City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome everybody to our September 28th, 2026 City Council study session. We have three topics on our agenda tonight or this afternoon. Housing access update with Taryn Edens and Irene Woodward. We have from plans to practical choice mode shift and transportation demand management overview with Matt Lynch. And then we'll wrap it up with a stormwater water quality treatment credit transfer policy update with Mr. Aaron Luckstein. So with that, we'll turn it over to Irene and Taryn.

Downtown neighborhoods, I think I'm gonna understand that well enough. Existing urban areas mean within the city boundaries and then urban expansion means the outside the city boundaries right now up to 2050 or 2060?

Okay, so I'm trying to existing urban areas. We're saying there's not enough empty lots or to be able to.

Okay, so it's not end up happening, and there's no assessment that says that is because those are the lots that were skipped because they're harder to build on, or there's no judgment in this?

It does. Help me with one scenario then. Then if something were annexed within the last 15 years and then built, would that be built in existing urban area or would that be considered urban expansion?

My question was going to be about annexation as well. Would it imply that urban expansion followed an annexation? Would the category urban expansion have required an annexation for it to be in that category? Correct. Okay.

Councilmember Miller just to follow up on this growth management map as a consideration when urban three gave their presentation I brought up and there was some agreement about developing an ROI formula to better understand the minimum tax base built through that annexation to be able to pay for the the infrastructure upgrades over time and to build and then maintain them for our roads or all the infrastructure is there any progress on Developing some criteria for what would the what would the annexation have to generate to be financially sustainable?

So I guess to say this another way, we are targeting our housing goals, but not necessarily weighing that against the long term levy pressure.

Just as well, we've seen lots of growth. Can I ask a question about infill? So can you talk about the incentives or the lack of incentives for developers focusing on infill? Obviously with edge growth, there are, and the first time out there, they put the infrastructure, uh payments with infill in particular the the former kmart and ampi site that there is development already there so my understanding is uh that there's no incentives for developer to uh to put in streets or or sewer and water am i reading that right

Mr. Yetzer, were you going to add something? Okay. Thank you. Continue.

Just for the sake of understanding, how are you defining affordable housing on this slide? What's the price point?

Well, let's see if I can get, oh, I got it.

Just as well, we got a- Council Member Palmer. Just a quick question. So how many of those are built to be rental, which is kind of new to Rochester, and how many are not?

What I'm hearing you saying is corporate can be a little misleading. It could just be a group of two people and you call it corporate. Yeah, okay, because I think a corporate, when you think of corporation, what do you think? I think of McDonald's, you know, and two people's not that. So that's just, it's a little bit misleading to me that corporate owned is more than one person.

Can I follow up on that? So when you say non-local corporate ownership, does that mean non-local Rochester or non-local Minnesota?

Just to clarify, to that homesteaded point, is there any carve-out of these for folks who are only renting a portion of their housing unit, or would these imply any short-term rental within a housing unit?

So are we saying no single family home rentals, period? Are we saying short term? Or is this?

Wow, so Northfield has no single family rental permitted?

I'm gonna ask a clarifying question on, so short-term rentals, what are, if any, city regulations to that market compared to long-term rentals as far as certification? And then another question, what is your confidence that we know of all of the short-term rentals?

In the legislation that you were quoting earlier, I noticed that you made very specific to say large corporation ownership. How do they define large corporation?

Not that you need to do the council work for us, but I think really a lot of the council wants to ensure that we have affordable housing for families so that they can build wealth. What particular policies would lead to the opportunity for families to buy into our neighborhoods so that they can create generational wealth?

There are just a lot of variables in there. So I can appreciate that.

Council Member Palmer. Well, thank you. You're asking what our preference is, and I would make no changes. I do have kind of another clarifying question. ADUs, right now, we require an R1 that one of the units be owner-occupied. Is that correct? Yep. In our 2X, they don't have to be. Both could be rentals. Correct. But yet, we don't see a lot of ADUs.

Council Member Keene. Yeah, I want to stay on your track here, but I want to make some comments here, too. Just on one of the, you know, in the comprehensive plan, it says enhance the integrity of existing neighborhoods. And this is one that I find to be in conflict sometimes with the growth from 7% rentals up to, is it now 13%? And there's a lot of, like, the neighborhood concern that that's changing the nature of the neighborhood. Clearly more on the inner... the wards closer to downtown than the wards on the far edge. That said, I'm okay with a lot of that because it's still into rental, wh

Mayor Mrakas, Are you i'm sorry Council Member Miller, you have a question that does relate to the policy options, but a different way of looking at this is the the financial impacts for you know, a rental owner, what is the annual light single family rental license cost.

