City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. It is now 7.02, and I call this regular council meeting of the Victoria City Council to order. It is our tradition to begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. If you are able, we invite you to stand and join us.

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

Excellent. Our first item on our agenda tonight is announcements. And this is a lot to read. I haven't read this much out loud since Goodnight Moon. But we were a little late getting going here because we had our second budgetary meeting. It was very productive. I invite you all to get a chance to watch it on the YouTube. We highlight a lot of the pressures, savings, and efficiencies that we've gone through. All meetings of the City Council including workshops are open to the public and held in council chambers at City Hall unless otherwise noted. We encourage anyone wanting to attend our council meetings or workshops in person to contact our city clerk in advance. Join us for a City Council workshop on August 10th at 5.30 p.m. for feedback on the downtown parking and community engagement. In other announcements, you can join us for a pop-up splash pad event on July 28th from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Recreation Center. Cool off and enjoy the fun, everyone. Our Night to Unite will take place on Tuesday, August 4th from 5 to 8 p.m. Neighborhood organizers can register with the city to request visits from firefighters, sheriff deputies, City council members and staff. Visits are guaranteed for the first 20 registered parties. You can find out more information on our city website at victoriamn.gov. With that, are there any other announcements from council or staff? No. All right. Our next order of business is to adopt the final agenda. Council, is there a motion to adopt the final agenda?

Motion to adopt the final agenda.

Is there a second? Second.

Second.

I have a motion by Councilman Reif. I have a second by Councilman Roberts. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Open forum. Moving on to our next item. It's our open forum. It's an opportunity for members of the public to address the council on items that are not on tonight's agenda and are not part of the active application that will come before the council at a future date. We haven't had anyone register in advance, but is there anyone in the audience who would like to address the council at this time? Going once, going twice, no deal. All right, seeing no one, we'll now move on to the next item on our agenda, the consent agenda. The items on the consent agenda are routine, administrative, and do not require deliberation and are considered housekeeping items and are required by law. Consent agenda items are approved with one vote unless someone requests an item to be considered separately. Ms. Hardy, does staff wish to pull any of the consent items for separate discussion and vote?

None from staff. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. Council, are there any additional items that you would like to see pulled for separate discussion or vote? Nope. Is there anyone in the audience who would like to pull an item for separate discussion and vote? Nope. Clerk, please let the, oh, that's not what we need to go with there. So, council, may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Make a motion to approve the July 27th, 2026 consent agenda.

Could I get a second? Second. I have a motion made by councilman Evanski, seconded by councilman Reif. All in favor?

Aye.

No one opposed. Motion carries. All right, moving on to our regular agenda item. Our first item on the regular agenda this evening is item 6.1, which is our quarterly update on progress related to our 2025 to 2027 strategic plan. Presenting this evening is Assistant City Manager Alyssa Nelson. Miss Nelson, welcome.

Hello, Council. Thank you for having me this evening. Each quarter we present on our updates for our strategic plan. For those in the audience and those watching at home, we have adopted a strategic plan that started in 2025 and it sunsets in 2027. As part of that strategic plan, there are eight priorities. On the screen, I won't list each of them, but under those, there's 198 strategic actions or initiatives that staff, council, our committees, and that we are meant to complete by the end of the 2027 year. Now with our quarterly updates we also like to highlight three strategic actions that were either completed or significantly completed throughout the last quarter and highlight them for you. If anyone is interested in reviewing the full 198 strategic report that is listed in the council agenda as well as it will be posted on our city's website after this evening. So our first highlight this evening is part of the workshop. You heard a lot about Highway 5 construction. We wanted to highlight it here as well. But this is the completion of the County Road 11 North improvements and with that the Highway 5 County Road 11 Roundabout project that was completed this last quarter and we are thrilled But it's really the kickstart of the larger highway 5 initiative and the project that is coming up and it also is a core connection for our downtown West development as well as as part of that highway 5 corridor connection and The second is under the service excellence umbrella, and there's three here on the screen, but all three of them intertwine and connect. The first one is the posted budget book that had to be completed within 30 days of approval. The second is the posted comprehensive finance report, and then the third is the posted popular finance report. And what might not be known outside of local government or outside local government finance department is that completing each of these within the year is actually less than 1% of all cities within the United States. So we're really thrilled to be part of that 1% that completed this. This really shows the transparency in our city regarding our budget and our financial process. And this takes a lot of time, but we applaud our finance team for getting these completed and done. Not only are we able to do this, but we are also able to get awards on how well these are done. So we're really, again, thankful for our finance team to be able to put these front and forward for all of our residents to view. And if anyone is interested in viewing these, they are on our city's website. And they can also find an interactive budget book on our website as well.

