City Council - Regular Meeting

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Please rise as you're able for this Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Welcome everybody to the June 1st City Council meeting and we begin every City Council meeting with our open comment period. This is a time on our agenda for members of the public to speak on items that we will not be taking public testimony during a public hearing later in the agenda. Each person has up to two minutes to speak for a total of 20 minutes. And I keep track with two methods. One is the red stopwatch on the wall over there and then the stoplight in front of us here. Participants are encouraged to limit comments generally to topics that are within the scope and jurisdiction of the Council's ability to affect policy and Council members and staff do not respond directly to your comments during public comment but will instead follow up on any specific requests separately. If you have materials to share with the Council please give them to the City Clerk Anne Casel over there. And you will be invited up to speak in the order you signed up. And we have Linda Parker. Is it Parker or Packett? Parker. Welcome. And you may have to turn the microphone on. And you push that button. Yep, it's green. There you go.

Thank you. Hello, everybody. Nice to see you all. I wish I was coming here less frustrated, but it seems like every time I come to speak to the council, I'm frustrated. Tonight's topic is the sports complex. I have been studying and researching and listening and reading about all of your comments. I don't understand how when we make a mistake that we just don't admit it and regroup. The estimated cost of the sports complex has doubled. We all know it. Why not stop and regroup? We're putting a Band-Aid on. We're going to go to do this. We're going to do this. Now we're going to scale back. We're not scaling back. We're paying twice as much for half the project. But now you guys are making the decision on how those dollars are being spent, not those of us who vote for it, what you presented. I heard what the states say, and our leaders said that there's nothing that can be done. But I guarantee you there's got to be a lawyer or somebody that would be able to find a loophole that would be able to say time to stop, maybe we need to regroup. I don't understand how the pay for play now is going to cover all of these new expenses the dome wasn't prepared for, that's going to come out of property taxes which are at record highs where most of homeowners now are some of your highest earners in Rochester, families are having to move to apartments because they can't afford property taxes. All of this extra money, is it going to come out of the general fund? I don't know because you guys haven't put out where it's going to be. I think it's unfair to the citizen that you get to take the money, we vote for it, now you've got it and you get to redistribute where it needs to be. I wish my checkbook could do the same thing. I think it's embarrassing and the state of Minnesota seems to be out of control and I keep hoping that the city of Rochester is going to stand out as a shining example, but we seem to be doing the same thing. Take the money, spend it where you guys choose to. I hope somewhere when these decisions behind closed doors, you guys look and reevaluate it and say, you know what, let's take the loss and let's come up with a new plan.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

That is all I have on my list. Anyone else wishing to speak during open comment period? Anyone else wishing to speak during open comment period? I will close the open comment period and we will move to our roll call. Clerk Kasel please call the roll.

Good evening. Council Member Keene.

Here.

Council Member Miller.

Here.

Council Member Wall.

Here.

Council Member Fredericks. Here. Council Member Palmer. Here. Council Member Doering. Here. Council President Shubring.

Here.

Mayor Norton. Present.

Thank you. Next up we have our city administrators report. Administrators Elms.

Thank you council president council members. I always start the report with thanking our teammates for acting with respect, integrity, safety and excellence and everything they do. And did just want to comment that our partners at experience Rochester stepping forward on your consent agenda this evening. There is a community festival permit for 4th of July at soldiers field. SO DID JUST WANT TO POINT THAT OUT FOR THE COMMUNITY IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING THAT IS PLANNING TO MOVE FORWARD DEPENDING ON ACTION LATER THIS EVENING WITH OUR PARTNERS AT EXPERIENCE ROCHESTER WITH SOME MUSIC STARTING AT 5 OR 5 30 IN THE EVENING ON THE 4TH OF JULY FOLLOWED BY THE TRADITIONAL FIREWORKS FROM THE CITY OF ROCHESTER. ALSO, IF YOU HAVE A MAILING ADDRESS IN THE CITY OF ROCHESTER, WE DID MAIL OUT THE SUMMER FUN AND CITY RESOURCES MAGAZINE. I RECEIVED IT LAST WEEK. And if you didn't receive it, you can pick up a copy at City Hall, the Library, or Development Services and Infrastructure Center soon. It is also available online at RochesterMN.gov. So if you head to our website, you can get a digital version if that is your preference. But it is full of different activities that are happening this summer. One of those activities is outdoor water recreation. So the facilities listed here are opening soon. Soldiers Field Aquatic Center on June 5th. Silver Lake Pool, newly renovated, really almost entirely replaced, is going to be opening on June 8th. The McQuillan splash pad is open and as is the Lincoln Shire splash pad and the Silver Lake splash pad will also be opening on June 8th. All of those are through August or Labor Day depending on the amenity. Also the lakes will be opening. For those of you interested in the Valley Drive Northwest traffic management improvement conversation, that's going to be Tuesday, June 9th, 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. at the Rochester Montessori School. They're going to be talking about traffic calming options for five locations along Valley Drive between 41st Avenue and 46th Avenue Northwest. And Thursdays downtown will be starting up again, starting on June 11th through August 13th, except for July 2nd. 11 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. downtown on First Avenue Southwest from Center Street to Historic 3rd and on Peace Plaza again this year. So something for all of us to look forward to, brought to us by Rochester Downtown Association. And the Riverside Music Series is returning this Sundays, July 12th through August 9th at Mayo Park. Music will begin at 7 p.m. Food and beverage available for purchase from vendors. It's free and open to the public on those Sundays. And, of course, the Forward Concert Series is also kicking off this Wednesday. That will also be at Mayo Park, the first of that series. So you can head on down Wednesday to check out the Forward Concert Series. That's a series that is starting this Wednesday and Wednesdays throughout the summer. And that's all I have.

Thank you. Next up, we have the mayor's report. Mayor Norton, take it away.

Yep. I've got just a couple of announcements up front. June is Gun Violence Awareness Month. And every year, the Moms Demand Action asks for the dome lights to be lit and hold an event. So that will be coming up this month. Play ball is an event that the mayor's office sponsored last year and we're sponsoring again this year. And this is in conjunction with the US Conference of Mayors and Major League Baseball. And so the Honkers will give a training camp for boys and girls between the ages of six and 12 at the honkers at the ball field over there the honkers will run it and Again, it's 9 a.m. Until noon and if you would like your child or grandchild to participate you can just go to that QR code or call the honkers go to their website. There's a place to register Last year we had 300 registrants and it poured rain and about half of them showed up and got very wet and This year, we have over 200 registrants already, so we're expecting to have a full house for that event, and we just would love to have, again, kind of with the 250 theme that we have going this year, we'd like to get at least 250 kids at that event. Also moved to the market, which is a new offering this year. The Village Food Co-op has held an event at Rochester History Center. They've done a market on Tuesdays. This year they are moving to Cascade Lake. So this is their first time at Cascade Lake. They will be there. And the move to the market part is as a result of a U.S. Conference of Mayors grant that we won. We came in second or third third place maybe and that and received $50,000 to support the farmers market So if you move there walking or biking and there will be extra bucks for you to spend at the co-op So we're really excited to have this new location and to be able to support more active movement and healthy eating. So that will be starting here this next week out at Cascade Lake on Tuesday nights. Should also mention that on Sundays, linked to the concerts downtown at the Riverside area, the Mayo Ball Field, I'm sorry, the MLK Park on the side On the south side of the park, there will be a farmer's market as well. It had to move a little bit from last year due to the construction in the area, but that will be open Sunday nights just before 2 in the afternoon, I think, until 6 or 7 p.m. before the concert starts. Also worth mentioning is Safe City Nights. Again, it just shows all the activities just that the city is responsible for that are happening this summer. The Rochester Police Department holds community policing events this year. It's at four locations. It starts on June 9th at Gibbs Elementary, and we'll remind folks periodically, but two in July then and one in August. We're trying to get them in all the quadrants of the city. 6 to 8 p.m., everyone is welcome. Free food and activities for all. And then also in June is America 250 Bike Parade. And this was something, again, working with the US Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities. We're trying to hold local events to celebrate America's 250th birthday. And so there will be a bike parade. Youth are invited at 1030 to come to Edison School on the parking lot there, decorate their bikes. We Bike Rochester and Bike MN are hosting or helping. They're helping me organize this. And they'll have decorations. So the first 250 youth that show up will have decorations. They can decorate their bike. And then parents, children, singles, couples, everyone's welcome. to do the bike parade at 11.30, and it'll be along the path that will be used for the parade later in the day and for the run that will be happening between the bike parade and the citywide parade where everyone comes to gather candy. Lastly, board and commission vacancies. We do have one opening on the Board of Appeals, so if that is of interest, we would love having some applicants for the Board of Appeals opening. That's all I've got.

Thank you, Mayor. Next up we have the order of the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda? Seeing none, is there a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Second. Moved by Councilmember Fredericks and seconded by Councilmember Wall. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Motion passes. Next we have the consent agenda. Councilmember Palmer has pulled item F11. Council Member Doering is voting nay on item F7.

Correct. I'll be voting nay on F7, the competitive negotiated sale of the tax bonds for the regional sports and rec complex. I continue to believe that this project is not what the vast majority of our community wants and or needs. And I'm nervous about taking this on financially based on the pro forma provided by our outside operator. I'm still not convinced of the economic viability of the regional sports complex.

Thank you, Councilmember. So we have one polled item. So I would invite a motion to approve in block items F1 through F10 and F12 through F19. So moved.

Second.

