City Council - Regular Meeting

the meeting order here at 7 p.m. Director Benerod indicated to you that we've been handling these meetings on a hybrid sort of basis. People can watch remotely, call in from remote locations. If there's public hearings, they can call into provide testimony in public hearings, also community comment. People are welcome to call in and address the council on a matter that's not on the agenda this evening or scheduled for a future public hearing. So the numbers are on the screen. If you're watching and want to call in during public comment, feel free to get that information pulled down and we'll go to people that are in the audience first. And then having provided that information, I'm going to, as I said, call the meeting to order and then ask our clerk, Sharon Ellison, to call the roll.

Excuse me.

Council Member Agnew. Here. Council Member Jackson. Here. Council Member Pierce.

Here.

Council Member Risser. Here. Mayor Hublin.

Here. Next is the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The next thing that we would do is approve the agenda, and we've had something come in that our colleagues may want to address this evening, Mayor included, and that is the possibility of being able to join the BCA, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Violent Crime Reduction Unit. They were holding a place for our chief of police on that violent crime reduction unit, but it requires us entering into a joint power agreement, and I think we could hold it for a couple of weeks, but we could also address it this evening, and if we were going to address it this evening, we should add it to the agenda as I think would make most sense to add it as item 8.2, after the conversation about voter to modify one of our park ordinances. So if anyone cares to move the addition of the joint powers agreement with the BCA crime reduction unit to the agenda this evening, please so indicate.

So moved.

All right, is there a second? Second. All right, we got a motion by member Jackson, second by member Pierce to add the joint powers agreement to the discussion by the city council tonight for the related to the BCA crime reduction unit.

Mr. Mayor, just a quick question. So where the proposal is to add it as item 8.3, is that right?

we've got 8.1 accepting donations 8.2 the ordinance the park ordinance uh yeah so the other copy i had was yes 8.3 excuse me 8.3 we've done it as 8.3 any further discussion holds in favor of adding a discussion about the possibility of uh entering into roll call Oh, thank you. OK, roll call please.

Councilmember Jackson, I Councilmember Pierce, I Councilmember Risser, I may have Lynn.

I will add that to the agenda. We now have an agenda that includes item 8.3, which is the joint powers agreement possibility with the BCA. Is there a motion then to adopt the agenda in its amended form?

So moved I second.

server Jackson was called for a new seconds motion to adopt the agenda as amended formatting item 8.3 to the agenda. The further discussion. All in favor of adoption of the agenda as amended form say aye. Excuse me, excuse me, roll call. We got the new new habit here we get to exercise a little bit more restraint on the enthusiasm and getting these votes taken.

Yeah, council members are. Councilmember Jackson. Aye. Mayor Hovland.

Aye.

Councilmember Pierce. Aye. Councilmember Agnew. Aye.

All right. The motion is approved. Okay. Now, let's go to the next portion of the agenda, which is community comment. And we've had we had a really interesting meeting on Monday night over ANSI Park. I think over 100 people there and I I think our chief are wanting to have that meeting early with neighbors in the park and many people came from all over Edina to attend that meeting. And then last night with national night out we had over. 90 sessions around 90 neighborhood gatherings around the community and we're able to cover all of them with city council members and people from the police department and also people from our public works department and i think able to convey information about some of the things that we were working on some of the things we're concerned about i think since we had this This shots fired incident at Yancey Park about two almost two weeks ago now in July 22nd. It's probably been something everybody goes to bed thinking about and wakes up thinking about. And I think there's a uniform sentiment on it, and that is that what happened in Yancey Park with respect to those shots fired was unacceptable, unacceptable at any level. And our chief talked about that on Monday evening before that group of people over at Yancey Park. And as presently determined, there were approximately eight rounds fired in a public park where young adults gathered to enjoy a soccer game when other people were simply trying to use the park. And we were really fortunate, very, very fortunate that no one was killed or injured. There was a house that was hit, but no one was, as I said, killed or injured. And the outcome could have easily been very different. Every resident, simply every resident, has the right to feel safe in our parks and safe throughout our community. We understand why many people are angry, frustrated, and worried, and we have those same emotions. Our police department continues to investigate aggressively. They've worked tirelessly since this incident. We are committed to identifying the individual or individuals responsible and holding them accountable. We will use every lawful resource available, and we ask everyone with information to come forward, no matter how small you think it might be or how irrelevant you think it might be. If you think you have some information, please come forward and let our police department know. We also need to remember in moments of stress or anger or worry about what happened at Yancey Park that the actions of whoever fired those shots does not define every young person who was at the park or every person or family who lives or visits our city. We will hold individuals responsible for crimes. We will not assign guilt based on ethnicity. So what do we do? Effective policing is essential, but it is only one part of the answer. If our only response is to think about this as a public safety issue with more police officers or more patrol cars added to protect our community, we're not going to get where we want to be. We also need to work with parents, community leaders, schools, coaches, faith leaders, and faith organizations and young people themselves to reduce the conflicts that lead to someone pulling out a gun. And our chief's going to talk about this in his presentation tonight, and I think people are going to be very pleased with the direction that we're heading. around three concepts, around enforcement, around engagement, and around public policy. And we're gonna have one of those early public policy discussions later in the meeting tonight. So in my mind, what we need to do is keep thinking about the following, reviewing security plans for sporting events, meet with Somali community leaders, soccer organizers, schools, and police, identify youth who are repeatedly involved in disturbances, increase adult supervision at high attendance events, develop interventional plans for the small number of youth at highest risk, continue aggressive investigation and prosecution of firearms offenses, including the one at Yancey Park. The recent violence was a serious challenge to our community, and they've risen to the task. These different moments also provide opportunities to demonstrate who we are as a people. We're a community that believes in safety and fairness. We are a community that holds people accountable while helping young people succeed. We are a community that does not ignore problems, but faces them together and head on. The goal of this initiative is simple, safe parks, strong families, successful young people, a stronger community. So having provided that information, and I encourage everybody here that wants to make a public comment to stick around to listen to the chief and the ideas that we've got around the strategies that we want to employ beyond investigating the crime and finding those responsible, I think it'd be well worth your time. So let's now go to a community comment and you'll have three minutes. Yes.

So our policy is generally to not allow community comment for things that are on the agenda. We're having a broad discussion about public safety tonight. If people wanna have a community comment about public safety, are we going to, I think we should allow that.

Yeah, we're gonna allow that.

Okay, so make an exception for this topic.

I could have made that clear. I think we're comfortable with this council having people express their thoughts about this shots fired incident in Yancey Park, and they may have information to share with us that we think is very valuable and will help us formulate some of the strategies that we want and refine those strategies over time. So if there's anyone in the audience who wishes to come forward and address the council on a matter of concern to them, including the incident of shots fired at Yancey Park, feel free to come forward. and you don't have to give us your address, as you know. Just your name is fine.

David Frankel. I'll start with something unrelated to what you were talking about, but as you may be aware, the federal government has put out a pretty tough warning about municipal water systems. I've sent several emails to the city of Edina asking where we're at with that. Older water systems use what are called programmable logic controllers. which due to money not being spent to upgrade those systems are usually old and cannot handle any cybersecurity software. The recommendation of the FBI and the federal government's cyber people is to disconnect those PLCs from the internet so they cannot be hacked. And I do not know where we stand on that. If we have newer PLCs that can have cybersecurity software or older ones that cannot, that should be disconnected. It's a serious problem. City of Plymouth just got hacked. So we should take this seriously. And it would be nice if the city put out a press release where things are at with that.

Mr. Frankel, we're going to address that very issue tonight. So thanks for bringing it up.

But the next thing with the ANSI Park is kicking that off. The venue for that meeting was terrible. It was a windy day. There were no microphones for people to ask questions. There was a compressor running in the background. And a lot of people could not hear most of what was going on. So I think next time you do any kind of venue, make sure it's accessible for everybody to hear and to also speak. But that presentation left with the, left with the idea that Edina residents are against the Somali community. That is not true. Sheriff Fletcher, who I parroted at the comments during that presentation, flat out said this is not about the Somali community. This is about 300 Somali kids that are in gangs. There are named gangs in Minneapolis and there are named gangs in the suburbs, according to Sheriff Fletcher. This is a real problem that needs to be addressed aggressively. I lived in Northern Virginia 20 years ago when a very violent gang, MS-13, showed up in that area. They've been fighting it for 20 years, aggressively, using a RICO Act to go after members of this gang. And I know firsthand the problems it can cause. I was innocently taken with my children to a hockey practice one day, went around a corner and ran across a police checkpoint. Had a half dozen law enforcement officers pointing weapons at me, because they were looking for an MS-13 member in the area I was in. These things can escalate and we can talk all you want about being kids, about having fun, but these are gang members and you don't want this to spiral out of control. And even City of Minneapolis council member who's Somali has said these Somali kids are a problem. It's being addressed by the Somali community. We need to address it with the Somali community that these are gangs and talk about them as gangs.

Thank you. Yeah, Mr. Franklin, I would encourage you to stick around and listen to the chief's presentation. I think you'll be well informed. And that also coming up tonight is the presentation by our public works director and our engineer about our water system. And you might want to hear about that too and the precautions that we've taken to protect that system. Anyone else? All right, is there anybody online? Okay, very good. Next, from an agenda standpoint, we usually turn to our city manager to have him address any issues that were raised at the prior meeting in public comment, and I'm gonna do that now.

Thank you, Mayor. We had two questions at our July 21st meeting that required answers. Why does the first one, and they were both about surveys, lot surveys, not surveys that you take for public opinion, but a survey of a lot. Why does the city not have all current lot surveys online? When will they be posted? Many of our lot surveys currently on file with the city have been posted online. However, the process for scanning, uploading property records is still ongoing. So it is possible a property has a survey in its physical property file, but it has not been posted online. If a survey is not available online, it may not have been uploaded yet. or the city may not have one in its records. There is no specific date by which the city is targeting to have every available survey posted. To check whether the city has a survey for a particular property, we ask people to contact the building inspections division at 952-826-0372 or online at inspections at edinamn.gov. Staff can review the property file and provide any available surveys if we have them. Second question was, if the city does not have a current survey on file, are projects being properly permitted? The absence of a current survey in the city's records does not necessarily mean a project has been permitted improperly. a current lot survey is not required for every type of project or permit the documentation required depends on the scope and the location of the proposed work when necessary city staff may require a survey site plan setback measurements or other information to confirm that a project complies with applicable zoning and building requirements before a permit is issued That's all I have.

Good. Does that prompt any inquiries or comments from any council members? All right, very good. Next on the agenda, we have the items on the consent agenda, usually handled in a single motion unless someone wants something removed from the consent agenda. Is there anyone on the council that wants an item removed from the consent agenda? All right. Is there a motion to adopt the items on the consent agenda in a single motion?

So moved.

Member Jackson moves. Second. Member Pierce seconds the adoption of the items on the consent agenda in a single motion. I'm getting smarter with two prompts here. Roll call, please.

Council Member Agnew. Aye. Council Member Pierce. Aye. Council Member Hovland, or Mayor Hovland.

Aye.

Council Member Jackson. Aye. Council Member Risser. Aye.

All right, the items on the consent agenda are adopted. Just a quick observation. I thought the request to join the Minnesota Task Force One with that structural collapse training was really important. And I think it's, you know, I think the folks in the public safety arena expect that we're going to be good at what we do, whether it's fire or police.

Our fire department has a particular skill in this particular area. And so we want to make sure that they keep that up.

All right, we're going to move on now to the special recognitions and presentations portion of the agenda, and we're going to start with a community safety update presented by our Chief Todd Milburn and Lieutenant Ryan Schultz, and we spent an hour and a half or so upstairs working on some of these issues as well that are community safety related. Chief, welcome.

Test.

Thank you, Mayor.

