City Council - Regular Meeting

The Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Welcome everybody to our September 21st, 2026 city council meeting. We begin every council meeting with our open comment period. This is an opportunity for anyone from the public to speak on items that we will not be taking public testimony during a public hearing later in the agenda. Each person has up to two minutes for a total of 20 minutes. I will keep track of time through two methods. One, the stoplight here at the dais and the digital clock on the wall to my left. I'd ask each speaker to be concise, to allow more people to speak. Participants are encouraged to limit comments generally to topics that are within the scope and jurisdiction of the council's ability to affect policy. Council members and staff do not respond directly to your comments during public comment, but will instead follow up on any specific requests separately. If you have materials to share with the council, you may give them to the city clerk to distribute over to my right. And with that, you will be invited up to speak in the order of which you signed up. And we have Ms. Molly Dennis.

Okay, thank you. I'm Molly Dennis. I'm a community advocate and disability advocate here in Rochester. And I see that the preliminary tax levy has been up for vote tonight. I am saddened that it's under reports and recommendations and that there isn't more public hearings and chances for people to speak about this item. I am wanting to say that teachers, I'm a teacher by trade, essential workers, people who show up, they are my heroes. And so in honor of them, I continue to show up, because this is my forever home, and I think it's important for people to continue to speak up. Not everyone, all seven of you white men on the dais have the privilege that you do. Not all of you, not everyone in Rochester has transportation. This weekend, I gave a ride home to someone from a conference who she lived so far away that it took her over $40 taxi ride to get to and from the conference every day because the Rochester City bus lines, it would have been a two-hour layover, and she wouldn't have got there on time. This is one of many barriers of people who are in Rochester and they do not have transportation. They do not have the means to be able to participate in situations like this because obviously the City Council got rid of a virtual call in people to be able to speak on City Council. We can do better as a city. You can do better. When I was a city council member, sitting right there, I knew how important lived experiences was, so I went and rode the bus, so I understood the challenges of people. And I hope that all of you have ridden the bus on the weekend to understand how difficult it is for people to get to and from Rochester. Please earn your over $100 an hour pay. Do the calculations. Anyone who wanna reach out to me, I can help you with that. and our pay because things are getting worse here in Rochester and no one is paying attention. It's your job to pay attention. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Dennis. This is our open comment period. Anyone else wishing to be heard during this period, please step forward. Seeing no one, I will close the public comment period and ask Clerk Kasel to please call the roll.

Good evening, Council Member Keene.

Here.

Council Member Miller.

Here.

Council Member Wall.

Here.

Council Member Fredericks.

Here.

Council Member Palmer. Here. Council Member Doering.

Here.

Council President Schubring.

Here.

Mayor Norton. Present.

Thank you. Next up we have the City of Administrators report. Administrator Zelms, take it away.

Thank you, Council President, Mayor Norton, Council members, members of the public. I always start this by thanking our teammates for acting with respect, integrity, safety, and excellence in mind in everything that they do, and so appreciate all of the work that happens around the community behind us in squad cars and fire trucks and out in the field. So to that end, I also want to let the community know that post-storm event, there is a free Rochester Area Insurance Village being hosted by the Department of Commerce. That's an opportunity to ask questions about insurance, different ways that you can work with your insurer to make sure that You are getting the storm-related relief that you have purchased if you have purchased insurance. That is Friday, September 25th from 2 to 8 p.m. It'll be at the Olmstead County Sheriff's Office Public Safety Training Center. That's at 1550 50th Street Southeast. You can get more information at mn.gov forward slash commerce forward slash insurance dash village. Always got to have a long one on there. or you can go to our website. We have a joint release out with Olmstead County. Also did just want to take a little bit of time to briefly recognize a really productive link BRT business session that our partners at the chamber hosted last week. Thank the chamber, the business community, and the city and partner teams that participated. There were about thirty to thirty five businesses and organizations along second street that uh... attended uh... the session was scheduled for an hour but was very robust went for an hour and a half uh... uh... there was direct conversation with the project team and our teammate steve sampson brown and danielle johnson did a really great job walking through the project uh... with other teammates that were also there uh... there were a lot of very thoughtful questions that came up uh... and they were focused on things that businesses need right now, information about closures and access, and we provided ways for them to continue to be connected to that. But it also provided a really encouraging moment where there was some conversation that was about not just getting through construction, but how to leverage the BRT route and being along that route going forward. So it gives us a good opportunity over the coming months to begin shifting some of our business forward work from construction mitigation to that business readiness and customer education um for when that is actually up and running uh free service uh coming up here um mid middle of next year so just want to thank the partners we have at the chamber the businesses that showed up and will continue to work through with that partnership with the chamber And then more construction, but I did want to share some information from the parks team that the Martin Luther King Jr. Park updates are expected to be about 95% complete at the end of the construction season, which is coming quickly. The playground's almost finished. The splash pad, basketball courts, trails, sidewalk, and shelter are in progress, and tree planting and the splash pad will come next spring when that's more appropriate. So lots of exciting work happening around the city, and I will turn it over to the mayor.

Thank you. Mayor Norton.

You bet. It's been a busy fall and I want to thank Council President Schubring for covering on Latina Fest. I got there at the very end and heard a really interesting panel discussion that you participated in. Thank you for representing the city so well on that panel.

It was a great, great time.

That was really nice. And there was also a fun event on Sunday called Transition Town, which is about how the communities can respond to be more resilient moving ahead. Given all the changes in the world including climate effects and economy and the whole thing so very interesting. So it's a nice little weekend of activities Coming up this week. We have Wednesday two days away Looking forward to this we have nearly 200 young people registered for the youth leadership and success summit It's open to all high school students in the county The governor is going to kick it off in the morning. We've had a little bit of a schedule change to accommodate his schedule, but he'll be kicking off the event. We have a full day of TED Talks and business leaders talking and sharing about different career opportunities for young people. And then we'll... I think I mentioned this last time, we'll head over to the Chateau for an evening of networking dinner and some poetry music to end out a really interesting day, I hope, for the youth. So looking forward to that. If anyone is interested, there's still time tomorrow to let us know. And we do need to know just for food arrangements. So if folks could just let us know if they're coming, that would be helpful. But they're all still welcome. There's still 48 hours before we start. Next, the Rochester Olmstead Youth Council, which is a city county supported youth organization for 14 to 20 year old residents of Olmstead County is starting its year and the application time is open. So all youth are available to apply. And it's a great group of young people who share their thoughts and ideas with us about what young people want in our city and county, but also learn a lot about the processes. They toured the airport, they've toured the court system, the jail. So they're learning a lot about city government during their time on Youth Council. And I think they've found it interesting. And of course, we always appreciate their voice. I'm going to do a move with the mayor, my final one this fall. So I'm inviting the city council to join if you would please, either Friday or Saturday or both if you want to do a lot of exercising. But we're just going to go over to Rochester Community and Technical College. and do walk in from either sometime between 7 and 9 a.m. or on Friday, October 9th, or Saturday, October 10th, from 8 to 10. We are in a partnership with Healment, which is a healthcare or AI group that's working with Mayo Clinic, and they've asked if we could kind of be a, I don't know what they call it, but a trial on a new ring, an app, so you wear a ring, and it's like an Apple Watch, I guess, And so they'll come share some information that morning for people who would voluntarily like to participate. We have a few free ones to give out, and then there'll be some for sale at a very significant discount for anyone that will participate in this trial, and you can keep it when you're done. But they're doing a three-month trial, kind of a beta testing, if you will, of this new product. So anyway, and we'll be walking, and I'll be walking more regularly, but we're going to kick it off on these two days. And I mentioned this before and I'll keep mentioning it, October 31st is the deadline to take applications for Mayor's Medal of Honor. Again, this will be my last one to do after the last eight years, but there are many wonderful people in this community, you all know them. They do things for neighbors and friends and churches and they're just those extraordinary volunteers and caring people. And we take nominations and then last year's winners sit down with me and select the coming year's winners. And we have a surprise event for them. So it's really a fun day with some really wonderful people. And there's about 16 to 20 categories. So if you go on the city's website under the Mayor and Mayor's Medal of Honor, it will list many. And sometimes people apply for two or three different categories because they're people who do a lot of things. But we're happy to have those applications. And boards and commissions. So we had the HPC and the music board listed. I will bring forward at the next city council meeting the youth. We had a youth applicant that was a wonderful young lady. I'll bring that name forward at the next city council meeting. We still have one music board opening and it can be anyone living in wards one, two, four or six. We're allowed to. in each and those ones have room for another. So any of those four awards and all boards and commissions will almost all will have openings because people term out after eight years on six to eight years on a board and commission. They can't continue after the second full term. And so every year in December, we send out notices thanking them for their service, and I need to fill those spots so that January 1st, the person is ready to start the next year's service. So anyone can apply for boards and commissions online, very easy application, like two questions, and then we do an online interview, and if you'd attach a resume or bio or a short paragraph about why you want to do it, that would be great. That's all I have.

Thank you, Mayor. The Mayor's Medal of Honor is kind of like Rochester's Academy Awards for volunteers. It's a very exciting event because people are surprised. They don't know they're going to get it.

We're very sneaky.

Great event. With that, we are looking at the order of the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda? Seeing none, is there a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Moved by council member wall and seconded by council member Fredericks. He got in before you just oh, do you have a just want to make a clarification?

Just that there was a. Last a late change if anyone was watching that there is a change in the resolution for G1 on the agenda. It's not a change to the agenda right now, but I'll just point it out. Thank you council member.

Yes, so check online and if you want a paper copy, I know Ms. Edens has some. So with that, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Poe say nay. On to our consent agenda, I believe there are no polled items, is that correct? Therefore, I invite a motion to approve the consent agenda in its entirety.

So moved. Second.

Moved by Councilmember Doering, seconded by Councilmember Miller. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay. Motion passes. We are on to our public hearings, and our first public hearing is G1, which is a conditional use permit. by MGK LLC and we have Ms. Taryn Edens to present this item.

