City Council - workshop

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It is now 5.30, and I will call this work session of the Burnsville City Council to order. Our work sessions are very informal, and we go directly to the items that is on the agenda. So we're very happy to have members of the public join us in person. But if they so choose, they can watch our meeting at burnsvillemn.gov slash meetings or Comcast Channel 16 or 859. The public can also participate through Zoom by joining us at zoom.us slash join. And more information is available on our meetings web page and in the council agenda packet. So the first item on the agenda is the B2 district zoning code amendment and pet vet 365 sketch plan review of 509 County Road, 42 East. And presenting is our planning manager, Mike Marisola, and the applicant. I think, Mike, you can introduce our applicant. And so I don't make a mistake with pronouncing your name, Ashley.

All right. Thank you, Mayor. So tonight's application is for pet, vet, 365, the applicant is present here, Ashley.

Kawuchi.

Thank you.

Say it again, Ashley. Kawuchi. Okay, Kawuchi. Okay, even though it's a K, it's a G. G. Okay.

So, yeah, the applicants here tonight, the proposed location is at 509 County Road 42 East. The subject property is Zone B2, Neighborhood Business District. And the proposed use is veterinary clinic. However, veterinary clinics are not permitted within this district at this time. Quick question for the group. Is there a mouse or... Sorry, I didn't grab that. That was my bad. Or clicker. I was like, where? I was too busy trying to figure it out.

I was like, who cares if I'm out of here? All right.

That would end the meeting. All right.

So moving through the background. Again, veterinary clinics are not permitted within the B2 district. The subject site is located, shown on the screen here, it's located next to the London Barley's. It's in the little strip multi-tenant retail building where there's a couple tenants in there right now, Eric's Bike Shop, I believe there's a karate studio, and a couple other ones. Then, so with that, I'll turn it over to Ashley here to kind of give a brief overview of Pet Vet 365.

Thank you for having me. These are some photos of our existing clinic. We have a location in Plymouth. And our clinic is not what you think of when you think of a traditional veterinary clinic. We are geared towards what's called fear-free. And that just means that our goal is to have a calmer, quieter experience for pets and pet parents. You saw the living room set up. We don't have any exam tables. That's stainless steel. We don't do a lot of drop-offs or having pets stay with us for the day. The surgery pets would. And if they're a critically ill pet, they would. But otherwise, everything's done in the exam rooms with the owners. We don't have any plans to have any boarding or outdoor facilities at all. But it's much, much quieter. I was kind of astonished when I opened the first one of how quiet it was. in the next slide. And so thinking about why Burnsville, I kind of recognized in looking across the metro for a second location that there's a gap in access to care in the southern part of the metro, in particular on weekends. When you think about the emergency clinics, they're all sort of further up in the metro. And so we have availability on weekends and thought Burnsville would be a good spot to land our hospital in. We're in this for the long haul. I'm an owner at the Plymouth location with a partner doctor. I would have an owner here in the Burnsville location as well. And so I'd be hands on in the clinic with that doctor. Um, and we want to be part of the community and so would hope to get this, uh, zoning variants so that we can open our clinic.

All right. Thank you. So they have considering, uh, applying for a zoning text amendment to allow veterinary clinics without outdoor runs or overnight boarding within the B two district. Again, um, B two district is, um, a smaller district within the community, but the overall, uh, clinic use would meet the intent of the districts. I was going to read that quickly. The purpose of the B two neighborhood business district is to provide for the establishment of limited scale neighborhood commercial centers that offer basic convenience type goods and services to the immediate least surrounding residential neighborhoods. Um, in staff's opinion, this proposed use meets the intent. It's a service that is kind of missing in the B two district to do allow for clinics for human care. Um, but since this proposed use does not have outdoor runs or overnight boarding, um, it does meet the intent of the district. Um, again, the B two district has 32 lots, um, throughout the community. Most of them are adjacent to residential properties. Um, Um, that's one thing to take note of. That's why, um, staff supports the idea of not allowing outdoor runs as part of these, this use. Um, if the applicant chooses to move forward, um, veterinary clinics without outdoor animal runs are permitted in the B three mixed to D I one and I two district and then veterinary clinics with or without animal runs are permitted within the B four district. but the applicant did hold hold an apron meeting here at city hall on August 20th. Um, mailings went out until surrounding properties. Um, and uh, we've received no communications from any of the adjacent properties and we did not, um, no one attended the neighborhood meeting. So, um, that was on August 20th. So the policy question for council tonight is does the city council support proceeding with a consideration of a zoning code amendment? allowing clinics without outdoor animal runs or overnight boarding as a permitted use in the B2 district. Again, this would be permitted, um, by right. That's the building permit. We would check with this. Um, and that, uh, I stand for any questions and applicants here as well.

Okay. Any questions for Mike?

Yeah. Um, this is a full veterinary clinic and, um, It sounds like you specialize in dogs that kind of trigger easily, that sort of thing. Do we get a lot of rescue dogs up here?

Sure, yeah. So we do dogs and cats. And, yes, I would say that we are a great environment for those dogs that are more reactive or maybe triggered at the vet clinic, per se. But we see all types, even though they're not as well.

So, Council Members, one of the things I was reviewing what other uses we had, and this is a health issue. use for our furry family friends. Because prior to that I think, well I know there was a massage clinic there. And so that's health. And your time is limited, you're not going to have outside runs or any of that. And so I don't I see that the use is very compatible to what we have already and what we had before. The only difference is that humans versus animals from what we had before. So from my perspective, members of the council, this would fit very well. There is no outside And it's going to add value to our community with radiation and surgery and taking care of our furry family friends. So, yeah.

100% agree. I'm a little surprised that this wasn't allowed in this particular zone. It's a good fit. And I think the ordinance or the update to our zoning would just reflect that it's veterinary in clinic, right? And not outside kennels and that kind of stuff. And it's a perfect fit. Appreciate you bringing the business to Griswold.

Yeah, and I like that you chose Burnsville because it's something different. I don't think we have this kind of veterinary clinic in our community. So members of the council, if you are okay, we'll have staff move forward. Okay, there's consensus here, Mike and Ashley. move forward and we'll look forward to seeing you when you bring your application for approval.

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

Thank you so much. So Mike, you have everything that you need, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Very good. Okay. The next item is our legal update. Jared, floor is yours.

