City Council - workshop

Time is now 5.03. Good evening. I'm calling this workshop of the Victoria City Council to order. Our workshops are informal, and with that, we'll dive right into our first agenda item. Council Member Roberts is a little late this evening, but he'll be joining us soon. Regardless, we have a quorum. We have one item on our workshop agenda this evening, which is a budget discussion. This evening we will hear from our department directors who will share budget pressures and highlight cost savings and operational efficiencies. Kicking us off this evening is Assistant City Manager, Tricia Pawlik. Miss Pawlik, welcome.

Thank you, Acting Mayor, members of the council. I'm just waiting for our slideshow to get booted onto the screen for you all. and then we'll get going.

Dan just walked in too, so. She's saying one minute.

It's probably my fault I have magnetic fingers.

Aren't you all happy I'm presenting the IT department in a bit? Where did this go?

It's on there. It's up there.

That's not the one we're using.

Yeah, I dragged it there.

We're not using the flash drive one.

Oh. Thank you very much.

There you go, friends. Can we see our notes? Alyssa, are we going to be able to see our notes on here, though?

There you are. Thanks, Alyssa.

Okay, I think we are all set. Ms. Pollack, welcome. Good evening again. So before I hand things over to Abby for most of the finance slides tonight, I want to start with one overview that really applies to all of our departments in one way or another. This sets the foundation for the work we do collectively and highlights the shared priorities that connect each of our operational areas. So a stable financial foundation ensures the city can continue delivering high quality services, maintain infrastructure, and respond effectively to emerging needs. This requires disciplined fiscal management, clear public communication, and long-range planning. Financial sustainability means aligning revenues and expenditures, forecasting predictable levies, and coordinating capital investments with their long-term operating impacts. Fiscal responsibility means using conservative revenue assumptions, maintaining healthy reserves, and managing debt to protect the city's AAA bond rating. Public transparency means sharing clear financial information. keeping the budget process open and ensuring accountability through regular reporting. So today's staff will give examples of pressures and cost savings and efficiencies that they have developed and implemented in their respective departments over this past year. So with that, I am going to pass this off to Abby.

All right, thank you. My name is Abby Caber. I'm the finance manager for the city of Victoria. Can you see the finance slide? Perfect. All right, so let's start off with some cost savings and efficiencies for the finance department and some budget pressures we're seeing, and then we'll talk about some spotlights. So the first one, late last year we went through an RFP process for our bank. We chose to stay with Old National. And through that process we updated the interest rate on our money market account. We went from .04% to 3.56%. So in terms of dollars, if we use the average balance, that goes from $800 a year to $71,000 a year. We're excited to make our money work harder for the city. Second, in terms of accounts payable, so that's how we pay our bills, we're transitioning from paper check to ACHs. That's a way safer way to transfer funds and they lessen the risk for fraud. In 2025, we went from 35% checks made via ACH, and we increased that to 54%. So there's still room to grow there. And then third, we're working to make the budgeting process more streamlined. So we implemented a new HR module in our accounting software, which includes budget, position budgeting. And so instead of maintaining a massive spreadsheet, we can automate it a little bit and make it more accurate and less time intensive. We can also plug in multiple scenarios and increase our analysis. So now for some budget pressures, we're fortunate on the finance side, we don't have to buy equipment and we run pretty lean, but there are two budget pressures that we're anticipating. So the first is an increase in the assessment contract for special assessments next year. We're anticipating a 9.6% increase, which in dollar terms would be about $9,000. Compare that to five years ago, it's a 35% increase. And so the cost is driven by the number of properties and is charged per parcel. So that's just a part of being a growing community. And second, so we're always seeking federal and state grants where we can, which is great, but along with grants can come some expenses. IF THE CITY RECEIVES MORE THAN $1 MILLION IN FEDERAL GRANTS IN ANY SINGLE YEAR, THAT TRIGGERS A SINGLE AUDIT. AND IN 2026, WE WILL RECEIVE ABOVE THE THRESHOLD DUE TO HIGHWAY 5 AND 11 PROJECT. AND SO WE WILL PROBABLY NEED TO COMPLETE A SINGLE AUDIT. THAT WILL COST BETWEEN 7 AND 10K DEPENDING ON THE COMPLEXITY OF THE AUDIT. And then last but not least, a few spotlights for our department. So these are things that we're a bit proud of. The first ties into what Trish mentioned about public transparency. So the finance department works really hard to provide timely and transparent financial reporting to the public. We put out a quarterly report each quarter, a really hefty budget book, and then the annual comprehensive financial report, the ACFR, and most recently the popular annual financial report, so the PAFR. For those at home, they're all on our website, so go check them out. The GFOA recognizes cities that complete all three the budget book the AC for and the paffer And they recognize that with a special triple crown award, and I'm happy to say Victoria received our first one this year only 14 cities in Minnesota received this distinction and Victoria is the smallest one by population so we're among the ranks of Bloomington in Prairie Plymouth st. Cloud and Edina and And the second ties into the fiscal responsibility that Trish mentioned. So we're proud of our AAA bond rating, which is the highest rating available. And a AAA rating is important because it lowers our interest rate for debt when we're issuing, or costs when we're issuing debt. And you can receive a AAA by having healthy reserve, robust financial policies, and historically positive financial results.