Correct So company one on your earlier slide Pays 175 times hundred dollars, correct? Are there cities that consider increasing licensing costs with the greater number of units owned?

Because I think that that's a different policy implication of just paying your fair share. And I would personally be interested in looking at those kind of policy options, not to arbitrarily limit the number of rentals of single-family homes, but to make sure that those uses, which are largely a commercial use, with different financing options and different rates of return for profit, compete with people utilizing lesser tools, financial tools to secure a mortgage.

Thank you. I like to see all housing options. I do like the short-term rentals actually, single family even, because families do come to town to get care, lots of them, and having a home for them is nice. They may, and a lot of times they end up being here longer than they anticipate, and it kind of brings them some normality, if that's what they're used to, is that kind of an existence wherever they're coming from. It brings them some comfort while they're here, and I like to see them have that option. I'm not a fan of making a change at all to our, I'm a make no change guy, I guess. Another

Thank you. And we've discussed this multiple times over the last eight years since I've been mayor. And a couple of things. Right when I was door knocking, which a lot of folks here have done, there were certain neighborhoods where residents told me, I don't feel safe here. There are people moving in and out all the time. And it's because they were all rentals. not all were short-term rentals some were a little bit longer but the short-term rentals were of concern the longer term rentals the issue that came up was no one cares for the yard no one cleans up junk piles up there's no one because

Thank you mayor. Uh, I, I share exactly the mayor's concern that, uh, and I, I think we need a balance in our community, but my biggest concern are for those. 1st, time home owners that try to purchase homes, whether it's in slightly park near Northeast or, uh, cut ski in that 200 to 300, uh. thousand range and they get bought and that's where we start building wealth and if that market is is closed off by corporate ownership that that's where my concern is so my questions are around are there policy options where we and our partners at the Coalition for Rochester Housing can Can work on that

Yeah, I want to build on that. And the issue that I brought up about the rental license fee to Council Member Keene's point, one of our comprehensive plan goals is investing in our core neighborhoods, maintaining stability. And yet one of the primary ways that we do that for services is through our neighbors, which is an agency that exists outside of the city organization. A different, which limits capacity. So looking at the economic ways that better balance the single-family home ownership use as rental, either short-term or longer-term rental, there are ways that we could assess higher pena

Council Member Keene. Yeah, I just want to kind of reiterate into the discussion. I think this idea of having a certain number of single family homes available for rent, we're not trying to clamp down on that, and if it were something like set limits, I would, just policies like that are very difficult to implement, and I'm not leaning that way. But I do want to go back to two different things from the comp, the enhance the integrity of existing neighborhoods. I feel like we're not doing that as well as we should. And then we have this other goal of improving home ownership in certain categori

It's my understanding our fees are set to cover about 70% of the housing cost, is that not? Correct. It's not a profit center for the city? Correct. And one of the reasons we inspect rentals is to provide a standard in the community, is that?

I guess it would be my guess about 20% of the cities in Minnesota have rental certificates.

Okay. Part of the problem I'm having with a large, and I'm going to make this assumption that a large company has many resources for fixing up apartments and having your inspections done by large corporations, probably passed more than the ones of the ones and twos, the mom and pops that own them.

And I can buy a wonderful management company, a medium management company, and a low management company price-wise, can't I?

Okay. You get what you pay for. So, Kutzke Park neighborhood, I know we had this discussion. I think you sent me the facts on it. They're about 70% rental in that area.

So basically, you could almost say that's a commercial area.

Council Member Doering. I really like what Councilmember Miller and Councilmember Keene have been talking about in terms of escalating a fee structure, more corporate ownership, generation of funds. I would consider another use of those funds to be an investment in the First Homes program. uh that will create more home ownership based off higher fees for it for this but i'd also be interested um i would love to know the number of um units single-family units managed by a management company versus private ownership i think total yeah okay lower percentages right like

Yeah, and then how are those management companies regulated?