All right. Thank you, ma'am. Members of the council. I'm here tonight to talk briefly for my update on city council actions, legislative and quasi-judicial decisions. As always, this is kind of a refresher for the council, maybe some new information, but also just general education for the public as well with respect to city council practices. There are two main roles of the council. You have your common knowledge legislative role where you're making policies or you're making rules. You do this by passing ordinances and resolutions. Adopting or amending zoning ordinances is actually one of the biggest ones. Or directing departments in their implementation of The ordinances are policies. There's also another type of activity that you engage in from time to time, and that's quasi-judicial decision making. This is where you're resolving specific disputes. This comes in a couple different forms. Sometimes this would be an appeal from an administrative hearing. Typically, in that context, we're seeing a licensing decision that's appealed from staff and ultimately from a hearing officer. And then appeal to the city council certain zoning decisions that you engage in like granting or denying a conditional use permit, granting or denying a variance. Those are also quasi judicial decisions where you are applying the facts of the application in front of you to a particular standard in your code or state law. When is a decision quasi-judicial? So again, we're kind of focusing on this a little bit because it's something we do less often. The courts have found that this is when a decision-making process involves investigating into a disputed claim and weighing evidentiary facts, applying those facts to a prescribed standard, and making a binding decision regarding the disputed claim. So again, some examples of legislative passing and amending ordinances, creating special assessments. Street vacation. Quasi-judicial would be zoning variances, conditional use permits, license related appeals. They have different standards of review. So when we're talking about legislative decisions, when you're making policy, you're making rules, you have the most discretion that you have. Reviewing courts are going to give you considerable deference to those legislative decisions. They're going to look at state law, you know, as the council knows your statutory city. We've talked about this before. Your power is derived from state statute. But as long as you're within those powers under 412 221, generally speaking, your decision will be upheld as an exercise of that power. So only if you exceed your authority, your statutory authority or your legislation is otherwise against Minnesota or federal law. So, for example, sometimes a state statute might preempt local decision making, or a federal statute might preempt local decision making. In that case, your ordinance that you adopt could be overturned. But generally speaking, that's where your discretion is the greatest. In the quasi-judicial decision, that's where you're resolving specific disputes. You have less discretion, you're bound by a standard. The courts are going to examine whether you fairly and correctly applied your city code to the extent that that's the applicable standard or a state statute. They will overturn the decision if they determine that that application was arbitrary, capricious, or an error of law. Couple examples of when a city doesn't meet the standard. So legislative decisions have been upheld when it benefited the community's health, safety, and welfare. An example of this is in Nagley Outdoor Advertising versus Minnetonka, a zoning ordinance prohibited all billboards in a residential area. And that was found to be a policy supporting the public health, safety, and welfare, and within the discretion of the legislative decision of the council. Um, the decision was reversed in Minnesota agriculture aircraft versus man trap township when there was a pesticide ordinance requiring a permit before aerial pesticides spraying when the state statute expressly prohibited municipalities from adopting ordinances regulating pesticides. So again, talking to that preemption piece in quasi judicial land, Um, again, we're looking at to uphold it. Is it a fair application of city code? Do council members remain impartial and made their decision on the merits in front of them? Um, an EP land LLC versus city of Eden Prairie. Um, the court uphold the city's denial of a land use permit application when the application did not satisfy any of the requirements for amendment is outlined in the city code. So the council applied the code. It was found to be upheld. Um, In contrast, in Rosso versus City of Lake Elmo, the court reversed the denial of an application to build a cemetery in an area zoned residential, found it was to be arbitrary and capricious because the application was compliant with the city code. And the record contained no evidence that the property as a cemetery would affect the community's health, safety, and welfare. So in that instance, I think the court found that the city council was sort of trying to make policy through the quasi-judicial decision instead of before the quasi-judicial decision, if that makes sense. Again, as we talked about, one of these typical decisions outside of the zoning context is licensing. Here at Burnsville, this is kind of the process for how that would look. So the business receives notice of a city decision. The business appeals the decision. the city and this also applies to other violations of city code under C code section chapter one four seven. Um, all of our staff level decisions on code compliance can be appealed to administrative hearing officer. So we have an independent hearing officer for which we have a hearing in front of. Um, the, the applicant or the appellant would present their case to the hearing officer. The hearing officer listens to the appellant. listens to city staff, and renders a decision. That decision can then be appealed by city code to the city council, and that's how you would get a quasi-judicial decision in front of you in the licensing context here in Burnsville. So the roles of the council when that happens is should the independent hearing officer's decision be affirmed, modified, or reversed. We're reviewing the decision of the independent hearing officer and not conducting a new hearing. So the facts will be in front of you from the record of the hearing officer and from the information that the hearing officer saw. And you're kind of acting like an appeals court in that context. And you're looking to make sure that the hearing officer exercised their decision in a responsible manner. You're not to decide in this context whether or not you would have reached the same conclusion based on your policy or outcome preferences, whether or not they would have weighed the evidence differently. You're really looking at whether or not they had an appropriate interpretation or application of the city ordinance. Appropriate grounds for reversing or modifying that independent hearing officers decision would include errors of law if they misunderstood the city code They acted beyond their authority that we've delegated to them under city code or abused their discretion the facts that they found did not support their ultimate determination or they failed to comply with the city's ordinances or procedures and Again, when we're within this quasi judicial context, it's just important to know that we must remain impartial. You're sitting in that quasi judicial officer position. Again, kind of like a court of appeals. So we have to make sure that we protect the record and do not engage in substantive discussions about the issue that's coming in front of you outside of that hearing. The record should be robust in front of you so that you can make an adequate decision based on that record. Communications that are made outside of that hearing could cause some conflict or could cause some problems in terms of overturning the decision wherever way you go. Once you make this quasi-judicial decision, if the appellant accepts the decision, it's final. If there's an additional appeal, that counsel decision would be reviewed by the Minnesota Court of Appeals. So it goes straight from you to the Court of Appeals.

Okay.

How did I do, Council Member Gustafson? You did well.

Questions for Jared. I think, Jared, you had also sent us a memo, a confidential memo. So one of the things that I, in reading through all of that, is that the difference between the work that we do and the work of the independent hearing officer has, the hearing officer has gone through all of the findings.

That's right. The hearing officer has heard everything, made findings, and then that record, were an appeal to happen, that record would be presented to you. You would have their decision and you would have the underlying information that was in front of the hearing officer as well.

Okay. So the question for us is whether the independent hearing officer's decision should be affirmed.

Affirmed or reversed or modified depending on.

Or modified or reverse under the applicable standard of review. That's correct. When that comes before us, you will have information that speaks to how we affirm or modify and or reverse.

That's correct, Mayor.

So that it's clear. WHAT OUR ROLE IS BECAUSE WE'RE NOT GOING BACK TO LITIGATE WHAT THE HEARING OFFICER HAD DONE.

THAT'S CORRECT. AND I WOULD EXPECT IN THAT CASE THAT WE WOULD HAVE A ROBUST STAFF REPORT THAT MAKES SURE THAT EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS THE SORT OF RULES OF ENGAGEMENT AND UNDERSTAND THE OPTIONS THAT THE COUNCIL HAS FOR TAKING ANY ONE OF THOSE DECISION-MAKING PATHS.

BECAUSE, YEAH, PARA.

So the, the party will not be present and this is not a time where we can ask questions or is that, or can we, so the party will be present for an appeal.

Um, you can ask questions. Um, but the, the, the questioning is not to sort of re litigate the whole thing, but to make sure and understand the decision that was made and the basis therefore. Uh, but they will absolutely, they have a due process, they have due process, procedural due process rights and the ability to, to present their case, and staff would also be there to answer any questions.

And we can affirm or reject the decision?

That's correct, or even modify depending on what the decision is, yeah.

Okay, thank you.

So if you did reject the decision, what happens then?

Well, so if it's a decision to, let's say it's a decision to deny a license, for example, then that would be overturned and then the license would issue. So there's no appeal from that. That's the end of it. That's right. And generally speaking, when we have one of these types of hearings, what I typically do is ask for a motion to direct staff to prepare findings one way or the other. So we can have that based on the record that you had in front of you and just make sure that we have a real clean decision that the council will ultimately come back and adopt.

So because one of the things that you put in your memo is that we should not independently re-weigh the evidence or make new credibility statements. determinations merely because a council member might have viewed the evidence differently had that council member been the original fact finder.

Yeah, you're still going to hear from the appellant or the appellant's attorney as it may, but Absolutely, we have delegated the decision within our code to the administrative hearing officer to do a lot of the heavy lifting. And so you are not retrying the facts and redeveloping the record.

I think that needs to be clear, that we're not retrying. Then why even do it?

Well, just like in a court of law, you have a district court and sometimes things go to the Court of Appeals and the Court of Appeals says, no, I would have done something differently.

Got it, okay.

Again, you have left discretion in this context, but you still have a role, right? So checks and balances, and it's to make sure that when we do something like, especially in the licensing context, renew or deny or whatever, that we have a robust ability to make sure that that decision is correct.

Okay. Any other questions for Jarrett? Okay. Thank you, Jarrett. And so we'll have good background around all of this because one of the things that you say is that the independent hearing officer has had all of the information available to him or her with regard to the case.

And you'll have that in your packet as well, just so that we have a...

And the hearing officer will, that decision will also have the findings of fact and explains all of the basis for his or her determination.

Yeah, we have a hearing officer that we routinely use and she's very good about putting her written findings together so that both parties on either side of an issue can really understand where she was coming from.

would have been before him or her argued the case. That's correct. Okay, very good.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Okay. The next item that's on the agenda this evening is drinking water. And it's Mark and Bo and Tony and Jeff.

The team and then me.

It's the whole team.