Moved by Councilmember Keene and seconded by Councilmember Miller. Councilmember Wall.

Thank you. We are awarding two contracts tonight. Engineer's estimates at $473,450. The bidding was favorable, came in at $380,000 for a savings of $93,000 or 19.7%. It continues to work well for us. Thank you.

Thank you for the wall report. With that, Council Member Keene, go ahead.

Yeah, I just wanted to comment. I know there's a lot of important city business on it, but I wanted to call out F-16. It's University of Minnesota Rochester funding. This is a combination of DMC, but also sales tax funding from the past. UMR has been one of the, bright success stories over in Rochester over the last two decades and the way it's kind of grown up. And seeing this on here really does show that it's become an important part of our, both downtown, but our overall community and our overall economy. And I just wanted to call it out above and beyond the normal consent agenda.

Thank you for doing that, Council Member Keene, and also would like to recognize our friends at UMR for being here. Thank you. With that, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Motion passes with Councilmember Doering voting nay on item F7. Moving on to our public hearings, we have two public hearings on our agenda this evening. Public hearings, a little different than our open comment period. So staff will first introduce or present the item and then if there is an applicant or applicant representative, they will have up to 10 minutes to discuss the item. And then I will open the public hearing. Members of the public have five minutes each, and again, encouraged to keep comments brief, concise, and to the item in question. And then following the public hearing, the applicant will have up to five minutes to respond to any questions that came up during the public hearing or additional information. With that, I will go to item G1, which is a major land subdivision by Creekview Meadows LLC to be known as Creekview Meadows 4th. Mr. Desmond McGill.

Thank you, Council President Shubring, Mayor Norton, members of the Council. Good evening, I'm Desmond McGill. I'm with Community Development. I'll be introducing this item. which is a major land subdivision preliminary plat for Creekview Meadows 4th, which is the fourth phase for this project by Creekview Meadows LLC. The 12.6 acre site is located south of 18th Street, north of 20th Street, and east of 37th Avenue Southeast in an R1 zoning district. The general development plan was approved by city council in June of 2020. and consists of 185 units having 139 single family lots and 46 attached single family lots. Phase four of this development proposes 15 single family lots that are detached of various widths and depths. It is located on a local residential street. That residential street connects to 37th Avenue on the west side and 18th. street on the north. The proposed plot also contains three outlots. Outlot A is a parcel for developed stormwater facilities for phases one through four. Outlot B consists of delineated wetlands and Outlot C provides a parcel for stormwater facilities for future phases of the development. This major land subdivision is consistent with the general development plan and the R1 zoning standards. Planning Commission unanimously recommended approval of the subject application at their May 13th meeting by a 5-0 vote and subject to four conditions of approval. That concludes my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have after the public hearing.

Thank you, Mr. McGill. Is there a, the applicant, are they here? Please step forward, state your name, and you have up to 10 minutes.

Thank you, Council President Shubring, Mayor, members of the Council. My name is Ryan Schoenfeller with WSC Engineering. We're the engineering, planning, surveying consultants on this project. Desmond did a great job explaining the project. Just a few more details. We held the neighborhood meeting on April 7th. No one attended that meeting, so we didn't receive any opposition. We're acceptable to those four conditions. The turn lane is actually gonna be constructed on the coming weeks here and be paved here shortly. Again, any questions you have, we'll be able to answer those.

Thank you. We'll call you back after the public hearing. With that, I will open the public hearing. Is there anyone wishing to be heard on this item? Anyone wishing to be heard on this item? Anyone wishing to be heard on this item? I will close the public hearing, invite Mr. Schoenfelder to come back up. And any closing comments that you have?

I will add the master pond and outlot C is gonna serve the remaining phases of Creekview Meadows, all those additional lots. So we're excited to get that built and done with this phase of development. So happy answering your questions.

All right, council members, council member Keene.

Just a clarification for staff. In the suggested resolution in the agenda, it doesn't call out the four conditions. Is that, I wanna make sure we do call out the four conditions on the approval. I'm looking at the agendas, or maybe I'm reading it wrong.

Thank you. They do appear to be there on our screen.

Okay.

Is that on the council?

This is on both the G1, the request for council action, but also the overall agenda. I don't know why I'm missing it, but I'm looking right at it.

I've seen three outlines.

Okay, so you think it's covered. I'll just make sure we have four conditions. Thank you.

Any other comments on this? Is there a motion?

I'll make a motion. Adopting a resolution approving major land subdivision number CD2026-007PLAT by Creekview Meadows LLC to be known as Creekview Meadows subdividing 12.6 acres into 15 residential lots and three out lots.

Motion made by Councilmember Fredericks and seconded by Councilmember Palmer. Any more to add Councilmember Fredericks?

No, happy to see it in the ward. There's been a lot of nice work done in that subdivision already. I see the families outside using the heck out of the area. It's really nice to see how active they are. It's like those kids don't have iPads or something. They're actually outside playing. So it's just nice to see, and I'm happy to see more coming to the area and enlivening it up out there. Hopefully we can get them a path to get to the main part of town easily. Thank you.

Council Member Palmer.

Yeah, there are four conditions on here. It's not on the heading like Mr. Keene pointed out.

So you're going to add that to your amendment and

I would love to if I knew how to properly say it.

I think your seconder said it, and so you both agree, so the four conditions are included.

Add the four conditions.

Got it. Councilmember Keene?

Yeah, again, they're correctly in the real resolution later in the packet. It's just not in the suggested thing we had, and I think it's all covered. I just wanted to make sure we did it right.

Council Member Doering.

And I was just gonna follow up with the same.

Okay, all right, with that, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay, motion passes. Next up we have G2, which is amendments to the 2026 Master Fee Schedule, Mr. Parish.

Mayor, President, members of the Council, this is a request to amend the 2026 fee schedule, which we do on an annual basis. What this really is doing is just correcting an oversight in terms of the look-back period, in terms of how we set one of the fees, which is based off some indexes within the engineering news record. Public Works Director Niemeyer is also here if you have questions on this. But we're just requesting that that adjustment be made. And the requested action will be to approve an ordinance establishing the amended 26 fee schedule as well as directing the City Attorney's Office to prepare the ordinance for the July 6th meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Parish. This is a public hearing. Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward. This is a public hearing. Anyone wishing to be heard on this, please step forward. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing, invite Mr. Parrish back up, and invite my colleagues. Any questions, comments? Is there a motion?

Yeah, I'll move to approve an ordinance establishing the amended 2026 Master Fee Schedule and directing the City Attorney's Office to prepare an ordinance for the first reading on July 6th of 2026.

Motion made by Council Member Doering. Second. Seconded by Council Member Fredericks. Any more to add? Council Member Keene. I guess just a question or more of a comment than a question.

Again, I appreciate you guys bringing this back up. I realize there was an error made back in December. We're getting it corrected right now. But underneath this is the conflict between one of our priorities but one of our policies. Our policy is that new development pays its own way and therefore we have to keep these fees up to date to cover our costs. At the same time, these rising fees are a detriment to trying to get housing built. Is there any sort of wrestling going on to say how can we stem this or what type of cost controls can we put in place so that we're not moving in lockstep as all these construction costs go up and basically hindering one of our main policy objectives over this year and in the coming years?

Yeah, Your Honor, I think from a policy perspective, I mean, the fee is grounded in the notion that we do attempt some level of cost recovery with new development. In terms of how that could be managed, I'm gonna defer to Public Works Director Nehmeyer on that.

So I would say, just in general terms, the team is always looking at those fees, right? Obviously, it's clear to us that the community is looking looking to prioritize housing, right? So internal review of all of our fees and everything is reviewed on an annual basis. These specific fees are scaled to that E&R index, so all we're trying to do is keep pace with inflation with the fees that we're discussing here.

I appreciate that, and I didn't expect a hardcore answer, but I guess I just wanna keep it in front of us that this is a conflict that we're losing at right now.

Council Member Miller.

I guess building on that, would our June 22nd study session when we talk about the urban three analysis and our TIF policy be a good time to talk about what incentives and where we have adequate infrastructure and where we have new infrastructure costs? Because there does seem to be a differential and we talked about this with the stormwater credit fee as how we incentivize and help infill development where we have adequate infrastructure often built. So I'm just curious if there is a future place from a policy perspective where we have differentiated fees, whether they're in target opportunity zones or outside.

Your Honor, I can start with that question. I believe Urban 3 is next week, right? So, is that correct?

June 22nd.

Oh, that is June 22nd, okay. So, yeah, I mean, certainly we've seen a preview of that information. I think it's, at a broad level, it's going to be a good opportunity for you all to just understand, you know, the impacts of different development types and the cost to provide service, but also, you know, where a lot of your tax capacity comes from and, you know, just get some notion of tax efficiency and tax per acre. I think in terms of where that leads us, I think that's gonna be part of your conversation and what you'd like to see happen on that as well.

Absolutely, and I appreciate that. I just wanted to anchor that discussion as a potential place to have a policy discussion about these fees. I don't want to change them tonight to Councilmember Keene's point, but I do think it is a conflict and I appreciate him bringing up that tension.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Motion passes. Next up, we have reports and recommendations, H1, which is the phase two indoor recreation option and next steps, Mr. Parrish and team.

