Remarks by Patrick Keane
68 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 3
- Play at 18:50
“Yeah. Thanks. I really appreciate having both of you here and kind of sharing your experience, but also just representing the youth in Rochester. And so it's appreciated. Alex, I noticed when you did your summaries of your two cities, you talked about the Bavarian region or the Rhine region. Are those like states or what did you mean? Is that a cultural statement or what type of statement is that?”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 19:47
“Okay. And then I noticed you talked about the sustainability and the percent. I think you're talking electricity. One thing that I noticed is, and I've dealt with some of the German delegations that have come here, they do a lot more talk about biogases and things like that than we do. Is that a big part of their sustainability or is just one of the things that they just mentioned?”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 20:35
“I don't know who, I don't want to get into this too much, but is that mostly through organics?”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 20:43
“Yeah, okay. Because they are trying to do more of that in Olmstead County here and trying to get started on waste sorting. So there's good learning there. So thank you.”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 51:35
“Thanks. Yeah, I was kind of watching the, I think a lot of what we're talking about here has been awareness, but I noticed you also talked about access, and I'll call it equity, but that idea of financial, and Council Member Palmer talks about it. If I would go through here just as I would at home, just kind of flipping it, we're not looking for anything specific, I wouldn't pick anything out that this is something I can do without worrying about it. I noticed in Pipsqueak it does have the fees, but some of the other ones, it's really focusing on the awareness as opposed to the equity access…”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 54:39
“Okay. I really do like the idea of the books and this sort of thing arriving in the mail. I think people do have a tendency to flip through it. Similar to community ed comes, that's a little more dense, where this is a little more of just awareness and maybe the reading things would be good. I especially like to see the library stuff in here too, because I think at the end of the day, this, I mean, we talk about it as access to, you know, the parks and rec, but this is, in my view, this is like, we have all these things that are underutilized, including the library, and trying to make them…”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 56:41
“The last point I want to make, and I think this is a communication thing, is Council President Shubring pointed out, by the rec center, you mean RCTC. And I think there's a tendency for the experts to think everyone knows what they're talking about. Even here saying the rec center, it means something to me, because when I came, it was the Olmstead County Rec Center. But I think people right now call that 125. And I notice you have 125 in here, which is interesting because that is city space, but it's activated by another group. I did not know that Pipsqueaks was really a city park and rec…”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 1:12:52
“Yeah, I'll comment on this one just because I was around when we made these rules. I would support simplifying our budgeting and just having the higher level budget. One of the reasons is there are council members who end up, like President Schubert right now is on the League of Cities and may have more things. Council Member Miller is on a committee now with National League. And I think sometimes they're representing the city, but at the same time, it looks like they're going over the budget, supporting things that I think are good for us to be doing. So I think going back to the rules of…”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 1:21:35
“I think that if you go over the limit, you can pay for it yourself, and there's nothing wrong with that.”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 1:24:11
“And would it make sense for you to ask the City Administrator to check what appears that are not here and make sure, you know, what you bring forward has a chance of getting four votes?”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 1:24:29
“Yeah, this is different than, I believe it is different, because we did an ordinance.”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 1:24:43
“Yeah, that's why I'm saying it's, I'm trying to help the staff figure out what they would bring back, and I think we would want them to check with the other members.”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 1:33:43
“So I'm just kind of watching the discussion, but I have a couple of points. I think it's difficult talking about the mayor's assistant under the topic of council rules. I think we have to be careful of this, because I do think there's a separation there, and we can't make rules about the mayor's office as a separate elected official. It's also difficult separating out the current operations, the way they work, and what is... you know, transition in the upcoming couple of months. It's going to be different. And I think we should be prepared for that. As far as my take is that whatever that…”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 1:43:25
“I guess I'll comment. I did read it. I was kind of, my notes were about the staffing model. I was thinking more what Mayor Norton was talking about, what our interactions are there. And I think that, again, is probably best handled through best practices more so than through council rules. That'd be the thing about, you know, can we nominate people for certain things like that? And I think we can. It's just more informal and not through our rules. As far as the, again, the change, because I think then the thing in front of us would be do we support changing an ordinance so that we can change…”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 1:45:56
“All right. I guess I'll just add, I don't know the logic that went in at the time that that was put in place. And it's a little disconcerting to be changing it without understanding why it was done that way in the first place. So I'll just add that to the discussion. But there's nothing in it that I've sat through an airport board meeting and I know the makeup of the group. I don't see a danger with the change, but I don't know what the logic was when they set it up to say, it's going to be the at-large.”
City Council · Oct 12, 2026
- Play at 6:02
“Downtown neighborhoods, I think I'm gonna understand that well enough. Existing urban areas mean within the city boundaries and then urban expansion means the outside the city boundaries right now up to 2050 or 2060?”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 6:25
“Okay, so I'm trying to existing urban areas. We're saying there's not enough empty lots or to be able to.”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 6:46
“Okay, so it's not end up happening, and there's no assessment that says that is because those are the lots that were skipped because they're harder to build on, or there's no judgment in this?”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 7:11
“It does. Help me with one scenario then. Then if something were annexed within the last 15 years and then built, would that be built in existing urban area or would that be considered urban expansion?”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 41:16
“Council Member Keene. Yeah, I want to stay on your track here, but I want to make some comments here, too. Just on one of the, you know, in the comprehensive plan, it says enhance the integrity of existing neighborhoods. And this is one that I find to be in conflict sometimes with the growth from 7% rentals up to, is it now 13%? And there's a lot of, like, the neighborhood concern that that's changing the nature of the neighborhood. Clearly more on the inner... the wards closer to downtown than the wards on the far edge. That said, I'm okay with a lot of that because it's still into rental,…”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 52:50
“Council Member Keene. Yeah, I just want to kind of reiterate into the discussion. I think this idea of having a certain number of single family homes available for rent, we're not trying to clamp down on that, and if it were something like set limits, I would, just policies like that are very difficult to implement, and I'm not leaning that way. But I do want to go back to two different things from the comp, the enhance the integrity of existing neighborhoods. I feel like we're not doing that as well as we should. And then we have this other goal of improving home ownership in certain…”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 58:19
“Council Member Keene. I just want to do a follow-up on Council Member Palmer when he talks about commercial areas. And I think just, this is just a more nuanced thing, but commercial areas, people can't live in commercial areas. They're zoned commercial or business, and there are no residentials there. I think what we're talking about is residential areas that are owned for profit or that are not owner-occupied. And that's different than a commercial area.”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 58:50
“Mixed-use, we have residential, but in business areas, we do not have residential districts. in areas that are zoned like industrial that people can't live there. I think this, but this is an important point. We started getting into the housing, like the investments when the interest rates are so low, it is a beautiful business case to buy these properties and then pay them, use the mortgages just to pay off the 2% and 2.5% things. And that's how we got into these problems in a lot of cases or call them problems. I really want a robust rental market in the city. It's important for the economy…”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 1:09:21
“Council Member Keene. I just wanted to clarify, because the number of 300 up to, I'll just call it 600, that includes like hotels that offer short-term rental, homes that have residential. I mean, is there any sort of breakdown that says there's 200 single-family homes that are used now as short-term rental?”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 1:09:55
“Okay. Again, let me just kind of... I did have this down. This is still my... The thing that bothers me about this one is that moving into short-term rental moves you out of the, you're not a residential property, which we're short of residential properties. You're taking a residential property and changing the use to be hospitality. And that bothers me because it works against our goal of improving the amount of residential. But the numbers are dramatically smaller than I thought. I thought these numbers were much higher than this even four or five years ago. So, and I think that they're…”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026