uh... that's the end of the finance portion i think next up we have community safety it's just a quick question before you guys of course uh... i think that the answers somewhat self-evident myself but for transparency so that everybody can understand that the seventy one thousand dollars of annual estimated income that we're going to now receive on our average balances that we're keeping for assessments. These are on the funds that we levy for and then we just disperse throughout the year and sort of have this stair step approach to cash moving into our account. I'm going to presume and I hope you can confirm that it's fair that the city of Victoria has no additional risks that they're taking with those balances. It just really amounted to having Old National Bank pay the city of Victoria a more fair rate of return on using our funds during those period of times.

yes that's correct so it was on our money market account which is a super liquid account and correct that was just through our rfp process we had discussions with old national and with all the other banks that we talked to and that was one of the results that came out of the rfp process was the account stayed the same the risks stayed the same everything just moved from 0.04 to 3.56 okay great job and great job with your awards uh

I think we don't get enough opportunity to spotlight your guys' accomplishments in that, but our AAA rating also saves the city of Victoria thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars. It does. So thanks for your hard work.

Yes, thank you so much.

Mayor Pro Tem and council members, just a couple more comments. If I may? You may, please. Thank you.

Ms. Hardy.

Thank you, thank you. So just a couple things, and to just put it in perspective for, I think you all can appreciate we've talked about this internally, but for those who might be watching us at home this evening, just to put in perspective how amazing the Triple Crown Award is, if you think about, there's 441 cities total that receive this recognition. It's a... In the state of Minnesota, I think there's just over 700 cities. And so the GFOA looks, their members are North America, so the US and Canada. And if you think about this state of Minnesota having 700 cities, there's 441 in all of the US and all of Canada. That received that so that the this triple crown award So I just wanted to put some additional context into that and then the other thing going back to Just what we were talking about with excuse me with the interest rates One of the things one of the policies that you all have as it relates to Professional services is that every five three to five years? we go out and we through a request for proposal services, really see if we're getting the most competitive rates. We have these companies, the professional services and contractors, respond to those services. And then we also go through an annual process, just like a performance evaluation for an individual employee, we do that as part of your policies to help ensure that the residents and the businesses of Victoria are getting the best value for their investment here in our community. Um, and it's things like this to go from that 0.04 to a 3.56% rate. Um, really if we would have just been in that and not going through this process, we would probably still be at 0.04%. So we use those opportunities to try to work in our community's best interest. Um, and we work really hard to, um, to carry out that fiscal responsibility that we feel that we have on behalf of all our community members. A lot of what you see in finance is behind the scenes. It's not really public facing and so I just wanted to take that opportunity to provide some additional context. Thank you.

Thank you. Let's not forget about moving to ACH. I don't know if I've ever received a paper check, but anyway, sorry.

Excellent. Well, thank you guys for your comments.

Why not? Thank you.

Fire Chief Shoger up next. Welcome.

Thank you.

Lots of stuff going on over there for you.