And thank you, Council. I'm Chief Milburn with the Edana Police Department. I am accompanied by Lieutenant Ryan Schultz here, and tonight we're going to give you a public safety update. As a quick overview of the things that we're going to talk about here tonight, we're going to get into some park safety updates and response and some things that we put into play here in the last few weeks. We're going to talk a little bit about our 2026 crime stats. We think this is a good opportunity to check in and just talk about where we're at year to date as it compares the last five years, just really for our community and for council. We're going to talk a bit about our citizen resources, and then I'm going to touch on our police staffing update and just update everyone on where we're at, because we do get a lot of questions for that. So as the mayor mentioned earlier, there are three buckets that we're focused on here in terms of enforcement, engagement, and policy. And these are the three areas that we're going to continue to focus on as we think about safety in the community and the park system. I want to briefly go back to the event that night, a week and a half ago, and just highlight and really just kind of overview what happened and initial response to talk a little bit about the case itself. I do have to preface this by saying this is an open, active criminal case, and I cannot get into any details around it, but I can give you some of the preliminary information. We're getting a lot of questions about it, and I continue to reaffirm to people that these are not solved overnight. They do take some time, and because of the integrity of the case, it's important that we not discuss everything that's going on behind the scenes. But briefly, how this started out, there were a group of kids in that park area at Annecy Park and they were playing football and they were playing soccer. And our understanding on the police side is that it had been occurring for weeks ahead and there were no problems. We did have an officer that received information, a tip if you will, that there might be people showing up, too many people, problem people, wasn't clear, but we were doing extra patrol in that park. Community members that night did see and observe officers that were traveling through the parking lot, and that was what was going on. But our officers get busy, and when that officer drove through the parking lot, there were no issues observed at that time. Our officer had to leave for other calls that night, and shortly thereafter, we received that 911 call for some type of a shooting or shots fired. When our officers arrived, it was very quick. There were multiple people scattering and running away from the scene, and there was a multi-agency response. And so in addition to Edina Police, we had Minnetonka, St. Louis Park, Eden Prairie, a number of police agencies responded to assist. Activity was observed there. We had canine units there. We had drones in the air to help process the scene and figure out what was going on. And then command staff showed up. So you had most of our command staff showed up. I showed up to help with the scene, to help manage it, and to figure out what was going on. It was an active investigation, and it continues to be an active investigation. I have been telling people that we have collected evidence, which is a good thing, and we're processing that. We have identified and interviewed or attempted to interview a number of witnesses. And one of the challenges that we've seen in this case and other recent cases and the problem that we're experiencing is that we're not getting a lot of cooperation. And so the number of witnesses that we've been able to identify and talk to, that's been one of the hindrances that we experience in this particular case. And it's something that we've been talking to community about getting people to cooperate and talk to our officers about what happened. We do know that people saw and heard and understand what happened. They just have not been willing to talk to police about it. We have been and continue to partner with other law enforcement agencies across the metro area on this particular case and in others. And that's very common for us from a mutual aid standpoint. And these types of cases are complex. And because of the complexity of these cases, we are using nontraditional means to solve this and work through it. And I also want to express to people that it requires patience. These, again, are not solved overnight, and they often take time. So what did we do in response to that in addition to the investigation? We decided to have the meeting at Yancey Park on Monday night, and that was intentional to reach out to local community that was impacted by the event that surrounded that park area. That was held on Monday night, and we had about 100 people show up, which is great. We provided an update similar to what we're doing tonight. We did the overview of events, and we provided an opportunity for people to give us feedback on what their concerns were, any ideas they might have. So we thought that went really well in terms of just engaging with community and having a discussion about it. We also told people in the audience that it was intentional to start there and we're going to have a broader conversation here to update the larger community. And so that's why we were intentional and really just inviting the local community members around that park. As a result of that and other recent events that have happened here, we executed, through our command staff, a safety plan. And there's really three areas that we're focused on here moving forward. Right away, one of the things that we did is we activated our reserve officers. And so one of the concerns that we have, we have over 40 parks, and getting eyes in our parks was important. So our reserve officers are stepping up to help us out, and they're going to be patrolling the parks here every day of the week. in the evening hours until parks close. We've also reorganized our cadet officers, and so they're going to complement that to provide that seven days of coverage of extra patrol. It's high visibility, so it's intended to get our squad cars out in the park areas. And then when we have any gaps there, we're going to have our officers there in overtime to provide that service. Our basic and our core Officers working patrol are going to continue to do that work as well, but we know that 911 calls are coming in so they get pulled away from time to time. So we're going to have lots of resources in those parks, and I fully anticipate that we're going to get good feedback in terms of high visibility and people seeing that coverage out there. We've also had discussions with our regional partners. We have very good mutual aid and close professional relationships with the cities that are listed on the slide in front of you. A few of those are in Prairie, Winnetonka, Hopkins, St. Louis Park. And we've been discussing this regional problem that we've seen with park violence and gun violence across the metro area. And in our partnership and our conversations with our regional partners, we're organized in a different way now. So we have a cadence set up with our partners where we're meeting on a weekly basis. We have intelligence that comes in. If we have that intelligence, it might be impacting or concerning a problem that might be of concern in a particular city. These cities are going to come together, the police departments, and respond to that city or respond to that park or whatever geographic area might be of concern. And they're going to provide that high visibility proactive patrol as well. So it's just another safeguard to have a regional cooperative effort to continue to provide that safety for the parks across the region. Through that partnership, it is possible that you could see an Indian Prairie squad car in the city of Edina, and that's strategic for this reason. And vice versa, you could see an Edina squad going over to St. Louis Park. And so we just want to be clear about what's going on behind the scenes. If people start to see that, that's very intentional. I want to touch briefly on smart 911 alerts. We use that the night of this incident. We started this a couple of years ago. If we have an active event, we have criteria built in. Our sergeants behind the scenes will send out an alert to community to identify there's an issue here, there's a police response or a fire response. And it's initially just set up to tell people to avoid the area and have an understanding that there's an event taking place. And it typically has to be a higher profile event. That night we sent one out right away. And then after the scene was processed, we sent out a second alert to notify community that the scene was processed and it was all clear. We were getting questions from community about, well, why didn't we send out information about suspect information and things like that? It's because if we go back to the scene was dynamic, we did not have a lot of cooperation, but we also had very, we were highly confident that our suspects had fled the area in a vehicle. So we weren't concerned about an active shooter situation in that event or that somebody was running through a neighborhood. For the community though, if you're curious about this, I would always recommend I always talk about this is a really good way to sign up for alerts and receive information. So as you see on the screen here, and if you just are following along, you can just go to our website, the police website, look for alerts and you can sign up. And that's how you'll get that information from us in the fire department. I wanna go back a little bit and talk about Centennial Lakes Park. So we started to see some problems early spring of this year. We started to get reports of large gatherings, disturbances, and many driving complaints in the parking ramps. And that prompted us to work with our parks department. So we set up biweekly meetings. We started to talk about what can we do to ensure that park was going to be safe. And we started to dedicate more officers. So we made a strategic decision to deploy more officers on overtime to patrol that park on weekends. And that started out right away in the spring and carried through the summer. We had 69 overtime shifts dedicated to that assignment alone, which is over 207 hours of overtime. That equated an extra additional $23,000 in overtime spent to really focus on safety for that park. That was phase one. We also worked through our MAC and our JCP folks, and we were able to develop our community ambassadors. And so as that ramped up through the summer, we had a number of volunteers go into the park and engage youth and engage people. that might have been part of the earlier calls that were receiving disturbances, large gatherings, and had dialogue and conversations about behavior and things like that. It worked really well. We started to see a drop. Those complaints really dropped off, and credit to the volunteers that came into that park because they really helped make sure that that park was safe through the summer, and that work still continues. So we were able to pull back our resources. We still have a presence there from time to time, but our volunteers have been really beneficial to sustain that, and it's been helpful for us. But I bring that up because park safety's been a thing, been a topic of concern, and so Satana Lake Parks was definitely a focus for us, and we placed a higher priority on that to make sure that was safe. We were also asked recently, how many mobile camera trailers do you have? We have one right now, and that's at Yancey Park, and we've had to shift around a little bit. It'll remain there for a while, but we shift that around depending on any trends or patterns that we have across the city. We're exploring purchasing a second one, and so we have budgeted funds for some of that, There's some budget of funds for that and so we're exploring that as an option here later this year. So we may add a second one relatively soon. I wanna talk about some crime stats here because again, level setting and just getting some explanation about where we stand year to date as compared to the last five years. So I'm gonna roll through four or five slides here. I pulled some information out that I think are particular to the issues we've been talking about as of late. So if you look at this total calls, this just gives you a sense of how many calls officers responded to per year. About 46,000 back in 2022. And in 2026, we're at 24, just about 25,000. So it gives you a sense just the volume of calls that we receive per year. That for models, that's been a big topic for us here in this community. We've had, unfortunately, our fair share of that. But if you go back to 2022, you will see the total number. And if you look forward to 2026, we're at 40. We're down 18% as you compare to 2025. And so that's been a nice drop over the last five years. Robberies. If you go back to 2022, 2023, you can see that was relatively high at that time period. And we've had a nice drop over time. We're up by one. But again, if we go back to 2022 and 2023, you can see those spikes at that time. So we've had a nice drop. Vehicle thefts. Vehicle thefts have been a big topic of conversation again. If you go back to 2023, you'll see that we had 100 here in the city of Edina. And that's dropped down to, well, in 2025, we had a drop down to 46. That was a 43% drop. We're up a little bit this year. We've seen a spike now in auto thefts again this summer, so of course we're working on that. But still, much lower than we were at in 2023. DWI arrest, we're up on that. So when you think about total crime, sometimes you'll see that there's an increase, and there's a reason for that as well. And that also encompasses proactive work. And so if you recall, earlier this year, we reactivated our DWI car. So that's a grant-funded position from the state, and our staffing levels have gotten to the point where we could do that. and that officer's out there aggressively looking for DWI cases. And so that's why that number's increased by 54% when you compare it to last year, which is good work by our officers, but it's also important for our overall crime stats. And then total crime, so violent crime. If you go back to 2022, you can see 43 was the number we had. Violent crime encompasses aggravated robbery or aggravated assaults, homicides are included in that, those kinds of high-level violent crimes. 2026, that dropped down to 2029, excuse me. Other crimes, which is the total, which is everything else. So that's larceny, that's any kind of parking complaint. It's a lower level kinds of things, assault, simple assaults. And again, you see a nice drop there as we went through the last five years. And we're at 701 this year in 2026. We have a crime map, so when we talk about crime stats, we have a different variety of tools that people can use if they have interest in looking at crime stats. We have a link on our website that gets anyone to our Edina Citizen Connect crime map, and that's a tool that people can use that they can take a look at any feature within the crime, within the data sets, and then they can set up any kind of alerts any kind of profile they want, and they can take a look at any kind of crime within the city and the geographic area. So that's a tool that's transparent for anybody to take a look at if they so choose. And by law, all law enforcement agencies have to report their crime stats to the BCA, and so the BCA maintains that as well. And anybody in the community can go to the BCA website, the statewide crime data, and they too can go into that website and they can decide what kind of crime data they want to pull out. They can create tables. There's just all kinds of features within that to pull that out. And they can compare and contrast with different communities within that or even within different counties. Okay, shifting gears a little bit, I want to talk a little bit about our staffing updates, our quick staffing update. About two years ago, this council, we presented council or asked council for an increase in officers, sworn officers. We were at 58, and we asked for an increase to 64. We were approved for that. We were happy about that. But as we know, law enforcement, it's very difficult to find candidates to fulfill those spots. So it's taken us a couple years to get there. Excuse me. We developed out a cadet program, which has been very beneficial for us. We've had several officers come out of that program. And we are now at 61. We have another officer starting next week. And then we have a couple more officers that are in background, or candidates in background. And so we anticipate by the end of this year, we'll be at fully staffed 64 officers. Also, in addition to that, we have a retirement coming up. Lieutenant Dave Vennies announced he's going to retire. But when we take a look at forecasting out and backfilling our retirements, we're in a good spot on the budget on saving on salaries. So we're going to start working ahead and looking to hire ahead of the retirement so that we can backfill and not fall behind. I also would like to touch on Saltdale Mall. We've talked a lot about that over the last four or five years. Years ago, we had a presence there. We had more of an undercover feature with detectives that were in plain clothes looking a little bit more for shoplifting cases. And recently, about two years ago, we had some higher profile shots fired events, unfortunately, at the mall. And that really prompted us to have a good dialogue with ownership and management, Simon Properties, to think about how we can put some officers in that mall. To their credit, we had a great conversation, came to terms on bringing in two officers. They pay for 60% of both of those salaries, and they provide the office space. So we have a precinct presence in that mall, and those two officers are assigned to that full time. And is that paying off? It pays off in a couple ways. One, if you look back to 2022 and the number of calls that we were dealing with at the mall, most of those were shoplifting. We were at 1,891. A lot of our officers on patrol were responding to those calls, so they were being pulled away from other areas to go to the mall to answer those calls. Now with the addition of those two officers, they're on site, so they're not coming from other areas. They're on site. They're working with different companies. They're on site. They're getting timely calls if there's any problems, and we're starting to see some nice drops here on the crime front. So we're down 12% in 2026 as compared to last year, and it's been trending down nicely over the last five years. And lastly, for tonight, I'll open up for questions. We, in the last couple of weeks, in line with the regional violence that many people have been talking about, We've been touched by that. We've been impacted by that. And the mayor summarized earlier nicely that it's not going to be tolerated here. We're going to be very aggressive on investigations and we're going to follow through on that to hold people accountable. But with that, we are a relatively smaller agency and the BCA started up something called the Violent Crime Reduction Unit a number of years ago, and that has 18 BCA agents, and a number of different cities that participate in this task force. And their mission is to go after violent offenders and aggressively focus on gun violence in particular across the metro area. And we've started discussions with the BCA to add a detective to this unit because we think this is a good move for our city and also for our police department. And what does it get us? It gets us a force multiplier. It gets us into better data sharing and it gets us what we call force multiplier and leverage other assets that are available to us in law enforcement. And so if we have a large scale event that happens here in our community, We have access to all those agents and all those other cities that can come in and help us investigate crimes. And conversely, if we have information that's going on in our major cases we're working, that can be shared out with these other agents as well. And then we're more efficient in enforcing and also following up on those cases to hold offenders accountable. This has been going on, like I said, for a number of years. It's a good product. From my law enforcement experience, I have a high degree of confidence in the work that they're doing. And I think this is a good move for us. And so as we discuss this, or council discuss this a little bit later, it would be my recommendation to transfer one of our officers into this unit. There's gonna be no cost to us from our department. It's a lateral move. We can accommodate that. and then it allows us for some open-ended discussions at the end of this year. This is a strategy for the summer to help us out with our current cases and future cases, but if we decide that it's not a good fit for us, we absolutely can transition out of that and pivot out of that and bring that detective back if we so choose. I don't expect that to happen, but just know that we have some options here on the back end of this if it suits us appropriately. So that discussion will come a little later. In a little bit, we're going to talk about some potential ordinance language for parks. Just to set that up briefly from a law enforcement perspective, one of the things that are going to be talked about is perhaps a permit process and just providing some tools for city staff and police that if we have a large gathering at a park and it's not sanctioned or it's not permitted and we get called, that we have some tools in place that we can move people that might become a problem at a park out of the park and make it safe for everyone involved. So that will be the intent of that discussion here coming up. So with that, I'll stop and I'll open it up for any questions from council.