In terms of repairs to units or escalation of rent charges, things like that, that's the kind of feedback I hear about rental units, especially those managed by larger rental management organizations, is that they're not as responsive to the needs of the residents as maybe a single owner occupancy. So I'm kind of curious about if there's ways that we can improve that, whether through regulation or, yeah, through punitive means.

Council Member Keene. I just want to do a follow-up on Council Member Palmer when he talks about commercial areas. And I think just, this is just a more nuanced thing, but commercial areas, people can't live in commercial areas. They're zoned commercial or business, and there are no residentials there. I think what we're talking about is residential areas that are owned for profit or that are not owner-occupied. And that's different than a commercial area.

Mixed-use, we have residential, but in business areas, we do not have residential districts. in areas that are zoned like industrial that people can't live there. I think this, but this is an important point. We started getting into the housing, like the investments when the interest rates are so low, it is a beautiful business case to buy these properties and then pay them, use the mortgages just to pay off the 2% and 2.5% things. And that's how we got into these problems in a lot of cases or call them problems. I really want a robust rental market in the city. It's important for the economy

Well, I guess to build on that, I actually appreciate Mr. Palmer bringing up Kuski Park because I've heard the same numbers and I've heard complaints from folks who say that they don't feel a connection to like a stable neighborhood because it feels like it has been turned into a profit generating center, which is not what I hear people saying is I don't want renters. I hear people saying that it feels like those are valuable properties that have been turned into commercial uses that have a residential form. And I think this goes to the question of assessments, because if we look at two multif

Are you saying that the corporate-owned apartments should be assessed more? Go ahead, Council Member Miller. So who do you think that gets passed on to?

If I might, I'm talking about the form of a single-family dwelling.

any of it, any residential dwelling period, when your assessments and your taxes go up, who do you think that's passed on to? The renter, that's not what we're after.

Any other comments? Council Member Palmer.

I'll just follow up what Mr. Dorian was saying. We do offer incentives if you pass your inspection the first time and you get a gold star, you don't get inspected for three years, is it? Four years. Four years. And then if you flunk it, you get inspected every year. So there is an incentive to have a good, and our rental code is a minimum standard. Correct. It's basically safe. Thank you.

And I will just continue to say that my hope is that we can foster people being able to afford homes in our city, whether that's through first homes. We need to get people to be able to create generational wealth, and we know that's through home ownership.

Can I ask why there isn't more uptake in those?

Just to clarify, when you say four units, that's per property? Correct. So if I'm a corporation and I own 25 different single-family dwellings and I rent them all as short-term rentals, I pay 1.25% on each of those?

It is not the overall ownership. So I could have... 25 unit hotel building and Pay 2% or I could own 25 distributed single-family homes and Pay 1.25 percent for each of those.

Council Member Keene. I just wanted to clarify, because the number of 300 up to, I'll just call it 600, that includes like hotels that offer short-term rental, homes that have residential. I mean, is there any sort of breakdown that says there's 200 single-family homes that are used now as short-term rental?

Okay. Again, let me just kind of... I did have this down. This is still my... The thing that bothers me about this one is that moving into short-term rental moves you out of the, you're not a residential property, which we're short of residential properties. You're taking a residential property and changing the use to be hospitality. And that bothers me because it works against our goal of improving the amount of residential. But the numbers are dramatically smaller than I thought. I thought these numbers were much higher than this even four or five years ago. So, and I think that they're stil

Thank you on the historical short term rental slide. You showed that 2024 was the high watermark and that 2025 retreated back to the same numbers of 2023. Is there a trend there? I've read that that market is somewhat saturated. Is there a need for correction? Will the market correct itself?

Thank you. Mr. Keene brought up the Burtman. When they switched those two floors to the hotel, don't we capture 18% on taxes on hotels in this community?

But anyway, I'm saying there's a good amount of money coming back and that pretty good return on investment.

I'm a fan of make no changes or require hosting platform to include rental license information because I do believe when we're tapping into short-term rental, you are, in theory, taking away from hotels, motels in this community, which you want to see all those entities do well and keep heads in their beds for a lot of reasons. So it's important to make sure that people that are doing this are paying their fair share.