Mayor Frotem, council.

Yes, Miss Hardy.

Make a comment. Thank you. Again, just for anybody watching this evening at home, we use a lot of acronyms, and there's a lot of words around some of the finance stuff, which, again, we talked about earlier in our workshop just being kind of behind-the-scenes things. But what I really wanted to share with you all is, as it relates to the budget book, There are government standards for government finance and accounting that we must have as part of that budget book. It makes it very daunting and not very easy to understand. First, we go through a six-month process. We're in that budget season right now to establish the budget, lots of discussion, decision-making along the way. We don't actually start building the actual budget document, that budget book, which is four or five, 600 pages long or longer, um, in any given year until you adopt that budget in December. And so there's a very small team, um, Abby and Trish do a lot of heavy lifting on that. Alyssa also has done a lot of heavy lifting on that to make that 30 days. Um, that goal. So there's a lot of work that gets done to make that happen. And then the, um, popular annual financial report. I just want to pause here for a second and let you know what that is. It sounds like it's cool and we want to look at it, but in it, what it does is if you think of like an executive summary to a white paper, it's the executive summary to our budget book. at a very high level explains takes out all the technical details that are required through GFOA those government finance accounting standards and boils it down into everyday language that Translates what is our budget doing to make your lives better to deliver those programs and services that you're relying on? and how does that impact you you as a resident or a business in our community and so I I just wanted to do, and then the comprehensive annual financial report relates to our audit and kind of where we're falling in terms of what all those requirements are and what does our financial position look like. So we just had the auditor in here not too long ago in early June to talk through that, and that's the document that that refers to. So just a little bit of additional context around some of those very important financial documents documents that really kind of serve as the backbone of everything that we do, because without the funding, we wouldn't be able to deliver those programs and services.

Thank you, city manager. Great, thank you. Sorry. Oh, you're okay. It's your meeting. And then the third is under the engagement and communication strategic priority. And the strategic action we wanted to highlight was our Victoria Academy, our version of a Citizens Academy program that we host each year. Annually we have the goal that annually we have at least eight participants in that program. This year we had 15 graduates. So not only are we thrilled by that number and the amount of residents that continuously come back for this program, our new residents we get to engage in this program, but also what happens in return with this program. A lot of our participants, our graduates come back in the form of committee members, commissioners, sometimes council members. But then they also engage with each other. And I want to spotlight this group. They were a really fun group, and they meet each other now outside of the program, sometimes regularly. We have dinner groups that have come out of this. So it's just sparking that we're creating community outside of just engaging with our residents and getting them to understand what local government is. So it's a very exciting program for us to continuously offer each year. And then just a quick high-level update on those 198 initiatives or strategic actions. We have 57 that are listed as completed, 91 that are on track, 40 that have not started, and 10 that we considered lagging, missed, or delayed. Again, the entire review of each one of these 198 can be found in the council packet and again on the website after this meeting this evening. And with that, Council, I will stand for any questions.

Great. Thank you. Council, comments, questions?

