City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Good evening. This is the city of Northfield city council meeting for Tuesday, 05/19/2026. It's 6PM, and I am calling this meeting to order and requesting a roll call, please.

Mayor Sweifel? Here. Councilor Ness? Here. Councilor Peterson White? Here. Councilor Sokop? Here. Councilor Beamer? Here. Councilor Dowling?

Here.

And councilor Holmes? Here. Thank you.

The first item, on our agenda tonight is our open public comment period where anyone can address the council for up to two minutes. If you'd like to address the council, ideally for any item not on the agenda because there will be comment period times prior to each agenda item, please fill out a card. They're on the table over there under the CALS Colleges and Community Board. So I do have one comment card filled out tonight and that is for Rich Graves. If you'd like to come up. Thank you.

And, I'm a little taller than that. There we go. And now the light is even green. So I have to run to the Chamber of Commerce to chair another meeting over there. So I just wanted to quickly comment and and say thank you for your service to the three of you who will not be returning next year.

Especially in these days, thank you for your service. So having met a couple people who were assassinated within the last couple of years, not that anything that extreme has happened in this city, but thank you. So I do recognize, I know that later in the agenda, there's discussion in the community survey in which one of the key findings that I'm very proud of is that 90.9% of survey respondents felt safe in this city. And in fact, the only thing I saw in that survey that was higher rated than police and public safety was the library. So I'm here to talk very briefly because I only have one minute left about a upcoming event at the Norfield Library, not sponsored by the library, but it's the June 23, there's a presentation by a city attorney from up in Ramsey and Hennepin County about extreme risk protection because some people do not always feel safe in their community.

I'm gonna leave three copies of the calendar item from the Norfield Library at the press table. But basically, there's only been three times that I felt unsafe in this community. One was when I was confronted to my face by a convicted predatory felon. The other couple times was when someone when a convicted criminal broke my neck. But for the most part, I have felt safe in this community because we do not stand for that sort of thing here locally. I also felt relatively safe when I personally hired a local painting company to do some work in my house and they were abducted on the way to my house. But that has nothing to do with me. Right? And now I'm out of time.

Thank you.

Thank you very much and thanks for leaving those posters over there on the table. Is there anyone else that who would like to make open public comment tonight? Alright. Seeing no one, we'll move on to approval of the agenda which includes one supplemental memo. Councilor Ness.

I will move the agenda as amended.

Thank you. Is there a second? Councilor Beamer?

I'll second.

Alright. Any discussion of the agenda? Alright. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Alright. That brings us to our presentations this evening and our first one is a recognition of service for our graduating Northfield High School seniors and youth coming off boards and commissions. And so Emily Culver will be leading us in that. She will be reading off, the names and I'm going to go up and help hand out the certificates. And then after everything is concluded, we will, the rest of the council should come down and we'll get a picture. Alright. There you go. Now you're on. Nope. Now you're off. There you go.

Okay. Great. Thank you all for being here. And thank you, students and families, for being here. We are excited to recognize you. So when I call your name, please come up, and then you will have a chance to shake the mayor's hand. And then stick around, and we'll do a group photo at the front with the mayor and then the council, and then we'll send you on your way. Sound good? Okay. First up is Stephanie Hernandez.

Bailey Parrish. Megan Carlson. Emerson Carlson. Martin Waddell. Charles Murphy.

Osidis Perez Doranfes. Please stop. Alex Salinas. Nicholas Livingston. And I think that is everyone who is here today. So we are ready for our picture.

Our next presentation is going to be from the Friends of Downtown Northfield, their annual presentation. You can make your way up here. For those, yeah, who are just listening and can't see what's happening, they're sporting lovely I Northfield t shirts.

Thanks, Jane.

Apps from the chamber. I love it. Alright. Here we go.

Awesome. Thank you, mayor Zweifel and city council members for the opportunity today to present our annual presentation, for the Friends of Downtown Northfield. My name is Josh Zimmerman. I am the president of the Friends of Downtown. And this is Logan Wells. He is our treasurer. I just want to say it's a really exciting time for Downtown Northfield. I hope you've all kind of taken a look. But this year is gonna be the twenty fifth anniversary for the Vintage Band Festival. We have a hundred and fiftieth year anniversary of, our town's defeat of Jesse James, which has, you know, happened downtown.

It's awesome. But also, we have a lot of renovations and different things happening downtown as well. The Homebody Refill Store moved into a bigger location and prime awesome. The History Center is doing an incredible job on the Scriver Building. And we have new businesses downtown, too. Loon Liquor has opened in the past year, Tinti, King Claw Land, El Sitio. And I hope you've all had a chance to check out Taco Turco. It is fantastic. So I just wanna say as the president of we we are in a lucky position to be helping be friends of the downtown and be fans of it. Just a little bit about us.

I know several people know kind of the Friends of Downtown, but just want to give you a sense of, know, we we our board is comprised of a lot of building owners, business owners, downtown residents. And we have a lot of connections to various institutions around Northfield. And that really helps bring a great perspective to how downtown can be more vital and thrive. Our organization was founded in 1999 as the Downtown Development Corporation. And then through a rebranding in 2021, rebranded as the Friends of Downtown.

We follow the Main Street approach, which is a national movement of trying to preserve historic downtowns, making sure they're vital, the they bring are vibrant and and so on. So that is you know, we we really just are big fans of it. So Logan, do you

wanna talk about our activities?

Yeah. And I think that last slide shows, you know, one of the strengths of Friends of Downtown is we bring a lot of different groups and people together. And so, one of our activities last year was Third Thursday, I think this is a great example of it. We had everyone from Age Friendly helping us with that to youth sports groups, to the fire department, to our local business community at four different events last year, bringing thousands of people downtown. And it was really great to see everyone from little kids to grandparents to parents to just anyone else who are looking for a nice night to come downtown and such.

And so we're really excited to keep continuing that program this year, and we'll talk a little bit about that in a minute. Another program that we really enjoyed was our Merry Microgrants program. That's where we give, several $100 $150 grants out to different businesses in our community to help liven up our downtown for Winter Walk, so that it makes it a little more festive of a time, makes it more exciting. These are some examples of businesses that got those grants. And also, something that we started this year was the window display contest.

It's been part of Winter Walk in the past, but it's always kinda gotten lost in the excitement of Winter Walk. So on probably the coldest day of December, I feel like Josh, myself, and a group of judges, we went around and we actually graded every window front, we had a scorecard. We gave out awards. We gave out, you know, little certificates and prizes to some of the businesses. And that was really exciting to see and we can't wait to keep doing that this year.

As you're all aware, in September last year, we brought forward a petition from, a group of building owners in downtown about a special services district regarding trash and snow removal, doing that in a collective way. And this has been a topic that's been discussed probably for my whole lifetime in Northfield, or certainly for a while in Northfield. And we we've heard it and so we we formalized that by having this petitioning process, bringing those informal conversations into the petition and hearing different feedback, and then we brought that to the council here. And I think what was great about having that conversation here at the council was it really did bring a formal conversation. We heard different feedback from people on kind of this first draft of what a special services district could look like.

And we'd be interested in keeping working with both you as elected officials and city staff on taking that feedback we heard last fall and seeing where this might go. Is there a different form of district this might look like in the future? 2026, we have a lot, planned for 2026. As you can see, this slide's got a lot. We have some new board members joining us. There's a lot of energy, and we're gonna be announcing some things literally tomorrow or on Thursday and next week. So, you get a little preview of what's coming up. So first off, we're gonna continue third Thursday this year. We're shifting it. We're partnering this year with our colleges to have a welcome back kinda night with from students in September.

So we're not gonna do a third Thursday in May. We're doing one in September now. The college bands are actually gonna perform at this to help kinda as a welcome back to the community, but also providing connection between the colleges and our, overall community. And then also just kinda continuing improving it. So we've heard feedback from it. We're gonna leave Division Street open this year. We're gonna really focus on Bridge Square. We're gonna have a picnicking area, so we're renting tables to bring down. We're gonna have other games and activities as well. And and dancing. It's street it's a street dance, so dancing for people as well. C. C. Lindstrom always reminds us to say, dancing is a core part of this program. So, gotta give that shout out.

Another thing that we're thinking about is also how we promote our businesses. So, if anyone goes on Facebook right now, Northfield Happenings or any of the other Happenings groups can be a lot at times and and quite overwhelming. And something we're really happy with our Downtown Northfield Facebook page is that we reshare things in a little bit more of a curated and digestible way. And so, we're gonna keep promoting our businesses and different events. So you can see on the slide here an example of the Valentine's guide. We had different sales and, you know, date spots you could go to in downtown. We're gonna really also focus on Thursday night promotions. There's a lot of businesses that are open late on Thursday nights. There's four different musical acts usually happening every Thursday night. There's trivia at multiple places promoting these different things in downtown, something we're gonna use our social media and other advertising platforms to do.

Next week in June, believe it or not, with June next week, you'll see, Pride Flag is gonna start going up around downtown. We've been working with the streets department here to, get Pride Flags placed downtown. One of our board members, Vicky Scott, the owner of Verbena Vinyl, really led this initiative, something they were really inspired to do, and they raised over $2,000 to buy flags, the flagpoles to go on the street lamps. This isn't where the banners are like the college banners. This is where the American flags would go.

And so, they raised this from other downtown business owners who are really interested in showing that welcoming, prideful community that we are. And, with the hub, that'll be up in June here. And then a new initiative we're gonna be starting this summer to help guide our organization, help guide other downtown organizations, maybe help guide the city is our 100 Conversations Initiatives. That is a reaching out to all the different stakeholders in downtown, the building owners, the business owners, the different event planners, and all these different things that all interact with our downtown, having conversations with them to understand how can we help them as an organization, how can other organizations kind of help them help helping form a guiding kind of path for us as we go forward the next, hopefully, five, ten, fifteen years. And so I've talked a lot. I'll hand it back off to Josh now. Thanks, Logan.

Really, that one hundred Conversations is about strengthening our partnerships and strengthening our network. And I really wanted to take a moment to say thank you to the city of Northfield. You are a wonderful partner. We couldn't do as much as we do, without that partnership. This has been great.

We can get, we're really grateful to have, staff time from Emery John as our market, marketing, as our main street director. She sits in some meetings with our coordinating partner, Rethos, and Main Street America, as well as when we have questions that they are we have a line to get those questions answered. So really, thank you for those. And and really, the other piece of this is thank you for the contribution that the city makes, for our Main Street dues every year. So we can we we raise money to make sure we can do our programs, that we can do Third Thursday, that we can take the ideas that come from the board or from other constituents and act on them.

And it makes it a lot easier to do when we don't have to pay those dues. And so the city's contribution to do that is fantastic. So thank you for that. And really, what I'm asking here is just continue that partnership. We'd love to sit down with you and have one of those 100 conversations to get your ideas, hear what is going well, what what are some other ideas.

So, really, you're invited to third Thursday as well. And, we really wanna make sure that you think about Downtown Northfield as, our friends at Downtown Northfield as a group that can really kinda convene and bring people together in our downtown. So please follow our social medias and, also, subscribe to our newsletter. It is really fantastic. We we send it out monthly, and it has a great amount of information. And we take a lot of pride in, curating that for you. So thank you.

Thank you. Are there any questions from the council? Councilor Holmes. I don't have

a question. I just have a comment, if that's okay.

Yeah. Okay.

I just want to thank you for the presentation. Full disclosure, I used to be president of the Friends of Downtown a while ago, during the transition from NDDC to the Friends of Downtown and I think that it was all it's an organization that's kind of always been on the, alright, are we gonna make it? Like what's happening? And I think where where you all are right now and where you've taken things is is really great. I think that the I've noticed the social media presence and I think it's it's been really helpful and I think it's created a lot of positive engagement.