Yeah, good. We may have questions from council members. Council Member Jackson.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. So you and I spoke briefly this afternoon about this, and we had a comment. Tell us how this kind of activity is different from the gang activity that we saw in the 90s. Everybody kind of remembers, everybody of a certain age remembers that, myself included. But how is this activity that we're seeing now different from that?

Yeah, so we think about the gangs of the 90s that had more of a specific hierarchy, right? So my law enforcement career goes back to the 90s, and there was more structure in place, right? There was a hierarchy. There were leaders. There was directives. People were following along. And that's different now than it was back then. We're dealing with more nimble young adults, youth, no leadership. We tend to call them cliques. And they gather together. There is no purpose. And unfortunately, gun violence is attached to this. And social media has changed everything. And so a clique will spin up, and they'll go out and do things. They'll beef with each other. They'll argue with each other. Unfortunately, we've seen that lead to gun violence. And that's moving all around the metro area. And so comments earlier before about, yes, do we have a problem with gang violence in certain communities? We do. And do we see it across the metro area? We absolutely do. And that's why we want to think about a task force environment to help us out with some of these things. But in my law enforcement career that goes back now 30 years, things have definitely evolved and it's become much more challenging. The other issue that we talked about earlier is the lack of cooperation. And that's a problem for us in law enforcement. So the more that we can apply resources and the more that we can deal with and attack the gang issues that are surrounding us in the metro area, the better we're going to be. But I always want to make it clear to people it's not just isolated to one community. It is very transient and spreads across the metro area. And I've been talking about this now for four or five years, again, going back to my career path. We've seen this uptake ever since COVID, and it really hasn't stopped or slowed down on the violent crime front. So it just continues to be a persistent problem, but to give you some insight about what we're dealing with, I hope that helps.

Yes, I do have a follow-up, and it's my understanding that before it was more of a RICO type of crime, so you had people dealing drugs on the street, and then there was a monetary element to it. This is more of a social... where people are getting together and then they're getting into fights or they're losing their temper with one another. It's not an organized crime type of thing like the drug dealing of the 90s was. Is that correct?

I would say it's both, really. It's a combination of everything we see at all. There's still elements of that, for sure, in a structure. Narcotics trades and money. People are chasing money and trying to create businesses that way. But also, when we think about more of the youth movement here and the younger age bracket of gangs, It isn't as structured as that. It is more dynamic, nimble, flexible, spontaneous, and it's the quick spin-up and then the beef and the feuding that usually starts online in social media and then carries over into physical violence. And the problem we're seeing with many of our youth is that this quick resort over to gun violence without any thought process, right, that's leading into these clashes, that's what we're seeing across the metro area.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah.

Council Member Risher.

Thank you, and I appreciate Member Jackson's comments. I do want to give a shout out to the police department, especially for those numbers that are coming down, and I think that is really critical for people to understand, to see the whole context, and I appreciate all the work and all the things that you have been juggling recently. So just want to have a plug for getting that presentation up there because I think it would help members of the community understand the larger context in which we're working. So thank you.

And thank you. I just would like to put a plug in for staff or officers. We have fantastic detectives that know what they're doing. They've solved high profile cases for us in this community over the last 18 months or ever since I've been here, actually. And they're phenomenal at what they do. And our officers are absolutely outstanding in the work that they do to to provide that community service, the relationships, the community engagement, but also to kick it into a different gear when we have these high profile events as well. So the credit goes to our staff. Thank you for that.

Councilmember Pierce. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I hope my question does not catch you off guard. We were talking about it a little bit yesterday. And so it would be awesome if you could kind of speak to that reassurance gap. And what I'm getting at there is you look at the data and we're relatively as safe as we were this time last year. if you look at the data. But people don't necessarily feel safe. And so this reassurance gap is kind of the gap between the incidents that are occurring and then how people feel. And there was one example you gave. If you have 40 incidents that are all misdemeanors, When we look at the data, if today we have 40, we kind of compare those two numbers and say, well, it's about the same as last year. But if the 40 this year are gun violence or violent crimes, then people feel less safe. And so if you could kind of speak to what we're doing to address both of those challenges, you spoke a lot to the data. So what are we doing? A little bit more detail from a community perspective, what are we doing to try to address the gap?

Yeah, I think Council Member Pierce, thank you for that question. So it's multifaceted, right? And that's how people perceive and feel about crime, regardless of the stats. And that's what's most important. A lot of the work that we do is community engagement and getting out into the community to talk about these things, right? So we have a number of officers orientated towards that. We have a number of non-sworn officers or staff that are out there engaging the community. We also work heavily in the prevention side. And so prevention is key. And we need collaboration from the community. Police can't do this alone. So much of our time is spent working with community to build trust, but also that collaboration effort so that we can be united on solving those kinds of problems. The other way we get people to feel confident about what's going on is doing this work, the data, but also getting into more of a granular neighborhood area. So let's talk about what we did with the NC Park that was really strategic to get in front of people to talk about things. A lot of people give us information, what they might be feeling or what they might be experiencing. And to have that dialogue with people so that we can get people to understand we're taking it seriously. We're gonna be aggressive with this. And don't worry, we're gonna come back to this and we're gonna keep working through it. We're gonna come through sustainable programming and really be collaborative on how we're gonna solve this long term. So I'd say it's multifaceted that way. What is challenging is social media. And everybody gets information on social media, and there's a lot of misinformation. And we have a really good communication department, so when we see things that we need to respond to, that's our opportunity to get involved with it and get factual information out there. But there's a lot of volume to that and it creates a big challenge for us. So it's a lot of these tools that we put in play, but I think at the bottom line, most of it is like interfacing with people and having dialogue. And we really press upon really opening up those opportunities to have that dialogue, to get the facts out, and then just have that interactive process so we can make people feel good about where they're at.

Yeah.

Council Member Agnew.

Thank you. So I know we have a couple of items we're reviewing later in our meeting tonight, but beyond kind of what you were just mentioning from that engagement with the community, what else might you need from us as council members to help support you right now?

This council has been fantastic. Council Member Agnew, thank you for that. But this council has been fantastic, and I speak about that quite a bit in the last couple of years. We asked for more officers. We received that. We've talked about it takes us a while to get that up and running. I do anticipate asking for more officers at the next budget cycle. So that's my kind of preemptive ask is that we're growing in areas, we have more volume in areas, and we have needs, right? And so we need to do more of a comprehensive analysis over the next year and prepare ourselves for that conversation. So that'll be my ask of council to be supportive back to the police department, but to continue to support the officers as well. And it was talked about earlier that this is stressful work. It's challenging work, it's unique work, and the more that council can be supportive of the officers' work in this community, because they care about this community, that's really helpful for your police department as well.

Yeah. Any questions? Yes, Council Member Jackson.

Yes, thank you. So I can't get to my email right now because I've got another thing pulled up. I got an email today about the police open house that's going to be happening in September. Can you tell us when that is and what's going to be happening?

Yeah. Dates? I can't remember. We switched the date. Somebody knows they can jump in. August 31st. Thank you. So August 31st, we have an open house at our police department we started at about four years ago. Big hit, big turnout. It keeps growing every year. So we'll have many of our officers, non-sworn staff, fire department, a lot of other agencies who will come in and then set up booths and just be interactive with community members that want to come by. It's free. It's open. We do a lot of cool things there, so we absolutely hope and welcome the community to come for that.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Could you describe for us in a little bit more detail your understanding of what role you might play over on the task force that the BCA is putting together with respect to that violent crime reduction unit?

Sure, Mr. Mayor. So the diner role, right, from the officer standpoint or the detective standpoint? and how they're made.

Or from your standpoint, I know we'll have a dedicated officer that'll be part-time assigned there with no cost to the city, but I was hoping that you'd have a role over there too, because I think you'd be a vital member of that task force.

Oh, well, thank you. I will likely have a role. I believe that they have a board, and so I'll be on a board to help guide decision-making process, right? And that gets into strategy, resources, and I'll have a say with that. Being a stakeholder in this environment allows us any Diana to make sure we're pulling resources in this direction as well Right as we have events or not have events and then just again back to my experience Yeah I believe I have some good experience that I can bring to the table and talk about some of the evolving trends and things That we've been seeing being that I've worked in two communities now in Hennepin County And so I think that they'll be helpful for the conversation to at that level.

Okay, very good in the old folks. I Okay, yeah.

Councilmember Pierce, go ahead. Just one other thing, Mr. Mayor. I was not able to make the Yancey Park conversation because I was out of town. But I do walk in Yancey Park every day. I was there twice today. Sometimes early in the morning, sometimes midday, sometimes at night. And so the reason I ask the questions about the perception of safety is because I do think it makes a lot of sense for us to have the right kind of presence in our parks so that when they are being utilized, everybody feels safe. And I'm going to Give an example, because I know my wife is not watching. She's flying back home. She would not be, she'd be nervous if I left the house at 9.15 to walk three miles, which includes walking either down the Bredesen or through Yancey, because it's night. She's not sure what time I'm going to get back. But if I do that at 6 o'clock in the morning, she's fine. If I'm doing that in the middle of the day, she's fine. And that has nothing to do with who's in the park, who's using the park, whether there's a soccer match or a football match or whatever. It's just this perception of there are certain times of day when it's safer. And so that's the reason I asked that question about having the right kind of balanced presence in our community actually helps everybody feel safer, no matter why they're in a particular part.

Chief. Mr. Mayor, council, member Pierce, that prompted a response for me too. Thank you for bringing it up because right now I would consider it to be a phase one immediate safety plan to make sure the parks are safe for the remainder of this summer to make people feel better. So this increased presence I think will be good for moments like that, right? Then we're gonna meet with parks over the winter and some other city staff to talk about what does the next spring and summer look like? Do we need to have police officers? Could we think about park ambassadors? Could we think about other people that might just could be in the park and just be a reminder on the park is closing and it's time to go. You don't need police officers for all those kinds of things, but striking that right balance, that's the conversation we're gonna have internally with other city staff here to prepare for next summer as well. Thank you for that.

Yeah, that's a good point you're making. And one of the folks came up to me after the meeting at Yancey Park and said, you know, I used to live in St. Paul. And they have someone working in the parks, every park, summer and winter. We've got usually people in the warming houses during hockey season during the winter, but in the summertime, something to think about, I guess, on a long-term basis. And then I see Mr. Frankel didn't stick around here, but I was going to disagree with him a little bit on the Monday night meeting. He didn't think it was very productive. I actually thought it was very productive. There was noise from the compressor. We asked people to come closer, but I thought you did a great job of listening to people's questions and then restating them through the microphone. So I think my impression was that most people left understanding what people's concerns were and heard you address them well in the process. So just a little bit of a different view of the world, different view of the situation in the park.

Thank you, appreciate it.

