City Council - Regular Meeting

Are we good? We're live. Okay, it sounds like we're ready to go here. This is the City of Northfield City Council meeting for Tuesday, June 16th, 2026. I am calling this meeting to order and requesting a roll call, please.

Mayor Zweifel. Here. Councilor Sokol. Councillor Beamer? Here. Councillor Dahlin? Councillor Holmes? Here. Councillor Ness? Here. Councillor Peterson-White? Here.

First up is our open public comments, and I don't have any cards this evening, so if there's anyone from the public that would like to comment, please come forward. So our next item would be the approval of our agenda including two supplemental memos. Is there an agenda to, a motion to approve the agenda? Yeah, Councilor Ness.

I will move the agenda as amended.

Thank you. Councilor Beamer. I'll second. Is there any discussion on the agenda? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? All right. We have an approval of our agenda. Next up is our presentation for this evening, which is the Convention and Visitors Bureau. And I think Jane, is going to kick us off? No. Is your mic on? There you are. I see the, oh, no. There.

Okay.

I wasn't going to start my 10 minutes until she was all done passing out stuff. So mayor and counselors, thank you for having us tonight. There's so much going on as usual, but we will keep it under 10 minutes.

Got my timer.

Set for eight and a half minutes. We'll leave the last 90 minutes for questions. How about that? All right. Back at you. All right. You'll see the first page is a pseudo logo. It is more than time that we are incorporating the city's logo into our logo, and we have not put that on the front burner. That's the way we're going. something like that. This is something that Claude helped me do. It's not officially done, nor have we used the proper palette or anything, but we will. So feedback would be great. We'll keep you in the loop as we get a designer working on that. Vision and mission is the same as last year.

So Northfield, we currently have a total of 253 hotel rooms across six lodging properties. And beginning about October 1st, we should be getting some short-term rental lodging tax to contribute to us. So when that is up and coming, we will go ahead and add all of those short-term rentals, Airbnbs, VRBOs to our website and our marketing material and start advertising those.

We have a more robust chamber board, chamber board, CVB board than before. We've got representatives from the city council, hotels, the Friends of Downtown. It's a new collaboration this year. We've got Josh Zimmerman that joined us. We've got retail, restaurants. MARK IS ALSO AN EXPERT IN AGRITOURISM AND DISTILLERY. WE'VE GOT DAN BURGESSON, VINTAGE BAND, MUSIC REPRESENTATIVE, HISTORY REPRESENTATIVE, ARTS AND CULTURE. WE CONTINUE TO WORK WITH JACKIE JOHNSON AS OUR MARKETING CONSULTANT. We've got Melissa representing community ed and sports tourism. We've got breweries and Dundas represented. And as part of Friends of Downtown, we've got Main Street America represented as part of our CBV efforts as well.

All right, so last fall when we were here, we had not done our CVB board retreat. So last fall, we outlined a new 2026-28 strategic priorities list. We will be focusing on three key areas, increasing wellness of Northfield as a destination. Is this skipping out or is that just me? as strengthening engagement with potential visitors through digital marketing and communications and expanding collaboration with local businesses, organizations, and community partners. Our goal is to continue growing Northfield's visibility, attract more visitors, support local businesses, and use data and community partnerships to guide our tourism efforts and maximize our economic impact.

So our assets as of June got about $50,000 in our checking account, almost $45,000 in our savings, and $11,000 in our CD. This year we just found out we were awarded $4,000 from a grant from Explore Minnesota. And with regards to the award for the governor's pheasant hunt opener, we will be awarded a $12,000 match from Explore Minnesota to put into the opener. OUR ANNUAL EXPENSES ARE ACTUALLY THE SAME AS LAST YEAR RIGHT NOW. WE'RE PUTTING JUST A LITTLE OVER 100,000 INTO DIRECT ADVERTISING PROMOTION, WHICH ALSO INCLUDES OUR CONSULTANT FEES, 67,000 SALARIES AND BENEFITS, AND RENT, 15,000 RENT OVERHEAD AND SHARED EXPENSES.

Our visitor guide has been created back in March, so it's not a full year-to-year January through December. So usually every March is when we get the new visitor guide. We had 12,000 printed, and we distributed about 5,000 already throughout our community, the state, and nationwide. And with Explore Minnesota leads that we get in, as well as our Visit Northfield leads, we obtain emails from them, and then we add that to our digital marketing as well, and we're at almost about 14,000 emails. So it's nice that we get not only emails It's digitally out there, printed and mailed out there, but also we get those leads, which is really important.

I thought I'd throw this in there. We had hospitality awards recently, and we had a representative from Explore Minnesota present on Minnesota tourism. Over $24 billion in total economic impact for the state of Minnesota. And you can see the rest of the numbers for the sake of time. HERE, WE'VE ESTIMATED THE AMOUNT OF RESTAURANTS, HOTELS, RETAIL STORES, ET CETERA, AND WE ARE AVERAGING BETWEEN 1300 AND 1800 TOURIST-RELATED WORKFORCE INDIVIDUALS EMPLOYED IN THE AREA. AND IF YOU CALCULATE THAT TIMES A $12 TO $18 PER HOUR WAGE, THE NORTHFIELD AREA GENERATES BETWEEN $51 MILLION AND $68 MILLION PER YEAR IN PAYROLL FOR HOSPITALITY RELATED FIRST LINE WORKERS IN THE AREA.

Print ads, they are still out there. While we really like our digital marketing, we do find that print is still important. And with most print ads packages, we also get some digital with that. So again, those email leads and visibility on those websites. We include QR codes on those ads, so that way we can track who, how many, not quite who, but destinations and the amount of people that are viewing those ads and are interested enough to click those QR codes, and we can measure effectiveness that way. If we don't see any with that return, we're not gonna probably go ahead and do advertising with that specific ad or that newspaper or that magazine. Two million impressions we got last year, so eyeballs seeing that website. Like most in this world, we found digital advertising to be a more effective and cost-efficient way. Our ads are designed to drive people to the Visit Northfield website, where they can explore everything about our community. Our digital campaigns include Facebook, Instagram, and Google, as well as YouTube. If you see in your packets there, we've outlined what we can all see within these Google ads. So Google is going to be our YouTube Google ads and keyword searches as well. So you can see, we can see what time of day, what day of the week our audience is looking at the summary of if it's Google search, other display partners. And with our Facebook, aka Meta, in our Meta feed, we have Facebook and Instagram, and so we can also view a whole bunch of performance placements and audience details there. The Star Tribune is also one of our key assets, and they give us access to a digital dashboard in which we can view all sorts of different impressions, click rates, the open emails when we send those out, and even track visitors that see our ads and come right into our town. So last year, we were able to track 853 people saw those ads from Star Tribune and came into our community. And reminder that that's the creepy little app thing that says ask to track or ask not to, so those people that are saying not to track, we don't get those people. We saw 73 of them going into lodging and 780 of them going to shops, restaurants, and coffee shops. And even creepier than that is within that dashboard, the next little pamphlet here that you can see, you don't just find out if they're male, female, their age. You can find out their psychological drivers, their top hobbies, their daily routine, what kind of car they own, that sort of a thing. So it's really detailing us into fine-tuning who is coming and how we can get more of those people to come. And also our website is our huge marketing tool as well. As more people use AI tools and search engines to decide where to travel, you guys might know of this, not only where to travel, but all sorts of other things like little AI bubble keeps coming up. And we have to really make sure that we're up to date on our website. The stronger our website content is, the more likely Northfield is to appear in those search engines and inspire visitors to choose our community. And with that, we're going to talk about AI. So while search engine optimization remains important, we're also adapting to AI-generated optimization. I said that wrong.

SEO to AEO.

Right, but it's not... artificial there we go thank you artificial yep so because people are turning to more of those ai tools for travel recommendations and information so through blogs and fax pages on our website we have itineraries and things like that but you can't just have come visit northfield because it's pretty we were doing more than that before but now we're putting in there more of those key term searches that people are going to be looking for and that's going to be driving the gemini to drive Google to get those results to those people. And we've learned, too, it's more about clarity than it is creativity. People are wanting that answer quick and short and correct is the biggest thing.

One thing that came out of our strategic planning session last year was that the board wanted the CVB budget to put more dollars towards our existing events and to lift them up higher than each individual event budget allowed. Right now we've got eight eight events that have applied for it. There's a footer on our website that applies for the, or that asks you to apply for the event amplifier program. So we just, we boost their events.

We've actually put them on Star Tribune. They did this for us.

So we put the eight on Star Tribune. They sent it out to 100,000 emails as an event listing. And they gave us a heat map back. So advertising in the Star Tribune is more expensive than advertising on Meta or the Facebook boosts, what have you. But we get more for our dollars. We know where people are coming from. We know where they're going. And so you get more for your dollars when you advertise with Star Tribune.

And they're telling us...

after each event, they're going to geofence each event, and they're going to tell us who was there and where they came from, which is a nice little perk. So we're going to feed them all the events we possibly have this year and get that information back to us, and we can market to more of the same with that information. These are just some examples of where we're helping existing events to boost performance.