There is quite a few things. Well, thank you again, Acting Mayor and Council. I'm very happy to be here this evening. And thanks for giving us all a chance to speak to the cool things that our departments are doing. So we're looking forward to this. Quick overview. of the fire department, most of you know. We are a combination department made up of 29 paid on-call firefighters and three full-time employees. Those employees are our community risk reduction specialists, our deputy chief and myself, and as I mentioned, our 29 paid on-call firefighters. The public safety department is also made up of the building department and our community safety officer. Our community safety officer is Rachel Dorff. I'm hopeful that you've all met her. The building department currently has one building official, Scott McCarty, our one building inspector, Mick, and then also our permadec, Gina Bresnahan. Pressures are pretty static among all of us, I believe, probably, but inflation being one of the big ones for us. Currently, as you've probably heard, and nationwide, we're experiencing over 5% inflation currently. Oddly, in the fire service, it seems to trend a little higher than that. And they say 5.5% to 6% is pretty typical for purchases for fire departments. And if you break that down into fire apparatus, it's actually closer to 10% year-over-year inflation. We're working through that and trying to manage it, but it is currently where we are One of the budget pressures for this year also include our new fire station debt The debt service for that new station will be 1.4 million dollars for the next 25 years It's big, and it's a big pressure that we will have through every department, but specifically finance, and we'll be dealing with helping to manage that with us. One of the other things that we've got is the pressure for our department is our increased calls for service. As our community continues to grow, we have grown year over year, nearly every, since I've been on for 18 years now, and last year we had 468 calls for service, and we are on pace to exceed that again this year. So we'll... will continue to grow and as we do that we know that that takes staff time to do so including paid on call firefighters and our full-time staff. COUPLE OF COST SAVINGS AND EFFICIENCIES THAT WE PULLED TOGETHER FOR THIS PRESENTATION. 50% ACTUALLY A LITTLE MORE THAN THAT THIS YEAR OF OUR CALLS FOR SERVICE HAVE BEEN HANDLED BY OUR STATION AND OUR DUTY CREW SHIFTS. REDUCING OUR NEED FOR OUR PAID ON CALL STAFF TO BE COMING IN. WHAT WE ALWAYS THINK ABOUT IS WHEN WE HAVE ALL CALLS, WE CALL THEM ALL CALLS. THAT'S WHEN THE PAGER GOES OFF AND WE DON'T HAVE A STAFF staffed station or people working a duty crew shift or station crew, all of our firefighters come to the fire station. And what we know, it's a numbers game. We know we have a certain amount of firefighters. We need to complete the tasks that we do as firefighters. But it's not typically 12 or 17 or 20, depending on what that call is. And we have no idea who's coming when we've got an all call. If it's three o'clock in the morning and we've got a carbon monoxide alarm, certainly doesn't require 17 people to show up. But if we don't have it staffed, we've got 17 possibly people showing up to that call. And that's one of those things that We know is a place where we can grow efficiency and eventually find cost savings as our call volume continues to develop and grow. We know that we will continue working on developing and increasing our duty crew shifts, which will then put a fewer number of people on shift at our station. Let me get to that next line. Yeah. Grants. We've been applying for grants as we do every year. This year, we just very recently, a couple weeks ago, received a grant from Centerpoint Energy for $2,500. That money is going to go toward purchasing, actually it already has gone toward, purchasing some rope rescue equipment for low-angle rescues. We plan on using that. And anywhere that might have a steep angle or a slightly elevated angle, we need to pull somebody out of a spot that's dangerous. We were thinking specifically about the single track out at Carver Park. Several calls that we go to and it's usually pretty challenging to get down to where we have our patients there The idea was to use that equipment for that so we are very happy to accept that and very honored to have been able to purchase that equipment and Our billing department has been working to build out and optimize our online permitting process. The online permitting process has been challenging for our residents and our contractors over the years. We get a lot of feedback from them about the redundancies that have been there and having to do work multiple times. Well they've worked through some systems to be able to build a new question tree helping to streamline that effect and hopefully improve our Customer service to our residents, so we're very excited about that, and I think it's a big a big win for us Some department spotlights. I'll start with the building department, just because I want to finish with the one that I'm most excited about possibly, but we'll speak about the building department too. The building department continues to work hard to find efficient ways to get their work done. In 2025, they completed 5,163 building inspections, 113 new home permits, and processed a total of 1,117 permits. So far in 2026, they are at 1,797 building inspections completed with 65 new home permits and 529 total permits processed. So pretty similar numbers to what they had last year, I do believe, but we're working hard to get it done. duty crew firefighters so this year we hired on a couple of new firefighters in a new position for us they're still paid on call firefighters by right and that that's going to be the benefits that they earn they're still working towards para and have the same benefits through the city as they would as a regular paid on call firefighter but what we did was recognize that as we're growing our duty crew model we've got hours that need to be filled and through that what we know is if we can get people who are responsible for filling duty crew hours, we're able to make sure that we're getting our calendar filled with staff stations. So what we're able to do is bring on two of our firefighters that were positioned as being paid on-call firefighters in 2025, actually hired them in January of 2026, and converted one of our current firefighters into that same duty crew role. So their job now instead of responding to all calls is just having a larger requirement for duty crew hours and shifts to fill. So it has actually worked out really, really well for us to have these people in these positions in that we've canceled far fewer of our duty crew shifts and been able to fill a much higher percentage of those roles. Also interestingly and very cool for us is that two of the people that we hired into those roles already worked for the city in different ways. One of them being Rachel Dorff, who is our community safety officer. She has filled the role in our fire department as a firefighter now. And then one of our public works professionals, Eric Menthe, is also one of the people who had previous firefighter experience in Watertown and now has become a firefighter here in Victoria. So we're super excited to have both of those people doing that. And then the other cool thing that we're really excited about, as I'm sure you're well aware, is the fire station. We are super happy, excited, and thrilled. A little stressed right now because there's a lot of things happening out there right now trying to get this project completed. But we are on track to have our ribbon cutting ceremony on August 10th and having you all out for that. And it's going to be a big deal for us to enjoy that. We plan on occupying the building and starting to work out of the building by the end of August is our plan and hope. And that's what I've got for our spotlights and our highlights.

