City Council - Regular Meeting

No. Let me take a picture of you. Okay. You make it so hard for me. There you go. Thank you.

They covered the entire basement. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We actually had a conversation on that.

I know you are. I just love to see this. It is for me too. That's good. That's a win. I like your haircut.

I should know that. That's one of my favorite places to work there. Thanks for saying that.

That's a moment I will never forget. Julia either yesterday. That's the front of my mind now for the rest of my life. And it's a compliment to you. They are.

Thank you. Thank you. Please sign here. It was the language. I saw the amendments. Perfect.

Thank you. Thank you. a little bit of an evening presentation Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Judge decided he was given a little bit of a lift.

I was going to talk about the amendments as well. It's about, I mean, it's hard to cut off his name, but we

This meeting of the Eau Claire City Council will come to order. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you city clerk and welcome everyone to the Tuesday, July 28th meeting of the Eau Claire city council. Um, this is our, uh, legislative session. Uh, and first, first item we have on our agenda is the consent agenda. Um, this is items number one through eight. Um, and so we'll be considering this all at once. Um, And if your item is on the consent agenda, please know that unless the item is pulled out, all items will pass or fail on one vote. So do council members have any questions about the consent agenda or wish to remove any items for separate consideration? All right, then on a motion

All right, and that passes unanimously. Next item is our, we have one proclamation tonight, so we have Lieutenant Jesse Henning here to accept a proclamation on National Night Out. So I will go up and read it. So whereas the National Association of Town Watch is sponsoring its 41st Annual Nationwide Crime and Drug Prevention Program called National Night Out, America's Night Out Against Crime, and whereas the National Night Out is designed to heighten crime and drug prevention awareness, generate support for and participation in local anti-crime efforts, strengthen neighborhood spirit and poli

All right, thank you so much. All right, so moving on to agenda item number This is the first item on our business agenda. So this is a resolution to approve the redevelopment district identified as the Riverbend Redevelopment District proposed by the Eau Claire Redevelopment Authority. And a 2 thirds vote of the elected members or eight affirmative votes is required for adoption. via Wisconsin Statute 66.13336B. And we have Community Development Director Aaron White here to present on this item.

OK. Are there any further questions? And I can perhaps just read the, well, so we have another item, number 10, that is just a different redevelopment district. So we'll cover that next. But is there, so we will move the item so we can discuss it. So on a motion by Council Member Werthmann and seconded by Council Member Orth, This item is moved. Is there any discussion from council on the River Bend Redevelopment District? Council Member Brewster.

Thank you, Council President. I have an amendment that I would like to make to both 9 and 10, but we'll start with 9. So yeah, we wanna add some language that talks about equitable development into the introduction section of the Riverbend plan. Say, development in the district shall be informed by principles of equitable development, for which the purposes of the plan shall be understood as a planning framework designed to revitalize neighborhoods without displacing or excluding long-term residents. It ensures that investments in housing, business, and infrastructure generate tangible economi

Okay, so we have a motion to amend from Council Member Brewster. And there are copies of this at every desk. And it will be identical for the next one too, so I probably won't read the entire thing again. Okay, and Vice President Schoen? Okay, so we have a second from Vice President Schoen. Is there any discussion on the amendment to agenda item number nine? Councilmember Werthmann.

Yeah, I would like to support this amendment. And it's something that I think will help us, as these redevelopment districts get off the ground, to think about both and. So how do we revitalize, energize, bring in more investment while at the same time investing in the homeowners that live there, the already existing community businesses? How do we help folks who maybe need that support to keep their places affordable while also seeing the benefits of investment. I like how this sets up as not a combative relationship, but as a collaborative relationship and seeing how we can do both things. A

Okay, thank you, Council Member Werthmann.

Councilmember Miller. Thank you, Council President. I agree with the language that's provided in this motion here. Just I was wondering if we could, so I don't want anything in this motion to be considered exclusionary or disparaging. I support the item presented and the four points. I'm just hesitant on the phrase rather than solely catering to new wealthy arrivals. Because before that, it says insurers' investments benefit the original community. And I think we said period there. I don't want to have any, like I said, disparaging language. I mean, we do want new people to come to Eau Claire.

Does that get get you closer to where you want to be I

If you, I'm sorry. Council Member Miller, yeah. We shouldn't really be talking to each other, we should be talking to the chair. Chair, if the mover desired to keep new but would be open to striking wealthier, I'd be okay with that. Slight amendment just to not disparage any particular economic classes from this motion.

Thank you. Yes, I would accept that as well.

okay so it has so there's a friendly amendment that is included that just strikes the comma and the word wealth here from that first paragraph of the amendment is that that's accurate it sounds like um So we will discuss the amendment without that word. And Council Member Otto.

Thank you, Council President. I, too, will be supporting this amendment, in particular because it recognizes these zones as a bigger, well, as a part of the bigger city, as a part of the city as a whole, because when other places have these redevelopment districts and there is displacement what usually happens is that the displaced people end up moving to other neighborhoods and creating a ripple effect and this helps us better prepare for any potential ripple effect and prevent it in other districts and neighborhoods within the city so I think this is fantastic and I appreciate the people who

Thank you, Council President Gregert. Yeah, I really appreciate that, too, and I appreciate Council Member Otto's point. The fact that, well, this one and the next items are both pretty large redevelopment districts, I think it's particularly important that we include this item inclusive approach to how we do redevelopment. And I think it becomes kind of a statement of values for us as a community and the kind of city we're really trying to continue to become. So I'm actually excited that these RDA districts are large and that they will all kind of have this kind of inclusive approach to them.

Okay, thank you. Any other discussion on the amendment? All right, seeing none, city clerk, please call the roll on the amendment.

