City Council - Regular Meeting

And then we have a council initiated action for disconnected parcels trail gap. Off with Brian or Brian on financial policies.

shortly after I got here, too, was to take a look at and revise the financial policies that the city has. So in doing so, first of all, you have to find out the financial policies that are there for the CEP. Everybody has one in their drawer.

And that relates to them mostly.

So working with different departments throughout the last year and a half to make sure that they work for them as well, too, to see what else needs to be updated. And these financial policies, I've done this for two IPMs before this, and it seems to be kind of something, again, to rein everything back in so you're dealing with a document in and of itself that you can see before you. So if we have 22 policies before us, I'll probably just be talking about the ones that you see in the slide presentation. So current council members can take a look at it. New council members have a chance to take a look at it. And also rating agencies, auditors, like the year of the word, yes, it's been approved and reviewed in the last year as well, too. So if one gets approved or reviewed, it's just an easier way to go about it. So with that, I will move these. Let's see about that. the purpose of the financial policies. I think we can all agree with those. Taking a look at this one for the financial policies. This was, the first one up there was an attempt to, as we heard, when a study or a plan, sustainability plan or something like that comes before the State Council, this is kind of guidance to what should be done. So what it states in here is that the plan should be adopted and it would be adopted by so if they're asking for an action to be done that would be adopted would be the action not received or anything else and less specifically noted for a specific reason uh that way if there's a board or something that needs to would also approve that they can adopt it the council can adopt it the latter part it doesn't matter who approves it first do i talk about the parks board most of the council and the council usually adopt it first and then move back to the parks board. So again, it doesn't matter about the action, the option that there's an action to be taken. And then the second part in here, the second part in here then relates to the city understands that the adopted document is used for informational resources. That provides direction without creating any future fiduciary responsibility or obligation to the council, to the council's part. The approach preserves the council's discretion, clarifies that the acceptance does not equate to an endorsement for specific financial commitment. I know that's where a lot of the discussion was for the fact that you see these plans that might be many pages, might not have dollar amounts attached to it, so the dollars usually come later. So with that, if you, again, like the plan, most of the plan, there will be, or this doesn't tie the council down just because the plan has the same statement. That doesn't matter. It's going to be offered by me with the plan. You should think they're brought back for further approval in the statute of hands. Questions on that one, Sean? I think, just again, kind of clarifying what we've heard. The second paragraph down there simply states that The city departments and entities that report to the cities, that report on the city's financial statements, shall operate using our shared resource planning, enterprise resource planning, and required charitable accounts. And that's what we're working on right now. The ERP and the charitable accounts is all part of the project that you guys approved for $50,000 give or take right now, too. So this is stating that in the budget process that that's what we were expecting to maintain going forward. So I have a question, Brian. So since I think you kind of went through a semantic exercise with adopted, is the word shall in there, meaning that you want them to do it, but they don't have to do it? I guess that's not really what I'm asking. It's more, are they,

Does everyone have to comply? Okay, okay.

So I'm kind of in the same vein. I was thinking like sometimes a department or individual will come forward with ideas about something we could do. The council accepts that now we're going to adopt it. but it may not be the thing that they want to do ultimately because there may be better or other ideas that come with it. They're not obligating funding for it, according to what you've said. So I'm struggling with some plans that we had a couple years ago. The idea came to the City Council. The City Council listened to it and said, well, that's interesting, yeah. And then that can be seen as an endorsement of that plan forever. Or, but there's no financial obligation that was given. It was just accepting concept. And so what if something better or a developer comes between now and then? And we've had this issue come up one time this last year where we already have a plan. The plan was kind of a pie in the sky idea. It wasn't really a great plan. So adopting to me then, is that obligating us too far or not? And how would you change it, for instance?

I think the intent here is that to have a specific process and order of operations, or if it's got a board, it comes to board and the council, and it should be adopted. But the rest of the language is that it doesn't obligate you to anything because there will be a future action, a budget item, a sort of financial resource, a specific CIP project, something of that nature, or maybe even adopting a policy that's an idea in the plan, but that it still needs to come forward to either a board or the city council, depending on what that is. That would come to you, but I'm sure there are. So I think the intent here is to show this is what we would intend going forward, that it would go to the board, it would come to the city council. The intent would be to adopt them. And it doesn't obligate you to anything because there would need to be potentially other financial decisions related to implementation of ideas within whatever the broader focus is.

So if I can follow up on that then, what if someone else had a different idea for something that we had discussed? Do we have to retract approval of this or we could just approve something else or how would you think of handling that?

I guess I was thinking, go ahead. I guess for what I'm thinking of for the We could bring something back in the menu. We've got Council Member Miller, then Council Member Keene.

to go off of that line of questioning one of my one of my questions is just the need for the middle sentence regardless of which body approves it first because because the the sentence before says that it would be brought to council feedback or consideration of adoption and i almost feel like that next step is should it be adopted then the city understands that they adopted document the one that reads funny to me and i'm curious of your thoughts on what that sentence adds. I understand that it's setting up the idea that it should be adopted, but it's really, at that point, the council's decision. And that reads a little prescriptive to me.

Yeah, when I talked to Mike from the Parks Department, he made it sound like they bring a parks plan for the council. Obviously, they've talked about it with their own board, and they're bringing it before the council. the feedback, all the feedback, he made it sound like the council almost adopts it then. They bring it back to their board for adoption. And that was the first time I heard that. It doesn't matter if, in my mind, I guess if the board adopts it first, that's the best one. We want to make sure it happens, we can. But he was kind of the one that said, well, we have the council adopt it first then. So we bring it back to the board and they adopt it.

That's why it was. And I guess that's one charter board, but the way that this reads to me is that review adopted by the charter board, could it be relevant to the council's consideration of adoption? And then should it be adopted, then the rest of the policy follows. But I guess to the mayor's point, what I'm understanding is sometimes when we adopt plans or we have a formal study and then a period of time passes, don't review it again. Is that a locked in plan? How are we having feedback? And I feel like we've had this discussion over the last two years and we have more council input. So I'm not sure whether it applies in this, but I would think some of those larger plans, area plans, et cetera, we just maybe the alternative is to build back in a feedback process to the council for review progress updates.

I guess my thought is these are financial policies. Right. This is intended to sort of clarify the conversation. So if it's not fair, we should make it clearer. But I would argue also that regardless of what this says, if the city council doesn't fund something, it's not going to be something that was put in a plan. So I think the intent is to have a structure and a process and to clarify that A plan is a plan and the additional actions that are necessary depending on what is in the plan still have to go through whatever process is necessary in order to effectuate and implement either a policy or project, a new way of operating things of that nature.

Council Member Keene.

Yeah, I see this specific chart in the packages. I read it to be having to do with charter boards. I really think our time would be better spent really focusing on the financial parts of what's in front of us. The policies that are things like, is there a shared service policy? What are the signature levels? I think those are policy things. Just getting into discussions of a master plan, I don't consider that under the control of financial policies.

I think really the key point for acceptance, who goes first? Is it recommended to you? That's probably not as important. The key is that last sentence. They're not ratified or actionable. It doesn't obligate you. And we'll have $30 million of CIP requests and experience. We have about $9 million to allocate. But we can't accomplish all of the plans. So I think this is really just saying, you're preserving your authority to only implement what you feel like you can in a given budget cycle.

So that is something we hear regularly when we bring a plan forward is the same question, is it obligating us to do this whole plan? And the answer is no. And so this is for all of the departments who have clarified that we use whatever word we use, adopt, ratify, accept, review, name your word. We are not obligating the city council currently or in the future to implement all of the pieces of the plan.

Thank you for that. Thank you for that clarification. Brian? Brian? Can you go forward?

So this one has to do with enterprise shared services. This is a relatively new policy, but not a new concept, basically. So with this one spot here is to, I'm not going to be verbatim, but to maximize the use of shared organizational services across the city of Rochester, so not to duplicate some of the larger services that are shared with them. And so the city of Rochester shall, let's read the policy statement real quick, service quality and long-term financial sustainability. And then it goes on to list some loans under the service subject to centralization, summer science, payroll, IT, purchasing, risk management, fleet and record management. And then departments may not independently establish a system, process, or staff. hybrid IT, or hybrid building maintenance, or something like that, where you have that, and you could share that service. So we need more communication to keep that as efficient as possible. Then there's the authority of stewardship, the city administrator, the finance director, the IT resources listed there. And then on the bottom, you can see, too, would be review and then with the council all in conjunction with the two year budget process would probably be a more great place to do it after the two year budget process. And the budget and funding alignment listed there along with the performance review and then that leads down to the communication as well. And again, things have been done recently the library and stuff like that to build maintenance. So it's just a continuation out of that for all departments to get up

Councilmember Keene.

Would you like to do, as we go through the four or five different suggestions, talk about each individually or wait till the end and then go through them?

I think if folks have questions on the specific policy areas, I guess what I would say is how I look at this is that a lot of this is in practice and what What you're doing is writing it all down and putting it in one place. And so what I would ask is, Brian, as you go through this, to point out if anything is new.

So is what is new new that we put it on paper?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I'll just comment on this one. I was more involved in this. This is really just sort of an idea and expectation that we're one team. We have a lot of duplicative services right now. We have moved toward a lot stronger alignment in the shared services space, but we have had a fairly decentralized environment even since I started. We have consolidated services and the council is aware of what we did in facilities and what we've done in fleet, but even those are not fully integrated across the enterprise. And we have, you know, separate IT departments in some cases. So like the question is, do you want to have, you know, I'll even just pick on Brian because he's up here, but like, you know, two finance directors for the city, one of you and, you know, a house. Is that the right thing to do? It might be. That might be the right way to do it, given the scope of what, you know, each is responsible for, the business need within the department. But we also want to, you know, push on that too and say, are there opportunities for realignment efficiency and better coordination and collaboration? So just having a, you know, some communication to you on an every other year basis with the two year budget that says, these are the areas where we're aligned. Here's where we continue to have exceptions and there's business needs for that. It just allows you to, you know, do your due diligence and exercise your fiduciary responsibilities. We're not saying anything has to change. but we are kind of setting a bar out that says, if we have opportunities, we should always be thinking about them and talking about them and be transparent about them.

Council Member Doering.

Yeah, RPU in particular is the entity that came to mind as I was reading. So thank you for that clarification a little bit. And in terms of administration, do we see RPU as a separate entity of the city or is it a part of the city?

Yeah, we could probably talk for a few hours about that. Peter might have some exciting stuff to share with you there too. I mean, you know, in some areas of the charter, it's characterized as the department of the city. Parks is also considered a department of the city. But they have some unique authorities that are provided within state law, within the charters. So, you know, each has a different environment they work in. RPU in particular, that is delegated to the charter to the board. you continue to exercise your authority to set the budget and your expectations for what operations look like through the budget. So that's really your opportunity to provide feedback on your expectations in that environment. Same really goes for parks. They work a little bit differently just given their funding model and all that. But for some of those things that you have granted specific authorities that they get to live out, but you also have the ability to create expectations through your budget process.

Then I have one other follow-up question. Go ahead. I think two slides back it said exceptions could exist if approved. One more. Departments may not independently establish systems, processes, or staffing for these functions without approval. Is the Common Council the approval of that, or is that an administrative function?

Yeah, I think a lot of it, I mean, our whole structure really is embedded in, you know, the budget process. And so, you know, our staffing profiles and all that are really set through that. So the lion's share of approval really does rest in those positions that are, you know, they're very in the budget book, but they're there. And, you know, we have some ability to change that through, you know, reclassifications, etc. But generally, you are looking at that when you approve the budget or have the opportunity to do so.

So what I hear you saying, and I just want to make sure I understand, is that while it's not explicitly stated in this policy that the Common Council does that, it's implied through the budgetary procedure.

Yeah, so when the parks budget comes before you, you have a set of positions where the parks do have a blank number of arborists. Their budget is a blank number of arborists. They'll bring up arborists. uh landscape technicians a certain number of landscape technicians um and that's what they're appropriated um and so now they get to go and do the hiring for all that and the administration of that but you are approving position levels through the project cost thank you council member keen yeah i guess i do want to just voice just some concerns with some of the things here first i think it's good to go through these reviews and make sure that the policy level is set but

I feel a lot of these policies are getting down to most of the operations and administration level. The consistent work we've been doing with AARP on the same system across the two major businesses should help us into the future. But I've been watching some of the shared services you mentioned. Communications is an area over the last four years that we've been trying to bring together. And there's times where I think it makes sense and times where it doesn't, where we have brought people into a shared group or data drawing. But I guess I get rude and I see that line that I think it's in there somewhere which says that all the authority will be with the city administrator to interpret and enforce the policies. That almost sounds like we as a council are getting pulled into these management things. I just want to be careful with that. The other thing I want to say with this, I went through this all my career in technology where we would have all the programmers together and all this other stuff, and that would be work. But then when the big projects would come, someone would say, like, no, pull the people you need together. So it was always a kind of a back and forth with this. But the way this works best is when the group that's getting the resources, you mentioned IT, the onus is then on them to provide the services, to provide work plans and do these other things. And the places where these fail is the service or the skills get moved to one group, but not the responsibility. And we really have to have a good way to move the responsibility if The police have someone doing communications, and that person moves to administration. They can't be reassigned and not do the work they were doing for the police. Same thing with public works. If they do, then we're just bringing things together and reassigning work. And that's what I worry about the way I read some of this. The other one that I'm applying to, that I also remember Doreen talked about, approved exceptions. I mean, the operational nature of that sentence makes me feel that it really is using the counsel to drive certain specific things through the organization, where I consider those to be more managerial and operational.

I guess as a follow-up question to slide five, if Dr. McKeon mentioned communications, I don't see it listed. I mean, assuming there are other services happening within departments that are not subject to centralization, would this be the list of prioritization?

Yeah, communications didn't make that. That probably would be irrelevant one to consider. I mean, we have mostly integrated communications, but there's two exceptions to that. And again, there could be great business cases for that to be in play. And I think Council Member Keene's points are relevant in terms of we still have the business needs for these things. A lot of it, and I can't recite that fact, it really is just become how is it delivered. Communications often can be like a like-like situation, but to use the example of IT, if we have two fairly significant IT structures and we have a director, director, manager, manager, manager, manager in the equivalent structures, then we minimize our ability to scale resources.