President, Mayor, Members of the Council, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here today to give you a bit of an update on some of the conversations we've been having with regard to indoor recreation options. We've really spoke about this in many places and spaces. I just wanted to give you an update about where we've been but also a potential option that you can consider to meet some of the indoor recreation needs. We discussed this fairly extensively at an April study session. At that time, there was some broad perspective and direction provided by the council to ultimately focus our efforts in looking at options for indoor recreation on our southern sites to bring back some discussion points for you this evening to further refine that as well as in the longer view as we get better information bring back some recommended financing and operational strategies. but also recognizing the fact that the existing dome on the RCTC campus was indicated that it was going to be closed this fall. Continue our conversations around how we might collaborate with them to keep that open during the interim period. Just to ground you, we've had three or four significant planning efforts on indoor recreation. I'm not gonna go through all this. You've received this information before. But as you can see again with the turf Transition and the indoor dome the last survey we went through there was a fairly strong indication and preference to have a turf option Nothing that we've went through in our previous planning efforts, so the landscape has changed But you also can see that there's this desire for multi-purpose space and fitness and court space A lot of these efforts and communication that we've received back have really been grounded in not just the need to increase the amount of indoor space that we have, but how do we communicate about it? How do we let people know about the programmatic opportunities? Many people know about the facilities, but the programmatic opportunities, we have opportunity to do better in terms of how we communicate market. You've invested some resources in that. and the team at a later date can provide you some insights into how that's working. Other recurring themes in these conversations have really been the opportunity for informal play in recreation and more unstructured activities, as well as really bringing a strong notion of affordability into the conversation. Again, part of that. More specific insights into the indoor recreation options. Of course here, indoor playground, court space, pickleball space were all rated very highly. And then last summer, we also had the partnership with the Rochester Healthy Community Partnership that really did some targeted qualitative outreach to a number of our diverse communities and demographics. And again, similar concepts there, strong interest in informal activities like walking, swimming registered here. That's not something we're specifically talking about because we've had a number of other aquatics related conversations, but just that unstructured play piece was really a strong value for the folks. Then lastly, we have Just a very slight preview here this evening for you. Our parks and communications and engagement team and our DEI team have really spent a good amount of time partnering with the school district on their community education survey. And again, strong indoor demand for year-round recreation facilities and options, more awareness, more differentiation on how you communicate, affordability, so again, recurring themes. I'm not going to go through this on a detailed basis but really this just says that depending on your demographics you may have different communication preferences. We have opportunities again for perspectives based on income and how we communicate with families versus older adults. I mean these all require differentiated strategies. uh... here's this one slide that tries to pull all that survey data and the past community outreach and engagement together and uh... just saying that we need uh... you know build greater awareness uh... we need to really be cognizant of affordability uh... ease of registration and access is important uh... again continued interest in flexible indoor and year-round rec opportunities and then really just you know try to define you know what are our KPIs in this space so shared themes really are in that casual rec, improved facilities, affordability space, much of which you've heard before, but continues to be reinforced. I also wanna just let you know that since our last conversation on this, we did continue our discussion with RCTC about the potential for an indoor dome on the RCTC property. We were informed recently, I think, as the council is aware, that that's not something that is currently an option at the RCTC campus, given the long-term nature of the ground lease that we would need. The site that we had been focused on and directed to evaluate also would have had its own set of challenges. We likely would have had to eliminate four rectangle fields for existing soccer and lacrosse fields, replacing those elsewhere, probably run in the six to $8 million range. So just understand like that would have had its own set of challenges. But just right now, given the state of higher education, this kind of long-term investment didn't align with RCTC's needs. And I think we provided the communication to you previously. However, we do want to emphasize that we want to have good ongoing collaboration there. So we still have relationships. We still have the ability for the public to access the existing field house or the Rochester Sports Center after five o'clock and on weekends. We want to maintain that. We want to communicate better around that. There's still walking options. We also want to encourage some innovation in the ability and how you access and register for the facility. So we will still maintain that ongoing dialogue and collaboration with RCTC. And then lastly, If you would like to continue to advance the design conversation on an alternative dome structure, we would try to have a conversation about how we could maintain that existing dome over the next one or two winter seasons. That opens from November to April. As of now, short of some other intervention, that is set to not open this fall. And so we'd like to continue that conversation until we can find a way to meet the community need if this is a project that you're interested in pursuing. That brings us to what we spent more time on over this past month or so, and that's really a more substantial dome than what currently exists. It's an elevated experience compared to what we currently have. It's over twice the size of the existing RCTC dome, so if you think about the existing footprint of that being a large indoor turf space, This has a large indoor turf space plus an additional area that's about twice the size of that turf space. And we'll talk about the indoor amenities specifically. We have a concept about how it could fit on the Rochester Regional Sports and Recreation site in the southeast. Just want to draw your attention to some specifics on that site. As you know, we're in construction on the Regional Sports and Rec Complex, which will feature eight multi-purpose fields, diamond fields, two rectangle fields, pickleball courts, as well as a substantial playground and lots of walking tracks, also the walking area. The Willow Creek Trail is also going to come to this site, so that's a separate project, but That will take you from Game Haven all the way through Highway 52 and generally allow you to access much of the other trail infrastructure in Rochester, but kind of that gap that we have right now between getting through there and 52, the Willow Creek Trail project is proposed to deal with that. I'd also say from a site perspective, The parking being created here allows you the opportunity to engage in some conversations about this being a park and ride type of transit facility and evaluating your transit access on this site. It's well situated to serve the southeast and southwest portions of Rochester as well. My kids in the northwest, I travel this area quite a bit. It takes me eight to ten minutes to get to northwest Rochester given the proximity to Highway 52. from this site, so it may seem like it's a challenge to get to at times, but the proximity to 63 and 52 really do provide good vehicular access, and that Willow Creek Trail will enhance the pedestrian and bike access to the site. Specifically, right now we have a five-month dome that's available to the community because we have the turf field that has outdoor purposes. That doesn't typically get going until the middle of November. People are often ready to get indoors before then, and they're ready to stay indoors longer than the middle of April often. So this would be year-round. We have temperature control issues in the existing dome. This dome would be insulated and be able to maintain a reasonable temperature. inside the facility year-round, and so that would be an enhancement for sure. And again, year-round, so you have the ability to program this facility on a year-round basis. It would have a foundation, so I think from a notable perspective right now, the existing building, a reason that it cannot be year-round is it doesn't have a foundation. This would address that as well as provide much needed space. There would be an existing, you can see it on the southern portion of the building, there would be an area for locker rooms and gathering space and queuing space and bathrooms, et cetera. So you can see that on this particular slide as well. I want to just note that there's other exciting things happening in this area. Some of the sewer investments that we're making are going to catalyze development in this space and set the future tone for growth in the area. And it's important to note that you can think about other sites for this. But whether we're comparing this against RCTC or another greenfield, we have a lot of existing cost embedded in this site that make the potential project cost lower here. So if you think about the fact that we have shared parking with the outdoor amenities, if you think about the fact that we've already acquired the property, If you think about the fact that we have other shared utility and site development costs here, anything on a standalone basis elsewhere would cost considerably more. So just you have to take that into account as well. I wanna say as we go through the design process, which we'll talk about in a moment, we will be evaluating geothermal as an option. We've been very successful with geothermal installations in our downtown public district energy campus. We're doing it at our maintenance center now, and we believe the tax credits will continue to be in place. That would allow us for the potential geothermal installation on this site as well. Couple things to think about. This is not masonry or concrete construction. I mean, this is a foundation with wing walls enclosed by a fabric dome. That fabric does need to be replaced every 20 years. All facilities like this have life cycle costs. Part of our analysis that we'll bring back to you, we'll try to give you some understanding of the life cycle cost difference. Part of the challenge is you're not gonna be able to do 200 to 250,000 square feet of conventional construction anywhere near this price. So you'll have to have some context for that as well. And you think about conventional construction, you also are going to have roof replacement, other types of investments you're gonna need to make in order to maintain that. But when we originally talked about this, we weren't talking about indoor turf to this level. That's been a new evolution. This is likely your best option if you want to preserve an indoor turf availability. Just moving on, part of this process will also help us to refine what programmatic expectations you have and what you want to deliver in that building, but also how we want to operate it. So right now we have a third party operator for the outdoor portion. We had that forecasted for an indoor portion that we didn't proceed with at that time. So we would start with that as the model. We would evaluate the third party operator model. However, we can also evaluate a publicly delivered model in that context or other models if the council is so inclined. But we will always use a publicly delivered model as the base. And then that will help you understand what your operating deficit here likely is to be. I wanna just continue on with some of the more specific slides. Again, full-size indoor rectangle field, soccer, lacrosse, exactly the same size in the existing. We will go through a community-based process with a work group and public open houses to further refine this area, but you'd have a seating and play area that you could have some transitional space in with existing courts. You have a number of potential courts that you can have as well as pickleball facilities. So getting more definition to what people want to see in that seating and play area and what's important to them will be an important part of this process. Some pictures that we showed you previously. would be further refined in this design process. And I'm not going to go through all these. These are slides that we went through at the study session. But just to give you context, this really does give you an enhanced multipurpose and turf space. But of course, there are costs here too. And we'll flush those out as we go through and refine the operating model. I think I've covered most of these opportunities and challenges as I've gone through the presentation, so I won't go through that. The only thing we really have is June 1. We are at a point on the existing outdoor facility project where we need to make decisions about adjusting the parking and adjusting some of the utilities to make way for this. So that is part of the time sensitivity here is if you want to make room for this on the site, we need to adjust the parking in order for that to happen. I would say irrespective every project we bring forward to you that's at vertical construction like this, you're gonna have a lot of concrete here. There's a lot of concrete being used in the community right now, and there's a lot of construction happening. So it's a very dynamic bidding and cost escalation environment. So as we go through the design process and get better designs and better bids, we hope to be able to make sure you have a number for this project that you can evaluate against the financing strategies. But we put a number of $55 million out, but again, that'll be informed by where the cost environment is at the time and where the community's design process takes you. So that transitions us into a potential schedule for this project. The upper portion of this, I know this is a busy diagram, the upper portion is engagement and community outreach. The bottom portion is really the construction and approval timeframe. So community engagement would take place between now all the way through September 4th. We have a community working group, which I'm gonna just show you right now. Very similar to the outdoor group that did an amazing job providing feedback into that project. A little bit of an enhancement here, given some of the turf stakeholders that are involved, but this is kind of the base group. Our communications and engagement team, as they've very capably done in the past, facilitate this effort with consultant support for diagrams and renderings, et cetera. But we'll have a couple of community working group meetings, a couple of open houses, talk about accessibility, affordability, year-round reuse, community benefit, what people want to see out of this facility. Those will take place through the summer with a recommendation coming to you at your September 9th City Council meeting. At that meeting, what you would be able to do is review the engagement, understand the preliminary design. We would have a preliminary cost estimate for you all to review and understand, and then we would provide, along with that, some recommendations on the approach to financing and initiating permitting. Once that's complete, we would then, if you endorse where we're at at that point in time, we could then proceed with the bidding and permitting process, ultimately bringing you back a bid and a recommended and final financing approval at your December 14th meeting. And then onward down the line, construction starts in 27, concludes in 28. With that, the team and I are happy to answer questions. These are the requested actions for you to consider this evening if you would like to proceed with the next phase of due diligence here. Excuse me. First is just generally endorsing. This is the direction you're interested in going. So that's item one. Item two would be authorizing a contract with TSP Architects at just over $948,000. That allows you to get the design work done in order to continue to advance the project, continue to keep your construction schedule, and so on. We yield in domes. They have some construction service. They would be brought on the team at risk We would look to do an RFP for construction manager at risk. They ultimately give you your gross maximum price and that again helps you have confidence in the numbers that they're actually estimating and positioning themselves to bid at the project. These costs would go into the project cost ultimately. However, if you elect in September to say this isn't for us at this time, those costs would have to be paid for out of the Holistic Budget Stability Fund. There's about $2.8 million there. Those costs would need to have a place to land in that case. If they roll into your recommended financing or preferred financing strategy, those funds would not need to be touched. Six just talks about something we've already discussed in terms of key council approval dates. And then seven just says we want to keep working on interim options for the dome. So with that, we're happy to stand for questions.