So thank you for your efforts there and I look forward to the 100 conversations. I'll gladly participate because I think some of our recent conversations here at council have talked about downtown things and I think being able to I see the friends of downtown as as the conveners of different bringing different stakeholders together and so I think that that can help us advance what we're trying to accomplish in in the downtown district with parking, with the the dam, with Bridge Square, etcetera, and and in economic development supporting all of our businesses. So I look forward to hearing what comes of those conversations and participating as as we can. Thanks. Councilor Peterson White.

Thank you. I too don't have a question, I confess, but I do have a comment. I just wanted to say thanks for the great presentation and thanks for all the hard work of the board making all of these great things happen. It's great to see a mix of serious policy work and excellent promotion of the downtown happening on the part of the Friends of Downtown. And I think I just want to reflect to the community and my colleagues here that Friends of Downtown is doing a really fantastic job, a better job than I have ever seen done, of promoting the Downtown as a business district on social media, in their newsletter, in other places.

And that is how Downtown Northfield really deserves and needs to be marketed in order for it to be as successful as it can be, and nobody else is as well positioned to do that as the Friends of Downtown. We certainly have other commercial associations and groups in the community and groups that are intended to be promoting visitors to Northfield and things like that. But the Friends of Downtown is focused on the downtown. And the downtown is really Northfield's brand in a lot of ways and is also where people think about going when they think about visiting Northfield for the most part. There are lots of other reasons people come to Northfield, but when tourists think about coming to Northfield, they're mostly thinking about coming to downtown Northfield.

And the social media work has been really impressive and is really like, I see it making a difference to downtown businesses. So thank you for that. It's great. It's really effective.

Thank you

very much. We appreciate it. You too. Next item for us is our consent agenda. So you'll see that come up on the screen. Those are all the items that we're going to pass with one motion tonight. So I am looking for a motion to approve our consent agenda. Councilor Ness.

I will move the consent agenda.

Thank you. Councilor Sokop.

Second. Alright.

All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Alright. The consent agenda passes. Our next item is a public hearing. So we will have a public hearing regarding the development program for the Master Development District and for the TIF increment financing for the Harvest Hills TIF District. And I am looking to, director WAPADA for that report or presentation. And miss John.

Wait a few years like me.

Mayor. Mayor. While that's happening, could you just officially state that the hearing is, open?

Yes. I will turn my microphone back on. Thank you for catching that. And I will officially declare, the public hearing open.

Thank you, mayor and members of council. I'm here to kind of give an overview, around this topic and setting up the TIF District. I'm gonna be welcoming Nick Ann Hutt, our consultant from Ellers, in a second. I just wanted to lay a little bit of groundwork first and mostly just remind everyone we've been having Harvest Hills conversations for weeks, and so trying to keep the focus somewhat narrow tonight that we're looking at setting up and approving the TIF plan. And so just small kind of outline for tonight.

I'll turn it over to Nick to talk about kind of what is tax increment financing, what the proposed plan is, what considerations we wanna have. We're having this public hearing and then there's a request for action in terms of a resolution. But just as a reminder, we reviewed this two weeks ago. Again, so I'm keeping the details light because I was in your packet two weeks ago. But this is a 71 unit two phase rental project.

You can see on the map, it's just southwest of our middle school. And so as we think about kind of the different steps along the way because you are part of a chain of different actions and steps taken to make sure we're moving this forward at the right pace. This in front of you is just the, at our April 16 Planning Commission meeting. There was a recommendation of approval of the preliminary plat. At the same time, a motion that affirmed that the TIF plan that you're presented with tonight is in accordance with our goals and land development code from the city's perspective.

And then in April, on the twenty first, the HRA, all of you, reviewed the TIF plan just to make a motion that this is in line with our housing goals. At May 5, we reviewed and approved the preliminary plat. And now, tonight we're holding the public hearing on establishing and approving the TIF plan. I am also also in attendance tonight as the applicant, Troy Schramm, and would be available for questions at the appropriate time. So just to make sure we constantly are affirming that we've had input from the public and I wanna keep bringing that to the forefront.

So we've talked a lot about access and traffic. We've talked a lot about pedestrian safety. I don't have an update on data, but I do have an update on process that our public works department has started placing some speed measuring. Again, outside my technical knowledge, but tubes, pipes out there. So confirmed that with Public Works, as well as the schedule was to start doing some pedestrian counts this week.

They're specifically looking at today even was a little bit colder, so there's always this concern about we don't wanna get a mismeasurement when temperature aren't as nice. We're expecting the highest pedestrian counts in the next couple weeks before school's out and as the temperatures rise. So public works is very much on that in doing those counts and we'll come back with recommendations once those are done. Those are in process now. We've talked a lot about storm water and two weeks ago we talked about the timeline of the development.

And so just wanna keep those at the forefront so we don't sweep those behind us. I'll just say in, you know, my role from community development we have a lot of policies that apply to this resolution tonight. One of them we do have a TIF policy. And so in the actual staff report, that is pulled apart into very specific details about how this project meets the policy goals of our TIF policy. I will just admit that coming into government, there are a lot of policies.

And they tend to like counter reference each other in a way that makes it hard to make clean on a nice PowerPoint for all of you. And I think, you know, in the future I'm just naming that. I think there's work to revise those and make sure that they're relevant to each other. But the TIF policy references the business subsidy policy and so that has its own kind of incentives which then outside of that we have our sustainable building policy which kind of references that it applies when the business subsidy policy is used. And so, just wanna name. Those three things are out there. They're very much itemized and gone through in specific findings in the staff report. I didn't think it was worth the time to go through those but I will receive questions afterwards if there's questions about that. The one note I would just make about the sustainable building policy and its application to this project. Specifically because there's two phases.

In phase one, the applicant kinda in good faith has worked with the city staff to figure out and determine and document what an approved pathway is to meet that sustainable building policy. I will say some of that predates my time here. And so in this phase two, the applicant and staff are working on how the policy could be applied in a more robust targeted way to even increase further the sustainable design of the buildings. And so there'll be kind of a two different approaches in a phase one that's been approved and is moving those carbon goals forward. And then in phase two, moving those forward even with more commitment to how we change the building design to meet those goals.

And so just on one top last comment before I turn this over to Nick. Just on a narrow scope of tonight because in my engagement in community members about this project and specifically about TIFF, there's often confusion about the TIFF plan and it can come across as, there's 10 and a half million dollars that's being thrown at a project and then people debate about that. I just wanna be clear. Today, we're talking about the TIFF plan which is really establishing the budget. Like how much incremental capacity, tax capacity will this project generate?

Which is very different than the TIF agreement which is really evaluating how much subsidy should be applied to this specific project based on the specific buildings and costs and all wrapped into a TIF agreement that'll sit alongside the development agreement. So And to some extent, the analogy I keep using is saying, if you wanted to know how much money you have to spend on groceries this month, on your personal budget, you'd kind of start with how much money did I earn this month? And so how much money do I have to spend? This TIF plan is really understanding like how much money is part of our budget do we have available to then make a decision about how much should we devote to this project. So tonight is much more administrative in its narrow focus on setting up that budget and TIF plan.

And I'll let Nick dive into the details of that. But then when we come back in more of this June time frame with development agreement, TIF agreement and final plat, we'd be looking at here's how much of that budget we've decided makes sense based on the fiscal reality of this project and then policy goals of the council. So with that, Nick, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you. Mayor of council, good to see you again. Good to be back here in Northfield. Nick Ann Hunt with Ellers and Associates. I'm a financial consultant to the city.

Been working with you all for about fourteen years now, and I'm here to kinda dive into the nuts and bolts and make sure you have your questions answered about what this tool even is. So tax increment financing is a a way to fund qualified projects and their specific costs that might be a barrier to development, something that the private market is not expected to be able to feasibly bear on its own. So it is a is a way to capture most of the new taxes generated from a piece of property after it has been improved and developed. So if you can imagine or or take a look at the slide, we've got a a kind of a chart here to show that as the value of a project improves over time after it's been constructed, built upon, the county assessor would assign a new value that would improve over time. And there's a portion of the taxes that can be captured and used to reimburse some of the expenses to develop that property.

Key to all this is the word increment, which means you're building upon something. And so the blue bar at the bottom of the chart indicates that there is a value that's in place today for this property. It's about 246,000 assessed value. That will continue to fund city, county, and school district operations in the exact same way that it is funding them today. So when the county calculates taxes in the future from the value of this property, it will take that first portion.

It's frozen, and it will continue to have that be a part of the tax bases that your levies are spread upon. But when they do the analysis and they notice that there's been an increase beyond that, if you do create a TIF district and the properties within that, they will take that captured value, that incremental value, and the taxes generated from it will be separately remitted to the city's TIF fund. So it'll provide those funds to the city. And then the city, under the terms of the agreement that was alluded to, the business agreement between the city and the developer will specify how those funds could be used to reimburse building costs of the project. At the end of the day, the goal is that that would all sunset, and then the full amount of the property would revert back to the tax rolls.

And that's the green portion of the chart that you mentioned here. So we're we're trying to induce development that, in the long run, is gonna provide an economic benefit. It is going to expand and increase the tax base of the city. But for a period of time, while that reimbursement is occurring, it's being deferred, that that benefit. I should note that the the slide makes it look like you're capturing all of the taxes during that period in the purple area due to the increased value, and that's actually not the case. There are certain levies that are excluded from that calculation. You're just not able to capture them. Some of those are taxes that are paid to the state of Minnesota. That won't actually be the case in this housing project. It only applies to commercial properties.

But there also are school operating, referendum levies. So these are these are levies that are approved by the voters, that are able to provide additional operating funds to the school district. And these taxes associated with that are not able to be captured in a TIFF district. So when we do have a project that is built, even though it's in a TIFF district, all of that improved value of that property goes to help offset or fund those operating levies. They do not those taxes do not get diverted into the TIF fund at any point during the time frame.

This tool is authorized under Minnesota statutes, there's a whole host of rules, within those sections of the statutes that identify the process for how a TIF district can be created, the types of projects that are able to be assisted with this financing, as well as what the composition of that TIF plan document that is in your packets. All of those things are specified and they're tailored to be able to satisfy the statutes. Fundamentally, as I already mentioned, it's it's a tool designed to encourage certain types of development. And one of the the types of development that qualifies is the building of affordable housing or housing that would not be expected to occur on its own solely through private investment due to the fact that there are some restrictions put in place on that housing in terms of the rents and occupancy of those buildings. So TIF is a tool designed to help solve for the financing gap in order to pay for, those types of costs.

The funds as well are recorded within the city's financial statements. So I mentioned that the funds don't go directly back to the property. They actually get remitted to the city. And the city opens up a specific fund within your financial accounting for each TIF district. There's a TIF fund, and that's reported within your financial audits.

All the activities, all the expenditures for the life of the TIF district are recorded in there. And you're also subject to reporting those activities to the state auditor specifically for every single TIF fund, that's open within the city. The approval does require the public hearing that we're here for tonight and the adoption of a tax increment financing plan that specifies the policy objectives for the TIF district. It specifies this the property that's going to be included and sets the maximum budget for future revenues and expenditures. It's supposed to forecast exactly how much we anticipate using our reasonable assumptions and discussion with the county assessor for the potential revenue over the full life of the TIF district and then identify how much funding capacity that could potentially provide.

