. Um, as you said, this is a public hearing to approve the on sale liquor license and Sunday sale liquor license for NMA Hi-Fi, which is a new basement restaurant located at 50th in France. 391450th if you want to know for certain. Um, and it'll actually be below um I can't remember what store the pink store right next door. What is it called? I can't remember. Lululemon. Yes, Lululemon. Thank you.

And so it'll be below that. So that'll be pretty cool. and hopefully they will be opening by the end of the year. Um after application review and a background investigation, staff is recommending approval for tonight's um public hear after tonight's public hearing, which deviates from our usual process. So it will be an open and close for the public hearing tonight. And we have um Daniel Dpra and their licensing consultant Jerry Wolf um available in attendance if you would like to ask them any questions. And I will also stand for questions if you have any.

All right, Miss Sitting. Thank you. Any questions from city council members for the deputy clerk? All right. This is a public hearing matter. Is there anyone in the audience who wishes to testify regarding this potential issuance of a new on sale intoxicating and Sunday sale liquor license? Opening it up for public testimony. Is there anybody online that wishes to testify? We do not currently have any callers. Okay. All right. Is there a motion to close the public hearing in this matter? So moved. Member Jackson moves to close the public hearing. I second. Member Agnu seconds. The motion to close the public hearing. We've got the favorable favorable report from our deputy city clerk.

Um all those in favor of approving the new onale intoxicating and Sunday sale liquor license for NMA Hi-Fi LLC DBA NMA Hi-Fi say I. I. I. Opposed. Carried. Sorry. Um, was that for closing the public hearing or for approving the license? Oh, did I jump ahead of myself? I think you might have. All right. So, all those in favor of closing the public hearing, say, "I." I. [laughter] Now, we'll go for the motion. Is there a motion to approve the new on sale intoxicating Sunday sale liquor license to NMA Hi-Fi?

Member Agnu moves. Member Pierce the approval of the new onale intoxicating Sunday sale liquor license for NMA Hi-Fi LLC. DBA NMA Hi-Fi. Any further discussion? Could I member? Thank you. Um since we have um the owner, could we just have him come up and say a little bit about this project? Um having it on our agenda and and looking at it tonight was the first time I had heard of it. So, I'd love to just hear a little bit more um and maybe speak to exactly where it's going. Um and anything that else you would like to provide, please.

Yes. I was thinking I can get an office [laughter] uh here for you guys. I was thinking you if you don't live in Edina yet, you probably should.

Um, so it's across the street across the hall from uh the restaurant that we just opened and it's doing very well. Um, we're going to use it for uh events for the and also um it's a hi-fi so it's a listening bar um when you can listen records. Um, and this a bar, like a cocktail bar. Um, so it's kind of like a this a Japanese um thing. Uh, then you see all over Tokyo. Uh, they have like all these uh, you know, uh, high fidelity uh, equipment to listen to records and things like that. So, um it's kind of like a it's going to have like um relationship with the restaurant because the restaurant is the kitchen is so small that we can do so much in there. So, uh the restaurant is is a good size but the kitchen itself is very small. So, uh if we want to do events, we would need another space. So,

right. And so help me understand if I'm going through kind of that like walkway in the back, it's across and under a little bit or exactly how do you get to it from your new restaurant? So, uh it doesn't have uh you have to get out of the restaurant and go across the hall. It's underneath um um Lululemon. Uh so you can see it from the restaurant. It's about uh I don't do feet. Yes, it's um it's about 100 feet I would say

100 feet from NMA. So you have to get out and go there. The idea is just like you can um buy out the restaurant and it's a practice that we do with restaurants and then go there for an after cocktail or before cocktail or stuff like that and you can listen to the uh records. So wonderful. Thank you.

And then maybe this is a question for city staff. Um is this the same project or a different project than what we were talking about from like a music venue? And if it it's the same one. Okay. Thank you for tying those pieces together. I thought that this was the project, but I'd never heard the name of it. So, appreciate that. It's in Nola mains. So, it's no ma high five high fidelity. So, um that's where the name come from. I also work in a place called NMA in Denmark. Uh so, it was kind of like a I don't know. I always like to just tie things together. So,

Mr. Delpra, one one further question and based on uh council member Agnes's question. So is the entrance off 50th or off that internal courtyard? It's internal uh corner. All right. Yeah. Um it's downstairs which is it sounds like weird, but it's a a regular thing. When we got the space, we uh I thought immediately about a uh Japanese Tokyo um record uh listening place uh because usually they are downstairs and uh you stay in New York a lot. I think they are having a comeback here in the United States too. So it'll be a bar, but you'll also have some food.

We have food. Yeah, we have to have food. So it's going to be Japanese uhish. Japaneseish. Yes, I'm not Japanese, so I don't want to uh butcher Japanese uh culture and and food. Okay. So, it's going to be my take uh with um uh Japanese ingredients. I think you've really aroused our curiosity now. We all want to try some Japaneseish. Yes. Cuisine. We'll be there when you open. And when do you expect to open? Uh December 31st, actually. Oh, wow.

Yeah. So, we uh um uh it's going to be for employees and and uh and uh some invites. Okay. All right. And what's the what's the capacity for the people that can be there? Well, he only has two bar um I'm talking maybe too technical, but he has two bar uh wells. So we can only uh uh serve certain amount of people like you can sit maybe like I don't know uh 80 people in there but I think like 50ish it's about

okay Mr. Delpra you got so much going on that it's good that Miss Wolf is with you. This actually was the first project that we started like two years ago in the uh talking but it took the longest. Um so it's going to Yeah, we have four projects in the area. So I'm I'm Yes, I'm very busy right now. Well, I was Yeah, I was with a group of six in Theres last weekend and uh and we had the lovely person helping us, someone that you've known for a long long time, Kate. Okay. Yes. So, uh, she worked with me as a, uh, in Veil, Colorado when I wor there as a line cook. She was a server like 25 years ago. She said you knew each other for me.

You knew each other from Vale? Yes. Yes. I I I lived there for five years. Oh, okay. All right. Any other inquiries from council members? Okay. No, I'm just I'm so excited to see this project come forward because like you just said, we've been talking about it for a couple of years. Yes. Um, and when we are thinking about some type of music focused venue in this area, I think that this is really going to add a lot. So, thank you. It's going to we're trying to bring a lot of energy there at night. You know, at night during the day is a lot of energy in 15, but at night it's kind of like quiet down. So, like uh now you're starting to see a little more energy. So, that's the whole plan. So, just Yeah. Right. Good. Thanks for being with us again tonight.

Thank you so much. Okay. Do this last until we get to bario again or No. Anyway, all right. Very good. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. Have a great holiday, everybody. Thanks for being here. Um All right. We got a vote on this matter. Is there uh we got a motion uh and a second to approve the new on sale intoxicating Sunday sale liquor license for NMA Hi-Fi LLC. DBA NMA Hi-Fi. Is any further discussion? All those in favor of approving the issuance of the liquor license as described, say I. I. I. Opposed. Carried. You're in business from a liquor standpoint. There you go.

I'll get that signed right away when they give it to me. Thanks for car. She's great. Yeah. All right, Miss Wolf. Thanks for being here. All right. Now, we're going to move on now to the reports and recommendations portion of the agenda. And the first matter we have there is resolution 2025-128. We've been having one of these types of motions on a regular basis and that is to accept donations to the city of Adina. Is there a motion to adopt resolution 2025-128? So moved. Second. All right. Member Jackson moves. Member Pierce seconds the adoption of resolution 2025-128 which would accept donations on behalf of the city of Adina. Any further discussion? All those in favor of adoption of the resolution say I.

I. I. Opposed. Carried. It is approved and the uh donations this reporting period uh some inind donations and one cash donation. Caribou Coffee provided some hot chocolate and coffees for uh the pumpkin smash bash event and the over at the Adina Senior Center, the Lions Club gave a generous donation of $400. uh Griswald Home Care uh and Tower Light and York Gardens and Alina Health uh all had some inind donations for bingo prizes and other things over there. Their names will be posted on the city website. So that concludes that matter. Uh and then we're going to move on to uh it is setting the levy night in Edina the tax levy and we're going to hear introduction here by our city manager as we've worked on this for many many months and our presenter will be our finance director Pattow but I'm going to turn first to our city manager Scott Neil to introduce the topic and talk a little bit about how we got to where we are tonight.

Thank you Mr. Mayor and members of council. Uh this is something what we're about to do tonight, approving the uh tax levy for 2026 and the operating budget for 2026 is something that cities all over the state of Minnesota are doing this first two weeks of of December. It's the natural flow of of how we uh put our budgets together and we might do them a little differently, but we're all subject to the same time frame. Uh so we need an action tonight from the council in order to uh push this budget into the upcoming year. We interact after you uh take an action on this item. Tonight we begin an interaction with Henipin County to process uh the correct paperwork and and to make sure that our levy is uh factored into the overall levy picture. That also includes a levy from the county, from school districts, and also from a number of other um organization, governmental and non-governmental organizations that are involved in in budget making this time of year, too. Uh we've had some uh some goals uh over the past year. Uh one has been to take a look at the rate of growth of our of our tax levy. Uh initially council gave us the the direction to uh get that uh levy uh rate of growth down below 10%. It's been above 10% um in the past couple of years. We've lowered it. Uh it was 9% in 2024. It was 8.4%. Um this year we're we're happy to say that we've been able to make some changes to our budget, not without cost. Uh that but that brings that rate of growth down into seven. So 7.9 uh for the upcoming year. Um we've uh had a chance to meet with council in work session uh prior to uh prior to tonight's council meeting laid out uh some of the final u budget choices, budget reductions in this case. Um we

those get transferred into they create the numbers that we file with the county. Um, I'm we've got Ptow here and P is our finance director and she's going to give you a brief presentation. Um, uh, same presentation we showed you earlier tonight, but this one is in is on camera. So, Miss Tao. All right.