I would just say one comment. You only have 10 projects that are lagging, so that's approximately 5%. I think with what you've seen with everything with completed in progress, just goes to reinforce the comments that I made earlier during our workshop that Um, there's just your, your focus and dedication to being able to deliver to, uh, our residents is evident in our plan. And just thank you for all that hard work and effort.

Thank you. Council members. I will pass it along to the dedicated team that we have.

Well done. Thank you very much. Um, anything else? see no further discussion on this item it does not require any official action we will move on to item six point two which is a public hearing regarding the request for a plan unit development amendment for the west creek village residential development presenting this evening city planner brian mccann mister mccann welcome

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem and Council Members. If you give me just a moment here, I will pop up my presentation for you. Lucky for you guys, this is probably the shortest presentation I will ever have for you. I know mine can get long sometimes, but this is only the main bulk of the item in front of you this evening. We are here for consideration of a public hearing to amend the ordinance for the rezoning for West Creek Village back when this was approved in November of 2025, staff missed two regulations that should have been included with their plan development based on prior review and discussion with the city council during their preliminary plat. So the two standards are, that should be incorporated with the PUD include the single family side yard setback reduction from 10 feet to eight feet, and then the increase of the townhome maximum impervious from 75% to 82.5%. So with that, we do need a public hearing for this item. Other than that, I do have two sample motions for you on the screen.

Wonderful. Thank you, Mr. McCann. Um, at this point in time, is there anyone who wished to speak on this item? Going once going twice, three times out. I will now close the public hearing and open the floor for council discussion council. Any discussion? Hearing none. I guess my only question for you, Brian, would be if we decided not to grant these motions, what happens?

Mayor Pro Tem and council members, that's a great question. We've already granted final plat approval for these specific lots and Those are 56-foot wide lots. Their concepts have those eight-foot side yards included in those concepts, so a 40-foot wide home product. They'd either have to reduce the size of the home, which this is a national home builder. They may not be able to do that with their home models, or they might have to go back to the drawing board and ask for a plat amendment, and the plat would be back in the city council's hands at that point.

Okay. All right, so it's just an oversight on our end from when we approved the final plat, so it's really more administrative than anything functional at this point in time. All right, wonderful. If there's no other discussion, I'll entertain a motion. We're looking for two motions at this point in time.

I'll make a motion to adopt the ordinance amending the West Creek Village planned unit development.

Got a motion made by Councilman Roberts. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Nope. Motion carries. All right, the next item on our agenda is 6.3, which is a Highway 5 and 11 project update. Presenting this evening is City Engineer Kara Guerin. Miss Guerin, welcome.