All right, good evening, mayor and council. As we have touched on earlier, this is really a long-term process and we're kind of in phase four of this. So the city is taking very intentional and deliberate phased approach to a master plan study of our water treatment system. And so the original start of this was kind of a condition assessment, really looking at that question of what is the condition of our existing water treatment plant. That was updated in 2023 with some additional facilities presented to the council in May of 2024. We then built on that with the water quality drinking study. So that looked at what are the current challenges facing the water treatment plant, and then also starting to look kind of future drivers and processes that was presented to the council in March of 2025. And now we're back before you all again this evening, looking really in depth at the treatment and process evaluation needs. One of the things I do want to stress with this is Our water continues to be safe and meets all all clean drinking water standards. And so as we talk about this There isn't a hard-pressed deadline here like we're being thoughtful and intentional and ahead of the curve and so We're in a good spot and so just there's not a sense of urgency about this we can be thoughtful and intentional With that I would turn it over to Bo to take it away

Mayor and council, thanks for having me in today. So as Mark had said, this is our fourth tech memo that's coming out of this kind of master plan process, looking at those facilities. Back in March of 2025, I was in to give you guys an update. And at that point, We were looking at Tech Memo 3, which was a regulatory review. And we took that with a regulatory review, we're looking at our current standards and then what are those future regulations that are coming up. The regulation environment is always changing. Every five years, they're putting out new regulations. They're changing those values. So we want to take a look looking forward on what those things are. We also took a look at the existing water plant against those regulations and we identified some gaps. And as Mark said, there's nothing pressing. These are gaps that can either help out the process or some exploratory things. So really five different gaps that we took a look at. First one was radium removal. Radium is a regular, uh, is a regulatory driver. Um, right now, uh, the city is managing the reg, uh, the radium, uh, it's naturally occurring in your groundwater. Uh, they're managing it. Uh, they have a couple wells that are high in radium and, um, uh, other wells that are low. They're managing it by, uh, eliminating, eliminating the use of those wells. Um, so just kind of, uh, work in their existing well field, maybe a little bit differently and looking at a blending strategy. But one of the things that we want to take a look at is putting in a treatment process in order for us to kind of get back to the full bench of all the different wells that we can possibly use. The next item was the taste and odor removal. The city does a customer satisfaction survey. That's something that the customers have noticed. We do have treatment technologies in at the site. We're looking at additional options to provide a little bit more robust treatment. The third thing was solids loading at the surface water plant. Right now that is designed as a direct filtration plant. We're adding in powdered activated carbon and we're also filtering particles out. But that process would allow those filters to run a little bit more efficiently, have some energy savings as well. Two additional items were more exploratory in nature. Questions that were brought up by council and by staff members was total dissolved solids and hardness removal. What would it look like if Burnsville went to softening? Again, exploratory looking at that. And then the last thing was PFAS. I think everyone, the perfluorinated compounds are in everyone's mind. We have your neighbors that are dealing with those. So this was more exploratory. and contingency planning by the city to answer the question, what if that becomes a problem in the future? How do we handle that? That's to have the plan ready in place in order for us to know what that's going to cost and how we would implement that. So with those, you can see up on the screen, down that left-hand column there is the treatment aims. We have a radon removal, our taste and odor removal, all the way as we're going down. We ended up grouping these together in three different alternatives. Alternative one is the upgrades to the existing water plants. These are things that we can put in that would provide a process to handle one of these items. So alternative one was at the existing water plant. One thing to note on that alternative one does not soften the water and it does not remove PFAS. So alternative two and alternative three are add ons to those or maybe substitutions for those. Alternative two is what would that, that softening look like? And then alternative three is what would PFAS look like? So we can use a combination of those costs and those alternatives together to really allow Burnsville to address any possibility of those goals in the future. So today we're going to run through just what those alternatives were. I'll keep it real brief. We'll be able to take questions at the end. And we do have costs presented at the end as well. So alternative one, again, this has upgraded the existing water plant. The first treatment aim we're looking at is radium removal. How we're planning on doing that is by adding a chemical called HMO, that's hydrous manganese oxide. This chemical you dose into the water, the radium sticks to that chemical, we can now filter those particles out, radium is removed. goes down in the sanitary sewer. Um, with HMO, we looked at three different options. Uh, and I also say this evaluation, we have kind of options upon options. So, um, we'll, we'll kind of go through those as we, as we do that. But we have three options for, uh, HMO addition, one is buying a preformed chemical. The next two are actually having the city staff at the water plant mixing chemicals together to create their own HMO on site. evaluation we also looked at what that overall cost would be per thousand gallons and then also what does that storage look like and how do we fit that into the existing water treatment plant and can we fit that into the existing water treatment plant. So there are some parameters up there of what those look like as far as it is laid out. So summary for this, again, HMO was required as a radium removal option. We are recommending option number two, which is liquid chemicals at the water treatment plant. So we would have two additional liquid chemicals, and we would batch those into a mixing tank, it would mix up in the right ratios. And then the city would be able to dose that into their, into their water. Um, it provides, uh, kind of, uh, uh, the lowest, the lowest operating costs, which is the, I guess the main driver. And I think it's, uh, of all three chemicals, uh, well of options two and three, which have similar operation costs, it's actually easier than dealing with the, uh, the powder chemicals and batching those together. So, That was the recommendation from there. One thing to note, all three alternatives, there's not existing room at the water plant in order to implement these chemicals. All three would need to have an additional room added on to the water plant. And one additional option we looked at, we looked at the room just for HMO and also an option for a Room that are a series of room a an addition that would actually hold on to additional chemicals permanganate or excuse me ferric and phosphate right now those chemicals are in smaller deliveries and So if by going to a larger tank, it would allow us to have a bigger delivery and you'd get bulk pricing and we would have a savings between 25 and 35,000 per year. Same amount of chemical. It's just how you get delivered. And if you have a, a bulk cost on that. So, um, again, benefits, uh, this, this benefits to a new building would also be to, um, uh, have additional operating space. There are some additional HVAC improvements that are currently in the CIP in the future that would address some of the current rooms where these chemicals are at as well. So added benefit there. Next is kind of our treatment aim. Our second treatment aim is ozone. With ozone gas, what we're doing is we're taking oxygen gas and we are running it through an ozone generator. It provides ozone gas. We can then dose that into the water. Ozone gas... we'll react with a wide range of items, but particularly well with taste and orders. Um, what does that look like on the site? Uh, this would be an addition onto the, uh, water treatment plant. Um, you can kind of see off to the right, this is our surface water plant. Um, we'd have a small room that would be added in some outdoor and some outdoor storage, uh, for the, those chemicals. Um, Benefits of ozone, like I said before, ozone is particularly effective against algal taste and odors, which is what the city has noted. That's the earthy, the musty tones. It's also effective against some of the fishy notes that you'll get into the water as well. An added benefit is ozone is also effective against a wide range of contaminants. There's kind of a group of chemicals that we call CECs, so chemicals of emerging concern. And so it's a whole group of all these different types of chemicals that we want to make sure that we're keeping track of. Ozone's effective against the VOCs, the volatile organic compounds, and a lot of the chlorinated solvents. It's also effective against pharmaceuticals and personal care products. and the endocrine disrupting compounds, the EDCs as well. About the only CEC it's not good against is PFAS. So pretty much think of ozone, everything but PFAS. There are some benefits as well. If you put ozone upstream of GAC, which you already have at the plant, they really work well together. System descriptions, one thing to note with this is that this alternative would actually be used for both alternative one taste and odor compound treatment alternative and also the alternative two lime softening alternative as well. So it could be used in both. The last thing in alternative one is the addition of a pretreatment plate cellar This is to achieve the aim of a solids loading reduction. So right now we have solids that are being put into the water either by chemicals or by powder activated carbon or naturally coming from the surface water treatment plant, just things floating in the water. You can think about it this way. More solids equals faster plugging of the filters. So what we'd be doing is right now it's a direct filtration. So that's all going on to the filters. it's plugging the filters up faster. So if we put a sedimentation process upstream of that, we can settle out the majority of those particles. The big ones will settle out to the bottom. We're able to collect those, send those directly to the sanitary sewer, get rid of them, and then less particles are going on the filters and a little bit better filter operation. One thing to note, added benefit of doing this, currently your GAC, your granular activated carbon beds, um, are being replaced every six years on the CIP schedule. Uh, we feel because of less wear and tear on the filters by backwashing less, you'd be able to extend that timeframe out, uh, eight to nine years, uh, before you have to replace it. So it takes that kind of capital expense and just stretches it out a little bit further as we do those, those replacement projects. Um, The base enough of this, uh, really, uh, be about a 24 by 45 basin. You can see that on the side over here. Again, it'd be an addition. Um, one thing to note with the ozone that, uh, would actually be on top of the basin. So the plan would be to put this base and kind of below the ground and ozone would be on top of this base. And so we're doubling up on the, on that space. The next alternative was softening. And when we talk about softening, what we're trying to do here is we're trying to get those ions, the minerals that are in the water, naturally occurring. We're trying to pull those out.

Excuse me real quick. Before you go to softening, can you go back to the HMO, specifically the chemicals you're putting in there? Yeah. Is that going to somehow affect the taste where we're having to deal with that taste as well then?

Uh, no, I would not say that either one of those chemicals are going to be affecting the taste. Cause what we're adding in as we're adding in a two chemicals to make a particle, that particle then gets filtered out in the filters. So we're not bringing those chemicals through the filters into your drinking water chemicals to create something that we can pull out.