Good evening, council and mayor. Um, so I don't have a lot for you tonight. I have I have two slides um to round our journey. I want to call it since the beginning of the year since you last adopted the 2025 budget. And so with that being said, um these are some of the highlights that I want to touch on in terms of where our journey started and where we are today. So with that being said, um the city of Edina's mission and vision is to deliver value service and maintain infrastructure, foster livability and innovation. Within this there is the budget pillars and work plan budget work plans uh being the broad outcomes to be achieved by the two-year budget. Uh these outcomes are within strong foundation reliable service uh livable city and better together. These pillars they stay consistent yeartoyear while the budget pillars and objectives direct the work of city staff. Uh we've also developed the budget work plans based on these directives. Um since the beginning of the year, staff has met with council through work sessions, through retreat, through similar council meetings in creating these uh 2026 budget. And with that, council took action uh in September uh in adopting the preliminary levy um at 11.03% knowing well then that that wasn't where we're going to land. we're going to have to trim down from that uh knowing that the goal is to stay under uh 10% as manager Neil stated. Um since then, staff has been working um in getting this levy increase down. Um therefore, like city uh manager Neil mentioned, our final proposal is coming to you tonight at 7.94% uh a 1% reduction since the last uh work the last budget meeting we had on

December 2nd. Um staff has take re-reviewed and took a look at where else can we fine-tune the budget. Therefore, we brought it down to uh what brought it down 1%. With that being said, um with uh with a 7.94% uh inclusive in that is also our medium home value. And I just wanted to point out that in 2025, our medium home value was 712,300 with an estimated uh monthly city property tax uh at the adopted rate for 2025 of 8.44% of $192. And then in 26, our medium home value was is 7 35,200 with the estimated monthly city property tax paid uh at this level that we're bringing to you of the 7.94% being $212. Um this is about a $19 increase from 2025's taxes. This is just based off of the medium home value and the levy increase percentage. Um, I've also shown you that uh what a let's say if we were to take a look at a $500,000 home with it not being adjusted for uh over the years, this would be a $812 uh increase from 2025 at the 7.94% levy increase that we have in front of you tonight. Um, with this proposal, we control departmental operating costs by restricting their annual rate of growth by less than 3%. Uh this is within the areas of commodities and contractual services. We reduce operating costs by reducing staff in two general fund departments. Uh six full-time employees in our assessing division and one full-time employees in our fleet maintenance as well as combining the departments of engineering and public works uh which resulted in some savings. We've also increased nonproperty tax revenues uh such as utility franchise

fees uh which we are going to use them to replace debt service um property tax levy for our future street reconstruction projects along with organizing capital spending and prioritizing within the available property tax levy as mentioned by city manager Neil. Um earlier we talked at work session and these are for an example one of the item was um in consideration of staff capacity. Some of these uh construction project are slated for future year allowing us to buy down the uh le the construction levy. Therefore we will also continue our practice of accumulating savings and personal related operating costs by controlling employee vacancy placement savings in the next two years. And we've al also adjusted our annual debt service expense over the next two-year budget uh to enable the city to service new debt um for the fire station to um to fit within our total tax levy that I have in front of you today. Um just another fact I want to share is that 5.91% of the 7.94% of the proposed uh levy increase tonight is for debt that you have committed to which includes all the debt issuance for the fire station 2 uh the aquatic center project as well as highway 100. So with this um some of the budget highlights uh if adopted at the city manager proposed level of 7.9% the 2026 annual budget would enable six firefighter paramedics to start on 1126 for the next two years going forward. and then budget commitments to budget commitments for budget work plan drafts as well as the 2050 comprehensive plan update and continuing contracting public safety partnership programs with Henipin County such as uh the joint community police partnership and the embedded

social worker program. Um next up we are going to be asking you to take action on this. Of course, um like city manager said, um all cities and special taxing district must certify the final property tax levy to the county auditor on or before December 29th, which is five working days after December 20th. [cough and clears throat] If this deadline is missed, our final levy will stay the same as it is in 2025. And [clears throat] with that, the second slide, I promise you, is where we've been to where we are tonight. Um, and so with that, I'll stand for any questions.

Yeah, thank you, Director Tao. Uh, questions for Director Towel at this point in time. We spent time uh this evening in our work session uh between 5:30 and 7 uh spending about an hour going over this presentation that uh our finance director gave to the public uh just moments ago and uh understand how she got down to 7.94% along with other staff effort of course to come up with this proposed budget from staff. Uh, and I'm wondering if uh folks on the council uh want to handle this matter by uh moving to approve the resolution and then having uh comments [snorts] about the budget or are you are you are you prepared to make some comments about the budget at this point in time. I'm open either way, whatever folks feel comfortable doing. All right. Maybe we should do it by way of resol adoption of proposed adoption of resolution.

Move move the matter and then yeah approve. Uh, is there a motion to approve resolution 2025-112 setting the 2026 T tax levy at uh 7.94% and adopting the 2026 operating budget which is yeah operating budget. So there a second second. All right now we're going to go to discussion. We've got a motion by member Jackson, second by member Pierce uh to approve that tax levy at 7.94% and to adopt the 2026 operating budget. And now I'll turn to council members for their comments.

Mine are long, but I'll start off. Um so go to member Russer next.

This is a the most serious thing we do all year. Um the budget is a reflection of our values as a city and we've spent a lot of time and I want to again thank uh city manager uh Neil and assistant manager Lens and director Tao for their very hard work in this. Um they've been working much more than you might ever imagine. So thank you. So, we've heard from people who are very concerned about their property tax bills. And I want you to know I completely understand that. When our family was young and starting out, we bought a house in another community in another state and our property taxes were going up 10% a year and our salary was going up 2% a year and we were very quickly getting priced out of our home and it was a terrifying feeling. We actually did end up moving because we got the opportunity to move to Minnesota and it cut our property tax bill in half. So, I totally understand the very scary sense and the sense of panic that comes upon you when you aren't able to keep up with the price of your property taxes. So, I I hear you and I take this all very seriously. In 2025, looking at the 2026 budget, we're facing a triple whammy. There's a tight market for single family homes and that sends home prices and assessments soaring. Then commercial property is decreasing in value and that means that residential property has to carry more burden of the property taxes. Finally, the tax levy itself is increasing. So even without an increase in our levy, it is likely that a single family home their property tax bill would increase because of the first two elements here. and but the levy is under our control and so we're looking at

that. Director Tao summarized the budget increases that we've got but I want to highlight you know staff is about 70% of our costs. We approved uh the housing and redevelopment authority budget and that's only staff and that went up 3%. So right there that's 3% uh going up. Due to inflation and tariffs, the cost of equipment and construction is increasing even more. Together with cost of living and inflation, that accounts for about an 8% rise in the levy [snorts] cuts, which I'll go into [clears throat] further further uh decrease that down to about 5%. The budget reflects an increase in public safety spending with the new fire station number two and six additional firefighter and paramedics. In our discussion upstairs, we said we are going to continue to evaluate this and and have an review mid year next year to see what the impact is on our service and continue to make sure that we have the best fire department in the state because they are already and this will help strengthen them. Um, another driver of the cost is infrastructure rehabilitation, including the street reconstruction funding that's shifting from assessments to property taxes, the Vernon Avenue bridge over Highway 100, and the replacement of the aquatic center pump room. Residents have pointed out that our tax levy has increased faster than the rate of inflation for the last 5 years. And this is true. We've had to absorb some historic costs. First of all, in 2020, we hired six additional firefighter paramedics with a safer grant, and now we're having to absorb that as a property tax payment uh to pay for it with property taxes instead of that federal grant. We've had six new hires in the police department to address the spike in crime following the pandemic. The adoption of the street reconstruction funding policy cost about a million dollars the first year and has been approximately $500,000 every year

since then. we were no longer by state law able to use 100% assess assessments for street reconstruction. So this is a cost that we have to absorb. Um and it's over a 16-year period of time to minimize the impact but to to make that change all the same. We're increasing funding to address the deferred maintenance in our neighborhood parks which you heard about earlier. There's been a massive increase in the cost of software to protect against ransomware and cyber attacks. And I've had questions, was lifting the salary cap for the city manager um did that add dramatically to our uh cost? It did not. Um his salary went up, but it created some room for future raises and staffing flexibility. So these are all of except for that last one, some really big historic costs that we have to do if we want to continue to serve the people of our city. What have we been done? What has been done to reduce costs? We made specific cuts including transferring the assessing assessing department to Henipin County. Before we made this change, Edina taxpayers were double double build. They paid for an assessing department in Edina and an assessing department in Henipin County. Now we just pay for the department in Henipin County. That was a very difficult decision for the people involved. We reconfigured staffing in the liquor stores. As an aside, the municipal liquor stores cannot be sold as a going concern. Sometimes that comes up. If the city were to close its liquor stores, the business or if we wanted to uh no longer be in the liquor business, we couldn't sell them. They would just go away. Only the buildings themselves could be sold. for cuts. Some positions in public works and engineering were eliminated. So, I want to talk a little bit about spending money to save money. As an affluent community, Edina gets the