And I appreciate that. I reviewed this list too and I didn't see communications and I just assumed that there are surfaces that are not coming out of this policy today as a recommendation.

I think that might have been an oversight. I think communications is a relevant one we talked about.

Continue.

All right.

So this is a minor change in the area, a special service fund area, where in the past we have not had an operating expenditure listed in there.

The state auditor doesn't recommend, doesn't have a suggestion for that, like we do with our federal funds.

where we would have the council set it at 42%. I think you can see that in here as well, too, for the fund balance with the general fund. We did not have one in here, but taking a look at fund balances that you can see here. So we have currently 11 special revenue funds. In certain standards, we have a special revenue fund. They all operate differently. It's legality is why it's a special revenue fund and why they function as a special revenue fund, too. So with that, we were proposing to put in there a fund balance now less than 15% of unreserved and undesignated expenditures. So that's what you see in here. If you go to page 105 of the ANFRA, you'll see the actual fund balances in there as well. If you go to page 101 of the ANFRA, you'll also see the quick definition of all of these as well too. So again, they all operate different, but we've done for designated or a reserve on the side um there should be some i guess fun balance in there like a 15 so it's something in there because some of these are much higher but they're going to be used for something else they're not right so that's why we put a sentence in here okay policy. This is probably one that we probably get the most questions on. Yeah, well, my career as well, and we've opened up the policy and we take a look at it and walk people through it. Rightfully so. So what we did with this particular one is we were taking a look at, and obviously, it all goes off of state statute for the most part, and that's what we were looking to simply replicate. Right now, the threshold is up to $50,000, and then it goes to the same council for approval after that. What we are proposing at this time too is, and again, contracts for $25,000 or less. That's all the state statute.

Sorry.

For $25,000 or less. And then they still have to abide by state statute in that they have to get a quotation or in the open market or basically they get at least two quotes if necessary for under $25,000. And then there's, again, this is out of the statute as well, exceeding $175,000 that would allow the department heads and their residents to be authorized to make those purchases.

And there's also discussion in there too about that's the alternative. And then for contracts over 175, all contracts over this amount must be taken by the same consult that goes for anything over $175,000. we are proposing against the golden times and what and what is what is the what is the limit now the the current is 50 000 um and so there are cities that have i think would vary you know tiny i thought had it they moved that up in 150 blooms and ended up 175. a lot of cities that are sized that moved it up to 175 and for a while there the state was moving it used to be 50 000 with the state and then i forget I think that's why Duluth is at 150. It's probably set up updated. There's the 175. So, and again, these are for budgeted items. You know, anything non-budgeted, these will become feedback. And you've seen those on your RCA. This is a bunch of items that can grow. Here's a funding source to find it.

Mayor Norton.

Well, this isn't gelling with what I see when the contracts come through. So, you know, maybe we need to just sit down because we've used 50,000 as the guideline, but then department things come through and those are different.

So there's two things. Yeah. Mayor's got some signature authority. And so for a contract approval, it's 50,000 or less. We can be approved administratively. 175 is the state amount and actually our view for their financial policy is also is already set up 175 in the county. So I think so relatively, you know, they were asked to go to this, you know, those of that amount for that. I think Mary, what you're thinking about, you get a voucher through something that's already been contracted, whether through the council process or through that, the approval of the vouchers can exceed that amount. That's more like a workflow that we have internally to review the voucher approvals, but you've already, if it's above 50 approved it, it still goes through. It's an operating process once the bill comes in. So the contract and the bill, there's quite a difference.

Council Member Key.

It's my understanding that we have a separation of duties on a lot of these things, that there isn't one person that can initiate and sign a check. Oh, correct. Absolutely. With those sort of safes. I just want to get that on the record here, that this isn't something that we're just upping this thing and hoping for the best. There's all kinds of protections in place, and I actually think this is a really good government efficiency thing to be doing and not having the overhead of the lower dollar amounts with the other process where we have the space. So I would support this.

No, no, not for that. It's your question about tunnels and 11 steps within my department alone to try to make sure that the item is in the budget correctly. There's a revenue source that is available And then it's quoted correctly, too. If it continues to move throughout, find a reviewer or something.

Yeah, and then all contracts right now, $50,000 or under, they'll go through a workflow that the department head, the mayor, the city's administrator, and the city attorney all sign off on for reviewing those contracts as part of that workflow.

And that would be a second part of this to raise that $175,000. Then again, the process would stay exactly the same. all those people still need to sign off on their, whatever, just be consistent with the state statute.

Okay. Okay.

Real quick, insurance specifications again. This particular item worked with our safety and risk manager on this one. And this one is what we're proposing to do is to... for the city contract policy is to protect municipal assets and then manage financial risk. Basically what we're doing is transferring the financial burden of potential accidents, injuries, and property damage away from the taxpayer to the responsible party. So if we hire somebody to do something or a company to do something, they have to have insurance. We're just putting this right into double check to make sure that they have the insurance or it gets gone to commercial on a general liability insurance, regardless of the size of the project. Basically, if you could take something that I would take would be small, but it doesn't look, you know, personal still, or maybe it's a small landscaping, but it's probably a busy road or something. You know, all kinds of crazy things can happen. So this T3 treats everybody the same.

So just to be clear, so this is current policy, we're writing it down. Any changes beyond that?

We kind of took a look at a tiered system, if you will, but obviously put a lot of work into this way on staff to help, you know, get them to point out, you know, is it a simple, small value project that you're dealing with some person getting

And then the final one that we have here, too, is the payments of lower taxes. This is a process that the city has done for a while, a long time. Basically, there's already been a transfer of funds from the five enterprise funds into the general fund. You can see the five enterprise funds listed on there. And so with this one, it basically is trying to level set because right now we don't have the standard practice between all five-year response so what we're trying to do here is trying to set it at six and a half percent um for electric water mostly water ventilation plant in the stormwater utility in the parking um in what and there's going to be this is two by single thing we look about your implementation for this because uh some things are a little out of that but the time to start will be now uh with that being said to the 26 and 27 will stay as in the budget we're not going to That's what those right now. And you can see here too, moving forward, six and a half percent for, and again, we'll have to see where things shake out, but for something like electric, if we're just pretty close to what electric currently has now, electric has its own issues probably in 28. We heard that there might be a dip and it might take a little bit to come back over. So we're aware of that. Water utility, you can take a look at that one to get up to six and a half percent. they would have to pay double what they are, so that would be what we want to continue to phase in. Sewer is pretty close, and if anything, their pilot would go down slightly. Stormwater, pretty much in the same boat, pretty close, but if anything would go down slightly, they'd get a lot of particular revenue.

Parking, again, they're paying quite a bit more, so water and parking almost. kind of the opposite of where they should be.

So that's why if you do a block six and a half percent, it would level set things. So parking would pay, not proportional to what their actual revenue is on that too. So six and a half percent, you can see like at the edge of 27, again, this is just a projection, but it comes in pretty close to what maybe our estimated, our actual budgeted amount would be to the proposed new pilot. So six and a half percent seems like it would be Dixon, what we see right now, being consistent across the board. And the reason why there's a couple, if you look at the far right column here too, operating revenue is what you see listed in our advert. That's what the auditors found to be retail revenue for the top two for RPU. That's what I was talking with here about RPU too, focusing on retail revenue. It's probably more stable than some of the other revenues that they received pretty much. I have worked with five enterprise funds on this.

Council Member Wall.

Thank you. Of all the policies that we have seen, outside of perhaps enterprise policies, how much of this is Rochester centric? How much would be state mandated? How much is best practices? Another way of asking that question would be, if we went to Bloomington or Woodbury, how different or similar would their policies be to these? I'm sorry, what?

For all of the policies that we have, or for specifically?

No, just the whole run that you've gone through.

No, the whole run, I would say they're very similar. I mean, that's what I don't want to say comparing ourselves to, but that's where we get a lot of our information from. If you took a look at Bloomington, and I think they had some, like, they included their TIF policies and a few other things, so theirs was like 112 pages or something like that. But a lot of these, Woodbury's and others... Then I'm not going for like volume or anything, but that's what they have. They have the policy and then they have a short excerpt, maybe on procedural. So somebody doesn't have to go to another binder. So it's all listed in a one or two page policy that's meant to be fluid and help staff members and department heads and everything along.

Maybe just to add to that, I think what you're getting to is, are there much like we have the 42% requirement that we have for the general fund? That's THESE THINGS ARE BASED IN GOVERNMENT FINANCE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION AND OTHER TYPES OF NOT REALLY BENCHMARKS OUT THERE. HAVING YOUR FINANCIAL POLICIES ADOPTED REGULARLY IS A BEST PRACTICE BECAUSE THERE'S TRANSPARENCY WITH THE BOARD TO UNDERSTAND THESE ARE THE THINGS THAT WE SHOULD BE APPLYING. THERE MAY BE EXCEPTIONS SOMETIMES BECAUSE YOU NEED TO DO SOMETHING, BUT WE'RE TRYING TO HAVE CLARITY, A TREND, making sure that we're following policy or changing it if there's something that is desired differently or if there's changes in the community that require us to do something differently. But I would say that most of these are, every city is gonna be slightly different because not every city operates an airport, for example, or has charter boards, things of that nature. So there will be differences, but the concepts of needing to have fund balance, you should have a minimum fund balance in order to have security for your park system, for example. So those kinds of things I would say are maybe standard is an excessive word, but it is aligned with general best practices for local governments, recognizing that every local government is slightly different and has different services. They provide different amount of special revenue funds, different enterprise fund types, having the largest electric municipal electric utility in the state is different than other cities and how they operate. So-

It is important to have the policy reflected and written down and sort of stable. I mean, I think that's something when we go through the rating agency process, they want to understand that there's a logical methodology to what we do and that it isn't something that we draw upon and change based on know a budget need elsewhere so there's communities in minnesota that have 20 percent of the pilot you know payments um which is very excessive and not at a point and you know according to their electoral you know great pairs um so this provides us across our ecosystem to say we have a standardization much like we would the alternative is we don't have a public utility and we have a private franchise agreement and the franchise agreement pays and you know we by council's franchise agreement that's approved, but within parameters within state law, you know, you're in that six and a half, 5% type of range with an Xcel Energy, you've got an investor-owned ability. So I think it's just important to have some stability and predictability for our rate planning, for bond issuance. And so I think this is really an effort to do that here and just encourage you to think about that way And it's a big change all at once. So this tries to introduce that idea in the shop.

Council Member Palmer.

Thank you. Thank you. I think what Mr. Wall, at least in my opinion, what we're looking at is like the liability insurance. Is that state what the state requires or is it above what the state requires? And if it is above, what does that cost?

The workers' comp would be what I think the state requires in there, too, I think. Are we at the state requirement? Yeah, because we work with also the lead facility staff too. So, you know, this is obviously informational for staff when they're executing this emergency policy. Yes, it goes out of state statute, but there's also other reminders and other things in there as well to her staff to make sure that they follow.

And then like an investment policy that states actually can invest in, you know, can invest in these 11 things.

out to our broker and say, you know, don't put us in anything other than what's in here.

And a follow-up on what Mr. Parrish is getting at. Let's use the electric. If we had an investor-owned, they would be paying us a franchise fee. And what is that typically a franchise fee? Is that each individual city is different, or is it kind of a blanket franchise fee?

there's common methodologies and you've really had this same conversation when he went through the natural gas franchise fee discussion. So it can be off of revenue, it can be off of utilization or firms or a lot of hours or whatever. So there is a little bit of variation, but a very normal benchmark for a lot of franchise agreements would be like some percent of revenue. So that's not a typical at all. That's how our charter agreement is structured. So that's a very normal, difficult way to approach this.

And if I may, you would also be receiving property tax from that private-owned electric utility on top of that franchise?

Council Member Keene.

You did look like you were thinking, but I didn't know.

Go ahead, Council Member.

So property tax, so this is really just to do a property tax, isn't it?

I would say two things. We pilots our term we use. That's part of it. So if there are electrical assets that are taxable or other enterprise assets that are taxable that would normally be property taxes, this is designed to do that, but it's also a fee to use your right-of-way. There is a private activity, if it was an investor-owned utility in particular, that's occurring in your right-of-way, and you're making money off of that, and your right-of-way's worth something, and they get some benefits with how they work in your right-of-way and all that. So if you think about the amount of resource you're dedicating to make these utilities successful in your right-of-way, it's trying to capture some value out of that process.

So let's look at parking then. So we have parking structures downtown, and instead of paying property tax, which I'm assuming would be quite high if it was a private industry, 6.5 doesn't seem like a lot. Is that, I mean, because electrical is different than parking.

We could do that. I think the parking system very well established here. It could have been initial conveyances to the system for the land that create the parking. So there could be some reflection of that here, but you're correct in that if it was, that is more of a real estate adjustment here. And I guess you could try to value the ramps. Now they're really only worth, the cash flow they're generating, and so I wouldn't make the assumption that 6.5% of revenue is way off base, but we could do that study if that was something the council wanted to do in the future.

Okay, almost done. So Sherman Associates gets a free lock, and so that came out of the parking fund because they were used to get revenue for that, but we're not reimbursing the parking fund for that, correct?

That's correct.

Shouldn't we if it's a true enterprise fund?

I think that's a fair policy conversation for you all to have versus your economic development priorities. The tough thing is how do we acquire that initially and how to turn into parking? We've got certain lots in our system that are parking because that's what they can be because there's environmental issues or whatever the case is. They can't be something else for a period of time. So each one has a story.

And do we look at that? I mean, I'm using Sherman as an example. Do we look at that and say, this is the cost to do this development for the city of Rochester? I'm not saying we shouldn't do that, but I think we should be aware of what gift they're getting from the parking fund to do that. That's a fair thing to think about.