Alright, anything else? Thanks, Chief. So in this special recognitions and presentations portion of the agenda, we've got We've got another public safety person with us, but he operates in a different sort of realm. And along with some others, we're going to hear a presentation here now from some of the key leaders over at the Met Council. And Angelique Cameron, who's one of the representatives, our representative from District 8 to the Metropolitan Council, is here, along with John Pacheco, who is our next-door neighbor rep over on the Minneapolis side of France Avenue. And there are, as I said, some staff people here with them that are just terrific public servants. And they're gonna make a presentation about the Green Line and the prospect of an opening here this coming year. And we're eager to have the presentation from the team and have Anjali Cameron and John Pacheco lead it off. So Ms. Cameron, Representative Cameron, I'll turn to you first.

Thank you, Mayor and city council members. I'm Anjali Cameron. I am the vice chair of the Met Council and represent a portion of Edina alongside fellow council member John Pacheco. As I think back to the leaders who have gotten this project and all of us to this point, Many people in this room come to mind, including your leadership, mayor, city council members, staff, and many others in this room. And I want to thank you for your steadfast leadership on this project. It would not have happened without many of the people in this room. So thank you. As an Edina resident, I know how special this community is, and I've also seen firsthand what bringing transit access to this city means. I'm so happy to see our strong ridership numbers on the E line already. And to me, that indicates that we have a lot of good things to look forward to with the Green Line Extension project. I'll pass it over to my colleague, John Pacheco, to talk a little bit more about the excitement that we share for the community in Edina.

Thank you, Ms. Cameron. Mr. Pacheco, welcome.

Welcome, thank you, thank you for the invitation. So I'm here, and I represent District 5, and District 5 includes a good part of Edina, along with Cameron, and as well, I have Bloomington and Richfield as there, and a little bit of Fort Snelling, so it's pretty much along 62, coming on each angle there, so it's a big area, a lot of challenges, but I really appreciate the work that we're doing. And it brings us to the green line extension. And I'm really looking forward to that coming up next year. It seems like every time I show up, it was like a milestone. And so next year is the big time. And I want to express our support for the mayor and some of the council members in the work that we got brought us to this point. You know, we may disagree and had a lot of, I've been on 50th and France with the mayor looking at where this line is going here or there and met quite often for this. So we had challenges, but you know, the beauty of the relationship here lets us get beyond the challenges and trying to really get what's best for the community. So I want to thank the support we've received both for Metro Transit and for the Met Council itself. It's been invaluable. And I'm a big E-Line rider, and it comes right down the block from me, so I take it to the Met Council, get on the 94 Express, I'm there, I come back, I go to the university, I spend a lot of time at Lifetime, but it's all around E, so it's an easy one for me to talk about. Green Line's just adding an extension to that, and I think that that, again, will be appreciated in the community. So tonight you'll hear a little bit more about who's all engaged in this. And so our manager for transportation, our police chief, Brian and Jim as planners, they're here to talk to you specifically about this. So I'm just here expressing the gratitude we have for working with you all in this. So with that, I'll turn it over to Leslie and her team to go over the project itself. And again, thank you for your involvement.

Thank you. Thank you, council members. Welcome, Ms. Kanderis.

Mr. Mayor, council members, my name is Leslie Kanderis. I'm the general manager at Metro Transit. And thank you so much for including us on your agenda this evening to talk about where we are with Metro Green Line Extension preparations to launch next year. I want to echo the council members' remarks about just the importance of our relationship and partnership with the City of Edina. We hope tonight we'll share some information to give you a sense of how we're getting ready for Green Line Extension opening next year. We'll provide some updates from across Metro Transit this evening, and of course, leave some time for any questions you may have. To start off, I wanted to begin with Metro Transit Forward. This is our shared strategic framework at Metro Transit that guides our work At Metro Transit, we are the largest public transit provider in Minnesota. We delivered over 50 million rides in 2025. We operate across over 60 communities in the metro area. And our mission is we connect people, strengthen communities, and improve lives by delivering high quality public transportation. As you'll see on our framework, and this is really the document that guides our work each and every day, we have three strategic priorities, employees, experience, and service. And in 2026, we're focused on three main areas or goals, building ridership, increasing satisfaction, and particularly pertinent for this evening, preparing for a flawless Green Line extension launch in 2027. Council Member Pacheco mentioned E-Line, and we are excited about the success we're seeing on the E-Line so far. As the slides mentioned, there's over 5,600 daily rides on average since the opening, and that is more than the Route 6 that previously served much of the corridor. So we're excited to see people using the E-Line and look forward to continuing to build ridership not only on E-Line, the future Green Line extension, but really throughout our network, again, in advancing our mission of connecting people. And at this point, I'm going to hand it over to Project Director Jim Alexander to give a specific project update before we talk about some of the other steps we're taking towards opening next year.

Yeah, thanks, Ms. Kanderis. It was good to get that E-Line update because I think it's one thing we've been wondering about is level of ridership compared to the old line. Thank you. Mr. Alexander, welcome.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, council members. I'm Jim Alexander. I'm the project director on this extravaganza, I call it. I've been on this project since 2011, and as the mayor knows me well, through many quarter management committee meetings, we are getting to the finish line on this project. And I really want to emphasize that, you know, Dyna is part of this, is that Lake Road Station, frankly, is just up the street from the city there. So We have stations right nearby. 14 and a half miles all told, 16 new stations that extends from the green line that runs from St. Paul to Minneapolis. You see the numbers here. One of the things that's been really impressive from my perspective is seeing the development along this. We've seen over $3.3 billion of investment. That's from 2011 to 2024 that we've been tracking. And you can see what's planned on that as well. So things have been popping up along the stations and it's looking very, very, very promising. So I want to talk about where we are right now in terms of we're really into systems testing. We have two major contracts, a civil construction contract that was wrapping up. We'll have that finished up here very shortly. Systems contract is underway, well underway, and we're doing system integration testing right now. And that involves a lot of things. We have thousands of devices along that 14 and a half miles that we need to test and make sure everything is working in concert with each other. along with our rail control center that's stationed in in Minneapolis. And once we get through with the system integration testing, we hand it over to Brian Funk's team, who you hear chief operating officer. They'll be doing their own testing and ultimately we'll be getting into revenue service. We plan to we plan to identify a date in 2027 for revenue service later. Later this fall, late September is we're currently earmarking. We still need to get some things underway. make sure that we're solid on the date, and we want to make sure that we're not going to be moving that. But 2027 is definitely it. So just to give you an idea of where we are at with the system integration testing, we have kind of delved this out in three phases. The red portion here is from Southwest Station, the western part of the 14 1⁄2 miles, up to just past Louisiana Avenue and St. Louis Park. That is essentially wrapped up for that testing. Right now we're testing in Minneapolis from Target Field, our existing main line, down to just Shorter Bryn Mawr in Minneapolis. And then finally, as we wrap that up later this summer, we'll be testing the whole A to B southwest all the way up to Target Field. And I can say that testing is going very well, but we still have more to do. Well, with that, I will hand it over to Brian Funk, our Chief Operating Officer.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Jim.

All right. Thank you, Jim. Mr. Mayor, council members, good to be here. Brian Funk, I serve as chief operating officer for Metro Transit. And all of this is going to happen because we have really great people who are going to be delivering our service and taking care of the system. And so What we're showing here is that we've been planning for years and we're on a really good trajectory here to get the people we need in place who are going to be carrying out the mission to deliver that high quality service that the general manager talked about. In the upper right, you see a graduating class of train operators. In the lower right is a technician. And in all of our key areas, including the ones listed here, train operators, maintenance staff, police, trip agents, and more, we're making really good progress. In fact, if we include the people who are currently in their training phase as train operators, we've almost hit our number. So we're gonna be in a really good spot as Jim's team hands it off to us for that pre-revenue testing to ensure that we're lined up for that flawless opening. And then the next thing I'll mention is that as we look at the train service, we also know that a key component of that is connecting bus service and different options. And so Network Now is a framework that was endorsed and adopted by the Met Council in 2025. We've been steadily making progress, adding service incrementally over the last couple of years. We had identified initial concepts of what that green line connecting service would look like. Now in 2026 we're bringing forward an amendment process to say we've learned a lot from the service that we've implemented. we've been measuring our performance we've made additional commitments and so green line extension as long as well as a commitment for the highway 55 are undergoing further development, so we can have that refined process. and really wanted to point out that we have a comment period coming up later this month into October. There's a link here, and we'll ensure that city staff have all that information so that residents are able to access it. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to our police chief, Joe Dotseth.

All right. Thanks, Mr. Frunk.

Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers. My name is Joe Dotseth, and I have the honor and privilege to serve as the Metro Transit Police Chief. You know, this year is my 25th year in law enforcement, 22 of those years at Metro Transit. And the Safety and Security Action Plan, it's our plan. It's our plan how we police people. and provide safety and security on the transit system. The safety action plan is four years old, and I can say in my time at Metro Transit, this safety action plan really changed the game for us. It changed how we were policing the system. The system is completely different than it was two years ago. The system is completely different than it was a year ago. We have so many positive things going on. We're actually fresh off APTA, American Public Transportation Association National Award for the work that we've been doing on light rail. So this safety action plan works. And for my time at Metro Transit, for so many years, the main safety and security of the system was relied on the police department. And I often refer to what I call the whole community approach to public safety, right? That's the police and all of our partners working to provide safety in our communities, right? And you think about our official layers of presence that's on the system, that's what the whole community approach to public safety is. So you can see out on the transit system right now, there's police officers, there's trip agents, there's community service officers, we have supplemental security at certain locations, community outreach services, and our real-time information center. I will say our police officer numbers, we're at the highest police officer numbers since 2021. We are doing great. We went to a values-based hiring system that really changed the game for us. We hire based upon values and we train for skill. Our community service officer program, which is really our cadet program, they're also on the system. All of them are in school for law enforcement. We have 49 community service officers. and a real-time information center that's housed in the police department that has access to all the cameras on the system. So this official layer is the presence, again, you're gonna see right on the system right now, and we think about Green Line Extension, this is what's gonna come to Green Line Extension as well. Other things that we're doing in the public safety update is that we know, I heard Chief Milburn talk a lot about what you're doing at the mall and really providing a beat concept of having officers out there. We know, and part of our success at Metro Transit is going back to what I refer to our beat model of policing, right? transit policing is some of the purest form of policing because we're on the front lines right we're in the field uh you know yes we have squad cars we drive around but our primary focus is being in community on board vehicles and having an interaction so ensuring that our officers are out on these beats is very important. We also know that we need a police substation along the Green Line extension, so we're actively looking at locations for that, and hopefully by the end of the year we'll have somewhere that we'll identify. And I don't even really want to call it a substation anymore. We're going to have officers and supervisors housed along the Green Line extension to provide that high level of service. When we talk about whole community approach to public safety, we also talk about policing as a service at Metro Transit. We provide a service. Our officers, the community service officers, yes, they enforce rules, they issue citations, they make arrests, but we provide service every day. If you follow us on social media, you're gonna see on a daily basis our officers out there providing service. OUR PARTNERSHIPS BETWEEN OUR LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES, YOU THINK ABOUT METRO TRANSIT POLICE, WE'RE A REGIONAL ASSET, RIGHT? BUT WE RELY ON OUR PARTNER AGENCIES AND CHIEF MILBURN AND THE UDINO POLICE DEPARTMENT ARE SOME OF THE BEST PARTNERS IN THE IN FACT, THANK YOU, MAYOR, THANK YOU, CHIEF, THE COUNCIL, CITY MANAGER. WE ACTUALLY STARTED UPDATING OUR JOINT POWERS AGREEMENTS A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO AND YOU ALL WERE ONE OF THE FIRST ONES TO SIGN THAT. SO WE ACTUALLY HAVE AN ACTIVE SIGNED GAPA AGREEMENT WITH THE CITY RIGHT NOW. THANK YOU, CHIEF, FOR LEADING THAT CHARGE. We also have a joint powers agreement with the BCA as well, and there's a great benefit to that. And there is a routine chiefs meeting too that we all have access to to provide feedback on that. And we also know for the Green Line Extension update to be successful, we need a very good project manager from the police department leading that. This isn't an oh-by-the-way assignment. We need somebody with a skill set that's very strong. So Captain Dietz is with us today in the audience, and one of Captain Dietz's primaries responsibility is going out planning for Green Line extension with all the police departments. Captain Dietz has a very great relationship with all of our partners along the extension. And we did mention in here, too, about supplemental security. We have supplemental security at several locations throughout the system right now, and as the Green Line extension becomes a reality, we're looking at where that may be as well. With that, I think I'll turn it back to the general manager.

Yeah, chief, I just wanna comment. I think you've done a great job of building public confidence here. There was a difficult period there during the pandemic and post George Floyd, and it was very, very difficult for everybody in the organization. And you really started to make people feel comfortable about public transportation, I think, because of the strategies that you've employed and the methods you've used in terms of hiring people and everything that you and Leslie and the whole team have done. So anyway, just to shout out for you there real quick.