benefit of being able to spend a little money upfront to save on costs in the long term. And this is something that I find is an important part of our stewardship of public funds. Historically, the city of Edina has had enough money to make equipment and construction choices that save money in the long term. Our strong finances similarly saved borrowing costs with our good bond rating. Another a prime example of this is our street repair schedule by making timely repairs on our streets that carries an upfront cost, but it extends the life of the street and dramatically lowers the cost in the long run. In the past, um the decision was made in order to keep taxes low to let to not keep up our asset preservation. Um we're now facing the consequences and costs of those decisions. We talked earlier about the equipment at the South Arena. Um at Braar Arena, the South Rink, we had to actually bond to replace the pump room and the pool. These are things that um over time built up um in order to keep taxes low and the costs are coming due now. Um [snorts] next year as we look at capital spending, I've asked to see a breakout of how much it costs to repair our old facilities which is a pretty big expense. Um just fixing these old things and uh how much money we could be save with a better asset preservation model. I've heard the mayor say that that the city council, we're a transition team. And I think that's a good way of thinking about who we are. The city was developed in the 1960s and the 1970s. The things that were built then are wearing out. And so we are now looking as so those things wear out. What's the future going to be? So we're looking both past and forward. Um the private infrastructure is also wearing out. That means that we're

looking at a series of redevelopments across the city. Some people claim that tax increment financing is to blame for the tax increases that we're facing. And it's really complicated, but the simple thing to say is that tiff, tax increment financing is a tool to support redevelopment. It defers the growth of tax revenue to the city in favor of a greater investment of our city than would otherwise happen. And so for me personally, that's a part of looking forward. What's our city going to be like in 20 years and what are the what kind of revenue is going to be coming in at that point in time. In that time, the city council will not be the transition team, but the beneficiary team. Hopefully, we're building a spending structure that will give those leaders a more stable and slow growing budget to work with. Um, so I want to talk a little bit about staffing cuts. We hear, "Oh, let's do zero budgeting." I I think that's a terrible idea. And we hear from the corporate world, you know, corporations will [snorts] fire people and then rehire them as consultants. That cuts their benefits and their worker compensation costs. And the state kind of does something similar by doing human services um fund giving funding to nonprofits to fund social services instead of funding it through the state. I just don't think this is feasible for cities. Fire departments across the metro are moving away from a volunteer firefighter force to a professional force. So, it's going the opposite direction. I also don't want to rely on private contractors to remove snow or repair broken water manes. Look at what happened to Minnesota Rusco and their stranded customers. Edina city staff do not leave people stranded. It costs money to hire and train new staff. Every time a city employee quits, that training is lost. Some jobs in the city

like police and fire depend on close teamwork. When they deal with emergency situations, employee city employees have to trust their teammates. That kind of trust is broken with staff turnover. There is a financial impact to trust. a team of the high in the early 1990s there was a lot of talk about quality engineering and I really enjoyed learning about that and one of the prime elements of quality engineering is to drive fear out of the workplace and I think that's especially true in a city [snorts] where people really have to rely on a life and death matters for city employees and I think we just cannot have these people working in a situation of fear. [snorts] A team with a high level of trust focuses on the job at hand, not on who will get credit or blame. Fear costs money. Teams that defensively carve out territory waste time and money. With public money, this should not be acceptable. Qu constantly questioning people's integrity, competence, or worth corrods effectiveness and efficiency. Discouraged people are not productive people. Along the same lines as trust, stability and openness to innovation create a more cost-effective enterprise. If all of a leader's time is spent training, they're not thinking of ways to do the job better. Similarly, if a new idea is met with a harsh rebuke, that employee will hesitate to come up with a second idea, even if it would save time and resources. In closing, as the economy around us grows more and more difficult, I expect the city budget to be as tight as possible. I recognize that this will take time to accomplish. I also recognize that fear destroys workplaces. I also recognize fear of families on a fixed income, but short-term cuts will create big costs later on. I greatly value our city employees and I

appreciate their public service. But I also charge them with continuing to do the work to reduce expenses in our budget. I expect the city of Edina to work to keep up high quality civ city services and good financial stewardship. Those two things I believe trust, integrity and stability are key elements that will enable us to do both. So I just really want to stress that um good financial stewardship has to you have to have an culture of trust in order to have that happen. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Thank you for thinking about it as much as you did. Appreciate it. Um, member Risser, we've heard a lot from residents and there are things that stick in my head, wants versus needs, and really focusing on that. Um, I appreciate member Jackson bringing up stewardship. Good financial stewardship means being able to have open conversations and to ask questions and to be able to go back and to look and to try to figure out whether or not something is a good investment. Now, tonight we talked about the Braar um expense investing $280,471 for a temporary chiller rental. It's over a quarter of a million dollars. And um my concern was this procedurally something that could happen. We have an emergency. We need to spend over a quarter of a million dollars. Uh but we've also had residents come forward and say, why couldn't we try to come up with other solutions? And I think really we need to be able to have the analysis to find out was this the only thing that we could have done? It was a lot of money. And as I look at um the budget and I look at documentation that we have and I'm looking at this chart here showing um the Braar arena and for 2025 the expenses were more than the revenue. So it's great that there is a fund that it can be there for emergencies but we need to have a bigger picture of what is going on. Um, as I think about the way we have invested this year, um, funding the aquatic center was something that was presented as the only option. And it wasn't until I went to Duth to the

Minnesota League of Cities and I questioned anyone who would talk to me about having an outdoor pool and about the amount of money that we were looking at investing. And I consistently got responses that you need to pause, you need to talk to the residents, you need to figure out if this is really what they want to do as possible. U you may want to go in a different direction. We are going to be paying $688,000 for the next 14 years in order to pay for that pump. And it's a facility that the attendance is declining. um it's a facility that is going to be competing with the massive water park that Bloomington is building. So I think you know when we talk about what fear does, fear can cost money because there's a panicky kind of response to a situation and it's not necessarily the case that we're stopping and pausing and thinking about whether what we are investing in is a prudent investment for the citizens of Edina. So that is something that is weighing on me and I um am hoping that in 2026 we have more dialogue about expenses and about whether or not even asking the fundamental question you know instead of assuming we need to do this. Do we need to do this? Is this a need? Is it a want? Is there another pathway forward that makes more sense? Um I did when we talk about the budgets and we talk about information and data we need to have a better system so that we can track expenses. Uh one of the pieces of information that I have been asking for and I still didn't get it was the total cost of running our intern fellowship program and I have heard from residents they want to have uh more of a understanding of exactly what this fellowship and internship program is

about. um we need to have more clarity on that. But if we had a system in place where we were tracking it expenses and so every time there was an expense that was associated with that program, it would be under a specific number and I I do know I'm not a financial expert or anything, but there are systems that would allow for that. So you could call up that information very quickly and you could have staff who are working um training the fellow be able to record the amount of time they are putting in training the fellow. Uh so it just it's something we need to be able to be more um capable of responding to resident concerns and to be able to say yes, this is exactly what's going on and here is the amount of time this individual is spending learning versus here's the amount of time this individual is spending um working for the city. And again, I want to emphasize I am not criticizing anyone who has been in this program. Uh, and I know when I brought this up in the past, it was viewed as uh me hurting the feelings of people who were part of the program. I am objectively asking for more information about the program and I I do think that's important. Uh, and I do think it's important to have an environment in which we can do that. When we talk about needs versus wants, um, we come down to public safety. And so much of this has been focused on firefighters, firefighter paramedics. Um, in our truth and taxation form that went out, we did say that we would have 12. I understand and in our work session, and I look forward to member Pierce talking about this more, there is a plan. Uh, and so it's something that I think is really important for the community to understand.

Uh I I think uh there's a lot where there's room where we could improve our approach and become more efficient. I do think we also really need to be thinking about the investments and when we talk about tiff um that it is a way to make redevelopment happen. Um when we look at our tiff districts and they are so small u they are not large expanses of areas that need to be developed. It is a project by project tiff district. Okay. So it is tiff for this particular parcel that is being developed by this particular developer. It's not a bigger region. And that is a really interesting thing to see that that happens in Edina. So you go down France Avenue, you've got France TIFF one, tiff 2, tiff 3. And uh as we look at the projects that have come forward, I think it is instructive to think about the whole history of the US bank site. uh they initially came forward wanted to put a bank that would front on to 70th which would have been much more logical than putting it onto France and they were met by a city council that instead of accepting that plan said we need something more grand and I don't think that's the role of council and so when we think about the tiff districts that we have and the projects that we have encouraged we really need to ask are these even feasible projects um they are not in terms of the you know open market they need tiff financing but they don't just need tiff financing they need even more and we need to be more prudent about what we're doing our tiff districts last for an incredible long period of time and that increment is not going back to the county the city so I I do think we need to really think about the positives and negatives and I

do appreciate being on a council where member Jackson can just, you know, present her view and I can present mine. Um, so with that, I will stop. Thank you, member. Uh, member Pierce. Thank you, uh, Mr. Mayor.