Again, it does not actually specify at all or allow for any type of expenditure that has to happen through the council in adopting a financing agreement and your normal budgeting and appropriations process. The TIF plan is also forwarded to the County Board and the School District Board thirty days before tonight to allow them the opportunity to review and provide comment if needed. Once approved, that plan is put in effect and it sets, kind of the the the guideposts for how these funds could be used. And then there will be follow on actions from the city council as you proceed with the project to actually award the financing if desired. It's also important to note that property, just because it's in a TIF district, does not in any way provide for any kind of rebate or a smaller amount of taxes from any other like property that were developed within the taxing jurisdictions.

So the taxes that the property pays are exactly identical to what another property of the same value would pay just outside of the TIF district. There is no difference there. What is different is how those taxes are allocated and provided in settlement from the county. So they they're paid into the county and then the county divvies them out under a calculation in line with the chart that I showed earlier. On the slide right now is a, table that shows what we expect.

This is for the full development, both phases. If they were to occur, 71 units of new housing, we do expect that that would generate, or or their tax bill would be $430,000 per year across all 71 of those units. As I mentioned, none of those taxes are payable to the state of Minnesota because it's not a commercial property specifically. But there would be new school operating, referendum levy taxes, even while the TIF district is active, about 61,000. So 61,000 in funding that this project would provide, to the school district and offset other taxpayers.

In addition to that, 4,500 of those taxes would be the taxes that the property is contributing right now, today, in its vacant form. So that would remain unchanged. It would still provide that capacity and those would still go to fund operations of the city, county, and school district as they do today. The last little bit there is there would be a small amount deducted. The state auditor does charge a fee.

It helps for their, regulation and reporting costs. That is applied to every single TIF district across the state. The county takes that money out and sends it directly before it ever hits the city. So that's not something you're responsible for. But what's left over of that amount would be the the portion of taxes in purple that would be captured and made available to potentially fund this project.

And our calculation is 362,000 on an annual basis after the project is developed. To put this in perspective with what that means in terms of your total tax base as well as how you've used this tool in the past, Northfield does have 10 active TIF districts currently that have supported various types of development throughout the community, different types of housing, commercial redevelopment, and even in the past, development has been assisted using this tool. Right now, your net tax capacity, this is a measure of the size of the tax base that the city represents, is about 24,000,000. There is just under 1,000,000 in captured tax capacity that are within active districts. That equates to about 3.9% of the total gross tax base is currently within TIF districts or has been created using this tool.

The Harvest Hills project by itself would add to that amount by about 248,000 or 249,000 in tax capacity. That would, if we took it in today's values, increase that percentage to 4.9%. However, it's going to take a while for this project to actually be built and actually reach the tax rolls. It'll take a couple years under the process. So, we don't expect all of that to hit at once.

And we actually expect that there'll be some TIF districts that have sunsetted in that time frame and reduced that amount so they'll offset each other. As I mentioned, the TIF plan has to identify where this project is and the specific property included. It is identified for the parcel that is shown on the map here on the slide, the single PID. Again, right now, it's assessed value of $246,800 That'll be the base value that'll be frozen in time for the calculation of increment. And the site is intended to provide affordable housing here within the community, seven one townhome units, and include all of the supporting infrastructure and roadways and sidewalks and those things to serve that development.

Housing TIF district can be created for a maximum of 25 after the first increment is created. So that's twenty six in total for those counting. The qualifications for the project is that at least a certain amount of units need to be set aside and restricted for occupancy by individuals or families that are at or below certain area median income within the community. So there are two different tests that can be applied. Either 40% of the units or at least 40% of the units have to be set aside and meet those restrictions for, families at 60% of area median income or a smaller threshold of 20%, can be restricted as long as the income level goes down.

It provides more affordability for, families at or below 50% of AMI. So these are either one of those tests. The developer needs to meet that in order to qualify this tool. And they'll need to agree to that within the financing agreement. That'll be a specific term that they need to meet. Just for giving you a representation of what that means in terms of a representative income for Northfield and Rice County. This published from HUD. An individual would meet the 60% threshold if they made at or below $45,000 per year. 37,950 would be the 50% AMI threshold. And that's for an individual.

It actually is a sliding scale. They do allow for more if if a household represents, you know, more individuals. And so a four person household, their threshold is $65,000, per year income. And then, the 50% threshold would be 54,000. Just to again provide some perspective about what types of families, this would be restricted for.

As we mentioned, the budget for the TIF plan is another thing that needs to be identified. And so we did the calculations, again in discussions with, the project as well as the county assessor's office and applying, tax rates and forecasting those for the next, twenty six years to come up with a potential revenue number that could be collected over that term of $10,500,000. Again, that's kind of the maximum that's under discussion. That would be locked in in in terms of the potential revenue budget if this plan were adopted by the council, it can only be amended in the future through another public hearing process. And how those funds would be used?

Well, in in keeping with the purpose of a housing TIF district, it can only be used to provide assistance for an affordable housing development, one that meets those affordability requirements that I just mentioned. So the the funding amount, was calculated by thinking about the fact that how much could that revenue leverage in terms of a a loan or financing today, understanding that we're not receiving all of this money right now up front. It's gonna come in gradually over a period of many, many, many years. And so $1 twenty six years from now is not necessarily worth $1 today. And so we have discounted that to apply an interest rate and back into how much funding capacity this could potentially provide in today's dollars.

And so that's the funding subtotal that you see on this slide, potentially able to fund about $5,900,000 again, assuming everything goes right and the project is developed on time, on budget, and delivers all 71 units. And then the remaining amount would be the potential interest expense associated with that funding or financing to pay for borrowing the money over the course of twenty six years and paying that back over time at an interest rate. Again, this would set the maximum budget for the TIF plan, and it would be up to negotiations with the developer to fine tune that amount to figure out what is specifically necessary, to serve this project and get it off the ground, and make it feasible. That leads us into the but for test, the expectation that, but for this financing, this project would not be reasonably expected to occur, solely through private financing. And to do that, we we have reviewed some of the draft financial information from the developer.

They did submit a TIF application to the city as well as their anticipated budget for at least the first phase of the project. And we were able to dive into those numbers and figure out that there was indeed a gap. $13,000,000 project budget was what was submitted within that TIF application, again, for phase one of this project. And when we compared the market expectations for the rents, operating income, and what that could afford in terms of a mortgage for this property, it left a sizable portion of equity that the developer would need to leverage in order to fund the remaining cost. Roughly speaking, about $6,000,000 of the $13,000,000 would have to come from some form of equity because the rents only support a mortgage of the remaining 7,000,000 And so what that what does that mean really in you know, if if we have a benevolent developer who's willing to just spend willy nilly and not expect any kind of return on that investment, then they would be willing to do that.

But if they're looking to actually provide some kind of a return on that investment, the forecast says that that only provides a 1.9 return on that investment. So this project, all the potential rent revenue, everything of the like after paying for the mortgage would only provide a 1.9% return. Just to put that in context for the council, you can go out right now and get a treasury bond, a thirty year treasury bond that that is yielding almost 5%. Right? That the the federal government will just give you 5% for for buying that treasury bond without having to do any of this work, having to develop a property, operate it, seek out tenants, pay operators and operating costs, and all the things involved with that.

So, the return is not there. So the the there is a gap. We do estimate that that gap would be roughly $2,000,000 for that first phase. We think there's still some more work to be done as the development contracts are written. So I don't want to go on the record to saying that's the amount that's going to come forward in the financing agreement.

But under the application, our finding is that there is at least a $2,000,000 gap in phase one of this project. The form of financing that's being requested is the use of pay as you go TIF assistance, to fill the the gap in financing that I just alluded to to help build out the project and install all the infrastructure necessary. That pay as you go methodology means that the city would not be responsible for any upfront costs. You would not expect to be delivering a loan to be repaid back to the TIF, issuing bonds, or provide any funding whatsoever upfront. You would only be making a promise through a promissory note to the developer that if they follow through, they build out this project to the specs that are required under the building policy as well as the financing agreement, that you would make available this TIF resource to reimburse them for a portion of their development costs.

In the example I cited before, the $2,000,000 gap that we mentioned, That would be after the project is actually delivered and meets the qualifications of the city and is able to prove that they're meeting the requirements of the affordability per statute. The rest of this slide I already talked about. Jumped ahead. So we're here tonight to conduct the public hearing for considering this tool and making it available to potentially help fund the project, both phase one and potentially phase two. There is a resolution that was, provided in the packets.

The council can decide whether or not it wants to, take up and consider that resolution, but that would approve establishing the TIF District. Essentially, it would adopt the tax increment financing plan, establish the budget for that tool, and then allow the city to city staff to go ahead and certify the TIF District with the county so that it was active. But that would not actually commit any funding to the project. That would come in June, as Scott alluded to, when the final plat is ready to be presented and a specific financing agreement is drafted for the use of the tool to help offset the gap in financing. As far as that would be a next step.

But tonight, we're here to talk about the TIF plan and answer any of your questions as well as hear from the public. So that ends my presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. The next thing that I have on the, public hearing list is to hear from the applicant, if if you would like.

Prompt you have any comments or additions?

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Now it's time for public input on this public hearing. So is there anyone from the public who would like to comment on this public hearing? Seeing no one, we'll move on to council any council comments on this public hearing. Councilor Beamer.

Thank you, mayor. Nick, I just wanted to thank you for your extremely easy to understand explanation of TIF. I'll take your word for It it of all the different explanations I've had of it, yours is, like, the one where the light bulb goes off. I'm like, oh, yeah. So I will definitely I'm glad these meetings get recorded.

Be looking on there and getting the time stamp of when that starts and when that ends so that I can refer back to that for other people too. But, no, I'm kind of excited for this. It's a good it's a good project to have, and I think this all makes perfect sense. So thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Holmes.

Thanks. You can stay there, mister. Have a couple questions first. You mentioned, I think these are for you, I don't know, maybe mister Wapita. You'd mentioned that thirty days ago the county and the school district were given had the opportunity to comment and I'm assuming there were no comments since we didn't see anything, or was there anything of note?

There was nothing returned, from the notices that we were sent, and that's that's typical when there are no, and sometimes, some instances, we'll get comments from the county if there's maybe a county roadway that's maybe involved in the project. There are ways that they can require TIFF to fund those improvements. But in this case, no comments.

And then just this this question is for you. Just because within the community TIF raises a lot of questions and misconceptions I think. Just knowing the nature right now of developments happening around the state and just your involvement with with other municipalities, are there any, do you know of any similar housing developments building with how affordable housing that that are not using TIF?

The majority of the ones that I'm aware of at least, you know, certainly the ones that provide any kind of affordability, restrictions usually are getting funded from state, you know, some other public funding source. So there are, federal tax credits that are accessible to certain types of projects. You know, as you're, as you all are aware, there's been some sales tax money that's been made available, especially in the metro area, to provide funding for affordable housing. So there are cities that are actively doing that and providing assistance. But as far as just pure market driven development, we do tend to see single family dominated in that way.

However, certain types of scale is necessary. And we don't necessarily see the type of housing that communities are seeking that they would deem to be, you know, workforce or affordable even in that realm. So there are a lot of, communities that are finding ways to participate and help offset some of

the

financial realities that developers and construction companies are facing in terms of development.

Thank you. Yeah. So then just my comments would be I share counselor Beamer's comments in terms of excited about this project and feeling like it, I think the staff, Mr. Wapiti, you did a great job calling things out in the legislative memo and and really laying forth all the policies and strategic plan, comprehensive plan that this helps us achieve. And I think as the developer is thinking about their return on investment, think we need to think about our the return that we get and the return that we get as families moving here, workforce housing, people who are living here, spending money here, participating in our community.

And then in the future, we get the property taxes. So I feel like this is this is really important for us

to make this happen. Thank you. Councilor Ness.