There's a lot of events in Northfield. I'm sure you guys know that. But we've got a lot of big ones coming up, too, including the Vintage Band Festival, which is the last weekend. It's a four-day weekend, and it is their 50th, I think, right? I think Dan Bergeson said that it's their 50th. 20th, sorry, thank you, 20th. We've got the 20th on that. We have 150th for the Historical Society, 75th for the WMA, 250 for America. There's all sorts of, 100th for the ARB. So yeah, there's a lot of events going on. We also have, we got awarded to do the first pitch at the Saints game as well on July 22nd. So we're going to, for Northfield Day. Yeah. Yep. So we get the first pitch and there's some interviews along with that. That's all free. That's through Explore Minnesota as well. There was 11 DMOs that were able to get that. So that will be fun. It's time. Okay. It's time. Okay.

It is time.

But we're not done.

Two more pages, maybe. The pheasant hunt opener is coming October 9th and 10th. There's so much to it. Lynette is heading up one of the Friday night event, the community event where everybody is invited. We've got media tours lined up on Friday. We've got the hunt lined up on Saturday. We've got a bunch of community partners and we could use more. Looking for spokespeople, we're looking for sponsors. It generates statewide exposure, positive media. We're expecting 30 to 50 media folks to come to town and tell their stories from what we feed them to talk about. And there's a lot to talk about. Examples of other communities, what they've done, it's just, it's all blaze orange. It's not red. It's not blue. It's all blaze orange that weekend. I think it's, okay, but I do want to say that we had a CVB meeting this afternoon. It went really, really well. We did not have a full board, but it's still a lot of really good information was shared. I am supposed to ask you. Can we declare a vintage week during the week of the band festival? So think about that one. Dan Bergeson is asking for the whole band festival, 20 years, four-day event. And Tracy Vracek is on the board, and she owns Chapel Brewing, and she's seeing our ads. She lives in St. Paul. She's 50 miles out. We are popping up on her feed. So that is just good to hear, that we are popping up 50 miles and out. Questions? There we go.

Thank you. Are there questions from the council? Councillor Holmes.

Yeah, I have a couple questions, but I'll just start and then let others go. This information that was handed out in the folder about the campaign takeaways, is this Northfield specific about geofencing? All right, okay. I don't think, I just wanted to clarify that, so I will pause there and come back with a couple more questions in a minute.

Other questions? Councillor Peterson-White.

I have a few questions. First I want to say I really appreciate getting the extra data analytics here. And I may have questions after I read all of that. My first question is how did you, what tools did you use to estimate the employment and wages?

I talked to AI, and I went through the list of, I literally read our visitor guide, how many restaurants we have, how many bars we have, how many coffee shops we have, estimated the amount of employees in each, and that's what it came up with. I asked it to prove it, and it gave me a grid of people, of an estimated amount of employees in each category.

So have you, like, reality checked that against what else we know about the Northfield economy and wages and employment? Or did you ask the AI, like, what its sources were?

Well, yes. Yeah. I mean, it went through... SHOW ME state, I'd be more than happy to bring the whole conversation in, because it was a back and forth. It was prove it to me, because it estimated anywhere from $12 to $14 an hour for employees in retail, $10 to $12 per hour for employees in restaurants and coffee shops. $40 to $50 an hour for supervisors and managers in various positions. I have the grid.

Okay. I mean, I would just say, like, I don't know what those numbers are based on, but compared to my anecdata, they're, like, wildly inaccurate. So I'm not trying to give you a hard time about the AI. Like, I love AI, and I think it's useful. Well, I don't love it, but I think it can be useful for these kinds of things. I have deeply mixed feelings about it, as do many of us. Could I finish? Thanks. I just, I think that if we're kind of presenting numbers as if they're analytical related to how taxpayer dollars and visitor dollars relate to our local economy, I just want to understand what is behind that. There are economists who study this kind of thing, who in fact work for University of Minnesota Extension along with Explore Minnesota. So there are, perhaps those are the data sources, but we don't know. At least I don't, maybe you do. But I would like to know more about that. So maybe you can send me some more on that to look at. And I think that if we're kind of presenting this at a public meeting as if it's fact, it's really important to me and to my constituents that we kind of know what the basis of that is so i will bring you yep that would be great share all that Um, my next question is, so it's really great that you're looking at like the QR code results when you're running print ads. What are you learning from that?

Are you like, I'm super curious what the, I mean, there's a formula for it actually. So our consultants, especially Jackie, so there's, there's a whole formula actually for, um, how many views it is, and it's a whole conversion thing, and I can send that to you also. I don't know it off the top of my head, but there is an actual process of how many clicks that has been on that versus what you pay for. So let's just say a magazine. There's 500,000 prints that go out to 10 different states, and we got so many views from that QR code, there's a whole thing on that, so...

And then you presumably can figure out like how much you're paying kind of per eyeball or whatever.

Yeah, almost like per click, but per scan. Per view, scan, whatever.

Correct, yes. That's great. Love that. It's so hard to know what's working in terms of marketing, but maybe less hard now than it used to be. And I really appreciate the awareness of AI in how you're approaching advertising and really focusing on the website content. I think what I'm hearing in terms of marketing and how that's evolving with people looking for things that they're interested in and places to go in particular is that social media is going to be less and less important to those AI search results. because it's hard for the large language models to access it. And so I love hearing that you're focusing on getting more, you know, making sure the content on the website is really current. I love the event stuff that you have going on there and that like whole model of kind of, you know, giving local events a boost in certain ways seems like a great way to generate content for the website that will then, you know, feed the machine sort of, if you will. I have a couple other questions too, but I'm curious what other folks have to say.

I had a follow up question on your question about the workforce slide. So when I read that, I wasn't clear if it was hours or employees or there were numbers, but it didn't tell me what the numbers meant. Yeah, humans, so I get, yes. Great, that was unclear, so thank you. Councillor Holmes.

I'll kind of follow up that question to the, you had the Minnesota tourism information in there that talked about workforce, total visitors, job supported, right? And then the state and local tax generated visitor spend. What I would love in the future would be a way to have that information, particularly about the state and local tax, not state and local tax, the taxes generated or the visitor spend specifically to Northfield on what we can track from these things, in addition to the workforce information, because that's really helpful. But I think we also, what's probably more pressing for folks in the community is, okay, what does this actually, what do all these visits bring in? Because we've gotten lots of back and napkin things from when we were doing the ice arena and different things so anything that we can get to get a little harder and more um more specific and targeted data on that for us outside of just minnesota but for us for northfield i think would be really helpful

So we have Lisa Velka. She's amazing. She's our southern Minnesota rep with Explore Minnesota, too. So she actually spoke at our hospitality awards, too. So I can maybe forward that slide to you guys as well. That kind of coned in a little bit more on Rice County and Northfield. I don't know if it's got all the answers to your questions, but yeah, good. Good advice.

I have one more. Not necessarily a question, but it's a I can't help myself with the line of work that I do when I see like goals and strategic initiatives. What I think would be what I would encourage the board to look at is to get more specific and measurable with those goals, because a lot of it's increase this, increase that. And it's like, to what end, right? To what end do we want to have out of state conversions? Like, what are, what are we, where are you actually like putting stakes in the ground and like actually putting something to try and achieve it beyond just increase? So, so I think, you know, what does that look like when we're going out of state and what kind of How will we measure that? What information will we get if we're really targeting South Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa with the states that you had listed there? Like, okay, so then what do we really want to see from that so that we can measure it? And I think, too, the collaboration, one, was a little loose to me in terms of getting more assets from the community and helping the businesses. And so I was like, hey, how much... can you get more specific about how you're going to help the businesses, what that's going to translate into, and how we'll be able to see the time, energy, and money you put into this paying off. So that's just my recommendation to maybe help get those to be a little more strategic. And that's something that I think every time we've had discussions about our strategic plan, I've brought up those points in the four years that I've been on council. So I think it's just a drum that I like to beat a lot.

Smart goals. Thank you. Yes. Yep, yep. Okay.

Thank you. Councilor Peterson-White, did you have another question?

I have a comment. Is that okay at this point? I'm responding to this because Jane asked for feedback on the draft logo. Yes. I just want to be really straightforward and say I think we're seeing a huge proliferation of AI-generated advertising images. And I think people really can smell it a mile away. And I think that even if they don't exactly know, they can tell it's sort of not authentic. And I think that's the real risk of using a tool like that to create something like this when we have a community full of designers and artists. Right. And in fact, when the city has actually generated like a really, you know, we paid a consultant to generate a really rich set of documents that have design guidelines that would, I believe, get you like 90% of where you need to get to without ending up with this sort of thing that looks very, very AI generated. Right. And like when personally, when I see things like this online, I just I think as a huge fan of Northfield and someone who spends a lot of time talking to people about what they love about Northfield, authenticity is really at the top of the list. And I think it's really important that when I see you saying you want to elevate the brand by creating more assets, I don't know if this is the kind of asset you're talking about or what asset means in that context. I think if elevating the brand of Northfield is the goal, then the materials and images and things that are generated and used, for me as a local business owner, as a policy maker, as someone who pays lodging taxes, that really needs to reflect Northfield's values. And one of those really big values and strong qualities is authenticity and the arts and it just it to be honest it just feels really kind of artificial well yes it feels artificial but also like if I were one of the many talented designers and artists in Northfield I would be very put out to see this Right? So, and I know that AI is incredibly useful for so many things. I think that generating creative work is something that, in my opinion, humans will continue to be better at. And I hope that you'll keep that in mind, especially as, like, the CVB's role is to bring in visitors, but ideally to do that by representing the actual qualities of Northfield. And I would like to see more intentionality in that, I guess, because this seems to me like, I mean, I know you know, I mean, you presented it as a draft, right? But like, I don't know where it's going that's gonna get better, to be honest. So, and there are, just when the community is rich with resources to do this, in a real, better, meaningful human way. And I hope you will avail yourself of those resources.