And I had a a couple of slides to to show. Um, and so I'll um when you get that pulled up, you can just go to that first slide, not the title slide, but that first one, number two. Um, so um over the past couple of years, I have um really had a sense of how complicated this is. And you kind of you guys pro in the you've seen me kind of get up and go over and talk to manager Neil. Um and so I'm probably going to make this a little bit confusing u because I want to talk about uh affordability in Edina. Um and what we're talking about approving tonight is actually the city share of your taxes. That's what the levy percentage is about. Um, and so what I want to talk about, um, over the past couple of years, we focused on lowering the levy and we've done really well at doing that, um, in an effort to reduce the overall impact on on residents. And [clears throat] while this effort has helped moderate the immediate burden, affordability continues to be an escalating challenge for Edina. And so what one of the things that I have been really focused on trying to do, especially over the last year, is to get away from us just talking about, right, it's a $20 increase for a certain size home. Um, and to really help people understand the bigger impact of the total tax bill on residents. And so I'm going to attempt to to do that a little bit today, but two years ago um I noted that in about seven and a half

years the median home value in Edina would exceed a million dollars. And that um forecast was validated by the assessing department um and they did the analysis and it came in at like a million20 um is what the forecast was. Um when you view that trend alongside the median household income, right, you get a different feeling about what taxes are doing in our community and it becomes the clearest indicator of a broader affordability challenge reflecting the combined impact of market forces and local policy decisions. So this first slide uh the yellow bars are the median home values and the red line is just calculating housing burden uh for Edina. And then the dotted line is the HUD affordability marker. And so I put that on there because HUD defines housing as affordable when the total housing cost does not exceed 30% of the household income. And so when you look at that, you see that back in 2014ish in Edina, our housing burden was below 30%. And then over time, the housing values increased, but what's happened is our median home income has relatively stayed flat. like it increases a little bit but it's not increasing at the same rate of the property value. And so I use median on purpose here. I'm not using an average because by definition what median means is that 50% of the people make more than

the median income. 50% of the people make less. Same for housing value. 50% of the houses are more than the median which uh in the presentation we saw 712 I think in my numbers I'm using 770 and 50% of the house half the houses are less than that and so when you think about it in those terms um what that means is as you move and you project out to 2040 you see that widening gap Um, and so if you go to the next slide, because it is so small on the other screen, I'm just blowing up the median household income and showing you the same red line, which is a 30% affordability threshold. And you can see the annual housing cost is ex is um exceed is um exponentially increasing. And so why should we care about that? Because over time the reality has consequences. As households age, downsize or experience income constraints, the ability to remain in the community weakens. Um turnover becomes one way, meaning households can leave the community, but they can't enter. And so when you when you think about that, there are again on the median, the median income, household income is $129,225 in Edina. And so if you look at the data, that means almost half of the people who live in Edina with that median income

would not be able to buy into Edina in the same house. they're in now in 2025. And so it just starkly shows you that we have an affordability challenge um that we have to address. Um and so I you know I will I'll share um the other point that I'd make is nearly a third of Edina residents are over the age of 65. So they're on a fixed income. So I am not on a fixed income. when my property taxes go up, my wife and I have an opportunity to increase our income. But that's not the case for onethird of Edina's residents. And I think that that is a challenge that we really have to um consider and think about what we can do as a community. And so I'll share one story. I was walking around Centennial Lakes with u someone who um mentioned to me that her she had moved back from California to the area and her to take care of her mother who was ailing. Her mother had recently passed away and she said she'd love to stay in the area but she wasn't able to find a home in the neighborhood she grew up in uh that she could that would work for her is kind of what she said. And I said, 'Well, by work for you, do you mean you can't find a home that's affordable for you? And she said, 'Yeah, I can't find a home that's affordable. Um, [snorts] and so that's that's what I'm talking about. So, we do have to face reality for what it is. The city can't control the housing market, right? We can't control interest rates. We can't control income growth. um those forces are all

regional, national or global. And the market is pure. It will always adjust. And if you sit back and think about, well, what adjustment is our market making now? Every time we have an affordable home that gets torn down, that might have been $500,000 or $550,000 and a million dollar plus home goes up. that first chart I showed you gets worse. And we have received several emails from residents that are concerned about being able to stay in their homes. Um, and I believe most of those would be uh residents who are on a fixed income um and just don't have the capacity to be able to increase um the income. So every time our rate increases in the city, that's a choice that they're having to make between how do they cover household um expenses and their and the ability to stay in their homes. Um so the contributions um to the cost of living that we have. So, what can we do as a city um to really focus on uh trying to reduce our overall portion of that total tax bill? Remember Rissa mentioned um a couple of these um it's [snorts] our the fees that we charge. Um policies that we have and I'll specifically talk about uh TIFF. I have no issue with using TIFF at all. TIFF has helped us um develop quite a bit. There's several examples where where um TIFF has allowed

us um to get um developments done and I would venture to say every one of those TI districts has created additional tax capacity um on an order of magnitude that is impressive. But the challenge is the way our tiff policies are written that tax capacity that's created doesn't flow back into the general fund and so it doesn't provide the benefit for the resident. Um and and the majority of our districts are written with a 20 to 25 year obligation, which means once those obligations are met, we can descertify those districts and that revenue can then flow into the general fund. Um and so that's just one example of of a um policy change that from a market perspective if we look at it we might be able to do something slightly different so that those funds can come into the general uh levy sooner uh rather than later. All right. So, um I think what we need to do and and we actually will do this and we talked about this. Um I am recommending that we find a metric and this isn't the first time the staff has heard me say this. find a metric where we can anchor our levy growth on resident affordability using the medium housing income as a preference as the preferred reference point and then have a directive to say all right let's look at our total spending in the city and figure out how we can

get to an operating budget between four and 7%. So, let's figure out what the goal is first of all, then let's set it and then figure out how we can get there. And um I say operate uh because that's what the difference is. Um prior to last year, I've always felt like what we do is that the budget time, we look at the budget, we set the levy, and then we kind of move on. Uh last year, we didn't do that. We set the levy and then we worked for a year. Uh we set a goal to be less than uh 10%. Um because we knew we couldn't sustain doubledigit increases every year and we've done a lot of work to get there. Um and so I think um I'd like to see us set that directive, figure out what our goal is in that target range. And that target range is specific in terms of trying to arrest this escalation of house burden across the total tax bill. Um and then us being able to focus just as a city on the portion that we um control. And I think achieving this would definitely require us aligning service levels, um, staffing, policy decisions like the one that I just gave. Um, and then really, uh, focusing on that affordability at the resident level and it will show us shows that demonstrates that we're fiscally um, we can operate the city in a fiscally sustainable way. And that's actually the way we talked about it last year. we said we need a sustainable levy growth projection. Um and so I think as a city, one of the things we talked about in the work session that after we um approved the levy,

we would come back together in January, have that discussion on all right, what is the right goal for us as a city um and then we would start to do that work um again and it will be a continuous process um until we reach the the goal. That's it. Thank you. Thank you, uh, member Agnu.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, thank you to my fellow council members for for all of your words on this. I I think it's clear that it's something that we've one been focusing on all year and it's been a priority and two, we do understand the impact that it does have to residents and we we are conscious of that when we're making our decisions. Um, I do want to highlight a couple of of things that I think are really important. Um especially and I know other council members have highlighted this but when we think about you know where we look for opportunities for cost savings um we did combine or we will be combining next year our public works and engineering department. We're looking for opportunities of where does it make sense to do consolidation or where can we um better align for some of those reductions. Um we also did the consolidation of staffing for the liquor store operations. I think that that's something we've we've heard from residents. We know it's something we need to be paying attention attention to in general. Um, but I think that council member Jackson kind of described the situation well. We can't just decide to sell the liquor operations. We would need to cease liquor operations and and sell the sites. Um, but we do continue to think about that and think about cons consistently is this a a thing that we want to continue to operate? And I think as long as it continues to be profitable um with the enhancements to operations due to the reduction in staffing, it is something I'd like to see continue. Um we talked about moving assessing to the county and I I think that's another important um component of this year's budget re refinement. And in our work session today um and in previous sessions, I know we've had a lot of discussion as a city council about firefighting. And I know that that's one of the things that is on a lot of people's minds, especially when we look at response times to the Morningside neighborhood. Um, so I know that that's important. I think when we had our our

public hearing last week, we heard that loud and clear how important that is. So when we're making decisions like this, we're talking about money, but we're also talking about people's lives, right? Like I I think that that part is known and is clear. And how I want us to continue to drive that conversation is make it rooted in what is our goal or what is our objective. Um so when we say we want to improve response times to the Morningside neighborhood, there's a couple of different factors that that are at play, right? There's how long does it take to get there? Do we have an ambulance that's available? And so when we're looking at staffing and we've landed on now six firefighters at least to start the year. Um the reason I think that that's important is because it gets us to the three ambulances hopefully staffed 24 by7. Um which that should cover us based off of the data 95% of the time. Um, there are obviously times where there are four overlapping incidents or five overlapping incidents, six overlapping incidents, and I know this year we even had a few with seven overlapping incidents. Um, but I also know it's not reasonable for us to fully staff out our fire services, fire and EMT to always be able to accommodate seven overlapping incidents. And so I I say that because even though we want to make these things a priority, there's always a sliding scale where we need to think about what is the objective that we're trying to drive. Um so that's I just want to add a little bit more color to how I landed on six personally. Um and the ask that I've made to um Chief Slamma and that we've discussed is at that halfway point on the year is check-in. Are we seeing the results that we wanted to? Are we seeing that we're able to fully staff three firefighters 24 by7? And if not, let's find in the budget, not by increasing the levy, but