Thank you. Council Member Keene. I'm interested in that thing about the consistency because about three years or four years ago we looked at the electric utility thing we're having trouble because we project the pilot at one thing in the fall and by the time you get to spring it was off those numbers so we did a reset on that on how what the algorithm was for how to uh can compute what the pilot would be for rpu electric you guys i think you guys i think you guys are remember this um But then when we talk about consistency, now here we are two years later changing it again. Are we breaking our own rule? Is the consistency important across our different enterprises or what we portray to the outside world? Because to me, these expenses and this sort of thing on the utility affects when they go out to the open market, which they're going to be for bonds. So I just want to make sure we're not breaking our own rule for consistency by saying we're going to change this again. And I think it's only been in place for about two years.

I can start. I'm sure we're all excited to talk about this. Yeah, I mean, there was an adjustment just because there's been some unpredictability. And the current formula is more complicated than it needs to be. And I think this is an effort at simplification so people can easily understand what it is that's happening here. but also grounded in best practice. So I would say that I think having this in place and for the foreseeable future and sticking to it for a while would be helpful for all the things that you just mentioned. And there's provisions within the language for us in order to mitigate some of the potential volatility if we have a bad parking year or you have a wastewater customer that happens to go offline or name the thing that can happen to revenues in these enterprise funds. that we're going to scale back and not budget 100% of the revenue, but we're looking to budget, you know, 95% and 90%. So eventually if we, you know, have a blip in one of those areas, that we have something to mitigate that curve. So this policy does suggest the idea of, you know, the financing suggestion just to say 95% or 90%, we're going to work toward backing off the amount of revenue that we budget.

As far as that sort of compare, this appears to be something that we're doing within our family here, say 6.5%. Now, we do have retail and operating pretty much the same measurements. Who is it important to that we do it the same way for each of our enterprises as opposed to having a separate algorithm for each enterprise? Who would care?

Yeah, I mean, I think you can do it many ways. I think this really is an effort for you as council members to understand what's that. It's important. I think a lot of these things you can make, maybe parking is the exception, but a lot of the other enterprises, you can make the argument that the basis for what you're charging is somewhat similar. So there's sort of this equity argument in terms of what each is paying and just predictability for people. So when they do their rate studies, they can go in and say, yeah, it's Not three years, we're going to change the number. We didn't budget for that. And we've had that challenge in wastewater as an example where we adjusted it ahead of a rate study. This would just allow people when they're forecasting the revenues to say 6.5% is what we're looking to need to allocate for this payment.

And in the budget cycle in the fall, we'll use the 6.5% of projecting. And then what we'll really collect is what's real when we go to collect. Yes. It's not lost on me that RP Electric's probably 75% of everything we collect through pilot. It's not just one of the five utilities. It's the lion's share of what we're doing.

Yeah, there wasn't much, I mean, a half percent change, I guess.

No, it is surprising and good that even though it's a different algorithm, it almost seems like probably another question, but I'm assuming that's where 6.5% came from versus... 6% versus 7%. We were trying to mimic what we were doing.

Yeah, so three of the five enterprise funds come out almost equal. But then the total also comes out equal to 6.5. So it's good for three of the five because, again, basically, in my mind, it's good for the total. Okay.

And I guess I want to bring this up because these same rate payers are the same people this group represents, the same as levy payers, almost the same, slightly different mix in there. But when I think of pilot, I usually think of it as in lieu of local property taxes and then the franchise stuff. But what is communicated to rate payers if these things change? I don't think anything is, but I can't tell. Yeah, I know that.

I think that depends on the utility billing folks who are on the view and if they want to try to show that there are costs in the bill that are not directly related to service. Although one could argue they are directly related to service because you can't provide electric, water, wastewater unless you're utilizing that public right-of-way that you don't have the ability to be there. You also can't have protective options. You can't have those things. So there's a lot of intermix value. It really depends on how the bill goes on.

Okay, so as all these came together, I mean, I do like the idea of the consistency. I'm glad to see that staff tried to do this to, like, peg it to very close to what the current pilot was. And I think that's important for consistency, because I think we're in for some turbulent energy things over the next five to 15 years, and it scares me that we're going to show this. But I'm also thinking that energy usage in retail sales and electricity is going to go up over the next 10 years compared to where it's been over the last 10, where through some demand management and other things, usage has been flat, even with our population growth. So I am projecting this to be a bigger funding source. That would be consistent with me when I look at the way levy went up over the last 10 years and pilot did not. But at the same time, I am concerned that we have to represent both the levy payers, but also the rate payers, so we have these discussions. So I just want to have this full discussion with my peers here. supported by a little distraught about the RP water stuff just because of the big percentages, but the relative size of the numbers are so dramatically smaller that it is a different animal. And I really appreciate, Ryan, your comment about this doesn't happen when we approve the policy. This is a slow methodical move so that it can be absorbed in the same way with .

Thank you for that clarification, Councilmember. Any further questions on this? So what I was going to say is just to emphasize Councilmember Keene's last point, the phase-in. So the phase-in will happen in the 8th or? The phase-in basically what I wanted to do was keep 27 and 28 because those are already budgeted numbers. Okay, okay. Got it. Councilmember Miller.

Did I miss this? Did we cover 13, the microcontracts process policies separate from?

Yeah, I guess I apologize. I hit the slide when we were talking about the purchasing policy.

I just wanted to make sure. It felt like you were talking about the purchasing and then.

Yeah, that goes off real quick. That goes off the 2016 resolution that the council passed. And so that's just put in there.

Okay. Just wanted to note that we... Sorry.

Thank you for noticing that.

I think parking is the one that feels quite different from the others. I guess I'm curious, too, about some of the protected revenues. It seems like it's falling back below, and I'm curious about how we're forecasting revenue in parking. And also, it seems like it's the one getting the biggest discount compared to the current policy. And so I guess explicitly, is this being set really based on trying to optimize the RP electric rate, and then standardize that to all the enterprise funds.

Maybe I'll say what Darren said in a different way. Most of our enterprise funds operate like a utility.

Yep.

And those are the ones that are utilities. Parking tries to operate like a utility, but it has different , right? So land use , especially if downtown is where one of our most valuable property is. So does everything have to stay at 65% forever? No, you don't have to keep, you don't want to constipate. And we'll do a fax because what the message that that sends is that you are trying to reduce your property tax by utilizing the revenue. So having consistency is important, but changing a policy because you're looking at, say, parking differently. Let's say that you did that over time and you did a study and say, what should parking be? What does that mean also for your race that you're cooking, which you've just done a year ago? There's a lot of implications for that. So it doesn't mean that you can't ever change it in the future or that you can do this, that's different. But you want to have some logical methodology to why it isn't 6.5%, why it is something different. And I think there's probably logic in saying, here, cooking isn't quite the same as operating electric water. stormwater or sewer utility. They have different implications throughout the system. And there are different implications for major use of diesel parking. And also that other entities would have potentially built that parking.

And we don't fully operate parking as an enterprise. We've got a lot of free parking.

so if we were operating at your enterprise you wouldn't say like well after five you don't have to pay for electricity um i appreciate that point and i think it's really getting this idea councilmember keen has brought it up it's like what is the subsidy going into parking and i think this is another area where i see additional subsidy because if this pilot is decreased from the current rate then that is likely made up by property tax so it feels like another area of subsidy so i just want to note that um looking to change it i think standardizing 6.5 for all these makes sense um and i guess my interest would be really in looking at the questions that customers are brought up as well how we track assets coming in the enterprise and go out and how are we right sizing that sort of subsidy versus paid by the rate payer in that case the parker we could adopt six and a half percent for now and then

do some evaluation, you know, about what the cashflow pre-transits and what the corresponding value for that would be and try to project the property taxes off of that and see if we're in the same neighborhood. I mean, there's other ways to look at how you would want to do that. Or you can just keep saying, just escalate it by a percentage every year at the fixed dollar amount that it is now and feel like that's fine. So there's a couple of different ways that we can put that as a, follow-up for next year funding for policies, you know, if you want to bring that back and you reconsider them this turn of the year.

Council Member Keene.

Council Member Keene.

Council Member Keene. Council Member Keene.

Council Member Keene.

I was surprised, but I'm also surprised in this discussion that we said if we had the value and we do it by cash flow, where I would have to think we should do it by replacement value, and it's dramatically higher. The other thing is we did have, I thought, a fairly serious discussion at some point of saying we should, When this council says free after 5 o'clock or free on weekends, we should still project that as revenue and say we're giving that away as a good decision or not. And then I think pilot could be paid on top of that. I am worried that, I mean, I'm not bought into the idea that all of our five enterprises have to be piloted the exact same way to me. That means nothing to anybody outside of this room. But I think that consistency on how we do our, with the major rate payers, parking is a different thing. It's not a utility, no other choice. It's by choice. And we've also gone through these big discussions with how we're going to use that to stimulate downtown development. So with those in mind, I think I would be open to like the parking thing could be different in the short term. So thank you.

Any other comments?

Thank you, Brian.

Thank you, Erin.

We are going to move to stormwater quality treatment credit transfer policy and program development. Tyler and Erin. Mr. Mr. Lux. Go ahead. Go ahead.

There we go. There we go. Thank you. So just to

kind of set the frame framework for this is I'm specifically seeking your feedback on three areas of course additional feedback is always welcome first and foremost is there support for establishing a formal market-based program to better support two-party transfer of off-site stormwater treatment credit this probably doesn't make any sense right now but as I go through the presentation think about that as whether or not there's support to do it because there's A lot of additional steps that would need to come after this. We don't want to waste time and effort trying to move forward with something that you don't support. So first and foremost, whether or not you would support this type of program. And even if you'd support it, we would like to see a few tweaks to it. The second would be the use of credit transfer ratios. And I'll talk about those and why we see value in those. And a big part of that is to help support the council's responsible American stewardship. As well as you'll see the way the program is set up is it really tries to push projects that are closer together in those transfer ratios because there's a cost associated with that kind of force people to start looking closer together. So there's some incentives for those transfer ratios. And then the last would be whether or not you would support the city participating as a generator of these credits that could be used by for non-public projects. So a private developer using credits that are created by the city. And again, I'll explain the pros and cons around that. Just to let you know, the city is going to have to be a generator for our own projects. So when we do street reconstruction projects, things like that, we're required to provide stormwater treatment. It can be very challenging. So even if they don't become available for private entities, we're still going to have to be a generator for our own projects. So keep that in consideration. So those are three specific areas I'm seeking feedback on. Again, certainly welcome for additional considerations as they go through. I'm welcome to take questions throughout, but other than for the council president, I understand it can be a complex.

When council members raise their hand, I call on them.

So council member Keene. I want to go through it now with you, I also want to understand the genesis. Is this like an industry best practice? Is this something that came to us from the private sector? How does this come before us today?

I'm going to talk about that in part of the presentation, really what it was. So the structure is already in ordinance because it's dictated by the state. So offsite stormwater treatment is set up under our state permit. It's in our ordinance. But there's lots of challenges. It is not easily implemented. And you'll see I have a slide just kind of talks about all the challenges. And as we work through those challenges, we saw opportunities to create a solution that addressed multiple challenges.

So you don't mind it is a staff generated method doesn't have. I'll just so I understand what I'm hearing when I start hearing that isn't like a way to stimulate in Philadelphia. Yes.

That's a way to support the legal development with some of the challenges

Again, our public projects are going to see issues with satisfying stormwater requirements going forward. It's hard to construct a pond when we do street reconstruction in downtown, for example, right? So a lot of this comes from that. It's taking advantage of other opportunities. Okay. Okay.

We're going to have Council Member Miller, and then we're going to let you get started with your presentation.

pioneering there are two other watershed districts that have similar programs but slightly different okay okay aaron um so to help set the stage so one um per the state permit that we operate under was called the amnesty permit and which then is in our city ordinance we require storm water treatment for any either new development project that is going to disturb one acre or more, including small lots. So think about housing development, lots of small lots, but collectively generally usually disturbing more than an acre. So they're required to provide stormwater treatment and volume reduction. Also in redevelopment scenarios, whenever you disturb one acre or more, so if you're going to disturb, move around one acre or more, or even smaller projects where If you're going to disturb less than an acre, but you collectively have more than an acre of impervious in that redevelopment, now you have to provide treatment for that redevelopment project.

And that's really where the infill comes in.

Most of it's already impervious surface, and it can be very, very challenging to find opportunities on site. So that's what ordinance requires. It's mandated by state. It's been required since 2020, so it's still generally fairly new, but it is something that developers have been struggling with since 2020 when it was in. The other requirement is that any of those stormwater we call BMPs, so treatment technologies, must also prioritize green infrastructure, which means volume reduction. So if you can infiltrate reuse of stormwater, tree trenches, things like that that really promote that reduction piece. Recognizing this can be a challenge, there is kind of an offering. So if the BMPs could not be cost-effectively treated on-site, you can go through a process to get approval to do what is called off-site stormwater treatment. So they can't do it here, but I'm going to find another spot where treatment isn't occurring and I'm going to do it there. And so that is, again, allowed by ordinance. And there are two parties that have successfully done it. I'll talk a little bit about that more. In order to go through this off-ramp, kind of the offsite treatment process, one requires city approval. The project area selected, so the offsite treatment area selected, you have to go through this priority ranking. So again, it forces you to look as close as possible. So the first is the same receiving water bottle. So look somewhere really close, close to point source discharges. The same catchment area, which is kind of our storm sewer shed. The next adjacent catchment area, so a good example would be here. This is South Horton River, really close by within a mile is Bear Creek. So if you're close, catchment area. And then as long as you're kind of upstream, so you want to look upstream on that side of it. Or the last one is anywhere within the city. So you could be on the way south end, something on the north end or vice versa, anywhere within the city. And you need to kind of go through this process of looking and identifying those priority areas. It also must involve the creation of a new stormwater BMP. So think of an area that currently was developed prior to stormwater treatment requirements. Our government center is a good example. Everything that runs off here goes straight into the river.