Aye. And that amendment passes unanimously. So now we're on to the resolution approving the redevelopment district as amended. And we can further our discussion here. Council Member Werthmann first.

Thank you, Council President. I am really excited about both of these plans for different reasons. But I think first and foremost, one of the first ways that people often experience our community is actually through this Riverbend district. For me, it was coming to school at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. visiting with my family. But we have many visitors that come in off the highway that utilize a lot of that corridor, thousands of people, probably daily. It's how they experience it. And right now, it needs help. And this RDA district, which I know a lot of work has gone in from our dire

Thank you, Council President Gregert. I also am really enthusiastic about supporting this RDA district. I think about, so one of the more recent and notable RDA districts in our community at Cannery Park and how transformative that was for the community. And I'm really, really excited to see what this district will become. I think there's so much potential there for the entire community. As Council Member Werthmann pointed out, I think there's a lot of economic development growth potential there. But additionally, I think about, I mean, as the name of the district, it's the Riverbend District.

Thank you, Vice President Schoen. Yeah, I too am looking forward to getting to work on this. The I served on the redevelopment authority when we were, it was probably discussed years before I was on the redevelopment authority, but it was exciting to talk about some new areas of town, particularly because at the time I was representing District 3, which included this whole area on the city council. And it was an area that was going through a lot of change. The Shopko had closed, and then later on the hospital, the Sacred Heart Hospital, and there was Ron's Castle Foods back in the day. There w

Thank you, Council President. And before we move further, I thank Council Members Brewster and Schoen, Vice President Schoen, for bringing forth the motion. There was also input publicly from the Jonah Affordable Housing Task Force, and we had a number of community members from them speaking to this and helping craft this motion. And although it was read into the record, the first item here was protect and preserve the original community, vulnerable tenants, and homeowners from displacement. So I really appreciate that. the community bringing forth this equitable amendment to this redevelopmen

All right. Thank you, Council Member Miller. Any other comments before we move to a vote on agenda item number nine?

Aye. And that passes unanimously. OK. we're moving on to agenda item number 10 resolution to approve the redevelopment district identified as the core reinvestment redevelopment district proposed by the eau claire redevelopment authority and this requires a two-thirds vote or eight affirmative votes as well so um Are there, I guess, I'm not sure if Director White, if you have anything you want to add. I know you've presented on this many times. But yeah, are there anything to add?

Any questions from the council on agenda item number 10? Okay, thank you so much. So... Let's see here. On a motion by Councilmember Miller and seconded by Councilmember Johnson, this item is moved. Is there any discussion or amendments? Looks like there is from Councilmember Brewster. Thank you, Council President.

Yeah, I would like to add the amendment that I put into number nine into number 10 as well. Once again, stripping the term wealthier from the place where it was stripped from in the original rather than solely catering to new arrivals. Otherwise, it will read exactly the same as the amendment to number nine.

Thank you, Council Member Brewster and Vice President Schoen.

OK. So we have another amendment. Exactly the same as the last one on the previous agenda item. Is there any discussion on the amendment by the council? All right. Seeing none, city clerk, please call the roll on the amendment.

Aye. All right. And that passes unanimously. So now we have an amended bill. Agenda item number 10, the resolution to approve the core reinvestment redevelopment district. Any discussion on the

the uh on this particular agenda item we have council member worthman thank you council president uh appreciate the recognition this uh much of this district um stretches within my city council district um and some of the things that i think about are the fact that Just the way that Eau Claire developed with an industrial core for at least a century of our city's history, logging and manufacturing the tire factory, et cetera, those things really helped kind of I would say prop up our community through those periods, but I think everyone can see, and it's part of what this addresses, the fact t

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Werthmann and Vice President Schoen.

Thank you, Council President. I am also excited to support this agenda item this afternoon. I think it's really exciting in particular because it's a strategy that not many communities in the state are using with their RDAs to develop a large district like this. I know of at least one other community in the state, I don't remember, somewhere in the Fox Valley, Appleton maybe that has a district like this and I just really want to applaud and take a moment to appreciate staff and RDA members For being willing to pursue kind of a creative and less traditional RDA district approach and echo a lot

Thank you so much. Yeah, as this is my first opportunity to be involved in a redevelopment project, it's extremely exciting and I too wanted to just thank the RDA and the staff and Jonah for all of the efforts that have gone into this. It's It's very exciting and I appreciate it.

Thank you. Any other discussion from council before we move to a vote on agenda item number 10? That's for this core reinvestment redevelopment district. All right. Seeing none, city clerk, please call the roll.

All right. And that passes unanimously. All right. We'll go on to agenda item number 11, resolution supporting STATE FUNDING FOR LOCAL PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENTS. AND THIS WAS INTRODUCED BY COUNCIL MEMBERS MILLER AND ORTH. SO YOU'RE WELCOME TO PRESENT COUNCIL MEMBER MILLER.

THANK YOU COUNCIL PRESIDENT. I'M THE CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE ON THE Board of Health for the Eau Claire City County Health Department. And this resolution is being considered by many counties and cities across the state as an effort with the Wisconsin Counties Association and the League of Wisconsin Municipalities as an effort to prioritize how local public health is funded in the state of Wisconsin. State funding for Wisconsin Public Health Department is 49th in the nation out of 50 states, where the bulk of the funding comes from either local municipalities and counties, so the city and t

Thank you, Council Member Miller and Council Member Orth.

Thank you, President Greger. I'm pleased to join Council Member Miller in bringing this amendment for your consideration. Our health department and health departments across the state have had a high return on investment even though they're at that 49th lowest in funding in our nation. So I applaud that what they have been able to do with their unreliable resources, sometimes unreliable, and still to put forth as they do. And especially that this resolution calls for the funding to be outside of local tax levy is extremely important to me as well. So I am pleased to second this motion for your

Okay, thank you so much. So this would be motion by Councilmember Miller and seconded by Councilmember Orth that this item is moved. So now we can fully discuss this item. So I appreciate the introduction from both Councilmembers Miller and Orth. Any other discussion from council on this resolution supporting funding for local public health departments, state funding for local health departments? Council Vice President Schoen.