Mayor, thank you so much. I appreciate that. And much like Council Member Pierce said, you know, perception is reality to a lot of people. And so ensuring that we're out there, getting our story out there, our social media is such a strong presence to provide stories about what we're doing on this system. Serious crime is almost non-existent on the transit system. Very few things happen. But again, people don't, if they don't feel that, we can talk about stats all day long. So I appreciate that, Mayor. Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Mr. Mayor, council members, just a couple of slides in conclusion. We are hopeful that when the Green Line extension opens, it attracts new riders to Metro Transit and provides ways for people riding with us now to connect to our community more seamlessly than perhaps they can today. This slide is just sharing that we do have support for new riders and have a lot of resources through Metro Transit to support people. If they're just learning how to use transit to plan trips, and many other resources. And finally, just want to share that we are continuing outreach engagement throughout our lead up to the launch and certainly beyond as well. David Davies remains a great point of contact for anything related to the Green Line extension and of course, we're always willing to partner on events tours in other ways to connect people to our work. So with that, Mr. Mayor, that concludes our presentation, but any of us would be happy to take any questions.

Yeah, thanks, Ms. Canderis. See if anybody has any questions or comments on I can't believe you brought Nick Thompson over here and let me just sit in the audience. I just don't know what he. Anyway, anybody have questions are coming yet. Councilmember Jackson, go ahead.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for this presentation. I think this is really exciting. It's been a very long time coming, so we're looking forward to having it. I live on the west side of Edina. We have no bus service. It would be, I'm just going to put a plug in because it would be a missed opportunity if we could have a bus going from here or from Grandview across Vernon to the Opus stop and get some of the people on west side the ability to ride the green line and using public transportation. I know there have been some elderly residents who've said We can't ride the bus anymore. Our mobility is really limited. And I know there's some people with special needs as well who would like to be able to just regularly ride the bus and not have to get this special.

Great idea, that local circulator to pick up that whole west side and take them over.

Yeah, so I'll put the plug in. And I know there's a formula, but I'm making a formal request. So thank you.

Council member, or Mayor, Council Member Jackson, thank you for that. And as Mr. Funk mentioned, we're just now really getting ready to take feedback as we develop the connecting bus plan because we do want to make sure we are really thinking through how we can make improvements to our bus network to make it possible for people to make connections. So we'll make sure that that plug gets incorporated into that work.

Great, thank you.

Are you still projecting ridership in excess of 30,000? I think it was a day.

Mr. Mayor, and maybe this will be a good opportunity to bring Mr. Thompson up, but we have not updated ridership projections since going through the federal process to secure the full funding grant agreement. And I will say our ridership has changed since the start of the COVID pandemic. We are not at the same ridership levels we were when those initial estimates were made.

Okay.

all right council member did you oh is there anything well i i do like the idea of the interface with the buses and um i'm excited to be able to use the e-line and interface with the green line and go all the way to the capitol and then maybe come back and stop in hopkins and it just there's it's so many potentials so that's exciting i think one of the things that jim alexander mentioned that's really worth emphasizing is that this was the first line

that was built with kind of running in tandem, the line itself plus the stationary development that went on, the TOD, if you will, the transit-oriented development. So when you see that it isn't even open yet and there's already been $3.3 billion worth of investment along the line with another 600 million yet to come, I think is what the rough numbers were. It's impressive. And though the line was expensive to build, it's going to be here for well over 100 years. And it's a long-term investment. But the economic impact is really significant. So it's one thing I think is important to continue to emphasize.

Anyone else? Okay, good.

Thanks for being here this evening. Thanks to the whole team and to the council representatives. Really appreciate you being here. Next thing on the agenda is. Moving out of the reports and recommendations portion of the agenda or 8 moving into the reports or recommendations portion of the agenda from the special presentations portion and the first matter and the report recommendations portion of the agenda is resolution 2026 dash 41 which would accept donations on behalf of the city of that is there a motion that effect. So moved. Second rejection move to repair seconds, the adoption of resolution 2026 that 41. Any further discussion with respect to that resolution which would accept donations on behalf of the city. All right roll call please.

Councilmember Pierce. I was never acting I councilmember Jackson I councilmember Sir I may have been all right.

That resolution is adopted 2026-41. And in this reporting period, we've got some nice gifts from Kowalski's to the Art Center Programming. Craig and Jennifer Dickinson, a nice memorial. In favor of Naomi Johnson for the Arts Center, several others for Naomi Johnson passed away recently, Boris and Joyce Mokoff, and Michael and Angela Schatz. Thank you for your donations on behalf of Naomi Johnson. Very much appreciated. Next item in this portion of the agenda is a proposed amendment to an ordinance. And I think we've got Tom Swenson here. Perry Vedder is out of the state, I believe, and Tom Swenson, the Assistant Director of Parks and Natural Resources is gonna guide us through this matter. Mr. Swenson, welcome.

Thank you, Mayor and members of Council. To improve safety for the community, staff is recommending to amend the city code for parks and publicly owned properties in response to public safety challenges in parks. A three-pronged approach including enforcement, engagement, and policy is occurring. This code amendment is a policy change. It is important for the police and the park department to be notified of large groups and other planned events that occur in parks so resources can be used efficiently and for better customer service. If adopted, a permit would be required for groups of 25 or more and also for planned activities at picnic shelters, athletic fields, and other park areas. In addition to this, the city attorney has recommended some additional rules in section 24-258 that improves the operation of this ordinance. Current code does not state that reservations or permits are required for events. This change would give police officers tools to improve safety. Parks currently has a simple system for reservations online. This reservation now would be converted to an advanced reservation permit for this purpose. Staff does not believe that there will be significant changes for park users and staff will use common sense when applying this ordinance to things observed in parks. Minnetonka has a similar ordinance and they have not encountered issues over the last 10 years that they've had it in place And my goal is to get tools to the police quickly and we can always make adjustments further if necessary And with that I'm interested in hearing comments and questions, you know, thank you comes over Jackson.

I

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So my first question is the applications for seven business days in advance. Tell me where that came from. What I'm thinking is sometimes First Amendment activities arise pretty quickly. If there's an event, people want to get together and share stories or share concerns. Waiting seven days is kind of a long time for First Amendment activities. So tell me where the seven days came from, please.

It's just part of a planning process just to give us enough time to react and respond to the, and start a dialogue with whatever the issue is. There would be a chance that we'd approve things quicker than seven days, but we want to ensure we have as much time as we can to review what the application is for.

Okay. So I'll tell you where I'm coming from and that's the, Oh, I've lost the phrase now. But I don't want a random way of administering this. I want everybody to be treated fairly and equally. And if some things go through easily and for some reason something else doesn't, although the activity itself is the same, that's a lot of discretion. And I know that you guys and our current park staff would be very fair and very even-handed, but I want that to be written into the statute. And so that goes to my second comment, and that is subsection number 16 in section 24-255, and that reads, use, so it's prohibited, in addition to the requirements, no person shall in any park or publicly owned property use recreation facilities and park areas, such as picnic shelter areas and athletic fields within a park facility without an advanced reservation permit from the city. I think this is wildly broad. I walk my dog in the park every day. Now, that could be a use of a park. I don't have a permit to do that. I might go down and meet some neighbors. I don't have a permit to do that, so I'm really concerned that this is overly broad and could be selectively enforced. So those are my concerns. I don't really have any. I guess I'd just like to drop number 16 and I'd like to know the reasoning behind including that in this ordinance.

So we have some events that happen in parks that are planned but less than 25 and they're causing some other issues that we have specifically at Harness and Acres. There's a events that happen in open spaces that are organized well in advance with no warning to us and it's causing possibly you've seen some feedback from residents in the area where the park is not usable to the general public because events are occurring with no permit and no interaction. So this would allow us to control activities that happen on other spaces basically in parks.

So I don't want to draft on the run. I think this needs to be rewritten to more reflect the problem that's happening. Because just to use recreational facilities in park areas, like I said, I do that every day. And I don't have a permit to do it. And if you guys got mad at me, I get off council and they say, oh, that woman was a pain in the neck when she was on council. We're going to really show her what for. You could come down and arrest me every day. I walked my dog under this statute. So I'm really concerned about that.

Ms. Lenz.

I'm going to add a little bit. We've had some discussions particularly about Subpoint 16. I do think that some of the city attorney's language that he's added in Section 24.258 does address some of the things in 16, maybe in a little bit better wording at this point. So I think we are comfortable if you wanted to remove that at this point in time and then we can continue to monitor. I think the real intention or the urgency behind this was really being able to focus in on groups larger than the 25. But there is some language in here that would allow the police department if there was an activity that is occurring that would have adverse effects. There's a little bit more definition in there that they could shut it down or shut that portion of the park down if there's an issue. So I do think that some of the language in 258 for now may be able to settle some of it and we can continue to work on this and there might be more updates in the future.

Okay, thank you. I would appreciate that.

Council Member Pierce. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. So I agree with Member Jackson But this almost feels like we're going a little too fast. And so I'm hedging what I'm saying because my email might have been the first one you got saying we got to do something. But when I read through this, this was not actually what I had in mind. So we already have an online system today that if you want to use a shelter, you have to go online you got to have a permit for it that's been part of the process for i don't know a decade if not longer and so that is well established i've used it if people have called me and said hey we want to use a park shelter what do we do go online see if it's available you have to have a permit for whatever you're doing right that made sense to me um what i was actually getting at is unauthorized it's kind of the way we're describing it now but larger groups that i was comfortable with 25 if if a group that is 25 or larger is going to be in the park I just, as a city, I would think we'd wanna know about that for no other reason than we wanna make sure we have resources available. If something happens at the park and that group is there and they need special assistance, We know that there's a group there and whatever they're doing, playing football, basketball, whatever, we're aware of that and we can help provide services as needed. But it wasn't my intent that if we did that, you had to have a permit to be in the park. And so I give an example, and this was not Edina, this was in Hopkins. We would get together and play cricket. And so we would just go down to the softball field, and there would be 25 of us, if not more, because people would come to watch the cricket match. And if there was nobody using the softball field, that's what we would do. Didn't bother anybody. we were there you um at that point you didn't have to have a permit to use the softball field because of the time of day we were using it during the week kind of business hours kind of thing but nobody knew we were there and so if somebody took a ball to the head and had a concussion the nobody in Hopkins knew that there was this match going on, right? And so I was just thinking of, I'd say it this way, kind of a, we want you to register online that you're gonna be in the park, this particular park, 25 or 30 people between these hours, here's what we're doing, haves at it, right? No permitting required. Using the term permit to me, just signifies a lot of friction and that wasn't my intent by my ask. So if law enforcement goes to a park and there are a bunch of people there and there's nothing on the log that says there's a match going on or whatever, then now our law enforcement has the right to say, hey, but what's going on you could you could register for that in the moment with the police officer when you say oh yeah we're just we're here playing cricket we're going to be here for these this these hours that's why we're here so they're kind of registered um No friction. Just go online, do it, and go. You can do it while you're there. You wouldn't have to wait seven days. There's no permitting process. It's just registering so that we know as a city what services might be required during those particular hours. I was looking for something more like that. And then if people don't do that and they're there, then we do have, as Chief said, we can ask people to leave if they're doing something that's not kosher. And so the reason I start with that is because this feels like we need to have a deeper conversation about the intent and the problem we're trying to solve. As I thought about it, it's for anybody. I've been driving down Vernon, and I've had kids flip me off because they're doing wheelies in the middle of Vernon on e-bikes. And so it's not a thing we mentioned earlier. It's not a thing about ethnicity or anything. It's we want everybody to feel safe and feel welcomed in the park. So that was my original intent. And my concern is if we take this ordinance today and we start cutting it up, I don't know that we're gonna end up with the right, with the best product for the community. And I go a step further to say it, if we're doing something like this, I kinda have maybe two ways to think about it. One would be, We set a goal of what we're trying to achieve. We take the rest of the summer to kind of judge to figure out exactly what we need. Chief kind of talked about that a little bit earlier, wasn't referencing this in particular, but kind of gives us some space to figure out what we might need going in the next park season. You could do that too. We could say, here's what we're trying to achieve, and we could get feedback from residents, whether it's a public hearing or whether it's a community event where people can come and share what they feel like they need from a perception standpoint to feel welcome and safe in the park above and beyond just an ordinance. And so I think either one of those, I don't know how we're going to get to that kind of an outcome today. Because for me personally, the starting base is wrong, because it's not what I intended.

Councilmember Pierce, Mayor Hovland. I just want to invite the chief up for a minute because I think I want to get us back to the intent and purpose. Why are we doing this and having this conversation today? Why do we put the ordinance together today? And part of it is grounded in giving a tool to the police department based off of the situations that we're in in this moment, and I totally agree. I don't want unintended consequences, but I do want to talk about what the need is, and so I kind of want to see if the chief wants to come up and explain how this tool would help them in circumstances that they've been seeing all summer with the movement of people through various parks and being able to predict so we can keep people safe.