Great. Council, open it up to any questions. You guys have any questions or comments for Chief Shoger?

Yeah. Obviously excited about the new fire station. Awesome. I received some questions on, I think the ribbon cutting is the 10th, and actually it'll open around September for if people want to go see it.

The public open house is scheduled for September 21st. We're going to have that at our normal schedule for our open house. We thought that would be a really great opportunity for us to get our feet in the building, get settled a little bit, and make sure that we've got an opportunity to kind of find our own space before we open it to the public and get a whole bunch of people coming through. But we're really excited about that, too. On September 21st will be the night that we have our public open house, and we'll be welcoming everybody in to come see it. Celebrate with us. I should also add that maybe the very first thing I could have said about the fire station is again Thank you all for your support in this process and helping us get to this place and opening this new station is a huge part of what this community is going to have and experience. And knowing that this building is going to serve our community for hopefully 50, 70 years, I think that we're really positioned ourselves to grow and grow with the community in this building and know that we had a lot of foresight in anticipating what the needs are going to be. And I think we're going to be very successful in that. So again, thank you all very much for your support here.

well thanks chief i mean you made it easy for us to make those decisions your professionalism your ability to communicate just the needs that uh... this community is one had for the building and to really the inadequacies of what we've had to deal with for that's been long overdue that's compromised firefighter safety uh... everybody wants to go home is our mindset and our mission and we're gonna be better position to do exactly that in the future and it's not lost on me and it's not lost on our other council members that This required a lot of above and beyond from you and your team and everybody in the city It was a group effort and it's it's going to be a wonderful gem and like you said it's going to serve Victoria for years to come and as we're growing it positions us well for that growth as well, so as you pointed out those calls are increasing and and you'll have the capability to manage that with all the professionalism and safety. So thanks to you. Appreciate that. Thank you.

I will say it's an interesting day. Today is our one-year anniversary of losing our firefighter that we lost last year to cancer. Today is that day. So Laura's with us for 16 years, and a lot of this building is because of her. So thank you all. Thank you. We'll move to Brady.

Mayor Pro Tem, Council, just a couple more comments, if I may?

You may, Ms. Hardy. Thank you. Please.

Okay, so just putting it in a little bit more context, of course, we've had growth, as you've seen, with the trend here, and part of that growth, I wanted to make sure that if anybody's tuning in and might not know how we came to this decision and why we might have a fire station when our fire station looks so beautiful and new, currently, it's because that A lot of people are surprised to find that our fire station is actually more than 40 years old. So if you think about how much things have changed and have changed as it relates to fire service in the last 40 years, we operate very differently. And so when we use the lens of health and safety, that was a primary driver along with the deficiencies in that building, but really we looked at health and safety prioritizing that as part of this as well as being able to serve the community for the next 50 years and backing up into making data-driven decisions, which Council I know that is something that you look to do We spent about 18 months prior to even starting to think about the design of this building, looking for the right location. The long-term plan before we move forward with this plan was to have two fire stations serve our community in the long-term. By making a decision using data to find the correct location for the fire station that could serve the community long-term and meet the response times, we did a lot of modeling, a lot of data crunching, we partnered with the University of Minnesota to have analysts help us find that correct location. And I just also want to say a big thank you to our friends and neighbors over at Holy Family who actually sold us the piece of land that the fire station is being built on so it could serve the community in that capacity for the years. We anticipated that we saved tens of millions of dollars in the future for investing now, investing for that growth in a building that can grow and have flexibility to grow with us in the future. And we will not have to build a second large fire station. So kudos to you all for using the data to help drive your decisions.