Thank you, Council President. I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate all of the really good work that our health department does. It's something I know I've met with our health director, Giese, in the past. talked about that with her and I'm always so appreciative and encourage other council members always to take a look at what the health department is up to because I think they're underappreciated for really progressive and innovative upstream strategies they're using to help the community in a wide variety of issues and so I'm very excited to support this resolution and wanted to just

Yeah, thank you, Vice President Schoen. Yeah, I appreciate the work that has gone into this, you know, through Board of Health, through the county as well, bringing, and then Council Member Miller bringing it to the city. You know, and we have, this is in a sense being proactive with the state budget coming up and an election coming up too that we're thinking about the issues that, and the funding priorities that really would have the biggest impact on our and making sure our voices are heard as a community. And once the resolution passes, there's certainly other things that we can do to use t

All right, that passes unanimously. OK, so now we're going under the category of ordinances for action. uh this is agenda item number 12 ordinance amending table five entitled yield intersections of the code of ordinances of the city of eau claire to add yield control at several intersections and this was introduced yesterday but i believe uh our engineering director leoness has potentially more to add. There was a follow-up email as well, is my understanding.

Thank you, Director Ness. We have a question from Council Member Worthen.

Thank you, Council President, Director Ness. As I understand it, We had done a first ordinance change of a number of different intersections. This seems like a second wave. And as I've heard you say, there's a third and maybe even a fourth wave of intersections that we're going to be looking at coming up. Is that still the right understanding?

Could I follow up? Yeah, please. Was the intersection, which is within my district and my neighborhood, Lindale and Roderick come up for consideration? Because I think I have called that in from a couple near misses that I've had. Is there any chance that you looked at that intersection particularly?

Thank you. Any other questions for Director Ness? Okay. Thank you, Director Ness. Thank you. We will move this item on a motion by... Council Vice President Schoen and seconded by Council Member Amboga. This item is moved. Is there any discussion of the ordinance to add yield intersections? Council Member Otto.

Thank you, Council President. First off, I appreciate Director Ness and staff for bringing this to our attention. I was just thinking about the cost angle last night about the cost of all these extra signs. Well, I think a single emergency call would far exceed the cost of the signage. So if this prevents that, then this is the most cost-effective thing we could do as a council and more ethically, you know, it will make our city safer for our constituents. For this reason, I think this is a great thing to pass. I look forward to voting yes.

Thank you, Council Member Otto. Any other questions? Comments from the other discussion from council? All right, seeing none, city clerk, please call the roll.

That passes unanimously. Next agenda item is number 13, Ordinance Amending Table 8, entitled Parking Prohibited of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Eau Claire to Restrict Parking on South Dewey Street from Better Way to 140 feet North. And we have our Director Ness here to present. If you have anything to add.

Any questions from council? Council Member Mboga.

Thank you. Thank you, Director Nuss. I'm just wondering, did you consult the library? I can see the library doctor there. Did you consult with them?

All right, thank you, Director Ness. Thanks. So on a motion by Council Member Otto and seconded by Council Member Reid, this item is moved. Is there any discussion? All right, seeing none, City Clerk, please call the roll.

Otto. Aye. And that passes unanimously. All right, agenda item number 14, ordinance amending chapter 10.48 entitled Truck Traffic Regulations of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Eau Claire to restrict the route along Fall, Summit, and Spring Streets between Birch Street and Bellevue Avenue. And we have Director Ness again to see if there's anything to add or any questions.

Okay, thank you, Director Nuss. Any questions from the council? All right, thank you. Thanks. So on a motion made by Council Member Serrano and seconded by Council Member Brewster, this item is moved. Is there any discussion? We have Council Member Miller.

Thank you, Council President. During last night's presentation, Director Ness mentioned that she had reached out to the trucking companies involved in this intersection to talk to them. Before this, I just wanted to say thank you for reaching out to the companies. It's always great when our community members and partners hear about stuff that's happening at City Council ahead of time so they are prepared for it. So that goes a long way. So thank you for doing that.

Thank you, Council Member Miller. Any other discussion? Okay, seeing none, City Clerk, please call the roll.

Aye. And that passes unanimously. OK, thank you. Next agenda item is number 15 ordinance amending chapter 10.24 entitled special parking restrictions of the code of ordinances of the city of Eau Claire to create Quick stop parking and we have our parking administrator Aaron Ross here to present.

Council Member Brewster. Thank you, Council President. I was just wondering if it turns out that we need more or fewer of them or to have them moved around. Is that something that's done administratively?

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Mboga.

Thank you, Council President. I'm wondering... uh because it's experimental can you can you guys in like six to 12 months come to city council and tell us how it is going just wondering absolutely okay thank you okay uh council member worthman thank you council president uh mr roth's one of the things that you touch on in your email but maybe you can

explain here as well because this came up last night with the public hearing is the enforcement part of this yep um but essentially that there will be mechanisms for enforcement beyond just um people reporting um that the technology is there to do that yeah we currently have two hour parking enforcement so this is the same thing it's just 15 minutes instead of two hours

Thank you. Council Member Miller. Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Mr. Roth. This might have been mentioned earlier, but how would these spots be designated? Would this have a signage at each spot, or is it markings on the ground? How will these be denoted?

Any further questions from council? From Council Member Mboga.

Thank you. I'm just wondering, in any system, in anything you do, there's people who abuse the system. The people will cheat on this one. People park 20, 15 minutes, move around, wait, and come back 15 minutes. How can you guys detect them?