I agree 100%. Ben had asked too last week about this. It was simply to get us moving forward to a joint resemblance of the N, the new logo. This was only for this presentation and we talked about it at the CVB meeting today about who should we bring in? Who should we, which local artist, which local brand developer should we bring in? So exactly that. This is, I like the idea behind this. I like the Ames Mill. There's a lot I like about it. We fully intend to bring in somebody local to actually do it using the color charts, all the palettes, all the font information that's in the packet from the original brand designer. So, yeah.

May I just follow up? I would just say, like, none of that is signaled by including this image in your presentation. And it's like, if all of that is the case and that has been the plan, I don't know why we're looking at this now. Because it is, it's not nothing, it's on the front page of the presentation. And it's not just like in a private memo, it's in the city council meeting. And we've got creative professionals in the community who are probably watching. And so I just, I, I hope that you will view this aspect of your work as a very serious thing and not... I mean, obviously it should be fun also, right? But I think the... if indeed this is not at all representative of where you want to go, or if it's like you intend to actually not have AI do it, this doesn't represent any of that, right? So it will be confusing to the public and is not necessary to include here. So thank you.

All right, thank you.

Thank you. I also appreciate the additional information that you shared with us, and we'll look through that later. So thank you very much. I think it just did. Yeah, thank you. Next up is approving our consent agenda. So those should be coming up on the screen shortly. The consent agenda is a list of items that we approve with one motion. So I'm looking for a motion to approve the consent agenda. Councilor Ness?

I'll move the consent agenda.

Councilor Soka?

Second.

All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Consent agenda passes. Next up is reports from the mayor and council members.

We had a 911 meeting earlier in the month and found out that the delay that we're moving the center from Owatonna to Faribault is going to be extended out about another three months because of some phone equipment again. Hard to run a 911 center without a phone system. So they have to wait for that. And as soon as that gets there, that's about all that needs to be done. But went to a chamber morning mingle at BelieveVet, the dog training for veterans. Amazing company. that they've started and they do a lot of good. And as Jane mentioned, we had a CVB meeting at noon today and that was pretty much what we talked about so I won't go there. And one other little advertising, the History Center's 50th birthday party is Monday the 22nd at Loon Liquor. There will be a silent auction of various things, so everyone's invited.

Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Peterson-White.

I don't know that I have any meetings to report on since I last reported, but I guess I would just... let everyone know it's been an incredibly busy few weeks in downtown Northfield with all the college-related events and transitions and things happening, and that's been fun and great to see. It's been great to see Division Street festooned with pride flags and then American flags for Flag Day. And for those of you who may not have seen the announcement, I think I hinted at, maybe, I told people a little about this at my last report, but Erica and I both, I'm sorry, the mayor and I both represent the city on the Hiawatha Land Transit kind of regional board, and we're working with them this summer to provide free rides to the pool. for kids or grownups, and they're running, and I just wanna say kids or grownups because grownups also like to go to the pool, but also because I would not necessarily have assumed that I could put my kid on the bus, but you can. You can totally just put your kid on the bus on Hiawatha Line Transit, and they will take your kid to the pool. It's running, I believe, five days a week, starting yesterday, right? Is that right, Ben? Dave? Dave. Sorry. Fill me out, Dave, with the actual data. That's my right question, yeah. I think it was yesterday, yep. It's running five days a week from like early afternoon from four different locations around town that are all like pretty high density housing areas and going to Memorial Park where the pool and the skate park both are. And then it'll take people home at five o'clock. from the pool so i'm really excited about it it's like a pretty a very modest investment on the part of the city to do this pilot hiawatha land is splitting the initial chunk of the cost with us and um so please help spread the word i think it's a really exciting thing um for kids to be able to get to the pool easily in the summer so thanks thank you counselor soak up

Thanks. I was unable to attend the Mill Towns Trail meeting and Councillor Dahlin isn't here tonight, so I'm wondering if Mr. Mardeg would give that update, but I just wanted to flag that. I don't have any other updates. Do you want me to do that now?

Sure. Okay. Yeah, they did not have quorum. They were close, but We went through a few project updates with Scott Haugen related to the Dakota County work. They're currently looking at some highway improvements and that the part of the right-of-way would be used for the Milltowns Trail potentially on that. Then they're looking at the other segment to connect to Billsby. So that's probably one highlight on the Dakota County side. I did volunteer for the city to help with the group to get a little more organized for the next meeting in September. Councilor Dahlin volunteered to assist with that and they also recommended that Commissioner Malika with his history as well. I've been in communication with the fair boat representative who's currently taking on there. We rotate responsibilities of like the meeting management. So I'm in communication with them. And so I'm looking forward to helping that group maybe activate a little bit more for their upcoming meetings and lights and fires on quorum. And we had other people that weren't in attendance as well. So I know that you weren't able to be there on that. But that's a short update on the Milltown's trail. But we should have more coming soon.

Thank you. Councillor Beamer.

Thank you. I don't have any updates on any boards, commissions, or anything like that, but I did, however, visit the worm race at downtown Bridge Square. But I'm not going to get too deep into it because I know the mayor actually participated with a racing worm.

I will share my results.

Councilor Holmes.

I have not attended any meetings but will on Thursday just a heads up and anticipation and what you can look forward to coming our way. The Zoning Board of Appeals is going to have a variance request or have a public hearing on a variance request from the Archer building. 13 feet is the variance they're seeking on the building there on the height and then following that the Planning Commission We'll have a public hearing on a conditional use permit for the Archer for the building of off-street parking. Also, this Thursday, if you want to, before you go to the zone or watch the Zoning Board of Appeals and Planning Commission, there's a third Thursday, the first third Thursday event downtown. And, yeah, that's all I have.

Thank you very much. So, yes, I helped kick off our summer reading program, the library's summer reading program. I was one of the celebrity racers with my worm. My worm, Loli, from the Richard Scarry books, was defeated by librarian Natalie Draper's worm. Shi Hadid from Dune. So I do think that's kind of fitting that the Dune worm defeated Lowly. And then there were also two police officers there with their worms that they didn't even, I don't think they placed, but they did a great job. They didn't let the worms out of the squad car. So, yeah, it was a great event. And, yeah, to all you summer readers out there, I hope you have a great summer reading experience. So, well, that will move us on to our regular agenda. And the first item is our sale of general obligation street reconstruction bonds. And Mr. Bennett will kick that off.

Mayor, members of council, so before you is a resolution for the sale of general obligation bonds. I think really good news from, so back in January we set the amount at 4.75 million for the project really not to exceed related to the bonds amounts. So there's three projects, really.

Mr. Bennett, are we supposed to be seeing anything on our monitor other than the Convention and Visitors Bureau?

No, if we can go to the staff input, let's see it up here. Oh, okay.

We're seeing now something's happening. Thank you.

So we have the Jefferson Parkway, Mill and Overlay, the Prairie Street. So that's the primary larger project. And then we also, not bid yet, but we do have really the projects that are tied to the railroad and future quiet zone. So closing and dead ending of Spring Street and then the Fremont Avenue, constructing the medians are the primary projects. Also, in combination with bonding, we also supplement the projects with franchise fees, utility funds, and then we also, so from the bids this year, so bids were very favorable on the 2026 street project came in around $700,000 below the estimate. And we're also able to leverage dollars from the state bonding to put more towards this. So we've been able to lower the proposed bond issue from that 4.75 to the 3.35 million. We worked with Ellers, our financial consultant. It's proposed to be structured as a 15-year levy repayment. They have an estimated interest cost of 3.74. So then the annual debt service with the 105% would be 312,000 roughly. The city is with the street reconstruction and overlay bond when we moved away from the street assessments, this does go towards the city's statutory debt limit. The current city's debt limit is a little bit over $72 million and it's based on the estimated market value of taxable property within the city three percent of that and the current outstanding debt that the city has is forty seven point six million so we have 21 million roughly remaining in capacity so as debt falls off new debt comes on related to a lot of our capital and our projects and that's something that we we work with Ehlers and we monitor that debt schedule So really the action tonight for council is to authorize the sale. The sale would occur on January 21st and be brought that evening to council for consideration and award. And then the closing would be August 13th. Any questions?

Yeah. Are there any questions from the council? All right. Would anyone from the public like to weigh in? All right, then I would be looking for a motion. Councilor Sokup?