Thank you. I too will echo councilor Beamer's comments and thank you for your presentation. It's probably at least the tenth one of those I've heard from you. And usually, I learned something, but I think I understood almost everything. Alright. And that's pretty hard for me to do. But thank you staff for pulling this all together and thank you mister Schramm for considering Northfield to do this project. We really appreciate it. Thank you.

Councilor Sokop.

Thanks. I have a question. You mentioned this, mister Anhut, and then if if this isn't knowledge that you have in your head, I won't fault you for it. But you mentioned, I'm always interested to hear the in general, the city's tax capacity and how much TIF is part of that. And I'm curious if you know if by the time this project would be built, if there are other TIF districts that are sunsetting and if you have an understanding of level those are at and what that 3.9, if it would level out, or if you need to actually go back and look at the table.

Well, I've got one on hand. So we did footnote it, but it didn't put the value in there. So there actually is a a another housing TIF District, Presidential Commons area, received assistance from the city a number of years ago that, that TIF District will decertify at the end of this year. So it'll be decertified and part of the tax roll starting right away next year in 2027. That's not the the size of captured tax capacity for that TIF District is not as big as this proposal for Harvest Hills, at least the full 71 units, but it will more than offset the first phase, 38 units that are being proposed.

So you put me on the spot. It's, you know, the the slide here says 248,000 in capture tax capacity. I think the presidential commons is somewhere in the realm of one seventy. So it that's coming off right away. There are a few others that will be coming off in the next five years, which kind of coincides with how this project would proceed and potentially stabilize. But it's really hard to say the exact figures.

Just a follow-up to that. Is there a and and I'm asking this because I'm curious, not because I think that this is too high of a number. Yeah. I just wanna be clear. But I'm curious if other municipalities, if there's an average, or is there a threshold that people in your industry kind of take a look and see, like, this might be a number where you start to advise against having so many TIF districts? Or, again, not saying that we have too many. I don't think we do. But is is there a reference there that we can have in our heads?

And I think just to to clarify, I'm sorry, council member Sokop. Are you you're referring to the percentage of the total? Okay. So there is no limitation put in place from the statute. You know, you may have certain types of, you know, debt limitations and things like that where the statute says, hey. This is you can't exceed this amount. There is nothing like that, in terms of tax increment financing. It's really up to each community to kind of decide on their own.

But

as you said, you know, I I certainly have advised a number of cities on this tool. We certainly don't want it to get to a a a percentage where you're kinda locked out from something and and from, I'd say, more so from the percent of task base, what types of people or services are necessary to support that development. So, you know, your budgets are based on providing a certain level of services to all residents of the community. And if you're adding residents or you're adding a project that requires a lot of plowing or a lot of, you know, a lot of annual operating expense of the city, that's where we'd wanna kinda review whether or not you're getting too big or or or beyond because, you know, you really are deferring the potential benefit of adding your tax base when you have a a TIF project. You're deferring it for the long term to try to help incentivize it, but you're you're foregoing maybe the ability to levy taxes directly upon that property right away.

So long way of saying, you know, I certainly wouldn't want to see Northfield unless we had some kind of really special need project that you all really wanted. I I wouldn't want you to get above 10%. But that's totally up to the council and its priorities and and the type of development that you wanna encourage in the community. So there there is no limit per se.

That's really helpful. Thank you. I think there's I the most, concern I hear about TIFF is the is the concern that we have we are losing out on so much tax capacity, and I think having that percentage reference has been really helpful because I think in when you see larger developments happen, I think it there can be a perception that we, you know, 30% of our tax capacity is tiffed or I just wanna say thank you for for always including that in the conversation, and, thanks for the presentation from both of you. It was really helpful and clear. So thanks.

Other comments, questions? Great. Okay. Thank you. Now, I'm requesting a motion to close the hearing. Councilor Ness.

Move to close the public hearing.

Thank you. Is there a second? Councilor Sokop.

Second.

Right. All those in favor of closing the public hearing signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed? Alright. The public public hearing is closed. And so that will move us on to the next item, which is resolution twenty twenty six dash zero five five, consideration of a resolution modifying the Master Development District and the establishment of the Harvest Hills Tax Increment Financing District. I'm looking for a motion. Councilor Beamer.

I'll move resolution twenty twenty six dash zero five five consideration of resolution modifying the Master Development District and establishment of the Harvest Hills Tax Increment Financing District.

Thank you. Is there a second? Councilor Holmes. Second? Alright. Discussion, would you like to add anything?

No, just mister Shrom, thank you. Nick, thank you. Mister Wapita, thank you as always. Looking forward to seeing this going up in, well, kind of kind of pretty much right out my front door. So, thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Holmes. Alright. Other comments? Alright. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Alright. Motion carries. Congratulations. Alright. Next up is reports from mayor and council members and we'll start with councilor Ness this week.

Thank you. On the eighth of this month, I attended a meeting in Rice County or held by Rice County. All kinds of different organizations, you know, the the city administrator and most of the city council, the Rice County administrator, and all of the county commissioners, chamber of commerce, the EDA. There was a representative of senator Klobuchar in the meeting, state senator Dziedzinski, and I can't remember their representative's name off the top of my head, but he was there talking about this was before the end of the session, so it was good. But but everybody got together.

They do it once a quarter and talk about projects they're working on. So maybe they can cooperate instead of each doing it their own way, and they've done this for years. So I just went thinking maybe Northfield could put together something like that, but we'll see. Also, I attended the nine one one joint powers board. Their move from Owatonna to Faribault got postponed because a very important part of the phone system won't be delivered until about June 1.

And a nine one one center without any phone service isn't really worth what it's being paid for. So the move will happen in June. Also attended Age Friendly. We were talking about the booth or table in the pride festival that Aid Friendly will have, passing out goodies and giving away little prizes and whatever. And last week, there was a finance committee meeting or yeah.

Finance committee. And we got the audit back and everything was fine. No red flags there. So the finance committee was happy. That's all I got. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Peterson White.

Just one brief update. I attended the quarterly, meeting of the advisory committee for Hiawatha Land Transit, which is part of Three Rivers Community Action. And we the organization continues to think about how to expand ridership and increase access to transit in all the communities it serves. And we have some interesting things in the hopper related to Northfield that might move in that direction.

So thanks. Thank you. Councilor Soka.

I just wanted to, make everyone here aware of the Pride Festival coming up. In case you don't have it on your calendar, it's Saturday, June 6. There is a fundraiser breakfast at the grand from nine to one. And then the main event, pride in the park, is from noon to four in Central Park. And then there's a after party at imminent at 05:30 with, miss Moxie. So hope everyone can make it. It's a excellent time, and I'm so happy that Norfield has its own pride celebration. So, again, it's Saturday, June 6.

Thank you. Councilor Beamer.

Thank you. We had a Beyond the Yellow Ribbon committee meeting last Tuesday that councilor Ness forgot to talk about, so I'll pick up the slack. We were just wrapping up and solidifying our plans for the, Memorial Day ceremony down at Veterans Park that I believe starts at 9AM. And immediately following that, there's a little picnic over at the Lions Park shelter sponsored by Norfield Beyond the Yellow Ribbon. Be some pulled pork sandwiches, hot dogs, chips, cookies, bottled water, I think, and the likes.

So I encourage anybody that hasn't gone to one of those Memorial Day ceremonies down at Veterans Park to do it. It's pretty cool. And then come on over and eat some pulled pork and hot dog.

Thank you. Councilor Dolan.

Thank you mayor. Nothing to report.

Thank you. Councilor Holmes. I also haven't had any meetings but have planning commission on Thursday where we're gonna get an update on the Archer. Thank you.

I like a good foreshadowing.

Can I

have one update?

Yes. Councilor Ness.

Tomorrow night, intergovernmental meeting at Greenvale Town Hall, 7PM, I believe it is. He's not looking at me. 7PM, I believe.

Who are you trying to get the confirmation from? Oh, administrator Martig. Is that correct? I'm getting confirmation from councilor Beamer.

07:00.

07:00 at Greenville Township intergovernmental meeting, Wednesday. Thank you. Alright. I just have a couple things. I, attended the League of Women Voters event where they had President Abbott from our Northfield Hospital and Clinics there to talk about the partnership and acquisition of Alina Clinics and what that looks like, what that means to the community.

He did a fantastic job answering a lot of really good questions from the community and I was able to just chime in briefly and talk about, the relationship between the city and the hospital and how we are a charter city and that it is, outlined in the charter our relationship between the city and the hospital. So some folks had questions about that and why we voted, why the council voted on that acquisition and we did that because that's outlined in the city charter. So anyone who has more questions about the city and the charter and the hospital, feel free to reach out. I also attached at that meeting received the list of the doctors who have committed so far to joining Northfield Hospital and Clinic. So that's attached to the agenda tonight.

And then I was at a signing of our agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers for our Northwest Area Water Tower. That was a really nice event and, I didn't realize how large the jurisdiction was that the Army Corps of Engineers covers for our region, and so they really appreciated the opportunity to come to the city of Northfield to sign the agreement and then to see the site and really see how close that, new water tower will be to the hospital. For that, we've talked about the impact of water redundancy for the hospital, community resilience, and then, increased water pressure and then opportunity for growth out there. We were able to show where housing was going to go in and where we're hoping there will be some more economic development out there that would be serviced by the water tower. So that went really well and staff did a great job hosting, the Army Corps of Engineers in their visit.

And then I too will be at Pride. I'll be helping kick it off at noon. So I'll see you there on June Saturday, June 6. And I also yeah. I appreciate the banners going up. I know we were trying to find a solution for, the banners and the flags, so I appreciate it. Sounds like I've learned tonight from, the friends of downtown Northfield. I'm sorry, I have I paused because I still wanna use their old name. It's in my head. So, I appreciate that solution to the pride flags that that was found.

Okay. That takes us to our regular agenda now. And our first item on the regular agenda is to consider the first reading of ordinance number one zero nine three, amending section two dash 66 of the city code relating to 2027 and 2028 mayor and city council compensation and I will, kick it to administrator Bennett for brief introduction.

Thank you, mayor, members of city council. So I'll give a brief summary of this since it was included in the consent agenda and then we had two council members request to put it on for the regular council for discussion. So the background memo does have a thorough kind of description and background but cities have the chance to make adjustments to compensation of elected officials prior to municipal elections, so we need to get that done. So we typically do that heading in on an election year to set that. In recent history, when I came, don't have a real strong memory of it but there had kind of been an inconsistent pattern of wage adjustments in the past and I can remember some political discussions around that.

So one suggestion that ended up getting implemented that's been pretty much on a standard approval process since that time and I think has been fairly well received is to basically assuming that we are comfortable with the base pay of both the mayor and then council members to go on more of a standard cost of living adjustment that would mirror whatever employees get on their adjustments. It would just be on a two year delay. So we've been following that practice since that time. In fact, when this agenda item came forward, you know, a couple years go by and you kind of forget it but I can't remember our clerk or deputy clerk reminded me, that this had been a consent agenda item because it becomes so usual so I programmed it and the mayor and I review these but it was set for consent agenda item on that. That's why it had been on there because it has been pretty much on autopilot following that and it's worked well.

I didn't put a lot of policy discussion on there but I did want to highlight a few things I think that it works well to have that, you know, first of all it is the standard practice that although it's not a lot of pay for elected officials, don't think any elected official does this work because of pay period. It can be a barrier to entry to elected officials if there is no compensation because some people might need to cover childcare, some people might have multiple jobs that mean them setting aside other work to do that. And I think in this form of government, in Northfield, I think there have been values discussed about wanting people to be able to work and also participate in that the time of the day of our meetings also is another reflection of that. We try and be adjusting with that. So I just want to keep that in mind that although the money certainly I don't think probably is what drives people to do it again and I think it can be a barrier and I think of our equity goals.