Good evening members of the council, council president and mayor, Taryn Edens with the community development department. I'm here this evening to provide an overview of the proposed development before you. This is for a proposed CD2026008 conditional use permit. It is proposing a limestone aggregate quarry near the Rochester International Airport by MGK LLC. This is located, as you can see before you, north of 22nd Avenue Southwest, east of the Oak Summit Golf Course, and about a half mile north of the nearest airport runway. What you will see is that staff are recommending denial of this proposed application. It is located in a light industrial zoning district. Just a reminder, we typically provide this for Planning and Zoning Commission, but a reminder that the application before you is considered a quasi-judicial decision before the council. The Planning and Zoning Commission also supported, or I would say forwarded, the recommendation of denial. What's unique about this is it is also located within the airport zoning district. So essentially what you'll see the site outlined in that hash rectangle. So part of it lies within what we'll refer to as zone A and part within zone C. And once again, you'll see the approximate location to the nearest runway 21 is about half a mile from the site. This provides an overview of those safety zones A, B, and C. Essentially, if I were to provide an overview, it has specific language on prohibited and permitted uses, essentially as it relates to structures. So as a reminder, this site lies partly in zone C as well as A, and this specific use is actually not recognized as permitted or prohibited, but typically the uses prohibit folks that would include assembly of persons due to proximity to the airport. This gives you another vantage point to show you the distance, proximity. What's interesting as well is the FAA also holds equipment near the site, about 300 feet from the site. And then another lens for you to see the proximity between the proposed site, the FAA equipment, and the end of runway 21. So I wanted to provide a timeline of occurrences because this has been going on for some time. I wanted to provide a little context for your consideration. As you can see, discussions around this development started around June of 2025. Because of the unique technical and specialized nature of this, a quarry includes blasting activity as well. And due to its proximity to the airport, staff recommended or directed the applicant to reach out to the federal the FAA for completing a specific form to determine essentially if there were to be any impacts to the airport. So you'll see that that took quite some time and essentially the FAA found a determination of no determination and I'll talk about that momentarily. and then it went before the Planning and Zoning Commission on June 10th. At that time, staff essentially relayed that more information would be needed to make a just recommendation regarding the impact of blasting activity. This is relayed to the applicant, and they worked with us and essentially worked and consulted with a separate blasting expert and provided an assessment. We went back and forth to try to work on a path forward and essentially had our own set of questions as a follow-up, The blasting expert then provided another report that's included in your packet. And then lastly, what I would note is the Rochester International Airport Facility requested and received an independent airspace assessment impact report, which details core implications to the airport facility via an airspace specialist consulting firm. So you'll see that a lot of these things happened in short turnaround. So that assessment was received just this past week, hence the change in your packet before you this evening. If we can get this to work, this is a video to just provide an example, maybe we can, maybe we can't, of the blasting that the applicant provided. I'll have one at the end of the slide deck that they also requested to show you. I'm looking to see if we can do it. I have to do it, lovely. Let's see if it works. Perfect. Just to give you an idea of scope for the conversation of activity that could happen. I believe what they shared that this was through their blasting firm, Olmsted Aggregate as an example. So the findings in which we are provided are the considerations for staff's recommendation of denial. I mentioned that the safety zones prohibit and show permitted uses within each safety zone. Just as well within the airport zoning ordinance specifically includes this general restriction language that applies to any development or any land that would be next to the airport. And that's the language we're using primarily as our basis for our recommendation of denial. Essentially, he says that the use of any land in any of the safety zones is prohibited if the use does any of these things. Our primary concerns are around the possibility of impairing visibility in the vicinity of the airport or otherwise endangering the landing, takeoff, or maneuvering of aircraft. As I mentioned, a third party report was completed and that's in your packet and that was published originally. If I were to summarize essentially the findings, that would include this information before you. Potential concerns are, I guess before I even mention that, what you would find as well from the applicant's report is that regardless, this will require a heightened level of communication and coordination. It's worth noting that much of the flights that come to the International Airport are not scheduled flights. So there's just a lot of things to consider when we're talking about potential risks to air navigation, even with that higher level of communication and coordination between those detonating a blast as well as airspace staff. But essentially, that report would show you that the concerns still exist around blasting could throw rock into the airspace when planes fly low. Dust from blasting could block pilots' visibility of the runway and safety lights. A particular concern is related to instrument approaches. So these are used in bad weather or at night, and this would be essentially completely compromised. Some of the airport's protected instrument flight paths pass directly over the quarry, and the report shows that fly rock could rise hundreds of feet into areas that must remain clear for instrument landings. To make the approach safe, the airport would have to raise those minimums so high that the approach could become unusable, eliminating an important landing option for airlines and flights. As mentioned, air traffic controllers would face ongoing, reoccurring operational hazards. Every blast would require coordination with the airport, which the applicant has reported as well. This would require verifying timing, checking for inbound or outbound planes, protecting airspace, and reacting if conditions suddenly change. These repeated duties and workload and risk to already complex operations, especially during any emergencies or medical flights. I would also note, as mentioned, the FAA made a no determination, essentially. It's worth noting that this really does only consider vertical impediments like structures in review of the hazards to air navigation. It does not consider blasting impacts or impacts from blasting. So essentially, a quarry in this location would be incompatible with safe airport operations. Our summary of findings include 60.500.050A.4. Specifically, or most notably, we would note that the operation of the use will create significant negative impacts on public facilities. More specifically, again, relating that specific, or communicating that finding, the application complies with all UDC regulations. However, we would say that the proposed use, a half a mile away from a runway, will negatively impact safety of air navigation. With that, I'll pass it over to the Executive Director of the Rochester Airport to expand on that.

And good evening, Mayor, City Council, President, Council Members. My name is John Reed. I'm the current Executive Director for Rochester International Airport. In your packet for review, I'm really going to concentrate here on the information that we got back from the consultant that we hired. Got that late last week. We had to do this in lieu of the FAA stating any impacts to RST about the proposed quarry, a company called Federal Airways and Airspace. And I openly say I appreciate all the hard work that the proponents done in providing us with example of the airports as well as the blasting study. I reviewed all of the airports that they provided, and to be honest, I struggled to find a true apples-to-apples comparison right on the runway approach in 2,800 feet from the end of the runway. Those that I did see, I would say I kind of had negative effects on the approaches to the specific runways, with most having very high decision altitudes and most I'd consider unusable really in poor weather. And again, we talked about it earlier here, but this is a proposed quarry. My biggest concern is the blasting. It's 2,800 feet from the end of the runway and essentially right on center line. Again, in the report, you can read it. I'm going to try to take some of the technical language away a little bit here to help with this. What the report tells us is that blasting in that quarry area really effectively eliminates what's called an LPV approach to Runway 21. What is that? It's a GPS approach. We can all understand global positioning systems and they're used today for approaching runways. And the FAA in this particular case is going to look at the fly rock as a constant, not just an intermittent. And it will drive up the approach value so high that it's either canceled or it's of no use to us for our airport. They don't do temporary things like that. The other things coming from this, and again, I'm going to try to remove some of the verbiage here, is obstacle clearance surfaces for runway three. What is that? So anytime a plane is making an approach, you have to prepare for that approach is not going to be successful. They're not going to be able to land the plane that they're going to have to retake off again. And to do that, you've got to have clear surfaces on the other end of the runway that an aircraft can pass through at any time and know that they're safe. BLAST ROCK WOULD PENETRATE THOSE SURFACES FOR THAT RUNWAY THREE. THE OTHER PART THAT WE'RE WORKING ON HERE IS AN ILS TO RUNWAY THREE. WE'RE IN THE PROCESS OF BUILDING THAT NOW WITH THE RUNWAY PROJECT THAT WE HAVE ONGOING. WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FULL IMPACTS WOULD BE TO THE ILS THAT WE'RE BUILDING ON THAT OTHER END, BUT THIS TOO WOULD BE IMPACTED BY THESE OBSTACLE CLEARANCES. Blasting, again, in that space, it's going to have negative impacts on those same missed approach surfaces for runway 13 and 31. That's our main runway. We have ILSs on both sides of that. So, again, that would impact that. I don't know what the true effects of that are going to be. That would have to be the FAA would make that final determination. But we also know that's going to affect the minimum descent altitudes again for GPS approaches to runway 13 and 31. Slightly different. They're LNAV and VNAV approaches. But again, just think of it in GPS. I think the other part to really, again, kind of talk about here, and Taryn mentioned it, the FAA determination of no hazard really was submitted in evaluation. It's no fault of the proponent. What the FAA does is they evaluate fixed objects. not things that are moving through that cylinder of air through there. So the evaluation of no hazard can be a little bit misleading. The other thing here, again, and Karen touched on it, FAA air traffic controllers at RST. Really, I don't think we need to tell anybody that there's an ongoing shortage of air traffic controllers right now. in the US as a whole, they do not need increased workloads or reoccurring coordination. My initial review that I got back from the air traffic control manager here at RST is to recommend not allowing aircraft landings on runway two one or departures on runway three. That's her initial review of that document, a long way to go, but that's her initial review. um and i just remind the council ongoing right now the city of rochester the fa the state of minnesota we're currently investing about 80 million dollars into this exact runway and i don't think we want to lose any operability or flexibility for the use of those critical assets and that's the runway that's the approaches to that runway i think finally the last point here every year the city takes grants from the federal government from the fa And every year we sign grant assurances. Applicable tonight is grant assurance 21. That's compatible land uses. And so we have zoning in place to restrict adjacent land uses and activities that are compatible with normal operations. That kind of goes back to the UDC criteria. Number six, um, um, safety, um, under the general conditions. And with that again, I thank you for your time tonight. Um, appreciate you listening to us and talking, um, airports and approaches.

Thank you and Mr. Uh, before I open the public hearing, I just want to, um. Thank you, council member. So before I open the public hearing, I just want to remind folks that public hearings are handled a little differently than open comment period. First, we've now had the staff report. Now we will ask the applicant to come forward. They will have up to 10 minutes. TO DISCUSS THEIR REQUEST. AND THEN I WILL OPEN THE PUBLIC HEARING. MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC HAVE UP TO FIVE MINUTES EACH TO DISCUSS THE ITEM. AFTER THAT, I WILL CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING. THE APPLICANT WILL HAVE AN to address any questions that came up during the public hearing and answer any questions from council members and then council members will deliberate and vote. So with that is the applicant here and if you can step forward, identify yourself and your affiliation and you have up to 10 minutes. Mark, can you turn your mic on?

There we go mark welch with g cubed engineering here on behalf of stay or get in the audience. We have Travis David saver. He's the vice president senior blasting experts with bar engineering. Also, I have Chris to cook with the owner of say, Mike writer and Levi Hansen, a couple of people that operate on state aggregate. and also Granger and Mitchell DeCook, who are the owners of the Oak Summit Golf Course. And I will ask for additional time. We have a lot of information to relay. It might take a few more minutes than 10, but I want to start out kind of going through some of the items. The timeline on this one, yes, we went through the EAW process starting actually back in 2004. Prior to the EAW starting, we had to identify who was going to be the RGU, the government agency that would actually do the reviewing and publishing of the EAW. because this property is actually partially within High Forest Township, there was a joint powers agreement between High Forest Township High Forest Township and the City of Rochester to allow the City of Rochester to essentially facilitate the EAW process. And so you guys approved that EAW back in, I believe it was June of 2025. We then did the Noble Neighborhood Informational Meeting. At the NIM meeting, which was actually on August 12th, I think the note said June 12th, but it was actually August 12th of 2025, there was airport representatives there. And the only two items that came up as concerns at that time were about dust and waterfall. waterfall being ducts, which are usually coming towards water sources, so that's a key that we could not have any standing water within this facility. We actually submitted the conditional useful application the next day, and that's what started the further discussions about some other items which come up, which was blasting. Blasting was referenced in the AW, it was brought up at the NIM meeting, Some additional questions came up about it, so we ultimately provided some additional information on some videos and some just basic information that we had on the blasting. And then it came up that they requested the FAA forms, which we looked through the process and we were like, well, they're exempt because they're for structures, but we went through the process. Unfortunately, there was some things at the FAA that switched over from paper copies to online applications that delayed getting those things actually back. Ultimately, we did get them back in May. We then asked again to get this back on the Planning Commission. There might have been a little snafu or something like that, but I give Community Development credit. They did everything they could to get this back on track for a June 10th hearing at the Planning Commission. But at that time, that's when they came with a negative declaration or negative or denial of recommendation, partially because they were still getting questions from the airport staff of things that they had questions for. And we requested, essentially, give us specific questions, and we'll give you specific answers to it. So, we had a frustration level, and that's why we went to the Planning Commission, essentially asking whether you deny it, whether you approve it, or whether you forward it on without a recommendation. We're having struggles getting the airport to provide what they're looking for on this thing so that people can make a decision or we can provide more expert testimony on this. And so at the Planning Commission, the reason that they moved this thing forward was so that it could come to City Council and ultimately make a decision on this. Since that time, that was June 10th, we have done the additional questions that come in. We hired Mr. David Saver from Barr Engineering. He is a blasting expert, and we'll be able to speak onto that shortly here. We relayed onto the commission, we just need to, I'm sorry, got it in the wrong spot, but we essentially continue to try to work with community development and the airport, specifically the airport, to find out what the questions that they had that they're asking for, what their concerns were. So we actually had a meeting scheduled. That was the city council meeting. And we had an opportunity to meet with Mr. Reid after the meeting and went over some specific items. And John did then send us a list of questions and then followed up some additional questions around August 11th. And that is what was in the bar engineering report. And the bar engineering report specifically identifies the concerns about the equipment that's on the adjacent property, the flight paths in, and one of the items that they have in there is the hypothetical, if nobody was paying attention, it was gross negligence of how high fly rock could actually go up into the air. And so we've been continuing this, waiting for trying to have correspondence with the airport to essentially come up with what are the concerns, have we addressed the concerns, and why is this something that just seems all of a sudden, this blasting is a problem even though we have multiple situations that we can come to that show that there's blasting at airports all the time. It's a compatible use with most airports because it doesn't have a lot of operations or assembly of people or items that are in the prohibited areas of Zone A. The reason we're here tonight is because after Barr's engineering report went out last Friday, we got the airspace assessment from FANA. That assessment is straight up a kill report. It used Barr's theoretical worst case scenario and called that the constant of blasting a rock 1,280 feet into the air. That isn't happening. If they read Barr's report and referenced it, it would be clear there is no such thing as blasting 1,200 feet into the air. Everything about that report and assessment is just theoretical. It is not going to happen. What we looked at there, there's a bunch of fly rock scenarios that we just know will not happen. We're going to have Travis address that. But they also did not assess the difference between being in Zone A or Zone C. And there is a clear difference. Zone C has no prohibited uses listed. A CORI is still a Conditional Use Permit, but it is not a prohibited use. Zone A does not prohibit a CORI within it. It also does not show it as a permitted use. that's also part of what the Conditional Use Permit is addressing. And so, we're asking was, what is FAA and A providing for documentation that says that they cannot do any kind of blasting, either Zone A or Zone C? Because the precedence would be set that there cannot be any kind of blasting within all of Zone C. based on their report. I think their report was just straight up a kill report to try to stop this project. If they really truly were doing an independent study, they went to reference 1280 feet for the blasting potential. It's not an independent study, it's a kill report. I don't know if the city has worked with FA&A previously, but they're a firm out of Florida. Is there qualifications in Minnesota? In their report, they don't provide anything that states what their expertise is, if they've worked within Minnesota, if there was prior quarries that they worked on that provided a denial because of the same scenario. Mr. Reid does make a statement that there's, made a statement tonight that there is no apples to apples comparisons. But there doesn't need to be apples to apples comparisons. There has to be reasonable analysis of whether or not what's being proposed would create a safety concern. And Travis with Bar Engineering will be able to further explain the rationale, the process, how quarry blasting works, and prove that it's not something that's going to be a constant scenario. The other items that probably should have been addressed if it was an independent assessment is situations that could be of similar type. You know, drones, unmanned aircraft can still fly. They're not compatible within fly zones, but they're allowed. So those are items that just, that assessment, we just, we read it as a kill report, trying to stop this project before it can move forward. I'm going to allow Travis David Saver to give some testimony based on his experience with blasting and work in airports. He's also a pilot. He has a lot of knowledge. I'd like to let him be able to present to you, and then I'll follow up with a summary on this.