So you either have to do a retrofit, create a new BMP,

retrofit an existing one to expand it to create additional capacity to offset. Or if you have an existing BMP where there's already capacity, maybe they built it larger for anticipated growth that never happened, you know, different scenarios, you can use that surplus capacity. But the goal is you're doing something kind of above and beyond because it's offsetting this new construction. The other requirement is it must be completed no later than 24 months after the start of your construction project. So you can start redevelopment and you get approval, but you still have to be doing this stormwater project and get it done within two years, which can be a challenge. So those are the requirements in our ordinance and in our state permit. So here's the challenges that kind of led to this. One, infill development and redevelopment, especially in our high density areas, is cost prohibitive. We've seen developers come forward and say, I just can't redevelop because stormwater treatment is too expensive to be able to do it offsite. If you start looking offsite, project proposers either need access to land to be able to build a new BMP, Or you need to find a second party to be able to work with and start cold calling people to say, hey, can I buy stormwater from you? And so it's not an easy process there. So there's challenges with that. Again, the timing is you have to complete a project within 24 months. So you have that going on. And if you don't have land, you're working through all that while you're trying to do a development. They're doing two parties. They've successfully done it since 2020. Both of them had existing land where there wasn't treatment nearby that allowed them to do a project. It was Mayo Clinic and Rochester Public Schools. Those are the only two that have successfully done it. That's because of the access to land and the properties. The properties they were working with were constructed prior to regulations, so it provided that opportunity. The other thing that we talked about a month ago when we were here talking about the comp plan The city is having some challenges. One is we look at adding VMPs in our older parts of town.

We don't have room. We're experiencing nuisance conditions and they are expensive projects.

And we would right now be relying on rig payers. And so we started thinking about these that are an alternative funding source. We have developers that have a need. The city has a need. There's challenges. We can do these retrofits for cheaper than it would be to do on site. this might be an alternative funding source to help advance some of these city projects too and not have to rely on Great Pairs. So with those challenges, again, we came up with what we believe is a good solution and aligns with council strategic priorities. And so with that, we researched what other communities were doing. And so the two other watershed districts that I mentioned, one is the central region in downtown St. Paul, the capital district down there, They just have a payment program. So they say, give us money. We're going to go do projects. There's a lot of risk associated with that because they don't know what the construction costs are going to be and all that. And there's this feel of give us money. We have to commit to a project. We don't know what that project is going to be. There's a lot of that. The other is Washington County Watershed District. They have a very similar program, but their goal, they produce them first. And then they say, you can buy, but it's just a payment. payment type program. And so we thought about that works great, but you're limiting it to just the government being a generator of credits. You don't allow anybody else to really participate. So as we started brainstorming ideas, there was a concept called trading or quality trading. And if I use the word trading, I apologize. Initially we looked at creating a local trading program. We've been meeting with the state a lot they're updating our permit and adding some language culture. So we're going to use transfer instead of trading for recommendation because of regulatory reasons. But you'll see this has a very similar approach to what a trading program would kind of look like. Similar would also be wetland banking if you're familiar with that concept of construction. So recommendation of the proposal is creating market-based compliance program that allows the transfer of approved credits. So you get approved credits from one entity to another, and the marketplace provides that incentive for recouping costs. So you could have someone that says, my property really doesn't work well for redevelopment or additional development, but maybe I want to create a green space, a nice open spot, you know, with stormwater treatment and a rain garden, whatever, for my employees. This is a way to help them. They could get money to be able to pay for that, as a part of it. It also is going to be market-driven based on supply and demand, and it forces entities like the city, if we are a generator, to select projects that are cost-effective because you have to be able to sell those credits at a reasonable rate. That's going to be cheaper than, of course, the unaffordable on-site option. So that market really kind of supply and demand forces cost-effective, efficient projects in places where they're needed. So we also have to be strategic on where to select projects. By setting up a framework, it would provide a clear framework for both generators of the credits as well as users at the start of projects. So under the program, we would approve a generator project that would be listed on our website. So a developer could say, now I've got into this offsite situation, I need to find someone who has Now you have a contact and a location and you can reach out to someone to be able to start that exchange process right at the front. And you're gonna know those upfront costs versus waiting until you either find a site later and have some of the unknowns related to a project.

Mayor Norton.

Is there any sort of requirement that if they can, they must before they go to the transfer option? So we're not creating a situation where you're buying it because it's cheaper, buy it from the city, and then not do anything in the area that they're in.

Correct. They have to do it on site first. And then they have to justify why they cannot do it on site. The other thing is they have to do as much as possible onsite. So maybe they can't get 100% of the onsite stormwater treatment, but they can get 90%. 10%, they can't quite fit in. They could purchase that onsite to be able to get it in compliance. So it doesn't have to be.

So I have a question. So you have Citi would be the first generator of stormwater quality treatment credit. Now, would we also be the clearinghouse for these private market? And then who decides what level of credit, quality of the stormwater treatment and whether they meet the standard? So kind of what does, do we provide, are we the clearinghouse and the... The approver.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. That would be, when we get to the policy, the recommended policy, council would say, implement that under the water resources program, just like we do right now with construction projects. So we would be responsible for implementing that. And that comes into one of the concerns of whether or not the city would be a generator at the same time we're approving the credits, right?

There's some risk level there.

So city would approve these, we would track them, And that also would be authorizing the construction projects. The other is, yes, I hadn't got to that last bullet. Talk a little bit about that there. The city does have a project that right now is in the engineering planning phase. It's currently, so off of just north of 37th Street, there's about 600 acres of drainage that flows directly into the South Florida Summer River. Very little water quality treatment, very little volume control. We've had lots of religion issues. through that area that's been washing out the bike trail by Foster Air, and there's lots of investment in there, and set it to loading right into the South Horton River. We have an opportunity to retrofit that area to be able to capture it, infiltrate at least the first one inch of every rainstorm, increase that volume, as well as then provide that water quality treatment and rate control. That would be, again, that's a good retrofit. There isn't treatment now, so we're creating a bunch of credits. that could become available either for city-only projects or for private projects.

Council Member Fredericks, are you on the list?

I beat you. How are you doing, Aaron? Good. I'm not doing too bad. So the question is, I'm hearing you say, okay, they can get 90% done on their property, but then they have to buy 10% somewhere else. There's still that 10% there. Where do you go with it? How does it actually take care of the other 10% of water it's not able to handle?

Well, so at that construction site, you're going to have an increase of saltwater. So there will be some pollutants discharged from that property. The offsetting is you're finding somewhere else to treat that. So collectively... Got it.

You're not taking care of it. You're just buying it out. Okay. Right. I get it.

I understand.

I just got hung up on, well, there's still that 10% there. Do we just not care because we're going to pay for it? Okay.

All right.

You got it.

And then...

Do you have somebody in the office that when somebody's coming in to do said development, whether big or small, that can explain this to people thoroughly and get them through it without them just like, oh, breaks, I'm out of here, this is too much, this is frustrating. Okay, great.

So we have Council Member Wall, Miller, then Palmer. Council Member Wall.

So we have a 600-acre parcel that could possibly be banked in this, and it's bought over time. In 50 years, city councils are going to look at that land and that will be in perpetuity undevelopable.

So let me clarify. There are 600 acres of drainage coming into the park. I have a slide. I think it'll make more sense when I get to that slide. I'll show you where the 37th Street project is and all that. So I think that'll be easier. You hold your question.

Okay, I'll reserve that for then. Does this make infill a great deal more expensive to develop? No.

And in fact, it would allow infill to happen because right now, the only way they're allowed to do offsite is if they determine that it's infeasible to actually do it on site, which usually means a project doesn't happen. And then that parcel sits vacant, undeveloped, or not expanded in any kind of situation. So this actually helps. redevelopment potential and allows those projects to move forward.

At some cost, to be sure.

Yep, but it will be at a cheaper cost than if they did it on-site, and that's the key, because on-site is not affordable. This allows for an affordable option to be able to allow that project to move forward.

Council Member Miller.

We would roll in and do existing resources. And yes, because we don't, we are not anticipating much additional work with this primarily because this is a very, very small percentage of projects that would actually participate in. Again, they have to do it onsite if they can. If they can't, there's a robust process they have to go through and it's largely limited to just infill. which again, supports some of the goals, but it was the council trying to focus on that. So the workload won't be significant other than the upfront, getting it set up, building a website, things like that. But once it's up and running, it won't take a significant amount of resources.

And we would be committing staff time to making sure that these projects are being requirements to begin with. So there's a lot of overlap with the effort that's involved.

Second question, can you define what a unit is that generates a credit?

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's again, our ordinance defines this. So it's a calculation of one inch. So one inch over the total amount of impervious surface across the entire development than on a per cubic foot basis. So that's the volume that they're required to treat. I guess.

is one credit, like how much area is one credit typically going to represent?

That's a great question. I'm trying to think of how to, I guess maybe what's an example. I think a good example of this, so I'll just flip to that slide just for a visual image. So in the bottom right hand corner of this slide, so on the north side is Foster Aarons Park. On the south side, this is Street.

Here's the RPU complex. So there's a small area here.

They're gathering 600 acres that flow through this one central point. This site will be able to provide 90 acre feet of water quality treatment. It's a significant amount. I mean, there'll be hundreds of acres of development. based on this one site. Was that 90 credits? Based, and these are, so this would be able to produce 90 acre feet of credits. Yep. So an acre but, yep, one acre but would be a unit of credit. Correct. In most, most scenarios, yes.

So my question is, you mentioned in a future version that a resident with some green space, develop this into a rain garden, get some fraction of a credit, spend the market for it.

This is just to- Yeah, so great question. Help from a workload standpoint, not have an influx of a bunch of generators. Yes, we would. Our recommendation is to cap it at, it has to produce at least one 10th of an acre that you are treating versus a quarter acre home development, things like that. So it's really going to push more into that commercial level.

Thank you. Council Member Palmer.

Thank you. I'm familiar with the Westland wetland banking back in the 90s when that started. And I think it's like before the one acre you needed to buy two or three. Is that something that you're looking at doing? Is it one for one?

Are you trying to increase it? Great transition.

Maybe I'll... Go ahead. Let me ask you a question. You can do that. Tyler, we did North Broadway that we're just doing. We spent a lot of money with infiltration and stormwater on that and kind of a unique type of thing. But the prior North Broadway project, did we do any of that? Dylan, do you want to help me answer that? No. Civic Center drive to the bridge. Did we do any from the bridge to 37? We did.

So we would not be required to find an offsite. We were able to achieve all of the water quality treatment and meet the stormwater permit requirements within the project footprint. On both the one we constructed a number of years ago from Civic Center to the dam and then on the one currently wrapping up in the next week or two.

How did you find it in the first block?

We utilized rain gardens. And we reduced our impervious footprint, so we were able to help reduce the volume of runoff. So that helped by, if you recall, it was essentially a highway that felt like a runway, and a lot less impervious surfacing helps as well.

So my other last concern is, You're putting this by Foster-Aarons Park, and I don't think, I don't know if you know this, but they're not the prettiest things in the world to have detention ponds in your neighborhood. So why would I want to have that in my neighborhood or in my ward? And would you end up with one ward having 12 and another ward having zero?

Two different ways. One, We haven't received Council approval to do the 37th Street project, so if that is not set in stone, we've got approval to do in Canary. But you took the trees down, Council. Two, our goal is to make them visually pleasing as much as we can, and I would say we have a lot of water ponds that are very visually they see an even infiltration base so he's going to be that plant vegetation and unlike mine it's like that lots of lots of cat tails right okay so it was to make them as aesthetically pleasing as possible within reason the other is i would say so again in order for this program to be effective and based on transfer ratios when we get to those ratios. From a city standpoint, I think there's a huge benefit by having them spread throughout the city. Again, because it's going to promote projects finding a generator project close to their project as much as possible. It doesn't make sense to put 12 of them all on the north side of town when there's development projects happening throughout and at least the downtown area. So trying to spread them out through each of our stormwater catchment basins, in my standpoint, it is a smart thing to do from the city investment side of it.

And I'm not saying this is wrong, the 37th site is wrong, but I did one by Northland today and the thistles are high and nobody seems to want to mow around our ponds, but not if, I guess it's like our, I think Boulder, but, I'm concerned about that, but I also want to, the real reason to do this is to get better water quality and help the downtown and other places that makes more sense to do. Yes, and that's the last.

Two things, one, if we have sites, please send them to us. We'll follow up on that. Keep in mind there are still quite a few private ponds throughout the city of Rochester. But if they're city ones, we certainly want to know about them. The other is, yes, currently all of this water is flowing through untreated water's leaving uncontrolled based on velocity pushing sediments into the river, causing erosion, things like that. This will improve the neighborhood, provide water quality treatment, provide rate control, and improve that area by doing these projects.

To be clear, the water coming into Rochester is in worse condition than when it leaves, with sediment and chemicals.

Generally speaking, yes, depending on the pollutants. It's either gets a little bit better or it stays the same. But we're not adding to the pollution or the sediment. Well, there's always discharge of pollutants into our water bodies. And this is why we have an ordinance that requires water quality treatment in redevelopment scenarios and even in development. We don't have any ways to your shop Okay, sorry so

So I do want to allow Mr. Luxine to continue with the presentation. We do have Council Member Miller. Can your question hold, or is it related to this? Go ahead.

My question would be, how frequently is the price of a credit set?

Or is it based on the supply and demand? I mean, is anybody bidding for these available credits? There are two projects. They both want to use credits from a priority area. How are those assigned and what price? So some of that, again, is going to be market driven.

The generator will be able to determine what price they want to sell that credit at, again, with the goal of being able to sell the credit.

From the city standpoint, we have developed what we would recommend if

so we would know the engineering costs, the construction costs that went into that, so that can go into the calculation. We will also be able to have an estimate on the recommendation, be you doing upfront costs as they're being negotiated with the purchaser, but you would do an outcome front cost to cover per credit basis, that construction, the engineering, kind of your upfront. And then there would be an annual operation and maintenance and then you can collect those fees. The other would be, you could estimate, I would say over a 20 year period, what that operation of maintenance is going to be, collect that, and then reevaluate that, whatever that frequency would be. The first one would be negotiated as part of the contract between the user of the credits and then what the general terms.

Okay. Continue.