I think it would be a concern of mine if we started backing off like trying to keep that, in the forefront of why that compensation is there. I also think when I'm pretty sure in my memory of this, probably wasn't quite as familiar with Northfield being a new administrator, but I would say from my experience and talking to peers, like the size of our community, we have a very engaged community. So I do think elected officials in Northfield in particular, the mayor and council members, probably do quite a bit of more constituent engagement and discussion than many communities probably experience too. I do think keep that in mind as you look at peer groups and trying to maybe come up with that as in in mind. I think also in these positions it can become compensation can be politicized and I think the more we can try and depoliticize that, the better.

One thing to keep in mind too on that delay is even if we run into more financial crises, you know, the economy and the future is a little unpredictable. We have new budget biennium coming up for the next couple years. But it's hard to know exactly how that's gonna shake out and whether things like local government aid might be impacted or other costs might be pushed onto us. So in my mind, when you look at the total cost increase, of a four percent and a 3%, that's just over $5,000 total over two years. I think it's a pretty negligible dollar amount on a total city budget standpoint but from an individual standpoint if you don't do some of these increases you could be going backwards on some of our peer groups.

So we aren't talking big dollars. This is ultimately your decision as elected officials But as you consider whether or not to make these compensation adjustments, I suggest you look beyond yourself on contemplating how those salaries maybe could be set and also recognize that state law does allow temporary reductions that I think is a safe valve to that, you know, if we do get into other more serious financial crisis, there is an ability to do temporary reductions that can go into effect by state law. You just can't do the increases. So I'll turn it back to the mayor. That's kind of a brief summary but a few things that came to mind upon the request for the removal of this on consent.

I do want to apologize too because one of the council members did request yesterday to have it removed from consent. I was traveling and out of the office and I missed that so I when I came in this morning I did work to inform that that request had been made. So I would have liked to have flagged that to you earlier than this morning. That's when I caught my emails catching up from being out yesterday. Thank you.

That's fine. I have, I do have a question. So is there anything that would keep an individual counselor from donating their salary back to the city?

Thank you, mayor, members of city council. No. That is totally acceptable Donating some are all it can't be done directly so you have to receive the compensation then you'd have to donate that back and then you'd have to deal with your own. If you work with tax accountants or your own tax filings, you'll have to deal with that donation, through that process. But if you want to give it to the city or donate it to some other organization, that's an option.

Thank you. Are there other questions from the council? Councilor Peterson White.

I don't think I have a question. Do you want to take some time for a question? I'm ready to make

a motion. Okay. Great. Other questions? I think we're ready for a motion.

I'll move the first reading of ordinance ten ninety three.

Thank you. Is there a second? Councilor Holmes. Second. Thank you. All right, Councillor Peterson White.

Am always happy to have an opportunity to talk about this. I think it's worth discussing. I also am really proud of the work that we did back in 2017, according to the staff memo.

It doesn't feel like

it was that long ago, but okay, I believe you. I'm really proud of the work that we did back in 2017 to lay the groundwork to really depoliticize this so that it can just be kind of a routine standard thing. It's a very modest increase that tends to follow either I think over time probably it's been significantly less than whatever the Social Security COLA adjustment is, if that is a measure of inflation. It's a measure a lot of employers use to gauge annual raises and how much more people need to be paid in order to have their salary basically have the same value. And before that, I certainly was involved in a few rounds of highly political highly politicized debate about this question.

And I think, you know, we're all familiar with the narratives around whether elected officials should give themselves raises, whether elected officials get paid too much, whether elected officials should get paid when Congress isn't in session, etcetera. There are all kinds of questions about that that I think are really, some of them very much worth discussing. Mostly, I think at other levels of government, where their salaries are much larger. Those questions to me are really different. And at the level of government that we are working at, to me, the most important aspect of the salary for an elected official is that it provide access to be able to do this work for anybody who wants to be able to do it.

As someone who I first ran for public office when I was 27. I was an entrepreneur at the time. I didn't run for city council, I ran for Rice County Board. One of the things that made that possible for me to get involved in that as a young person who was self employed was that there was a salary that would allow me to basically pay other people to do part of my job while I was doing that job. And that county commissioner role involves a lot more daytime work than this job does.

This job involves, as you all know, not zero daytime work, though. And if anybody wants to know anything about the county commissioner's salary, it's a whole other ballgame. But it was really important to me as a young person who was not retired, who was single, who was self employed. I didn't have children at the time, but I did have children when I ran for this office. And that is a huge consideration, think for many people.

Like I think it's important to recognize that, you know, I I think that the use of one's time to do this kind of work, like as has been stated, nobody is doing this to for the money. Right? I think we can all agree about that. It would be a crazy thing to do for the money. But the cost of doing the work is real.

And if you are retired or independently wealthy, as many elected officials at higher levels of government are, or have little to any caregiving responsibilities, for instance, those costs might not be as obvious. But if you are a person who does shift work, if you are self employed, if you have significant caregiving responsibilities either for children or elders or other people in your life, you really notice the hours that you spend on this. So one thing that I have thought about many times is the amount of childcare that I need in order to do this work. Right? I have I had one kid when I started doing this.

Now I have three. And I have an extremely supportive partner who makes it possible for me to do this. But sometimes, we also need to pay for child care, because I go to a lot of meetings. And at my at our current salary, which after taxes is $364 every other week, if we assume that we're working ten hours a week, which I think you all know is probably conservative a lot of the time, that's $18.20 an hour. And I would challenge you to find childcare for $18.20 an hour.

It's not possible. And that's, you know, that's not like my benchmark for how much a person should get paid to do this work, but I think when we think about whether whether elected officials are overcompensated in this role, We should think about what the barriers are to people doing it. And childcare, eldercare, maybe paying someone else to do your job if you're a sole proprietor of some kind, those are all really real. And personally, I don't want to live in a world where the only people who can afford to hold elected office are retired or independently wealthy. That doesn't seem good.

I don't think that's the outcome that we all want. I don't think that's true of any of us, right? I think that, I mean, some of us are semi retired maybe. But I think that we all, I think it's very possible to recognize that we do this work for the benefit of the community. We do it because we're passionate about it.

We probably do it partly because we think it's interesting. And we also want to recognize that if we really want people from all different walks of life to be able to imagine themselves doing this work, and if we believe that that makes city government better, which I most certainly do, then we need to recognize that there is a value to people's time. We're not placing, as I noted, a particularly high value on that time, dollars 18.2 an hour after taxes. But I think it does something to make it possible for people to do this that makes it not an absolutely unthinkable sacrifice for people who have other constraints in their lives, but still want to be able to do this work. So that's why I think it's really important that elected official salaries reflect some relationship to reality of how much time we spend doing this.

I think having served in a different elected office that has a far higher salary, I would say indeed this job includes vastly more constituent service and time spent on that kind of thing. I'm a lame duck. I have no skin in this game except that I care deeply about Northfield. And I have spent much of my time in Northfield actively encouraging people from diverse backgrounds to run for office. I have actively encouraged mothers to run for office, and entrepreneurs, and people who have shift work jobs, and all kinds of people who are, in my opinion, really underrepresented in local government.

And so for me, this motion supporting the continuation of this is both a way to ensure that this doesn't just become an endless political football, and also ensuring that we're doing what we can within reason to ensure access to this role for a wide range of people. I also really appreciate the administrators noting that if we find ourselves in some kind of fiscal crisis for that 3,000 or $5,000 a year of increase is really crucial for some other area of city government. We can like a future council can choose to make that sacrifice when it is needed, But I don't think that we should make that sacrifice in advance of the necessity for the sake of politics, guess. So thank you.

Thank you. I see you, and I'm gonna go to, counselor Holmes as the seconder of the motion. Oh. And then I will go to counsel Ness.

Make it fast for you, counselor Ness. I mean, I think as a working professional and mother younger children, I echo a lot of what counselor Peterson White said. I believe that it's important and as someone who thinks about this and who thought about this in terms of my run or not for counsel again in the next term, this does does factor in. And so I think it's important for us to, give weight to the job that we do. I think that what, as we think about compensation and wanting our staff to be at the mid range, I think it's important for us to look at that for ourselves.

And I think the increases that have been happening over time are not exceptionally high. They mirror what the increase is in terms of that cost of living or what we're seeing, in the community. And I think that while it can feel weird and awkward to talk about our own compensation and and getting paid more, I think it is important to look at the bigger picture and the message that sends to people who we want to do this work and being able to get to the best possible people to be able to do it and opening any doors we can and not closing that. So I support moving this forward. Thank you. Councilor Ness.

Thank you. I was one of the requesters along with the other elder statesman of the council, I'm sure. And we do come from probably a little different realm than younger members. And I can appreciate these arguments and from now on, will let sleeping dogs lie and probably will vote for it.

Councilor Dolan.

I respect the arguments on the pro side and, but I wanna address just a few of the ones that really gnaw at me. One is I'm a politician, albeit at a very local level. So I don't think there's any way to depoliticize any decision I make. I'd like to think we could, but I don't think that's possible. I think that a democracy is a political system.

On the equity argument, I'm as you probably know from my background, I'm quite sensitive to about that. But I think to reach that we have to say that the salary has to just be a lot more. Yeah. Because the amounts we're dealing with tonight or for the next two years are are really small. It it would be easy to just say fine and then go on and, work on our our real care that we have for equity arguments in society.

The thing that kills me about this is the timing because the economy is the issue in the midterms. And there is real pain in the community about, meeting budgets, meeting expenses, finding the finding the money. And I just, it doesn't have anything to do with my personal circumstance. It doesn't have anything to do with the future council or drawing in new candidates which I spend my time doing as well. And I just think of it as, we should just take a very close look at this and would it be bad public policy to vote?

No. I actually think it might be good pub public policy at this stage of the of the economy, at this stage of our political system, to keep the status quo. So I will be voting a a no, with my heart in both places because I get the pro arguments. So thank you, mayor.

Councilor Sokop. Thanks.

I agree with a lot of what Councilor Peterson White, raised. But I would like to just touch on something that counselor Dullen just said because I think it is true that if if, what I've found difficult in serving in this office myself and also now trying to encourage other people, in similar circumstances, to run, for the seat, is that it's kind of the compensation is kind of in this weird middle realm where you can't really I can't, per se. I'll just say for me, I can't work less because I do this. And so it is in addition to to working, and then by default, it it becomes, just a really, really practical calculation for people. I think I'll just speak for myself.

I did not decide to run for this office because of the compensation. I would be really surprised if anyone did, and I don't think that's a reason, personally, to run for office. But I do really feel for people when serving in office is a huge time commitment and and doesn't allow you to, make a living wage while you're doing it. I think I think many of us up here spend more more than ten hours a week, especially when you count all of the in between of meetings and what that does to your workday if you're still working. I think it it really adds up, and, I think, for me, it's been incredibly fulfilling and absolutely worth it, but it is a it is a really practical calculation, that you have to make.

And, however, to counselor Dahlen's conclusion that he's coming to, I'll be voting yes for this because I would I would personally support a policy in the future that actually compensates counselors more, to allow, more working class people, more parents, younger people to run for office here because it is a huge commitment. It's not a, you you show up for one meeting a week kind of thing. So a lot of constituent correspondence and a lot of digging in if you really want to, and I think it's one of the most enriching experiences that you can have as a citizen of this country. And so I would love to see a lot more people looking at serving in office as a way to serve their country. That actually practically makes sense too.

So, again, I'm also a lame duck. I'm not gonna sit here and talk about my own salary, but I'd be more than happy to advocate in the future for, local, elected officials actually making a livable wage as in a decent and deserved and, honorable way to, make a living on top of everything else.