let's find within the existing budget, how we can continue to increase the staffing levels to get to the objectives that we want to see. I really liked the the data point that I think um Director Ta provided for us which was 5.91% of the levy um is related to our new debt service. Um which means without that new debt service what we would have is 2.03% increase in the levy. Um, why I think that's important is because when we're also talking about response times to the Morningside neighborhood, one of the ways that we're going to make a big impact there is by building a third fire station. [snorts] One of the main drivers in our levy increase this year was our decision to build a new fire station, too. So when we're thinking about combating response times, improving response times within that neighborhood, we need to be talking about and thinking about fire station 3 and as we're having those conversations, what is the impact of the levy? So I think that there's a a lot that I will not repeat um from my council members. Um these are really important decisions, but I I am happy with where we landed at the 7.94%. Um, I know that a lot of work went into this and I think as as council member PICE is saying, the work doesn't end here. We continue to look for opportunities. We continue asking some of these hard questions um and and hope for and work towards um even better results for next year.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for that. And I think that that final comment you made about uh hoping to get even better results next year is a is a great goal to have that we've all taken very seriously. So um you know in thinking about ways to talk about this issue uh happened here on the radio this morning. It was a public radio and they had somebody from the assessment board from the city of Minneapolis on the radio and and they were they were going up I think a little over 8% on their budget. The county is up 8%. And then statewide uh the average city increase in the levy is 8% and uh in the counties it's about 8%. All of this driven by you know what what we all experience personally in our in our own lives is the the cost of everything is escalating and the cost of government delivering services is escalating too. And in fact, I've been recently the recipient of a letter from some of the mayors in northern Minnesota that unlike Edina, they get local government aid, Adina doesn't get any local government aid from the state. We're we're a we're a giver, not a receiver. And with respect to fiscal disparities which is a concept developed in the 70s where uh commercial real estate property taxes are and to a certain percentage are peeled out of certain communities and and given to other communities to help them uh maintain their budgets. Edina is a is I think in the top five of the givers on commercial real estate uh you know fiscal disparities and so some of our commercial real estate property taxes are going into the fiscal disparities pool. Uh so when when I hear that cities that are already getting help from the state are concerned about what's happening with them, it naturally follows that we who take care of ourselves basically and then help others

uh have the same types of concerns that that these other folks have and and we're especially sensitive at this time I think and have taken very seriously this moment in time when the pressure is on families in uncertainties in the economy uh are uh are present and we're still trying to deliver the best bang for the buck because we live here too. You know, we pay these taxes like everybody else and so we're trying to meet our collective responsibilities in our town uh that we all own together because in my view our residents are kind of like shareholders uh uh that own stock in our community. they want and deserve a good return on their investment of property tax dollars. And the job of the council is to make sure absent external forces like a recession or a depression that we try to keep uh try to keep growing that value of the property of our residents by making sure the Dina is wellkept and desirable. And that's that's what's happened over time. You can see that in the church that that that Paul presents that property values keep going up and they kind of move in lock step with increases in in in property taxes themselves, but the value of the property keeps going up. It's a town that's very desirable and everything works. I remember when I was campaigning last fall um stopped at a house where a person had just moved here from Golden Valley. He'd been been in United for a couple weeks. I said, "Well, what caused you to think about moving to United from Golden Valley?" He said, "Well, because everything works here. The whole town works. It functions well. This investment in through property tax is not painless, but that investment continues in my mind to be a good one. And I believe for our residents who have seen the value of their homes continue to rise in value. Uh it's a good one as well. And then we see that results of that in our quality of life survey that consistently says that we get high marks for delivery of high quality services providing for the safety of the public from both a police and fire and emergency medical services standpoint uh and having properly functioning infrastructure. All of that leads us to

the position where we've got this double AAA bond rating. one of probably three dozen cities our size in the United States that can make that claim that we're borrowing money when we need to at the lowest possible rate. So, uh, here we are now looking at this 2026 budget and staff's recommending that after a lot of work during the year, as everybody's pointed out, a $224 million consolidated municipal budget for 2026 that covers all city programs, services, infrastructure work, and debt obligations. So, a key part of this, of course, is what we're all concerned about and concerned about it for ourselves as well, is the tax levy. Uh, that total amount of money that the city collects through property taxes, which is now been proposed by staff at uh about 63,694,000, which is a 7.94% increase over last year. And and so what does that mean for the typical home in Edina? And I think member Pierce said that, you know, the typical home we'll say is the median priced home at at for 2026 at 735,200. That levy increase uh if approved tonight at 7.94% will mean roughly a $20 more per month uh commitment by our residents with that typical price home uh in Dina. Uh and and then of course it will go up from there. the more valuable your home, the more you're going to pay because it's progressive in nature. And so when you think about and some of our my colleagues have touched on this, well, what were the what were the key factors that are driving this beyond just the cost of government rising and the cost for all of us rising? Uh we've got these new investments that we've made that are for the benefit of all of us like the big projects like the new fire station, uh the the work at the aquatic center that was referenced. Uh and then improvements at this key intersection right here outside of city hall where we made a $6 million investment in uh in that uh bridge over trunk highway 100.

Uh and then we're thinking about expanding our our emergency medical services. And I think member did a great job of explaining why at one time we were thinking about 18 firefighters, but we've settled on six because 95% of the time we can meet the needs of our residents for multiple calls uh by by we hopefully staffing three uh three vehicles, three ambulances 247. So I I thought her explanation on that and that analysis by her was very good and continues to be good. Um, and then of course I I say covering routine inflation. I hate to call it routine and operating costs citywide, which uh is consistent with the pressures many of our households are facing as well. And then you get into this discussion about balancing public safety needs with cost impacts, especially for folks on fixed incomes. And uh some of these investments that we're making are are important investments, but they're not inexpensive to be making. Uh and so we've we've we've done uh an effective job I think. And then one other thing that's a little bit of a headwind for us this year and was last year as well is in this postcoid environment commercial property values have dropped. You know for for many years when I was on the city council we would we would do a levy increase because 70% of our our budget is labor and you're trying to keep people current with the rate of inflation. you'd have a you'd have a a modest relatively modest levy increase. Uh and it might let's say it's four or five percent. Well, the effect of it that effect might have been three 3% 2% uh something less than what was the levy amount because commercial real estate was taking more of the burden than residential. That's not true. Now, we're taking all of us as single family homeowners were taking the burden. multif family home owners, apartment owners as well. We're taking the burden u that was formerly taken by um by commercial real estate. So that's

another pressure that we have to deal with. And I and I think this is going to be something that heads of the legislature in some capacity. Uh I think we're all of a uniform belief up here that we wished we were lower than 7.94% but when you start looking at some of the factors involved and and remember Egnu pointed out some of those things that you know you've got your base percentage you've got the investment that we're making in all these uh new additions in our town. Uh you've got the inflation factor. Uh all of these have driven us to the point we're at 7.94%. Uh down far from the what was originally projected last year was even more than 11%. I think it was originally projected that by staff that well if you're going to deliver the services you want to deliver we might need to be and make the investments you want to make you might be around 13%. Well here we are at 7.94%. Just below what appears to be the state average for uh for residential for uh for cities across the state. So, um it it's it's where we are. It's where we need to be. We've worked hard to get here. Uh we're going to work harder to define how we want to go forward. Uh we're going to do things like member Eggna mentioned some of the things that we had done. Uh we're going to also look do a staffing study uh and look at the implications of artificial intelligence on our municipal operations. I think all those things will help us drive the efficiencies that we think are important to drive uh and the effectiveness of our city government as best we can uh into next year and beyond. So uh we're going to we're going to continue to work hard to make sure that the levy is uh as low as it can possibly be and still deliver the quality of services that we want to deliver. And so I think tonight we're probably going to we've got a motion in a second on on the adoption of the resolution 2025-112

setting the 2026 tax levy at 7.94% and adopting the 2026 operating budget. And I don't know if anybody else has anything further they want to add. They sure can if you want to. Um I was going to mention just quickly before we vote uh a couple of comments that were made um with respect to the south arena and the and the temporary fixes that we had to undergo out there. Uh you know the question was posited what other what other methods might have been possible other than spending $280,000. But I can assure you that our staff is extraordinarily competent and looked at every possible solution uh that that made sense. Uh keeping in mind that we needed to get that rink back open again because we were uh we were taking a rink out of service uh in Dina and it was extraordinarily expensive as to the public pool investment that we made. You know, member Risser has pointed out that asset to me is valued at tens of millions of dollars and provides an amenity in our community and beyond that is really really special. What's the cost of that? Probably $30 per household per year when you look at the numbers. And so I think it's a good investment. I think that's the things that that you know over time our our town has looked at. Not everybody can belong to Interlock and then Edina Country Club, but people love golf and I use this as an example. So, we've made an investment in golf as a community and each household is helping pay for that. It ends up being a relatively modest cost, but we end up having amenities for our whole town that some people might not otherwise be able to afford that most people may not be able to afford, but we're doing it together. And we're doing it together again. And we're going to we're going to get this budget uh in place here and we're going to have uh a a year in 2026 where we're going to work as hard as we possibly can for 2027 to drive uh this down to a level where we

can we we can be comfortable and we can be predictable as member Pierce says. So um we have the motion and we have the second. Uh any further discussion? All right. All those in favor of adoption resolution 2025-112 setting the 2026 tax levy at 7.94% and adopting the 2026 operating budget say I. I opposed.