Thank you. I covered this a little bit in my earlier remarks, but this is the area when I door knocked that I heard the most concern raised about. It was from primarily word for quite honestly, where there are streets where you would go multiple houses on a block or two are all short term rentals. Some people I met there were had medical equipment. um others not so much and they said people just come and go come and go come and go for days or whatever and the neighborhood shared with me those two or three block area that they don't feel safe they don't feel safe letting their kids out they don

Yeah, I'll make similar points to what I said about single family rentals is that I just feel like the first step and I do support at a minimum requiring the license of the platforms to post that the property has a valid rental license for that use. And if they can practically work to remove listings that don't have the appropriate license, I think that's a great minimum step. But I think it's really capturing the value of a business when if you look at something from the street and you see a single family dwelling and a single family dwelling, one of those use as short term rentals is quite d

I usually don't bring this type of stuff up in our meetings and stuff, but I will. This one, I'll give you a good example of, and I'll just let you take it from there. We own the Parker Apartments right over here. There's 62 rooms in that building. In our average rent, there's right around 800 bucks. And right now, our assessment, our sales tax, our property tax each year is over $70,000 on that. and less than nine years ago it was around 10 grand. So I personally have an issue with that because we are trying to hold them down because we're providing people in their first legs of their educati

Thank you for sharing, council member. Council member Keene.

Yeah, a couple points. One, I just want to follow up on Council Member Fredericks here. I agree with him that the fines are this bad behavior, and I think that is a lot of the complaints I hear about it, but I will take it a step further. I think we should suspend licenses after things, and I think that's where you get into, you say, hitting the pocketbooks, but that's where people start saying, this doesn't pay anymore. They'll still rent. Not when they don't have a license. And so that was one thing. I still want to go back to this thing, and I don't mean to just be laboring it, but there is

I was going to go down the same path as Councilmember Keene in terms of suspending licenses. In terms of policy options, I believe the absolute minimum we should be doing is requiring hosting platforms to include rental license information. I AM INTERESTED IN THE OTHER THINGS THAT MY COUNCIL, MY COUNCIL COLLEAGUES HAVE SUGGESTED IN TERMS OF OTHER IMPLEMENTATION FOR THE SHORT-TERM RENTAL PROGRAM. I HAVE HEARD EXPERIENCES MUCH VERY SIMILAR TO MAYOR NORTON'S IN TERMS OF PEOPLE BEING CONCERNED THAT THEIR NEIGHBORHOODS ARE TURNING IN TO JUST THESE collection of short-term rental units and the degra

Can I ask a question on ADUs? So where do you see there is a market for ADUs? Are there other communities around the country that are successfully launching this program?

Councilmember Palmer Where is the colonies project with their ad use We got they're here today.

And one of the advantages that Rochester did change is that we no longer require them to run the sewer and utilities to the center of the street. They can, if it's safe to use the existing.

I was actually pointing to Ms. Norton, how she was raising her hand.

Mayor Norton and then Council Member Keene, and I think I saw Council Member Miller put his hand up, so.

Thank you, Council Member Fredericks, for pointing to me. I've never been a fan of these, so the folks who've been around here know that. And I have family members who live in ADUs out in California, in Berkeley. And one of the differences is we have a lot of land, and while we want them because it builds density in the city area and it's cheaper, People still, if they have the choice, tend to want their own property and their own land. And so I don't think it should come as a surprise that people aren't jumping on this at this time. I do like, and I've been into, Council Member Palmer, I thin

Yeah, I would agree that I don't think we have the rental and the land constraints in place such that it really drives people towards ADUs yet. I've seen some interesting investments up in the Twin Cities, but they're more like improving, going out and making an apartment in the garage. And they really are pretty cool. But at the same time, they were probably, you know, the projects that I saw were like $280,000, $300,000 projects. projects. So I'm really glad to hear this thing with that one of the cost things was that idea of the separate lines running from the street for the ADU. I think th

And just to clarify, the 20K that the city's offering as an incentive, it doesn't matter if it's a duplex or not, they could use that money?

Okay, that's kind of what I was implying there, that if it's, I guess when I look at us and we say the thing that the builders did in Northwest is an ADU, it looks like an attached apartment to the unit. So if that's an ADU, then I would think the thing I'm thinking of is too. But if we need to change language in what that is, I would be interested in that as a policy change.

Yeah, I appreciate that clarification that a single family home with an ADU is effectively the same as a duplex. And for that reason, I think our one zoning is too limiting for these uses. And I would also say, I think the other risk that we have in not allowing more ADUs to be created is that they continue to be an unfamiliar building style to the local market, to local builders. And I would be in favor of increased flexibility. I know Council Member Palmer has brought up the idea before of why don't we just apply R2X zoning to the whole city, which would effectively negate this conversation.