I'll move Resolution 2026-060. Thank you. Is there a second?

Councilor Beamer? I'll second. Discussion?

I don't have a whole lot to say. It's great news, and I'm thankful to the staff for all the work.

I also appreciate the work that went into getting this down to a lower number, so thank you. All those in favor signify by, oh, sorry, did you have a, Councilor Ness.

Just a comment.

Yes, please.

Thank God for not having to do the old system. That was a nightmare. And I appreciate all the work that gets done on this new one, so.

Yeah, Administrator Martink.

Maybe the old system that he's referring to is when we did the special assessments under the city's 429 referencing state statute. It was a very cumbersome process that goes through, and I think it was very frustrating for all. So those counselors who didn't have that experience, we can offline talk about what that was like, if there's ever a thought to go back to that, because I think it definitely has its challenges.

I think it's also worth pointing out the impact that the two different systems have on our debt. If anyone would like to jump on that.

Thank you mayor members of the Council. I think we're working on a little more detailed memo and information to come back with that. But at a high level, when we talk about the statutory debt limit, 1 of the big differences related to the state debt limits that are scheduled is that the 429 process that we used to be under was all exempt from any statutory limit. So. typically cities that are doing special assessment projects, which I'm guessing is still probably the majority of communities out there. Those are all exempt from that statutory debt. So we are paying more attention to that debt limit going forward and more as as to whether we might ever hit that ceiling or not. I don't believe it's a good proxy for what is your appropriate amount of debt to carry. I think that's a separate conversation. So we're in conversations with Nick Anhut to help provide some additional background information related to that. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate that. All right. All those in favor of Resolution 2026-060 signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. Next up is a resolution, consider a resolution modifying central business district short term parking and handicap accessible parking. And Mr. Bennett, are you kicking us off on that one as well?

Mayor, Ms. Council, so I'll kick it off and then Scott will kind of weigh in on him and his staff was down doing interviews with businesses, so he'll share some of the takeaways with that. So really building off of really our discussion with Council on May 12th, we've really focused on Division Street and really a more uniform approach to the short-term 20-minute parking and the handicap accessible parking stalls. so we've looked at really the from a short term looking at like the centralized within each block on division so we would what was existing there were seven stalls existing on the west side where the angled parking is we're proposing to increase that by three stalls there would be 10 total and then on the east side in the parallel so there would be so that would that would be two stalls on the west side and then on the east side would be one stall per block So that'd be an increase of two. So total increase of short term 20 minute stalls of five is what is being proposed. In terms of the handicap parking, really it's about the location and the location is best on the where the ramps are for the users to get up. So that's really at the beginning and at the end of the blocks. So on the west side on the angled parking, there's currently seven handicapped stalls. A proposed increase would be to go to 10, so that's one on each end of each block. So it would be three more. And then the same on the east side. It's really when you're going northbound on the east side, where the peril is, it would be the first stall on your northbound approach on the block. So it would be one stall per block. So there's only two currently on the east side, and this would increase it by three. So a total increase of six. Now, in the supplemental memo, there was proposed to add one more stall. There were two. NEAR KIND OF ON THE THE DIVISION AND SIXTH STREET INTERSECTION KIND OF BY THE BFW THERE WAS TWO THERE SO PROPOSED TO ADD ONE ON THE SIXTH STREET BLOCK SO THERE'D BE ONE MORE STALL AND THAT'S THE MAP IN THE SUPPLEMENTAL MEMO So with that, I'll turn it over to Scott to share some of the input he received from the businesses.

Thank you. One of my roles or responsibilities as Community Development Director is really to try to incorporate, seek out and incorporate feedback from people impacted by some of the decisions to be made here. I'd say an ambitious goal we're having is to make sure we get that feedback before it comes to council and to make sure that you can hear that and have an informed perspective when making a decision. We sent out some staff to interview businesses with the draft that you're seeing in front of you of the parking changes. In a relatively short time, we were able to meet with 17 different businesses on Division Street that represented various areas, but also out of convenience of people who were available in a kind of one week turnaround. Overwhelmingly, people were positive about the new map. Some people either were positive or thought this won't change too many things, not a huge deal. The positives were really about predictability and consistency. That would be really good. We got a lot of feedback that it could be confusing because the spots are sporadically available throughout town and for a business owner to point to or direct people exactly where those spots should be, both for the 20 minute and the accessible stalls. People really advocated for updated clear signage to eliminate any confusion and a couple spots were pointed out that had paint but no sign or signs but no paint and so that would get updated now. And there's a lot of appreciation and gratitude that the new plan aligned with current infrastructure around curb cuts and some of the infrastructure that would need to be in place. A few concerns we heard, both related directly to this, but also for future discussion. There's concerns about enforcement and kind of the changing self-enforcement that people do downtown. And there's some comments that over the last five years, even kind of pre-COVID, post-COVID, there's a lot of comments that customers or people parking or visitors would self-enforce based on the two-hour, 20-minute stop. It seems that that's not as consistent anymore. And so there was a lot of people who expressed directly missing our CSO position and having some parking enforcement, recognizing that that was part of some budget conversations last year. And the other side of it was just maybe on a flip, there was some questions and concern just hoping from some businesses to see perhaps either data or some type of analysis to make sure as we increase accessible stalls that those are being utilized and that we have we've right-sized the amount of cells not just done a minimum or not just added them where we said they'd go on a map but making sure that those cells are utilized knowing parking is always a sensitive topic near downtown and then we also heard just general feedback that we'll bring up for other topics around some pedestrian concerns safety concerns and always if you bring up parking you're going to get a lot of insights and feedback and so we heard a lot about parking on side streets and specifically around bridge square that we'll incorporate into future policy decisions but overwhelmingly It was positive without any major concerns and we're excited about the map in front of you.

Thank you very much. Are there questions from the council? All right. Any public comment on this item? I'm looking for a motion then. Councilor Beamer.

Resolution 2026-061.

And a second from Councilor Peterson-White.

Second, yes.

Councilor Beamer, would you like to kick off the discussion?

Not a whole lot to say, but thanks. It appears as if everything is kind of how we discussed it in a previous meeting. So everything seems to make perfect sense, actually. So thank you for all your work.

Councillor Peterson-White.

Yeah, I'll echo that. Thank you so much. This is, I think, a really good reflection of our last conversation about this. And I really appreciate staff talking to some folks downtown about having an open-ended conversation that seems to have gotten you some useful feedback on a range of parking-related things in addition to this specific policy change. And I think it goes a long way for people to just not be surprised by it, right? And to just know that somebody stopped by and had a conversation. And I know we're not able to get to everyone, but any amount of that that we can do is really fantastic. I have also just had a lot of informal conversations with folks about this since our last council meeting in which we discussed it, because I was curious how it's working for people. some related conversations came up in conversations about you know getting better pedestrian access around the construction on the scriber building so and so that was all fruitful and interesting and I think this is moving in the right direction and I guess I would just echo that the the thing I really heard loud and clear is that the lack of parking enforcement is widely observed and as we all know, that was a budget consideration last year and we, I don't know that we necessarily had a detailed conversation about exactly what the loss of those, that position would mean for this specific aspect of life in downtown Northfield. But it's a very clear effect. And I, you know, I don't count how many comments I get as a downtown retailer from folks about not being able to find parking. I don't like have a tally that I keep. Probably there are some retailers who do keep a tally. Or who have been doing this for even longer than I have and so may have a stronger sense of how things have changed over the long term. But I do think that it's especially noticeable when we have a lot of visitors in town as we do in May and June that it's harder for locals and regulars to come do their errands downtown because the two-hour parking is theoretical, largely, at this point. I think there are more things we can do. I'm gonna keep talking about managed parking in downtown Northfield, because I really think it's very clearly the best solution for Northfield. I understand it's not in our strategic priorities right now, but every time we make a small change like this, we're affecting the whole the management the ecosystem of parking in downtown northfield and that is felt in a very immediate way by downtown businesses downtown residents people who are just walking around downtown enjoying the great outdoors, really notice all of these changes. And if we are not taking a comprehensive view in which we view the city as having a management role in the public parking, then we're not using it to its best effect. So I'm just gonna keep talking about that. So thank you.

Thank you. Other comments? I will just say I also appreciate the engagement very much, and I also appreciate the accessibility alignment with the curb cuts. I think that's something that's also important to lift up, the predictability of this model and the consistency and the clear signage. So thank you for bringing all those to us. All those in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. So the next item is Resolution 2026-062, a citizen petition for the preparation of an environmental assessment worksheet to be completed for the proposed Harvest Hills second edition development. And Mr. Wapita is going to kick this one off.

Give me one second, please.

Of course. We'll just bring up some more parking issues while you're doing that.

You only have two timeouts left.

All right.

And we're still seeing the Convention and Visitors Bureau. I don't know if that was some hack by the Chamber to just have.

And Ms. Peterson.

It was a good tactic.