Yeah.

It's kind of like it, it, it, it creates a particle. It captures the radium. The particle gets captured by the filter, and then when we backwash, that gets removed into basically the backwash recovery. We send that to sanitary sewer, and none of the particles are making its way through the filter.

Okay. Every time I hear new chemicals in our water, it's like, excuse me.

Yeah. No, we're... We want to be aware of that, want to make sure that we're not carrying anything through those filters and those particular chemicals are really we're trying to form those particles and the particles are what actually are removing the radium. So with softening, we have really two different types of softening. The first one is lime softening, and that's the top picture there. With lime softening, we are adding lime or adding calcium into that water. We're raising the pH and then what we're doing is the calcium and magnesium ions are coming out of a solution. Okay. With that, it creates particles. Those particles settle out in a clarifier. We're taking those particles and now we're taking the sludge off the bottom of that. We would also be sending it to a dewatering basin to recapture the water, but take all those particles and it, it ends up being processed out into something that kind of has the consistency of Plato. We're taking all the water out through filtering the water and then we'll be able to take that cake, uh, that Plato type, uh, uh, consistent, consistent product. We're taking that, sending that to the landfill. Um, you can also use it as soil amendments on farms depending on how, um, how close the farms are and how far they want to truck it. But, um, That one would, and actually as far as your neighbors go, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Bloomington all have a lime softening. The second type of softening is RO softening. That's that bottom picture there. This one we're taking a dense membrane and we're filtering water through it so only water can go through the membrane. All of the ions stay inside of the uh, we, we, the term is called concentrate. Um, and so we just keep taking pure water through and then the concentrate is just getting more and more concentrated as far as those ions are concerned. We're able to blend water together to get a final water quality. Um, one downside with this is that it does produce that concentrate. It is a waste that now needs to be disposed of. So typically it would go down the sanitary sewer, but it is a high volume, somewhere in that 10 to 15% of your total flow would be going down as a waste. So pros and cons for both of those. A couple of things regarding the sizing. When we talk about soft water, Your current water is somewhere in that 22 to 24 grains of hardness. We're sizing these units as far as our costs go to be going down to 7 to 9 grains. That's similar to what your neighbors are softening to, Minneapolis, Bloomington, Eden Prairie. St. Paul, all of them are softening down into that seven to nine grain range. Some of the benefits with this is you are centralizing that softening process. So there's no need for your customers to have home softeners. That's a savings for them because they're not going to have to buy the softeners, they don't have to buy the salt. There's also less chlorides, that salt brine that when you regenerate your softener and going into the sanitary sewer. So there are some benefits with that. One added removal with both lime softening and RO is we get radium removal with it. So there would be no HMO underneath of that option. And then with RO softening, it can also do PFAS as well. So a couple things to consider with this. These are large basins. That basin that's in the picture there, that's a 95 by 95 foot basin. Burnsville would need two of those. So it's not a small amount of real estate down at the water plant. There's not a lot of space down there, so would probably need to have some sort of purchase of adjacent land to make that work. Same thing with RO. A large building on there would likely have to have some adjacent land.

Can I ask a real question about the pools? When you say it needs two of them, is that at our current levels or does that anticipate growth of Burnsville Savage because we supply Savage with land?

That's at current levels. You are right. If we're going up in flow because we're providing additional water somewhere, that would be a larger basin. So, but right now, uh, that's similar to what you would currently need.

Okay.

Thank you. Um, we also have additional operating costs. Um, we'll go over those later and then we do have those, uh, the, the generation of, um, uh, both those lime solids or the concentrate waste that we had talked about before. With the evaluation, these are pretty significant numbers. So it's not cheap to soften and it's not cheap to run them. But, you know, I think that we are in the right price range. And as a comparison, Maple Grove is now going through a centralized softening study as well. From the numbers that we've seen, they're estimating that their 24 MGD water plant would be a $67 million investment to bring lime softening onto their groundwater plant. And then they would have additional piping around there to bring additional wells and increase their capacity. So they're talking right now of over $100 million. So where we're at in those areas with, and also those are all construction costs. We have a slide later that does project costs, but we're still in that same ballpark.

I'm going to have a lot of questions. Let's go for it. When you're talking about not needing water softeners and that, I read some reports where soft water actually extends the life of appliances. Water heaters that by 30 to 50 percent.

Yeah.

Somewhere in that area. So we're kind of literally mitigating some of these hard waters already just through the expense of just running our households all the time.

Yeah. And exactly. And I mean there's, there's a, there's a study, I think Minneapolis when they originally went to it and this is back in the, you know, uh, over a hundred years ago there was a study about just the savings in, in soap. They quantified how much soap the average household would save. But you are right, no water softener, longer duration on your appliances, that white film that you can get on your showers and whatnot, all that kind of gets mitigated out. So there is a benefit, but there's also a cost.

At the end of the day, it's going to come down to how much our residents and our partners at Savage would want to pay for the rate.

Yes, exactly.

Highly expensive. And right now, a lot of them already have water softeners in their homes.

And I think Maple Grove right now, they're going through a public campaign to get information back on if people want that. And that's largely a public-driven request there.

I would imagine here will be the same thing.

Yeah.

Well, the council asked the question, what is the cost?

Well, because it was what our residents wanted. Yes, that's because of the residents. It was taste and odor, it was softening, and so forth. So we've done the study. Now we're going to let them know how much it's going to cost and what they want to do.

Yep, exactly.

Yeah.

Um, just a quick reiterate something we touched on before. Um, when you look at, we're meeting all current requirements. Radom is a controlling factor on, on what we can pump in wells. But as you look at potential future options, this is a longterm plan. We're not looking at listening. We're not looking to implement something in the near future. There's additional study that needs to be done, more conversation, public engagement, and so on.

And you're only asking us tonight for alternative one, which is just to put it on the CIP. Dan.

Thank you. To the point of if we were to decide in the future to invest in any kind of softening, That doesn't necessarily eliminate the homes that have softeners. The water coming in right now is excruciatingly hard and it wears softeners out at an extremely fast rate unless you do a lot of regular annual maintenance. If the city were to choose to invest in softening, would those softeners take that water from the city that's already sort of pre-softened and be able to further soften it with their softeners? making it to your scale. You're shooting for a target. You're not really getting it as soft as maybe it could be, but you're getting it a long way toward that goal.

Yeah, and I think actually it depends on how you have your softener set up. But what we're providing here would get you into the range of what people are currently softening their water to. So in that case, you wouldn't really need that softener.

You wouldn't need a softener anymore.

If somebody wants to soften further than that, that's where they're at. I would think the majority of those folks, you wouldn't need to have those softeners anymore.

Can you go back to that slide where you had there? To the seven to nine grams, but soft water is considered five grains. Sorry, not grains. Five grains. And so our target in theory, if this were to ever move forward, would be seven to nine. Sounds to me like there's still room to get.

If someone wants to go down further than that and go down to five grains, they could definitely do that. And that five grain range is... That's a chemistry number. Most folks, if you've had Bloomington water or Minneapolis water, that's seven to nine grains. So that's a range where we have a really nice, stable water. The chemistry is very happy at that range.

Thank you. It's actually not to our advantage to try to go softer than that because it creates some other issues. And then your question about the water softeners, residents could absolutely go lower. Usually there's a custom setting on what's coming in, so they would just need to update that setting if their water softener can handle that to whatever our soft water setting would be.

We would use a lot less salt than we use today if this were to happen.

We definitely encourage residents to stop using the in-house systems, and nobody wants to carry 40-pound bags of salt downstairs.

Well, I think there's an environmental statement to be made. When you said if the city, if everyone decided not to replace their and shut their softener off, that discharge of that brine tank flush with the saltwater tablets, how much, do we have any estimates on what? that volume would be that would be eliminated and what benefit to the environment that would be if we did eliminate it compared to what we're going to discharge by doing our softening.

Yeah, so when that regenerates, it's putting chlorides down into the water. Um, so your, your salt is in it. We're not going to get into that bow, but, um, the, uh, yeah, almost went on a tangent there. Um, the, uh, so, but those chlorides do go into the wastewater. They go directly to Met Council. Met Council does not have any way to remove chlorides from water. It goes right through the water plant, right back into, the river and keeps on going downstream. So by capturing that out, we are not sending that portion on to on to the, you know, the Iowa, I mean, yeah.