Mayor Norton.

So from my perspective, this is very premature and fast. I had anticipated from the last study session that something might brought before to say yes, we could or couldn't do something out there. I'm just shocked that a solution has been found and that it's being presented without any discussion about anything. And I will just say, One, I'm really disappointed that while we did get a very, what I would consider curt email from a member of the administration at RCTC, we have not closed the loop to have a meeting and find out if there were other options, if the administrator agreed with the other administrator's email. And I would have very much preferred before we have even said these things that we would have closed the loop with RCTC first to assure that there weren't workarounds because several of us have talked to folks at the state level and MNSCU or whatever it's called now level that it wasn't a closed door. So that's one disappointment. I'm still concerned about the troubling location far out southeast. While I do agree that indoor space is needed and I recall in the back of my mind when I said I didn't think we should choose southeast, that if we did, there should be an indoor location. And that's what you're bringing forward here. I'm still not convinced that what the community is asking for is in there because I don't think, I haven't heard enough discussion about what will be there because it was only a little over a month ago we were talking about a building at RCTC and then the idea of a dome was thrown in there last minute and now for the last month it's all talk about dome and you know, Dome is, as you've mentioned, a 20-year life expectancy for a roof that will have to be, or the dome material will have to be replaced every 20 years. We're already seeing that as a problem over at RCTC. Granted, it's a different kind of dome, but that is desperately in need of replacement. That will be true in 20 years, so we will be handing off some expenses to future councils. And I had hoped we would have a more comprehensive look at other sites that the city owns. What could we, of all the things that you had on the screen that the community said they wanted and some that they do want that weren't on that list, like curling and some of the rest of it, Are there current facilities that we either own or that are available in the community that could be enhanced? It doesn't all have to be at one place necessarily. Is there room at the rec center, for instance, not only to enhance the offerings that we have, but to put an addition there, given that there's a brand new parking garage going to go in? I would have, and I hope we can still have some discussion in that regard, rather than just grabbing this thing that you've put in front of us today and say run with it. I will feel better if we've exhausted, take a comprehensive look at all we need, everything everyone wants, and other possibilities before we say yes to this. And lastly one of the things two things one is you mentioned the holistic You always have this funky name for it Holistic budget stability fund which as I recall was the ARPA funds now Are there ARPA funds left or have we continued using this terminology and put other funds in there? and if so whether it be ARPA funds, or I think I would like to hear a little bit more about where the 30 million is coming from, because the taxpayers, as Ms. Parker mentioned earlier, think it's coming from levies or taxes. I have been told that's not the case, but I think this community deserves to hear, A, that it's not going to be on their taxes for either building or ongoing expenses, and B, Where is it coming from? The community deserves to know that. So those are a couple of the points. I was deeply disturbed when I saw this on the agenda because I thought, I did expect a report back about Southeast. I did not expect not only a report back but an immediate ask for around a million dollars and then an obligation for 30, 40, 50 million more in the future.

Yeah, Your Honor, I appreciate that. And I mean, I think this is... It's going to be a conversation that you're trying to blend in a variety of needs and perspectives. We always intended and hoped to have an indoor option on the southeast site. I mean, that was part of the original proposal. Unfortunately, the numbers didn't allow for that. It's a dynamic changing environment. We've been with this for a long time. The turf news is relatively new news. That's different. Things have changed. I think if there's other sites and options, I can't think of them, to be honest with you, that don't involve utilities and new grading and buying a site, unless we're talking about the site we own in the Northwest. Just from a size perspective, whether it's this dome concept or the other concept that was originally fitted for the site, I'm not thinking of any sites that are immediately available that haven't been sort of ruled out in other conversations for other uses, right? Open to that, but I'm not thinking of them at this point in time. That doesn't involve a whole new cost structure and strategy for this. I think the RCTC piece is, I appreciate the clear as kind approach they've taken finally. I mean, we've been having lots of conversations. I thought the email we received was pretty clear. It was copied to the president, and I haven't heard any different that there's any disagreement on the perspective included within that email. If that happens to change, I guess we can reengage in that conversation, but at this point, I have to accept that as the direction that they provided until they tell us differently. And if they do, we can obviously reengage. Also though, I want to tell you that there's a mountain of challenges with doing this project on that site. First of which is taking out four existing fields in an area that is well utilized and people value. The second is we still would have to negotiate within a framework that allowed for a ground lease that we would want to sign and they would want to sign. That all would take a very significant amount of time given the approval processes. Given the level of progress we made from November of this last year to now, I might be able to bring you that back in a number of years. It would take probably an amount of time that the current construction pricing and current other things would make that challenging. Not impossible, but there's a lot of concessions you'd have to want to think about in order to do that effectively on that site. So I just want to lay that out there. Certainly could work, but it's just on a different kind of immediacy and time horizon. As far as the holistic budget stability funds, that is not necessarily ARPA funds. We do have funds that we are putting in there if we have revenues over expenditures in the annual budget process. We did code certain funds from the ARPA and original CARES funding to purposes and then transferred levy money into that fund as offsets for what we used as eligible expenses there. But generally speaking, the more recent capitalization of that fund has been through coming in under budget for the year and realizing your general fund balance is on target with where you want that to be. So I think those are your main capitalizations, but it's a yes and.

So to follow up, Mr. Chair.

I'm gonna actually go to council members and we will.

Haven't answered all the questions.

We will get to those. I have a list of your questions. Council member Palmer.

Thank you. As you speak, you always raise more questions and I appreciate what the mayor's trying to do here. The first basic question is what would be the cost just to do the underground, just to get your site work done? Do you have an idea what that would cost?

um customer palmer i if i'm understanding your question i i don't know that there's a a net differential on the cost to make the changes if that's what you're asking like just something you could do to make sure it's placeholder to allow for some future conversation sewer line big enough is the water line big enough yeah is it is it graded enough would your holistic budget stability fund cover part of that so if we decided

let's put a pause on this, let's get this construction work done and it's a gamble, but you at least would be able to sit down and figure out what you want to do later on with the building.

Yeah, I think if you position the site to work later, I don't know that those costs would be material. We'd have to do some additional work there. What I would say is it might look funny for quite some period of time because you would be leaving some open spaces on the site that when intuitively looking at it, makes sense to have the parking here versus elsewhere. But yeah, it could be done. And I think at a fairly reasonable cost. Okay.

Yeah. You've heard people with a frustration over the original plan and what we're trying to do. Have we just written down or provided to the community why the original thought process didn't work and why the budget was so high and why we're at the spot we are at right now with basically doubling the cost of what we thought it was going to be? Because I know for a fact that it wasn't a... It was an honest, we had our money coming, our consultants told us this is what it was going to cost, and that's what we went with that, and we were only 10% designed at that time. Even this design that you're showing today is probably 10% designed.

Yeah, not even 10%, yeah.