Carried. That's approved. Thank you for all your hard work from a staff standpoint. For the general public, I tell you thanks for the input. It's uh it's been a year where I've never seen so many people concerned about and rightly so all of us concerned about uh the budget levy uh and making sure that we also have a sufficient number of public safety personnel in place to be able to meet the needs of our community. So it was an interesting year. We were at a function this afternoon for the retiring mayor of Minnetonka and mayors from around were saying well we had one we had one family show up we had one person show up. We had two people show up. We had I don't know 40 50 people on chambers because of the keen interest in this issue and we and it's really good to have that input. We really appreciate it. So thanks to all of you that uh provided that input. All right, we've got a budget approved for 2026. And now we've got to look at some roadway reconstruction projects. We got three of them to think about here. [cough] Excuse me. Um, and we're starting with the first project we heard about a couple weeks ago, uh, when we had the public hearing, and that's West 72nd Street proposed roadway reconstruction project embodied an improvement designated SS538. And Director Chad Milner, our engineering director, will take us through all of these matters uh, as we determine how to vote on them.

Director, members of council, yeah, the first one in front of you this evening is 72nd Street. So on the Better Together web page, we received 21 comments. At the public hearing here last week, we received six comments in person. You really heard a lot about the development project, uh about the concerns for the traffic from 7200 France. On the staff side, we proposed a 24 foot wide street with an 8ft sidewalk on the south side, continue no parking on either side. We suggested a median west of Linmar Avenue and then we would construct that pork shop island on that 7200 France so cars can only take a right out of that private street. We're proposing a $6,000 assessment per REU and we would ask council to approve resolution 2025-118 embodied improvement SS538. I'd be happy to stand for any questions.

Questions for director Mililder on this matter? I know [clears throat] we had questions for him last time, quite a few on these three different projects. Um, is there a motion to adopt resolution 2025-118, which is the West 72nd Street roadway reconstruction improvement? [clears throat] So moved. Director Pier, I mean, Director Pierce, Commissioner Pierce, member Pierce moves the matter. Is there a second? Second.

Member Jackson seconds the matter. Uh, let's have a discussion. Anything to discuss here, folks? All right. U, all those in favor of approving resolution 2025-118, which is the West 72nd Street roadway reconstruction improvement embodied in uh SS538 say I. I. I. Opposed. Carried. That that matter is approved for reconstruction the West 72nd Street project. Now on to the next one which is Prospect Nolles AC and D.

Thank you mayor, members of council. Prospect nullles AC and D. That one we received 29 public comments on the better together website. We had 13 people testify here in the chambers. Last week we heard comments a lot of comments about sidewalks on Fleetwood Lamrich and Shannon. Uh the sidewalk on Shannon and Chem would really be a nice to have to as it connects to Lewis Park, but if the council feels it's not the right context, we definitely have other locations where we need sidewalks and we can definitely do more projects this year or next year in 2026. So with that, I'm going to show a quick graphic. The mayor had asked for a graphic on street widths. So we'll show you just a couple from last time.

Yeah. One of the things I got confused about was where did you want something narrower than what we were going to narrow the road to which is our new standard I think at 27 ft. That was what I was trying to figure out. We'll start with this one. So if you just went with the staff proposal the Lam let me get a better pointer here. Lam, Fleetwood, Chemrich, and Shannon would be reduced approximately three feet to 24 feet wide. And the whole reason for that is because of the sidewalk. The other ones that are highlighted, Kerry Road, let's make this clear, absent the sidewalk on Fleetwood, you'd be at 27.

We'd be at 27. And if you look at this table, it's basically what's out there today. So, we have this column and it's in the report, the street widths, what's the proposed width? These are with the sidewalks, but you can see sometimes we're actually increasing the width a foot or two or decreasing it a foot or two. And then when we get to the sidewalk ones, then it's a little more of a narrowing at 3 to 4 feet, 3 and 1/2 ft width reductions. But if you choose not to do the sidewalks, it's basically what's there, just a minor change in street width. Um, there is three assessment districts in this project. District one, if you recall, was estimated a $19,000 assessment per REU. District 2 was $9,700 per REU. And District 3 was $3,400 per REU. So again, we would recommend approval of resolution 2025-116 embodied improvement BA458, and happy to have any discussions on the sidewalks as you see fit.

Yeah. Questions for Director Milner or comments on this? I think member Jackson, you had some concerns about the sidewalk. I do. Um, just for starters, if we don't do the sidewalks, does that dramatically change the value of the um of the assessment? Would that I I know the sidewalks itself are paid for out of the packs fund, but if we have a 27 foot road instead of a 24 foot road, does that uh how does that impact the assessment?

It'd be within that contingency we have built into those numbers. So with the scale of all the other streets and accounted for within the scale of the project and the contingency, it wouldn't impact that preliminary assessment we want you to set this evening. Okay. So, um, at the beginning of your presentation, you talked about Shan, the [clears throat] sidewalks on Shannon Ro Drive and Kendrick Drive, K Kenrich. Kenrich, thank you. Um, it's very small. Um, those are important for connecting um the overall community to Lewis Park. Is that correct? That's our opinion, right? The bike and ped master plan had this sidewalk connection going north south through this neighborhood. Mhm.

So, we have a portion of that's covered here, but we also think there's a a sidewalk, a trail that ends out of Lewis Park over on the east. So, if you weren't comfortable with Fleetwood and Landom, you could still direct staff to do Shannon and Chem to make like a connection with Lewis Park and do a hill, you can make a nice circle. So, I think there's an option of no sidewalks, sidewalks as proposed by staff or this interim condition where you just do it on Shannon and Chem to connect to the city park.

Okay. Well, I'm definitely in favor of taking the sidewalks off the discussion for Lam Lane and Fleetwood Drive. Um, I think this is a very quiet neighborhood and I generally am in favor very strongly for sidewalks, but this is one of those rare neighborhoods that is not facing pass through traffic or big traffic increases that other parts of the city have seen and I just don't see that happening in the future. So, for sure, I don't want to do sidewalks on Lam Lane and Fleetwood Drive. Um, and I'd like to hear what my fellow city council members think about the um sidewalks for Kimrich and um Shannon. I think that the circle around with Lewis Park is a is a really good point.

Yeah. Just another quick background on the road width up at Kerry Road. You had that at 24 feet. Is that by necessity or is that you know there other places you had a 24 ft were was because of the sidewalk. Why why are you recommending 24 feet up at on Kerry?

Uh good evening Mayor. Uh Aaron Ditler, assistant city engineer. So Kerry Road today is around 24 20 ft wide today. It's got some interesting topography. It's got some large mature trees there that uh we'd essentially be widening that existing road and we'd be taking down those really mature trees there. So, we felt it would be consistent to kind of leave it close to what it is today. Okay. Close. That's basically leaving Kerry Road the way it is today. Correct. And that's that's a charming little stretch in there.

All right. Um, and then council members, what about um I I would say first of all that I I joined member Jackson and I'm not convinced we should put sidewalks in on Lam and Fleetwood either. Um I go through that neighborhood quite a bit and I see people walking in the street. It's about 300 cars a day, 500 cars a day on these streets. Um I think they'll continue to walk in the street. I just I just don't see it uh as a as a need. I'd better spend, as director Miller said, I'd rather spend the money somewhere else. I'm I'm kind of intrigued with that idea of sidewalk that would come from um Dewey Hill Road, I think, up Shannon to Cambridge and then across to the park because I do see a lot of people going across uh on Shannon from the neighborhood to the south heading for the park. So, that's kind of an interesting idea to talk through. I'm going to go to member Risser has some thoughts, too. Um, first I do agree with both of you about Lam and Fleetwood and which is so odd because I have actually petition to put sidewalks in, but that was along Valley View, which is a whole different thing. Um, as for a loop for Shannon and Chem, I don't think you need a sidewalk in order to have the loop. Those are also um, especially Cambridge is a very quiet road. Um, the other thing is what struck me as I was walking and listening to residents is and you could see it and someone told me how they have to back into the driveway across the street from them in order to get enough speed to get up onto their driveway because it is that slopey and it does feel right now. And I I did this was a beautiful day for walking this area. So that was really nice. And I I think there were maybe two

cars that I encountered the entire time. Um I agree that we could be putting our funds to better use and I was struck by the um issue of not having sidewalks on the south side of 70th. And I think that would be a much more valuable um investment. They don't start until Tracy. And so I did actually see a walker coming up Lam and then and here's the thing walkers we just keep going and she needed to get to the sidewalk with her dog across the way but there was traffic coming so she turns and starts walking along the north side um waiting for a chance for a car to stop coming and then just kind of looks over her shoulder and goes across to the next sidewalk. And so I really think putting in sidewalks at this juncture seems problematic also in terms of timing because you're building a connection to infrastructure that's not yet there and u also I did go and look at the bike pedestrian master plan and my understanding is that these connectors that go uh between the twin loops are there to help the neighborhood get to the twin loops. and not so much as a pathway through. And so I I did want to recognize that. The other thing is at our last meeting I asked about a crosswalk um to get to the park path from that area and I can see you don't need that. It's so quiet and calm it'd be ridiculous. So I do want to say I went out and I did some field research and I realized that was totally not a good suggestion there. So that is

what I have. All right. Good. Thanks for that. Uh member Pierce nothing. Okay. I thought that's what you meant when you went like you gave me that that gesture. Nothing personal. It's just you waving off. Yeah. Member Agno.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, I I just want to say it is always really hard to make decisions like this that go against the plans that we have in place. And I'm thinking the pedestrian master pedestrian and bike master plan that we have um we put a lot of effort as a city, as a community into making those guiding documents um that are really meant to help us as a council make decisions. And so anytime we have this document that says this is where the sidewalk goes and we have the plan for this is where we want the sidewalk to be and we get a lot of opposition. It it makes for tension, right, that we have to decide as a city generally, and I think I'm echoing most of my fellow council members, but at least member Jackson in I prefer to have sidewalks as we are going through these processes. um right before I got elected. Um, so I think was in 2019, um, the sidewalk on 58th Street was added and I was just a resident at that time and I I remember following it because if for people who don't remember, it was just a very narrow street with people walking day in and day out and it was busy and I had I was just having my daughter and I'd push her and it was scary walking on that street with all of the cars breezing by. I think sidewalks are so important to our community and I think adding more connectivity is essential. And when we look at this area, this isn't 58th Street. Um it doesn't see nearly as much traffic. It's not I mean it's definitely just as steep in some

