City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone, and welcome. I will call our Bloomington City Council meeting to order this evening. It is Monday, October 26. Thank you to everyone joining us here in the council chambers. Thanks to everybody watching online this evening. We will begin our meeting as we always do. If you are able in the chambers, if you could please stand, remove any head coverings, and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one liberty and justice for all. Once again, thanks to everybody for joinin

Thank you, Nat, for your powerful reflection and testimony. It's a somber acknowledgment What we look as a celebration of a month, but understanding that there's so much more depth to it as well. So thank you so very much for your words, Matt. Greatly appreciate it. Council, we might have to do a quick audible. Item 2.2 is an update from Hennepin County Commissioner Debbie Goodell, and I do not see her this evening quite yet. So maybe we're going to move on to item 2.3 and double back as we need to. So let's move on to item 2.3, our new employee introductions. Kim Bergeron from our community d

So did you intern in environmental health as well?

Welcome to both of you. Thank you for being here. I'll give you my speech that I give all of our new employees, the fact that you now basically are the face of Bloomington for a lot of people. They may know who we are, but you're the ones that people will be interacting with and working with on a daily basis in the city. And so it's a big responsibility, and I have no doubt that you'll be able to meet that responsibility and be able to provide the service and the empathy and the work that the residents of Bloomington have come to expect and do it in an outstanding way. So thank you so very muc

Yeah, do we have any holds tonight? I just have one. I've got 311. But other than that, or do we want to? Okay, all right. Let's go. So then with that being said, Mayor, then I'll move 311 all the way through 310.

Motion by Council Member Lohman, second by Council Member D'Alessandro to accept consent business as stated, items 3.1 to 3.10. Is that correct? Am I saying that right? Any further council discussion on this? No discussion. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries 7-0.

And then, Mayor, I have 3-11, which is the resolution to amend the city of Bloomington employment rules. And I'd like to vote against that, so I don't want to move that. And I've stated that many a time, so I don't want to get into the details here today. But if there's somebody else who wants to move this, I'd be happy.

All right, thank you for pulling that aside then. Council Member D'Alessandro?

Sure, I'll move the resolution amending the City of Bloomington employment rules.

Motion by Council Member D'Alessandro, second by Council Member Carter to accept item 3.11 under consent business tonight. No further council discussion on this. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Nay. Motion carries 6-1 with Council Member Lohman in opposition. Thank you much, Council Member Lohman, for taking care of our consent business tonight. With that, we are going to double back in the agenda to item 2.2, an update from our Hennepin County Commissioner, Debbie Gattel. I'm assuming traffic on 494 must have been a bear. That's all I'm going to figure out. Commissioner, welcome. Thanks for joining us tonight.

Well, first of all, thank you, Commissioner, for being with us this evening. It's always a pleasure to have you here. It's always a pleasure to have you in Bloomington for whatever reason, but I'd really appreciate it when you're able to give us an update. And I know it's been a challenge to get you on the schedule and make sure we get you here, but it's always helpful. It's always informative. And I will say the one statistic you brought forward was eye-popping, the notion that there will be a decrease in the budget but an increase in the levy. I mean, that's stunning. It's debt service. The

Yes. Council, any questions or comments for the Commissioner? Council Member Nelson and then Council Member D'Alessandro.

Yeah, thank you, Commissioner. It's always nice to be able to see you twice in a week. So I first just want to, on a personal note, thank you for personally supporting VEEP last Friday. It was great to see you and have you there. And you talked a little bit about the budget impacts and what's going on at HCMC. Do you have any information in terms of the insurance program through Hennepin Health? I understand that they run Medicaid or medical assistance through there. And there have been some challenges there as well. And if people are on that program, there, to my understanding, are new requir

Well, thank you. I appreciate that because I know, like you mentioned, a lot of times being low income goes hand in hand with a lot of medical needs. There's maybe a reason why you're not able to work as much as you would like and prefer because of those medical conditions. So I know it's a big thing that the county does appreciate the service to our community, and so thank you for looking out for them. Thank you, Councilmember.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Another comment on the situation with HCMC. I just wanted to say thank you on behalf of all of us who also benefit from the availability of that trauma center. The concern I have is... I guess that you could speak to is if you're thinking about solvency for that property for the next, let's say, three to five years, and if you were to make the worst case assumption that there wasn't federal dollars available, what are some of the levers you all are considering potentially pulling to kind of keep that afloat and is there anything that the city can be doing to support that?