Mr. Welch, you do have one minute and 40 seconds left. You did ask for additional time. And I'm gonna ask my council if there is a motion to.

Motion to approve what Mr. Walsh is asking for.

How much time, council member, are you going to give?

How much time would you have, Chair? I think five minutes. Five minutes? Five minutes it is. Okay. I'll second.

There's a motion to add five additional minutes to the applicant's time. And it's been moved by Council Member Fredericks and seconded by Council Member Keene. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay. Move forward.

Good evening, I'm Travis David Saver, Vice President, Senior Blasting, Geotechnical Engineer at Barr Engineering Company. I live in Duluth, Minnesota. We have rock all over the place. I'm also the Vice President of the International Society of Explosives Engineers, and I'll become the President of that society here in January. And on top of that, I'm also the President Blasting Consultant at Mayo Clinic. So all the blasting that's going on downtown I'm overseeing. Blasting is one of the safest construction activities that occurs because of all the regulation that falls in with blasting. I'm also a pilot, private pilot, and I fly all over the country in private aircraft in and out of airports and routinely see coring operations in immediate vicinity of the airport because it tends to be a compatible use. I was asked to put together my thoughts about blasting and quarrying and how fly rock and vibration and dust from those activities might have consequences to the airport and truly felt I developed an independent and a very factual basis based on observations and experience. In considering what was the theoretical maximum fly rock potential that could be generated through gross negligence, which the blaster would be fully liable for, I determined that calculation to be over 1,000 feet of rock throw. I've personally never seen a blast of that poor design or execution in my entire career, which is now over 25 years, particularly in a well-controlled quarry environment where the blaster routinely interacts with the same geology. So in this case, I find it very frustrating, again, that the other report focused strictly on what we consider gross negligence and an incredibly remote probability and applied that to a scenario where there's no ability for the blaster to be aware of their surrounding, which they're required by law to do so. So blasters bound by law to be aware of their surroundings and have no negative impact to their activity. Blasting is a strict liability activity in the state of Minnesota. And in this particular scenario, there's an incredible ability for that blaster to not only see the sky, but hear the sky. In an unprecedented approach, an offer was made to coordinate with Rochester Airport, where I've today alone spoken with six other airports where they receive a courtesy call from the blasting that would occur in very similar distances to their airspace. But there's no requirement for that coordination. In this case, as far as I can find anywhere in the United States, including Dulles, at Dulles International Airport where there's blasting nearby, Jackson-Hartsfield, the busiest airport in the Western Hemisphere, as well as a local airport, Madison, Wisconsin, where there's blasting 1,300 feet off of the end of their main runway, their primary runway in Madison, Wisconsin. So the activity of blasting in even closer quarters to these airports, what Mr. Reid says is different than Rochester, it's really not. Because if we're looking at where that fly rock might go, these airports are all within that same approach space. And so from that standpoint, I find it, you know, I'm asking for a focus on the facts and not on opinions about where the rock might end up and what that might affect. And in this case, the request is that there's coordination between the tower and between the airport to allow this activity to safely occur instead of allowing it to blindly occur, because I do believe that's a fair thing to do to improve safety for all individuals involved. Additionally, there's an implication that this is a constant activity that would be occurring at the airport, it's not. This is something that maybe six to 10 times a year, this activity would be conducted, and therefore the ask and the demand of the tower is frankly fairly low, and the coordination that's being asked between the parties I think is very reasonable in terms of that land use. Finally, the question about dust. As a private pilot, he uses the PAPI approach system all the time during normal daylight hours. The dust that would be generated from this activity would likely be very low, and the blasting would only occur when wind directions are carrying that dust away from the airport. That's something that the blaster has full control over, And so the idea that blasting would happen randomly with no coordination is kind of the basis for the report that we saw from Federal Airways. And that's simply not the case. And I think there does need to be some consideration for the professionalism that the blaster would bring forth to the table to conduct that work safely in the state. So I guess with that being said, we found in the report that we provided you at least 20 towered airports with similar or more volume, including some major airports in the United States. where this is being conducted safely. One with blasting as close as 125 feet to their only active taxiway with no coordination between the blasting activity and the tower. So I just want to point that out that what we're offering here is unprecedented and I think it needs some serious consideration for the offer that's made to make this land use compatible.

Thank you. Thank you.

Mark Welch again, and I want to point out Travis has been working with Mayo Clinic on all the blasting that's taking place. That's his project. And so there's blasting that's taking place about four feet away from buildings. So in summary, we're here tonight because we're disappointed in the process. That working with the airport has not been going forward with getting responses and answers. So this last The first report that came on Friday looked like a kill report. We wanted to make it clear that we were willing to continue to work, but we have to have correspondents that are responsible, and hopefully somebody from Minnesota, not from Florida, trying to put this together for the airport. We haven't seen anything come from the FAA, even though the report, back when we were trying to get some information together, we'd heard that they hadn't got any comments from the FAA, weren't sure who we were supposed to be talking to. I reached out and talked to somebody that within a week, we had a response that everything that's responsible for the FAA is within the site, not, they don't deal with anything offsite. We then forwarded that onto the city. We haven't seen anything else come back from the FAA, and I think it's because the FAA doesn't respond to the offsite blasting procedures. And we haven't heard anything from the city's airport's main engineer, Meaden Hunt. And so when this report came from somebody out of Florida, we were questioning why is it from Florida and not the local that actually is the expert or has experience with Rochester. Our conclusion, this is a CUP for operation of rock quarry. And quarrying is not clearly permitted or prohibited in Zone A, but it is not prohibited in Zone C. And so the analysis should have essentially identified what's allowable in A and C. They can't not be looked at as being exactly the same situations. One has airspace, so there's departures and landings over top. The other is area off to the side that covers a huge number of acres, hundreds, I mean, tens of thousands of acres, I believe. We asked for your approval tonight with the conditions that community development put in. There was six conditions. We'd be willing to also allow for the blasting within zone A to be removed, because we can still move forward with that if that's something that feels acceptable. We're also open to continuing this, but we need to know that we're going to get correspondence and work with us, not kill reports that are trying to essentially stop the project. We've been working for two years on this, and unfortunately, we haven't had much positive dialogue with the airport in the last year.

Thank you, Mr. Welch. At this time, I will open the public hearing, and our first speaker is Justin Hasse. Hasse? step forward and you have up to five minutes.

Okay, thank you, Council. I'm Justin Haase. I am a private pilot with an instrument rating based out of the Rochester airport. I'm also president of the Southeastern Minnesota Flying Club. A few points I just wanted to make here about procedures and processes that I follow as an instrument pilot. Dust in an approach or departure corridor presents a visibility concern, obviously, and a potential engine ingestion concern. Some engines, some procedures during approach have things set where air is not filtered, so that is something that could be a concern. Those are the times when reliable power is needed for a climb or a go around. Secondly, flying on instruments gets me to the point where I can land visually, but it doesn't make the final seconds of the landing safe if something takes away my view at that point. Affecting visibility or even the availability of a path for circling approaches reduces options that are there for mitigating wind or airport operational things. For example, right now Runway 2-1 and Runway 3 are closed, but you can still fly an approach to them, get to an altitude, and then circle around to a different runway. So having that circling available is something that's a great option, and that's done only at about 400 feet above ground level. And then finally, having the option to fly a published missed approach where you would go around after not landing is a fundamental safety option. Its availability shouldn't depend whether a nearby operation has reached a point where it could still be stopped or not. And flying a missed approach doesn't always allow minutes for communication beforehand in decisions and execution. Practice approaches, absolutely. They know as you're coming in how that approach is going to terminate. You can say, I'm going to do this practice approach. I'm going to go missed. They know that minutes, you know, five, 10 minutes in advance. But a real instrument approach during bad weather or, well, just during bad weather or times where you need to do an instrument approach, those are intended to get you on the ground and the option to go missed if needed needs to exist at all times. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Haase. Next up, we have Brian Posse.

Good evening, council. My name's Brian Pass. I'm from Stewartville, Minnesota. I am the vice president of the Southeast Minnesota Flying Club. I'm a flight instructor, and I'm also the assistant chief pilot of the Flying Club. I also happen to be the vice chair of the Planning and Zoning Commission of the city of Stewartville. So I'm very well versed in how these things work. I have a couple concerns about this. As a pilot, as a flight instructor, we teach pilots, if they have engine issues, After takeoff, you land straight ahead. We tell them push the nose over, land straight ahead. You don't have time to turn around. As a matter of fact, a year and a half ago, we had an airplane out at the airport, lose an engine, went down in the trees. I always have enjoyed Rochester's airport, the runway layout, because we do have a very large open area on the ends of each runway. It makes it much safer, because there is a period of time as we're climbing out, that our options are very limited in what we can do as a pilot. As a pilot, about 23 years ago, I'd have had an engine blow up on me while I was flying. I was very thankful for the cornfield below me that I was able to land in. This list of 20 airports, yeah, that's not really an apples to apples comparison. I looked through this, there's barely two airports on this list that have a blasting quarry on the center line of the runway within a half mile. I also read the FANA report that came out last week. I thought that was a little doomy and gloomy as well. And we've been talking about approaches, but nobody's really given us actual numbers. So as an instrument rated pilot, and I teach pilots, a good approach is about 200 to 250 feet above the ground. When we see those numbers as a pilot, we know, okay, there's nothing really in our way, we're comfortable. When we start seeing 350 feet, okay, there's something in the way, we start seeing 400 feet or more, there's definitely something out there that could get me as a pilot coming in on an approach. I looked, those two airports that do meet that criteria, I grabbed the third one just because I was looking for another data point. The numbers for the approaches going into those airports, 1200 feet AGL, 900 feet AGL, 500 feet AGL, 300 feet AGL for one runway and 400 feet for another. So those are the actual numbers of similar quarries at the ends of airports. And what that does is for an airport that we're spending all this money on is, As a pilot, if I can't make it, I gotta go fly to another airport. And the lower that approach minimums are, the more likely I am to make that. So when the FAA increases those approach minimums, the chances of me making it into the Rochester airport decrease. And there's been many times, myself, I'm personally thankful for the low approach minimums that Rochester does have, because a lot of surrounding airports don't have that. It allows me to make that in. But if that goes away because of these quarry operations, it makes the usability of the Rochester airport much less. You can't use it as much. Pilots will not make it in as often as they do today. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Scott Kuhn.

Council President, I have a clarifying question to ask about acronyms being used. Okay. So I have better understanding. What does AGL mean? Thank you.

Thank you. Council member. Mr. crew up to 5 minutes.