So again, It's a better upfront consideration because our requirement would be, in order to be a generator, you have to have the project complete.

The credit determination is based on something already built. We know that, then it's confirmed. So we're not trying to sell, transfer things of unknown. So it has to be built. Our recommendation is to also include what is the transfer ratio to account for the distances between sites that helps enforce that priority level. and to create an environmental set-aside that aligns with that, the responsible environmental stewardship. Additional bonus is for state requirements, we have to make improvements towards TMDL. So many of these water bodies are impaired for too much suspended solids. A lot of it comes from outside the city of Robester. We are still required to reduce that. These are things we can report back to the state saying we're making our reductions under our permit. Again, if this were to move forward with the 37th street project potentially coming forward, that could be a first one that could participate in this program. So here's how transfer ratios would work. So again, similar to the wetland banking multiplier that would be applied to that credit. So recommendation that we worked a lot with these to try and bring for someone that it's something that is reasonable but also helps move the needle a little bit. So within that priority, one is the same receiving water body. It would be at a 1.2 to one ratio. So sample would be if you have to purchase one credit, instead you have to do 1.2, you know, so that's how that multiplier works. One-tenth of that is just set aside for environmental benefit. We can pay credit for that under the TMDL. We're making advancements in water quality improvement. And then the other 10 is for that distance, recognizing there's a distance between those two discharge locations, but they're still pretty close together. Priority two level would be, again, same drainage, but then further away.

So that's at a 1.3 to one.

Priority three would be, again, like something in Bear Creek. One project's in South Forks, Monroe. The other one's in Bear Creek. That would be at a 1.4 to one. And then the priority four, at a 1.5 to one for anywhere within the city. Again, the calculation, you first start at a one to one, you add in that 10%, 110 for environmental gain or 0.1, and then you add in a 0.1 for every priority level. It's easier to track, but I think it is supported based on proximity within Rochester. In comparison, so we use a wetland replacement, they have a two tier based on what you're doing. It's either 2.5 to one or two to one, as you mentioned. Under the state TMDL water quality trading, so the point source and wastewater trades, it's at a 1.6 to one. Or if you do a non-point project, so you could do like a stream bank restoration project where you have lots of erosion, that's at a 2.1 to one. to keep, you know, recognizing there is a cost by the time you add that on to keep them at a reasonable rate, yet still get some of that benefit for the community. So it's a community gain. And it's enough of a ratio to, again, especially the difference between the 1.5 to 1 to the 1.2, really push people to say, I want to find something as close to my project as possible. So hypothetical, how this would work. Here, the picture in the top left is the government center where we're sitting today. It's a little over five acres, about 5.25 acres. Pretty much all of it is impervious. So if we wanted to do a redevelopment here, project, and don't quote me on these numbers. I just did some rough estimates that won't be required here. So say you want to do a project, we're just stretching the South Fork of the Zumba River under our ordinance based on the project. could be again these are just numbers based on an unknown project right hypothetical 10 acre feet of water quality treatment which would be pretty close for like a five acre redevelopment type project so city of rochester we they can't do it on site um for for various reasons one difficult to infiltrate we're close to the flood walls we don't want to infiltrate a bunch of water underneath that city goes through the process and gets approval to do off-site stormwater treatment just so happens that water resources, you have council approval to do a 37th street project that got built that has 90 acre feet. So that's in the bottom right corner.

We would have an infiltration base that would treat 90 acre feet. It would get approved.

This is like what you would see on a website. Somebody could look at a website, find this information. of the water resources division to purchase. So this would be at a transfer ratio because the gold is stretching into the south of the river, or wherever you have that separation distance, it would be at a 1.3 to one.

So the government said we need to purchase 13 acre feet of treatment from our 37th street site. That would take it from 90 down to 77.

We still have 77 credits we can sell to someone else. that would get tracked, that would be real-time, and we would track it on a website just like this so somebody could click and say, hey, I see this project in my neighborhood. Who's transferring credits and what are those credits going for? We would also inspect each of these sites to ensure they're compliant and have that compliance status on the site so that people know that the system's The benefit here is, again, the city is doing a redevelopment project. You know you can't do it on site. You would know a price right up front of how much it is going to cost to do the stormwater treatment and consider that right in your budget. As soon as you make that transaction, you're automatically in compliance. You don't have to wait that two years and try and figure something out to make that happen.

Council member Fredericks.

Thank you. What's that 13 acre foot going to cost?

going to be based on what the construction cost is for this 37th Street, which I don't have right now. So again, that will go into that calculation of what the price would be per acre foot. And so we would know that once the project is complete.

That didn't really give me an answer. But do you have a rough idea? Or don't you want to quote anything?

Well, so I can do

I think she answered for you.

We can use rough math and just say that. So let's say the 37th street project costs trying to do with 90 acre feet. Say it was $900,000. Okay. So you do the quick math on that. It's going to be $10,000 per acre foot. Got it. So $10,000. depends 13, 130,000.

So for a project like that, it ain't something that's going to stop the wheels from turning. That's what I really wanted to hear. Okay.

So, so, so that would be, you know, that would say an all in on cost. Yeah. And then as part of the negotiated contract, it would say, if you want to pay for operation and maintenance up front for an educated unknown, or do you want to, want us to send you a bill every single year.

Right on. I just want to see us have our cake and eat it, too. I don't want to see development stop, but I also don't want to just be in reckless with our resources. That's all I'm trying to get my mind wrapped around.

You know, essentially, it's not just a feasibility thing. The cost comes with the money for these developments, too. So to figure out a way to chamber this water on your ground, we've already potentially seen examples where that's cost prohibitive. When you stack up against an approach like this, much more cost-effective.

It's no different than what we're doing with our tree policy. It's the same thing. If you can't plant them, you pay to plant them somewhere else. I get it.

I understand it from if the city has the property and we build it, we know all the costs that we have to build into what that credit will be. We know that we're going to maintain it and when it comes to the private sector doing them? What kind of quality controls would we have on their upfront costs and their maintenance of it? And I can just kind of build a scenario. So you have a private landowner and they say, oh, we have a wetland now. And then they are able to undercut the credit fees. And we don't have control over the quality of that water treatment.

Yeah, so good question. So one, anything that gets constructed needs to be reviewed by the city and ensure that it meets our ordinance as well as our engineering standards. So that's the out front instructions. inspect those projects to make sure that they were constructed correctly. And then under this program, what our recommendation would be is in order to participate, an annual inspection would be completed to make sure that they're effectively maintaining the system. Because if they don't, it could cause compliance issues for another property. From the cost standpoint, that's a little bit the beauty of the market-based approach. It's going to be up to that private owners determine what they want to sell those credits for. If they want to sell the credits for a loss, that's up to them. And that's just part of the program. If they want to set them really high and try to generate a profit, that's up to them. But if you have more people participating in this market, it's going to start balancing it out because you need to be competitive in the market. If you price yourself out of the market, you're not going to sell anything and get a return on your investment. If it's too cheap, you're losing money on that investment. So that's, again, that market base. We're not going to review what they set for their pricing and all that. That would be up to them. Our role would be to make sure it's compliant, that it was constructed correctly, and that they've met all the requirements of participating in the program.

And they're annually inspected.

And I would add, the terms of the agreement without the signings, at that point, maybe the city could come in and back up this and offer, you know, all of that would be outlined in the agreement to adjourn. There would be no suspenders.

And just to let you know, we have, there's a lot more information than I brought forward, but again, we got to a point where we didn't want to spend more time and effort on this. It becomes less important to do that. What draft agreements could look like, how people can calculate the credit pricing to make sure they're getting the return on each and all those things are in draft.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Wall. Did you have a question?

I did, but I have lost it, so maybe I will find it somewhere.

Okay. Council Member Miller, and then I'll come back to you if you...

longer providing stormwater management what happens the credit is that purchased in perpetuity so they have to be transferred so one of the things that again as we have wrapped will be set up as draft of the recommendation will be as one by signing on to this you are agreeing to maintain and keep that BMP as long as it's tied to the development, the reason that it was constructed.

So for its useful life, right?

If that property transfers ownership, the requirement that it be maintained under this program, transfer with it, just like it would be if somebody owns a stormwater treatment pond right now that is required to be part of their building. property acquisitions component. The second thing would be, so if there's not compliance, say something happens and the site is not compliant, the purchaser, the user of those credits will have to either, they will then have two years or, you know, under our ordinance where we could work with them to either find a new generator to have an agreement with, or they will need to go construct their own water quality treatment system somewhere else. And so that's something that we would be tracking and then we would work with them to make sure that they're always in lines. The other thing that we'd also be allowed as long as these contracts happen in the right order is say somebody purchases credits at a 1.5 to 1 ratio and then a new site is built somewhere nearby and they can get it at a 1.2 to 1. They can, under the terms of their contract, if they're allowed to get out of that, they can terminate that and enter into a new. From our standpoint, they need to notify us because there's a compliance piece here. So we need to make sure that those contracts then are able to happen in the right order and that they maintain compliance that whole time. that answer questions.

Council member Wall.

Does the. And I'll have an example after I ask the question, does the city ever forgive a stormwater requirement? For instance, there's some infill and some developer comes in and has this project that we've just been desperate for in the city. forever and fills a precise need that we have. But the stormwater is an issue. Do we ever forgive something like that?

There are state requirements.

We are not allowed to forgive that.

Each project needs to comply with those requirements. We're held accountable if we were to approve something.

I would say financially, you may have opportunities to make sure that if the issue was the hoarding of the credit that you could enter into some sort of development agreement that could still provide the compliance with stormwater quality, but do so in a way where the cost is not, I would imagine cost is still the issue, or cost still is something that you could address in a different way. That still has to also be compliant with load and bills.

Mayor Norton.

I am wondering though about water quality. So let's say you have a part of the community that is just very feasible to do anything and people start buying the credits where they're available and they might be a little further out. What about the water quality in that particular area? If it gets really bad, what's the solution then? You bought the credits. You kept other parts of the city's water clean, but that particular area, the water is not really very good. Is there a fix for that? Because the credit idea, I like the credit idea, but I also think it could be a downside, which is maybe one part of town life. one stream of water might not be as clean as the others and are we okay with that or is there a different fix we would think about in the future?

Yeah, great question and great concern. So one, keep in mind, especially again promoting infill, there's an opportunity to help make that happen. The second is in most of the infill scenarios, there isn't water quality treatment. A lot of them are already paved over. There's impervious surface. This is still going to be an improvement to the system there. Third thing I would say is again, it's the city's role in this. Knowing that water quality is important. This is the importance of us looking at where we can do these retrofits to help the city, and if we have these areas, being able to do something closer. As I started, these sites are challenging. We've been looking at a few of them. We've actually worked with Rochester Public Schools. We started looking at who has land next to the surface, right? That's kind of the goal. The city does have quite a bit of land right away, green space, next to the surfaces. all throughout the challenge is gonna be trying to bring forward a cost-effective project that meets requirements. And so that I do think doing this the right way, we can strategically as a participant in this program and a generative of credits, be able to help get ahead of that and spread it throughout the community.

So I have a follow-up question to kind of what the mayor, the line of discussion that the mayor brought up. so our goal is infill of development and so if they do not they have all impervious surface and they don't have on site ability to do the water treatment in our development plans would we still in a development say well we don't want you we want you to have some non-impervious surface at that development site. Are there guidelines for that? So they're required to do as much as they can on site. It's not as prescriptive as what we do. So they can do some. But yes, they can definitely push as much as we can on site, whether that's a rain guard.

tree trenches, green roofs, reuse of stormwater. You capture the stormwater, use it for irrigation. Those types of things, yes, they need to do as much as they can on site. Again, there can be scenarios where it gets to the point it's just not feasible to be able to do it on site where they just physically can't comply because of what it would cost to do it. then that's the remaining piece that could participate in this role. Got it.

Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Council member.

I want to emphasize to not encourage and make it easier to not do it. That this really isn't off-ramp for those unique scenarios. It's just when people end up in that situation, they can push them into not redeveloping because you can't find a partner, you can't find land, can't do it, this helps do that. And again, from my standpoint, I see an opportunity for the city to be able to do projects in a way that can be funded by supporting development at the same time, helping do landfill. And so we're able to check several boxes under this scenario. It's not for every scenario. It's a very few. We're not going to have projects throughout the city, but where it does make sense. I think this is a good solution.

So the goal is infill. So if the council supports this and you pull together your implementation plan, how soon would you think we could see a project come before us that says we're using this system?

So there's some steps we'd have and support transfer rates, those should go into ordinance. So there's some things we need to go through on that side. I do think 37th street infiltration basins could be the very first project. And that is slated to come back to council around the August, September timeframe with permission to go for bids, start construction. We would have a project complete in 27 to have again, a generator credits be available which they'll use over again based on those feedback.

Thanks. Council Member Miller, then Frank.

This is very interesting. I appreciate you bringing it forward. And I would be in favor of us moving forward at least into a pilot phase. And I guess my curiosity is at what touchpoint would it come back for review? Would it be after the first 100 credits are transferred? What types of projects were built that would have been otherwise feasible? Are we tracking this on the KPI report? How are we interacting with this program and making sure that you're saying that these are the right transfer ratios, this is the right system? How is it coming back to us for review? Great question.

So there's several council touch points. One, one of the next steps would be we bring forward a policy, including the draft policy,

We certainly can provide updates on and we build a website, you know, to be able to track this. And then every single, every project that would fit underneath council under the development agreement approval, there's always a stormwater piece in there, a power line of stormwater. This is going to be specifically called out in that development agreement. So you'll see the ones participating in the program that way. We can certainly, you know, if there's an action plan list or something to be able to fill out.

I think you could. I think every time you bring it forward, you're going to want to know, like, where are we on our credit availability and also where are you on your next feelings?

And that's what I was getting towards. I mean, so say we saw there are 100 credits transferred percentage of that are public projects? What percentage of that are private projects? Is it meeting the end goal? Right? Or how are we meeting the end goal through this? Are there any? Are we seeing like no 1.5 credits are being purchased? Right? Like, is that too high too low? Are there are too many 1.5 credits being purchased? Two things.