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Commissioner, for being here tonight. So obviously you guys are dealing with federal cuts and then there's a lot of unknowns for next year, but as you are making budget decisions now, do you anticipate any cuts to programs and services that will significantly impact the community other than what you've already kind of alluded to, like with cuts to Medicaid and the impacts at Hennepin County? But I'm just thinking about all of the other programs and services the county runs. Do you anticipate that there will be any I'm just thinking about are there ways as a city we

I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes.

I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes.

I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes. I'm full of good news, yes. I'm F one way to try to attract, as we showed the slide up there, with businesses and the shifting impact to residential and apartment, and certainly we've seen that here in the city of Bloomington and certainly across. Some argue that maybe you just bring that levy down, you know, We're trying to, you know, being fisc

Council, if there's nothing else, I'd like to move on with our agenda, if we could, please. Well, very good. Commissioner, thank you so very much for being here, and thanks for the great work that the county does. It's a massive organization, a massive operation. Even setting Minneapolis aside, just the fact that Bloomington and Edina and Richfield have absolutely nothing in common with St. Bonifacius and Independence. And you've got to basically span that gap and figure out how to best serve all of those folks and all those communities. And so it's a big job, and I appreciate the work that yo

Thanks for coming tonight. Council, as I mentioned when we adopted our agenda, we have nothing under item four, hearings, resolutions, and ordinances. And so we are going to move on to item five, our organizational business. And our only item there is item 5.1. This is a study item. No decisions to be made tonight, but plenty of questions and conversation regarding a sports, health, and recreation use review. And Emily Hespeck from our planning staff is here. Good evening and welcome.

I have a quick clarification question. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I noticed, for example, that like some of our anytime fitnesses weren't examples that you gave us. Do they fall into the health club category and not the fitness category? Is that why they're not like included in that list of the sports facilities that you gave us?

They're in one or the other. We just don't know which is what you're saying.

Looking at that these facilities may include food and beverage service, and I'm curious as to what that means. And for this reason, as I look at these, when I consider these fitness and sports facilities that we have in town and that we've seen around, I've seen the ones that are most successful either have something adjacent to or very close or even built in that could offer food and beverage. So for example, if you're at a volleyball tournament and the kid, your kid plays a 10 again, and then they get it too. I mean, there's a place to go to, to have lunch, to, to have coffee, to have a beer

Yeah, thank you, Mary. I appreciate that. And just as an example of that, I think Champions Club, I think it is, if it's still open, over in Eden Prairie, had volleyball. It had some recreation like, I don't know, jump on things, baseball. There's soccer in there, turf, and a bar. So it had all those things in one facility. So I think just... To your point I think that makes sense and there are examples of how that's worked. The other question I had and this is kind of probably minor but you put saunas and world pools as accessory uses and I The only reason I bring that up as a question is Hat

Thank you, Councilmember. Other thoughts on this part of it, Council? Council member Nelson? Or excuse me, loman. Council member loman?

Oh, yeah, no problem. So I know that it's coming later on, but I kind of debated whether to bring it up now or just bring it up now. So if we, I mean, I have an image in my mind in terms of what this is and in terms of this definition here, in terms of what it looks like, but then I think about something like the, you know, when you go over to egan, they've got that whole vikings kind of set up over there. How does that fit or not fit into this definition and what do you think of that as you look at this definition? Could something on a smaller scale fit into this definition?