Up to 5 minutes. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you. Council members for the time. My name is Scott coon. I'm from great plains aviation. We're a business that operates flight training, aircraft, maintenance and ground handling at Rochester international airport. I'm concerned about the possibility of quarry blasting near the airport. I'm the chief instructor and an instrument rated pilot who personally flies the approaches this quarry sits under pretty much every day. I want to be clear that our concern isn't about opposing growth or financial growth in the city. Understand, please, that it's about ensuring the safety of airport operations for everybody. Our staff, students and customers fly that airspace seven days a week, 365 days a year in good, marginal and bad weather. These are aircraft at low altitude in the most workload intensive phases of flight, so we're generally concerned about safety. I've read the report, and there are several things that it does not mention that we believe present risk to aircraft operations. First, while the report notes there will be observers available prior to blasting, visual observation fails in marginal weather. A spotter cannot confirm airspace is clear when the aircraft are in clouds, emerging from an instrument approach or initiating an unexpected missed approach. Further, with Highway 63 adjacent and Highway 90 not far away, mistaking small aircraft as auto noise seems a distinct possibility. Second, the exclusion areas mentioned in the airport is inconsistent. The letter alternates between one mile from the airport, two miles from the blast, two miles from the airport, and detonating while air traffic remains in the pattern, provided it's furthest away. This last provision directly conflicts with the stated two-mile prohibition, and the impacted area for any of this would need to be well-defined both laterally, vertically, and with time-based boundaries. Otherwise, it significantly impacts aircraft safety. Third, a missed approach or an emergency, as mentioned a couple of times before, could put the aircraft outside the expected flight path within seconds, with the pilot just trying to remain in control of the airplane and not damage themselves, the airplane, or the people or activities below it. All three of these situations could put an aircraft within the dust or debris area, and the report doesn't discuss the possibility of animal or bird flush activity due to blasting, and all of these create risk for aircraft and the people that happen to be underneath them. We have several other concerns that I won't share tonight. In the interest of brevity, I want to make sure I stay within my five minutes. But I will end by saying, in addition to impacting our operations, this will have repercussions for airline operations, mail medical flights, cargo flights, as well as all general aviation operations. Because of these impacts, I'd ask the Council to find this use incompatible with the airport and deny it. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Coon. This is a public hearing. Anyone else wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. Anyone else wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. Anyone else? What's that? Come forward, state your name, and you have up to five minutes.

Yeah, I'm Mitchell D. Cook. I'm one of the owners of the property that this would be going on, so I just kind of... I guess I wasn't really planning on speaking, but I just wanted to point out there are some other pits that are gravel pits right off of Highway 63 there, which would be kind of right in the zone where they always fly around and stuff. I mean, that's been there for 40 years, and I think it's on that one report there, and you can actually see it on there. And they've been flying over that for 40 years without issues and doing similar activities and stuff. I don't know what it is. I guess it doesn't really, you know, when we're trying to work with everybody, obviously we don't want anybody, you know, getting hurt in any way. And, you know, there's risk to kind of everything you do, you know, you can, the more traffic you have, the busier the airport gets and more car traffic there is more car accidents there are. And then, and then one other thing that was pretty, uh, that I wanted to point out was, I don't think you'd be blasting. You wouldn't be blasting at night. You wouldn't be blasting in, you know, bad weather where you don't have good visibility you know i mean the last thing we want to do is you know hurt somebody so it's uh i think just having some common sense around it would i mean we would obviously do that and these guys are experts with what they're doing they've been doing it for a long time i mean there's That and the kind of the reason originally that I that came up with this idea to have the pit here was actually circling circling Atlanta airport there and there's pits all around it right next to it. And I, I kind of thought to myself, well, around the golf course there around the airport, you know, we have the golf course and and. They kind of limit you from building structures and things like that. So, I mean, a pit you're going down and. That seems like a good safe thing to do, I guess and then and then. One thing that John Reed had mentioned in the past, too, with one of our first meetings about this was not having open water in there and bringing in waterfowl. And that's a good idea not to, I think, because you don't want to goose it in an airplane or something like that, taking it out. And I was like, well, I think we can do it without having open water and do it safely. And then the dust and everything, too, that's another concern. Well, the The dust is only up there for a couple seconds when you blast. You're not going to blast when there's any planes around. And then another thing, you know, I don't want to dust out the airport, obviously, but, you know, the prevailing winds kind of work out well there because they're kind of from the west, and that would be kind of blowing away from the airport, so. Just a few things that I was kind of thinking of off the top of my head there. Thank you.

Thank you.

Just, Council President, I just want to point out that's the applicant, so I don't know if that changes your five-minute rebuttal or not.

I'm going to say no, but if council members don't want to allow the rebuttal, we'll be fine. Okay, Mr. Welch, you have five minutes to, and if you can address any of the concerns that came up during, well, actually, I'm sorry, sit back down, because I didn't close the public hearing, and I do wanna ask one more time. This is a public hearing. Anyone else wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. Anyone else wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and invite Mr. Welch and the gentleman from Barr to step forward. And you have five minutes to address any issues that came up during the public hearing.

I'll let Mr. Davis have the talk on the pilot's questions. As a pilot, he can answer better than I can.

Sure, I can certainly appreciate some of the concerns that were raised by the speakers. I want to reiterate that no blasting would be occurring during instrument meteorological conditions, so no bad weather. This would only be done during visual flight rule weather conditions. There'll be no proposed blasting at night, that's illegal, it's against state law. And there would also be no blasting that's occurring when the tower is closed, because that again is times that are incompatible with those uses. I can say with almost certainty that one in a thousand blasts might produce rock that would fly more than 200 feet in the air. So we're talking about huge numbers that are remote, very, very infrequent numbers, and we're talking about 10 shots a year. The ask for that airspace, for it to be safe from a fly rock standpoint is about 15 seconds, maybe less. The dust itself, if the dust is generated any significance, again, would be moving in a way, a direction away from the airport operations, and that can be decided by the blaster. I keep seeing a lot of comments coming down to there's going to be just recklessness and randomness about how the blasting would be executed. In fact, it's completely opposite. It's going to be done during good weather. It's going to be done when favorable conditions exist for all parties. And the ask is for that coordination to be with the tower. I want to remind folks that Atlanta Jackson doesn't have coordination with the blasting next to them. Dulles doesn't coordinate unless Air Force One's in the sky. And we all know as pilots when Air Force One is in the sky, that doesn't sneak up. The practice approaches is a very valid point that were brought up by both flight instructors that were here speaking. But again, the location and proximity of that aircraft can be coordinated for this activity. I've personally sat on this property twice now to observe traffic around the Rochester airport and even watching both runways because again, 321 is closed right now for construction. But there are plenty of times throughout the day when there's no air traffic within five miles of the airport. And those are the type of windows that we're looking for is when air traffic is significantly far away and that distance is very negotiable. So I think many of the concerns that are raised don't acknowledge the fact this is not a random activity. It's fully coordinated and it is well controlled. I spoke again with these airports. They've never had dust as a result of blasting being an issue for their airports. This is including Madison, Wisconsin. Madison, Wisconsin has a quarry 1,300 feet off of their approach end of runway 18. And their winds would take that dust directly into their airport all the time. Dust is not an issue there and they're mining the same material. That's just down the road. There's no sneaking up on this airport, frankly. There's no sneaking up. With ADS-B, we can see aircraft coming in and out that are equipped. Aircraft that are not equipped still would be in contact with the tower as they approach the airport. This is a secondary ask that would be unprecedented to really ensure safety, and would frankly address the concerns that were raised by the pilots that previously spoke. And any aircraft that would be sneaking into this airspace, I can hear it. The blasters can hear it. That time before the shot is taken or planned to be taken is very quiet. There's not equipment running. There's nobody else around. So the immediate area around them is quite peaceful. And then again, by coordinating with observers, of coordinating with tower and listening, these are all the tools that we would use. And the distance, again, that the aircraft would be from the airport or any planned activity would be well set in advance. We committed to there being no blasting proposed near or around any scheduled activity. So any air traffic carriers that are bringing passengers in and out on a scheduled route, that would be automatically avoided for a proposed window. And the coordination to conduct that work would start days, weeks, and hours before there would be final choice on the shot time that's compatible to all parties. So that being said, I'll turn this back over to Mark. But I still firmly believe that this is a compatible use, and it's being demonstrated by many airports around the country right now.

and I've kind of felt this is blasting thing has become a much ado about nothing, but obviously we got to address the comments and the questions that came up and feel that we have done that. And so again, we're asking for approval based on the six conditions that were outlined by community development, or if you feel that there's additional information that can be provided, we are open to a continuance of it. But to date, it hasn't been clarified that if the denial is based on zone A or zone C, All the discussions about concerns are about zone A, that's the fly zone. Zone C is not within the fly zone. This quarry can't operate within zone C without having to do blasting within zone A. And just concerned that if we move forward with an outright denial without addressing that concept of it, it just feels like a taking of property rights within that zone C area. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll add too that I believe that property take would be unprecedented for denying it on the fact of blasting outside of that area.

Thank you. Thank you. At this time, I will ask my colleagues if they have questions for staff or the applicant. Council Member Wall.

Thank you. And this would be for staff. It is under The conditions, it's number three. Due to the anticipated negative impacts of the quarry use, the applicant shall enter into an operations agreement executed by the applicant and the city that includes, the first bullet, planned controlled explosions only occur outside scheduled and non-scheduled flight. How could you do a planned explosion for a non-scheduled flight if you don't know they're coming?

I think that's a fair point. The intention here is that there could be no flights coming into the airspace at that time. So essentially, we would be looking or pausing to see if any were coming. So that's the implied intention, because you're correct. We couldn't know unless contacting the air controller at that time to see if any were coming. So to clarify, the intent is to say no flights are coming at the time of blasting.

Councilmember, can I ask a follow-up to your question? So, Mr. Reid or Ms. Terrence, can you talk about the number of unscheduled flights that come into RST? And obviously, we have medical emergencies that come here, but... What amount of unscheduled flights happen? And then when an unscheduled flight happens, how much notice do you have?

I think it started a little bit higher here. So we have approximately 50,000 annual operations. If you divide that out evenly, you're about 140, 150 operations per day in a 24-hour clock. If you think about aircraft that are scheduled, what is that? That's Delta, that's American, that's FedEx that's coming in. Anybody filing a flight plan, an instrument flight plan. So think about any of the flight training that might be happening today. If they're filing a flight plan to do that or let's say it's a business aircraft that's coming from around the world to come into Rochester, that's generally going to be scheduled as it would be. There's quite a bit of activity to give you an exact number. I can't tell you quite a bit of student activity. from RCTC as well as Mankato, where the students are just out flying. They're out doing touch and goes. They're getting all the instrument practice that they need, or excuse me, all the hours that they need to build. So to tell you exactly how many, I don't know. That's not a stat that we keep for sure.

Can you address the second part of my question as far as when there is an unscheduled flight coming in, what kind of notice does the tower get?

I don't know that notice is the right term there, but if a student's entering the airspace or a pilot's entering the airspace, four or five minutes, I'd have to speak to maybe an air traffic, or excuse me, a flight instructor for a little better notice on that. It's just not something I'm familiar with as to what that notice looks like, depending on where they're coming from. You could get some even without radios that have a radio issue, so there's all kinds of scenarios.

Council Member Dorrie.

I have a follow-up to Council President's follow-up from Council Member Walz. The unscheduled flights, I appreciate the description of those unscheduled flights, student flyers, all that kind of stuff. What are the kinds of weather conditions when those student flyers choose to fly? Are they the favorable conditions that were described by the blaster in this case? Or do they go up when...

It's rainy and cloudy and windy. Yeah, I think, you know, varying conditions, but I think, you know, student pilots are generally going up in very favorable weather for sure. I think they, you know, I think as students begin to learn and progress through there, they might challenge themselves and get in more instrument rated weather. But for the most part, it's very favorable weather for learning.

Council Member Keene.

I have a question for our attorney. We're in a quasi-judicial thing here and one of the Applicants said, you know, focus on facts and openness and I have a quandary that I have facts in front of me that were documented in reports. And then I have other experts who come in and say, those are incorrect. Is there a certain way that we're supposed to weigh these? Is there something with public safety outweighs taking of of land assets? Is that just our job to pick the expert we believe? Thank you, Council Member Keene.

Council Members, Mayor Norton, with the exception of that last add-on at the very end about taking, I'll ignore that for the moment. But yes, the evidence that you have is before you. As we tell jurors at times, you need to do the best that you can. You're in the position to make credibility determinations. I know that can be particularly challenging on a matter like this that is quite technical, and you now have a mix of reports in front of you. But you do have the evidence to sort through to the extent that follow-up questions for staff are helpful to you to work through.

perhaps can contradictory points in front of you follow up as is helpful to you thank you and then I wanted to ask not sure if it's community development but one of the resolution whereas is the report received concludes that the quarry would create a direct aviation hazard And we've been talking to those specific facts, or is that a finding of fact based on that report? Or is it based on other, uh, other, uh, professional judgment?

That is a finding effect based on the 3rd party report that was done by the Rochester international airport.

Okay, and let me ask Mr. read just in it is it the almost way it came up. How did we pick that group to do this assessment versus another group that would be more familiar with our airport zoning or our airport construction work on that runway or somebody that, yeah, how do we pick them as the experts?