Thank you. Councilor Beamer.

Thank you. I had sent administrator Mardig a text message when I started reviewing the packet. And because I was considering the same thing that counselor Ness and counselor Dahlen had done. And after some text message exchanges, with administrator, decided not to. The funny thing is I know I certainly didn't run for counsel for what we get paid.

I actually didn't know we got paid anything until after I had had filed filed to run. So I thought it was a volunteer thing. So I do appreciate yeah. I do appreciate councilor Peterson White's comments. And I do certainly appreciate councilor Dahlen's viewpoint of it as well.

I will definitely probably be supporting this, if not for me, for those considering around at it at some point. And and I fully agree with councilor Sokop's comments about about running for office. I never saw myself as somebody that would do this, and I was kind of in one of those positions where where it was, you know, quit complaining about it and try and do something about it. So here I sit. Thank you to those that that agreed that, I was the right guy for it as well.

But to councilor Sokop's point, have being someone who served served his country in the military and now is serving my hometown as a member of the council, I can't think of anything that's really more rewarding. Talking with the people, and we do talk with a lot of people, e whether it be emails, knocks on the door, phone calls, text messages, instant messages on social media, all forms of communications, walking through the grocery store, while going to a baseball game, anything. It's it's super rewarding. And and I like councilor Sokop said, if you're at all interested, do it. So and if you have questions about it, you are free to contact me.

Thank you.

Thank you. I've got a couple comments here. So I served on the council from 2009 to 2020. So, I served both pre and post the 2017 decision, and I have the battle scars to prove it. So I will say that pre 2017, it was highly politicized and this even the simple fact of removing it from the consent agenda and having this discussion politicizes this issue.

And so, I I have feelings about that. Like I said, I've, had to deal with a lot in terms of compensation over the years. And so to me this is about equity and yes, it's not gonna, you know, it's not a reason to take this position and it's not a livable wage, but at this point, you know, the hope is that the compensation makes it possible to overcome some of the barriers to service, which I think we're accomplishing. And I totally share counselor Sokop's, interest in compensating the council more. I've said that numerous times over the years.

I say that every time this comes up, that this should be a livable wage for government officials. It's also just this really weird power dynamic too that, is in the Northfield Charter that you have this mayor and city administrator setting the agenda together. I make $13,000 and you all can look up what administrator Martig makes. Okay? So it's, you know, it's what it is outlined in our charter, but yeah, obvious.

So I would be totally for, a livable wage for local, government officials, and I agree with what many people have said here about the service. It is frustrating that it comes up in an election year and you all have pointed out to me the opportunity that that provides in election year to point out how this is an honorable, rewarding, and impactful way to serve one's community. So thank you all for that. I appreciate all those comments, and I will be voting in favor of this as it's as the policy is written. Any other comments? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed?

Nay.

Roll call, please.

Councilor Ness?

Yes.

Councilor Peterson White? Yes. Councilor Sokop?

Yes.

Councilor Beamer? Yes. Councilor Dahlen?

Nay.

Councilor Holmes? Yes. Mayor Sweifel?

Yes. Thank you. Motion passes. The next item is the community survey report and presentation from miss Kram.

Good evening, mayor and council. So tonight we'll be discussing the 2026 community survey, the report and the findings. As part of the twenty twenty five, twenty twenty eight strategic plan, one of our key priorities is enhancing service delivery, specifically on a focus of strengthening how we engage with residents and making sure that aligns with their expectations and also the community needs. A critical component of that is also working to listening to our community members and making sure that we're receiving that feedback and we're using it to make decision making, planning, and future investments. The 2026 survey, which is the first community survey this community has had that's statistically valid, it's an important step in our ongoing efforts as again we hope to continue to listen to our community members and use those findings to help us make better decisions.

The survey was designed to be statistically valid to provide feedback from residents on a wide range of topics including service level, city service, public safety, infrastructure, parks and rec, communications, and just overall quality of life in Norfolk. So, we'll hear about the survey will touch on all of those bases, we'll hear more about those results with the presentation. And again, we're hoping that the findings of the report will help council and staff make valuable decisions and insights into the future and how we make decisions and plan for the future of Northfield. Tonight, we are fortunate to have Mr. Robert Hecock from ETC Institute who the city selected after we did issue an RFP and received a few proposals back and ultimately selected to go with ETC because they were able to provide a statistically valid survey and dissemination and also provide the city with a dashboard that's available to the public to go in-depth and actually go through those survey questions.

We'll talk a little bit more about that later. But Mr. Hecock is here to go over those findings in the presentation, and there'll also be a portion at the end for council members to ask questions and for us to go a little bit more in-depth as well. Alright. And I will turn it over to mister Hecock.

Appreciate that, Reese. Appreciate all the staff that helped us bring these results to you this evening. My name is Robert Hecock. As Rishi said, I do have to disclose something. It's not easy, but this crowd hopefully will understand. I did graduate from St. Olaf. So nice. Awesome. Yeah. So part of our interest in serving you and conducting this was I get to come up here and see Northfield and see what's changed. And I think about maybe one building that I stayed in is still up. But it's a great town. And we used to have family living here and all of that. So I appreciate the opportunity to be here.

A little bit about ETC Institute. We're one of the largest companies in The United States that focuses on mainly municipalities, but also states, counties. We do statewide surveys. We do transportation, household, employee surveys, you name it, ETC. And in the last fifteen years, we've surveyed more than 3,100,000 people.

So if you consider 400 at a time, 500 at a time, there's a lot of surveys. And we're very happy with what we do. And we believe that we're providing a service that will help you, as Risi said, make better, more informed decisions. Not only that, but this day and age, we we hear a lot of the public really want to be included. They want to make their opinions known. Not just the squeaky wheel might come to an occasional council member, but as a whole, as a group, they they wanna find their voice to their elected officials. So we see that all over the country is engaging the community. We have an agenda. I'm not going to read all these. You can glance at them and we'll hit them when we go.

I know you're a little short on time. The purpose, again, is to have an objective assessment. We don't want to have a biased one or a limited one. We wanted to make sure that it's statistically valid. We want to be able to give you comparisons so you know what your ratings, your satisfaction ratings mean in context to other communities because by themselves, it's just half the road map. And finally, we want to help the city determine priorities for improvements to serve your residents better. A little bit about methodology. This survey, we believe in a hybrid approach most of the time. So we administered it both by mail and online between January and February of this year. Our goal was 400 surveys.

We actually had 428 completed surveys. We thought that was very indicative of engagement of the citizens and a desire to, make their opinions know. What does that mean from a statistical standpoint? It results in a margin of error plus or minus 4.7% at what they call the 95% level of confidence. So generally 5% is a bellwether for most surveys. If you see national surveys for different public offices, 5% is kind of the mark. So yours is better than that. And we're attributing that to your engagement, the efforts your staff made to reach out. Now just some information about the survey, who took it, and all of that. This is what we call a dispersion map.

It shows you where all the responses came from. You can see good representation by respondents throughout the city. Demographically, all age groups were well represented. You see you had 21 of your respondents were 65 or older. And yet you had 19% that were 35.

So you had a good mix respondents by age. In terms of how many years they've lived in Northfield, again, a nice dispersion there, nice breakdown. Annual household income, the same. What we don't want is we don't want to have one category be dominant and out of place with what your demographics indicate we should receive. And in gender, it's usually this.

Sometimes it's 51% male. And the other way around, this one was 51 female. The first main topic we want to jump in is we want to talk about satisfaction with city services and perceptions. What I want to say is let you know this is on a five point scale. You're going to see colors from blue to gray to pinkish red. And we combine those pinkish red. Those represent dissatisfaction in most of the slides you're going to see because we want to highlight that. We want to make the bar higher to try to address that. But in terms of the satisfied, we'll have very satisfied and satisfied as shown in the dark blue and light blue. What I really want to point out and I'll show you this is the first slide.

When you look at this and we'll get into some of these categories. We don't have time to go through every single one on every slide. But you look at the bottom, say effectiveness of city economic development efforts. You've got 29% that say that they're neutral. They're not sure. Maintenance of city streets and effectiveness of city communication with the public similarly have fairly large groups of people who took the time to fill the survey only to say I'm neutral. I don't really have an opinion, but I'm filling this out because I want to share my non opinion, I guess. Not really. But you look at that. A lot of times what our clients will do is they want to focus on the dissatisfied.

And that's not wrong. You do want to find those people who are really passionate about and think the city is going down the wrong path. You do want to hear from them, certainly. But it's really easier to move the needle, the real needle, by focusing on the neutral. So we try to emphasize that to our clients that in response, as you develop action plans with your staff, how you're going to integrate this into your future operations, we really want to focus on, a lot of times, that neutral.

If over 20%, that's something that we think you can reach out and influence by better communication, by trumpeting your successes. Sometimes communities have trouble patting their selves on the back. It feels weird. But you need to let the public know the good things that are going on here. And in a lot of cases, can move in the right way.

But you see here, your quality of police services, you've got, what, 85% who are satisfied or very satisfied. And you can see same with the quality of city parks, quality of city sewer services, all vary on the high side. And you'll see that even more when we show you the benchmark. Now we get into perception of the city, not perception of city services, but the city itself. The feeling of safety in the city and you can see that very little, I think it's maybe 1% or 2% that had some level of dissatisfaction.

The quality of life, the appearance of residential property. Now you go down below and you see some of the concerns. Obviously, availability of affordable housing certainly is on that list. And you had a hearing tonight, I think, trying to address some of those issues. How do you bring more available housing for people? The quality of new development, both public and private, How well the city is managing growth and development. Those are the main areas of concern. Satisfaction with specific city services. The overall sense of safety in the community, overwhelmingly positive with, what, 90%. The level of trust in the police department, very high as well.

And you can see in all of these pretty substantial in the very satisfied, satisfied realm. Satisfaction with parks. Again, only 7% of those responding to the quality of park facilities said they were dissatisfied in any way. You have 78% that said they're very satisfied or satisfied with park facilities. Down below, not a huge, difference in the dissatisfaction, but you do see a lot more in that gray area that we talked about, the neutral area.

Satisfaction with city streets and sidewalks, fairly consistent. You got a chunk from 20% to that 33% in maintenance of streets in your neighborhood. A sizable level of concern and those that are registering as neutral is pretty significant as well. We find a lot of times with infrastructure or public works types of services, people just don't know what you're planning. And that's what hurts a lot of communities because you'll have a really nice five year plan or even a three year plan to overlay streets.

But if you don't tell people beyond the current year what you're planning on doing, there's no real motivation or no way that they can get on the same track with you. So we would emphasize that as something to look at. Satisfaction with code enforcement in terms of responding to noise concerns or complaints, a fairly high level of satisfaction with that. But however, you get down to the bottom in terms of responding to reports of dangerous or unpermitted buildings. You have to consider that that's one of those items that people may drive by, maybe in their community. They see it every day. And they just don't know. They don't know, is there a plan to address this dangerous building? Is it going to be here forever? And that's just how people react to things.

And it spills over one of these items. If it becomes a hot button, you're going to see more of that from some of those same people. Satisfaction with the library system, it was mentioned earlier. Amazing level of positivity for your local library. They're doing something right.

And really, obviously, the community shares the vision that is being brought forward with the library system. We don't always see that. Sometimes library systems are viewed more as antiquated and not as important. But clearly, your community appreciates the value of library services in terms of tax dollars with 89% I I'm sorry, 65% or 9% in terms of finding value, very satisfied or satisfied with the tax dollars that are spent on the library system. Now we wanted to look at how you compare to other communities.