First, you're trying to create a website that would help everyone know what is out there all the time. And I hear what you, I think what I'm hearing you say is how do we connect this to utilizing a program like this only when necessary because we can't build on site to advance the other housing and affordability goals.

I guess my question is just, Ongoing review, the question came up, the mayor raised it, maybe others did as well. All of a sudden, this area of town has been converted into all storm retention, and now it's being all the developments happening in one place, the cheapest land, cheapest place to do this in a different place. We've created this market. I don't think that's going to happen, but I'm thinking about it. about how media summarizes this and how the community understands this and how we give additional touch points to our confidence in this working for the program review and also to the community that this is meeting the goals and what are the pros and cons, right? How is this working in reality? I think it sounds great. I think it's a super innovative idea. I'm glad that we're ready to pioneer something like this. But how do we offer reassurance to us and to the community in a forward-looking way?

For one, I really want to emphasize this will be very few projects moving through this. I don't even see a lot of generators wanting to participate because of being sending annual inspections or the oversight and all that. I think there's a potential. From my standpoint, I think it's important to create a structure where there's a map to generate the credits. You know, there's a benefit to that. So, one, all this information forward, it's going to be, yes, our goal is to have it on the website so it's transparent that way. Annually, all of this needs to be implemented under a state permit with the Minnesota Fish Control Agency. We go through an annual audit on that side, so there's checks and balances in place there to make sure that it's being implemented. So we're staying in compliance with our format. The other thing is I am certainly willing to build in a report back to council to say this is the number of projects that are participating in the program. And versus how many inquiries we have had. We can track the number of people that retail and say your credits are too expensive. something like that.

Okay, we're gonna go to Councilmember Doering and then we have Fredrickson.

Yeah, I agree that this is a very innovative approach for a problematic obstacle for some development. I'm just looking for a little bit of clarity about something that you said a little while ago, because I've been stewing on it. I just want to make sure I understand. So the generator falls out of non-compliance the onus is on the person buying the credit from the generator to then buy credits from someone else, because that's what I thought I heard you say. So that seems punitive for the person who is operating in good faith to buy credits and not punitive to the person who is falling out of control.

Yeah, good distinction there. So clarification, the person that's in that compliance has a responsibility to bring the site correctly with them. If we get to a point where that does not happen, the user of those credits would need to find someone else or do their own. We would work with them on that, understanding the scenario that they're in. I think that's the other piece, again, is some of those things can be a disincentive for people either wanting to be a generator or even this is voluntary. Nobody is forced. to participate, and that's if they choose to either meet it outside, go find their own. Sure, you know, they can do that too. So the importance is this is voluntary touring, there's some risk associated with that, but then we would also work with them in those scenarios to make sure that the sites are involved in compliance and compliance is always the closest. Thank you for that clarification.

That alleviated my concern. Less concerned.

Council Member Fredericks.

I like the idea of it because you're mitigating a problem up towards foster errands. You're mitigating a problem there, and it's getting funded by what sounds to be like the public and the private sect in some cases. And we want infill. And if you've got to meet state requirements, and you can have two wins, and actually more than that, if you're providing, in some cases, housing, whatever it may be in need for our community or for our city, it's a win on multiple levels. So I like it.

Thank you. I agree. I think it's a very innovative approach, but to the point of the objective is to see development in those infill, and so I say, even though you say you're going to incorporate all this work and build this website into what you do now, there's some kind of rationale that you made that said, you know, this is going to help. It's going to loosen up some of that infill property, and we'll see those coming into development. And so that's what I'm looking forward to. Council member Keene.

Question on a project we did a couple years ago on 20th Street, 3rd Avenue Southwest, where they were going to build six houses. I don't know if you remember this, but some of our built, they did a underground water retention tank. Does anyone remember this?

I don't.

The reason I ask, I thought that was pretty innovative to be a major tanker. That would you say would be required or would everyone be doing this?

I don't know that specific scenario, I think. So one, whether or not that system would comply with our requirements, I guess I don't know, because there's both the water quality treatment component, you need to be able to treat that first one edge, and then there's also the volume reduction. So some of those types of systems though, are what you would have to look at. So big tank underground, that separates out the solids. You'd have to be able to extract that. And a lot of them would infiltrate it. So I just don't know enough about that.

And this was the stormwater control, too, because it was in the hilly neighborhoods there where if the water ran off where they were doing all this development, there was more stormwater than filtration. But I just take some fear that when you put something into some place, it would get around that idea of doing that with stormwater.

So a project like that, if we're speaking theoretically, would still have to prove out that something like that wouldn't be feasible. Obviously that got installed in this case. So with the safeguards, you know, the hurdles that we would put in place to qualify in this process, presumably we would have arrived at that being feasible for that site. I think that's the same option.

I want to bring it up because I do worry when I hear the language such there. You can say 31, 32 and start seeing like there's other options in that.

I think that could I agree with Tyler. I think the key there is they've demonstrated they can be compliant sometimes. So if they can do those types of projects now, those are some of the things that we have figured out.

She knows I'm trying to shut it down.

So that's what concerns me. I want to understand when you talk about building the foster errors thing. We're doing that as a as a project already in the city of Rochester, and then we're creating credits. We're not doing it because we could get the credits.

So keep in mind, again, it's in design. I got council approval. Our recommendation would be to do that project primarily because, yes, there's a significant amount of stormwater that flows through that site untreated that's causing significant erosion issues.

I'm just trying to understand if we really think like you use the example of the school district to the other property owners. Is there anybody going to look at this as a good business to get into, or is this going to be something you're doing for other good reasons that you can now get this additional value?

I think that's in some cases, it's probably going to be an added incentive on top of some of the other reasons. So, you know, again, I gave the example of maybe you have a business that has some space. They don't want to have it.

Yeah, perspective, right?

To me, you can construct a stormwater treatment facility that looks really nice and people like it and things like that. So here's an opportunity and a way to generate some income to offset the cost of that project. And so it's an added bonus on top of it. Now, with that comes responsibilities. I'm going to record right now.

Those two. We are the permittee.

they have the municipal separates from water systems to a point earlier regardless of where the pollution is coming from where it's measured in the city we have to be able to meet our limits so regardless of anyone ever buys into this the city generating value in water equality in a project on 77th street is the primary reason that why you would do this and then there is additional value in being able to assist with those rare projects that are private, potentially, if this is approved, that really cannot treat something outside. And no matter what, you're still getting increased quality water treatment in your city. But regardless of if this is ever used by the private sector, we have to treat the water regardless of how it's cutting the city. So the pollution from any of the sites that we're talking about, if it all came from outside the city, we are responsible for treating it. based on our partners like the states requiring us to do that. And they don't care how much it costs.

Okay. One more question.

You really do want to see, you don't want the city to be the provider. You want the city to be a provider and others too. I'm good with that. I think I understand what you're trying to say. It's not like a captive thing that only the city does. But I want to understand what you said, like somebody buys these from like a private And they have an ongoing maintenance cost then too on top of it, because you did a cost in the 10,000 per foot acre or whatever it was. It's that and then some sort of perpetuity, like 3% of that per acre?

All the setup is between the generator and the user. They will negotiate that contract. My standpoint, again, I would primarily look at it as a generator under the city program, recognizing that we are owning and operating these systems. that payment structure is there's an upfront payment that covers, you know, via calculated cost based on engineering, permitting, construction, hard costs that we know, those capital costs that go right into it. Then what I would negotiate with people is that annual fee to collect the funds, again, based on a per credit basis for operation and maintenance.

So when that project sells off.

Otherwise, you're guessing, and that's the most fiscally responsible way to set it up for the city. private entity wants to be a generator and they want to set it up different. Under the market-based approach, that would be up to them how they would want to set that up. It's just that at their risk, our role is to make sure the site's in compliance, that it meets the criteria to participate in the program and that they're operating and maintaining the system the way they're supposed to. They can't come back and say, I'm in non-compliance because I'm not generating enough revenue to pay for my own. That's on them. Their responsibility is operating.

Yes, that's what I was trying to make sure that's a sustainable business. And I worry that I see a lot of like outlock of retention plans that I believe your team takes over at some of these bigger residential developments. So I'm trying to think of this idea of a developer developing an infant lot and then having it in perpetuity or how he passes that responsibility to the new owners. I don't know how it's going to work. It's a concern. All right.

Great discussion. More discussion to come. You guys have what you need from us.

I didn't hear anything specifically on the values of the transfer rate, so I'm assuming you're okay with that.

Yep. Sounds good. All right. We're going to take an eight-minute break. Thank you, gentlemen.

Expansive network of sidewalks and paths.

So someone had the foresight decades ago to ensure we were building sidewalks with new developments, which was great.

We've continued to build paths with both the flood control network and other recreational projects.

But obviously, as we've gone through this analysis, we still have gaps within the system. So As we're working through our pavement management planning, you just recently approved the next half of the community for us to rate the street pavements. We also want to look at adding on all of our paths to be able to go out and rate the pavement of all of our current path network just to help inform Going forward, not only long-term maintenance, but when do we decide whether this next project being proposed is a good idea based on everything we have? you know, and that comes down to both long-term just maintenance, but also we continue to get more requests for winter maintenance, right? And we've done a nice job between the public works and the parks teams. The council gave us an additional position a number of years ago. We continue to grow the winter maintenance, but we still have complaints about winter maintenance too. So it's all part of the story. As I get to the funding slide, which was part of the CIA, we did add some COLUMN TO TALK ABOUT POLICY. WHILE YOU DIDN'T ASK FOR POLICY UPDATES, THERE'S A LOT OF POLICY QUESTIONS THAT WE NEED TO BE THINKING ABOUT AS WE'RE LOOKING AT THE DATA THAT WE HAD. SO I DO WANT TO JUST LEVEL SET HERE'S WHAT WAS IN THE COUNCIL INITIATED ACTION, REFINE WHAT WAS A REAL QUICK ANALYSIS THAT WAS COMPLETED BY THE GIS GROUP IN CONJUNCTION WITH OUR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS TEAMS. looking at prioritization based on street classification, population density, access to key destinations, collaborate with the Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee and our mode shift coordinator to improve criteria, and then come back to you to present the results and talk about funding strategies. So we worked, as I noted, with really a huge shout out to the GIS team. They spent a lot of time digging into the different layers we have and the criteria we're going to lay out today. But worked with Irene's team, Tyler and myself and others in Public Works, but also we met with Parks. We reviewed this as it relates to the Park System Master Plan to ensure we weren't conflicting with what they're looking at long term, connecting whether through Parks or between Parks as part of their overall system. So really tonight, we want to get your feedback on the criteria. The way we conducted the analysis, we did not weight it. We scored things zero to three, the different criteria I'm going to talk about. They were all weighted equally. So you just scored it, and we have the six criteria, and you add it up. And that's what you'll see on the mapping that we're going to share. But we'd like you to be thinking about are there other criteria? Are these the right criteria? Do you have certain weighting you want to put on one criteria or another or multiple that are higher than certain criteria? We did present this as noted in the request to the Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee in April. They were in agreement with the six that you see. They did not have additional criteria that they wanted to see considered. Other feedback from that group was if there's further work desired by the council that comes out of tonight's discussion, they would like to be involved and engaged in that process going forward. So I'll walk through the different criteria. Access to key destinations was the first one. Looking at grocery stores, schools, parks, pharmacies, childcare, mixed use. You see everything listed here. So we kind of broke it out in quarter mile chunks. The further you are away, the higher you scored from these key destinations. Next one was safety needs. So we recently, ROCOG completed a safety action plan, and that plan identifies corridors throughout the community as tier one, two, or three. Tier one being the highest priority from a safety perspective and a need for improvement. So we use that one, two, and three. So if it was a tier one, it scored the highest as a three and reduced as it increased in tier. So those tiers consider crash history. CONSIDER THE TYPE OF ROADWAY AND WHAT YOU'D EXPECT TO SEE ON THOSE ROADWAY, AND THEN ALSO THE FEEDBACK THAT ROCOD RECEIVED FROM THE PUBLIC AS THEY WERE ENGAGING AROUND THE DIFFERENT CORRIDORS WITHIN THE COMMUNITY AND THE COUNTY. HONESTLY, IT WAS OBVIOUSLY COVERING THE WHOLE COUNTY.

Seconds, next two, looking at access to transportation options.

MnDOT has a priority areas for walking score. PAWS is the acronym. So we use that. It's something they've done statewide and looked at walkability in certain neighborhoods as it relates to equity, environmental justice issues. So, we used that, and because we were able to get that data from MnDOT. The next criteria you see is, is it, how does it relate to our primary transit network and ability to access transit? The further you were from the primary transit network, the higher you scored, because again, more disconnected, harder to connect to things. Next one was, we looked at is it vacant land that's development ready, so it can happen in the future with that development of that land. And looking at working with the planning team on where do we have areas for future growth that we could identify projects that could fill these gaps. Similar to our sidewalk gap fill program, we used gaps based on distance. So, if you recall, the sidewalk gap fill was only 600 or less. So, 600 or less scored zero or one. I don't have the exact breakdown. from zero to 201 and then up to 600. But then anything greater than 600 scored two and then three. So, similar to gap, we looked at the gaps, but in a broader range than the sidewalk program.

With that, each... Are the criteria themselves weighted in any way?

They are not. So, that's something we want to hear. Do you feel like one of these should be, or multiple should be weighted higher than another? We just went flat tonight. Again, this is our first run at slicing this data.

You'll see some numbers ranging all the way up to 13 is the highest partial score.

this being the first time, you know, each of them has some sort of discontinuity if it's scoring somewhere. So, it's just that you'll see some that are much greater than others throughout the different quadrants of the community.

when we talked about this in November was how many people are impacted by the current gap it is that it encapsulated anyway in these criteria like if there are a thousand people and there is a disconnect is that parcel emerging in any greater way, because there are more people disconnected from a destination, the transit network, etc. Or would a parcel with a 1000 unit residence or 1000 unit apartment building score equally to a single family home?

It is just based on parcels, so it's not taking population into account.