All right. Thank you for coming up. All right. So on a motion by Council Member Werthmann and seconded by Council Member Orth, this item is moved. Is there any discussion on this item? OK. City Clerk, please call the roll.

All right. That passes unanimously. So now onto the category of ordinances for introduction. We have agenda item number 16, ordinance amending chapter 10.24 entitled special parking restrictions of the code of ordinances of the city of Eau Claire to amend city hall parking hours and clarify overnight parking exceptions. And uh we we can entertain a motion to suspend the rules to vote on this item but we just need a two-thirds vote uh council member uh miller i see that you're here i'm sorry do you wanna do you wanna read all the ordinance for introduction first and then i'll uh i could read th

So I will read. So I'm going to read all three of the ordinances for introduction. Number 17 is ordinance amending chapter 8.32 entitled management of waste and recyclables of the code of ordinances of the city of Eau Claire to create a comprehensive organics management and composting program. Agenda item number 18 is ordinance to text amendments to Title 17 land development ordinance and the official zoning map. And so going back to, is there, yeah, Council Member Miller, would you like to make a motion?

Yes, thank you, Council President. On recommendation of city staff in order to have a consistent implementation of paid parking on August 1st, I would like to suspend the rules and take up item 16 for action tonight. I'll second that.

Okay, so we have a motion by Council Member Miller and seconded by Council Member Brewster to suspend the rules to take up agenda item number 16 tonight. And I don't believe that there's discussion on this, so we can just move to have City Clerk, if you could please call the roll on that.

All right, that motion to suspend the rules passes unanimously. And therefore, we can discuss agenda item number 16. I'll move. So moved by Councilmember Werthmann and Councilmember Brewster seconds. So is there any discussion by council of this or by the movers?

Council Member Brewster. Thank you, Council President. Yeah, this is just some clarification aspects of this that I overlooked when we voted at our last meeting. There was some lack of clarity in one of my amendments, and this is just cleaning that up to make sure that – staff know what the intent is and also make sure that the fire department has access to that lot overnight, despite the no parking for anyone else.

Thank you, Council Member Brewster. Council Member Miller?

Thank you, Council President. I see that Mr. Roth is the staff person assigned to this. I don't know if he has anything to add. Just give him the opportunity to add anything. If not, he can stay where he is. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, thanks for that, Council Member Miller. Um... Any other discussion before we move to a vote on agenda item number 16? OK. City Clerk, please call the roll.

All right, and that passes unanimously. So Council Member Werthmann, or do you? So the other two agenda items that were read earlier, 17 and 18, we will take those up at our first legislative session in August. So we are on to announcements and updates by the city manager and the city council.

Council Member Brewster. Thank you, Council President. I just wanted to thank everybody from staff and council and the community that showed up at the inaugural Eau Claire Water Street Fair on Thursday. Turnout was incredible. Weather was incredible. Good time was had by all. Had great, great help from city staff and in the streets department and the police department um everything went went very well and we received a number of uh of emails from people encouraging us to continue to hold that event in the future so thanks for everyone that helped make it a success all right thank you council m

I wanted to follow up on that and thank our law enforcement and our first responders for support during the Eau Claire Festival. It was a very hot couple of days, but it seemed overall to run smoothly, and I saw a lot of our Eau Claire Police Department. folks out and about during the two-day concert. Just want to thank them for being there on scene. And then, of course, all of our Parks and Rec and the people who help set up and get everything ready as well out at Carson Park. I know a lot of work goes into doing that, but I got to imagine there was close to 5,000 people, maybe more, that wer

There was 9,000. Oh, wow. Okay. I was just eyeballing it. I got the count wrong. I don't know. It feels right, though.

Great. Yeah, city manager. Council Member Orth, yeah.

Maybe I'm stealing city manager Solberg's announcement here, but I just wanted to say congratulations to Ty Fadness on his promotion. That was effective today. He's a resident of my district, so I thought it was appropriate.

Thank you for that. Yeah, I believe our city manager will announce this as couple of these other things too so I'll hold off but it again I want to mention National Night Out you know as a something we talked about during our during the proclamation but that just as a reminder that's this coming Tuesday a week from tonight from 4 30 to 8 at at Carson Park so that's certainly a great event that attracts thousands of people to Carson Park yet again so and it is an event organized by the city so wanted to plug that again I also just wanted to just, it was about yesterday that there was a tornado

Thank you. And just one other kind of reminder for folks that was in an email from City Manager Solberg and should be in your calendars as an invite is the City Council Academy which will be Tuesday, August 18th from 5 to 8 at the Chippewa Valley Museum at Carson Park. So I'm just going to keep doubling down on Carson Park as a longstanding resources in our community. So any other announcements before we move to our work sessions? OK. Unless there is an objection from council, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you. We can take a five minute break before we start the work sessions.

Absolutely. Thank you. at this point Thank you. Oh, I was wondering. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So that's the secret word. So,

I think for some reason I am interested in bringing some amendment and I already have some language I've been working on so I um it's a little complicated but like it's like three or four sections that just need a small tweak a table and a few other things so um let's not cross that bridge unless we have to but I do I would want Because it's not only them, that would be an impact that I kind of feel right now. Even down the road, I might bring forward language that makes it a little more permissive to run small cottage businesses in neighborhoods. I don't know, as a policy. Cool. Thanks for yo

I tried to elevate it as a huge deal. Yeah.

All right, let's get this work session going here. So our first work session is on RDA subdivisions, and we have our community development director, Aaron White,

Yeah. Thank you, Council President. I think I remember last year, me and the former City Council President . We had a conversation with Derek White. Is that the staff? And as we walked, I think what she told us, I didn't like it. For me, I think they wanted to build I think the territory they want to build, like, where it would be up, like, on, like, the second or first floor, then the, is that, which street is that, uh, uh, ground? Then the ground would go around into underneath. I think I, I did like that.