Absolutely fair question. I picked this group simply because there's not a lot of people out there studying that kind of airspace. And to the proponent's question, why didn't I use Meaden Hunt, which is our standard engineering firm, because they don't do this kind of work. They don't study that. I needed a specialty group to begin to look at what the FAA should have done in the first place, who refused to do, because it's a political question. that has drivers behind it. So I hired Federal Airways and Airspace. Just give me your evaluation of the impacts as presented. What impacts would happen to our approaches at RST? And again, I'll point out, these are full-time impacts if council decides to move in this direction, which I respect. But it's a full-time impact, not part of the time. And that's their opinion of that.

Okay. And last question. This is just on the, uh, when I get into this idea of this, if it did go towards approval versus denial, and then you end up with these conditions, can you talk about the. Administrative complexity and what the authority is to to, um. Uh, enforce those sort of conditions.

Again, I think if we go in that direction, there's a lot to work out. It's not just RST Airport working with a proponent. I've got to get full buy-in by the Federal Aviation Administration. I've got to get full buy-in by the air traffic controllers and the air traffic controllers union as to what exactly we're going to do as it relates to airspace and utilization of the airspace that they are in control of during that time frame. RST is not in control of the airspace. So a lot of work to be done across a lot of different spectrums. And again, I mean, I'll reiterate, this is what the air traffic control manager's initial conversation today was, well, in an email. Stop approaches to runway two one, stop departures to runway three. And I understand, you know, that this happens in other places. Again, I went through the whole list that they provided here. I struggled to find a lot of them that were true apples to apples on the approach, 2,800 feet. They make mention of Atlanta. Yeah, well, that's parallel to the runway. It's not off the end. It's not in line. So, again, a good, fair apples-to-apples comparison is important.

Thank you. Yep. I have a follow-up to Councilmember Keene's last question. So, twice, Mr. Reid, you mentioned the lead in the air traffic control process. group in the tower and and their comment is that the I guess I'm struggling with it sounds like a very off-handed comment and it's not official and so I'm asking kind of when did you ask for their their opinion and and on this issue and is it in writing somewhere that opinion or is it just kind of an offhanded comment that

Yeah, good question. So as soon as I got the blasting report from FANA, I did send it to the tower manager. She's my contact. That's who we work through. And I just said, please read essentially impacts to approaches related to the proposed query. I had a consultant look at the approaches and any impacts to see if the operation of the query is or is not a problem. I didn't say is not. A query could be a problem was my intention. I'm not the best in this space, but it looks like impacts to me. Any help by your team would be appreciated. Her response, I was out of the office and returned today. We have concurred that the query is a hazard. If it's going to go forward, we need specific information about how each of the adverse findings will be mitigated. Essentially, the only way to eliminate all the risk induced by the query at the proposed site is to eliminate the use of runway 21 for arrivals and the use of runway three for departures. This seems like a poor solution for a problem that does not need to be a problem if a different location away from the airport is selected. What would you like from me? I still have a little time today if you need to reach out.

Thank you for giving us that context, Mr. Reid. Mayor Norton.

I'm looking for some clarification. I heard two different things on whether the quarry is in A or C, and it was multiple times the owner's representative mentioned it was in C, but in the visuals that I'm looking at, it clearly appears to be in A. So I'm struggling with this, and I'm wondering if someone can provide clarity for that.

If I may, once more, the parcel is in both zone A and C. And once more, I will state that in the airport zoning ordinance, section 5C, general restrictions state that the use of any land in any of the safety zones is prohibited if the use, and goes on to say, number four, impairs visibility in the vicinity of the airport, or number five, otherwise endangers the landing, taking off, or maneuvering of aircraft. Once more, the general restrictions are our primary rationale. for recommending denial.

Council Member Palmer.

Is the third party report done by an engineer from Minnesota?

I can't say yes or no, but I don't believe so. No, they're just a consulting firm. They happen to be located in Florida.

Okay.

They're looking at standards that are across the United States from the FAA point of view.

So our meeting agenda was published on Wednesday. You're sending emails out today, and we get a report from this other third-party report comes in on Friday. Am I missing that timeline?

I'm going to take that one, if I may. That was in response to the secondary blasting assessment that was received by the applicant on August 28th. So since that time, we consulted with the third party to review it, and it took that amount of time to get a response back until Friday. And then naturally, we had discussions with the applicant about that timeline and decided to move forward with the meeting this evening. Okay.

Can I ask the gentleman from Barr Engineering?

Step forward.

You're an engineer licensed in Minnesota, correct?

Correct. I'm a professional engineer licensed in Minnesota. I'm a blasting engineer and a private pilot.

And I'm going to take you to downtown Rochester where you're blasting similar material? Same rock. Same rock. And how many blasts do you think you've done? Two or three, probably?

About 180 at Mayo Campus alone.

Okay. Okay. And who's doing the blasting? Is this a professional person that's doing the blasting?

Falcon Drilling and Blasting is the blaster that I'm working with, and that's what they do for a living. There are no freelance blasters. These are all folks that are highly controlled by insurance companies and regulation, and licensure.

Okay, thank you. If we approve this today, the next step would be for an operational agreement. Is that not correct?

I'd point the council to the potential draft conditions that are included in the staff report, one of which include an operations agreement. One thing I'd like to point out as well for some of the discussion that's been had, the applicant has mentioned limiting the number of blasts per year. There's nothing that will limit that unless that's also considered a condition. And I will remind the council as well that potential operations of this could be 35 to 50 years per the applicant.

A question for our engineer over there. Can this quarry last 30 to 40 years in operation?

It depends on how quick the material is taken out, but any additional expansion of the quarry is going to go to the west, into the golf course area. So further away from that zone A. And zone A is the area of the direct takeoffs and approaches, which is the area that would be of most concern, which I believe that is what the assessment by the company out of Florida was trying to address. But yes, that could be 35 to 50 years, depending on how quickly it's taken out. but that expansion be further west away from Zone A.

So they're going to blast the rock. They can come in with loaders. They're going to break it up. Is this for crushed rock? Yep. And there's a need for that in Rochester?

There's a need for it in Rochester, a huge need. Most of the rock from Rochester comes from Goldberg quarry that's on the north side of Rochester.

And DeCook owns LaCourie?

It's a DeCook family, different, Mitchell and Granger own the Oak Summit Golf Course, Chris DeCook owns Olmstead Aggregate. Okay. And they didn't buy this because there's the rock, they just bought it because it's a golf course? It's been the Oak Summit Golf Course and the family for probably 30 years, I believe, so. Okay.

I have a follow-up to Council Member Palmer's questions about the blasting and comparing it to the blasting that's happening downtown at Mayo. So we've, some of us watched that blasting and they have a process where they put something like a covering over it that keeps the debris, I think it's to keep the sound low, but is that something that you've explored to, or does something like that mitigate the dust and rock coming into the air.

It's generally inefficient to do that cover, but that video that you watched earlier, when you have that open face, all the energy is actually pushed out and not up. And so that's once you have that open face, the video that was shown before will show that kind of, the momentum and everything is pushed out.

Yeah, I can add a little more detail to that. You've seen the tire matting that's draped over the top of the shaft? The tire matting, yes. And the reason that's occurring is the explosive charges themselves are so near the surface of the ground to try to break that rock up. Where the coring operation, the explosives are placed much deeper, and we have the ability to use gravity to drop that high wall to help break it up on its impact. The rubber tire mats also do reduce the risk of excess sound. It helps keep the little stemming rock down in the holes. And from a coring standpoint, matting is not used because you're draping these big mats near the high wall, near the edge. It's not necessarily a safe thing to do from a timing and tie-in standpoint. From a technical standpoint, we only use matting when we're in high, dense urban areas. And the reason being is it does add additional safety issues for the full safe execution of the blast and tying those shots together. So it's not done. We don't map these shots for coring. We simply design them. And the two videos that were shown, I give the applicant credit because those two videos that were shown are, I would say, not the best blasts. They're really good ones, but the best blasts that we typically see produce probably a third or even a half of the height of the rock that you saw move there because we're getting those explosives further in the ground.

Thank you. Council Member Miller.

Just a question. I guess for either staff or our engineering blasting expert, for the comparable airports where there are existing quarries within that radius, are any of those quarries, have they been approved post-airport operations commencing or were they pre-existing and the airport was built there? I mean, do we have some analog to a process that was followed in another case?

So I think it's both conditions. There's clear instances where the airport came to that area after the quarry's been existing for sometimes 100 years. And there's other instances where those quarries have started much more recently. So the answer's both. But I will say, one to look at, because I think it has more traffic, it's close to here, is Madison, Wisconsin. And I apologize for not including that in a visual in the report. I did include some text. But at Madison, Wisconsin Airport, which is not only an air guard base, it's a medical base, it's the state capital, and it's got an incredible amount of carrier traffic. Blasting is occurring right now at 1,300 feet from the runway, so quite a bit closer than it is. And this is on what would be zone C, zone A margin. So the same boundary line that's being proposed here in closer distance to that approach to runway 18 is happening at an airport with much more traffic and much more frequent blasting. There, they're probably blasting three or four times as frequently as what's being proposed here in Rochester.

And could you speak to the process they're using of coordination there?

Their coordination, to the best of our understanding, in discussion with the blaster, is they provide a courtesy call to the tower just saying, we're going to be blasting today. And that's the extent of that coordination. I can dig into that deeper because we saw the Federal Airways, I saw it at six o'clock on Friday night is when we received the Federal Airways report, so I couldn't get much time to call out to some of these airports over the weekend. But one of the largest aggregate producers in the United States, I did speak with their lead blasting engineer today, and he personally works at six airports within a mile and a half of those airports, and they provide a courtesy call. The only exception they have is Guernsey in Wyoming, It's a military base. It's a joint military civilian field. And at that military base, they will not allow any drone activity based on that location. They film all their shots with a drone. So they coordinate that drone activity very much like we would propose this blasting activity, where there's a basic communication between the activity and the tower, and that's allowed a very successful relationship there.

Thank you. Council Member Doering.

Yeah, just one more question about a perceived discrepancy between the resolution and what we were told by Barr and the group coming forward. In the cover page for this item, it says community development, Rochester Airport, note the high degree of coordination, very significant possibility that flight operations of RST RST may need to be suspended before and after blasting activity, and I am making an assumption that that is based, and that's what's informing one of the whereases in the resolution that we're being asked to pass, where it says the continuing land use would require the use of explosives every four to six weeks. I heard from the other group here that that would be four to six times a year, and that's a frequency question for me, and I'm looking to which one is more accurate.

The phrase stated in the resolution is what was included in the original application documentation from the applicant stating every four to six weeks.

So, but then what can I ask one more follow up? Go ahead. So then what I understood is that in an operational agreement, we could limit that amount of blasting activity. That's correct. Okay. Thank you.

Council member Palmer.

Yeah, I'll make a motion. If I may add that should be included in a condition if considered specifically. Okay. Thank you.

Council Member Palmer.

I make a motion adopting a resolution recommending approval of a conditional use permit number CD 2026-008 CUP by MGK LLC for limestone aggregate quarry with the six conditions and with the seventh one added that less than seven blasts per year. Second.

Motion made by Council Member Palmer and seconded by Council Member Fredericks. Council Member Palmer, are you gonna defer? Oh, go ahead.

I mean, we have a state of Minnesota engineer who's very well-knowledged about what's happening here. I'm comfortable with that. I'm uncomfortable with something that shows up on a Friday afternoon after our meeting agenda has been published. And I've been around enough blasting that I'm comfortable with what they're trying to do, and I understand the airport's original two problems, and number one was the waterfall, and everybody else agrees that waterfall is not, birds are not going to be a problem on this site. So that's the reason for my motion.

Council Member Fredericks.

Yeah, just one of the things you said at the end there, Council Member Palmer, did you state that only seven blasts a year? Correct. Is that fair? I should ask that before I jumped on a second.

Mr. Walsh, come to the microphone.

I think it's fair to start. The concern would be that if it's very successful, if they're needing more rock, they might be blasting more than is necessarily needed, and it could impact how the blasters have to put it together. But I think if we get to that point, we would be having a blasting operation, we could come back to city council to get a point that if we needed to ask for more.

I just don't want to pigeonhole you and impede your operations if it isn't effective and you need to do a few more. Yeah.