I'm just going to quickly go, Mr. Keene, just some of the problems with doing a duplex is that you have to separate it from fire. You have to separate from sound. You have to have a separate furnace. You have to have a separate entryway. Those are all cost effective things that make it cost prohibitive to try to do that. Somebody who wants to just rent out their basement, they don't look at those and they get a sticker shock. R2X, if I remember correctly, we've had only one. building built under R2X, we had to expand the district to do that.

I am not interested in changing current policy at all for a lot of the reasons we talked about, short-term rentals and other rental units, the effect that it will have on the neighborhood. Do we have any idea how many undocumented ADUs exist in the city?

Okay, because I hear reports about those more than I hear about an interest about actually going through the process to have a accessory dwelling documented and licensed in the city. So I would love to have a conversation about that with you sometime. Mayor Norton.

Yeah, just for clarity, I personally see duplexes as very different things than a detached ADU on a property. I see what Council Member Palmer has taken me to out there with these new buildings where it's part of the, it's over the garage and in the back. I see those as very different. than an ADU that is a standalone. And I think back to the days in the legislature when these first came forward and got approved, they were granny pods. That's what they called them. They were a separate little building, and they gave the excuse that your grandma or your mom is going to come live in your backyar

Thank you, Mayor. So my question is, Is there a market for non-owner occupied housing, people wanting to build ADUs?

I guess where I'm at is I'm not interested in us spinning our wheels as creating policy and being around this table to make a policy that really isn't going to move the needle any significant amount. I'd rather see us spend our time on some of the ideas that Councilmember Miller brought up earlier when it comes to the long term. on valuation and other aspects of the discussion that has been rich in this hour and a half. So this one, I'm not interested in seeing us have you spend more time on it. Council Member Fredericks.

Well, he asked me a couple weeks ago, so he's gonna get what he asked for. I agree with President Shubring.

Thank you, and we will take a six minute break. We agreed last week, too, though. Oh, yeah, I agree. And we have a CIA coming out, too. That's right. February 28th, why that?

Is that your birthday? Oh, it only happens once every four years.

Okay, we're gonna get started. We've got Mr., folks, oh, is Mr. Keene here? Here he is. So we're gonna get, turn it over to Mr. Lynch. He's gonna talk about mode shift.

I'm looking at your group up there and the city of Rochester has Membership and three of the groups up there, so it's hard to say that we don't have a coordinated effort between rocog DMC in the city of Rochester I'm missing the point on the The numbers that I have is that they have 40,000 workers who come in Olmsted County every day And I don't know how do we deal with 40,000 people coming into our town on the other side of that we have 19,000 people who leave and And so somehow, you know, we get to move back and forth with these people and, and that, that makes it more difficult, um, for me

I guess two questions. One, looking at the organizations up here, I realize that you say others are not shown in their logos, but named. And it just feels like the downtown employers are represented primarily by Mayo Clinic. I don't see up here. I'm assuming they've been engaged in some way. But I also think of the Rochester Downtown Alliance as being a liaison to many small businesses that have employees who are challenged by transportation and access problems. I frequently hear about challenges for downtown employees who are not male employees knowing where to park, having coordinated progra

The question is, does this describe the transportation problem you hear from constituents? I'm from Ward 3, and I do not hear this problem. If anything, Ward 3 residents would say, I'm not sure why we are spending time on mode shift when we're going to use our cars, really, to get everywhere. So that's from Ward 3.

Thank you. When I look at the statement, what I don't see there clearly stated is, so we have a transportation problem, but we have a major transportation project that is launching next year, the BRT. And I don't know how it should be reflected there, but it's almost like And well, what I would say is from. Our standpoint, from my standpoint, sitting here at, uh, on the council, it is vitally important that that be extremely successful. That, uh, the 11,000 writers that we expect on that 1st, they have a, a, uh, a, uh, efficient. safe, clean experience so that they see that as a mode shift and

Yeah, I appreciate your explanation there. Mr. Lynch, that idea of like, this is the problem statement. We're not getting down into the different sort of solutions. But I do think we've struggled with this as a communications thing, mode shift, because I think what most people read this with the city's communication is you mean you're not going to let me drive anymore. And That, whatever human nature is, but I really think that there is a better way to do some of this with the vehicle miles going, that we're trying to head off this problem of 700 vehicle miles going up to 1.4 million. Before w