What you see here, we have Northfield is in blue. The Plains Region, that's up and down I won't name all the states unless you need me to that are in the Plains Region. And The US is in yellow. So in almost every single category here of major city services, you're at least margin of error plus or minus 5% to the good. You look at quality police services.

You rated 89.5. Look at 49% for the national and 53% for the Plains Region. Again, we can spend more time talking about these various areas. And I'm sure you will with your staff as you follow-up. But this is really impressive.

And you should be very happy. Even on maintenance of city streets and effectiveness of city communication with the public, you're still in line or slightly above those averages. You're just not 5% or more above that. We ask about satisfaction with perception of the city. So feeling of safety, 90.9 said that they are very satisfied or satisfied with the feeling of safety.

The image of the city, very positive. Lot of pride in the community. Quality of city services provided by the city, 64% compared to fifty one and forty two. So some really positive. There's nothing on here that really shows up as too negative other than you look at the one of those that we do measure in a lot of communities is the value received for tax dollars and fees. That's, again, one of those messaging things. I don't believe it's it's kind of in the culture. Do do people know where the money is being invested and how can you make that more clear? The image of the city, very positive. However, how well the city is managing growth and development, that's one where you're about half where you're benchmarked.

You're not above it. You're below it significantly. So when you have those type of numbers, that's definitely something I know in speaking with your staff, they really want to help drill down a little bit more to that and have more discussion and find what's behind some of those numbers. Satisfaction with public safety. Again, all of these areas well above those benchmark averages.

Not as much here, but you still see 3%, 4% difference in many of these categories in terms of maintenance of city streets and sidewalks. Now we want to talk about investment priorities. Now, I set this up by saying one of the things we do is we talk about how satisfied they are, obviously. We showed you all those satisfaction issues. However, if you just ask the question, how satisfied are you with the city service, that tells half the story. Let's say you're talking about the dog park. And you ask me as a resident, Robert, how satisfied are you with the dog park? And I say, oh, it's horrible. I took Buster there. He got chased around by bigger dogs.

And it was a really bad experience. I'm very dissatisfied with the city's dog park. Okay. If that's the only information, the only question you ask, he might go down that path thinking that's the priority. But if you followed it up and you said, well, Robert, how important is it relative to all these other services? How important is that dog part? I don't care. I just won't go there. It's not important at all. I would put that at the bottom of the list. So we've done that. We compare the two. Most survey companies don't do that. We do that. We spit out a number. And I'm not a mathematician. And I think I took introduction to statistics at St. Olaf. And that was about it. Actually, flipped a coin because it said flip a coin.

So here we look at those major services. And you can see very high priority. We had three items that registered as a very high priority. High priority none that fell within that spectrum. And then medium priority. Again, this doesn't mean they're not important. But you can look at the effectiveness of city economic development efforts. Is it important? Yes, number one. Are you dissatisfied? Yes. Out of 10 items, it tops the list of things that your residents are dissatisfied. So same with maintenance of streets and effectiveness of communication with the public. Now with communication, will say I do run into a lot of communities that are kind of taken aback. They'll say, well, we just spent a million dollars updating our website.

And we're doing all these things. Some of these take time for the public to really take notice of the changes. And if they were unimpressed with your website, now they could be impressed if they just went to it and checked it out again. But a lot of people don't. So it does take time to move the needle on some of those items. We asked about public safety. And you remember all those positive reviews. Nothing really jumped off the page in terms of a very high priority, definitely medium priorities. What we find a lot of times where you have something where they're very satisfied, they don't view it as a problem. They just but they don't want you to underfund it.

Just because they're really, really happy, that's something citizens start to wanna protect and wanna make sure they send a message to you as elected officials. Don't start cutting back because that's really, you know, that's really important to our community, that public safety. We look at it at parks. Again, you have a few items as the high priority and a couple of those mediums. Community outreach, level of public involvement and local decision making and efforts to keep public informed about local issues, rated number one and two and high enough to have the very high priority.

Now we asked about city streets and sidewalks. There were two items that registered as very high priority, maintenance of major city streets and maintenance of neighborhood streets. Also, condition of sidewalks in the city, plowing city streets. I give your staff credit. We did go out in February, and that's not exactly winter's not over by any stretch of imagination.

I lived here when we had 27 inches of snow on Halloween, if anybody else remembers that. Code enforcement addressing concerns about material garbage recyclables, furniture, machinery. That jumped off the page as the most important item of code enforcement and next to last in terms of satisfaction. So if you look at all those items and you're trying to say, Okay, where do we start code enforcement? Your public is telling you very clearly addressing concerns about material, garbage, recyclables, furniture, and machinery.

Most of time, that's the stuff that people leave outside that just neighborhoods die passively, quietly. They don't often turn in their neighbor. They'll move away. And that visual and who's going to move in next to some of these things? So that's definitely something that we see as a priority and a concern of the residents here. Other findings. So we wanted to ask some things specifically about Northfield. It's not all comparisons to other communities. Which of the following would be your preferred way to receive news? Newsletter or other insert in the utility bill envelope rated to the highest at 62%.

There could be multiple selections here. City website, 53%, and social media, forty forty four percent. Public meetings and the Notify Me city information update service, I don't if that's something new. Maybe 30% is good because it's fairly new. But those rated at the bottom. Perceptions of current pace of development in the following areas. So we asked a question here. The red is much too slow. The yellow is slow. The blue is average.

And then the red is fast. So we asked a question in terms of what's the pace of development in industrial, excuse me, industrial development. You had about, again, now this time, have to recalibrate because you have 55% that are basically saying it's either way too slow or somewhat slow. So it's kind of the opposite of what you've seen before on the satisfaction surveys. Retail development, again, another one that rated fairly high in terms of being slow and multifamily residential as well.

No. That actually had more that said it's too fast. Sorry. Misread that. We ask level to agree with the following statements regarding the library and, again, everything that was positive about the library. Probably don't have a lot of time to get into that, but it's impressive. In summary, your residents are generally satisfied with major city services and perceptions. They're most satisfied with police, sewer, and parks. And they have an overall very high rating of feeling of safety and quality of life. Northfield rate is significantly higher than the Plains Region and The US averages regional and US averages in a number of categories.

We don't need to go over those again. Priority investment, again, major city services, effectiveness of city economic efforts, maintenance of city streets, and effectiveness of communication with the public. With that, I'd be happy to answer questions you might have.

Great. Thank you. Questions from the council? Councilor Sokop. You alluded to

this a bit, but I'm curious with other communities that you've done this with, that point about people feeling like they get value from their tax dollars and also the point about communication. Are those two often do those two often go hand in hand? You mentioned, you know, if there's a different type or more communication, people might feel like they're getting more value from their tax dollars. Is that Definitely. What you're kind of touching on, or are those things separate more often?

No. I I I think they they go together way more often than not. Certainly, in communities where the response is that they're satisfied or very satisfied with the value of tax dollars, they get that in part because of communication. And you'll see high ratings of of communication in those those areas as well.

I have a a question I was trying to get on the right page on the, in the packet, but, you also included maps that gave the answer to the question in kind of large scale, but I found that really helpful about when you think about infrastructure answers and then you looked at the neighborhoods where things were dissatisfied. Did we do a project there recently or, that type of thing? Did those line up as you expected? I didn't have the chance to go through every single one of them, but did any of those jump out at you when you think about other cities?

No. Not not particularly. Again, I think it followed along with the the narrative. We don't know. Every community is a little bit different and perception of of people that live there is something different. You look at your overall responses. You have overall a lot of consistency on things like feeling of public safety. Typically, what you might find is one neighborhood or two neighborhoods in a community that they're very dissatisfied with that. There's something going on in that particular area. And I don't remember something jumping off the page. Maybe, Risi, do you remember?

No. We There's cross tabulation through the dashboard. And I did go through all those. And there weren't any areas of the city that I could pinpoint that jumped out and said you know this specific section of the city rated this extremely low so there weren't any of that when we did cross tabulations.

Okay great thank you. Councilor Dolan.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. The, produce so I have a lot of conversations with constituents who like to look at the big picture. They're not they're not they're ready to maybe make a complaint, but they automatically put it into a big picture of all that's going well in the city. It's just the nature of many of the constituents who take time to talk to me. So, would you tell me more or tell us all more about the margin of error? Because I would like to use that in the conversation that if we take that margin of error, we could extrapolate it to the whole city. But I'm not sure that's correct. You could just tell me more about the margin of error, that would be helpful in my conversations.

Thank you. Yes. With any type of statistical analysis of this sort, you're going to have a margin of error. It's not going to be perfect in terms of being able to capture that opinion. So we look at that, as I said before, plus or minus 5% is generally looked at as the benchmark or the standard that you try to achieve.

In this case, we were at 4.7% because you had more responses than we had originally projected. That's true if you look at the fine print of any survey that you see out there. Regardless of what, there's going to be some margin of error. And people will sometimes latch onto that. And they'll take it to an extreme and say, well, means it could be way off in all of this. There is a little bit of that, an understanding. And that's why we talk about a dashboard. One of the values that you're going to have if you choose to do another survey usually, our clients look at every other year. Some of them do it every year, but not normally. So every two to three years.

And the next time you do a survey, you'll have that dashboard. We'll add that data to that dashboard so that you can compare trends, how things have changed over time. And you'll be able to look at the maps and say, do maps tell us a different story? And then looking at that. The 95% level of competence means if you did it a 100 times, 95 times it's going to come within that margin of error.

Other questions? Councilor Beamer.

It's probably more of a comment if that's

okay. Absolutely.

Okay. I just the one I guess one of the things that jumped out at me the most was how some of the concerns that popped up on there actually kind of align with our strategic plan goals. So I think this is super helpful from that standpoint, you know, the commercial and industrial development, housing goals, all of that stuff. So, I think that should, as far as we're concerned, at least assure us that we probably picked the right strategic plan goals. So thank you.

Yes. Thank you for that comment. I noticed that as well. In addition to the communication that which, you noticed that feeds a lot of the if we don't get the communication right, do it well, do it proactively, share what we're doing in the streets in three years, that can lead to dissatisfaction. Councilor Sokop.

I'm curious, Ms. Kream, if you have, with the results, kind of how you're thinking about the survey results in your work from a staff perspective, if there was anything that stood out to you or that you're really focused on.

I would say one thing that really stood out to me is the community not feeling like the city is communicating with them enough or not getting adequate levels of communications. That really jumped out at me. And it's something that actually brings us to our next topic of where I'm going to dig more into that. So I will be working with Robert and following up with this survey. We had four twenty eight people respond.

That survey, question twenty five and twenty six asked folks who were able to respond if they would like to participate in further assessments or further questioning from that list that Robert was able to pull. Of that 400 and some, there were about 100 and some that did provide their contact name, contact information, email, phone number because that's not something that was asked to be provided as the survey outside of just verification that you know you did get the survey was sent to your home. So we are going to do a smaller scale deeper dive which about a 100 people that did respond to the survey and we're going to be honing in more on having communication questions for them specifically how they would like to be communicated, what types of communications they're looking for from the city, and then also some of the other service areas that did rank pretty low in some of that gray area, so asking more follow-up questions. And so there is a part two of this it's not just we have the survey as there is going to be a smaller survey to those who did tell the city like, Hey, I would like to participate in further follow-up.

And we did get a list of about a 100 some folks that we plan on following up with and disseminating another survey that is way smaller and won't be as thorough as this. So, we'll be following up with Robert after this to talk about what that next survey looks like. It will be smaller scale. We'll come back to council with those results as well and how staff is going to incorporate that into our work plans as we move forward on these projects. So we will use this survey and these responses to better our work.

Thank you. Councilor Peterson White.