I think it's worth pointing out that with a fewer number of blasts, those simply be larger to produce the needed material. My recommendation is, you know, maybe a few more than seven to give some operational flexibility during the busy year or busy time of the year, because most of these activities are not occurring the dead of winter when there's not a demand for that product. So that does end up being a little bit higher demand during the summer months. But I agree with Mark that that would be a starting point, and if there would be a need for that, that would be an ability to come back and ask for revision to that condition. And there's one more point, if it's okay for me to add, that an aircraft can't get to within five miles of this airport without contacting the airport ahead of time. And I think with the number of times that we're looking at this activity occurring, that's a reasonable impact to the airport operations to ensure that they're safe operation during those number of blasts that are determined.

Council Member Miller.

I'm curious. I don't remember who said this, but at some point during the presentation, there was a mention of if it were not amenable to keep Zone A into the approval, that you would be looking for certainty to be able to continue with a project that only incorporated areas within Zone C.

Yeah, if necessary, the blasting could be limited to within Zone C. We haven't come up with anything that would prohibit from being within Zone A, but it also could be something that's addressed in the blasting operations plan that we'll have to continue to work with Community Development and Public Works and the airport to solidify.

Okay. I know that staff mentioned that there's largely no difference from staff's perspective is how I understood it. Would that remain your position here? That it would, should this move forward, Zone A and Zone C would be seen equally there?

I would say the basis for recommending denial is based on those general restrictions that a use that impacts plane navigation and takeoff qualifies essentially the recommendation of denial. If this were to move forward, I think it would make a difference recognizing the proximity and location of blasting in Zone A compared to Zone C. So I would say that we would consider that.

So I'm then curious what my colleagues, particularly the movers, would feel about a modification to the motion that would remove the area zone A.

You both.

I don't believe in land restriction as low as possible. And if we're within guidelines and safety measures, I like to have them the freedom to operate in their space.

Council Member Palmer.

Well, if Mr. Miller wants to make that motion, I would support that. I go back to the seven. It's a business decision, how much rock they want to have blown and how much they're going to do. So that's where I'm comfortable with seven. And if they've already said that Zone C was agreeable to them, I'm not particularly sure that I want to, you know, if it gets to the pass, I'd accept the motion. All right, second in motion.

Okay, we'll get to that if we need to. Mr. Keene. Yeah, I see Mr. Keene. Go ahead, Council Member Keene.

Yeah, again, when Council Member Palmer made this motion, he talked about this last minute report or being out of state. I've been following this a little closer. It sits out by the airport and other residential parts of Ward 1. This has dragged out a long time, and I think the staff did a good job of showing the things starting there. But this idea of like degrading that report over somebody's local, that's a finding of fact that I just can't do. And based on that, I'm not going to support this motion.

Thank you, Mr. King. I'm struggling with this and so we have denial or we have the motion that we just heard. Now, I did hear continuance. What I have difficulty with is I'm looking for, and I understand that this has been going on for quite some time and I really commend Mr. Reid and the airport and and the applicants of working together up to this point I do have some I'm uncomfortable about the report that came out late this week and also some of the some of the characterization of that report by by the applicant that concerns me I'm also concerned about hearing about the coordination that can happen between FAA and the air traffic controllers, I'd like to have a little more information about how this could be possible. I hear from staff that it's almost a hard no, and I'm looking for more of how could this work with the number of unscheduled flights that we have, and I recognize that we have a lot of emergency unscheduled flights I need I guess I'd like to have more information on that and I'd also like to have a little more information on the Madison example that came up this this evening so I'm not gonna support this motion but I would be supportive of a motion that would continue this item so that staff and the applicant can work together a little bit more on this councilmember wall

I will not be supportive of the motion. The current motion. I really appreciate the care offered by the applicant in terms of blasting and assurances that you give. I very much do appreciate that. However, Mr bars word said, you know. 1 in a 1000, which doesn't mean. zero it means something could happen safety is always paramount i believe it's safe i believe the applicants uh believe that certainly the staff believes that but even if it's you know a remote chance are you still saying there's a chance uh and it could compromise safety In addition to the local pilots that we heard earlier tonight, I spoke to another local instrument certified pilot who is a large user of the airport. and says it would be a significant change not only for his business, but for a lot of business people that use our airport and make it less reliable to be able to land. So I'm going to stand with Planning and Zoning Commission, the city staff, the airport staff, and our local private pilots who have believed that this is not great for the safety of our airport.

Any, Council Member Doering?

Just I do not plan to support the motion as it's made right now as well for very similar reasons to Council Member Wall. So I appreciate his efforts to express that much more eloquently than I can.

Council Member Miller.

I guess I'm not ready to support the motion that's presented, but I am closer to where Council President Shubring has expressed an interest in considering how this project continues with a look at Zone C further airport operation coordination and a little more time to understand if this is a workable solution. But I would be inclined to see this move forward with some additional carve outs and clarification of the number of blasting events per year.

Call the question. Clerk Acaso, can you call the roll?

Council Member Keene.

Nay.

Council Member Miller.

Nay.

Council Member Wall.

Nay.

Council Member Fredericks.

Aye.

Council Member Palmer. Aye. Council Member Doran. Nay. Council President Schuburn.

Nay.

Motion fails.

Is there a alternative motion? Council Member Palmer.

Motion for continuance.

to a date or any further?

Help me with that since it was your idea.

I think your colleague next to you, Council Member Palmer may help you with that.

I would second a motion to continue this till the second meeting in October.

Is that good? Motion has been made by Council Member Fredericks and seconded by Council Member Palmer. Any further discussion? Council Member Keene and then Council Member Wall.

I'm just gonna reach out to Community Development and let's say this is the second meeting in October. What are you looking for? I'm not sure what the continuation is gonna do there. I think we're trying to work on these six conditions. Is that the idea? But I'd rather get something from staff or how you feel we'd move forward if this were the direction.

Thank you for the question. Just a couple of things to note for the record. In Minnesota, we have certain timelines that we must adhere to. The applicant has already waived that timeline per statute 15399, subdivision 3G. So I just wanted to say that on the record. I think on the spot here, we could probably make the second meeting in October work. I'm saying that independently of connecting with the applicant or folks at the airport, as there'd be many things to consider. But I think that's a fair date.

But I guess what I'm looking for here is what's gonna happen in the four weeks. Is this a negotiation to say here are the conditions and the specifics and we have an agreement that we could do this? I mean, I'm not sure if I'm putting the onus on. Is that the onus is on the petitioner or is the onus on the airport?

Sure, I think it would be a bit of both. What would happen? Essentially, we would be meeting with the applicant. Again, what I heard was see what it would take to draft an operations agreement, essentially, for example. So those would be some things that we would consider. A lot of the onus would be put on staff to put that together and trying to consult with other agencies, such as the FAA, as mentioned, to see what would be feasible. So, for example, that would be a concrete next step.

Okay, so if you don't mind, I'm gonna portray out that there's gonna be a, it'll be on reports and recommendations, it'll say recommend to approve or deny, and then it'll say if approve, it's with this operational agreement, and that would be an agreed to thing, or maybe the thing comes back to us, it says we couldn't get to an operational agreement, and we recommend denial. Is that, am I thinking about it the right way before I vote, or is that, am I making this up?

Let's pull Administrator Zelms into this.

Council Member, Council President, I think this is part of why you're struggling because this isn't just a question of whether or not a compatible use in the airport zoning exists. The implications for having a conditional use and the agreement that you're talking about is what are the implications for the airport, which we are unlikely to be able to pin down exactly. If we have significantly more operations in future years, that's a different implication depending on how much blasting is available, depending on what the implications are for the approaches, depending on the weather, even if there's, wind is a factor in aviation, it may not be as much of a factor depending on the type of blasting, Having airspace and approaches isn't necessarily the same thing as having blasting on the ground. So we're trying to thread the needle on these two things. And I can't guarantee you that we will ever have clarity on what the full implications to the airport operation are. But you will be obligated to operate that airport for 20 years every time you take a dime of federal money, which you do every year. And as the airport sponsor for the airport, you have obligations to ensure its operability.

What I would say as far as our process here, we are choosing not, if this motion passes, we are choosing not to make a decision on the denial that came from planning and zoning and the recommendation from staff. So what we are continuing is that decision. So that decision will come back to us in the same form is my understanding. Is that correct, Mr. Spindler-Craig?

Thank you, Mr. President. I would say mostly yes, but we do need an agreement to continuation on the record. Otherwise, I would be recommending that the council not pursue that path.

So can you spell that out to us? Do we need that to be in the motion that Council Member Fredericks made?

I think the applicant's indication on the record at the mic that they are agreeing to a continuation, a continuance on this matter, that's not definitive to the body. You can of course still vote that down, but we're clear that that needs to be a condition of this motion.

Okay, if the applicant can step forward and let us know if you are willing to continue this.

We're willing to continue, yes.

Thank you. All right, with that, we have, who are you pointing to?

Mr. Reid.

Mr. Reid, did you wanna say something? Go ahead.

Get this working. Thank you. Appreciate this. One last comment here. Obviously willing to do whatever council directs us to do. This is the position you hold here. I can't guarantee, though, that it's not going to change the outcome of the approach. Regardless of what we do, if you agree to do this, I think it negatively impacts the approach to Runway 21. And just I wanted to put that up for some clarification there, just to make sure you fully understand. We can agree to, you know, so many blasts per year. I'm not sure of the impacts on Zone C versus Zone A. I'd have to hire this same company again to take a look at that so that we understand those impacts. But I can't guarantee that it's not going to continue to impact the GPS approach to that runway, which is a negative for the airport as a whole, or the other impacts for the other runways. Just wanted to make that clarification, regardless of the time that you're asking for.

Thank you, Mr. Reid. I think we're asking for more information as well to make our decision, if that's from my standpoint. Council Member Wall.

So I think that Mr. Keene probably covered what I want to ask, but I'll be a little bit more pointed. For whatever it is that the council is asking, is the staff, Certain about what we're asking is the applicant certain that we're going to get the information that we're going to ask for within about four or five weeks. Where's the burden lie? to make sure that we get whatever it is that we want in order to make a decision.

Ms. Eaton, did you wanna take that?

Sure, if I may, I think we have a general understanding of what the council is asking for. I think our concern is whether or not that information can be produced or is available, period, in its entirety. But I think I have an idea of what the council is asking for information on as far as if there's a workable path forward, more or less.

Thank you. With that, Clerk Caso, please. I'm sorry, this is still. Council Member Doering, go ahead.

Could I ask Community Development to tell us what that information you heard is so we can make sure that we're all on the same page?

Yes. What I heard was more information regarding the Madison example, what it would take to consider an operations agreement, if that's feasible and what that might include, more information around an air traffic controller, how does this work in practice with unscheduled flights, how much notice would be received, if any, and more clarification around the number of blasting events per year. Thank you.

Very good.

Councilmember Keene.

Yeah, I just want to add to this. Again, I'm looking down this thing and I'm getting to the point I'm okay with the continuation because it's getting the right facts here. But I don't want to imply that I'm willing to accept like this, create a direct aviation hazard, like even if it's a one in a thousand, one in a million. That's not what I'm hoping to hear from this. But I'm also telling staff that, I mean, if this is a Degrade degradation to the airport. I want to make sure you tell us that and don't say, well, that's what they wanted. Because I am not comfortable on this trade off that if, uh, if it finding a fact is, yes, some of these, our analysis was probably over protective, then then that might be a good direction. But if that's not the case, I, I am, uh, I don't think this council is directing you to take undue risk or to reduce operations at the at the airport so that we can approve this conditional use.

Thank you, Councilmember. With that, Ms. Edens, go ahead.

If I can respond to that, I would state once again, staff recommends denial and there will be impacts to the airports as related to both requirements of advanced communication between the airspace control staff, regardless of how we move forward, as well as the approach impacts as communicated.

Thank you. Clerk Kasel, please call the roll.

Councilmember Keene. Aye. Council Member Miller.

Aye.

Council Member Wall.

Nay.

Council Member Fredericks. Aye. Council Member Palmer. Aye. Council Member Doering. Nay. Council President Schubring.

Aye.

Motion carries.

Thank you. Thank you. We'll be back on this. And we are going to take a seven minute. G2, which is our 2027 Annual Action Plan Community Development Block Grant allocations. Mr. Brent Svenvee.