So Let's see I'm just gonna try to keep track of the order that lights go on so come come some member Otto.

Thank you First off I do notice that this is pretty close to Plank Hill and my comment is I I'm thinking the East Hill Neighborhood Association might have thoughts about how close it is to Plank Hill and why that wouldn't be included. I can kind of see that just looking at the map, why it's not included, but it might be something to address for constituents. And I'm wondering why those lines kind of veer around the senior living apartments, or if they were considered to be a part of it, or if they're doing just fine along with the development immediately to the north

So I have just a few thoughts. And I missed the very opening, so apologies there. But I've also, just for clarity, met with somebody from the Y in the last maybe nine months, it was a while ago now, and talked about some of their organization's visions and what they're interested in. I am open to it. I think it would be great to revitalize that portion of downtown. But I do think one key thing in my mind is especially if we are investing in that in some way, I want to see some community access to that space. I think about like Sonnen Tag, for example, and the city contributed funds and we don'

planning process and community outreach for those areas that we have say in the cannery district so that would be part of that process should the rda be part of this or this becomes a project we're involved with can i make one more comment yeah please okay my only other thought then with that clarification is from like uh environmental contamination remediation standpoint i would have a lot of concern about the cost of the city acquiring that property um I'm just wondering if staff have information or if the Y has provided any information about asbestos or other abatement-related issues that w

Thank you, Council President, or Jeremy. So this sounds, just in listening to your answers to the other questions, still very open-ended. Again, you're just kind of mapping out a boundary and saying this could be a sort of sub-district. But then you also said something about $3 million. And I'm just kind of trying to connect the specificity of that dollar amount. What are we really talking about for that dollar amount? And it seems like we're still not really, we don't have a concrete proposal. before us of the city's involvement, so I'm not sure. Are we just kind of brainstorming here?

Do you, do you think you could speak to the boundaries, particularly that were chosen? Like I'm particularly interested in like that, the Eastern and like, Do you always use streets as the boundary? Because I see that there's like houses and then the executive center building are not in it, on the east end of Dewey. What are some of the things that were considered in terms of defining a boundary or what is traditional in terms of defining a boundary? Is it usually a street?

Council Member Brewster, do you? Thank you. So given those three buildings, is there anything that, you know, if we were to acquire them, would the idea be to just raise them or try to find somebody to utilize them or in the meantime utilize them ourself? You know, I mean, like, would we put storage in the YMCA building until we could figure out what to do with it or... Anything like that? I mean, would there be a benefit to us in the short term other than just holding onto the land? Because I do worry that if we don't get sort of the issue we have with homelessness and sort of the focal point

Yeah, thank you, Council President and Director White. Thank you. Yeah, I would be interested in, you know, pursuing and investigating these areas. You know, Lake Street is kind of like the de facto, like, downtown is North Lake Street. And although it's a downtown area, you know, it kind of abruptly ends. The vibrancy declines. And we have three properties coming for sale. That's, you know, you never know when properties are coming up for sale. You always need to give a good look at if this is the moment to buy it or invest in it or redevelop it. The Metro is kind of a gateway into downtown.

Any other questions or thoughts, I guess, as we discuss this? Council Member Serrano?

Thanks, Jeremy. I'm echoing what Josh is saying. We have a lot of just bare concrete in this space, whether it's empty buildings or big surface parking lots. And even Wilson Park being sort of this little precious green space there. I think all of this could really benefit dramatically from some reimagining and some creativity. So I like this particular delineation of an area to look at and I guess take to the next step, which is where the creative ideas come forward.

Council Member Brewster? Yeah. I'd be interested in taking a look at it, devils in the details as it is with everything, but it's not, it's an optimistic maybe, I guess, for me.

To the optimistic maybe here, I mean, Lake Street is not pedestrian friendly. It takes forever to cross it. So it is a definite barrier that we'd want to consider breaking down if we want to unify these into a coherent downtown. I'm curious... Could we anticipate other mini-districts forming from the large district in the future, or do you see this as a special case?

Yeah, given the three buildings that are currently available, I think it sounds like it's an opportunity. and I think it could be a very exciting development. I don't know, you mentioned dry cleaners and you mentioned brownfield and I don't know what, but what brownfield refers to and I don't know what the laundromat building is.

So the particular building that is being referred to is just south of Shift on Graham Avenue? Yeah.

Is it, it's just an empty building right now? Yeah. Okay. Correct. All right, then I know which one it is.

Yeah, it's kind of behind Sojourner House, too. Calling it a building is kind of generous.

Maybe that's why I was wondering. I didn't recognize it as a building.

Yeah, thank you. I'm just wondering, do you know the price of all these properties or reparations?

So it doesn't necessarily mean that's... Is that like one account, two accounts, or what?

councilmember johnson yeah i just wanted to second what josh said i'm in support of this i'd like to see it move forward get additional information yeah and personally i'm supportive of looking at it more and yeah just because there's this area hasn't really changed all that much over the last 15 or 20 years, while the rest of the downtown has changed quite dramatically. So it seems like it could use some extra attention from the city. I know the Third Ward Neighborhood Association boundary is roughly in that southern area of this district, so I think it'd be good to engage with that neighborh

I have a wild thinking, very crazy thinking. Our police officers, Do we pay for the police officer at the, is that a county building or a city building?

That's what I'm talking about. If the city council ask we buy this land, can we build a police station there to save that money we are paying the county?

Yeah, there's all sorts of possibilities in that area.

OK. Well, it appears to be support for moving forward. So yeah, thank you for the presentation and the focus on this. And yeah, anything you want to add about About timeline or anything?