That's what gets us in trouble with the community is that they see this and all of a sudden someone a year from now is going to say, well, where are the pickleball courts? Where is the spectator spot? I mean, I can understand where people get frustrated with that. I mean, do you see that?

Yeah, no, I understand. You also have to have something to say, I want to spend a million dollars to kind of point toward to, and so it's an iterative conversation. But yeah, I mean, there is a reason why we're reluctant to say this is exactly how it would be financed, because we don't have a good cost estimate, and how much you're going to finance on this project really does sort of drive into how good is your estimate in terms of what are your options. You have to definitely relate those. Just back to how we got to this point, I think there was a question in there about that. Yeah, it was unfortunate. We got an unfortunate initial estimate on the option, the $65 million project that said we could do indoor and outdoor. maybe a slight gap to be closed there, but we just didn't get a good estimate. And then as we went through the next phase of design and construction and further evaluation with the project, it became clear that we weren't going to be able to do both phases of the project. Now at that time, the council provided distinct direction to say, we want to phase this, we don't want to lose sight of the fact, and here we are talking about what phase two wants to look like. But it really was, yeah, just an unfortunate estimate that we relied on in good faith, and It's been challenging ever since. Now I'd say, if we were talking about a similar facility, that was for about 130,000 square feet, which was mostly eight indoor gyms, that add to this project, and I'm just gonna make, I'm not gonna, this is not a definitive number, but it's not fifty five million is substantially more than fifty five million if we wanted to do that and no turf in that scenario so uh... conventional construction eight jim's even what we're talking about back then uh... you know as a much larger project we were pricing out a metal building uh... a grade of construction less at more than $55 million for this and less space. So it's been an evolution, but clearly that one bad estimate has been challenging.

So the dome they're proposing is about the size of the fleet farm that's out there south of town, which I know that for a fact. So for people to look at that and go, wow, that's a huge building if you start just looking at the walls. Um, which I thought was kind of a curious thing. So RCTC, I know we worked with them for over a year. Um, we tried to work with them and it didn't work out, but we do have a, um, commitment with them. We have a, we gave them sales tax dollars to build those buildings. What are we going to do to get that marketing better after five o'clock since we have control or we can use that building after five o'clock, there's very few people who've ever been there, let alone know that that's available or in the morning that that's available. Yeah.

Good evening, Jenna Bowman, Communications and Engagement. Great question, Council President Palmer. I think we have seen some opportunities already as we were moving through the colder weather months to work with RCTC to help promote those opportunities. We did see some positive response to that and I would hope that as we continue to work with the RCTC folks that we can make additional strides. As mentioned by Mr. Parrish, we will be coming back to you all as well as the park board to give an update on what we have been doing and i think you're all aware we were did not anticipate but i think great opportunity with community ed to work together on that survey so that now as we review that data as well come back to you and say here's what we've learned and what we've done Here's what we further learned in connecting with the community, and here's how we would intend to use the dollars that you've allocated as well. So it really will be about continuous information sharing through a variety of channels, but I think would just fully agree that we have continued to see time and time again that there's an awareness gap and we need to address it.

Okay. Um, Mr. Parrish in your presentation, I think if I read it right, there's about a half a million dollars of cost just to run a building without, um, any programming in that building. Um, in, if I remember correctly, uh, the rec center, we're about $800,000 a year in property tax. Do you have any idea what we would want to have for, for out of the property tax to actually operate events and do things there?

Yeah, and again, I think that's part of this evaluation is, you know, updating the pro forma. You saw pro forma for the previous court-based facility. We would have to, you know, put that in. I would, just to be, you know, reflective of this, I mean, there's likely some subsidy going to be required here to operate this. You have to balance out your values here. You know, people are talking about wanting programming and unstructured programming and affordability. That comes with a cost. And... you know, we are going to be taking on a fairly large amount of square footage. So I do expect that there will be some level of deficit, but there are going to be revenues to offset, right? I mean, the existing bubble, you know, runs a deficit, but it, you know, also generates revenue Reasonable revenue there, so I think it's just a lot of these facilities are about how do we manage the deficit? And what can we expect in that space and if you want more affordability more unstructured time? We probably have to be willing to think about some level of deficit But we'll try to bring that back to you once we get a better sense of the program after the engagement I

And just my last question would be, with our current facility that we have out there, we have a third-party operator operating that. Are they out promoting this? Are they looking for sponsorships for the fields? And is that revenue that they retain? Is that revenue that we would retain? How do we get some financial backing there?

Yeah. So, I mean, they're definitely, you know, beginning to do outreach in terms of, you know, bringing events and tournaments, you know, into that facility. Now we're only partially open come, you know, next year and then fully open, you know, the following. So there's some onboarding time for that. We do know that they've engaged with the group to solicit sponsorship and they're out doing some of that and having some level of preliminary interest and success, the same thing would happen with a facility like this. So those things can be material in terms of offsetting construction costs or offsetting operating costs. I mean, I think our orientation or my recommendation to you is to look at offsetting your operating costs with those sponsorships. But I think there's that potential. We have a nice logo on the facility, but that could be someone else's logo. I mean, I think if you go to naming rights and all that, those are definitely areas that we're going to want to explore. But they go into a common budget. We contract them to do the operations. They have some incentives to be in a surplus situation. The incentives don't kick in if they're in a deficit situation, so we've tried to structure the agreement. With that being said, we do these on a five-year basis, so if things aren't going the way we want them to go, we reevaluate where we're at every five years and say, yeah, this is really working out great, or no, a public model's better, or doing another RFP is a better option.

And you, you skipped along a little bit on, on opening next year, um, partially for the fields. Is that because of the, the artificial turf it's hard to get? Is it, is there a rationale or how much is gonna be open? Is it gonna be open next June? Is it gonna be open next September? What, what's your guess? Yeah, has it been here?

I'd rather not guess.

I'd rather not guess either, but yes.

Good evening, council and mayor. So timeline right now is that we would have four fields and the rectangle fields open by next April, May. So we'll have most, nearly all of the outdoor season with it open, just the scale of the full project with 10 artificial turf fields and all the grading and other things, utilities, all of that. The timeline, just the kind of scale of construction doesn't allow for, to have the entire facility open by next spring. So then all fields will be open by spring of 2028. Thank you, thank you.

Council Member Keene.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm just going to be very small up front here. Just in the seven-point action in front of us, we don't talk about the operating model, and we probably would need something like that. You referenced there's going to be some sort of operating subsidy, but I'm looking for the... the process placed for those decisions about how much, you know, structured versus unstructured, municipal versus contracted. Is that in that September meeting? Is that in December? That's further out. We need to make the commitments before we're there.

Yeah, we certainly would hope to have that available for the September meeting, just the working estimate based on the program and what's being recommended, just an update of the original pro forma. And then obviously, as you move toward getting bids on the 14th of December, We've continued to update those documents. But yeah, we'd want you to make a decision to go ahead on the 14th. Because there's another substantial amount of money to get you from September to December in terms of construction documents, almost another million dollars. So we don't want to go down that road if you're not feeling good about how it's going to be operated, what the design looks like, and does this meet the need that you perceive to be in the community.

One of the reasons we did lean towards the outdoor was because we did think the ongoing operating expenses was much lower than having indoor space in Minnesota. Is that still an assumption? I mean, I'm making the assumption that with indoor space, even dome indoor space, the operating expenses are higher and hopefully the usage is more, but the operating expenses are higher.

I think that's fair.

Okay. Another mistake I made going into this when we were waiting for the operating model on the outdoor sports thing, I still have, in my oversimplified mind, I thought operating model also included how do the non, Non tournament sort of community people get access to the asset. I thought that was part of the operating model Can you talk about how if you have these courts and you have this somebody trying to you know? Enlist these tournaments and these other kind of paying customers. How does the Rochester youth basketball? Contract for it. Is there something we're going to do to make it a civic asset or is that considered we're in full cost recovery by then and they're paying customer like anybody else I

Yeah. I mean, it's going to be a blended strategy. You're definitely going to have a fee for service. You know, the soccer club is going to want to use the turf and you're going to rent the turf by the hour. Same thing with the court. Same thing with pickleball. Like there's, you know, almost all of our recreation options have a fee for service element. And there's some value in that. And I think part of this conversation is going to want to say, how do you scholarship people into these options? How do you provide that opportunity? And as we were talking through with the indoor options at RCTC, how do you provide unstructured time within that? So it's not exclusive, right? You can do... time for associations and time for unstructured. So the West St. Paul Dome is an example. They have open dome where if you just want to come in and kick a ball around or use the batting cages, that's certainly an opportunity or have a birthday party or whatever. That's certainly an opportunity for people to do that. That's scheduled. They actually do that a lot of their time in the summer because they don't have a lot of, we'll call it paid time in that environment. So you know, these open dome times. Same thing with your gym time. Like, if it's not scheduled, like, it can be open. Or that area on the sort of, we'll call it the seating and play area, I think that is designed primarily to be unstructured and not exclusive. And so what amenities want to happen in there, whether it's an indoor playground, whether it's the kinds of fixtures and furniture that allow people to have that unstructured time. I think that's what we're asking the community working group to solve through and provide input on. But I think it's both.