Yeah. And again, I feel, again, I don't know if this is just We're bad communicators, we being council members and everybody else, but it has become a zero-sum game that if you make it safer to bike downtown and make room for bikes to park downtown, you mean you're going to take capacity away from me. And that has been the discussion on mode shift. And even the BRT has... positive as I think the role is still, as far as how that's gonna operate, it still is this idea of like, if I were higher up at the clinic, I would get a park downtown, but I don't have the seniority, so I've gotta go here a

Yeah, to build on what Councilmember Keene said, I think you did an exceptional job this evening of stating the case, beginning forward of really indicating that for everyone to succeed or everyone to be able to go where they need to go, we do need to shift modes. I do not hear a lot of the same, a lot of the feedback. I would guess that same feedback that those who are closer to the downtown core here living in Ward 6. And what I would do is emphasize that other busy destinations part in that problem statement. I do hear from from members or from constituents in my ward that they would like t

Thanks, I'm gonna build on that too. What I don't see necessarily here is the timing, the day of the week and the time of day built into the problem statement because there are peak times and there are off peak times. There are events at Mayo Civic Center and there are other days that there aren't. So depending on the timing, we either have way too much parking and access or we don't have enough. So there is a timing component too, like when there's the highest demand versus the supply that we have. I think the other constraint that we have is resource, because to go back to that figure about

on the council that came before us on being proactive on these issues, our congestion issues and things that are more than likely coming down the pipe. The most complaints I actually hear about is about bike lanes. I know I'm on a very bike-friendly dais, but the most complaints I hear about are bike lanes over and over and over again. That's the only complaint I hear about the transportation. But ironically, I do ride my bike and I feel like I'm gonna get run over on Highway 14 and I ride that bike lane, it's like, I'm very scared. And I don't get scared easy, but I definitely do out there. I

Continue. Council Member Palmer, go ahead.

somebody mentioned seven parking ramps we are currently building in rochester for parking ramps and so you know we're more than halfway to seven so um there seems to be a mix there and i think the rapid bus is more for you know clinic employees than it is going to be for the public so i'm not particularly sure how that's going to save everybody since there's no real public parking at both ends councilmember wall

I appreciate what Andy said. I also think it's driven by need and not just convenience. Back in the 1970s, I rode my bike all the time into downtown Minneapolis, both for a job and for an acting troupe I was a part of. I couldn't afford the parking. So you ride a bike and you can park your, at least at that time, you can park your bike for free. And it was only three, four miles. It was easy to do. i can see people who have a need i can't afford downtown parking or it's too congested that need will absolutely drive changes for people councilmember fredericks

It parlays into other issues too. People aren't leaving their $3,000 bike just anywhere and everywhere. I see, I have had to cut several just bike frames off the bike ramp outside the parker. You know, I'm picking up bike frames, bike parts. They go missing. And then the facts are out there. So there's a lot of things that go into the reasons people don't do certain things, so.

Yeah. We had two of them stolen from tenants at our parker. Two of them have been stolen. One of them right out of the locker right underneath the train bridge. That's a shame.

Well, I find it interesting up there that carpooling now is better than public transit in 2024. That's a line that we've done a poor job, I believe, in our transit. But your 22 information survey that you're talking about, we had 1,300 people riding a bike. We had 3,000 people walking to work on that survey. Am I reading that right up there? More people are carpooling and they're riding the bus?

So carpooling is the blue line at the top.

I would also agree, and it also, I have always talked about the need for connections and filling those gaps with the trail system, and so what you're saying, what the early data is saying is that the trails are an important connector to both commuting and getting to people's destinations, so. Council Member Miller.

I'll just say yes. And this is the first data that I've seen from city staff on anything that's remotely construction use related. So thanks for being the first to produce the data that I've asked for as far as like, how do we measure changes and trends as construction projects happens? And I think the baseline data is great. So more of that.