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So the next work session is on recouping. costs for services, and we have our finance director, Kitsie Winters, to help us through this work sessions. Okay. Thank you, Director Winters.

Good evening. President Greger, council. We're here tonight to have a brief overview on kind of what I would call the community services fees and get a little feedback. So I'm going to have Dave is going to start for us, and I'm going to do an overview of each area. And we have Patrick here for any questions.

Thank You Dave so tonight we're gonna go over the process some strategic goals the fiscal strategy that I'm looking at the plan overview and then the next steps So our fee schedule process aligns with the budget and The departments have the meeting with the meetings with finance director and the city manager They align their strategic goals within their department departmental needs, so we evaluate what they need, what they want, what the CPI has done to their budget, to their departments, if it's still fiscally viable to maintain those operations within their departments, and then also lookin

Yeah. Why is the focus more narrowly on parking?

Council Member Werthmann, we just need the microphone access there.

Just the question is, why is the focus more narrowly on parks and recreation versus all of the other fee areas?

Sure. That's a great question. You're going to have user agreements coming to you. More specifically with that innovation funding grant and soccer. It's also one of the areas that Wouldn't be statutorily obligated, so we need to show you kind of we're giving you a two-year follow-up on the parameters that you've given us before where we're at now and So kind of setting the table on the next steps of the soccer agreement and also talking a little bit about the budget in an area that's not statutorily obligated but would be more than likely reduced just because of the current budget situation. S

Oh, my light's been on for like 15 minutes. Sorry. I just want to talk when you're done. Oh, okay.

All right. So with SACA, there's a desire on both sides to return to how everything was on June 30th, let's say. So, we'd want to bring that back to you, but part of that is we're going to work with this group to negotiate fee increases as well. I'm returning close to $50,000. Right now I have no subsidy in soccer due to that contract that's signed, plus I have innovation grant fund money. So, we need to work with those user groups on their percent of recovery. That group also, similar to the advertising sales discussion, has the potential to offset those fee increases. We're looking for guard

And unfortunately, I would have to send them an invoice for the costs, and I would definitely have to refund the innovation grant.

And just to put the fee increases in perspective, one of the individual groups, if you did the math, not saying they'd pass that all to the user, it'd be about $5 per participant on an annual basis. The other user group, if you just look at the tournament, I don't have individual data for that, it'd be about $25 increase per tournament group. But again, I don't know if both of those organizations will pass the fee increases off or if they'll use some of their donated funds as well. Pavilions and parks, that was another council priority since I've started here, keeping those costs low. We have

Maybe let's start with, we had a couple council members that put their lights on early, so maybe we start with those just because they may be more general. Okay. Council Member Brewster, you were the first. Yeah, thank you.

I was wondering if, you know, if, you know, I saw 15% increases on that. I wonder how detrimental it would be to the budget to just, you know, keep it above where CPI is but have it do like 10% instead. So then we'd catch up maybe in 2033 instead of, 2030 or something it just you know like what we're going through as a city is is like absolutely normal like every organization that I know of is having funding issues and it just if we can if we can do it a little bit more gently while still getting to where we need to be I wonder if it's if it's worth that extra effort

Sure, we do have scenarios for 10%, 12.5, and 15. We did work together on those. Ideally, we want to just have these programs for free. I think it's the desire of the department not to increase fees ever. And I respect that, because they're awesome programs. We're looking at, I guess we didn't do 10%, I mean 12.5 I guess is the lowest that I recommended to you. And are you saying generally all over these six areas or just the certain ones that had the larger numbers?

Yeah, I mean, I guess for me, I would say the closer they are to 100 already, maybe try to keep the increases as low as possible. You know, but like for, you know, the ball fields or whatever, maybe that's a 15 and maybe Hobbs is like, you know, seven or something because they're already pretty close to...

That's kind of where, I mean, Hobbs was at, I believe it was, we already have a 7% in for January and I think you proposed 10 for September, is that correct? We've looked at a lot of numbers this weekend. So what was the fall? So 3% in September and then the dollar per event.

I think that one specifically would hit your 10% target, but we would want to implement the $1 per hour event parking so it wouldn't have to be higher. So we did try to mitigate that, find that solution if that would be acceptable.

That one I think you've been a little bit more, I don't know, between Patrick reducing expenses and finding efficiencies and just been more strategic on those contracts every year, you've been closing that gap.

Thank you, Council President. So this is just a big picture thought. So earlier you mentioned prioritizing children versus adult programs for lower recovery rates, which I'm fully on board with that. I wonder if there's another axis of priority here in that some of these programs I imagine don't generate secondary fees from hotel overnight revenue, and some probably do, and I'm thinking about last weekend, Eau Claire's Festival, and maybe some of these are a net gain. I don't know. I don't know if the external fees have been generated. I can't imagine it's something you can precisely measure,

That has been, I mean, Hobbs has an event that I know Visit Eau Claire has spoke about. The COOB tournament and then also, well, items like this weekend. And I believe you have that, there's another event at the soccer park as well with the Mung Festival.

And most of those would be special events, which would recover our costs outside of just your special events team. We don't charge that much for the administrative time ahead of time. We talked about that today, that maybe we should recover some of the admin time on just like a... Eau Claire Festival event. I mean, it was my suggestion from a fiscal standpoint, but is that event fee maybe, should that be higher than $70? Maybe should that be like 500, you know, or 1,000? Because it's taking a year of planning, whereas, you know, the downtown Fall Fest, that's still a $70 fee. Things like that,

I'm just wondering, Casey and Patrick, have you guys, I think especially Patrick, have you guys reached out to, like, Ukraine, United States, or perhaps there's a lot of hockey clubs there. Each of them, we are planning to raise some fees and to see which reacted in a positive way.