And then it kind of goes along with that. So if there's a limitation in terms of that, how would one expand into that? So if you're right up against the, and you wanted to expand and make it bigger, how does that fit into this definition if you're over that? Would it just be, at that point it would be a, you know, some other process to allow it to enlarge or I'm just trying to understand what we're trying to fit into this.

I wanted you to say it, not me. All right, I'll wait for my other questions later.

Just a quick question almost similar to what Councilmember Lohman asked just now. You mentioned that only 50% of a given building should be occupied by these potential establishments, correct?

Okay. So you're proposing to take the entire building? Okay. So in regards to that I have a quick question to follow up on it. industrial areas are kind of protected at this point, right? So is the tax revenue increasing by adding these facilities to those areas or the industrial element provides more of a tax base if you compare one to the other?

But it will occupies the building. Yeah. So there is the potential that if... I mean, I don't want anybody to fail if they come up for business, but in the event that they did or they decide to downsize and move to another location and there is a potential industrial company trying to move into a building that is unoccupied, that's still the possibility, right? Yes. I like that. All right, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. mayor. So dance is included in this and I think that's fine. It's obviously a sport in a lot of ways. But like the dance studio that we now have in the 90th and penn strip mall, you know, if they wanted, is that particular as an example something that could move into one of these under this category is is that like I just want to make sure I understand the kind of like would they have to be bigger than that in order to go into this or are you saying of any size this this particular thing applies right yes okay and it's not taking them out of the ability to be in those commercial

Council, any other inquiries regarding question one here?

In general, I'm open to this. The conflict I'm having is we had a proposal a few years back for someone that wanted to put in a, I believe it was a charter school in an industrial zone area, and we said that's just not an appropriate place for kids. I mean, because it could be next to, you know, some heavy industrial use that created a safety standard, and this would open it up that, going to put kids next to a potentially industrial use that could have safety so I I just I don't know if we can deal with that through standards in some way to protect those but that's that's my concern on on thi

Thank you, Councilmember. And I don't disagree with you. I'm remembering the proposal was actually for a church, a place of worship, wasn't it? I think it was both, yeah. And that was especially, yeah, I agree with you completely, and we did vote it down, the fact that there was just too many safety issues. My thought, and would appreciate your thoughts as well, something along these lines, I think the market will take care of it. I mean, if you're putting in a volleyball training facility right next to a You know, a smelting, you know, operation probably not going to work and you won't be in

My ideas were more specific but on the same lines as yours. We have different industrial zones and I think there are some that are appropriate and some that aren't is maybe another way to say it. For example if we look at the I think there's one that is specifically let's see here. there's one in here that talks specifically about using, yeah, industrial park. The IP district is intended to accommodate it, but it's also identified as protective, sorry, oh, sorry, industrial park excludes more intensive industrial activities and business uses that are not complementary to the district's purpose

No. But anyway, that was my thought was to maybe kind of start with a couple of these, maybe the freeway one, the ti one, the it one, and then look at limiting the heavier industrial ones to start with.

Other thoughts? Councilmember lomon. Well, I won't repeat all my colleagues have said here, but I'm in agreement with that. That conflict with the hazardous waste and that type of thing or any other conflicting things, I think it make it tough. while I like to consider, obviously, you don't want to have something sit vacant for decades just because you're waiting for something to come along. But my other concern that I have is that once you kind of lose that industrial use, it's really difficult to turn that around and go backwards. And that's more so from the data perspective, where I'm a lit

So if I may, Mayor Wood, I'd comment on this is to say that it's not so much the square footage that I'm concerned about. My colleague here brought it forward, Council Member Nelson. It's the impact to the residential area. think that's where I think we've got to be careful about what that looks like and so I mean that's one way of solving for is to say we only want an ulterior you know but I wonder if we ask this in a different way what's the impact to the residential areas that are abounding or around that area and not so much worry about the square footage because the thing I'm afraid of ma

Thank you, Mayor. I guess my question is, would the concerns be addressed by our traffic regulations and parking regulations? You know, because, you know, if we add a certain number of vehicles, it kicks in the traffic. And so I presume the size of the building is going to drive how much traffic it has. So I think these may get addressed already with our existing ordinances. And we may not need that threshold. It'll just automatically happen that you have to put that on a collector or arterial just simply due to the amount of traffic you're going to generate.