I have a question that might be for Ms. Cream or might be for you, or maybe both of you, I don't know. So I'm sitting here kind of puzzling over the very high levels of satisfaction with what I see as the core city services. Somewhat less satisfied with street maintenance, but library, police, overall feelings of safety, quality of life, pride in the community, all really high. And the communication piece, I think that's like I can sort of get my head around that being sort of separate from the satisfaction with the work.

What's harder for me to understand is the relatively low ratings on I forget how you phrased it, but like the the value of services for tax dollars. Is that I'm pretty sure the word value was in there. So I'm really curious about that, and are we are there ways that we can explore further to understand? Is it that people are so satisfied with these core services, but they think they're too expensive? Or are there other services we didn't ask them about that they think they're not getting value from?

Or is it just taxes are too high? Is that simple? And if it's taxes are too high, like how do we Yes. Like always people We would all love to have lower taxes. Right?

But it's it's never quite clear to me if that's really all we can learn from that. Like how do we use that to inform our policy making? Because when we do try to reduce the levy, we are faced with cuts that people are not going to like, So that's kind of the big question of our jobs, I guess, now that I'm saying it out loud. But I'm interested in whether you have tools to help us understand better what people mean or are thinking about when they say they're not getting value for their tax dollars.

Yeah. I think some of it is what Risi alluded to. We've also talked with your city administrator about how to dig into those items a little bit more. I would say not every community that has high levels of satisfaction have low levels of value on that question of value. It's the value of services for the taxes paid.

And to me, a lot of times that comes down to telling the story, making sure people understand as much as they can why you're spending the money where you have, what are the priorities, and how those have made a difference. One of the communities I worked with had a very divided council, very divided constituents. But after doing three or four surveys over a number of years, they really got a fine tooth point on that. And they were able to communicate in their newsletters, hey, notice this item is no longer on our priority list because we've been working on it. You said it was important.

Now we've got something else we're working on that's the next priority that the public has told us. So I think it's just all of you are clearly in your deliberations tonight. You're very thoughtful in what you're doing. And you're wanting to make a difference with the public. A lot of times I would say people don't share that. I use the analogy pat yourself on the back, trumpet your success. That's something a lot of communities struggle with. But unfortunately, if you want them to know the value that they're getting, ask yourself how how are they determining that? How how would they unless we tell that story better and more often?

Oh, I was gonna say a lot of the questions, council member Pierson White that you're raising are the same questions that we had when we were going over the survey response is we need more. We have actually we actually have more questions now, which is why we kinda wanna do that part two smaller scale survey for the folks that had indicated like, Hey, I do want to talk with the city more about this. And then given them some follow-up questions and prompts that will allow them to engage with us and give us more direct like, Okay, we know that the quality of life in Norfolk is fairly good. We know that folks are saying they like our streets and parks, but we also know that there are areas of improvement and they also people have different values, but we also aren't clear of what value is going to change move the needle a little bit and what do we really need to hone in on and that's not as clear in which we're hoping that deploying this additional survey as a tool will allow us to get a deeper dive into that. And if need be focus groups can be pulled in the future as well.

But I think continuing to work with those who have responded to the city survey and said like, hey, do want to work with the city, I do want to provide more feedback and ask some more additional questions, I think that'll give us a better look of like, you know, what direction we need to be going.

This is great. Really interesting and thought provoking. And I also think that there I hope that we can find some ways to dig deeper into the probably very clear bright line that we can draw between people's perception of the value for their tax dollars and the limitations in economic development that they're also noticing, or the low ratings there. Because you probably don't know this about Northfield, but we do have an unusually low proportion of commercial and industrial property in Northfield. And that does present challenges for our tax base, and we have spent decades trying to grow the commercial industrial tax base.

And personally, I think there are many challenges with growing the commercial industrial tax base, but one of them is Northfield's culture of critique, And I think that people want to have high levels of engagement with redevelopment projects, with greenfield development projects. People are already organizing against entire categories of projects that we're not even talking about yet, right, that would dramatically change our tax base. And so I hope that we're, as an organization, able to dig into how that relates to the communication and what we can do to help people understand that if we're looking at this relatively dissatisfied population when it comes to the value they see for their tax dollars, we can't do it for cheaper, so we need more money. And there are only a certain number of tools in the toolkit for growing our tax base. And I think that is just it's often not a part of the conversation very much when we talk about redevelopment and greenfield development projects.

I mean, it is sort of, right? But we don't tie it. We say we need to grow the tax base, but we're not it appears that we're not drawing a clear enough line to what does that mean for your quality of life. And that doesn't mean that people should want a data center in order to want better parks too. But it means that if they don't want a data center, we need to have a richer community conversation around what else we do want in order to shift that value for tax dollars, right?

And to be realistic about that, and to talk about, you know, we have a lot of conversations with people who are saying, but I don't want density in my neighborhood, or but we really like that surface parking lot, and we don't want you to build anything on it. Things like that, right? Things that would really grow the tax base. So don't have a solution, but I think that there are probably things we can learn about what works to communicate with people about relating these things to each other better so that the public can feel like they're coming along with us on this journey of trying to solve this tough problem. Thank you.

Thank you. Other comments?

Councilor Sokop. I have

one really quick comment that's not very serious but kind of related to on the back of that. I was very happy to see that the highest rated form of communication was a newsletter insert. I think those are amazing, personally. And, I worry about the city of Norfield trying to match the presence that the, concerned citizens of Northfield have on social media. I worry about, like, trying to the communication solution being we have to be on social media and as successful at selling what we're doing as these other groups that are really, sometimes, in my opinion, really zeroed in on just tearing everything apart.

So when I see from a survey result that people just want a piece of paper in their utility bill, I'm like, yes. That seems awesome and doable, and I love reading things like that. So I just wanted to add that. Thanks.

Mayor, what I what I hear is coupons in the mail in the mailer for the Ole store cinnamon rolls. I I that's what I hear.

Yeah. And I I will note, don't we send the newsletter out electronically if you if you do pay, online? For paperless? Yeah.

We we do. We did find out we had some we've had some technical issues on our conversion of our accounting system that ties with the same system that includes that. So I believe that those that receive it electronically going forward, there might have been a bit of a lapse during that crossover and so that should be taken care of. But, we've had interesting conversations even pre the survey about strategies of communication in going what I would call more old school, especially the way that people get information that in a town like Northfield that actually might be most successful to do it that way. And that's just one piece of our conversations internally.

But, I think that certainly is like how do you hit the masses with limited resources too. And some of that might be it might be digital, but it might be having some paper options for people. And if we know it's hitting everybody with people getting information in all different ways, that might be one way we can guarantee everybody's kinda getting information with it.

I'm thinking paper option at the library. Just because, you know, library scored so high. Yeah. Okay. Other comments?

Thank you so much. This is really helpful. Pleasure to

be here.

Thank you. Alright.

That brings us to the administrator's update, and I believe we have some updates.

Thank you, mayor and member of city council. One of the things I take away is success on our last conversation too was no methodology methodology I warned our consultants that you better be ready for some methodology questions. Maybe one of the people laughing who maybe has some experience in training in that area might know who they are. So I found it really fascinating digging in deeper to some of their methodology on how they're integrating, social media that wasn't available at time I was in graduate school taking methodology classes around survey developments. And so really happy with with that side of it and a lot of the same questions, and I'm excited to dig a little deeper into as Rishi said, I think we'll be coming back to you in particular, like that communication and feeling a part of decision making processes too is where we probably had some significant discussions and making sure we're understanding really what people want because if we run and jump to what we think they want and then we don't hit the mark, part of the goal would be is we're gonna be proposing a follow-up survey in 2028 leading into the next strategic plan to see if we can improve in some of these areas.

So that will probably be one area where or the the areas where maybe there are some improvement areas that will be coming back to you to maybe firm up some of our goals and to understand that better. So thank you and thank you for coming and welcome back to Northfield to, from your college years. I'm gonna be very brief. Legislative session ended up. There's a lot of dust settling that we're gonna be finding out, like all the different, you know, impacts to city work, two that I mentioned that you probably all know about that financially we've been tracking is the capital investment bill, the bonding bill, and, they ended up did as you hopefully know, the they did end up passing a combination of some debt and cash out of the bonding bill, and Northfield got its full request of $3,000,000 for the Northfield Community Resource Center.

So that will, be helping to both do a little bit of those costs will be used for maintenance of some of these things like our HVAC systems getting improved upon. But the big probably the biggest cost piece of it is some added storage and an expansion of the food distribution at the at the food shelf that we have for the community action center. I think the both on our road tour that we gave in the summer and at the legislative session with what's happening in the economy and household impact, I think the recapturing of food waste to keep it out of landfills really resonated in the fact that we can feed people on food that otherwise is going into landfills. And from the time this building was built to now, the amount of increases that we have in people utilizing those services has way surpassed our facility capacity to do that. Some of you, I know volunteer for that, organization on that and have even shared some feedback that informed our request.

There is a bunch of processes that we'll have to go through paperwork, it they'll take some time to get agreements done and getting working with, architects and what process will be. So that'll be something we'll be working to understand more and coming back to you and our community partners in that facility. The flip side of that too is is that we're hoping that the local option sales tax that would fund, some of the projects in helping maybe the visitors to help pay some of the cost of these quality services that we have but does maybe question the value and can we help distribute those costs to some of the people that come and visit Northfield? We estimated about 40% of our local sales taxes generated would come from non Northfielders. Unfortunately, Northfield along with every other city that requested special authorization for that did not get approved.

It's frustrating that that sometimes happens. It passed out of the senate. We had split leadership, in the house and, it did not end up successfully getting in there. I don't know all of the negotiating reasons why. I do know there was, you know, local sales tax option is not one that is party, that there are clear party lines on.

I've shared that before that there's differing policy perspectives on both sides of the aisle, related to, this tool and how it works in the bigger package of cities being able to fund services and capital projects. And so I think, we saw that deliberation happen again and I, you know, I've been doing this for twenty five years and actively trying to seek bonding bill and this is one that's constantly under tinkering at the legislature, ebbs and flows and the law gets changed and there's I think there's been two moratoriums in place since I've been a professional looking at this tool. So for now, it's not gonna be an option, that was authorized to to go forward but I think it's gonna be conversation. I think there'll be continuing conversation around property tax burden because Northfields are feeling that, but as you'll see on we're working to share more on property tax reports and it's been a heavy discussion at the legislature is limited tools and city's toolboxes and increasing costs have put a lot of pressures on and communities aren't looking at just taxing for the sake of taxing. There's a reason why you're seeing a trend of property tax increases across the board and I think that's a combination of it.

Local government aid is one tool that is formula based that helps some communities but there's many cities that don't receive it. Northfield does benefit from that but, that's a part of the the package of our overall financing. The legislature did approve some additional property tax aid that might help some individuals in particular that they funded significantly more dollars into that program as a one time piece that might help offset property tax burden for this upcoming year for residents. But we'll be back at the table for that to talk more in our budgeting process, how this might relate to that and then ongoing lobbying and interest to explore the local sales tax in the future will be a conversation that we'll we'll be having down the road. But those were a couple of pieces, that I wanted to call out directly.

I did wanna say, thank you obviously to our, senator Lieske, who's a republican and representative Purcell who's a democrat, both supported both of these bills and and assisted to get us hearings and to testify on behalf of, both of those, issues. And, it's really important. You can have good projects, but if you don't have legislators supporting and and aligned with what you're trying to achieve that can be really challenging. So I do wanna say thank you to them for both of that, know, both in the bonding where we got success and on the sales tax where we didn't and we'll be talking more to them about that. With that, that's all I have for this evening's report. Thank

you. Councilor Ness.

Move to adjourn.

Thank you. Councilor Beamer. Second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. We are adjourned. Thank you all.