Well, and to take that one step further, right. Is we know other utilities along the Mississippi river pull water and they use it and discharge back in. So you think of kind of that compounding factor all the way down the line, that concentration of salt does get larger as you hit where it dumps into the, the Gulf.

Okay. Kara. So, you know, I, here here are my concerns on this and i'm happy that we're getting to this point um when when you look at what a core function of a city is like water is as core as you can get i mean other than roads and public safety i mean that's that's really the absolute core of it we have long had residents saying They don't like the water. And it doesn't matter that we say that it's safe. They don't like the water. They're our customers. And so I would like to have it where they actually are okay with the water. I am concerned about, even though we do not have an issue yet, Just seeing the spread of issues with PFAS, I mean, that is a big concern. Radon is a big concern for me as well. So having these things mitigated and being prepared for that is a big deal to me. In anything that we're looking at doing. Solutions that don't involve those, to me, those are not solutions. And then you get down to appliances. We have the dump. I mean, we have the landfill. So when people are getting rid of things like that, like it's us, like we get it. And so cutting down on the number of refrigerators because of the water coming in for the ice, the washing machines that get destroyed, the dishwashers that are getting destroyed, and the water softeners that are getting destroyed. That is a lot of appliances in a home that get landfilled early. And it's getting landfilled early because of the hardness, even if you are softening. I'll tell you, we soften the heck out of everything, and... I mean, it's lime away all day, every day. And we have run through, since I have lived here, we've run through several dishwashers. And when they come in, they're like, yep, it's gone to crap. And they tell us the reason why. We've gone through a couple water softeners. We know the reason why. Same with our water heater. We know the reason why, even though now we flush them, right? We do the flushing thing, but still. So that is a significant cost to our residents to be able to replace these big ticket items. And then our city bears the additional cost of that, of now we get that crap because everyone uses their coupon to dump that sucker off. And it's got all the other delightful chemicals that are in that type of appliance. So I am happy to see these type of solutions. I appreciate the thoroughness of this, and I do hope that we as a council take two things into consideration. Number one, finding a way that our residents can say what their preference is. Number two, that we are looking at a long-term total solution so that we aren't picking a solution that we then have to come back and try to retrofit like we're seeing other cities having to do and paying several times more than if they had just done it. So I appreciate this. Thank you so much for the thoroughness that you're doing on this and for breaking it down very clearly on what it can do, what it can't do, and then what the impacts and costs are. So I really appreciate that.

Thank you very much, Council Member Schultz. One thing I do want to note, we'd encourage any resident looking to get an appliance, go to our Google, the Dakota Valley Recycling website. There are ways to get those items recycled instead of just putting them in a landfill. If it's okay with you, I'd like to actually wait to kind of respond to a lot of your questions to the end when we have the matrix that shows kind of the different options and everything. I think that really kind of captures what you said well and then provides for a good discussion.

Yes. Okay. There was just so much that it was like, you've got to kind of get along.

Well, it's a great way to tie it together, and I think that final slide is a really good link to visualize the topics. Well, the last alternative here is, again, it's that exploratory

contingency planning with PFAS. Um, so one thing we want to stress here, uh, uh, we do have PFAS in the raw water. Um, the city has done a great job at monitoring that. That's, that's not required by the state or the federals. the feds in order to sample. They've been sampling that independently since 2013 and then we have additional MDH mandated testing the past five years. Really trying to get an understanding of where the PFAS are and where they're not. Right now, the wells, the well fields, we have some minor, very low level results at a lot of those wells. The quarry does have levels to just below the regulatory limits, but PFAS is not regulated on it coming in. It's what's regulated on it coming out. So one thing to stress, the treated water that's coming out of the system, that's blended surface and groundwater. These are non-detects to low levels well below the current regulatory limits. So right now PFAS not an issue in, in, uh, Burnsville. But the scope of what we are looking at is we wanted to develop that PFAS action plan if PFAS became an issue in the future. What is that plan? So with that, we did an evaluation on different technologies for removal. And we developed two cost models for PFAS for concentrations were to rise or if regulations were to drop. So either one. With that, with the cost models, we did cost model one, which would be adding on one PFAS facility that is on the end of the current water treatment plants. That is kind of a worst case scenario. You have lots of PFAS coming in, very similar to what Apple Valley is doing right now. They're bringing a bunch of wells to one location and then treating it one time. The second cost model was more along the lines what Woodbury originally did where they might have one or two wells that were originally had higher levels. This was actually done up to have wellhead treatment. So we would add a treatment at the wells to take care of that at that localized wells, then send it up to be finished at the water treatment plant. So two different ways of treating those. really giving the city options and the costs for knowing what that would be if that became an issue in the future, how would we handle that?

Didn't those blooms move over there, though?

Yes.

So now they're looking at a whole different system?

Yeah, and with Woodbury, they had a couple of very hot wells that they initially put in a large water or a wellhead treatment plant to filter those out and to send those into the system. They are now spending more money to get a centralized plant because they're seeing additional PFAS popping up in their other wells. Full-scale cost models, again, we had GAC, two different versions here, and an ion exchange. This would be added on if it was just an add-on PFAS treatment. We also have numbers for RO, which would get you softening and PFAS together. So to the cost summary that Mark had indicated, Mark, do you want to talk about kind of the current CIP and then?

I'm actually going to defer to Jeff who is our CIP master and kind of what's in there now. Um, but just again, the setup for this is we know radium is the current issue. Um, so as you look at the current plan that was targeted towards kind of addressing that radium, um, core focus there, the alternative one brought in some other factors based on community feedback around taste and orders with that Jeff over to you.

Yeah. So, uh, we kind of had developed a slow roll plan if state funding hadn't become available. Uh, so in the current five year CIP there is money for both HMO and taste and odor. And in the six to 10 year CIP there is money for sedimentation. Um, and then we did get $2.75 million from the state. Uh, you add that on to what we currently have in the five year CIP. Um, sorry, that gets to a $7.1 million.

That's over 10 years. It's over the 10 years. The 7.1 million I think was programmed.

It's, it's in the five year CIP. Yep. So

Yeah.

So I'm looking at our alternatives of going, uh, going kind of crossed, uh, again, alternative one, how do we upgrade the existing water plant to take care of, uh, the, the radium removal, uh, taste and odor and solids loading? Um, alternative one does not address hardness and does not address PFAS, but kind of does everything else. Um, so, uh, we're looking at that project cost the 8.8 million. Alternative two, we have lime softening and RO softening. You can see there's a wide range in cost differences between those two there. Lime softening, adding that on, 62 million versus RO softening, which is more expensive, larger capital equipment. That is 80 million. To note the difference between those two, again, lime softening does not do PFAS removal. RO could do PFAS removal. So, and that's what Apple Valley is doing right now. I think they're looking at if they're doing PFAS, let's do the added benefit of softening our water for our residents. It is an additional cost on there. And that last alternative, which is just the PFAS add-on, that could be added on to either existing alternative one or a lime softening. But that is just an add-on. We would not need that for RO softening. So kind of that possible combinations down below. A couple different numbers that are in there, different options on how you possibly can handle that.

And to follow up on what Council Member Schultz said, if you look at the line under contaminants of emerging concern, Alternative 1 does some partial. Alternative 2 really does, correct me if I'm wrong, the same as Alternative 1. And then RO is basically comprehensive of anything that we're aware of now is potentially coming down, would be handled through reverse osmosis as well as the PFAS mitigation.

A question. If we did alternative one, would we have to do alternative one to get to alternative two? Or are we spending money on one and then spending even more money to do two because we built things we don't need in one?

Um, so yeah, there's some, there was some things like radium removal. We, it depends on, uh, depends on which alternative to, um, ozone is complimentary to both of those. So that would be able to be, to be used in both alternatives. Um, radium, we would not use the HMO so that we would, we would have, we would, likely mothball that and then we could put on lime softening in order to take care of that radium. It would do both. The radium removal number for the RO softening, that's some additional chemicals that we would need for kind of stabilizing that water. So I would say For the most part, the items that we put in alternative one would still be used in alternative two if that was added on, with the exception of HMO.

Okay. So tonight you're asking us to put alternative one into the CIP.

Correct. So the two questions before the council this evening is does the council support advancing alternative one into capital and financial planning for implementation. I do want to stress, even with the directive of yes, it's still a three year period plus till that's all done because of sequencing the projects within the water treatment plan. So it's not a get it done and go.

No.