Yeah, I think that'd be great. I am just being clear. I don't want anybody to think I'm being flippant when I say this. I did send an email saying we need to do something. And so I'm acknowledging you did something. And I do appreciate that. But as I sit and I think about this, I'm not sure it's not what I intended. And I'm not sure it's getting the outcome that's in my head. So I think it'd be great to understand that from you, Chief.

Sure. Mayor, Council Member Pierce, Chief Milburn again. Just from a law enforcement standpoint that I can provide on this and legal foundation is what we're focused on. And so what in the criminal side, and Dave can certainly correct me if I'm wrong in this, but What we really need is to have foundation with a permitting process or structure from the city to even start that action. In other words, we're not going to go out and do random controls. We get a call from somebody. We have access to databases, but we're not positioned to do quality control and sign people up in those moments. We need to know and understand from a lawful standpoint, Is a person allowed to be on that property or not? Now the general rule is they are, unless there's something that would stipulate that they can't be there, like through a permit process as an example. So it's important to us on the criminal side, if you were to move into prosecution, we're citing people that we start with that so that we're on solid footing if we move into that. Now with that said, from a practical standpoint, we would not be looking at patrolling this particular ordinance. We have better things to do. It's if we're called upon a situation that we have that legal foundation to start with. And we would probably have other staff involved with the proactive interaction with people, those kinds of things. It's kind of a tool in the toolbox you alluded to earlier. The other thing that we're dealing with when we talk about regional violence, other communities that had one incident happened last summer, summer before somebody had signed up, but they used a fake name and they set up a birthday party. And that unfortunately led to violence and gunfire in that particular park. So we just want to be careful in terms of structure and process that we're identifying people correctly who is legally bound to that permitting process, who do we have for a point of contact and reference. So there's things like that that we focus on on the law enforcement side that would be important for us as we come to the table from our standpoint.

Go ahead.

Thank you and thank you. I think everyone for pulling this together. I know it was pulled together quickly and I completely understand the intention and one of my goals is to help give you tools to ensure that you're able to maintain the safety of our parks and so I completely understand that perspective of it. where I'm struggling with this is thinking about those like second order consequences that might come from it. One, because we would be setting an ordinance potentially, unless we found time bound for it, that would sit on our books indefinitely. And so while I might trust who we have in that position to be making the right calls of when to use this as a tool, that doesn't mean that that's a forever situation. And so that's something that I'm conscious of. I also worry about knowing just generally how we enforce policies, right? Is this giving people potentially another tool in their toolbox to kind of have disputes with neighbors because they don't like that they're playing in the park and they're loud or something like that. So I, don't think that this is the right way to do it right now. I don't know what the right way is, but I agree with Councilmember Pearson saying we probably need something because what we've identified now are kind of, I'd say, two needs within the community. One is misuse potentially, thinking of Arneson Acres, of is there use of our parks that we don't want to be there today, and then also the safety aspect. And so I think if we take those two back and we really ideate on how do we come up with an ordinance or two ordinances that really reflect what it is that we want to achieve, I think that we'll end with a better product. and within the community right now. And so part of me is hesitant to say, let's go back to the drawing board and kick off this process that is local government that can mean we maybe have an ordinance that's ready to go for next summer when we have a pain point right now and our police officers looking for a tool. And so one of the things that I'm kind of reflecting on is Is there something that we can come up with that we could agree to for a temporary like over the next three months? Knowing that then we could come back and really work to make it the best that it can be for the future. I don't know, but I just I want to make sure that we're able to keep our park safe knowing that we have an acute problem right now, but also making sure that we're not. Not thinking through the second order consequences.

I'm going to go to manager Neal.

I really appreciate the comments of the other everybody who's spoken thus far. I do agree with member Jackson that 16 is problematic because it does isolate individuals saying no person shall and I wasn't thinking of it in terms of walking. the dog in a general thing, but more in terms of this makes it sound like if I'm out and it starts raining, I can't seek shelter neath the pavilion. Or if it's super hot, I can't seek shade. And I think it does tee things up for potential misuse, if you will. You know, if I'm sitting there eating a sandwich, can someone come up and say, hey, do you have a permit to do that? And I think Really number 16 is something that I really wrestle with and I have a hard time thinking I could support. I don't know if we could remove 16. Put a trial period on this and recommend and the thing is this is a situation where it is rushed. This is policy being created by staff, not the community. We don't have feedback from the Park Commission. We don't and. To top it off, last night I spent with the fire department going to all these community gatherings, some of them in small parks that are surrounded by homes, and you could see how easily you would end up with 25 people. I talked to somebody who's planning his son's birthday party and is estimating that it will probably be over 25 people once the adults show up and all of that. And so you start thinking about that and you think, okay, You want a birthday party in the park, it rains. So you move it to the next day. What then? And so it opens up a lot of issues that I do think we need some time to think through. However, it's a pressing situation. I'm not thrilled that the number 25 is going to be applied to all of our 40 Edina parks. It seems like for some it would be very nonsensical. We do have some teeny tiny little parks, but I do understand Other cities have a similar kind of language, and I just wish we had more time to do this in a way that was iterative and involving the community. So those are my concerns.

Thank you. Manager Neal and Mr. Kendall, I'm going to ask the two of you to give us an explanation of how you think this ordinance was crafted, what's it intended to do, and how do we avoid the problems, maybe within the confines of the language proposed or modifications there to the concerns that some of the council members have raised and still find something that's helpful in terms of enforcement, in terms of large groups of people gathering in the parks. uh... and that not have any tools to disperse you know i i think uh...

I think our impression of staff that we got from council and also community was that this was, and I think the word was acute, there was an acute issue and that you were wanting us to bring a public policy solution that we thought would work and provide the legal basis for our police to take necessary police power action. So we looked for, examples of that among kind of our comparable communities. The city of Minnetonka has such an ordinance. This one was based on theirs. It's not exactly the same, but we've conferred with their staff. They tell us that it works and that they really don't have to use it very often there. So that's a little bit of where it came from. In terms of what your options are as a council, we can think of this as a feedback loop right now right you've provided us some feedback tonight we could sit down and and go through this draft and prepare a new draft and present to you at our august 18th meeting we had this meeting we had this rest prepared in such a way that you could take action on it tonight and it could go into enforcement very quickly soon after. But if you're not comfortable with it, you need to be comfortable with it because you're the people that say whether we're going to do this or not. But we could go back to this on August 18th and bring you back a different version of it that you can take action on there. I don't know if Mr. Kendall has anything to add to that.

Add along and then we'll go back to Member Roeser.

Mayor, I guess the only thing I would add is regarding item number 16 there, I don't think I drafted that, but I also don't think it's intended to stop people from walking their dog. The language talks about using areas such as picnic shelters or athletic fields without reservation. I don't think the police would interpret it that way, someone walking their dog, that they would try to stop them or cite them for not having a a permit or a reservation for that type of purpose. So if there's some lack of clarity there, that can certainly be changed, but that's not the way it was intended.

And I think the deputy city manager commented earlier that if that's the particular item, everything else is great except for 16, you can take 16 out by motion and edit it out. Okay, we'll consider that. Member Erser.

I did have a slide that I wanted shown that shows signage in one of our parks. I think it's Strattcower Park. If we could get that one up. And it has a city code that I have not had time to look at. The slide. The picture, yeah. My past career is shown. So this is a slide in one of our Edina Parks, and I don't know if this is in all of our Edina Parks, but it references City Code 1230.06, which I admittedly, somebody sent this to me close to the meeting, and I haven't had time to try to find that. But it's an interesting way of getting at athletic groups can use these fields by permit only, but then it says permits are not required for neighborhood use by order of the park director. And I guess this was before Perry Better. And it looks like it's been there for a while.

Is this a John Caprios thing? I would assume so.

So I believe the parks director has authority to make rules in parks. Interesting. But I'm not the attorney. But I believe the goal here was to actually have it in an ordinance so the police could use it as a tool, not as a rule, but more as a tool.

So there is a 1230.06.

When I looked it up before the meeting, it referenced city code, but I didn't make a copy of it.

Okay. All right. But is it just in one? I mean, I've never...

I think this is oriented more towards the actual playing fields, right? Not the playgrounds or shelters.

So our athletic fields, many of them have a similar language posted right on them. Okay. So they're basically a permit system for athletic field use. So if teams are showing up, they need to make a reservation.

Okay. But member Jackson could walk her dog.

He could.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

So what do you do in a situation where I'll use Roslyn Park. They've got the big pavilion down there. And somebody's got a permit to use it for a friends and family gathering or a wedding, post-wedding reception. And they get down there, they get a permit, and they get down there, and there's an ad hoc group that's using the pavilion. What do you do now?

If staff's available, they'll try to interact. Many times, police is actually called. by the people trying to use it, because they know that they have the permit or the reservation, but someone's just in the shelter.

So the police have the ability right now to say these folks have a permit, you guys have to vacate the premises?

Oh.

Or not? I will not speak to that.

Or is it just a matter of trying to talk them into leaving? Yeah, mayor, that's exactly how we would just try to talk them into leaving. Um, if there's individual criminal acts occurring within that, so let's say there was an assault or maybe loud music or disorderly behavior. Again, that gives us more foundation to take action. Um, I'm not aware of any circumstance where we've had to arrest people, you know, in those kinds of situations. Um, so the best we've been doing is like verbalizing and telling people to move along. And as far as I understand, they've been compliant with that if we've ever had any issues.

I could see where that could create tension though. So to me, it's a little bit like, THE OVERNIGHT PARKING ORDINANCE. YOU CAN'T PARK ON THE STREETS OVER SIX HOURS, YOU KNOW, ESPECIALLY IN THE WINTERTIME. AND I THINK MAYBE THE RULE APPLIES IN THE SUMMERTIME TOO. IT'S NOT AN ORDINANCE THAT YOU GUYS GO AROUND AND LOOK FOR CARS AND MARK THEM AND THEN COME BACK SIX HOURS LATER TO CHECK THEM. YOU KNOW, IT'S A NEIGHBORHOOD, IT'S A NEIGHBOR-DRIVEN COMPLAINT BASIS ORDINANCE, WHICH IS KIND OF WHAT I FEEL HERE. BECAUSE I CAN SEE A SITUATION WHERE THERE WOULD BE AN ADVANTAGE IN HAVING SOMEBODY HAVE A PERMIT FOR A BIG GROUP AT THE PAVILION, AND IF NOBODY, IF SOMEBODY ELSE IS ALREADY THERE, AN AD HOC GROUP, THEN YOU'VE GOT A BASIS FOR ASKING THEM TO LEAVE, OTHERWISE THEY'RE IN VIOLATION OF THE LAW IF THIS ORDINANCE WERE IN PLACE, RIGHT? RIGHT. OTHER THAN JUST TRYING TO TALK THEM INTO LEAVING. CORRECT. AND NOT HAVING THEM SAY, WE WERE HERE FIRST, WE DON'T CARE IF THE OTHER PEOPLE HAVE A PERMIT OR NOT, YOU'VE GOT SOME LEGAL AUTHORITY TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. So in the situation of a field. Activity, let's say 25 guys decide they want to go play soccer in one of our fields. It's a spontaneous sort of thing they. Talk to each other over TikTok like they did at Yancey Park and they all go down there to play soccer and they don't have a permit because it's all spontaneous. And they're not doing anything wrong. What do we do? We just leave them alone because they don't have a permit? Even though under the ordinance it says they need a permit?

Currently, they would just be using the field. If there was comments that rose up to the police, then they would have a tool to, again, I'm speaking on behalf of the police. But currently, the field would be used and there would be no ordinance against that.

Yeah. But it's just another illustration of some of the complexity of the situation, trying to figure out what to do. Councilmember Jackson?

Yes, so I have a question on process. So we could pass this on the first reading tonight and then maybe work on it over the next two weeks and refine it on the second reading? We've done that before, haven't we?

I think we could.

I'd be actually just going to comment to I'd be reluctant to jettison 16 because of the very factual scenario that we talked about Yeah, so I would I would Delete it for first reading and maybe come back with something that's tighter I think it could be I don't know the facts particularly so I can't you know, well it would preclude

Without it, somebody could do exactly what happens now. Go down and occupy the pavilion and say we're not leaving even though somebody comes with a big group of the permit and they're gonna have a celebration down there.

Okay.

They can't, the police can't do a thing about it.

So leave it there and then tighten it up.

16, let's do something about it, just tighten up the language.

Okay, so we would pass it on first reading, amend it on second reading?

Theoretically, yeah.

Okay, Mr. Mayor.

Council Member Peirce.