Good evening. acting mayor members of the city council uh... we have talked a little bit about the highway five and eleven project but uh... we have what we haven't talked about tonight is the budget so the project is substantially complete But if you recall, so at the time of project award, which was all the way back in June of 2025, the city council approved a resolution awarding the project to minger construction in accordance with the joint powers agreement. But when we award construction projects, we set a project budget. When we do that, the project budget includes the construction contract and all the engineering project costs, the geotechnical engineering project costs. It includes a construction contingency. And the approving resolution gives the city manager the authority to approve any of those expenses that come in within that budget so that you don't have to have every single bill over twenty thousand dollars come in front of the council is an actual agenda item for approval so at the time of contract award we set that budget at twelve point four million and as we approach substantial completion we have processed and either approved or anticipated to have approved about twenty two change orders on the project What we're looking at right now with projected costs or known costs, we're anticipating that the total project costs are probably going to come in at about $13.3 million. For the sake of the audience who probably doesn't remember my presentation from June of 2025, the city is the lead agency on this project. the city opted to leave this project because of the connectivity to the highway or the downtown west project but the bulk of the funding is actually coming from outside sources so federal funding state funding county funding the city share of the project costs are actually pretty small but as the lead agency all of these different funding sources are coming through the city so we have to pay the bills associated with the project uh... so the bulk of the added costs associated with the project that we're looking at today and we've talked about some of these as we've come through some of the updates that we've given over the last year and there was significant uh... soil corrections that were needed on county road eleven particularly north of the roundabout and where we have an additional surcharge work that had to be Completed on either side of county road 11 if you remember over the winter there were jersey barriers on either side of the road There was a bunch of soil that needed to be mucked out on either side of the roadway in order to support the widened shoulders This summer the project encountered some pretty poor soil conditions actually within highway 5 once they removed the pavement that was there there was poor soils that needed to be corrected underneath the roadway. So all of those extra costs need to be paid, and those will come through on a future pay request that we haven't paid yet. So we're looking for a budget increase to give the city manager authority to pay those bills. Some additional project costs that have come in that really come through to the city are associated with changes that we made on the fly as the 13 1⁄2 acre development was coming through the process so uh... we made some revisions to the sanitary sewer system and water system to accommodate the new development so that the developer didn't have to go back in excavate out sanitary sewer pipes that were already in the ground if you remember when we completed the design of that project the development wasn't a thing yet so we were able to make modifications in the field so that the developer wouldn't have to go excavate new roadways that were just paved in order to make changes to the pipe so we're estimating the city's additional share to be about a hundred and fifty thousand but we're still reconciling all of the project costs so the bulk of the additional funding is going to come from uh... county sales tax funds and county uh... state aid funds we are actually though also talking with men dot about some additional potential year-end funding that they have available that uh... they may be able to provide it to the project over and above the funding that we have in place to offset some of the county sales tax funds for the additional uh... class that i noted on highway five so uh... met with the county on friday to review their additional share uh... when didn't express any concerns about what they're going to be needing to come up with and for getting some documentation over to men dot It's about $420,000 we think we'll be asking MnDOT for, and hopefully they'll be able to come up with some of that to offset the county share. So with that, I'm happy to go into more detail or answer any questions. Otherwise, the motion we're looking for is just to increase the overall budget to help us to be able to process those final bills as they come in. You said 120,000 for the county did you mean the city or did I miss here sorry for the city's estimated increased costs We're estimating right now to be about a hundred and fifty thousand the reason we're describing them as estimated is we have a whole cost share profile that things like engineering costs all get prorated based on percentages of construction costs so we are maximizing everything we possibly can to all of the grant funding we want to make sure that we spend every last dollar of the grant funding before we allocate any cost to the city or the county. So we'll apply all the grant funding first, all the MnDOT funding first, all the eligible county sales tax fund, all the county state aid funds, all the MnDOT, or all the city state aid funds, And then the city funds.

So with 22 change orders, everything we've got put together here, we're looking at worst case scenario of $150,000 that would expand to the city's cost share.

Correct.

All right. Sorry, Council, opening it for discussion or comments. Do you guys have any questions, comments?

Just a quick question. So we own the project on this one. And as a result... we need to authorize the increase for the overall project, even though we may not be funding that overage, correct?

That is correct.

And that is estimated at $900,000 at this point?

That is correct.

And my rudimentary math on it, although aided by a calculator, says it's about 7% of the overall budget is now due to these change orders.

That is correct.

And then more rudimentary calculations using a calculator the city is going to share in about sixteen almost seventeen percent nine hundred thousand dollars with the one hundred it's a big project it's not surprising we have seen those who've had a long arc of history with the city and projects in this area it's not surprising that you found soils that are weak i mean recall when they did highway five before the amount of styrofoam that's was had to be tucked underneath over by the fire station to get that roadway stabilized i'm presuming that we had similar kind of construct problems in there yes i uh...

So MnDOT actually was on site and instrumental in deciding what the correction was. Since it was a trunk highway, we deferred to MnDOT Office of Materials to determine what the right repair was since it was their road so Off the top of my head I don't even know what they ended up doing exactly to correct the soils there when they when the project team first contacted me it was like a $900,000 correction and they were able to get it down to $400,000 in rough numbers to repair the roadway or correct the soils I should say

Well, thank you for that Miss Karen This does not seem like we have something that was just an outrageous problem or a boondoggle So these things are gonna come up in these Larger projects and that's just the the nature of the beast in this case.