areas. Um but it's a different area of the community. Um, so I I will kind of go with my fellow council members and align with removing the sidewalk. Um, at the very least from Lam and Fleetwood. Um, but very specifically, I do want us to continue having some of the conversation on Shannon and Kendrick because I I do I love seeing more sidewalks in our neighborhood, especially when we're talking about connectivity to parks. Um it just I think adds accessibility and it it adds to the community feel within the area. Um so I just want to say all that I don't take the decision lightly especially when we have a lot of community members and people that called in of of stressing the importance of our plans. Um but I think for me in this case um especially given the the considerable out um I guess feedback that we got from residents I I'm okay removing it from the plan for now. What would be the ability to maybe think about Shannon Cambridge uh and coming back in at a subsequent time? It's going to be a little bit of time before this. Oh, I get I take that back. Forget it because it's going to affect the road width. So, yeah, I think people seem more concerned about making maintaining the existing width of the roadway or the at 27 feet than they did about a sidewalk. So, okay. by while while I said I was intrigued with that idea of the sidewalk over there. Uh I think the width of the street at 27 feet is probably more important to me. Remember

it's the width but it's also the topography and you know we heard from so many people. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I I I've navigated that myself, you know, up Shannon right on Cambridge and then up Fleetwood or up Lam. And you're it's a it's a it's a great change. No doubt about it. Um so we if I may Yeah, use please.

Um we heard from some neighbors on Chem. I think one of them just either last night or or yesterday late yesterday afternoon. Remind me what is the topography of of Keidge? Are there those steep driveways on that street as well like there are on Fleetwood? I Yeah, I think that that was a concern. Um that and that with adding the sidewalk does affect the perception and the reality of of backing in and out. So I guess you know people are walking on the streets now. Um it is very quiet and and the the topography does make a big difference in this. So, I guess I'm leaning towards getting rid of not doing sidewalks at all in this um in this redevelopment.

The other thing we haven't talked about is some folks raised this surmountable curb idea, but with all the grade changes, I think it's really important to have that bulkhead style sidewalk for a water management. I remember seeing that years ago over on Blake Road, even though that's a little bit more consistent from a grade standpoint when they put the bulkhead sidewalk in and really managed water coming from west to east. And I see that being a real advantage here in this neighborhood too to manage water using bulkhead.

We agree. We don't want to go back on that uh standard that we have in the city for many reasons and water drainage is one of those. So, yes, we could live without the sidewalks and then we would do our standard street widths and with barrier curb and I think we'd have a great project here. So, let me ask council members, is there someone who'd care to make a motion to approve uh the um project uh for this particular neighborhood uh without the sidewalk on Fleetwood and Lam and Shannon and Chem without the sidewalk anywhere? uh and maintain those existing road widths at 27 ft using bulkhead style curbing and and then maintaining Kerry road at its existing width of 24 feet roughly.

Yeah, I think mayor I guess I would prefer if just didn't do the widths of the road. We may need to do some tweaks around trees and stuff. So, we'll do our normal practice of protecting trees and we know we got a little corner that our snowplow operations need a different different. So, what would you having heard the council, what would you how would you like the motion worded? I would just approve the resolution as stated but remove all sidewalks from the project. Okay, there a motion to that effect. So moved. Second

motion by member Agnu, second by member Jackson to approve the project as proposed without the addition of the sidewalks anywhere in the project area. Uh any further discussion? All those in favor of adoption of the motion as stated say I. I. Opposed. Carried. No. All right. One more.

We have one more item here for this evening. Mayor, members of council, resolution number 2025-117. This is Parklon Court. We had one comment on the Better Together Edina website. Zero people testified. And if you recall, the assessment amount that we proposed was $2,300 per REU. But if we do divide that in half, because it's per unit, our policy says it's 0.5 per unit. The assessment per apartment unit is 137.50. So we would recommend approval of resolution 2025-117 embodied in BA467. Be happy to stand for any questions.

Questions for staff? Uh with with regard to uh resolution 2025-117. Is there a motion to approve that neighborhood roadway reconstruction project embodied in BA467? So moved. the Parkland Court matter. Member Risser moves second. Member Pierce seconds the adoption of resolution number 2025-117 which is the Parkline Court neighborhood roadway reconstruction improvement embodied in BA467. Uh any further discussion? Yes, member Jackson.

Yes. So moving forward when we have a situation like this where these are naturally occurring affordable uh apartments I believe and I'm worried about the impact of the cost on on whether that'll affect rents and and the cost of affordability. So I don't know quite how to square that circle. I I'm in favor of of fixing the roads, but I do want to figure out what what we [clears throat] do in a situation like this. um if there's any kind of I don't know squaring the circle and I'm not I don't know but it's expensive and I I worry about the affordability. So one of I we talked about that at the last meeting and I worried about it too and I kind of came to the conclusion there isn't much we could probably do about it. The landlords have leases with the folks. Their leases may extend a few months or a few years. They may not see an impact for a while. We don't know what the impact will be and I think we probably just need to stick to the and I I understand completely what council member Jackson is concerned about affordability issue but need to concentrate on whether we're going to approve the project or not.

Correct. We've reached out to the owners multiple multiple times and haven't heard back or received any comments with the information we've shared. Okay, we got a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor of adoption resolution 2025-117, which would be the uh BA467 improvement for the Parkland Court neighborhood roadway reconstruction project, say I. I. I. Opposed. Carried. That roadway reconstruction project is approved. You got all three approved. And thank you. Off we go.

Thank you. Well, I don't know if there are any folks from the neighborhood here or not, but uh should be a lot of folks pleased that there's no sidewalk. [laughter] All right. Yeah, thanks for thanks for bearing with us tonight. Um well, uh we are we're gonna I guess we're going to go to manager's comments and then we've got something important to talk about as we get towards the end of the agenda here. So, manager Neil.

Yes. Thank you, your honor. My only comments are to thank the council for the action you took earlier tonight on the 2026 budget. Uh we consider that an act of trust from the council. Uh we'll use that money wisely and we'll report on it throughout the year next year. Thank you. Yeah. Good. Um before we go to comments by uh our individual council members, we've been talking for some time and and and in fact, member Pierce has been helping lead a group uh that met last week

and uh to to gather to talk about uh how how do we be good neighbors? How do we be better neighbors? How do we make sure that everybody gets treated the way they should be treated uh as human beings? and and there's been a lot of a lot of letters to the editor that have been written uh about uh our Somali-American colleagues, our fellow residents all over the Twin Cities, this large large diaspora of people that are here from from Somalia that came in difficult times that have been here well over 20 years now and have prospered and uh like so many immigrant communities from the past worked hard, prospered want their kids to go to good schools and and we're fortunate we've got some folks in Edina from the Somali American community and they make you make our community a much richer place. Uh the more diverse we can be the more interesting we are and you can see it in the kids at the school. I was over there today and it's just I had some great hallway conversations. I ran into uh last time I was over there last week, I ran into a group of six young small American Americans in the lunchroom and had a great conversation with them and they felt uh yeah, I mean I I didn't think it was that big a deal, but they thought it was a big deal to meet the mayor. [laughter] But uh anyway, it was it was fun to visit with them and uh anytime you can make people people feel like they belong and they're part of community, it's really an important thing to be doing. So um many of us have expressed uh our opinions individually and and we know that other communities uh like Eden Prairie have come uh have expressed their solidarity with our Somali American neighbors and uh our staff helped put together uh at our request at

our the the consensus request of our council that we do something in support of our Somali-American neighbors in our community and a statement has been prepared that was circulated to our residents uh our council members in advance. I don't know if residents have seen it. I suppose it's part of the agenda so you have probably seen it. Uh but I think it's important to to read that tonight and um and have a passage of that um statement and approval of that statement by the entire city council. Uh and uh we've got some of the leaders in the Somali American community here this evening. Uh Sahers, thank you for being here. You know, leading that group last week, member Pierce, thanks for being part of that team. Assad here, still here. Yes. Thank you for being here. And uh the man who's everywhere, Shamara Yusef. Yeah, he's everywhere. And always with that big smile on his face, too. and uh always so gracious and kind and um and it's always a pleasure to see you and I'm I'm so pleased that you're all here tonight to hear us read this this statement of of solidarity with all of you. The Dina City Council affirms that every person in our community deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Recent public comments that demean, dehumanize, or single out Somali Americans are unacceptable and do not reflect the values of our city or our nation. When political rhetoric targets a group of people based on their identity, it does more than inflame disagreement. It undermines our shared commitment to be a safe, welcoming and inclusive community. Words shape attitudes and attitudes shape actions. Dehumanizing language can lead to discriminatory behavior and policies and it has no place absolutely no place in a healthy democracy. Somali Americans are an integral part of

Adina and the greater Twin Cities area of Minnesota. They are our friends, neighbors, residents, and visitors. They are public servants, health care professionals, educators, students, business owners, and community leaders. They contribute every day to the strength, culture, and well-being of our entire community. Strong leadership requires responsibility, especially in a diverse society. Vigorous debate about public policy is essential. Attacking the dignity of people is not. The Adina City Council stands firmly against rhetoric that divides or harms, and we have reaffirmed our commitment to ensuring that all who call Edina home feel valued, safe, and included. Edina City Council denounces harmful rhetoric and discriminatory actions against Somali community members and expresses its full support for the Somali residents, workers, and visitors who contribute to our community and to our American society. Uh, is there a motion by council to adopt that statement of support? So move Pierce moves. I think it's all kind of uniform, isn't it?