When we switch, I'll switch to the podium for our presenter and then I'll take it back. So we'll be swapping screens and all that. All right, thank you. I'm going to give a quick overview. We have, there's an agenda item. We have a petition, a citizen's petition for consideration of an environmental assessment worksheet for Harvest Hills Second Edition. In terms of an order and kind of to carry the theme around engagement and feedback as we make decisions, we're going to provide, I'll provide a quick overview just to make sure we're grounded in what NEAW is. And then I'll invite the petitioner's representative, Jason Hill, who's here in attendance, to give some information, and you'll be allowed to kind of ask questions and get clarity from Jason. And then all our developers not here, so then I'll provide some staff overview, answer any questions, and we'll go to public comment at that point. So just basic overview. The idea of an environmental assessment worksheet is, and it's specifically a citizen's petition to require an environmental assessment worksheet, is a process that's managed by the Environmental Quality Board. I'll give more overview about what that is, but just in the grounding of this is Harvest Hills that we've been talking about both in preliminary plat and that planning commission and what you'll see at some point in the future, most likely a final plat. This is from a map perspective, this is just southwest of our middle school. And the project includes 71 units in its completion of workforce and affordable housing. This is what the kind of overlay of the units and the streets look like. And this is the approved preliminary plat approved by council. And so just an overview of timeline. Back in April, we had a public hearing notices that were posted. I was part of a neighborhood meeting along with Councilor Beamer on April 13th. There was a public hearing at Planning Commission on April 16th. Back on May 5th is when you as council approved the preliminary plat. And then on May 29th is the date that's just important for us to recognize that that's the date we received from the EQB as the Environmental Quality Board from the state. Notice that they had reviewed a environmental assessment worksheet petition and we're forwarding that to the city. We now have 15 working days to make a decision based on that May 29th notice. Today, we're reviewing that. And then just again, I'll talk more about it later. But this hat the EAW petition has to be decided upon by council before any final plat for development agreement comes in the future. And so right now, that's estimated to be in July. And I just wanted to make sure that was understood in the timeline. And so high level is just what goes into a citizen's petition. And so really this is a submission to the Environmental Quality Board. It has some basic requirements. One, that it has 100 signatures, which the EQB calculates to make sure that there's 100 signatures from community members on the petition and that the petition's application is filled out sufficiently. I just point this out as I know it can be confusing as I've had conversations with community members that the EQB does not do a preliminary review of environmental impact. There is not a statement about the validity of the concerns or the qualitative nature of it. This form has been completed in its sufficiency and there are 100 signatures. And that's really to set it back up to the city council then to say, hey, there's a petition here that's been validated. It is now upon you as the responsible government unit to make the decision about whether you should require or want to require an EAW on this project. And so the way that decision process is done from an EAW or a citizen's petition is the council needs to decide whether or not to require the EAW and specifically based on the material evidence presented in the original petition. A couple other things. We need to make a decision within 15 working days. So since that was received on May 29th, we have a few, we have this opportunity. It's defined as working days, and so those don't count weekends. We have a little bit of time to do this decision, but we do have one option, which would be to extend for an additional 15 days if that was the desire of the council. And then, as I mentioned before, we do have to keep this linear sequence that right now no other decisions about the project, such as final plot or anything else, can be decided during this timeline. And so one just set up here is there is a relatively narrow scope of your decision today, and it's really this. Does the project have the potential for significant environmental effects? There are in any project that starts involving a lot of voices into the conversation, we can think about a lot of different things we like or don't like about a project, but specifically around a citizen's petition for an EAW, this is the question we're answering. Does the project have the potential for significant environmental effects? And before I turn it over to our petitioner, this is from their application. Just to make sure we're narrowed on what the petition was naming, the specific environmental effect being addressed in this petition is safety, primarily of pedestrians, but also of motor traffic itself. And so our conversation will focus on pedestrian safety, quantity of motor traffic, vehicles. Sometimes I've heard in kind of the community conversations coming my way around, trees or water or some other things that are typically involved in environmental assessment worksheets that those aren't part of the petition in this case, it's purely focused on pedestrian safety and motor traffic. And so with that, I'll invite Jason Hill, make sure you're set up.

you're going to need to hit the one more button there you go now your mic is live you're good well okay well i don't know what i did but it works okay mayor's wife and city council members i want to thank you for the time and effort you put into helping northfield be as amazing as it is it's fun to just witness the presentations before this this is a wonderful and uniquely engaged community And I want to thank Scott for arranging this. Last week, Scott wrote to me to say, my hope is that this format honors the idea of citizens having direct access to decision makers, especially through a formal and recognized petition process. And I come here tonight in a similar spirit of respect and understanding. I see from the draft resolution that I have an uphill battle ahead of me tonight. However, I wouldn't be here unless I felt I had a pretty good chance of convincing you to initiate an EAW. Right up front, I want to reiterate, and Scott said this, that an EAW is about gathering actionable information, not gumming up or stopping the permitting process. Our petition requests an EAW specifically for the purpose of providing actionable information and mitigation options to protect pedestrians as a result of a significant increase in traffic. Turning to the petition itself. An EAW must be prepared when, because of the nature or location of a proposed action, there may be potential for significant environmental effects. Our petition addresses each of these criteria directly and includes empirical evidence in support. Motor traffic from 71 housing units DO YOU LIKE MY SKILLS OF GIS HERE WITH MY FINGER DRAWING THE NUMBERS? THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. THE PETITION ADDRESSES EACH OF THESE CRITERIA DIRECTLY. MOTOR TRAFFIC FROM 71 HOUSING UNITS WILL BE ADDED TO A CURRENT TOTAL OF 121, WHICH WILL FLOW THROUGH TWO NEIGHBORHOOD OUTLETS. This is a 60% increase in traffic. That is the nature of this. The location, also highlighted here in green, is also clearly stated in the petition. As evidenced in this map from the petition, it is right next to Northfield Middle School and Bridgewater Elementary School. And I might add, there are many high school students who walk or bike to school through these paths too. This is also where children walk or bike to four city parks. So both nature and location are satisfied in this. As for potential, also highlighted in green, it is significantly high. Residents of these new housing units will drive vehicles, they have garages, again leading to an approximate 60% increase in traffic. So potential, yes, and realistically, it's beyond potential. It's established that this is going to happen. Finally, this is significant. This is a nearly 60% increase in neighborhood traffic along pedestrian routes, which is a significant increase by any reasonable definition of the word. But importantly here, it is a significant environmental effect as defined by the criteria listed in part 4.4.10.1700 subparagraph seven by which you must judge this. Taken together, the must test is met. You must do this. I strongly disagree with the assessments in the agenda packet on these points as they neglect to directly address the points made in our petition. Scott, could you pull up the thing that the hyperlink please now and present that?

What I'm seeing here isn't, okay.

What I've already presented is more than enough to support an EAW.

Just a sec, we're not seeing that. We're still seeing the, no, I'm just kidding. Getting started is what we're seeing. We're seeing the getting started, there we go. Okay. There we go, okay, thank you.

What I've already presented is more than enough to support an EAW, but there is something else that in and of itself justifies an independent EAW. The central argument presented in the resolution concerning traffic finding effect point 15 that you have in front of you, states, quote, Fillmore Street is designated as Collector Street and the comprehensive transportation plan anticipated growth in traffic as development continues to the south. The current traffic volume on Fillmore Street is 710 vehicles per day, And with the proposed development traffic volume, Fillmore Street is well below the volume of a typical collector roadway in Northfield and can support this growth in traffic. But is Fillmore Street actually a collector street? Not according to the US Department of Transportation and MnDOT, it's not. In fact, it is a local road which supports far lower volumes of traffic. The map pulled up here from DOT is in support of that. If we could zoom in on that, Scott, maybe to the part around the middle school there. OK. You'll see that green is minor collector, and roads that are not highlighted are local roads. are local roads. And indeed, the findings of fact here show many other collector streets in Northfield and highlight those, Linden Street North, St. Olaf, Cannon Valley Drive, et cetera, that are shown on this map as minor collectors. but Fillmore Street is not a minor collector here. In fact, it is a local road which supports far lower volumes of traffic and is not intended for what is being proposed. I corresponded with staff at MnDOT and here's what they had to say. Quote, I was able to dig in a bit and the road has been a local road since at least 2016 and nothing I found indicates a change of request for an update to minor collector. This discrepancy can be found throughout the materials recorded in prior city council agenda packets. An independent EAW is needed precisely for this reason alone. I might also add that Fillmore does not connect to Roosevelt, as is stated in the findings of fact. It connects to Hayes, which connects to Roosevelt. Hayes isn't a minor collector either. Let me put this another way. Harvest Hills second edition has been moving forward with the significant misclassification of a road indeed two roads that many neighborhood children must cross to go to school and All we are asking is for a simple form to be filled out. This form exists for a reason, to provide actionable information to mitigate environmental concerns. For a city such as Northfield that thrives on environmental data, which is a wonderful thing I might add, this lack of interest in an EAW seems out of character. It wasn't hard to get 107 signatures and honestly it wouldn't have been hard to have gotten 100 more. We only needed 100 to initiate this and time was of the essence. The petition includes those who support the development and those who oppose it vehemently. I spoke with a whole range of people on their thoughts on this. But regardless of their position on the development itself, those I spoke with simply can't understand, and I can't either, why an EAW isn't being prepared given the significant nature of this project. You actually have a lot of people's support in the development and in sustainable housing in general, but we are baffled why more isn't being done to ensure the safety of the kids in this area. And EAW is all the more important given the discrepancies in road classification and connections that I mentioned earlier. This is a real opportunity for you to exercise your power to protect our city's current and future citizens and to take to heart the real concerns of the communities being affected by this, which is all we petitioners ask.