And I would say yes, but we have to be a little careful that when you're because the trails, this is this is good. These are good factual basis things to go on. But I'm not sure if you're assuming those trips on the trail are commutes versus. Whatever you know what the hundred of other kinds of reasons people can be out I thought when you said people were working from home more I thought you were gonna come to the thing that leads to more trips in the evening because people aren't doing their Things on the way to or from or at lunch when they have their automobile. They're going out at differe

The park and rec facing trails, I think, are a great amenity to this community. I like them. They're used. I hear a lot of positive feedback about them. On street, a lot of the streets I'm seeing bike lanes on, they're downright dangerous. We only have so much money to spend a year. We can only budget so much money to do things in our community. The question we always have to ask, are we getting the most use of our money? And is putting millions of dollars into bike lanes for 2%, I don't know what the number is, but percent of our population that uses them, is that a good use of our money? Or

I would just add to, I agree with Council Member Fredericks on the overall, uh point that you're making but to council member keen's point that we have to have safe routes and there are gaps that you use your own example that you did not feel safe so there needs to be safe routes for those that are using it mayor norton

Thank you. And I will double down on that. I think one of the issues is with the paths, they're great. They're fun for recreational riding. People use them. I love to see it. But if you need to get to a destination for work or for an event, it's not a direct route. And I'm hearing from my neighbors that it may still take the same amount of time. But the idea of going backwards in the wrong direction and driving around and finally connecting to a trail someplace else that might get me there the same just doesn't Makes sense, right? And so for me, the direct route is on a street and I don't feel

All right. Do you have concluding comments or?

So can I ask you a question on that? Sure. That one there. So are you you said this does not include the recreational ride. So you're not including trails, even if people are using the trails to get to downtown or get to their destination, their commuter destination.

Like Quarry Hill Trail, you mentioned that earlier. Is that, I can't quite see, is that on there?

did you want to say something councilman i just mouthed good work oh okay thank you other comments uh councilmember miller yeah two two comments just on time of day again like parking demand making sure that it's not just really on that demand to and from work um but particularly events i feel like are a missed opportunity for parking strategy like when nate varkatsi comes in and we've got people in the streets and people trying to get to the ramps at the same time it feels like something didn't quite work there with program access And then I hear a lot about shared micromobility, particularly

I would love a lime conversation, Mr. Miller. It's great. I am very tired of picking them up all over my properties.

I would agree with the lime conversation. Council Member Keene.

Yeah, again, on the MnDOT active transportation, I do like the counters, but I'm still looking for, when you start talking about action plans and roadmaps and implementation strategies, is there also sort of a... call it objective, maybe it's more subjective of our most dangerous points as opposed to our highest use points and trying to head off any of these sort of more dangerous things. When we're in that decision making point, I think having these kind of like here's how many pedestrians, riders, that, but I also would like to see some sort of judgment that says our highest risk areas are t

Yeah, in the implementation strategies, I'm going to chime in as well about Lime Scooter data. I'm more interested in actual usage and where that usage is concentrated or what that usage is leading to. So are folks using that as an actual tangible way to commute to and from work? Or are they just a recreational amenity? Because that's a decision point for me, to be completely honest. It is a lower cost commuting option for some folks. And I would be hesitant to make any decision to eliminate Lime Scooters in this community if folks are using them to get to work. If it is a larger recreational

Next up we have stormwater water quality treatment credit transfer policy. Mr. Luckstein, you have 15 minutes.

Yeah, I know. That's why I said. Pull it through in there. You don't have to use it all.

First, just again, geographic proximity. Who is going to do the benefits that if a project is one mile from where the water is that the neighboring properties won't be negatively impacted but the person will say I've done everything I needed to do? Is that your department will have to make sure that if somebody's buying credits from another location that they're not having a negative impact on any other property?

As far as the pricing, and when someone comes in and says, is this very objective, or is there some sort of expertise to say, the amount of treatment you want for this is a little more because of these other extenuating circumstances, or is it objective enough that there's not going to be, like someone's going to come in and say, it should only cost this, and we think it's up here. Is it very objective, or is it...

Just last question. I think I understand the answers, but let me just ask it here anyways. What is our, as a municipality, what's our goal of taking on this complexity of having this other method? Is it just to allow more land to be developed, or why would we do this versus saying the system as it is is working fine? If that project doesn't make it, it doesn't make it.

Very good. Thank you for the explanation. I would be supportive. And thank you and the department for taking this on.

Thank you, I really appreciate you coming back and giving us this brief update just before the meeting where we'll make the decision. I do recall the lengthy discussion we had about this and really appreciate the leadership and direction we're going in and look forward to moving it forward on the 19th or the second.

Thank you. Thank you. Next, study sessions.