Then on the larger, broader concept, which again is a, it's a much longer, again, time horizon does the council support continuing evaluations of alternatives two and three is part of our kind of longterm process. Gathering information, understanding the costs in the community of appliance replacements, sighting of potential locations as we talk about treatment sequencing.

I get all of that. The thing that I want to make sure is that because we've said that once we have this study, we're going to also engage the community to inform them about what the study has revealed to us and what that cost is going to be. But tonight, you're wanting us to look at alternative one to get into the CIP. And that's, did you say five-year, Jeff? Is that a five-year or 10-year CIP?

Yeah, we'd like to get in the five-year CIP.

Yeah, that's what I thought I heard you.

So that's the difference between the 7.1 million and the 8.8 million is really the difference we'd be looking at.

Yeah, and because this comes out of the Water Utility Fund. So I think people need to understand how that's going to be paid for, and they're the rate payers.

Exactly correct, Mayor. The rate payers are the ones that will be whatever, well, really long-term, they're the ones that are paying for the infrastructure that it takes to produce safe and reliable water.

And I think that needs to be clear to everyone on how all of this is going to go. But tonight, you want to make sure that you can put it on the CIP so that we can move forward with the process. for informing the community and then coming back and going through which items are going to be approved for whatever first year, second year, third year of implementation of alternative one.

Madam Mayor, members of the council, the staff recommendation tonight would be for the council to advance alternative one, which addresses the treatments, the near-term treatments that Bo discussed tonight, particularly related to radium and to taste and odor customer feedback that the city has received. And then also to continue the evaluation. There's been some great feedback from the council tonight on customer preferences and input to inform both potential city action on exploring, whether it be either of the alternative choices around the softening and the benefits thereof, that would also allow us to continue the evaluation of preparing more specific designed plans for addressing PFAS or other regulatory changes or issues that perhaps we don't even know exist today to continue to position us in a productive place from a drinking water perspective.

Engaging the community and helping them to understand the water down in the aquifer is a plume. There's not... a barrier between the water that services Apple Valley or maple wood or that aquifer is a plume that just moves around. It's just the way that we have to monitor all of that and to see how that PFAS, because of the monitoring aspect and understanding when we see more PFAS coming out of those wells and then shutting them down.

I'm okay with putting that on the CIP knowing it's going to be a few years before we actually get that done as we simultaneously engage our citizens and talk about these other things because I think once it gets out through the alternatives that we could have, I think you might see a very positive response from our city about that. Yeah. So as a placeholder, yeah, I would be good with putting that on the CIP to at least get the process going, but I think simultaneously we need to be talking to our citizens and presenting now so that we can have a good, clear understanding of the direction we're going to end up at the final product.

You're okay with alternative one?

I'm good with what staff recommends, yes.

Yeah, me too. Because it gives us a plan to move forward, and then it gives us the runway to... talk to our community about it and then for them to understand the cost because we know we don't we have to also talk to Savage residents and the business community as well exactly so we have a lot of work to do even for alternative one

That is exactly correct. And I think one of the things that Bo was reminding me of in previous conversations is technology is changing. It's changed a lot for over five years just related to PFAS. And so that's another thing that will be very interesting as we continue this evaluation of alternatives two and three over the next extended period of time, how that enters into this conversation and may influence where things end up.

Because, Greg, this also gives us the opportunity to go back to the legislature for more bonding money because I heard you say we're going to have to build another building for some of the equipment that we need.

Madam Mayor, members of the council, so to your two questions, I'm going to start with the latter first in terms of a new building. Yes, there are significant facility needs in both of the alternative to both of the softening. options, those facilities likely would look different. The city currently likely does not have the land available. So we have some study to do there. So that continued evaluation would help us do that. I think it's another important reminder just on timing to underscore that going back to alternative one, which we're saying is the near term, we're going to do it. It's about a $1.7 million investment for our customers. Mayor, you're absolutely correct. Our current agreement with the city of Savage. We provide about 90% of Savage's water. We need to go back and we'll share with the city of Savage this presentation and talk about the council's direction from tonight. The other important part of the evaluation, even ahead of us starting to talk to customers or the community on softening, is we haven't done an analysis, what is not in front of you right now, is the cost and increase of staff that would be required for Alternative 2. Also, Alternative 2 RO softening, so not lime, but on the RO softening side, as Beau talked about tonight, there are some unknowns in terms of the waste product in our management and the cost thereof. So we would need to continue to explore that. that could be a determining factor in the future as the council considers which option to potentially go with if that's the space we find ourselves. But back to my previous point, what's not included in these operating costs right now are the costs of staff. And any softening operation would require 24-hour utility staff, which would be a significant change for us that we also need to start evaluating and planning for. If the council were to give us this direction tonight, we would start all of that work knowing that in the next one to three years, alternative one would be funded and implemented, and then we would be simultaneously in parallel talking about alternatives two and alternatives three with the council and the community.

Yeah, because I believe we also need to talk to the Met Council because of the waste that's going to come out of this. And then because if I remember correctly, their rates have also increased.

Yes, Mayor, the Met Council has consistently increased rates.

Yeah, so there's a lot of work that I'm looking at this and not seeing those costs put into it, but this will allow us to do all of that work because there is a lot of work. Bo, you said that this goes to the Met Council and then it goes out into the river, but there's also a filtering and cleaning system before that waste goes into the river.

I mean, in putting that type of concentrate into your wastewater facility, they're going to have some concerns with that, I think. And there will be some discussions on how they're going to handle that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Things are changing.

It's a lot of work. And I think that's what I would like people to know. Tonight we're getting all of the information that they had asked us to do. You did the work. Now we have it. But this is just the beginning. There's a lot more to get done to get through that. And I think we still also need to get to the legislature and see if we can get more help.

Madam Mayor, I apologize. I forgot that point in my ramblings. Yes, I think it is a wise suggestion that we continue to evaluate the council's legislative priority in seeking state bonding money. This is a regional water facility, and we will continue those conversations. As a matter of fact, staff has already started to have those conversations. anticipating this discussion with the council so we will bring that forward as part of your legislative conversation here in the next month or so I think the other point just to underscore we have a great team that is looking at keeping our drinking water safe and the primary point is The city's drinking water is safe and well managed. This work, both the immediate alternative one, upgrades to particularly address issues around radium, continue to address issues around radium as we have. And that introduction of ozone to address customer feedback really is the next step in making additional improvements to making sure that we stay on the path of maintaining a safe and reliable drinking water system. And we have a great team of people here tonight who have been talking with you about that, that do that work day in and day out.

So the other thing I want to add, I don't know if you all read in the paper during the Minnesota Fair, because we're not the only city that has had complaints about taste and odor. And did you all see the taste and odor tests that they had at the fair with all of those people? So it wasn't a scientific thing. It was more preference. So out of all of the communities that brought in all of their municipal water to be tasted, I think, was it Blaine that came up on top?

New Brighton. I think it was New Brighton.

New Brighton, yeah. So I knew it was from up north. But we're not the only ones. So if anybody was at the fair or read that article, it was very interesting to me. So, but we're doing something very systematically and thoughtful and scientific. Thank you so much. To all of you, Mark, Bo, Jeff, Tony, thank you so much. And yes, that means we're probably going to, Mark, you're going to come back and you're going to look at your staff allocations according to our city manager.

That will be part of the alternative two and three analysis over the long-term mayors. That's exactly one part of it, correct.

Okay. Very good. So I thought I saw a that we have consensus here to move forward with alternative one.

And just to clarify this point, so we've already planned for in the CIP the $1.7 million. Yeah. So the one point, I'm sorry, the $7.1 million. So the additional 1.7 will work with finance staff to include that over the CIP over the next five years as we looked at scheduling and getting alternative one delivered. And it may change in a couple years.

Okay. All right. I think I have consensus. Alternative one, move forward. Okay? All right, thank you. Thank you so much.

Thanks, everybody.

Okay, the next item is the homage installation, and Mark, this item is also yours. And thank you for members of the Burnsville Community Foundation who are here. They've been working on this for a long time. 2019, Eric and Mike? Yeah.