Good evening, Council, President, Council Members, Mayor, Brent Swinbee, Community Development. Tonight I'm here to ask the Council to open the public comment period on the 2027 Annual Action Plan for the CVG program. So let me just do a brief background of the program itself. The city of Rochester is a entitlement community, so every year we get funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for our Community Development Block Grant Program. The funding is used for a wide variety of community development projects. The goals of the program are to provide decent, safe, sanitary housing, provide a suitable living environment, and to expand economic opportunities. So the primary benefits of the program is to provide services to low and moderate income persons. Each program must be the eligible activity. And there's three national objectives of the program itself. The one the city uses the most is to provide a benefit to low and moderate income individuals. The other two are to prevent and eliminate slum and blight or to meet an urgent community need threats of health or welfare of residents. So the interaction plan is basically the plan that designates or tells how the city intends to allocate and spend their 2027 CVG dollars. I will note that today I did receive back our agreement for 2026. So that came back today, just have not gotten the funding yet. We should get that in the next couple of weeks hopefully, but we did get the agreement back for 2026 today. Um, so again, the interaction plan, so it serves as the, how are we, how are we going to spend our money in 2027 back in 2024, 2025, the city adopted a new 5 year plan for 2025 through 2029. And the strategic priorities of that plan, there are five of them, and they're access to affordable housing, access to public services, non-housing community development, planning and administration, and a fairly fair housing. That's the five strategic priorities that the council adopted in our five-year plan. So for 2027, we start this process back in July. So back in July, we sent out emails to individuals who have expressed interest in the CBG funding in the past. We also published a notice in the post bulletin. We also did a press release, notifying the public of the window for the application period. And then also enjoy we held a open house where people come in and ask questions in regards to this The CBG application itself. I think we had three individuals come to that meeting so which is pretty good We usually get zero, but we had three people this year come to our open house and then in August 17th the application window closed and and After that close, we sent the applications to a steering committee for their review along with the scoring rubrics. And then that steering committee met on August 31st, and they came up with a recommendation of funding of the dollars that we anticipate getting for 2027. Then from September 1st to September 15th, our community development office kind of drafted the plan. Then on September 15th, actually we held a open house at the library asking for input on the 2027 Interaction Plan. And again, we had zero individuals show up for that open house. So that brings us here to the council here on September 21st, where we are asking the council to open the public comment period on the 2027 Annual Action Plan. And then we'll be back before you on August, or I'm sorry, on November 2nd, to ask you to close a public hearing. And at that time, the council can make modifications to that plan. And then we would ask you to, on November 2nd, to adopt a resolution. for the 2027 activities. Since our program year starts on January 1st, we're supposed to have our annual action plan submitted into IDIS by November 15th. We actually don't do that. We wait until March, April of next year when HUD notifies us that they would like to see our annual action plan. So as part of our CBG dollars, 15% of our dollars that we receive from HUD can be used for public service types of activities. So those are the activities that we send out a notice for the application window. We are anticipating that we'll maybe receive $650,000 in CVG dollars in 2027. I think for 2026, we are receiving $657,000. So it has been going down a little bit in the last couple of years. So we're estimating we'll probably receive $650,000. So we did get nine applications in for public service activities. The total amount requested on those nine applications totaled just over $259,000. Based on our projection of $650,000, 15% of that is about $97,500. So you can see the nine applications that submitted applications and their activities that they would be using the CBG dollars for and the amount requested. I'll skip over the recommendation part for now until later on in my slides. So back in 2020, the council adopted a new allocation process for allocating CBG funds. We went to a steering committee process. So as previously mentioned, the steering committee met on August 30th to review and provide their recommendations for allocations. Just the steering committee consisted of five members that were city employees and we had two committee members that were also on the committee last year. We did send out the applications to the steering committee along with the scoring rubrics that address timeliness, project effectiveness, does it have a direct impact, equitable impact, who is it serving, and the social economic impact. And then how does it address the priorities of the council and how does it address the priorities of the consolidated plan? And if they were previously funded, if they were previously funded, they got less points if they were a new one. And it kind of broke it down into like the last five years and then different scoring points. I did not ask the steering committee to provide me with their worksheets for their scoring of applications. It was more like just an open discussion with the steering committee members when we met on August 31st. I kind of let them lead a discussion, and Adam Froelich and I were just kind of there in background listening, taking notes, and helping guide them along the way. But I really wanted the steering committee to have a discussion on the applications that they received. So based on those discussions on August 31st, they came up with funding five of the nine applications that we received for public service activities. The five activities would be Damascus Way, Family Promise of Rochester, Iowa at the Homeless Foundation, Jeremiah Program, and the Salvation Army of Rochester. And then we always have administrative costs that goes to our time administering the program itself, $75,000 in program administration costs. And then we've also been putting money towards affordable housing planning. That money actually goes to the Rochester Housing Coalition for their work in planning for affordable housing in the community. And then the big pot of money usually goes to rehab activities. Our biggest program that we fund is our single family rehab program. We offer loans up to $25,000 for income qualified individuals, families to rehab their homes, to make their homes safer, energy efficient, more suitable for living so people can stay in their homes. longer and those loans are zero percent interest loans and they get paid back when the individual no longer lives at the property. And about three years ago, we started doing kind of a rental rehab program where we put aside like $25,000 per rental unit. Again, income qualified rental units are eligible for CVG dollars. And then with that program, we do require that the applicant provide a match for those rehab dollars. And then that loan can be forgiven after 10 years if they maintain fair market rents in those units. So one of the first rental projects that we did It was for $100,000. They had a 25% match. Two years after the project was completed, they sold the properties, and so we received those dollars back into program income, and those money goes back into the CBG program. And then we have about $107,000 in administrative costs of the rehab program. And that also goes to our partners at Olmstead County who manages the rehab program for us as far as the inspections of working with homeowners and getting bids with the contractors, et cetera. But they also have some money in there for our office, because we do have staff members that also work with clientele as far as working with them on getting them some loans drafted, income verifications, et cetera. So in total, we have about $725,000 that we're allocating in 2027. Again, $650,000 of that is anticipated receiving through HUD, and about $75,000 is expected through program income from those rehab loans that get paid throughout the year. It's really hard to judge how much we may get a year. I think I just looked today, this year we've received about $100,000 already, but some years we probably only see $50,000. So it's kind of hard to believe the number of how much program income we'll get. So we kind of be conservative because we do have some unallocated funds in the CVG program that we can allocate if we need to, if we run short. Here's just a slide showing of the $725,000, 13% of that goes to public service activities, 66% to housing rehab, and about 20% of our dollars goes to administration. Again, here's the timeline of where we are. So 21st asking the council to open the public comment period on the annual action plan and move that before you on November 2nd to ask you to close it and adopt a resolution allocating those funds.

Thank you, Mr. Svenby. AT THIS POINT I WILL OPEN THE PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD OR THE PUBLIC HEARING TODAY. ANYONE WISHING TO BE HEARD ON THIS ITEM PLEASE STEP FORWARD. Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. Seeing no one, we will not close the public comment period, but I would invite Mr. Svenve to come back and invite my colleagues to ask any questions you may have. Council Member Wall.

Thank you, Mr. Fendi. I was very pleased that you reported on the loans that are repaid to the city and how you include those into further grants. That's terrific. Thank you.

Council Member Fredericks.

Thanks for your work on this. Your meetings are popular with the public. A lot of people show up.

I'm just kidding you. Yeah, I will say that we do have an open house plan for Tuesday, September 29th from noon to one to gather input on the 2027 interaction plan. I think the press release will go tomorrow on that. So we do encourage the public to provide us comments on that interaction plan and any comments that we receive will be included into that plan.

I like the areas you're allocating the money. Thanks for your work and thanks for the people that are on the board as well.

It's always a tough decision because you get so much of an ask and there's only so many dollars to give out. It's a really hard choice to make and I kind of reviewed my scoring sheet today and I had all nine applications within nine points of each other. So it's a really tough decision and I wish we had more money to allocate to public service activities, Based on HUD's regulations, we only can allocate 15% of our CBG dollars to public service activities.

Council Member Miller.

Just a question, I noticed most of the applications are for operational support, with one exception for purchase of assets. Are these typically new programs that these organizations are proposing, they're ongoing operations, and what other funding sources do they rely on?

A lot of them are, most of them are, yeah, are operational support, and a lot of them rely on fundraising through other means in the community, so, yeah.

but they do tend to be ongoing programs whether funded or not.

A lot of staff passed.

So I'm unclear, do we need a motion to keep the open comment period open until November 2nd?

If someone would like to make that motion, I'll make the motion, which we probably should have before we opened it, but authorizing the opening of the required public comment period regarding the 2027 annual action plan as required by the US Department of housing and urban development for the receipt of community development block grant funds. The public comment period will close November 2nd, 2026. Second.

A motion made by Council Member Keene, seconded by Council Member Doering. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Thank you. We will be back on this on November 2nd. To our reports and recommendations, we have one item, which is H1, the 2027 Preliminary Tax Levy and Supplemental Recommended Budget Administrator Zelms.

Council President, Council Members, Mayor Norton, several members of the public, thank you for the opportunity. Tonight's item is the next formal step in the 2027 budget process. The item before you asks Council to establish the preliminary 2027 property tax levy and preliminary budget. Set the date for the final budget hearing as in December, which is recommended as December 7th. and take action to allocate funding for any path home per your discussions last week. Specifically, the recommendation before you is to certify a preliminary property tax levy of approximately 124.9 million, which represents a 5.59% increase in the total levy compared with 2026, and to establish a preliminary all funds budget of approximately 799.3 million, which is inclusive of Rochester Public Utilities. Council is also being asked to establish that December 7th date as the public hearing and final adoption of the 2027 supplemental budget and levy that gets reported on the tax notices that Olmstead County will need this information for in order to send those out to each property owner. I want to emphasize an important distinction that we've discussed throughout the process and all your prior processes about setting the levy. 5.59% is the increase in the total amount of the city levy. It is not a property tax rate, and it does not mean that every property owner's city taxes will increase by 5.59%. Property valuation, classification, and changes among property classes all affect individual tax bills. The preliminary estimated market value growth for taxes payable in 2027 is about 5.21%, including 1.26% from new construction and 3.95% from valuation changes. So about a quarter of the net tax capacity change is new construction. which is the first to absorb the levy, whether it's changed or not changed. For some context, the 2026 budget materials, when we had the final market value evaluation in December, projected only about a .16 percentage point change in the local tax rate. Again, applied based on assessed value, even though the larger, there was actually a larger levy increase than proposed today. The preliminary levy also establishes the maximum levy that council can ultimately adopt. So between now and December, council could maintain it or reduce it, but under state law, it cannot increase after preliminary certification. because that preliminary certification gives the community a known upper limit, and the property tax notices I mentioned are prepared in accordance with that. There are, I think, a few highlights still worth calling out in case folks hadn't watched your study sessions, et cetera. The recommendation is meaningfully below what had originally been contemplated when Council adopted the two-year 2026-2027 budget. At that time in December of 2025, the projected 2027 levy increase was 7.4%. The supplemental process and all of the hard work of teammates and the elected body recommended a It's a lesser tax levy adjustment, and it is down to that 5.59%, which is about 6.6 million more than the 2026 levy. The largest component of the levy, as we've discussed, is the cost of maintaining existing employee services, representing about 3.27 percentage points of the increase, and we do that through labor negotiations with 19 labor units. Other components include stabilization of the equipment revolving program, previously approved decision packages, and capital investment, with other budget adjustments partially offsetting those pressures. So the overall $799.3 million budget includes about 463 million for operations, 299 million in capital investment, and 37.5 million for debt service for finance projects. Importantly, that total, again, does include Rochester Public Utilities, so our electric and water utility. We're making significant investments in the electric utility for the 2030 power resource plan, the budget, the supplemental budget, we're also in a supplemental budget year, so rather than creating an entirely new budget, the approach in the supplemental budget year has been to update the second year of the adopted biennial budget where we now have significant new information or more reliable estimates. So we've not opened a new round of 2027 decision packages, although we did some adjustments based on council feedback. And it's not to do not rebuild the entire six year capital plan. You will have the joy of working through that in the 2028, 2029 process, which will be upon you before you know it. The recommendation tonight is the results of an extensive process that you've been involved in. Staff worked through departmental requests and internal review during March and May. Council discussed the major factors influencing the 2027 budget at their April 13th study session. On July 13th, we brought back the results of the 2025 audit, so what actually happened. in 2025 to get that updated financial picture. On August 24th, council received the city administrator's full recommended supplemental budget and thousands of pages that I'm sure you poured over, followed by another discussion last week on September 14th to work through any remaining questions and potential adjustments. So again, we're at the preliminary approval point. THROUGHOUT THOSE DISCUSSIONS, WE CONTINUED TO ANCHOR THE BUDGET AND COUNCIL STRATEGIC PRIORITIES AND FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES, PARTICULARLY FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY, PUBLIC SAFETY AND QUALITY SERVICES, while recognizing the financial pressures associated with maintaining existing services and delivering the significant capital work underway in Rochester. So staff are still finalizing a few things, as you are well aware. We're still finalizing a full recommendation for service charge for credit card fees and understand that there is at least some concern about whether those should apply in situations such as paid parking and transit applications. where credit cards are required. Also, there's further desire to hone the process to provide administrative support from existing teammates for both council and the mayor's office, as well as an adjustment to not apportion the council travel budget by seven. And to review the council appointments and whether specifically appointed boards like the airport commission, which specify membership, could adjust. Those are things we heard throughout your process. These are primarily policy adjustments without budget impact and will come forward yet this year. Other feedback that you've shared will inform the 2028-29 process for things like community experience, shared services, and importantly, street and trail maintenance funding that was discussed at the beginning of the process. So just again with that, I want to thank the staff team that works very hard to craft a reasonable budget recommendation and to manage the budget every day thereafter. Specifically, Rachel Hodick, Esten Jostad, Josh Doerr, Brian Anderson, and Aaron Parrish, and thank you to all of you for your diligence and deliberation establishing the two-year budget and now the 2027 supplemental year. The last thing, again, that we are recommending is to approve allocating $100,000 for any path home, and we're recommending that that come from the 2025 statewide affordable housing aid funding that's already received by the city, rather than adding it to the property tax levy. excuse me, Minnesota Housing has confirmed that that type of support for homeless response is an eligible use of the funds. I made it a little bit too long. So in summary, we're here to ask for your discussion and approval of the preliminary tax levy, preliminary budget and allocation of those non-tax levy funds so that you can continue the conversation about exactly how to utilize those.