That's a good point, Councilmember. It might be worth investigating a bit on that one. Other thoughts, Council? Question three. Mr. johnson, good evening.

Thank you for that clarification. That's helpful information. Thank you much.

Well, I would say all the things that you just said. Okay. Lighting, parking, pedestrian routes, entrances and so on. I think that should be at least considered as we talk about all this. Councilmember Nelson, you were going to say the same thing?

No, I was not, Mayor. Oh, okay. You were much more in front of me on that one. The one that I was going to bring up is related to the parking and if the use involves tournaments because they drive a ton of parking, much more than – a training use in and of itself. And you know, I've been to M one many times. My wife is a volleyball referee. My kids have played volleyball. And I mean, I'd frankly at this point be better off just parking at the brewery, you know, and walking over there. So and you know, it, when they do tournaments, I mean for the regular stuff and all that, it's great, but thos

Thank you. So I know we're focusing on the practical things, parking and safety in particular, which we definitely should. But in answer to this question, I hope we also leave room to consider flexible and creative uses and putting together what otherwise we might not, something we might not think would work together, but to find a way to make it work together. The example that we just saw, I think, last month was Augustana University opened a graduate health program just literally down the alley from Hero heating and air conditioning. And so to see those two totally disparate uses together, b

I just wanted to say thank you for bringing this. I kind of forgot that this was something that was coming to us in this work plan, so I appreciate you guys being diligent about staying on top of things, even though we forget about stuff. I would, I mean, I... I always like to ask this question. Is there any reason, is there anything that's in your pipeline right now that is going to be immediately affected in a positive way as a result of making these changes? I'm thinking about whether there's stuff over in the South Loop area or other things like that that might be, people have come to you.

Thank you. Along those lines, we should talk to those folks that want to build a pickleball golf bar thing on top of a dump in Burnsville. That's literally where they're going to build it. My question is, I know that this didn't go into that, but it also mentioned the recreation and entertainment part, and I get confused between that and places of assembly and things like that, and the reason I bring it up is I have had a request from someone that wanted to use some excess capacity within their company building that is off of I believe it's in the Hampshire industrial area and for something al

Yeah, and my understanding of this was non-religious, and it was more for an entertainment purpose, which is why I brought it up. If there was a way to fit it into there, we can talk offline about it. Don't need to take up everyone's time. Thanks, Nick.

Well, thank you. I hope you got the information that you need, and we will look forward to keep moving this forward.

Thank you. Well, that council, we are on to council policy and issues update. I will kick us off. I will get to the listening session. I do want to point out that in reading the proclamation tonight, when I did mention the native peoples who used to live here, including Dakota, Ojibwe, And Iowa, I did not throw the joke out about the Iowa peoples, especially after the past weekend where the Gophers, you know. I did not take that opportunity. I know. I know. Good for me. Yes, I know. At our listening session this evening, we had... Six speakers, one, two, three, four, five speakers who came for

We can laud him more than once. You're exactly right. 50 years. That's pretty impressive. Council, any questions and anything to add to this week's council policy and issue update? Seeing none, council, we've reached the end of our agenda. I would entertain a motion to adjourn this evening.

Motion by Councilmember Roberts and second by Councilmember Carter to adjourn this evening. No further Council discussion on this. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries 7-0. Thanks much for the conversation tonight, Council. Thanks to everybody who participated. Thank you, staff. Everybody have a good rest of your week.