I appreciate that and I realize it's not something that we're gonna have a set plan in September if we go in this direction. At the same time, I really do think there's onus on us to figure out how to create incentives, if there's an operator, that they make it more civic-oriented, the way we've done with the Civic Center. So I'm really bringing these up more to think about it that way. So I think I've got my answer. I did want to just, I really struggle with this idea of, I'm really glad we're doing a lot of community engagement, but that whole comment on what the community wants. And I just have come to the conclusion that there are just inordinate number of independent communities. And this thing started out coming much more as an economic development project that was really there to help our hospitality industry. And now we also want these other benefits for local community assets. And I think it is possible to get us to both of it. But as an example, do we have good like youth sports input and collaboration with this? Do we still have like I know we're really struggling with the community input and how that happens and how we connect to them and how they get to the event. But do we have the other original players are looking at this and going, yes, this is we're bending in the right direction.

I think that's part of this process again to kind of reaffirm I mean we were out and had all those questions and conversations when we were looking at the original indoor facility and you know I think a lot of that perspective has rolled forward into this and the needs we're trying to meet have rolled forward into this But I think validating that and understanding like this is a different concept, again, because the turf evolution and trying to meet that need has come before you now as well. So I think yes, there is some perspective that these are needs and we want to validate that and just make sure in this environment that that perspective is refined.

Very good, those are the kind of things, I'll hold on my comments on the other things, but these are the things I'll be watching for like in September that we also, along with the community, do the people that we originally set out to try to serve the chamber and the hospitality thing, they think they're getting what they want and we're able to get this other sort of the asset things. Because I don't want to set the goal of everybody's happy because it's just not going to happen. But I also want to make sure that as we make these decisions, we have that aperture open and wide enough for all the different opinions. Thank you. I want to listen to my peers now.

Council Member Miller.

Yeah, I'll just start with where I am and then I have some questions. At the study session, as the mayor said, my understanding was the urgency was really what is the potential decision to leave room at the south site? It was not clear to me that we would be asked at this meeting for more than a million dollars of investment authorized to move this forward because it felt like construction is moving forward. If we're going to ever have the possibility of this type of concept at that south site, we would just need to adjust parking utilities. So I would be fine doing that. I am not in a place where I'm ready to move this forward at this rate, at this cost. And the reason is, if we go back to the sales tax, it was an authorization of $65 million for a sports and recreation center. We asked people what they wanted if we were to spend $65 million on sports and recreation. Many people told us indoor we weren't able to provide that, and so we went in this direction. With the potential, and I even remember Councilmember Keene saying, we should be clear to the community, there's no guarantee of a phase two, we are authorizing a phase one. And so now we have this new opportunity But we haven't told people what the funding can be used for. I don't know what the funding is. It's unclear if this is restricted to sports and recreation. And so if that were the case, then I feel like, yes, we have good community engagement. If that funding could be used for other community needs, the mayor did a Rochester Vision 2050 survey. I've talked with plenty of people that are interested in cultural and arts programming and investments in other aspects of our community beyond sports and recreation. And I feel like even the way this community working group model is structured here, we're presenting a concept that's already fully realized in its concept and asking them to make tweaks within the building. And I don't feel like that's a pathway that we rebuild trust with the community. And so I'm interested in my peers' conversation on this, but I think the elephant in the room is what is this potential funding source? Is it property tax? I would appreciate comments that would clarify that it's not property tax going into this if it's not, but I think we really have to have a better conversation about how $55 million could be invested for the most pressing needs of our community. and not say, well, we have engagement about a prior $65 million authorization for a sports and recreation center, and so we can expand that. And I'll just say too, I received a question today from somebody who's active in the space and said, where was this $55 million in the prior discussion? Why wasn't it available to not say, well, we can't do both, but here's how we could do both? So I feel like we're moving ahead of the community and I'm not comfortable with that and I'll leave my comments there for now and look for what my peers have to say.

Thank you, Councilmember. I'm gonna weigh in now as well because I think a lot of my thinking is along the same lines as Councilmember Miller was talking about. I really have trouble justifying a million dollars when we don't know if we're even going to do this It feels like we're putting the cart before the horse. I really want to see community engagement, but I also want to see community engagement on the funding model. I want our constituents to say, yes, we do want to spend this money. and whether it's a mix of property tax or other funding sources, I think we need to be very transparent about what those potential funding sources are. And when it comes to the design and getting us higher design, I don't quite understand how that's gonna help us with the funding model because with the original 65 million in sales tax dollars, that was set, that was our cap, and so we did design up to that. Couldn't we do design up to 50 or 55 million and have you folks come back to us, whether it's September or earlier than that, and say this is the funding model that we propose for providing this amenity to this community. And I say that as someone who really encouraged the team to expedite this because I heard from the community that they felt they were getting indoors. So myself and Council Member Wall and Mayor Norton spent five months, not a whole year, Council Member Palmer, But five months, really encouraging and working to try to get some kind of reimagination of something on the RCTC campus. I do believe, unfortunately, Mayor, that the message that we got last week was a final no for now. And so that is not an option for us. But I still, I want greater transparency on this project funding model before I even commit a million dollars to it. And then just one other thing that I think I am very proud of the work that folks have done on surveying the community ed and the work that we've done with RCTC on what we want to see. And the message we get loud and clear is we want greater visibility of the offerings that we have across the spectrum. So what I really want to see in conjunction with capital project like this is what is our plan for marketing our entire sports and rec facilities that includes RCTC, the rec center and the regional sports center and potentially this project. So with that I will

stop and turn it over to councilmember wall thank you boy this is complicated goes back years goes back through a community vote goes back through failed expectations with the money that is available to us through The sales tax, with many of the people on the council here, I would be concerned if there were property tax dollars that were going into the building of this. And of course, part of the recommendation that we're being asked for is for the staff to go back and flesh out exactly how this thing could be financed. with the proviso that property taxes were not used in the building. I'm not necessarily saying in the operating. I think that is another issue that we will deal with. But in the building, I would be more amenable to at least taking these next steps to see what what is true and what is possible for us given the funding sources that we have available so that's the funding part uh... aaron you started going down uh... a road that i thought was helpful uh... and i think you can complete that story in comparison of the building that uh... was being promoted at the time of the vote and uh... the building that is being promoted at this point? For instance, the number of courts, the number of indoor pickleball courts, the large play area, the turf. Could you do a comparison on those two buildings?

Yeah, mayor, president, members of the council. So again, the original idea really was for eight indoor gyms, 130,000 square feet, some queuing space, pre-function space. And then within that, you could program courts in many ways, but it really was eight courts. There wasn't a lot more to it than that. There was a room for some meetings and birthday parties and things like that. The pickleball piece of that wasn't dedicated like it is here. It would have taken place on those courts so you would have had shared use. In this case, the number of courts is the same at eight. There wasn't really any indoor playground or any of that seating and play area, which is a substantial area in the course. There was a Piece that you know allowed turf to be added on later But that was not part of the original scope at that point in time And so yeah, I mean again if you just think about I know customer Palmer used Fleet Farm as the analogy Really? think about the existing dome, if you've been in there, and just think it's more than twice the size of that. So you have the existing dome, and this area, the space to the right, really is additional space that you have the opportunity to program in many, many ways. So I do think it's an enhancement, and again, this whole journey for us all has been challenging, and we had a YMCA close, we had a bad estimate, we've... tried to partner in many other different places. It was hard to find the property. I mean, you all went through a very substantial property acquisition phase of this project. And so, yeah, it's like anything, great projects are never easy. If you wouldn't mind, I'm happy to provide some more context on financing. And I mean, maybe just preface this and say, you don't have to do any of this, right? This is really just, and I'm not here saying like, hey, we gotta do this. I'm trying to be responsive to the idea that you've identified need, you asked us to come with options at a point in time, but this is a discretionary investment. Now, it's a quality of life thing, and we're in the quality of life business, and so if you think about that, that's important. And again, I think maybe just because this has been such a tricky project that You know, we're a little gun-shy to over-commit to, you know, trying to develop a financing strategy for something I don't have a number for. And so, you know, it's like anything. If you want this, and we estimate right now it could be $55 million, that's one thing. But we haven't gone through a design process. So I would like to get you better information before we have the opportunity to do that. So it is a... a confidence thing in terms of some of this. Also can say, you may always set a budget of 55 million. We did that with the regional sports and rec complex. We want to design we have $65 million to work with. We've done projects that way too. So that's certainly an option. But we also like to give you the room to make the decision of, I would like to invest more. I want to stick to this budget because that's just the number. So I think there's those things. With that being said, There's a handful of financing options that we present. We certainly can work that into the design phase and have public engagement around the financing options that we likely would present in September. Happy to do that if that's what you'd like to do and it's just gonna have this big qualifier like on the bottom, like images are concepts and will be refined as the design and budget evolve. We just start trying to manage expectations. And there's really just a handful of options. There's not a significant number of them. It could be a property tax finance facility. I don't think that's what you're asking me to do, but if you were to ask me to come with options, That's one option. That's always a thing you can consider. There's P3 models where you basically say, we'll get private investment. That will cost you something per year. It could be offset by some amount of operations. But you're likely having to find a way to pay for that in some way, shape, or form. And then the other probably more leading idea is to prioritize our sales tax above the $205 million that we have collected. So there is statutory authority that does allow us to invest in a regional sports and rec complex not to Councilmember Miller's question earlier, not in just a wide variety of community priorities. It's a very distinct authority. It has to be over $40 million. It has to be focused either on a civic center, like think Mayo Civic Center, or a regional sports and rec facility. So those are like the two criteria for that funding. There is a law that allows us to do that based on our existing authorization. We have the ability to over-collect. for anything above $205 million. And our current sales tax is projected with the years that we have available to it to collect much more than $205 million. So again, need a target, want to understand that, but those are the types of ideas that we would be bringing for you to consider in September.