Thank you, Ms. Zelms. Take a breath and another drink of water. And are there any questions from members, Council Member Doering?

Just for clarification, this is a process question. We heard in our open comment period tonight that this was brought forward in reports and recommendations and there was a disappointment that there wasn't public comment. That public comment can happen at that December 7th meeting, correct?

Council member Dorian, council members, yes, that's correct. The state law requires the public hearing to happen when you're certifying the final levy, which is significant notification happens through those individual tax notices, which provides the date for the public hearing and, of course, each individual property tax owner's implications. And so this report and recommendation really sets that, the ceiling, which allows you the trajectory and any community members' trajectory towards that public hearing.

And is this year's process divergent from processes we've used in the past?

Council Member Doering, it is not. There was one year since I've been here that we did approve the preliminary levy as a public hearing, and I believe there were three speakers at that public hearing. And of course, individuals come to your open comment regularly to comment on things that are in reports and recommendations. Yep, thank you.

Council Member Wall.

I understand that we are setting the cap tonight and that we will establish the budget on December 7th. Most of you know that I'm talking significantly with the public these days, and by far the largest item that I get is property taxes, and it really is painful for some. I would say not most, but it is really, really painful for some. So any sharp pencils that can be applied to the budget between now and December 7th, I would be very much appreciative of Councilmember Palmer.

Well, I also have been out talking to a lot of different neighbors and affordability is a huge issue to most everybody I've talked to and People are struggling. I did ask our last study session that we keep it to the 5.2% Which I think is a reasonable request I think that just less than $400,000 that we could take out of the budget to hit that. What it does show is that we do have growth in our community, and growth is good, and people have been struggling with the growth downtown, and the benefit of that is that our property tax levy will not be going up that much. It's a $400,000 difference. We do have TIF districts that are coming off, and I don't think I've seen the numbers for the TIF districts coming off, but that will save us I'm a supporter of any path homes. I'm not particularly sure what we're getting for this $100,000. At our last meeting we had, I think one of the staff members said it was half-baked. And so we have to have some trust in what we're going to do with that. I'm still a proponent that the county is responsible for our homeless population. population and thank you and but I also understand where the city has to step up sometimes so I will not be supporting not a surprise this tax levy

Can I follow up on Council Member Palmer's thoughts on any path home? Can you remind us what is the process for us to detail where those funds are going to go? Ms. Edens, were you gonna take that? You were smiling, so that's why I thought you were going to answer it.

I was ready for it, but feel free to jump in if I got the process wrong. I guess what I would say is, once again, right, we talked about potential uses of the funds. The funds could be committed to any path home for allocation as well. That is also an option, and what we discussed was using state funds, statewide affordable housing aid funds, which could be considered, as I understand it at this time, or separately.

Mr. Parrish.

Yeah, this is a budgeting exercise, and so you've designated that these funds would be available for that purpose, but to the extent that we appropriate that to the group, at $100,000, it would come back for Council approval and some form of agreement, and so you would see it at a later date, but we would be appropriated for it at that time.

Got it, thank you. Council Member Wall.

I would ask Mr. Palmer what it would take to get you to support the tax levy proposal for tonight.

Well, I was quite clear at our last meeting that if we took $400,000 out of our contingency fund and let that be $600,000, that would meet that dollar amount. And it doesn't affect the budget. And the budget's been well put together, and a lot of input is put into it, and a lot of blood and sweat and tears. It's not a budget full of fluff. But I think that the contingency is something that we sometimes use as a piggy bank that we don't need to. And I think that we do have a, 47% funds sitting there that's gonna go down to 42, maybe 43%. It's a little bit kind of like any path home. We needed $100,000 and poof, we found it. So when we do have a problem, we can do that. And I truly do believe that our budget is a tight budget, but I don't think our contingency needs to be that level. Ms. Elms and I disagree, but that's fine.

So I expected you to come with a motion tonight.

We'll see. Can I ask a question about contingency funds since it came up? Ms. Elms, can you talk about, one of my concerns about going into the contingency fund is that It's not a sustainable way to budget. It then brings us to what do we do a year from now and do we go back to that? So, Ms. Elms, can you talk about, as far as best practices and contingency funds and supplemental budgets?

Certainly, Council President, Council Member, The best practice, which we have established, is that we're carrying a contingency. The intent, and I don't think we've, I don't believe staff has treated it as a piggy bank, and oftentimes you haven't utilized it. Most of the time that it's been utilized, it's been to bring something forward that was unexpected in the year, or sometimes there has been a council-initiated action that's requested use of contingency because something is important and wasn't in the budget. But the primary purpose for the contingency is to continue to carry enough levy so that in your future budget year, as we've noted, a significant cost for the general fund budget, about 80%, which is primarily funded by property tax is personnel. And so based on state law and the different personnel rules that we work within, although we try to mitigate that every year, The increase of 3.5% for personnel is not insignificant. And so as your budget grows, you need just laws of proportionality. You need to have a larger amount of fund in reserve in order to keep meeting that 42%. Fiscal best practice and that becomes important when you go out for rating for if you won't ever as you continue to do financing That's basically the rating for the credit worthiness of the city for any Long-term financing for projects that last 20 30 40 50 years You get a lower interest rate more bidders and a better overall pricing for your offerings when you have a high about bond rating and one of the not that many factors that bond rating agencies look at is your ability to withstand change to your economy, to revenues, to any other global forces that start to impact your ability to deliver and pay your bills. And I would also note that we do not receive property tax every month of the year. We receive property tax twice a year. We pay debt payments twice a year and we make payments to all sorts of folks that we owe money to for contracts, for employment, et cetera, every day of, well, we do it two times a week, but we make payments multiple days of the year, and so your cash flow is also important. So if you can't meet your cash flow, you have a problem. And while I don't think that's a significant current concern at 42%, there are times of the year where your revenue is drawing down. And so when you receive your first tax payment January time frame and your second tax payment July time frame, every day in between there, you are drawing down dollars, especially for those levy-supported funds. The other thing I would just point out is that of this budget, about 15.6% of it is tax levy. The rest is funded through other revenue sources like rates and fees.

Council Member Keene. Yep, I'm looking, again, I've gone through the study sessions we've done on this. I think we've done this. like i've gone through it enough but it's interesting to me that a resolution the language is slightly different we're not talking about percentage difference we're really talking about the real number of tax levy and the real number of budget is there um is that a consistent way we do it or is this because i was looking for the preliminary tax levy increase of 5.59 and that's not part of the resolution council member i believe we've always made it the dollar amount because the percentage is

Well, it's based on what all of your. It's we've always done it by the dollar amount because the dollar amount is the amount that is going to increase and need to be spread across all of the classes of property by Olmstead county.

Very good again, I think the dollar amounts do for us. It is a cleaner way to communicate. I just, I just feel like we're changing the language to the public and I guess this is really setting our dollar our agreements with the county. So they can send out our statements.

Council member wall.

I believe that I have read twice, including either today or yesterday in the Minneapolis paper that the Minneapolis General Reserve is 17%. Is that possible, is that true? Who knows that? 42 or 47? Ms. Selms, you look like you might have.

Councilmember, that is possible. Not every city achieves a reasonable reserve and not every city has a AAA bond rating. It also puts pressure on their ability to continue to provide services without what is also a fairly significant recommended increase in their tax levy in order to continue providing services.

So as regards the contingency, last month we spent about half of it. And we will return, if we spend no more, about $500,000 to the reserves on January 1st or December 31st, if my math is at all good. If we reduce... the contingency to 600,000 this year. And we as a council were committed to not funding projects, but really truly only emergencies. We might have 600,000 on December 31st of 2027, perhaps. Obviously nobody knows that, that's what contingency is. But I'm not necessarily convinced that bank rolling money just to put it in the reserve should be our prime consideration.

Council Member Palmer.

Mr. Wall, I think I read the same article, but I believe as everything with taxes is kind of goofy, It was a fund reserve. And so if you look at our, um, park and rec department, their fund reserve, it does not meet the, the, the overall, uh, number that we're looking for it at, um, 42%. And some do and some don't, but they keep trying to get to that spot. I think that's what it comes from. Yeah. Um, but after a motion has been made, I'd probably make an amendment.

Is there a motion? Council Member Keene, go ahead.

I'll make a two-part motion. Number one, adopting a resolution certifying the 2027 preliminary tax levy of $124,901,338, which includes the preliminary operating and capital budgets and establishing Monday December 7th as the public hearing date for the final adoption of the 2027 supplemental budget and levy increase and part 2 approving a $100,000 funding for any path home from the 2025 state statewide affordable housing aid fund.

Motion made by Council Member Keene. Is there a second? Seconded by Council Member Miller. Council Member Keene.

Yeah, again, it was a nice surprise going from 2025 to 2026 and seeing the 2027 come down 2027. 2% or more. I also note that they are electric went from 6 down to 4 because of operational things that happened through the year going into 2027. so those are nice to see and I usually like to state we staff works very hard on trying to get this budget all together and keeping everything straight. But. I ALWAYS WANT TO CONSIDER THIS TO BE OUR COUNCIL BUDGET. THIS REFLECTS OUR PRIORITIES AND DECISIONS WE MAKE THROUGH THE YEAR. YOU DO THE BUDGET AT THE END BUT IT REFLECTS THE DECISIONS AND THE PRIORITIES YOU LIVE WITH THROUGH THE YEAR.

Yeah, I'll echo that. I think we've had a nice time to review this at multiple points, make reasonable changes, find alternative funding sources for the IndyPath home request. And should there be a motion to come forward to alter the contingency, I'm not going to be supportive of that.

Council Member Palmer.

Yeah, I'll make an amendment to reduce the tax levy by $400,000.

A motion has been made by Council Member Palmer. Second.

seconded by council member wall council member palmer i think it's important to hit our 5.2 percent with the growth that we have anticipated i think it's nice to be able to tell people um because we have growth your tax levy um a dollar amount will not be going up i believe that the contingency would be an area that the staff could look at to get it but it's not if they think that's more important than something else let them make that decision

Any further discussion on that? Seeing none, Clerk Caso, please call the roll on the amendment.

Council Member Keene.

Nay.

Council Member Miller.

Nay.

Council Member Wall.

Aye.

Council Member Fredericks.

Aye.

Council Member Palmer.

Aye.

Council Member Doering.

Nay.

Council President Schubring.

Nay.

Motion fails, four to three.

We are back to the original motion. Any further discussion? Seeing none, Clerk Kasel, please call the roll.

Council Member Keene.

Aye.

Council Member Miller.

Aye.

Council Member Wall.

Aye.

Council Member Fredericks.

Aye.

Council Member Palmer. Nay. Council Member Doering. Aye. Council President Schubring.

Aye.

Motion passes six one.

Thank you. We have no council-initiated actions. Again, no ordinance first or second reading, nor any tabled items or other business. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Motion made by Councilmember Miller, seconded by Councilmember Doering. All in favor say aye. Aye. We are adjourned. Good to see you, gentlemen and ladies.