Thank you. If you'll hang out there for a sec, we'll see the count. Does the council have any clarifying questions for Mr Hill? Councilor Holmes.

Thank you. Um, the petition asks for material evidence and all we got was, uh, references back to our meetings and our agendas. Is there any other material evidence that you had or is there anything, I guess I'm still looking for something that proves environmental impact

We provided environmental impact. Environmental in the EAW worksheet includes traffic effects. It's considered an environmental effect. So for us to have restricted our request simply to effects of traffic and safety is entirely within the scope of EAW. We provided exhibit one, the map here that is included. And the wording in the petition states that, let me find this right here, just a second. There is, I can't find it immediately, but there is a statement that says information included otherwise known, otherwise, so it could be direct evidence presented in here, which we included with the map and the text, or evidence otherwise known to the, oh, what is it, the initials here, whatever you are, the EGW or whatever it is. or otherwise known, and in my discussions with the staff at the Environmental Quality Board, your agenda and your agenda packets are classified as otherwise known to you. So they were included here in addition, they were attached to the petition, but they also qualified as otherwise known to the council.

Great, thank you. Other questions? Yeah, for the petitioner. All right, thank you.

Thank you.

And now, Mr. Wappa, did you say you wanted to speak on the developer's behalf or not in their proxy or are we going right to you as another staff?

Right to me as a staff, please.

So if we go back to the staff input, put it in presentation.

My director of public works is gonna help me for a second, please.

I'm enjoying looking at the line of directors over there.

I could present from up there if I need to. Probably feels inappropriate to give a round of applause, but thank you, Director Bennett.

I was going to pick up where I left off.

OK. So just thank you to Jason Hill for presenting and, again, taking part in this democratic process. I just want to kind of come back to I know in my discussions often we get outside of the scope and so just to center this back on does the project have the potential for significant environmental effects is where we're focusing on. And here are a few additional facts that I think are important in terms of the council weighing its decision. One of them being The project just specifically does not fall within the category for mandatory environmental assessment worksheet that's defined as 100 to 150 housing units. The reason there's a range is there's like this formula you have to do whether they're attached or detached 100s on the low end 150s on the high end, we're at 71. A little bit less if you do the calculus, but I didn't want it to come away as me trying to do some backhanded kind of calculus. And so I'm just giving you the actual language. So we're far short of that. The Minnesota Department of Transportation does provide recommendation for municipalities, like if there is no EAW required, MnDOT does recommend a traffic impact study, which is to some extent a subsection of an EAW, for developments creating 250 peak hour trips or 2,500 daily trips. As has been discussed and is in the finding of facts, this development does not generate that much and so we have guidance on when we should be doing an EAW or a traffic impact study. We have guidance that we are not triggering an EAW and we have guidance that even on a subset just looking at just traffic, we also have guidance that we should not be triggering and do not trigger environmental assessment or a traffic impact study. I will point out, and maybe to Councilor Holmes' line of questioning, there hasn't really been new material evidence presented in the petition for consideration. I think it's really important that we have the petitioner share the insights and certainly open that up to questions. But just from the facts of how I'm managing this EAW, those are not part of the petition in itself. Additionally, I think this is important language as I've reviewed exactly how do we walk through this process. There is really specific statute language around allegations of vague or generalized fears and concerns are not sufficient under the statute to then give guidance to a government unit or the city council to require that an EAW based on these were really again grounded in a decision that's grounded in facts and evidence as presented both in the petition and specifically around the development and so i'm not going to go through all the facts i think the packet both the memo provided by the city attorney and then the actual resolution provides 29 findings of fact I'M JUST SUMMARIZING THESE IN CASE YOU WANT TO ASK SPECIFIC QUESTIONS ABOUT THEM SO I CAN PUT THEM IN CATEGORIES. BUT FACTS ONE THROUGH NINE REALLY JUST DESCRIBE THE PROJECT AND ITS SPECIFIC ALIGNMENT WITH CITY ZONING, ORDINANCES, POLICIES, PLANS AND GOALS. 10 AND 11 IS REALLY DEFINING THE PETITION AND THE LANGUAGE FROM THE PETITION. FINDINGS OF FACT 12 THROUGH 9 START GETTING INTO SOME STATUTE LANGUAGE AROUND THE TYPE, EXTENT, REVERSIBILITY OF ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS AND As discussed, specifically, I think, number 15 discusses the 710 vehicles per day currently on Fillmore, and we can invite further questions about that, but from staff's assessment, that is far below the capacity of Fillmore, and in comparison to other streets, again, and the idea that does this generate an undue or significant environmental effect, and we don't feel that it does, and that data is laid out. The rest of these really, this cumulative potential effect are in facts 20 through 23, 24 through 26 talk about mitigation, and again, these are requirements of the EAW decision process, so I'm just putting them back in front of you, but the specific language is in the resolution. Number 27 specifically has to address the extent that the RGU can anticipate these effects or control them, and then they're summarized again in 20 and 29. So again, I'll invite questions about that. But I think the other just update that is very related but tangential to the EAW is throughout this process for Harvest Hills as a topic, we've been talking a lot about staff's desire to address the concerns we've heard from neighbors. And so staff have been out and there's been pedestrian and traffic counts collected for multiple days, specifically in May, both on school days and non-school days to get a good understanding of the data. And in that normal process that we've managed and communicated, we are assessing that data and when we get to final plot we'll be suggesting based on that data what type of interventions whether they're traffic calming measures or other pedestrian improvements would be required or would be suggested from staff as part of that area based on the pedestrian traffic counts and so again just ending on the narrow scope that's all i have to share and now we're open for questions are there questions from the council councilor holmes

I don't know if this is appropriate or not. Is it appropriate to ask a question about past history of this land and area in terms of like previous development here? Okay. Sure. Um, so harvest hills one, was that what it was called? Um, now this harvest hills too. Okay. Uh, it had 121 housing units, so presumably bigger, more, more people, more cars. When that went in, was there an EAW done for that development?

Not from my understanding for Harvest Hills phase one, which is just to the north of the proposed Harvest Hills phase two.

Okay. Other questions, Councillor Ness? Thank you.

I hate to throw this at you without Mr. Hood being online, but do you know if environment or environmental is in the statute that defines what an EAW is?

Maybe you can ask, are you asking whether it's environmental or environment? Or are you asking?

No, just either of those definitions because this seems like safety and environment to me is not even close to the same. So I would just like to know if the statute that defines an EAW defines environment or environmental.

I think maybe to answer the question, provide abundant clarity is that traffic and pedestrian safety are part of an environmental assessment.

Yeah. Counselor Ness.

Follow up. But MnDOT defined that, correct? As part of an EAW, not the state statute.

When I say...

I know I'm getting legal, but...

When I said MnDOT earlier, that's a recommendation of when we would do a traffic impact study if an EAW isn't triggered. But a traffic impact study could be part of an EAW as well. You might just do a traffic impact study if specifically traffic was the only concern and breached a threshold that... If the traffic specifically breached a threshold, you would do a traffic impact study even if you weren't doing an EAW. But if you breached the EAW, then you may be doing a traffic study as a subset of that.

Thank you, I think. You're welcome, I think.

Councillor Peterson-White. Thank you. Can you flip back to your slide? Wait, wait, that was the one here. So I think this is really the meat of, well, there's plenty of things to talk about here, but this is my biggest concern about this petition, and I think staff have quantified the things that can be quantified about this, are in fact the things that are stated as matters of concern in the petition. All of those things can be quantified, as I understand it, though they may not be quantified in the petition. So I'm not commenting, I swear, I have a question. I'm just, I'm sort of framing it up here. So, you know, I think we heard the petitioner saying, you know, why not, like why wouldn't you Don't we want more information? And isn't Northfield a community where we want more information about how the environment is working and will work post-development? And it is a community where we want that, but we may or may not need an EAW in order to get that information. I think staff have stated really clearly that these things can be quantified because we know the number of units that will be built. I think it, I'm gonna ask you a question that I think I asked the last time we talked about this, but I'd like you to repeat the answer for the public because I think it's part of the, the use of the word fear here is really important. So we're taking a street, we're adding more vehicle traffic to it. this particular street, once this new, fairly easy to estimate amount of vehicle traffic is added to it, can you, either Mr. Bennett or Mr. Wapita or both of you, give us some ideas of other streets in Northfield that house children, where children cross to go to school, that are currently used for the new level of vehicle traffic that this street will experience?