All right, good evening, mayor, council members. So yeah, the project, you intro this great mayor. 2019, the community foundation initiated homage to honor first responders. In 2021, the council supported the effort through just over $16,000 in city funding. Also just want to note $53,000 in donated construction services was anticipated for this project. In 2023, the original police city hall location was reconsidered. with the police city hall planning project that is now underway in 2025 Nicollet commons park was identified as the new location in collaboration with the community foundation. And then in 2026, really early this year, we brought together the foundation, the artists and our project team together to kind of talk about, getting this thing installed and getting over the finish line. This is my very rough rendering of how this looks. You see a zoomed in picture of Nicollet Commons Park with the design of homage laid over the spot. So to the left you see the stage. To the north there is kind of the Veterans Memorial, the three flags there. And then homage, you see there basically that the white circle is where people can generally walk. And then the inner podium is where the actual three statues are mounted. The proposed path forward would be the city assumes responsibility for delivering homage related site and electrical construction. We'll coordinate that construction with planned concrete improvements in 2027 and Nicollet commons park. We would manage that project through our established contracting process and requirements. The city would then continue coordination obviously with the community foundation and the artists as we move through the process. I do want to know if we met with the community foundation probably a month ago now and they support modifying and using this delivery process. The costs for the city for this would be about $85,000. The funding source would be the facilities fund balance from under budget previously approved projects. That is actually a consistent funding source that was originally identified for the city's commitment. There would be no other impacts to planned facility projects with the use of those fund balance funds. So the proposed next steps, the fall of 26, our team will finalize the project plans, both the homage portion on the larger part of it and go out for bid in early 27. The council will consider a contract award. spring of 27, the work will be, um, the concrete work and siting work will all be completed prior to the water feature opening. Just so we're not mixing kids and construction. Um, that said, we always welcome people at our public works open house, but not this job site. And then the council would be approving the homage donation agreements at some point in 2027. I'm working with the city attorney on that. So with that, are there any questions?

Um, Council? I don't really have any questions.

I know that this project's been the victim of some timing that we've had here at City Hall with building. First we thought it was going to be in front of the police department years ago, and then of course we came up with the City Hall building plan on that. Then we had someone sell their company that was going to help us, and I think somebody else maybe died that had another company, so those two kind of went away on us. I think the foundation did everything possible to make this thing happen. They've They have the statute, and now I think this is something that's going to be in their city for a long, long, long time, and I think that's a pretty inexpensive fee to pay to make sure our public has that available to them. And we honor our public safety group, so I'm good with it.

Okay. Dan and Kara? Okay.

100%.

Okay.

It's been a long wait, but as Council Member Gustin said, it Those statues are going to be there in perpetuity. So they're going to be enjoyed by the general public for many, many, many decades beyond all of us gone. So I think it's going to be worth the wait.

Well, and it's one of the things that we said we wanted public art. And the foundation raised the money in honor of our public safety personnel.

And then we get to talk about the Arts Commission next.

And the nice thing is that the sculpture is a Burnsville resident. The artist is a Burnsville resident. So, staff, Greg and Mark, there's consensus to move forward.

Thank you very much. Thank you, members of the council. We appreciate the foundation's patience as well as the city's looking forward to getting this done.

Okay. And thank you so much, Mike and Eric, for coming. It's been a long journey, and I know you've been involved with all of that all this time. So thank you so much.

I think it will get a lot more exposure in the location, too. I like it, yeah. Because of the constant, I mean, the traffic there is always dramatically higher, so more people will get to enjoy it.

Get to see it, yeah. Mayor, members of the council, I was actually thinking the same thing. It's kind of cool to me to think that with all the kids that play down there, that the kids are going to see these statues. Who knows? Maybe there's a future police officer or firefighter we get out of seeing these. I like it there.

I also like it that it's right next to the Veterans Memorial. So you have police and fire and the veterans. So it's right there next to each other. So thank you so much for all of the great work that you do to make our community continuously to be vibrant with all of the different amenities, the art. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, the next item is the Arts Commission. And Garrett? You're giving us an update.

I am. Thank you, Madam Mayor and council members. So this evening we're going to talk about the Arts Commission. We'll start with the background. In September of 2025, council asked staff to create an Arts Commission that serves as an advisory body to city council, would focus on convening and connecting the arts community, and could help coordinate and communicate the city's commitment to arts and events in city activities. So the process that we went through, city staff and a consultant formed a team January through May, and what we did at that time is we researched Burnsville's art and culture assets, tracked community activity and looked at pure city approaches to having an arts commission. We did an update to council in May and to the community at a work session, and then after that, from May through July, We had a smaller subcommittee of the consultant and staff and some members from the community that participate in the first phase to further develop what a potential commission structure could look like and what a possible first year work plan would look like. And then August through September, the team kind of really focused on finalizing those recommendations and plans, which brings us to tonight. From an engagement standpoint, uh, we engage local stakeholders to help shape the proposed arts commission structure in that first year work plan. And that involved artists and art leaders in our community businesses and venues that, uh, participate in different types of art activities, uh, connected with community partners and nonprofits, and then also engaged our city leadership and staff on the process. What we heard was there was a strong range of events and classes, but some gaps in visual art exhibits, markets, and youth activities. There was a strong desire for centralized marketing, a unified calendar hub, and potential network opportunities that I'll discuss a little bit further. There was an interest in the Arts Commission serving as an additive, not a duplicative convener. A desire to have a better calendar alignment of all the different art activities out there. to help facilitate audience growth and an understanding that the volunteer commission would need some dedicated staff time, clear operational boundaries, and a right-sized work plan for a volunteer group. So the committee and staff and the working group are recommending that this arts commission serve in an advisory role to city council with the final policy and decision-making authority remaining with city council. Uh, that it'd be a seven member commission that there would be monthly meetings that support that regular coordination while maintaining the right size volunteer commitment. And then, because this is a new committee, uh, there's a recommendation that we stagger those terms, uh, in three-year terms, um, and then follow the city's commission protocols to support continuity. There's a recommendation that we have an assigned staff liaison to provide the appropriate administrative coordination and support as necessary. And the commission would be established through city code just to be consistent with our existing protocols. Part of that is to have an ordinance where city council would establish the advisory commission through the code. This ordinance would define the commission's purpose, responsibilities, and its advisory role. It would establish the commission's membership, the length of term, the leadership, and the meeting requirements consistent with city policy, and it would provide clear roles and expectations, again, with that final policy and decision-making authority remaining with city council. Uh, again, as I mentioned, there was a smaller work group that worked with the consultant and staff to try to help establish what that work plan was. So, uh, people who were interested in the commission could understand what they would be signing up for. And what the group came up with is we would focus on establishing that web landing page that aggregates calendar links, uh, has information about grant opportunities that exist and provide other types of art resources. It would host, the group thought that there was a desire to host informal art and culture meetups where they would post that there was gonna be a meeting at maybe a local venue or entertainment site and invite the community to come out and participate in some type of art activity. The Arts Commission would provide a presence at major city events. So for example, just had the festival in Firemuster, in the future they anticipate they would want to set up some type of table tent to have a presence there to share information about art in our community potentially providing some type of art activity as well they would review relevant city policies and provide recommendations to city council and then a goal in this first year would be after they are established and up and running Sometime in the fourth quarter, they would look to have a joint meeting with council, just talk about how the year has gone, talk about what's working well, maybe what they would like to see be different, and then that would help to inform what their 2028 work plan would look like. So next steps, if council supports the process, this evening we would look at scheduling an interview timeline at the work session with the start of the recruitment of commissioners beginning October 1st. We would present an ordinance for council to consider and adopt on October 6th. Close that recruitment process for commissioners November 6th. Schedule interviews the week of December 1st with city council approval of those commissioners and appointments on December 8th. With the end goal of having that first Arts Commission meeting on January 20th of 2027 So with that What questions concerns? Do you have about the proposed Arts Commission structure the first year work plan and the implementation timeline for this process?

Any thoughts? You've done a wonderful job, you and the consultant. I mean, the final report, that was very comprehensive in really outlining how this process, and you did a great summary of all of it. I think you have a good plan in place, and you've done all the work that you were directed to do, so do I have consensus for Garrett to move forward with With the interview, and then Michelle's going to talk to us later on about setting up the interviewing process for commissioners.

Yep. All good? I support moving forward.

Okay. Greg, I think we have consensus to move forward.

We'll keep it moving. Thank you, Madam Mayor and Council. We look forward to getting this established and moving forward.

Okay. Thank you so much, Garrett. That was a lot of great work. And I know what people don't realize, when we give you all direction, it's a lot of work to get this together and then to read through the final report and all of that. It took a year, didn't it? Because you had to do the analysis and find all of the partners who were doing. There were some that I didn't even know were doing art here in the city.

Yes, Madam Mayor, this direction happened last September, so we're about one year. But I, again, appreciate the support and resources and the timing and to be able to fit it in and to make it work. So thank you all.

Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Garrett. You have a lot going on. Okay. The next item is the Community Builders Award nomination. Michelle.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, City Council. This year we did have 15 nominations. In your background, you see that I've noted there are 14 nominations for you to consider. One of the nominations was for one of our police officers, which is great, but unfortunately he's not eligible as a city employee. ALL THE NOMINATIONS WERE IN YOUR AGENDA PACKET. ANY QUESTIONS?

ANY QUESTIONS FOR MICHELLE? I LOOKED THROUGH ALL. THEY WERE ALL VERY GOOD CANDIDATES.

We did have a couple of duplicates. Well-deserving.

And there were some that were two. Two duplicates. You only get one award, though.

You still only get one award. That's correct.

Okay. So we're going to move forward with it and schedule a... They look great. Okay. We have a consensus to move forward. Okay. Thank you so much. Okay. Then roundtable. Michelle, you're the only one on roundtable for... You want to schedule some dates?

Yes, Madam Mayor. We currently are in the process of recruiting for the Black Dog WMO board, and that we will need to schedule interviews for. But since the council has elected to also move forward with the Arts Commission, we'd like to combine those efforts. And scheduled them both for the same time. And I had asked for council to check December 1st as a potential date.

December 1st?

December 1st is the first Tuesday in December. Because it's the first Tuesday, we do not have a council meeting on that date.

Oh, yeah, because it's... Because it's a Tuesday.

December 1st, Tuesday, December 1st.

And we only have a council meeting on the first Tuesday after the first Monday.

Correct.

So that works for me. It's clear in my calendar. December 1st. Tuesday is usually a council meeting.

What's the date again?

Tuesday, December 1st.

It's the first time we've ever done interviews in December.

Hard to believe we're scheduling things in December, isn't it? Yeah. It's good by me. It's good here.

Yes.

Thank you.

Okay. Does that work, Dan? Yes. Okay.

Kara? Yep. Okay. And will the start time of 5 p.m. work?

We need to do it any earlier than 5.30.

We really can't anticipate how many people are going to apply for the Arts Commission, but I would venture a guess that when we had the Code Review Task Force start, we did get quite a few. So anytime we have a new commission start, we tend to see quite a few applicants.

So are you okay with starting a little early? Five. Five? Okay. Thank you.

You're doing the Art Commission and the... We'll be doing Black Dog and Arts Commission at the same time.

That way we don't have to have a separate evening.

All right, very good.

So, reports. Experience Burnsville, we start our interviews next week for the new Executive Director. We had several applications, and I think we're down to final four right now for interviews. We'll be reporting back on that soon.

Okay, good. Kara?

I have my larger one meeting on this Thursday, so that's the Dakota 911.

Dan?

The Suburban Transit Association met yesterday and covered ridership updates. MVTA was up a little over 10% on state fare rides, even though the overall state fare attendance was just slightly down against last year. It kind of shows the constant demand for catching the bus as opposed to driving and parking and walking. Might have also had a little influence by the city that hosts the state fair was charging parking on the streets where historically you could just cram two years in a row. Somebody had said they thought this was the first year. The second year. So we're experiencing great ridership growth. On a festival note, festival recap, We enjoyed great weather, which was a nice change from last year. The winds on Friday kept our inflatables deflated, so we lost some, kids lost some fun, and we lost some wristband revenue, but Saturday was very strong. Our Thursday kickoff block party, we had an adult band, free and easy, for the first time in a few years. We really could not pull the young kids on a school night, TO ATTEND AND SO WE WENT FOR THE ADULTS AND SAW A BIGGER CROWD OBSERVED COMPARED TO 2024. LAST YEAR WAS CANCELED BECAUSE A STORM CAME THROUGH. FRIDAY, WE BLEW AWAY. WE HAD A 55% INCREASE IN TRAFFIC OVER LAST YEAR. SORRY, NOT OVER LAST YEAR, OVER OUR RECORD ATTENDANCE YEAR, WHICH IS 2024. THE DRONE SHOW GOT A LOT OF EXTRA MEDIA ATTENTION. WE SET UP TWO PRESS RELEASES, ONE FROM THE FESTIVAL THAT THE CITY DISTRIBUTED TO THE MEDIA OUTLETS. AND WE DID ONE FROM THE SPONSORS AT AGENCY. AND SO WE WERE ABLE TO GET THE ATTENTION OF THE MEDIA STATIONS. AND ALL REPORTS WERE WE GOT MULTIPLE MENTIONS THROUGHOUT THE DAY ON FRIDAY. SO IT WAS ALMOST FOR CHIEF SMITH, ALMOST BORDERLINE TRAFFIC PROBLEMS. Some folks were saying they were trying to get into anywhere in the area to find parking, and it was gridlock. So it was very, very well attended. And then Saturday, great crowds. It was packed, but those crowds were actually slightly under 2024's record. So I think we pulled some people from Saturday into Friday because they wanted to see the drone show. But overall, tremendous success. And hats off to all of the volunteers on the board and the volunteer event committee and all the folks that show up the day of to help make it happen. And of course, our biggest partner, the city, couldn't do it without the city's support for public safety and public works and the funding to help pay for the entertainment. So thank you. And I hope everyone enjoyed both shows, aerial shows, the drone show on Friday and the very large and long fireworks show on Saturday.

Yeah, it's very nice. After we did our shift.

Your 5 to 7 welcome shift? Yeah.

It was a little windy.

Yes, it was a little breezy.

It was still a gorgeous night. I was concerned for you. I was watching the weather over here, and it was like the winds were above 30 for a while.

There were times when, thanks to... BJ and Chief Matt and Andrea came over also, but sometimes the gust would come and almost lift up, but they had some sandbags holding down our tent.

Inflatables? Oh, your tent, yeah. Oh, yeah, we had lots of sandbags. Just a quick fun story. Well, not fun to John. He was in the inflatable area and had them all inflated, and a wind gust came and picked up an inflatable and turned it on top of him. Oh, no. Um, it was the kind where it created a cave for him, but inside, but, uh, it lifted the cement blocks and it moved them and allowed it to flip over. It was just, those were, those are incredible guts. And then, uh, some of the vendor tents, one vendor tent, a Gus came and flipped it up in the air, up into the construction zone. So I think, uh, and it was locked. So Jason Lowe, our operations chair climbed the fence and went and got it and brought it back over the other side. for the vendor. So there was some mean Gus playing havoc for everybody. But they settled down by the evening, thank goodness. Not in time to inflate the inflatables. They remained deflated. But in time for the drone show to have the pyro on the wings of the Eagle, which was something we were hoping to preserve. But it was dicey.

There was a lot of traffic along the Food truck row.

Oh, yeah. It was packed solid. By the way, I recorded the show from the stage, and I was looking out on the crowd, and everybody was at a complete standstill, and the phones were in the air. It was almost like a concert where everybody was taking a, you know, recording it. It was a magic moment. Okay.

Okay. Madam Mayor, members of the council, just to reiterate, Dan, to you and the board, thank you. It was incredible to see how many people came out and gathered this weekend, but also an opportunity to recognize BJ Junman as our staff liaison, fire chief, staff liaison to the festival in Firemuster. It wouldn't happen without BJ, and frankly, it's an all-hands-on-deck weekend for city staff in many ways and I really appreciate the time and energy that staff has invested, police, fire, public works, through administration. So I very much appreciate the staff effort and work that goes into helping the community gather and have fun together. Absolutely.

BJ is a priceless liaison. He's now a board emeritus, and his role, you know, it's like, Call BJ. Call BJ every time something comes up. It's like he's the guy who can get it done. And then Sergeant Mahler is also very deeply interwoven into the operations for the three days. And he, again, is right on site and works very long days alongside us. Awesome, awesome. We sent him home Friday night, I think, about an hour and a half before I left after doing all the cash counting and reconciliation and stuff. And so we said, nope, we're good. We're going to leave it all locked up here. Go home. Get some rest. He goes, yeah, starting at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning for another long day.

Yeah. Well, good. We didn't have our meeting with Savage. There was nothing to meet about, and so we'll meet here. Our next meeting is, is it in November?

Mayor, in the next, yeah, in the next four or six weeks. I'm not, don't have it in front of me.

Yeah. And otherwise, you know, everything else is going well with the Burnsville Community Foundation. And I've already given, we had a very successful international festival. So all is good. So thank you, everybody. Is there anything else, Greg, Council? If not, we adjourn by acclamation, and then we will regather for the budget meeting.