Okay. Would it be possible in any way to take population into account, either current, projected?

I'm going to defer to Ms. Woodward.

Yeah, we could add population overlaying of where there's greater population density and put that in the map as well.

I guess I would love to see something like that, census tract, some sort of equity in that definition of equity consideration. But yeah, I think this looks good.

Thank you. So I'm just going to briefly.

I agree with having higher density areas like served technically first because it just makes sense. But before that, for me, would actually be safety, just like if there's imminent safety concerns. I mean, obviously, there's people that are disconnected, their routes may be safer than the ones that maybe have 500, 200, because there are some areas I'm genuinely concerned someone's going to get killed. I really am. And you happen to be close to one first slide, so I'll just let you talk.

Yeah, and that would shake out because safety is, again, one of those criteria. So depending on the corridor, it's going to score higher. Okay.

Just quickly to clarify, are you advocating that maybe safety would get a higher weight? Yes.

Yes. Definitely. Okay. Definitely.

Council Member Palmer.

In the past, when people have talked about safety and you said there's been no accidents, and the reason that there's no accidents is we just avoid it. So that's kind of a mixture that kind of throws a monkey wrench into it. And I agree with what Mr. Miller was saying about the people served. I mean, how many, because like at Bridgeview, that's a whole subdivision that can't get anywhere. And so that's more important to me than maybe one or two single family dwellings. So that's the safety thing that bothers me.

GO AHEAD, COUNCILMEMBER.

I GUESS TO FOLLOW UP ON COUNCILMEMBER FREDERICK'S POINT OF THE PEOPLE THAT AREN'T SERVED BY THE TRANSPORTATION NETWORK ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE PEOPLE WITHOUT ACCESS TO PERSONAL VEHICLES WHICH ARE FULLY CONNECTED TO OUR TRANSPORTATION NETWORK. BUT I WOULD RATE DESTINATIONS, PARTICULARLY PUBLIC SCHOOLS, as higher that would be my preference is thinking about waiting destinations so particularly for um public schools that have a walk boundary of you know ranging from one to 1.5 miles or maybe a little off on that but if somebody is not able to access that key destination particularly a student i would like to see that weighted higher than somebody who is unable to walk to a less essential service or get to on the active transportation network. Again, that doesn't give you a specific criteria adjustment, but I do think that our under served by current transportation options really gets to my intent with the CIA to understand how many people are impacted and who is impacted, who is cut off from daily life because of lack of access to transportation. And I think that there's probably somewhere in the census tract data and also the school walk boundaries that are important in those destination, in that access to destination frame.

And I think we'll get to.

We'll let the. I guess I correct I would just do schools I wouldn't do whether or not they're private or not because like the math and Science Academy on 16th Street Southwest is a tough area to walk and you know I would hate to leave them out just because they're not a public school so.

Yeah, and that's, we'll have another slide coming up that gets at some of that deeper dive that we could go into if there's desire.

Desire to advance the work we've done today.

So again, I'm gonna just quickly jump through. You can see the reddish, orangish, yellowish, those are the highest scoring parcels, so the most disconnected. Blue being much more connected. So here's southeast, this Marion Road sort of corridor, which again, township areas that were annexed that did not have the requirements to build sidewalks like we would have had within our city subdivisions and city code. So, this is a, you know, this is an area that really lights up if you think of a sort of heat map and where it's scoring highly. Northeast, a lot of this area was obviously connect, or developed under the old land development manual where we would have sidewalks and that connectivity so you know it's newer it but as you can see you get on the periphery you get areas that are similar to some of the others that we've talked about already tonight that are further from both transit and everything else we've talked through with the criteria and so there are some areas further northeast that along 48 that are not well connected Northwest, again, was more in that 90s, 2000s, some of the newer developments in the community where we have access to safe places to walk, to bike, to connect to transit routes. Not a lot of areas that score as high in the Northwest. You do see a couple areas kind of west of Highway 52 that can be somewhat isolated. Southwest, we have some pockets in Southwest. Again, areas that were township that were annexed don't currently have sidewalks. There isn't, there aren't paths. Transit might be further away. And yet you have schools nearby that, you know, people can't safely get to. Even on this slide, there's Bamber Valley is a school very close to some of the orange and red you see. Another area is, you know, further southwest out towards the airport. Just areas that were, you know, quite honestly, some sprawl has occurred and out on the periphery of the community. And they're well connected within their neighborhood, but it's, you know, if you want to get somewhere, you're probably going to have to get into your vehicle to get there if it's far enough away. So, again, we're...

Dylan, are there maps for the areas of Rochester that are not in the presentation?

So, that's one thing I was going to mention. Our GIS team developed a dashboard online, so we could provide, if there's a desire, access to the, so you could, it's all online. You could get in there. We'll have to get you the access to the ArcGIS online, work with GIS group. But then you can scroll all over and really, you know, zoom in, zoom out. We just wanted to take some snapshots to give you an idea of what the mapping looks like. And then, you know, if we were to make updates, it's all sort of real time. You run the analysis and it'll update the scoring and the colors. And so it's pretty awesome what the team's put together, quite honestly.

Council Member Fredericks.

I just want to ask a question of the president and you guys. Is it the wrong time to address a couple things than those images that you just showed? Is it the wrong time? Is there going to be a better time? Because I don't want to get way in the weeds if we're going to just keep, we need to keep rolling here.

You can ask your question now.

If you can go back to slide southeast, the one with the most orange, and yeah, that one. Okay, Marion Road, first of all, we put in the new splash pad, very nice. Mr. Miller and I have had this conversation. I really appreciate his analytical abilities because I'm not that guy, so it's a great resource to have on this council. But OK, on Marion Road, we put in that nice splash pad. To get to that splash pad from the east side, they got to go all the way down to Longfellow School, go across the street, and go all the way back up. It's not going to happen. There's going to be people going across that street. It's not cool. They're going. I don't need to go into all the details, but I personally witness. I live at the Marion Apartments on Marion Road. I watch. By the way, I love how much the basketball court's being used over there. It's being used a ton. It's awesome. And they seem to be taking care of it. So I'm really happy to see that. 20th Street, people are walking on the road at dark and they're crisscrossing the street to try and avoid cars. Someone's going to hit them. People are on their phones texting and driving. I'm super concerned. It's ugly. It's like you say, it's a runway. People are driving 60 in on it. It's a 40-mile-an-hour speed limit. It should be a 30 in city limits there. And I talk to the county about, oh, talk to the city, tell them to take it over. I get in this stupid back and forth. I did say that out loud. But it's like, do we genuinely care about these people? Do we really? Because, look, it is all disconnected. And people are walking on roads everywhere. My biggest concern is I'm driving down the road and I'm seeing people. I'm like, oh, my God, people are walking right there. So that's my concern. I aired it out and I'll talk about it all you want on a later date if you want to talk about it.

And one of the later slides, I'll mention some of those challenges as we do a deeper dive and identify barriers, quite honestly. But the Marion one, the splash pad, it's good you bring that up. We actually just met with the county yesterday. We're working on design for intersection improvement at the current signal by Longfellow, as well as some improvements on the where the old Longfellow access was to help people safely get across Marion Road. It's going to be something that will come back in front of the council, county, and city will be a joint 50-50 project where county contributes 50%, city contributes 50% to that. So, that will come back to you. Preliminary, as we talked through it with them, we talked about a project, hopefully we can do it next year. It's not currently in the CIP, though.

Because the kids in those communities are using the playground at Longfield or using that splash bed. It's an active community with kids outside.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Miller?

Yeah, I appreciate Council Member Fredericks bringing that up. I've been very concerned about Marion Road and I would almost put a criteria presence of a county road as a criteria because I've talked extensively with our county commissioners about the fact that they do not have a complete streets policy even for streets that they control within city limits. and it is a safety issue. But I also appreciate that Councilmember Fredericks is bringing up children, particularly who are vulnerable, who are trying to access destinations for recreation and for school as, again, like a primary, more important criteria because those are the, like within a distance of that destination, the ones most likely to be trying to access it on foot, unable to access a vehicle to get there. most likely to be impacted by the safety conditions.

Continuing, moving along. So, this is the slide I did reference. If we were... directed to do a deeper dive and refine what has currently been presented. You know, the sort of things we're gonna look at are, you know, is it a topography challenge that's becoming a barrier to something? Is there an environmental constraint? Is it financial? Is it just truly a barrier where we're gonna have to do some sort of grade separated crossing, which those are not cheap. Is there a better alternative? external agency challenges. Is it a MnDOT highway? Is it a county road? You know, we have to have willing partners to work through a project. So all of that we'd have to take into consideration. But really, As we started to dig into funding considerations, you know, like I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of policy considerations that come with this because, you know, there's impacts to the current budget and where we're allocating our funds to different pavement management and other projects. We could just continue to allow these gaps to be filled with both future development, like we noted where there's vacant land, and or projects that we have that will be presented within the CIP. We aren't recommending revamping the SID program. We don't think, honestly, the statute really would allow for it if we're going beyond sidewalks. And there's a lot of areas where it's not abutting, you know, your frontage, where it just isn't going to fit that program. Obviously, grant opportunities, we always look for those, but we have to have in the back of our mind what is the funding source for that match, because they usually don't have, when it comes to construction and implementation, there's always going to be a 20% match, typically. Look at shifting or expanding existing funding, but there's tradeoffs, and that's a lot of those policy considerations we have on the right side of the screen. We could modify, we could talk about modifying the sidewalk gap program to include paths. As we discussed with the parks department, as we identify projects that could fill some of these gaps that are in their parks master plan, we could talk with them about their referendum funding, whether that makes sense and whether it would be an eligible funding source. But really, a lot of the discussion is the right side of the screen here as we think about The things you need to be considering when it comes down to service, priority, funding, maintenance, and how do we want to grow. While it wasn't explicit in the CIA, we wanted to make certain that we note these and you're thinking about them and what the different tradeoffs might be. And I guess I would let Tyler and Irene add a little bit more to that if they'd like.

Sure, thanks, Dylan. I'll go back to the bullet on the left-hand side that was referenced about, you know, existing funding levels and tradeoffs, right? We have a lot of miles of path and sidewalk and street in Rochester that, frankly, we struggle to maintain where we're at right now. while we want to make sure that all users have a safe experience in town and this heat map is concerning to us as well, we think about this in terms of what can we accomplish, right? Outside of existing funding levels, it's hard to pick winners and losers against other priorities, right? That we mentioned the SID program, and if we pulled that in and tried to rearrange that, it would probably, you know, another problem would show up within that program. So, we want to make sure that as we're presenting this, Keeping all of those things in mind, that we need to balance this against the things that are already occurring and the challenges we have in maintaining the paths we have now. Snow removal comes up frequently. We don't currently have a very robust program to maintain the paths that we've built over the last decades. We've had a pretty consistent, I would say commitment in the community to initially fund construction of paths, but we haven't had a very robust way to follow up with maintenance on a reliable cycle. This starts to dovetail into other conversations about path maintenance, which are coming to the council as well, but to just look at the map and say we should go fill that gap seems, a little bit too straightforward, there's a lot of considerations that go into if we wanna start chasing down some of these gaps.

And I would just add, we did a pavement management plan in 2019, and we've talked about this number. There's sort of this unfunded liability of 16 to 20 million. Sales tax, we're generating an estimated 3.1-ish a year, so that helps reduce that unfunded liability. you know, we're already struggling to maintain our roadway pavements. We're going to, when we collect the second half, we're going to, we intend to initiate an update to that pavement management program where we incorporate paths too, so we can understand how does it all play together and, and yeah, and then it becomes, you know, are there trade-offs with pulling some back from our pavement so we can focus more on walking and biking and connecting. So those are the discussions we're going to need to have.

Council Member Wall.

thank you most not all but most people would believe that their own neighborhood is the most important and the gap that they identify is that which will make it greater for the kids in the neighborhood or for other people transporting i just had a very thoughtful email from a fellow who recently moved toward three and identified an 800 foot gap that i'd passed on It appears to me that there's an asphalt trail on the south side of the road, but no trail on the north side of the road where he has witnessed kids traveling through waist-high weeds and all. How do we deal with individuals and their perceived need for city action to better ensure safety, especially for kids?

Well, I mean, our team, whenever we get those sort of requests, you all know you get a lot of requests for intersection evaluations, pedestrian crossings, intersection control, whatever it might be. You know, our team's going to look at that and do an engineering evaluation. understand what makes the most sense. Is it something that we have within a current program? Do we know we have an upcoming capital improvement project that will address it? We take all that into consideration and, you know, prioritize and bring that back to you for projects.

Yeah. So I told this person that his timing was great and we were going to be discussing that at a council meeting the next day. I think it was only yesterday. And I will report back to him our conversation here. And I know that you will get to him and the email that I sent as well. But this GIS thing I think might be kind of helpful so that people can see the scope of the issue across the city and say, well, maybe my neighborhood isn't as bad as I thought it was. I don't know. Is that a possibility?

Yeah.

CAN I JUST ADD SOMETHING? I THINK THE OTHER THING THAT COULD BE INTERESTING, BECAUSE GOING BACK TO THE SLIDE WE LOOKED AT IN SOUTHEAST ROCHESTER, THE WAY THAT THE CITY DEVELOPED IS NOT CONSISTENT, RIGHT? WE DIDN'T DEVELOP SOUTHEAST ROCHESTER. WE INHERITED SOUTHEAST ROCHESTER, WHICH IS GREAT. WE HAVE A LARGER ROCHESTER. WE HAVE WATER QUALITY IN A DIFFERENT WAY IN THAT AREA, BUT ALSO IT DIDN'T DEVELOP TO CITY STANDARDS GENERALLY, SO BEING ABLE TO BUILD sidewalks there could be challenging paths maybe more likely and people that live in different areas as you're well aware from sidewalk gaps as well as trails not everybody likes to have the trail or the sidewalk so there's also that concept of how connected where is it are there key areas and being able to understand that could be helpful because getting to all of that red is EXPENSIVE, BUT ARE THERE KEY DESTINATIONS WHERE IT CREATES BETTER CONNECTIVITY BUT ALSO IN KEEPING WITH THE TYPE OF NEIGHBORHOOD THAT IS THERE, WHICH IS MORE RURAL DEVELOPMENT?