I Will note that the finance Directors assistant city manager and I are hoping or hoping isn't the right word looking forward to the city not leading one of these anytime soon We like our Local street projects a lot better Stay off the county state aid highways gotcha, but as you pointed out though We took this on because of the integration with the rerouting of Steiger Lake Lane to

Create a workable downtown west and then if I also understood you that we would have had to tear up things that were already done Correct, and and even though this is an overage the seven percent overage Ties that in without having to drive those further costs so correct and the it's important to note that the cost savings that the city realized by being able to include Steiger Lake Lane and

in the overall project funding saved the city. I don't have those numbers off the top of my head, but we saved significant money in the overall project cost for the 13 and a half acres by being able to use federal funding for Steiger Lake Lane in the first place. that hundred fifty thousand is nothing compared to what it we had budgeted for if we would have had to build stagger lake lane on our own as a stand-alone project outside of this project and then we also had trail connectivity that we didn't have before and then if i memory serves me correctly there was an aged

uh... sewer system that served the housing that was over there that we were able to upgrade that at an untold amount of savings if we had to take that project on itself so i think it's fair to say that while we had a diff it sounds like a very difficult time navigating this it was in retrospect the right decision for us to take that that kind of uh... project that is

all accurate and factually correct.

Thank you, Ms. Garrett. Thank you. I don't have any other questions.

Council Member Roberts? Okay. All right. I'm seeing no more discussion. We're looking for one motion on this item. Council, do we have any motions?

I'll make a motion to follow staff's recommendation to increase the overall project budget from $12.4 million to $13.3 million.

Great, could I get a second?

Second.

I have a motion made by Councilman Evanski, seconded by Councilman Roberts. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed, no one. Motion carries. Moving on to the next thing. Council, there are no more items on our agenda. We are now moving on to reports and emerging issues. Attorney Vose, any reports or emerging issues?

I do not, Mayor. Nothing going on in the legal world.

Ms. Hardy, any reports?

Thank you. Very quickly, just a note that there are two open council seats for this year's election, and the filing period does close tomorrow, July 28th, at 5 p.m. Great.

Thank you. uh... i have one question just because we have you here housing eighty p going right now how far behind are we or are we not behind are we had a schedule to miscarriage city engineer certainly i'm here happy to answer uh... i would note if you are falling a lot following along on the updates that uh...

Highway 41 North and Bavaria South are both behind schedule. 41 North is further behind schedule, I would say, than Bavaria South, but they're both behind schedule. If you recall the schedule that we had previously talked about, the goal was that those two roads would be opening around the time that These roads that we just talked about were getting completed. So around the 4th of July, those were going to open, and Rolling Acres Road was going to close. They are not open, and Rolling Acres Road is not closed. The primary driver of that is private utilities. gas, electric, telecom, all of those facilities needed to relocate and I sit in a weekly construction meeting and I can tell you that that is a challenge to get all of those private companies out of the way so they are not under contract by the county or the state. They are in there by permit and It is a challenge to get, it's like a orchestra to try to facilitate their movement and Your attorney would be happy to speak at length about the challenges and working with those folks to get relocated. So, um, finally progress is being made. I don't have an update as I sit here today about when they think 41 is going to open. Um, the project team does not want to close rolling acres road until 41 opens because of the pressure. that that would put on other streets, particularly, I believe, in Chanhassen, if that were to happen.

That was going to be my next question. So just generally speaking, campfire talking, what are we, four weeks behind, six weeks behind? Four-ish. Four-ish behind? All right. Thank you. Wonderful. Anything else? Nothing? All right. Council, there are no more items to come before the body this afternoon. May I ask for a motion to adjourn?

Motion to adjourn. Second.

I have a motion made by Councilman Reif, seconded by Councilman Evanski. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. We stand adjourned.