Sure. Mayor, members of council, so I think some of them are really listed, too, under item 15. So we have 7th Street, St. Olaf Avenue has 2,100 vehicles. This road is even going to have proposed less at this time with the proposed development that's before you. 4th Street. has more vehicles um uh Greenvale has more traffic on that roadway. I could pull up my map, but I think that gives you a flavor of ideas. There's numerous local and collector roadways that have more volumes that are above what is even would be added to this roadway where we have people that live in homes or crossing these streets, reaching destinations very similar to this neighborhood.

May I follow up? Thank you, that's exactly what I wanted and thank you for putting it in the packet also. Can you talk a little bit about the steps that we're taking with street engineering to ensure pedestrian safety in those locations?

mayor members council so i think part of it is i think it's part of it is outlined in here i think one of it is our our land as part of our land development code and really how we want to see streets built in the community so it's you know it's not only for the vehicles but it's pedestrians bikes and making sure that we have those on new developments and they integrate well into the existing and transportation network, we're looking at key crossing locations where people are crossing where the destinations are, adding improvements to those crossing locations for safety. So those are all things that we're looking at through the platting process and as part of development and on our existing roadway network.

So this is kind of a follow-up to the question before that question follow-up. It was brought up when the petitioner presented about the local road designation versus the collector or minor collector. How important is the designation or is it more about the number of vehicles traveling on the road?

I think it's probably a combination of both. So we want to see what's currently going on with the current traffic volume on the road. What is the development and what's proposing? Look at how that compares to slimmer streets that are operating the context of the streets. and really what collectors are. Our transportation plan shows Fillmore Hayes as a existing and proposed collector all the way down to County Road 1. So when we look at our transportation planning and we're thinking in the growth areas, we're mapping out where these collector roadways are going to be that these local streets fill into. So that is in our transportation plan currently.

Yeah, Councillor Holmes.

So I'm looking at the actual EAW form that were to be presented. This is the questions here. And it says, if the peak hour traffic generated exceeds 250 vehicles or the total daily trips exceed 2,500, a traffic impact study must be prepared as a part of the EAW. So essentially, as I'm reading this, it's we're not hitting that threshold so it's it doesn't matter if it's a local road or a collector it's more about that that threshold am i correct in that reading that's correct okay thank you oh yeah go ahead Councillor. Okay. Then this is my last one in the sense of what we need to do and my read of all the materials that you presented for us in the packet. Um, thank you. That was very thorough. The, the, where I read, I can't remember where I read it. It might've been in the EQBs PDF, but it's important for us to balance the environmental impact versus the benefit of the project. Is that correct?

yes and that's partially why in the first handful dozen facts um we discussed the alignment with the city's comprehensive strategic plan land and zoning and everything our housing goals all right thank you counselor beamer thank you mayor um i'm gonna try and do this into one kind of a one two-part question and then i'll have a follow-up um

Where are we at with the traffic counts and pedestrian counts that staff was doing off of Fillmore? I know there was a traffic counters on Roosevelt as well. And can you tell us with that information what the traffic and pedestrian counts were like on school days and what they were like on non-school days?

uh members council so we're we're um currently preparing the recommendations from the traffic data collection so i'll have the summary in july but we will be able to share really school days non-school day weekend and you will be able to show the differences from a traffic May not have as much on the pedestrian on the weekends, but we'll be able to share some non-pedestrian school day to pedestrian school day information from that study. Did I get a second part of that? Got it all? Okay, thanks.

your follow-up counselor beamer thank you mayor um and as part of that of doing those counts was it was it not part of our direction to look into and this may be part of the results coming back to us uh potential doing a four-way stop with mark dinners with mark pedestrian crossings at carter and fillmore and then potentially adding a A stop sign versus a yield sign at Hazen Fillmore, and I'm trying to think if there was one other thing there that we had talked about. Oh, maybe a marked pedestrian crossing tying the trail from Tyler Park across Fillmore, I think was the other one that we were looking at.

I'm not prepared tonight. I'd say some of those items are going to be in the recommendation, but I don't have a final recommendation. We'll share that in July. But certainly some of those will be on there with the recommendations, just really on what's being observed out there with both Tradrat. With pedestrian, where they're crossing, what traffic is doing, and making sure that we make recommendations that'll provide safety for pedestrians and also keep good function on the traffic that's in the neighborhood.

Thank you.

Councillor Beamer. Thank you. So are we not essentially doing what the EAW is looking for us to do already? to some extent, maybe not the full extent, but you're getting traffic counts, you're getting pedestrian counts. We're also talking about potentially doing intersection improvements, which I will be very adamant about, just throwing that out there right now, because I do live in the neighborhood. So that's, I guess, my real thing is, I mean, we're kind of already doing a lot of what the EAW was wanting. Am I correct in saying that?

Uh, mayor's counsel. So I would say yes. Um, a lot of the, it really gets back to the EAW would really get into the traffic. It would get into the counts. It would be looking at peak, peak review of intersections, looking at enters if there'd need to be modifications in there. So we're, we're gathering some of that information, um, with, with the stuff. So we're going to have some, some of that, um, as part of this.

If I may, I think the way we framed this at the preliminary plat conversation was really selecting the right size tool based on the gravity and scale of the concern. We have direct guidance on when we would pull a really big tool out, a hammer or a sledgehammer with an EAW, and we have when that would be necessitated. Scaling down a little bit, just doing a focused traffic impact study, we have data of whether that was necessary. And to your point, I think what we've done and the way we've staged this is we're going to right-size the approach to study specific things and suggest specific improvements based on actual data that's actually observed in the actual community. And so we're not doing any AW, but we are doing essentially the correct scaled version of something based on the actual traffic counts generated by the development.

Thank you. Other questions from the council for staff? Is there anyone from the public who'd like to weigh in on this item? Then I would be looking for a motion so we can have our discussion.

Councillor Sokup.

I'll move Resolution 2026-062.

Thank you. And a second from Councillor Beamer? I'll second. All right. Councillor Sokup, would you like to kick us off?

Sure, thank you. I wanna start by thanking Mr. Hill and all the work that you put into collecting signatures and bringing forward the petition and for your presentation and your engagement with your neighborhood. I think your concerns are really valid. I think the slide that, Councilor Peterson, white kind of raised up, is still in front of us. For me, I would be asking, without the context of the tool and when it's necessitated and all the options we have besides that tool at our discretion as a government body and a city, in general. I would also ask the question, what's the big deal with doing an EW? Why wouldn't we just do it? I agree with staff that the route that we're going and the information we're gathering is right-sized for this development and for the neighborhood and its impact. And then I also just wanna recognize that there are, as Councilor Holmes kind of alluded to, there are trade-offs that we weigh as a body For me, the trade-off to adding housing in Northfield is that there will be increased traffic. And I think that the steps that we're taking to mitigate that as much as possible, but also I think that those those things are adequate, in my opinion. And I think the trade-off to adding what I think is a needed housing development in Northfield, I'll leave it at that. The trade-off is that it will generate more traffic in a neighborhood that is dealing with a really specific traffic problem, especially in terms of school traffic and drop-off. So I just wanted to say thank you for your engagement and your commitment to making sure that we're checking all the boxes. I think we may continue to disagree on if those are the right boxes, but I just appreciate your thoroughness and your commitment to your neighborhood. But I'll be voting in favor of moving forward without an EAW.

Thank you. Councillor Beamer.

Thank you, Mayor. If I start to get a little too windy, just kick me under the desk or something. First of all, Mr. Hill, thank you for putting the miles on to get the petition signed, because I took a look through the signatures on there. I even have a couple of relatives that have signed it. And I know the distances that you probably had to travel to get those signatures just by looking at it. The big thing I want the public to know is that this isn't one of those scenarios like a couple of years ago where there's really... some, it appeared to have been some loophole that was found and made the petition invalid. The petition's recognized. The petition was validated and the thing we need to look at is doing the EAW legally warranted and Staff doesn't seem to think so. City attorney doesn't seem to think so. By the criteria laid out for the EAW, it really doesn't appear that it is. The thing that keeps coming back to me is, you know, two years ago, I knocked on the majority of the doors up in that neighborhood, my neighbor's doors. And everything I heard from my neighbors is that the city needs to get spending under control, the city needs to get spending under control. Well, I know that we have extra dollars stuck into this. We're probably going to stick some extra dollars into this already. Staff time, that's extra dollars because there's other things that staff could be working on if they're not working on this. If we were to approve this and move forward requesting the EAW, By my tally, we could be looking at upwards of $32,000 more expenses, plus staff time and everything else that would be included in there. As a reminder, $50,000, Ms. Engelstedt, correct me if I'm incorrect, but that's worth a half of a percentage point, a third, roughly, of a percentage point on a levy. for something that isn't necessarily warranted. And I kind of keep going back to a lot of the comments that I heard during the planning, during the public comments, during the planning commission, and a lot of the public comments that we've heard in some of the past meetings here. And those comments This is where I'm having a hard time with it. So I'm just going to call a spade a spade at this point. And this isn't necessarily about a safety thing. This is about a rental townhome thing. And it hurts that my neighbors would think something like that. And Mr. Hill, I see you shaking your head no, but we can roll the tapes back. The comments were made publicly. I've got emails from people stating the same thing. I've got text messages from people stating the same thing. And some of those people signed the petition. If this wasn't a rental townhome unit, project really begs me to ask myself if we would even be sitting here having a conversation about this right now and I guess that's one of the parts that that burns at me the most is that is to think that people actually think that way and I guess at this point I'm going to stop. And I think it's pretty apparent where I sit with voting on it. So thank you for your time.