Mr. Mayor, can I clarify for a second? After we reviewed what 16 is getting at, I do think that the stuff that the city attorney added down below already also addresses. It gives the director or any law enforcement officer may declare that any part of the park facility is closed for an interval of time or for any particular use as reasonably deemed necessary in public interest. It's very broad. That probably maybe should be a conversation about the unintended effects of it, but that already, that line there would get at the same thing that you're having an issue at with Subpoint 16.

You could delete that provision.

You could delete 16, pass as is.

Continue to tweak. The language in six says the director or any city law enforcement officer may declare that any part of any of the park, any or all of the park facility is closed to the public. Well, if somebody comes down there with a permit, you're going to tell them they can't be there either because it's closed to the public and they got a permit? I don't see where that language has some potential issues associated with it too.

I'm assuming that the only reason in the duty determined necessary in public interest is that there's some sort of safety component that's happening at that time that a law enforcement officer is getting involved and saying, you know what, we're going to shut this down tonight. Everybody's got to go home.

Yeah, mayor. I think that the intent of that language is kind of what happens next. You know, the police go out and folks don't have a permit and they say you don't have a permit and the folks say, well, okay, what are you going to do about it? That's when the police say, okay, we have the authority to shut down this area, you know, until this disperses.

I'm not lobbying for the elimination of that language. I'm just saying that I think that's another reason to keep 16 in place because if you're going to shut the park down and that's a different situation than telling one group they have to leave because they don't have a permit because these other people are going to have a celebration there.

Yeah, I don't think the language is any neither 16 or six are intended to prevent people from who have a permit from using that permit, you know, so if if a group is there without a permit and and folks come in who do have a permit, I think the police need authority to ask the folks without the permit to leave so that the folks with the permit can utilize the space.

Member Pierce. Couple of questions. So today. If someone is using a pavilion and they do not have a permit and the person who has the permit shows up, what happens? They call the police. Let's just say they call the police and the chief shows up. What do you do? Nothing.

You just move on. Yes, because we don't, well, one that's kind of in the civil side of things. So we don't, there's like not an enforceable action because there's not anything clarified in ordinance that would stipulate that we would take action. We would then get back to what we're talking about before trying to move people along and explain great Rational process or if there's a separate criminal element within that so others some like a statute violation Disorderly conduct somebody's assaulting. Okay, that's a different Threshold that then we would take action on something like that. All right.

That's not what I thought you were gonna say if There is a permit that one party has, the other party doesn't have it. You need an ordinance that stipulates that in order to move the person on. So that makes sense to me, but that's not why we're here. And so we're having this conversation about people using, walking their dogs in the park, me walking in the park, using the pavilion or not using the pavilion. That's not why we're here. It's not about the structure, it's about what people are doing in the structure. And so if people are doing illegal activity or activity that by our ordinance should not be allowed in one of our parks, then we should do something. And so the odd thing to me, this ordinance comes out, we got emails from people saying, well, now you're gonna require me to have a permit to use my park. And so what we're seeing is you've got individuals on both sides saying we don't like this. We don't know if this is what we want to do. And if the issue is today you're supposed to have a permit to use a structure or a field, right, if it's an organized game. If you have the permit and somebody else is there, you need to be able to act. And that needs to be part of an ordinance so that we can do that. And then two, if you're doing activity that we don't want in the park, you should be able to shut that down, just like you said. But those are the two things to me.

Can I add one more? I want to come back to number 15, which is groups of 25 or more. I think that when you get to a certain point of an unexpected pop-up group outside of potentially what's happening from a public safety perspective, you also have food waste and trash and bathrooms. There's a quality of service component that we also have of how can we be able to provide service and to the next group that actually did maybe permit or rent it and show up the next day. So I do think it's adding another element or a layer, but it's outside. But I do think that that's the 25 or more is the part that we're really trying to solve at this point in time, because it gives us a threshold to be able to say, hey, you got to get a permit. and if people good people are there trying to gather hang out and have a soccer meet up they can get a permit and we'll know where they are which means that we are able to protect them and keep them safe and to make sure that we have a better idea of how to handle that situation similar to what happened at yancey park yeah i so i just asked those questions because i i don't think we should approve this on first reading

I think we should have more conversation about it, about what we're actually trying to address. Because I don't know that we have an issue with people unauthorized using a pavilion and the permit person comes and they can't get rid of that person. We didn't answer that question consistently either time. The first time it came up, we said, well, we'll call the police and we ask them to move along. Next time we say, well, we don't do anything because we don't have an ordinance in order to do that. And so we're not really consistent, which is okay, but my fear is I don't want us to be solving a problem we actually don't have. This all came up because we want people to use our facilities in an authorized manner. And if you're not using our facilities, and that's pavilions, fields, whatever, then we should do something about it. And again, I'm just being really transparent. My first email to the chief said, if people are doing things in our parks that we don't want them to be doing, and we have an ordinance, I want it to be a misdemeanor. I want them out of there. I don't care who they are, because the parks belong to everybody. And so that was again where I was going and this to me is kind of veering away from that. And so if we're gonna do something, I don't think we should pass this on first reading and we could do nothing and just keep doing what we're doing because I've been on council six years, we've never talked about this as an issue. until two weeks ago. I don't have anything else to say.

Council Member Jackson.

So I have heard about Arneson acres being misused. I think this is, I haven't witnessed it, but I have heard complaints about that. Well, I think people are going to the pavilion, and other people have asked to use it, and they can't get access to something that they've planned to use. That's what I've heard. And like I said, I haven't witnessed it, and it's been a while, but I know that that's been occurring.

We should address that.

Well, what I think I'd like to do is I want to offer an amendment and then open up. We have two weeks. Or we could even push it to September if we want to have a longer period of time for people to comment. But we get this out on public notice. People can look at it and send us stories and make comments. And we can decide to not pass it on second reading in the future. But at least we'll get this on record. And then we can get a public discussion going, which I think would be good. Because I know people are really worried. And one of the things we want to do is show that we're taking people's concerns about safety very seriously. So I guess what I would say is rather than removing 16, I would just change one word. So instead of park areas, I'd say park amenities. So use recreational facilities and park amenities, such as parks, shelter areas, and athletic fields within a park facility without an advanced reservation permit from the city. we could put it in there and ask for people to tell us about their use experience of the parks and and you know what beyond what we can think of here tonight get some comments and then make amendments as needed or decide not to pass it all together next meeting but let's get it something on record get things the ball rolling and then we can get comments from the wider community. And then to Member Risser's point, what I'd like to do is put a tickler on the calendar to revisit this in either six months or a year and see how it's working, or maybe the end of summer of 2027, revisit it and say, has this solved the problem? Have new problems arisen? And so it's not sitting there on the books. I think that Member Agnew said it would sort of sit there on the books for as long as it could. But while we can, we can revisit it and say, yeah, maybe this wasn't such a good idea and go back and see what the experience has been. So that's what I would recommend is just amending 16 to change areas to amenities. Do it on first reading and then ask the public to give us comments.

I would ask that if we do that, that we add in either the six month or the one year timeline into the ordinance itself. That's a good idea.

There are elements of this that make a lot of sense. you know, in terms of applying to people other than a group of 25. You can't place or keep goods, wares, merchandise, or other vehicles without the written permission of a park director in the park. Can't conduct any band procession parade or military formation without the written permission of the park director. You can't drive a park, drive or park a motor vehicle on any area not designated for parking or travel. A lot of these things or take or allow any dog or animal were forbidden by posted signs. Take or allow a horse or other livestock upon the park. I mean, there's some of these things are real specific. And don't get into the heart of the problem and don't seem to be offensive but seem to be of assistance in those particular areas. It's when you get to 15, gather with a group of 25 or more people for any reason without obtaining or being in compliance with an advanced reservation permit from the city. So... What's good and bad about that? I mean, we've talked a little bit about it in terms of those ad hoc meetups and parks are open to everyone, but I just hearken back to this notion that it's, over the years of doing this, it's a little bit like the, can't park on the street over six hours, and we don't enforce it. It's enforced by complaint, and that would be maybe the situation here. But without some kind of, without some tools available, we're not going to be able to have the kind of control that we want in the park, or have our police have the kind of control that they would want in the park. So it's that finding that line between allowing them to do the good police work that they do on some basis under the law, but not Impeding the use of the parks for general population. I mean it's just it's a It's a pathway that's pretty interesting to try to figure out and Mr. Kendall you've tried to help us on that So would you go back remember Jackson and tell me what that 16 change was again I

use recreational facilities and park amenities, such as picnic shelter areas and athletic fields within a park facility without an advanced reservation permit from the city. So that means if you're just down there visiting with your neighbor and somebody's mad at you, they can't call the police on you and say, ah, they're in the park and she doesn't have a permit. So it takes that random element out of it. So if you are... monopolizing a park shelter or an athletic field and somebody else has a permitted use, the police have a reason to move you along. But it narrows it to amenities as opposed to just park areas, which to me is a park. And that's, I think, where the broadness comes. But, you know, if I'm down playing pickleball and a league comes down, they say, you know, we have a permit to play our game, then I have to move along. But if I'm just down there playing and there's nobody around, I don't have to have a permit for that.

To me, under Section 24-255, 1 through 14 make a lot of sense. I mean, in fact, 14, I'm thinking about that in the context of Centennial Lakes and the activities we had down there. What I read from 14 leads me to believe that we don't have any ability to keep people out of the park after dark or before the park opens.

It's about some kind of ordinance. That's existing ordinance. It's the underlying parts that are new.

Yes. Just be in or remain within the park before or after posted hours of operation without the written permission of the park director.

This is new.

This is new 15, this is 14.

14 is existing.

All right, so, all right. Okay, other Councilmember Jackson has proposed something without moving anything. I don't think you've moved anything yet. No, I haven't. Just more conversation. What do people think about that approach that she has?

I just had a question, Mr. Mayor. So the Yancey Park issue, or incident or whatever we call it, how, what portion of this ordinance would have allowed police to do what they needed to do that they couldn't before?

Council member Pierce, by having a permit to allow for more than 25 people to gather would allow, and if they were in violation of that, so having a permit in hand would allow us to go in and move them away from the property

What time was that?

That would have been probably I think eight-ish. That's a good point too because after 10 o'clock we're fine. The ordinance is in place so we can do our thing after 10 o'clock when all parks close. We're trying to account for the window between probably 6 p.m. to 10 o'clock p.m.

And you were called because there was activity there that should not have been occurring there.

For that incident? Yeah. We were called for gunfire. Yeah. We were in the park ahead of that doing proactive patrols and noticed there were a lot of people in the park, but there was nothing we can do with that.

Until there was gunfire. Correct. I'm not in favor of approving this in any way without having a conversation about it. The reason I was asking those questions is because I felt like you already had authority to address that issue, which is true because there was gunfire. You're saying prior to that, if you were trying to be preventative, all you could do is go have a presence in the park, but you couldn't force people to move on. Correct. And it's hard for me to believe that if police had presence there, that that activity would have continued. And so I've said this before on other ordinances, we can't legislate people to do what they're supposed to do anyway. So we can have ordinances on the books, and if we can't or we are not going to enforce them, then they're just paper with a green medallion on them. And so I felt like you had authority to do something that particular time. And you've said that, right? Maybe you can't do it proactively other than having a presence in the park. But to me, that is something. And you don't need an ordinance to do that. So I think if we did nothing, and an incident happens again, you could do the same thing. If you got a call that said there's three hockey teams down there and it's 8.30 and there's loud music and they shouldn't be there, you would go. And I think you would tell them to disperse personally, whether it's in an ordinance or not. I think that's what you would do. And I would expect that they would disperse. And so I could be wrong in that, but that's how I view this. The issue of permits, that is a real issue to me. If we have law-abiding citizens that have a permit in hand to use one of our facilities and there is someone there who does not have a permit, we should be able to move those folks along. That one makes sense to me. But I still find it hard to believe that you would show up at a pavilion and if someone has a permit that you wouldn't tell the other people to move on.

We would make our best attempt, but if we move into citations, this is set up for a petty misdemeanor, we lack the legal authority to move into that next step.

Yes.

Right.

And I'm being transparent. That is what I asked for. When people are in violation of those types of requirements, I wanted it to be a misdemeanor. And so that is what I was looking for. but I think we should take time and go through this is my opinion. I won't vote for this at first reading, but you only need a simple majority.

I was just going to comment that Council Member Jackson got me going down the wrong. This isn't her fault. She was talking about walking her dog. This only really pertains to groups of 25 or more should they have a permit. groups or 25 or more have a permit to be in the park doing something. And then the other one would be the situation where you're using a recreational facility, a park area, like a picnic area to the point you just made, or athletic fields too, without advanced reservation permit from the city. So maybe the Yeah, it's a good, there's some great dialogue here about what's the right pathway here. We try to figure out something. Council Member Agnew.