Well, I think at this point right now, we've definitely reached out, you know, and Dave has as well, to the soccer organization, especially the one that is contracted, I believe it's United, that's contracted to be operating the field at this point. So... Our next step is to say, hey, right now we have a 0% subsidy. This is our proposed fee schedule, and we're going to go from there with the guardrails from this evening. I had offered a 5% or, excuse me, a five-year, and that's, you know, and city manager Dave has as well. So we're looking at a five-year recovery. on those rates um so then the

I think the staff wants it back as well. I think these conversations will be hard just because of the

Of all of the operational changes, I can't speak for the groups themselves. I mean, these fee schedule changes are jumps. But again, they're covering 100% of their usage, their field usage, and they're getting to that 100% over five years. So that was kind of the guardrails we were looking for.

But my comment, just a comment. It would be nice to reach out to them and say, because of inflation, everyone knows inflation. Everything is going to sky. So because of inflation, we are tending to do this one. So they are aware. They need their mind. Before the contract, they know that it will be an increase, but they don't know how much.

And I think we don't sell the fact that we do create efficiencies behind the scene. We don't even have time to tell you that we create efficiencies. So, but they're doing that, plus there's a clerical issue with the spreadsheet. So those costs have came down, so it's not as high as what originally the 193,000, it's down I think about 170,000, I want to say.

The last one, I will say, but it's not here. I think I've talked to David. If they have the lights at night, we make more money. Because when it's too hot, people like to play late. So think about that one.

So actually, I wanted to talk a little bit about the, I guess particularly the realm of the pavilions and parks because one of the ones I'm concerned about is the farmer's market and like their agreement coming up and like you know that structure was It wasn't super expensive to build maybe back at the time that it was built, and it probably would cost like maybe 10 times more today, even though it's only like 20 years old. But I'm thinking of those user groups and just kind of using the farmer's market as an example, where it's like it's something that, is kind of special about Eau Claire. I

yeah no that's a great question i think um prioritizing use is where those those agreements come in and those rates um there we have started repairing that pavilion um just a little bit here and there um but that's the volume discount i guess is my easiest and simple description you know when you we bring a contract to you that's where that you can kind of prioritize that use. But Dave has the best analogy on what this farmer's market specifically would mean per user, per both.

So we've been getting behind, so that's why we're kind of in these situations. So when the contracts are coming for renewal, we've got some larger numbers. But we're trying to put them into perspective here, like a per user, like the dollar for the soccer per child or $25 per team.

You know, I guess I also had some questions about the farmer's market. And there are a lot of, like, probably, I mean, just the list of positive externalities from that is quite extensive. But at the same time, it's also, like... for-profit entity right like the well the organization I believe is well a non-profit but then the vendors exactly that's I think all of them are it is a commercial enterprise as opposed to you know some of the you know youth sports and stuff that are that are not I don't think that means that we need to go after them with a chainsaw or something.

I think when we minimized it down to like it's $1 to $2 per booth on an annual basis. I mean, that's why we wanted to give you that perspective because it sounds so big.

So one of the things that I'm trying to consider is just that ability to pay piece of it, where I feel like groups maybe have more ability to pay than individuals. So the individual family that may rent a park pavilion needs to have to make sure that the pavilion, like the smaller pavilions, for example, are maybe more accessible and then kids of course from ability to pay standpoint is important to me in terms of having that be more affordable too so those are that's one of the just ways that I look at it and

yeah i wonder if there's a way to um do something like for example at fairfax you know like let's say you know by nine days get the tenth one free kind of kind of thing like that if you know if you have a little receipt thing that you keep or something like that just like or uh you know if you go with a group of friends like buy four entrances get the fifth one free or something like that just people that you know, keep the usage high and also give people the opportunity to find ways to save some money. I'm not sure what that would look like with any of the other facilities, but maybe somethin

Yeah, I think it makes sense for frequent users to try to make that, to keep that the same. I think that's good. Any other thoughts? We kind of lost half the council here. Yeah.

We have quorum. Look at that. I guess just...

For me, I understand the necessity of doing this. I just say, you know, try to keep the increases as minor as possible while still getting closer to that goal. And also I had a question. Have you noticed, like, an increase in... like pool usage since under 18s can ride the bus for free?

So does it mean that the pool usage is up?

To go back to transit, I just wanted to tell you that Katrina had reached out to me on June 19th and was so excited about driving 329 kids. This is the first time that we've had over 300 kids in one day in years. The beginning of the year, we were excited to have 200 kids in one day for the first time. So it was cool to hear.

fewer instances of our colleagues at the fire department having to go do what they do so yeah so council member reed did you yeah um thanks jeremy i um i just want to ask why and maybe you said this already but why is the stadiums and ball fields only at 22 percent is that a reflection of keeping it accessible or is it something else?

I hate to say it, but what about paid parking for stadium and ball fields?

So then just a clarification, the paid parking at Hobbs would be through the organization and not through the city?

Yes. The revenue is going to pass through into our budget, but that would offset the fee increase that Patrick's providing. Is that the best description, Patrick?

Well, you know, I think there's generally support for, I mean, I do kind of agree with Aaron that, you know, trying to. There may be certain instances where we may want to elongate that from five years to like seven or something. I'm not sure if that makes sense.

So I think I'm going to run through here next steps because what I'm hearing is, well first in primary I did bucket out soccer a little bit different than the rest just because of that innovation funding. Hobbs is getting closer to closing that gap, but I do see your point and I think we're on We're on track with what Aaron Brewster had mentioned with a 10% there, and then they're having the ability to break even with the tools that we've talked to them about, and they've avoided innovation funding, so I don't know if that one's kind of on track with that 10%. Is that something that we're kind

You're the numbers person. I guess my thing is just keep it as low as you can and not make it exceptionally difficult for yourself.