Thank you. Councillor Holmes. Thank you, and thank you, Councillor Beamer, for those comments. I think that I'll echo what Councillor Sukup and Councillor Beamer said in terms of the importance of the citizen engagement on this and the fact that it's... while the results might not be what the citizens who signed the petition want, it's not because we aren't listening. I think we are very deeply listening and trying to find the ways to understand what is happening here. And I think as I've dug deep into this, both when it came to the planning commission and since it's been with us here at council, have wanted to look and see and make sure that I am sure of where I stand on things and how I'm interpreting things. And I think to the point of some of the questions that came from counselors before and the answers that we received in that when I look at an EAW, there's a lot that goes into that, and there's a lot that isn't covered by this petition that is required, and a lot of it is around irreparable damage to the environment. And yes, there is a section on transportation, and I do believe the work that we are doing is really covering that and mitigating that, and that the Were we to get an EAW, I don't think we would have any new information that would change my mind from when we've seen this come to us, that there would be any information that would change how I view the project and what I think is, you know, if I think that there is significant negative environmental impact. So I feel like it's not a good use of the developer's time, our staff's time, our council time to move forward with that. I do join Councillor Beamer in making sure that we are following through with how we're looking at mitigation for traffic and creating a safe space. And as I questioned about the balance between the negative impact and the benefit of the project. I feel like this project is extremely beneficial to the community, bringing more affordable homes, hopefully for families who can have easy access to parks and the school, I think is absolutely critical. And I will not get in the way of doing that because as Mr. Wapata said, it really highlights what we've talked about in our strategic plan and our comprehensive plan. So I feel like this is, I am very much in support of the staff recommendation and will be supporting the resolution before us. Thank you.

Councillor Peterson-White.

Thank you. A lot of very wise comments made so far. I'll try not to repeat anything I agree with. Really everything that's been said and I, like everyone else, want to really underscore that as I, you know, I think Mr. Wapita really framed it up nicely that this is, you know, we really want to honor the the democratic aspect of citizen petition and people bringing forward a concern and I have immense respect for going to talk to your neighbors about things. It's something that I think is just incredibly valuable and I, in particular, appreciated hearing from the applicant, from the petitioner, I'm sorry, the petitioner that that he spoke to people who are supportive of this development as well as people who are not. And I think that that's the way forward for us as a society is to talk to people of a wide range of viewpoints and really listen to them and then to engage with openness and mutual respect in the democratic processes that we've laid out and this is one of those. And I appreciate the opportunity to participate in it and I appreciate everyone's petition signatures. I appreciate the effort to bring it forward. All that being said, I think the council in each of our discussions about this project have been very clear that we understand that this development will represent an increase in traffic. in this particular neighborhood. And that we have quantified that, we understand, we know what that impact is. It's not sort of nebulous, it's pretty clear what that's gonna look like. We believe that the infrastructure we have is sufficient to handle that. We believe that the result of those traffic levels will be very much within the community standards for pedestrian and vehicle safety. and very much aligned with what we see in many other parts of the community in terms of pedestrian and vehicle safety. And that is absolutely our job to address that, and it's the staff's job to address that when we are reviewing a development like this. An EAW, in my opinion, is just not the right tool for trying to make that happen. It is a tool for slowing down in development, though. And in addition to our role in ensuring that the community impact overall will be within our community standards in terms, like when we look at the traffic impacts, right? It is also our job, I believe, to to ensure that there are not unnecessary impediments to improvements to the community that are very much aligned with what we know we need. And in the last election and already in this election cycle, a very dominant theme in the community conversation is the need for affordable housing, the need for all kinds of housing. It takes many, many strategies to ensure that a community like Northfield can do better in terms of providing enough housing for the people who want to live here. And we have over the last, over my time on the council, 15 years, employed many strategies to try to move the needle on that. And it takes a lot of different strategies. But in my opinion, one of the most important strategies is to say what we want to have built and then not get in the way when someone wants to build that. to ensure that we have ways of addressing, for instance, in this case, these traffic concerns by quantifying them and ensuring that the infrastructure is sufficient to the task here and to the addition of housing in this neighborhood, while also ensuring that this developer who is coming to our community in order to build a thing we have said we want and need in our code, in our strategic plan, in all of our community documents, in our zoning, that we are facilitating that and not obstructing it. So when I hear the question, why not do an EAW, that's really why, is because I think in addition to having a responsibility for due diligence and review and ensuring that we have all the right data and information to assure our constituents and the whole community that this development is appropriate and the infrastructure is adequate to support it, we also have a responsibility to ensure that we are not unnecessarily obstructing the things, the creation and development of the things that our community very much needs. Which is why I believe that we should move forward with this. That's the biggest reason, why not to support an EAW? And I think it, you know, I've been through probably several EAW petitions in my time, I'm not counting, but, and I think that It makes a lot of sense to me that as a citizen and a petitioner, one would think, why not just do some extra review? But as Councilor Beamer noted, it costs money. And as Mr. Wapita noted, it takes time. And time and money are obstructions to the creation of these things that our community very much needs. So for those reasons, I will be voting in favor of this resolution. Thank you.

I will also be voting in favor of the resolution. I appreciate all of the information we have here tonight. For me, in particular, the state mandated threshold for an EAW is not here and the MnDOT traffic um out number of trips is not met for an eaw and i appreciate that staff has already taken steps to right size the tool that we'll use a focused traffic study and that they're already working on that and will be bringing us back recommendations so that for me those are the main highlights for not supporting the eaw

Just clarification. Just to make sure. A yes vote would allow the EAW and a no vote will reject it, correct?

No, I believe the way it's written is a yes vote is to decline the petition.

Okay, that's why.

Am I getting, is that correct? A yes vote is, yeah. Mr. Wapita, please say it in another way.

Yes, you are correct. mayor um so just to make sure we're clear the there was a request or a petition um to require an eaw the resolution in front of you if you approve the resolution is to deny the request and so it was written from staff that we felt that the preponderance of evidence was that it was likely to deny and looking at the findings of facts and so we prepared a denial resolution and so you would approve the denial resolution

Robert's rule likes it the other way.

I could see that going through your brain. You brought that up before. All right. So all those in favor of declining the petition for the EAW through Resolution 2026-062, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Okay. So we have our... ANSWER THERE, AND WE'LL MOVE INTO THE ADMINISTRATOR'S UPDATE.

THANK YOU, MAYOR, MEMBERS OF CITY COUNCIL. I THINK MR. WAPATA LOOKED AT ME BECAUSE I OFFERED TO HELP HIM THROUGH THE BUREAUCRATIC PROCESSES OF THOSE TYPES OF THINGS, LIKE RESOLUTION FORMATTING. I KNOW MR. HOOD WAS HEAVILY INVOLVED, SO I WAS PROBABLY LEANING ON THAT A LITTLE BIT, BUT I THINK IT FUNCTIONS FINE, AND WE'LL MOVE AHEAD WITH THAT ONE. The only update I wanted to give is that our investment committee did finally get together here. We had a little bit of delay getting going forward in the council, set that special group of three citizens that will be meeting with staff. Brenda Anglestead was there, outlined a kind of a proposed schedule. So today was only about agenda setting and a little bit of getting to know one another in our backgrounds. I would say as the weakest link on the financial people around the table myself. I think Brenda and I were pretty impressed with some of the qualifications and background of the individuals that got appointed. Certainly opened my eyes to some of their experience and expertise was pretty powerful. And I think also when they heard some of Brenda's background in private, nonprofit, and now governmental work too, including specific involvement in investments for Northwest Airlines when she was there, I think there was a lot of respect gained there as well. So I'm going to be along for the ride and working between those two to kind of navigate through that. we'll be scheduling another follow-up meeting. They were meeting as individuals to see if there's any other information they wanted gathered to come back. So we're looking forward to that work with them and then coming back to you once we get more progress made. If you did see too, like, I know I've had some people questions just again, so on our, calendar invites for the council's knowledge. I think I did send an email out on that too, but just as a reminder, if there's, cause we're still kind of testing that out, that whenever we do a public notice meeting, you are on that email list or should be. So if there's ever like different ways we can prompt it, if it confuses you and you think like, oh, is this a meeting for me? i'm also trying to like educate staff too that when they're scheduling it kind of explain what it is in the email because you and i get that email no matter what the event is and it might be helpful to know like oh is this one i need to attend or not so if you ever have any feedback on that i can help refine that feedback back to staff because we have multiple people that program those types of calendar invites so that's all i have this evening great thank you counselor ness

Move to adjourn. Thank you. Councillor Beamer.

I just thought I'd pause a little bit like last week. I know, like last week.

Okay. Second. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, thank you. We are adjourned.