Yeah. Can we all second? We all move. [laughter] We all move. Signature spot. Great. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, we're all moving this matter together. We're all in lock step on this uh solidarity around this statement. Um so um all in favor of approving this statement and uh supporting our Somali American uh colleagues in our community say I I I

opposed. Approved. It is uh it is uh approved and we will see how we can best use this. I think publishing it in the Sun newspaper is one solution, one one pathway, maybe not a solution, but a pathway. And then we'll see what else we can do as well. We can make sure it gets to the Star Tribune and other uh media outlets. And I think our communications department will do the best they can with it to try to get it broadcast be on the city website, probably go out as a press release. Uh I think we'll we'll do as best we can from a communication standpoint. And I don't know if any of you that that have stayed with us until almost 10 o'clock at night. Uh you I mean I think you're welcome to come up and any any comments that you want to make. If if you don't want to do that, that's that's fine as well, but I just want to make sure that you have the opportunity. So here comes Assad. I know you guys have a long day, so I will make this very very brief. When I chose Adidina five years ago and I was thinking of relocating from Ohio, I chose Adina for a lot of reasons. Great public schools, safety, access to parks. But I think the greatest asset of Adina, it's really its people. When we were attacked as a community violently and viciously with vile rhetoric and remarks, I think the community, our neighbors stood up for us. We were getting countless emails, messages, phone calls asking us how we are doing. Is there anything we could do for you? Is there anything we could do as a community together? We were actually getting a text message as we were sitting here of people asking, "Hey, how is it going? Is there anything that you need? How can we make our community safer? That speaks of the

character of Adina. And I'm so proud to call Adina home. We've had individuals, we've had organizations like anti-racism collective, Asian-American Alliance who showed us support the school, the superintendent. So, I just want to thank you again because this does affirm the values of America, the values of Adina. I feel like I made a good choice when I moved here. So, thank you so much. Well, we're blessed that you're here. Thank you. Thank you, Assad. Thanks to all of you. I was hoping you'd stand up. I I couldn't believe that you weren't going to you didn't raise your hand to say something.

Thank you, mayor. Uh thank you, the council. It's my pleasure to standing before you. My name is Shar Yu. I'm a community worker, a resident of Idana for the last 15 years. Two of my kids graduated from Idana High School. I've been involved in the school district and I also have another two who are in the district now. So I'm very much pleased when I see that the community behind us in this difficultest time. I know and I know the communities are with us and I really really from the bottom of my heart appreciate our communities living in fear and the fact that we have a city who is behind us everybody in the city whether in Minneapolis whether in everywhere we see Minnesota this is why we choose to be here on behalf of the Somali community on behalf of my family thank you very much

thank you thank you Shamura All right.

Good evening. Welcome. Are you guys? Um, I just wanted to say thank you for the message that you're sending out. It means so much to my community. Helps people understand how much we contribute. Um, I don't live in this um city, but my children go to the school here. I've worked in this district for over 10 years and um this is I've been in this country since I was five. So this is the only home I have ever known. So I do appreciate that message. It says a lot when you guys stand behind us like that and I'd like to thank you for that.

Thanks for coming up. Thanks. All right. Um well let's uh let's go to member and see what she has for the good of the order. Thank you. Um, so I just have one thing. Um, anytime we get a a lot of questions on a topic, I I think it can be helpful to bring it up here. Um, but we'd had some issues of having a full voicemail box. Um, and so I just want everyone to know that we heard that there were some technical issues. um and it it has been resolved. Um and so I'm I'm hoping that we're also taking steps as a city to prevent that from happening again. Um but just know that we are fully aware of that and and it should be resolved. But appreciate everyone resorting to email um and connecting with us in other ways um because we definitely want to be as accessible open as possible. So really appreciate everyone that wrote in. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Member Pierce, what in addition to whatever other comments you're going to make, would you talk a little bit about the the gathering last week that you helped put together?

Yeah. Uh, thanks, Mr. Mayor. Um, so the first thing I want to say is I was not the leader of that. But I [laughter] I understand why you made the comment that way. Um, but I think it's it's it was really a kind of a neat um grassroots kind of an event where um SA reached out um a member of the um racism collective reached out and so now I had actually um planned a few of these get to know your neighbor meetings and other um in a different community and thought, "Hey, we should do this." And then really Jessica Connors really took the lead to then um kind of coordinate the group. And um all all I did was I sat on maybe two meetings maybe maybe one. [laughter] One of those I probably left early, but I had one action item was to find a place and um I do we met at the um Chamber of Commerce. Um and so just a shout out to Shelley Lurberg. If you haven't gone over there or tried to use that facility, I mean it's a amazing space and she has been very gracious about um when when people want to use it. So, um, definitely want to say thank you, uh, to her. And so, Jessica did a great job of, um, I think we wanted to have about 40 people. Um, I think that was about the right number. Maybe there were 50ish. Um, I appreciated um, council members coming by um, and

participating. we kind of staged it so that there were no more than two in the room at the time uh to honor um open meeting laws. And Jessica did a good job of um just kind of doing a couple of events where you talk through what your similarities are, things like that. So it was and the space was very intimate. So it was a really good um event. Um, and there will be others. Um, and the intent is really just to get to know your neighbors. Um, so it it was a very wonderful event. So, I'm looking forward to whatever the next one will be scheduled and Jessica does a great job of coordinating and running those meetings. So, thanks to her.

Sure does.

Yeah. Um, the only other comment I had, and I mean I'm sure I talk about this a lot, [laughter] but I and I don't know how to solve it, but we got to get better at controlling our own narratives. Um, and so I I don't know what the solution is for that. Um but u to member Agnu's point I responded to probably three or four emails of people saying hey voicemail box is is full and there is nothing wrong people should reach out and say this is not working but what says to me we have an issue is when the email says you guys don't want my feedback right and so that's not the case we do want your feedback back. Um, and so we definitely got to figure out how we can stay ahead of some of these types of challenges. Um, because the last thing we want is for people to feel like they can't uh share their feedback. And so there were a couple of those that then did the email. Um, I think we got one since we've been in here or this this evening where they stopped by and left a letter because they couldn't get to us. Um, and so I we just the more we can effort we can spend on just trying to shure up some of those uh communication challenges, I think it would be great for us.

Thanks for that. Yeah. Yeah. Um on to council member Jackson.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um so this has been a good evening to talk about differences and similarities. I I think that really shows what a good functioning democracy is, right? We have differences and we have similarities and all together we're working to to get along and to and to build community. So I I think this is really wonderful. Um, I want to thank everybody who took time to have coffee with me in the course of this budget process and and have conversations with me. Sometimes things started out a little heated and we heard each other and had some I had some really fantastic conversations and I'm very grateful for that and I I really appreciate all the different um points of view that I heard in this process. It's the end of the year. I want to wish everybody a happy holiday season and a happy new year. Um, we won't see you until 2026. And I I hope you all stay safe. I hope that if it gets snowy, it's not icy and that you uh I want to thank our snowplow teams once again and uh and wish you all a happy new year.

Thank you for that. Good uh good reminder we're in a holiday season. Thank you, member Risser.

Um I too am thinking about the new year and everything and I do want to wish everyone, you know, happy holidays. I also want to um let people know I really am eager to meet with anyone who is interested in running for my open seat in 2026 and 2026 is going to be quite the year and happy to sit down, have coffee, um answer any questions. Um the really wonderful thing about serving city government is it's about the basics. It's about road safety service. um just you know what you need to keep the city going and because of that it's not about issues that tend to be more controversial at the state and federal level and so for me that has been just a wonderful experience because I am meeting with people across the political spectrum and I think it is so wonderful especially in these times when there is so much division to come together with people and to know, hey, we don't agree on a lot, but we really agree on how much we care about Edina and how much we really want to see it thrive and how much we really are thinking about its future, not just this year, but 5 years, 10 years down the road. So, um, call, you know, send me an email. Uh, I would be happy to get together. And with that, I hope everyone has a wonderful, happy new year.

Thank you for that. Uh yeah, those those holiday reminders are are great things. Thanks to everybody. I hope you all have a wonderful uh holiday season and uh for those in the broader audience as well, uh the best to you for the holiday season. Uh full tab day tomorrow. We're at the uh I think we've got our last long long day uh working on regional solicitation and the the new standards for dissemination of uh of funds or evaluating applications for funding. So that's uh that'll take us into the holidays and um I don't have anything else to report right now except to wish you all the best. And um manager Neil, anything else that you wanted to share? Okay. All right. Um, thanks Ryan for being here this evening. Appreciate you being here and thanks everybody. And Bob, way to hang in there. Uh, [laughter] and uh, we we'll take a motion to adjourn.

So move. Member Pierce moves and member Jackson seconds that we adjourn the city council for the calendar year 2025. Any further discussion? All those in favor of adjournment for the rest of the year say I. I. I. Oppose. carried. Extend adjourned until 2026.