Yeah, and I should have shared this. You know, just looking back on a couple recent just path projects, we're at 700,000 to 825,000 per mile. That's going to continue to go up. So, it's, you know, these aren't, we don't have endless funding to just really quickly fill all these gaps, unfortunately.

Council Member Palmer, then Council Member Miller, then Council Member Keene.

I appreciate the winter ones and I get the biggest complaint is on the county road 22 where the county has a road and people complain because it's in the Rochester, we should plow it. But saying that, one of the reasons for me doing the CIA was this Bridgeview subdivision out in southeast Rochester. You either go on Highway 14 or you go on Collegeview Road and we're building a new apartment building up there and the path is going to be put in but it's gonna end. And so you're just gonna dump people at the end there. So that's frustrating that, and I call it an orphan subdivision because it's built prior to 2008, things went to hell and we need to get this taken care of. And I didn't see it on the map and it didn't come up on this one, but somehow we've gotta do a better job of connecting when we put new apartment buildings up One of the things you put in there was to modify the sidewalk gap one is can we do sidewalk and do a path? And where do we make that determination? And I'm a little baffled by the trails that I've been on. I'd say 95% of them are in pretty damn good shape. Probably the only exception is one at 7th Street along Silver Lake by the old snow dump. But most of them are pretty good shape that I don't see where it's a big concern.

I think when we can gather that pavement rating, it's going to show that we do have more challenges and imperfections in our path system than might be imagined. And not necessarily for the able-bodied person who can, you know, get over that heaved path that's got roots growing through it. There's a lot of that that's occurring as I, you know, just move around the path system. So, that's why we want to collect the data and really understand where our biggest needs are. Like, if you go up by 41st Street, north side, on the south side of the street, north of Target, I mean, that's an example of a path that's in terrible condition. We had one like that near Costco along West Circle Drive that our maintenance team repaired and did an overlay, and it's great now, but that one by Target is just another example. We do have some that are in near disrepair, quite honestly.

Well, the ones along the flood control project, aren't we using flood control dollars to fix those? We are.

So, you know, thankfully we did a nice job when the flood control project happened to incorporate recreation into that, and we have a funding stream that helps with the maintenance along that corridor.

So, go back to my original question. This Bridgeview subdivision, how do I get into Rochester? How do I get to RCTC where there are trails? There's trails right there at County Road 20, East Circle Drive, and there's a path right there.

Safely, you have to drive your car down to RCTC and then recreate from that point on. And yeah, we have others, as you could see as I was scanning through the map. Even some of those in Southwest Rochester, You get to Highway 63, you can't get past 52. Once we have the Willow Creek Path project, that'll help some of that, but they're kind of isolated to what they have in those areas. At least they have some shopping and other amenities.

Well, but at Bridgeview, we're adding more. As you go east, we're adding more houses. We're adding to the problem. And again, you're going to hit the school property, and then the trail's going to end. It doesn't take much more to get that done. Can we force the school district to put the path in?

Okay, we have mr. Nehmeyer and then we're gonna go to come on some member Council president my comment was gonna go back to a previous question.

So I'll make sure that one that one gets answered I mean we can't force them to build pedestrian facilities there and I mean our typical approach would be when that project happens as we noted when the development occurs that could be the point at which we achieve that and

And you continue to work through these policy considerations and prioritizing certain areas and how much is reasonable to either not reprioritize and adjust generally the tax levy in order to be able to provide some of those things. It probably doesn't happen overnight, but what are the ways that this council wants to prioritize any of those gaps? And what we're explaining is we have challenges with pavement maintenance, both road, trail and it's likely that if you're going to fill gaps you are going to increase costs both for capital for those but you could come up with something that's reasonable we've done this throughout the history of Rochester that's how you got here today and we also want you to know that as you grow that system we don't want to forget the maintenance cost of any capital that we put in because just because something looks great now does not mean that it will be in 20 30 40 and 50 years so if we plan ahead for that then you don't have some of those cliffs

I still go back to Bridgeville. I got 600 houses or 600 people living out there that you can't, Highway 14 is your route. I don't think anybody wants a person walking along Highway 14.

Well, I think if, you know, if we're directed to do a little, some additional analysis, if we bring pop, if I heard population is one that seems, I'm seeing head nods, like that probably will help get at, you know, as we rescore, we'll see where it then lands. COMPARED TO OTHERS. COMPARED TO OTHERS.

WE'RE GOING TO GO TO WE'RE GOING TO GO TO COUNCILMEMBER POMER. COUNCILMEMBER POMER. I THINK YOU MADE YOUR POINT. I THINK YOU MADE YOUR POINT. COUNCILMEMBER MILLER.

Thank you. Just to reiterate some of these points, I think as a next step GIS map transparency is a great next step to make sure that people are able to, us included, understand the scoring, how it lays out beyond these screenshots. I'm glad to hear that maintenance of pavement condition of trails is coming in. I even think about the quality improvement that happened around Cascade Lake last year filling in the expansion joints, much better experience. I definitely would love to see how we incorporate population, getting to people impacted, census tract, and proximity to a school as like key parts of understanding who is more likely to be impacted by that gap in transportation. I think like key destinations, definitely schools, but to Council Member Palmer's example, also RCTC, Quarry Hill Nature Center, other destinations that are proximate but disconnected. With our growth pattern, we just had this conversation at the DMC tour with the collaborative session, looking at the potential of new development of contributing to our tax base. And I would wonder with parkland dedication or other programs of working with developers, how we make sure that our system is connected, even when a new development is benefiting from existing investments. So we have great investments in the DMC district, a lot of investment incentive to grow there, but my hope would be that that growth pattern helps us create a more robust connected system for the whole community, because even if you live in that district, you are likely to want to use the Bear Creek Trail the Douglas Trail, all of these places that go beyond, which goes to then the economic development aspect of this. We have the Med City Marathon, numerous 5Ks, the Med City Meander that all utilize this trail system and are planning their routes depending on where there is a quality connection to the trail. My family and I did the 30-mile route on the Med City Meander this past weekend. We did not go into northwest Rochester. And I think the quality of connections in southeast Rochester, northwest Rochester are different than other parts of the city. And I think understanding the connectedness, you know, and understanding the community benefit, I would not recommend that we modify the sidewalk improvement district model either, but I think it does recognize THE BENEFIT OF CONNECTED SIDEWALK NETWORK EXTENDS BEYOND THE INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY OWNER TO A DISTRICT AND I THINK THIS SIMILARLY A FUNDING MODEL SHOULD UNDERSTAND A COMMUNITY BENEFIT TO A COMPLETE CONNECTED AND WELL MAINTAINED TRAIL NETWORK AND I HOPE WE CAN MOVE IN THAT DIRECTION. and then you know as a final point and when we think about the jurisdictional challenges rocog is a place where these different road owners transportation network owners come together and i would just mention that the olmsick county parks and trails master plan process is happening i hope that this process can at least help inform or create some opportunities for collaboration and understand how that project is directed and what recommendations it lays out so that we're working as a community and not saying, well, that's a county road, that's a county parcel, that's a school parcel. I think we have some partners in the space and I would think that Rochester Public Schools and other school systems have some shared values and safe access, particularly for those students who are walking or biking to school and not generating a cost for busing as those boundaries have increased over time. So those are my points.

Thank you, Council Member. We're gonna go to Council Member Keene and then Council Member Doering.

Thanks. Yeah, I really did find it interesting to see the maps and just to see that sort of thing. But I also realized, as you said, it was based on criteria. It wasn't weighted. And what I've heard from this meeting is, like, do we have the right weighted and the right criteria? I've heard public safety is obviously higher. But this whole thing about population and I almost think it's like the tradeoff between Is it reasonable to move to the outer edges of Rochester and say, give me a clean connection to the networks and all that? Is it, I mean, I'm watching right now the amount of population moving west of 60th Avenue, and that's going to be probably a 40, 50 mile an hour street. And I look at this, when I heard my peers kind of going for this council interaction yesterday, and we call it gap analysis. I think of gaps as not so much the sidewalks as much as how can I get from this neighborhood to a safe trail head? And there are places that are really good. I mean, slightly difficult to do that, but to me, getting access to those and getting on a trail, and then I know we've done some investments over the years of trying to say, once you're on the trail, we try to keep it connected. We don't have places where you just run out of sidewalk or jump in the street. There are places like that. But I do want to get into, in my view of gaps, a lot of times I think of it as... West Circle Drive, Highway 52. I consider them walls that are blocking population from one side to the other. And there's a lot of those that sort of like, how do I get to these assets? It's different than the criteria we used right now. It's different because I think we will see those older neighborhoods were built without sidewalks saying that's where the investment needs. And I guess I would want more understanding before we did something like that. I think there's a, Council Member Palmer talked about we owe that to them to get to the city resources. I understand that, but these are also people who are deciding to be on the edge of town. And I've had these hard discussions about you can't move out to that area and expect a city bus three times an hour. It's just we're not a big enough community to do that, and I think the trail thing, we're gonna run into that. I also want to be careful having these discussions outside of the constraints of a budget discussion. I really like that you put in these funding considerations, but it's easier to say we got to do all this stuff when we're not looking at trading off against street quality, and we're probably already looking at a 7.5% levy thing. So I worry that we get too, now let's do this, now let's do this, and I think we have to kind of like pull back our interest to make sure we're doing the right things, but the things we can do within a reasonable budget instead of sending this team off to like, let's go through and redo this, redo this. And we look at the maps, look at the maps and then say, Are we going to change the cap from $9 million to $11 million? I don't think we're going to. So that's the kind of stuff that makes it hard on me. I really like the idea that this, one of the things that was talked in there, using these other resources like the bike and pedestrian, but also we have a mode shift. like on staff now, we have to bring those to bear on this and get to the point that, you know, I might peruse the community and hear from certain people, but we should have professional opinions on these are the five biggest problem areas or these are the areas that if we had an extra, we're going to do an investment in 2027, these would be the ones and not just criteria is good, but also like get that professional judgment.

Thanks. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Doering.

Yeah, I was going to echo a lot of what Council Member Keene just said. That being said, I would argue that just because a sidewalk or a trail exists doesn't mean there's not a gap for members of our community. I'm thinking in particular those who have mobility challenges, right? So I really appreciate the sidewalk improvement district implementation to address some of those concerns. Yeah. But I would love to bring in a professional who deals specifically with that population to help identify where the gaps are in our system that don't allow people to recreate if they have mobility issues. I think that would be existing. Yeah, totally existing, not even new. I think that would be a fascinating overlay along our map as well.

Thank you, Councilmember. I just want to echo some of, a lot of what I've heard. I think, you know, safety and density are important weighting factors, and I really liked Councilmember Keene's idea of really you folks the professionals come back to us and say these are the priority areas we heard you know impassioned uh plead from council member fredericks on along marion road we heard uh uh council member palmer and the connection across from rctc and there are others uh but To see the heat map, I mean, it is scary, but I think we need a lot more prioritization if we're going to say, okay, we're going to trade something off because this area really has some safety concerns and it's got a density of traffic there, whether it's pedestrian traffic or gaps from pedestrian cycling. Yeah. With that, Council Member Miller.

And I guess a final comment on the funding as well. When I think of one of the reasons that my intention of bringing this forward with Council Member Palmer was to highlight the gaps and the challenges and the current conditions, because we will have budget discussions, which obviously are important. We will also set our legislative priorities. And the reason that we have sales tax funding going to road maintenance and road condition is because we made that a legislative priority went to the legislature and got an alternate funding source to maintain part of our roads and help close that gap in deferred maintenance so i think having this discussion doesn't obligate us to a certain expense but it helps us get us a better handle around what where we are today and what this future vision is for our community and how we close that gap over time or those gaps as it were so thank you thank you councilmember ballmer

Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. Parkland dedication, we're looking at maybe adding trails to that. And I think community development in parks is working towards that. The other one is, is one of our priorities was to change, right now you have to subdivide property to get parkland dedication. So for example, the old YMCA site, they contributed nothing to parkland. And somehow we've asked for that to be done and we need to work together to get that done. But adding trails to parkland dedication would be helpful. Ms. Woodward?

I just want to note that it was an action plan item to look at parkland dedication, so the Parks Department and Community Development have had some initial discussions. We will be coming back before Council to kind of review high-level policy in terms of what needs to be incorporated into parkland dedication, what we currently have as existing, and what are those options. So that is something that we're working to get on the calendar.

Do you have a timeline on that?

We... Not quite July, but we were identifying a couple of calendar options and working together to get something on the calendar.

All right. Thank you, gentlemen. Great report. Great discussion. Next study sessions. Ms. Elms.

THANK YOU, CLERK.

I SO APPRECIATE YOUR HELP WHEN I DON'T HAVE THIS OPEN. SO YOUR NEXT STUDY SESSION IS ON THE 8TH OF JUNE, AND YOU WILL HAVE AN UPDATE FOR THE FIRE STRATEGIC PLAN AND SOME INFORMATION THEY HAD FROM AN OVERVIEW THAT THEY DID. EXCUSE ME, AN OPERATIONAL REVIEW THAT THEY DID. DISCUSSION ABOUT MAYO FIELD AND THE OBVIOUSLY THERE WILL BE A NEW SITE NORTH WITH THE JOINT MAIN END FACILITY. PROVIDES SOME OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOU TO DISCUSS THE GENERAL AREA THAT IS THE CURRENT PARKS MAINTENANCE FACILITY AS WELL AS MAYO FIELD AND THEN A 2026 LEGISLATIVE SESSION UPDATE AND I JUST DID WANT TO NOTE THAT IT LOOKS LIKE WE WILL POTENTIALLY BE GOING OVER THAT EVENING ON THE 8TH. WE DO HAVE SOME NEED TO MEET IN CLOSED SESSION SO I'M HOPING THAT YOU WILL CONSIDER THAT FOR YOUR CALENDAR TIMING.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU. WE ARE ADJOURNED.