Yes, because I know in turn it does make difficult conversations and a lot of emails and a lot of conversations, but we thought it'd be very valuable. And I'll email you this presentation, but just to hear what does that mean per child or per user group to put these large percentages in perspective. pool from what I'm hearing we're we're kind of okay with that that direction it's kind of we do put intentionally we don't increase down to the penny just because of making change right and we have to make sure I won't shake that cashiers can properly create the right amount of change so whole easy

I mean, I guess if there was one that I could pick to keep as cheap as possible, it would be Fairfax.

Patrick was talking about it as on some level a safety issue if it gets really hot. Yeah. as somebody that has really valued his knowledge of how to swim and has used it successfully at several points in his life. I'm talking about myself in a weird way right now, but I would very much like to figure out a way, if we could, to make sure everybody has a chance to learn how to swim. Because then, you know.

So keeping swimming lessons as affordable as possible as well. Okay. Because those are in the recreation budget.

Don't we get something from DPI to help with swimming lessons too?

It doesn't meet the cost. I mean, that's 45. Patrick's requested 50 per student. But we're subsidizing that whole program of recreation for

So I'm hearing to keep Fairfax pool daily admission maybe and swimming lessons that are very affordable.

Yeah, the daily mission because of the pools. All the other things are year long where it's pool in the summer and you're finding stuff for youth to do in the summer. So yeah, keeping the daily rates as low as possible.

That's one of them we wanted to stay away from paid parking at as well, just internally. Recreation, again, swimming lessons does fall under that. We are requesting more from the school, again, for the DPI funding. Our 2031 goal is 60% recovery. That'd be an annual about 15% increase in the fee schedule.

I had something to say about that. This is something that we can track, right? Like if we do a 15% increase next year and then we have like half as many people involved, we might look back and be like, okay, we took that a bit too far.

Well, yeah, that's part of why I was mentioning the changes with pavilions, just to show that they're looking at. Sometimes Patrick might want to drop one program that has no attendance. instead of increasing the fees overall. So that's where your operational management comes into play. So they do make those efficiencies behind the scenes that make sense for their program. So he might not want to try to increase the full 15%, but if it's maybe in certain areas and lowering that swim, keeping that swim low, there's a lot of things behind the scenes. But again, charging. Part of that, too, is th

Could you do a daily family pass for 25 or something like that in case somebody has a whole bunch of kids? Because that could get really expensive.

I think there's a scholarship program too, though. I mean, it's something we should look at, but then the scholarship program helps with Eau Claire Area School District children that are enrolled in the district that can get a percent discount on recreation. So that might help another way.

And so that's one of the numbers too that can be adjusted, the percent scholarship on the program to help offset some fees as well. Stadium and ball fields, that one. We again are close on Express. Those other items we're still going to be kind of working through. So I think something that'll help us going forward, you know, even 10 years, probably more so 10 years down the road is having those contracts indexed to the fee schedule, like Patrick's saying. So Hobbs was like that. and you look at that percent recovery rate, now we look at these where they're having those set amounts, just like t

In the theme of charging more for adults and fewer for kids, the school district being included in the list of the Cavaliers and the Legion, maybe you can try to not bump them up as much as you might the Cavaliers or the Legion, given those are the more adult teams.

And that's something we haven't discussed with any of them at this point, so they might be hearing it tonight, but I don't know what those conversations have been in the past. But that's a good proposal, too, depending on how they're funded and if they have ability to pay, too, as well, or donations.

I mean, we could definitely look at applying that same concept, though, to ball fields.

Yeah. Soccer, this one is very confusing, but I've talked about that one a little. So if you want a recap on that one, let me know. I don't want to repeat myself too much. But we think we have a good path forward, and we'll be requesting a five-year recovery for 80% of the field use. We use the field 20%, so it's kind of a little bit more of a discount that we're kind of passing along to them. And pavilions and parks, what I was hearing is the smaller pavilions, we need to maybe be less aggressive on that recovery. And we do look at these overall as a whole. So maybe some of those larger renta

It is, we get 30% of the 8% of the room charge.

30% of 80%. I love things like that, yeah.

Okay. Okay. So at this point, I mean, this path forward retains the Parks and Recreation's budget. We are holding open one parks position right now. We'll look at kind of splitting that over time and stepping into using a seasonal maybe for part of that to help contribute to keeping costs down.

functionally in terms of service reduction.

It's going to be, yeah, they've already, we're holding open a position right now. There's less mowing. We were just talking a little bit about they would like another entire FTE for Half Moon Beach for the weed harvesting. So, yeah, it does mean a lower level of service within parks.

And I think what I've heard you say, too, is you prioritize high traffic areas.

We are making plans to balance a budget for the next few years and I mean one of the options too if you ever do have to go to a referendum I mean I think parks should definitely be you know having a couple FTEs in either streets or parks you know it definitely

So I mean, we're starting those discussions, but for 27, all areas are holding open positions? and we're gonna get to the point where we see what next steps we have, but all this is part of the build, I would call it. And then in 2028, we're looking at self-insured to mitigate that 15% cost with 15% increase on health insurance, because it will be substantially higher in the subsequent year if we don't make those steps. So we're.

A lot more, yeah. So we are making those steps, but it's not just parks that is temporarily holding open those positions. It's important to take that back with you as well, so. All right, I think we've got our marching orders, if that's. And I think as far as next steps too, I know we talked about, we did this two years ago. I think if we're staying on the same course, we're gonna bring you a normal fee schedule. If there's something out of line, we will let you know. If we need help, we will let you know. But if we're just staying on course, we'll treat it as part of the normal budget process

great thank you so much for playing that all out yeah thank you okay yeah we're officially done yeah well until next tuesday