Thank you. I still have two more questions. Council Member Wall. Thank you. And I really appreciate that better explanation. I think that adds to some clarity anyway of what might be possible in the future. Going back to the building itself, one of the big ads, there are many ads, but the big ad of course is the turf. And if we were to build this, it would be a direct replacement for the RCTC dome and we would have the only dome in town that would accommodate what RCTC currently hosts. Would that be correct? Yes. And we do not see that the RCTC dome It's limping right now and it'll be on crutches soon and not very good in the years to come.

Yeah, that's correct. I mean, we're waiting for an evaluation of the Dome to even determine if interim use is an option, but it's one or two years that we feel without some substantial investment. There's going to be a request of the city to make that investment to cover the interim operations, and so you'll have to determine that. I mean, maybe that's the other bit of urgency here. I know we talked a little bit about urgency. I mean, I think the two things you have to consider on whether you want to proceed with this project, just so you have all the perspective. One is, do we want to be in a perpetual cycle of trying to do an interim situation on the dome? I don't think RCTC wants to do that. I don't know that. We can talk to them more about it. But they very distinctly said we are out of the dome business this fall. We're likely going to be asked to cover the deficit, a couple hundred thousand dollars. plus or minus, again, to be determined. But do you continue to do that if you don't have a strategy to go anywhere with this conversation? Or do you just say, we don't have a dome in the community? I think that's where we were at but for this conversation. The other is just you do have to bear in mind, too, the appreciation of our revenue sources, sales tax in particular, probably is a lot slower than construction escalation. So you do have diminishing buying power as you move through this. So we say construction escalation is in the 10% range probably. I mean, it could be more, it could be less, but for planning purposes, we'll say 10%. you lose buying power. So the 250 that you see up there might be 200 next year, and it might be something less than that the following year. So you just have to realize when you wait, you have the potential to lose impact too.

And my last question is a simple one. If this item were to pass, how would people indicate their interest in serving on the community working group?

We typically have had that flow through our communications and engagement team and there's a base of people that are familiar with the site and have served on the previous outdoor option, but I think it would just be contacting Jenna and seeing if there's anything.

Okay, so the contact communications, thank you.

Council Member Keene.

Again, just to move our discussion along, I wanna propose putting a motion on the table and then if we amend it or however it goes, if that is suitable. Go ahead. I'd like to move to approve the seven-part motion to proceed with phase two to address funding, design work, requests for proposals, financing ideas, and interim RCTC dome extensions.

A motion made by Councilmember Keene. Is there a second? Second. Councilmember Keene.

All right, so I'll give my overview and we'll see where this goes. But back in 2023, we came up with four projects for the sales tax and we went first to the state to get permission to take these to the voters and that was the process. I think it's clear now that we erred in that process by sharing what we thought were concepts and possibilities that could be a part of the regional sports section before we had done the hard work of finding land and buying land and improving land and getting to the point that we knew what our capability was with $65 million. And I think the city, I think I've heard from City Administrator Parrish, we realize now that we've probably got ahead of ourselves with some of that. And then what we did was come back with a smaller plan that was within our funding stuff. I think in my view of coming here tonight, the decision and the proposals in front of us are trying to do better. We have to do more design and planning work before we start committing to what we think we can do. We need to adjust the current plans with things like parking so that we don't end up deciding six months from now to do something and then finding out we need to tear up things like the build once problems. And I wish I could give assurances here that we would not fund any of this type of work based on tax levy. I know that I would not support that, but I'm one of seven, and that may go that way, but my sense from being up here for over the years is this council wouldn't go that way. I think part of the work here is finding out what these other funding sources are. Federal and state are always options for these things, but I think what we talked about now with sales tax, but the other one we've talked about in the hospitality industry has talked about this. Do they have examples of other places where the private sector through advertising or other sort of things is a good... input and maybe as as Mr. Parrish says maybe more for operations than for building. I think we have to be careful when we say we want to listen to what the community wants. There are so many different bifurcated parts of the community and I think the majority right now would say stop spending. But I think what I'm always concerned with is not just, you know, it's sort of where the sources of the funds are coming from and are those sources what they're being used for. And again, that's why I would say right now with tax levy, I think we would stay away from that and focus that on city services and public safety. Thank you.

Council Member Miller.

Yeah, I appreciate the motion. I won't be supporting it tonight, but I did want to go back to Mr. Parrish. You mentioned that the leading financing idea has some restrictions, but I didn't hear you say that it's only restricted to sports facilities. And I look at our Civic Center and it has performing arts space. It has an art center. It has flexible event space. And I also think of other community efforts and I hear from constituents often that we don't invest that much in arts and cultural spaces for people. And so I am uncomfortable moving forward with further investment in sports tonight. without a deeper dive into potential uses, be they limited with some restrictions by the authorization of how could a scale of funding like this potentially be used and add an asset to our community. And I would just go back to when we had the conversation over multiple meetings about what are the council's priorities and what are our strategic priorities and foundational principles. The idea of inclusivity in the decision making and then the growth management came out in both and we adjusted them in that direction. And I am highly concerned that if we move this motion forward as proposed, that we are losing further trust in those areas. So I will not be supporting this tonight. I would like us to hold space at the site and have a better community conversation about what could be done with that leading financing idea.

Council Member Doering.

Yeah, I also will not be supporting this motion tonight for many other reasons that Mr. Miller just shared as well. I am concerned about the financing model relying on extending the sales tax even a little further or collecting more sales tax. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should do something, and I'm concerned about that, especially without increased community engagement or increased community knowledge about that. I would agree with the idea of holding space at our south site for our future indoor development. I just don't think we're here at this point. I do recognize urgency for that, but I think we can come up with some additional creative solutions in the interim as we continue to suss out what the community wants with a huge build of indoor space. I also hear from the community about concerns about not investing in cultural amenities or arts amenities in this community. So I would love to explore that a little bit further. I would encourage us if we engage with a community working group that we actually ask those different segments of that community working group to nominate spokespeople for those community groups rather than just real relying on the same voices we heard in the first phase of the project. Increased engagement in that way brings more buy in and more voices to the table. And that is essential to me. So those are my thoughts this evening. Again, I will not be supporting the motion.

Thank you, Councilmember. I'll just say I will not be supporting this motion for a very targeted reason. It's, like I said, I feel we're putting the cart before the horse. I don't. I think we need to have community engagement on the funding models that you, Mr. Parrish, outlined verbally for us and have a greater discussion amongst this body as well as in the community on do we want to spend that and use those resources for this indoor. And I say that as someone who has worked really hard over the last year to expedite this discussion and to give us some options on indoor. I like the model. I think we also need to know more about the all-weather dome. We should visit some that are in operation and take a look at them. One of my favorite terms is glide path this discussion with our constituents. This is a very viable option for indoor and really sell it to our community. But I really feel hesitant to commit even a million dollars before having that discussion. Council Member Fredericks.

Thank you. remember when you're a kid and you used to get on a steep hill and think you're going to run down it real fast and you just get going and you lose your footing and you start doing somersaults and all kinds of stuff that's kind of how i feel i'm very much for anything to add economic stimulus to this community for the businesses for everybody i'm any i'm all about overall health physical health, health of our community as well. I'd just like to slow down just a little bit. That's the only reason I'm gonna vote no tonight is because I just wanna slow down a little bit, that's it.

With that, Curler Caso, could you call the roll? Oh, Councilmember Wall, go ahead, I'm sorry.

Just a point of order. I would like to know precisely what the motion is. There were seven parts, but I just want to know precisely what the motion is.

Council Member Keene.

Again, I tried to write it up without reading the whole thing back to us, but I move to approve seven-part motion to proceed with the Phase 2 sports complex. Address funding, design work, requests for proposals, financing ideas, and interim RCTC dome extension.

as presented.

As presented on our screens.

Council President, can I just get clarity because I heard a desire for something different and if you vote no on this motion without amending it, I don't know if you have the opportunity to vote on something different.

Clerk Kasel, if this motion goes down, are we able to put forth an alternative proposal?

I would say that if you wanted to do something else, you should probably amend the motion so the topic does not fail completely tonight at this point.

Thank you. Is there any amendments to this motion?

I'll propose an amended motion to adjust the site for the existing regional sports and recreation complex, particularly the parking areas, to allow for a footprint of a potential future indoor space. Second. And to request, thank you, Council Member Palmer, and to request additional review of funding models at a future study session or council meeting.

Second.

So that was an amendment by Councilmember Miller and seconded by, was it Councilmember Palmer? Councilmember Miller, can you clarify your amendment? Sure. Well, let me ask you a question. With your amendment, are you removing items one, two, three, four, and five from the action requested on our screens?

Say those numbers one more time please. It's one through five.

It's the funding piece.

I would clarify that I understand six as presented here is a financing option for this design. I WOULD CLARIFY THAT I WOULD LIKE A FINANCING DISCUSSION OF THE POTENTIAL FUNDING SOURCE AND HOW IT COULD BE USED BE IT THIS PROJECT OR OTHER STATUTORY OPTIONS WITHIN THAT AUTHORIZATION. IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE AT THE SEPTEMBER 9TH CITY COUNCIL MEETING. THAT'S FINE IF IT IS. But I would like us also, as I understood during the study session where we last discussed this, to just do the immediate work of utility location and making sure that we're not building a parking lot where something could be in the future. Those are the two actions I'm suggesting we take.