Thank you. I just want to State kind of where my mind is at after this conversation. I feel that knowing that we have an acute issue, I reflected on that and hearing what Council Member Pierce was saying of what our reaction should be. I think that with the reserves and with the cadets, If in the short term we got these calls, I hope that we could maintain some of that presence for awhile, and so I think we should pause or not approve this tonight and instead allow the additional kind of reserve capacity that we have to support the parks in the interim and really talk about what are our goals and what is the ordinance that we want to see to support that.

One of the suggestions earlier was that we, in addition to, I think, Member Jackson, offer up a couple of alternatives. One was maybe publish the proposed ordinance to the public. I think Member Rister has mentioned that, too. Give a little more time for public input.

I would like the Park Commission to have a crack at it, too, to be able to

So maybe we could take it up next meeting, but in the interim, get it circulated. I don't know what the Park Commission's schedule is. Meet between now and our next meeting? I would think they would.

Yeah, it should be next week.

Monday.

Monday?

Monday. Monday, this, like, the 10th. August 10th?

I'm looking to Tracy, yes. Yeah, look at Tracy. So they meet Monday. Okay. Get it out to them right away as one possibility. Get it to the Park Commission. Get it broadcast to the residents in our town. Try to get feedback within the next two weeks, both from the Park Commission and then from our residents, and then take it up again in two weeks. Do you work? policing activities, you know, and then to member Agnew's point, we're going to have people in the parks now. We're going to have our cadet corps there and other people as well. Does that sound like another option that people want to think about? Member Risser?

One point I hadn't raised is we talk about wanting people to be able to go and do things, positive, healthy, exercise, that kind of thing, get out into the parks, is part of that. I do think pausing this is good because I would not want to do something that would actually reduce the number of Edina residents going to enjoy the parks and being there and being present and all of that because I think that could be a problem too.

It sounds like from Minnetonka though that it hasn't been an issue in terms of impedance of people using the parks but the tool that they have available so I figure I guess we would be thinking about what's the best way to design that tool, craft that tool. And maybe it's something akin to Minnetonka, maybe not, based on the feedback we get. Council Member Jackson, any further thoughts?

Yes, thank you. One thing that I would like to have just maybe a little bit more information on before making a decision is the work it takes to clean up a park when there are large groups there. So I think Assistant Manager Lenz made a good point. when she said that there is garbage and there's use in bathroom use and stuff like that and why we have permits for using our facilities in the first place. So I'd like to have, I think that's an important part of these large gatherings. Even if they're peaceful, they're still stressful on the parks. So that's something I'd like to just get a little bit more input on before we vote on this. Not tonight.

So in general, if we know an event is happening, athletic event, scheduled rental, anything like that, we staff accordingly so we can change things over and get it ready for the next group. If it's an unscheduled or unpermitted event, we might prep something on a Friday and we know there's an event scheduled for a Saturday morning. Well, something happens in between then, then it's a disorganized mess, basically. because any of the work that was done prior is now ruined. You'd have to bring in extra staff to get ready for the next event that's occurring. So unscheduled events cause disruption and make it a lesser experience for the next person.

Okay, thank you.

So one possibility would be based on what member Jackson said would be to motion to table. The proposed amendment to ordinance 2026 dash 12 to our August 18th meeting and direct that we get an opinion from the Park Commission as to their thoughts on this proposed amendment and also. Release the proposed language to the public as soon as possible and get their feedback. before we take it up again on the 18th of August.

Okay.

That sound like it might work? Yep. People comfortable with that approach? Yep. Okay. Is there a motion to that effect?

So moved.

SECOND. REJECTION MOVES. MEMBER PEARCE SECONDS THE MOTION TO TABLE THE PROPOSED APPROVAL AND AMENDMENT OF ORDINANCE 2026-12 OF CHAPTER 24 OF THE DENIS CITY CODE TO OUR MEETING ON AUGUST 18, 2026. AND IN THE INTERIM DIRECT THE MATTER TO THE PARK COMMISSION FOR REVIEW AND OPINION AS TO THE Substance of the proposed amendment and also release it to the general public for their comment with an advisory that they should have their comments into us by Let's say noon on August 18th 2026 Is that fairly state the ocean? All right any further discussion Roll call please Mayor Hovland.

Hi councilmember Risser Aye. Councilmember Agnew? Aye. Councilmember Jackson? Aye. Councilmember Pierce?

Aye.

All right, the motion's approved. We'll take this matter up again on the 18th of August. And now we're under the joint powers agreement that we added to the agenda this evening. We've been given a copy of it in advance. Our city attorney has looked at this. Our city manager has looked at it, assistant city manager. We know from past experience that there's no ability to modify these joint powers agreements with the BCA. But it is, I don't know if, Chief, you wanted to explain it again, or Attorney Kendall? but it allows us to participate in that BCA Violent Crime Reduction Unit work around violent crime in the Twin Cities. And I think, Chief, you explained it well before with your slide presentation, the number of agencies involved, the number of people involved. We'd have a partially dedicated officer there at no cost to the City of Edina to help with the work of the task force on violent crime reduction and strategies in the Twin Cities area.

Yeah, that's right, Mayor. The only thing I'd add to that is it would be a full-time assignment, so a full-time detective would be assigned to this unit. It's a force multiplier. It gets us access to approximately 20 BCA agents and several different departments that participate in this. So if we need those resources to come and help us out with major cases, we're going to get that. It also is a proactive task force to go after gun violence and those types of high-level crimes to really be proactive and vet that out and hold people accountable. And it's my recommendation and from my law enforcement experience that this is a very good move for our police department, our staff to be able to really be aggressive in this kind of enforcement. It's important to our community.

Okay.

Questions for the chief on this matter? All right. Is there a motion to authorize the city of Udanda to enter into the joint powers agreement with the BCA violent crime reduction unit?

So moved. Second.

Member Risser moved.

No, Agnew.

Member Agnew moved. Member Jackson seconds the motion to authorize the city to enter into a joint powers agreement with the BCA Violent Crime Reduction Unit. Any further discussion? Roll call, please.

Council Member Jackson. Aye. Council Member Risser. Aye. Mayor Hovland. Aye. Council Member Pierce. Aye. Council Member Agnew. Aye.

Motion passes we are authorized to execute the document and get moving very quickly on this. I think it's important important work ahead of us. Part of that overall strategy on crime reduction. OK, manager Neil and I think.

Thank you, Your Honor.

We're going to go to you now for a report. I think you're also going to talk about, or Director Milner's going to talk about the water system.

I do. I have two items for you, and Mr. Milner will handle one of them. The first one is just very simple. We are canceling the HRA meeting that was scheduled for September 10th. TO ACCOMMODATE INTERVIEW SCHEDULES FOR THE COUNCIL AT THAT POINT. AND WE'RE ALSO GOING TO TAKE A LOOK TOMORROW AT AN HRA STAFF MEETING AT THE OCTOBER 1ST MEETING AND WHETHER OR NOT WE NEED THAT MEETING ON YOUR CALENDAR OR NOT. SO THAT'S JUST A COUPLE OF SCHEDULING UPDATES FOR YOU. THE NEXT ITEM I WILL ASK OUR CITY ENGINEER PUBLIC WORKS DIRECTOR CHAD MILLNER TO TALK A LITTLE BIT

the the issue that's been in the news with regards to municipal water systems and and and possibilities of them being hacked or some that have been hacked and he can comment on what has happened here mr miller so yeah the cyber attacks on water infrastructure such as wells water treatment plants and lift stations we had no cyber security breach related to that last week yes we do have an internet connection and yes we run we can run without internet But we lose functionality without it so the system uses secure connections via the Internet for remote access for system operators to view the data and operations to ensure the wells water treatment plants and lift stations are operating as expected. This requires multi factor authentication through a firewall VPN the recent attacks or on specific ports on systems that were open to the Internet no firewall preventing outside connectivity to them. Cybersecurity in our system is monitored by both internal and external staff. And with the recent attacks, we changed some of the settings at each facility. So currently no one can edit our programs that control the infrastructure without physically being at the facility. We also have door and control cabinet intrusion alarms. So if any of those open without proper credentials, we are notified and the appropriate people are sent to investigate. Without the internet connection, we lose remote access for operators to ensure those wells, treatment plants, and lift stations are operating as expected. We lose the ability to use our alarm system software to know and respond when they're not operating as expected, and we lose the ability to push daily, monthly, and yearly operating data to our reporting software. So we're confident in the security system, cybersecurity systems we have in place, and again, we did not have any breach of systems last week.

Very good. Thank you. It caused any questions or comments from council members?

Council member Pierce. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Do we have periodic tests to validate our assumptions of how secure we are?

I'd have to get back to you on that and ask our IT department and that external partners that help us.

Okay, if we aren't doing that, I would suggest that we at a minimum do a desktop, tabletop rather.

If we do, I just want to give you a for sure answer on that one.

Okay, thank you.

Anything else for Director Miller? Yeah, I think I'm sure the entire world is curious about their safety, their water systems. And so thanks for taking the time to pull that report together for us.

And I had one other thing. This is kind of related to that. We talked about the comprehensive plan months ago when Addison came in and kind of went through that with us in the working session. We have met or I have met after that to really go into what our plan is to add a technology portion to that comprehensive plan and so we are going to do that and we'll be able to take things like this I believe and just ensure that we have good future direction on the technology that we have not only in the that the city staff is using but also kind of city-wide what are the things that we need to have in place to protect our technology infrastructure very good all right anything else major neil from you all right um how about uh go to the order here uh councilmember agnew anything for us

No, not tonight. Thank you.

Councilmember Pierce. Just the night to unite yesterday was awesome to have that event. I was, as I mentioned earlier, I was out of town and I got back the night of. Well, on my flight home, there's an individual in Edina and they were planning for their event and asking if a city council member was going to come by. And so it was just interesting to be on a flight running to somebody from Edina who's trying to get back so that they could attend their event. And so I think our police this time we had public works right as well um do a really nice job of getting out into the community and so it was a it was a fun another fun night that's it all right thank you councilman rejection

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I was only able to attend my neighborhood one because I came in as well in the afternoon. But my neighbors were, I was saying, oh, and we used to do a block party scheduling. It was so much hard work. And here, the night to unite, it's a national night and nobody has to worry about setting aside the night. And I just love the fact that the city is engaged and organizes activities and fire engines and ambulances and public works. So thank you everybody who held a party and thank you to the staff who came to share our works with them.

Very good. Council Member Risser.

Well, I was out with the fire department last night, and I really want to thank them for letting me ride along with them, with Sean White, the training and safety chief. Also in the truck was John Good, the fire chaplain, and his dog Bob. And so we really had a wonderful reception going to all these different neighborhoods, and the dog Bob was very popular. But just seeing the staff interact with the kids was so amazing and discussions one was saying where there was one girl who wanted to be a firefighter but then she said she wasn't brave enough and just to talk about how you should have a healthy fear of fire and that if you fear something bravery really is real because then you have to be brave enough to address that. And if you're not scared, then you can't really be brave. And so I thought that was a really wonderful moment, but it was just great being out and about. And I actually got cold last night because the temperatures really sort of dropped a bit, but it was a very good experience. So thank you, Edina Fire. Thank you, police, Edina Police, Public Works, and everybody who put that event together. It was very well organized.

Thanks. Yeah, I joined my colleagues in saying that these 92-plus events that we were able to cover with all of our personnel, the police, fire, people from Public Works, it was really quite a night. Several of us were together with the chief over at Point of France, which we helped them celebrate their 50th anniversary there as well. And then on to Centennial Lakes, we had several great conversations in these different locations, and I was grateful that some of the council members were with us and see what an excellent job the chief does in engendering confidence in the Edina Police Department at all these different locations where there were Really hundreds of people if you add them all up I mean the least at least a hundred at the point of France and hundred probably at Centennial Lakes and they just they all leave feeling really good based on the man who leads our police department is a Reflective of our entire police department operation. So it was really inspiring that way And I think I might have forgotten to mention a few weeks ago, I was supposed to go down to New Ulm and get an award for the MLC from Carolyn Jackson's old employer, the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities, which always wasn't such a great relationship. But that same night, Finance and Commerce was giving out awards for the best new buildings in different categories. And our fire station number two won this wonderful award. And so we had a whole crew up there getting a photo of that. And the chief's got the statuary down in, I'm sure it's down at the fire station number two behind glass somewhere. But that was a fun night too. So that's about all I got to report out on. Anybody else have anything that they thought of they wanna report out on? Okay. Now I'm gonna be mindful of... council member agnew and her her her suggestion to the mayor that mayor you don't need to ask for a motion to adjourn just adjourn the meeting so here we go uh so much for inclusivity we stand adjourned that sounds more authoritative