I want to ask the question again. Is your action striking

i would suggest i'm striking the entire list of seven here okay and proposing alternate actions that we have a deeper dive into the funding model point of order i would suggest that's a substitute motion not an amendment to a motion okay

I think if you saved one of the points there.

How about we save seven? There you go. Pursue interim options for existing RCTC dome extension of that beyond this season.

Is there clarity on the amendment? Council Member Palmer.

Yes, I'm very clear.

No, I guess I understand that, again, trying to, I mean, this is more manipulative, just keeping seven, but there was also, I thought, embedded in what Council Member Miller said and also make the arrangements at the south site to, and that's not in the motion right now.

So I would suggest that we can keep seven and amend it to add actions of bring a future council discussion of potential funding sources and their possible uses. And as it can be number three in this list, prior nine, is to authorize the relocation of parking, et cetera, on the existing site to leave space for future indoor construction.

I am going, since we are at roughly 7.45, I am going to have a 10-minute break, and I'm going to ask Councilmember Miller and Councilmember Palmer to work with Clerk Kasel to write up this amendment. We're on break.

Can I borrow a sheet of notebook paper? I can't rip anything out of this.

All right, we're gonna get started and Council Member Miller, can you read your amendment?

Sure, so a motion to amend by striking numbers one through six of the main motion, leaving item seven and adding two additional requested actions. Adjust the RSRC site to allow for a footprint for a potential future indoor space and request additional review of funding models at a future study session or city council meeting.

And Council Member Palmer, are you good with that? Okay, so we have a amendment. Any further discussion on this amendment? Council Member Keene.

Just to clarify, on the adjust the RCT site, is there a cost associated with that or that's not a cost?

Go ahead, your mic. Yeah, Your Honor, I appreciate the question, because during the break, had the opportunity to kind of group up with the team, and there will be some additional costs there. I don't know that that should influence, we can't tell you what those are. I think what we will do is make every modification we can in order to best position that for future use, but it's not to say that there's not gonna be any costs with that in the future, that there might be some site disruption and modifications that end up having to happen, but just respecting the fact that you're clearly not in a position to understand what that is. But I just wanna forecast that there probably would be some additional costs in the future for that.

That's a good clarification, thank you. Clerk Kasel, could you call the roll?

Councilmember Keene.

Aye.

Councilmember Miller.

Aye.

Councilmember Wall.

Aye.

Council Member Fredericks. Aye. Council Member Palmer. Aye. Council Member Doering. Aye. Council President Schubring.

Aye.

Okay, the amendment passes 7-0.

So, and we're back to the original motion and that was made by Council Member Keene.

We're back to the amended motion.

The original, yeah, amended motion. So any further discussion on that? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay. Motion passes. Thank you. Moving on to H2, which is the Contract Approval Plan for Enhanced Public Realm Delivery. And this is an item that was pulled by both Councilmember Palmer and Miller. Councilmember Palmer, would you like to start?

Well, thank you. What is the funding source for this money?

Who's gonna take that? Miss Woodward, go ahead.

I'll take the question, thank you. It will be DMC funding.

And is this only gonna be in the current DMC area?

That is correct. There is a map within the RFQ on page nine that identifies the streets that'll be examined and they are all within the current DMC boundaries.

That's what I just wanted to hear. I'm not in favor of this only because, a lot of reasons, but the biggest reason is that I think that we have staff and we have Mayo Clinic people working. I don't think we need to add more people to this. And I'll give you kind of an example that we've had too recently that having more than, a lot of people involved and nobody really wants to take responsibility. And one of them would be for the St. Mary's Electrical that cost us $900,000 and the Peace Plaza. And everybody's pointing to everybody else on these issues that this is what went wrong. So I think adding one more group to this doesn't make any sense. And so I won't be supporting this request.

Council Member Miller.

So I pulled this for a different reason and I had had some conversation with Ms. Woodward, but I was hoping that you could clarify the process of the RFQ narrowing down the applicants and then narrowing down finalists and making the recommendation. Can you talk about the framework for that? Who was involved? And give us a better sense of how this recommendation came to be for this consultant.

Certainly. So there was an RFQ process or request for qualifications. We made it pretty widely open. We received 10 proposals. There was an initial review and scoring with a number of items. I think there were about six different items that we were asked folks to score, included representatives across city departments, including parks, public works, community development, along with DMC folks and Mayo looking at them. We had a discussion and narrowed it down based on who scored highest, and then we ultimately interviewed two firms, further asking some clarifying questions about scope and innovation and how public engagement, and then we narrowed that down through that interview process and made the recommendation for Gamble and Associates.

And at both stages of that, were the different stakeholders evaluating the proposals or the firms and then the interview responses independently or was that done in a group?

We reviewed, well, initially everybody scored them individually and then we brought that together to have a discussion. And then through the interview process, after the interviews, there were group discussions.

Okay. So was it... unanimous decision? Was it consensus? What were some of the tension points of one versus the other?

Generally, it was consensus. Part of what we were looking at is who really understood the scope of work, understood the timeline, really understood also the engagement efforts. One, I would say proposal had more of doing a larger engagement, but we also recognize there's been a lot of engagement done to date, and we wanted to build off of the existing engagement so that we're not tiring folks out of repeating some of that same information also understanding the complexities of we have a tight timeline with mayo construction happening and being able to get these design elements together to be able to give them to the project managers who are going to be looking at these infrastructure projects and how all that's going to work together really well okay and that's what it seemed like to me too uh from some conversations i had but i guess one of my concerns and i i'm happy to support this tonight but i i

I feel like often we move with urgency as things come up. And I know that innovation was part of that RFQ. And I read through both of the proposals, and it's unclear to me that we're choosing a firm that is really bringing core innovation. And I hope that that's the case when they actually deliver this project. But I wouldn't want us to lose sight of innovation, especially when we've gone through this process with the DMC, EDA, to develop these three areas, innovation being really one of our strong areas, and design for well-being. I just want to make sure that those are well represented. And I know the other consultant is actively engaged with that, has done recent plan review. And I see how there could be advantages to both firms in different ways. And again, I just don't want one to miss all of the requirements just because expediency and they're already engaged.

The requirement will be to provide an innovation and really looking at different tiers and how does that get incorporated throughout the design. So that element is required of the consultant to complete and that will be some items that we will make sure as we kind of move forward that that is part of it and also probably likely part of the engagement of what does that innovation really look like throughout this process.

Is there a motion on this item?

Sure, I'll make a motion approving a contract with Gamble and Associates for the development of a plan for the enhanced public realm downtown adjacent to Mayo, Bold, Forward, Unbound.

Motion made by Councilmember Miller. Second. Seconded by Councilmember Doering. Any more to add, Councilmember Miller?

No, I appreciate the opportunity to have this discussion in a public setting. I know there's a lot of... competing factors that go into any of these recommendations. And I just want us to make sure that we operate from a clear set of principles and don't get thrown off course as things get urgent. And I know that that's come up with Council Member Keene talking about transformative capital projects and really keeping to timelines. And I know that the $38 million for this area was approved a while ago, and then we didn't go out to RFQ until a lot closer to it. And it feels like maybe we've created some of this urgency. And again, I'm happy to support this firm. I just want to make sure that we stick to the core principles and don't get thrown off course in a very busy project environment.

Other thoughts? I would just echo, and not in particular with this project, but the urgency and the action plan, because there are so many plans that we've done, whether it's the small area plans around this building or the small area plan at Ampey and Kmart, And they're great plans, they're very creative, but then there's nothing to lift them off. And this is a little different because it isn't a development project, but it's that action plan that happens after the plan is developed that I'm really interested in seeing and hearing more about. Ms. Woodward, do you have a response to that?

Yeah, if you don't mind. So all of this work will directly correlate to projects. So part of what we're trying to do with this plan is to identify what these elements are going to be in the overall streetscape design that will directly link to construction projects that are also going to include underground infrastructure. So it's really doing the upfront work with this so that those projects are ready to go and on schedule and on time as well. So this work will directly link to what will be in those construction projects.

Thank you for that. Any further comments? All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, say nay. Nay. The motion passes 5-2-2 with council members Wall and Palmer voting nay. With that, ordinance second reading. Go ahead, Mr. Spindler-Craig.

Thank you, Mr. President. Item K1, an ordinance of the Rochester City Code approving the renaming of roadway section located at the intersection of 45th Street Southeast and St. Bridget Road Southeast and runs eastwardly to Sports Complex site to Game Day Drive Southeast.

I move approval. Second. Motion made by Councilmember Keene and seconded by Councilmember Wall. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Motion passes.

Item K-2, an ordinance amending section 3-1-17 of chapter 3-1 of title 3 of the Rochester Code of Ordinances relating to dangerous dogs.

Move approval.

Second.

Motion made by Councilmember Miller and seconded by Councilmember Doering. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Motion passes. Is there a motion to adjourn? Mr. Chair. I'm sorry, does someone have a other business? I did not hear about other business, but go ahead, Mayor Norton.

I just want to remind the council that I'm taking off on Wednesday afternoon to go to the U.S. Conference of Mayors to forward a resolution for workforce development, and we'll be back after, and there are two items that I am not willing to put my name on, item F7 and K1 that will be in my box, and Mr. Chair, I would ask that you sign those, both related to the sports complex.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Is there any other business? Seeing none, is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second? Second. Motion made by Council Member Miller and seconded by Council Member Fredericks. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay. We are adjourned.