Can I ask a couple of quick questions? How many fire stations does Chanhassen have? Just off the top of your head. One? Because I know there's a satellite one that's off of like Minnewashida Parkway, and then there's one downtown. That's not a...

So the downtown one is their only fire station that's currently active. They had a satellite station that they took out of service several years ago, and that's now a base where Ridgeby is currently operating out of.

All right. I'm not sure who I should ask this to, but I know last year we moved to the duty crew station crew model. How much better response times did we have based on doing that? Do we have any hard data on that?

Do you want to use the microphone, Dave?

Sorry, I probably should have asked that earlier, but your points made me think about it.

No, and I don't have that data exactly. I can't give you exact numbers and that would be 100% correct, but I will tell you anecdotally. Typically about five minutes quicker response time per call. So it depends on where the call is going and how far it's out. But if you think about the mode and the model and how it works, if we've got people in the station, they're able to get turned out and on an apparatus and on their way to a call for service, without having to get up, get out of bed, get dressed, get in their car, drive to the station, and then do those things. So you're taking that part of that process out of the system. So what you're doing is you're putting people in the station ready to respond now. So that is, on average, I would say it's about five minutes, maybe a little less than. But pretty close to that. Great.

Thank you.

Yeah.

That's great. Anything else, council?

all right moving on public works director brady lee you're up next welcome mr lee thank you thank you for having me mayor members of the council our pleasure all right public works oh don't know what i did there uh department overview public staff we have about 12 full-time well we do have 12 full-time right now and we do have five seasonals it is the most amount of seasonals that this Department has ever had and it's been working out really really well. We have five full-timers in water sewer and stormwater we have We have a new addition to the streets department Ryan Kleber who you met at the last council meeting He introduced himself. He's our second addition to the streets then we have five full-timers in parks and the five seasonals like I said and Some quick statistics is we have about 57 1⁄2 miles of streets that we're maintaining, 69 miles of sewer and water pipe, 53 miles of trails and sidewalks, and then 27 active and passive parks. Looking at adding two to that active and passive park with Marsh Hollow and Hunters Brook coming up here soon, hopefully. But as far as the streets and sidewalks, Water and sewer, adding a couple miles a year, it seems like, with the growth that we've been having. Budget pressures, similar to the previous ones and similar to last year as well, but the number one for Public Works is definitely the growth and the increase in maintenance that goes along with that growth, as well as some aging infrastructure. But additional investment for equipment and materials and staff. Mainly with that one, I'm going to talk about downtown West. There's a lot of infrastructure being installed in downtown West, and it's not just like the sewer and the water, but it's the drain tile, it's the landscaping plan. We're adding five underground stormwater systems out there. Plowing, it's going to have to be done by the same time that the current downtown is done, so it's going to be adding staff, adding equipment and all of that. so it can all get done and be held up to the standard that we have currently. A weird budget pressure this year has been the price of cutting edges for the big trucks as well as our plow trucks. One of our big trucks used to be about $3,000 to outfit with cutting edges for the front blade, the wing, and the belly blade. There's about a 400% increase on that throughout the last year. We were able to purchase some discounted materials to get us through the next two years. To hopefully save us money otherwise yeah this the steel cost has just gone through the roof for some reason Yeah, like now.

It's about all blade.

Yep the blades the wearable part on the blade So those now each trucks about ten to eleven thousand dollars if we wanted to outfit it with new cutting edges on it three grand to twelve More budget pressures new infrastructure is gonna be water storage. That's gonna be coming down the pipeline here soon We're gonna need more storage as a community continues to grow with that addition of equipment for more areas that we're gonna be maintaining cold storage building would be extremely helpful it needs to be in the future budget for the public works site and downtown West, like I talked about, and then also all the roundabouts are all gonna be, all the new roundabouts that are being installed along Five and these county roads are gonna be maintained by the City of Victoria and Rolling Acres. So those are also gonna be increased staff, increased equipment, increased hours that need to be, we need to be thinking of. And then trails, trees, and out lots continue to be a huge budget pressure for us, especially the trees and out lots recently. dealing with a lot of emerald ash borer, dealing with a lot of dead trees and outlots that we're trying to mitigate as much as possible. A lot of these trees are hazardous trees that could fall into the roadway or onto private property and such. We're trying to get rid of as safely and efficiently as possible. All these trees in the outlots are too big for Public Works to handle. So the great majority of it is we are hiring all of this work out because we just don't have the equipment or the staff to do it. And then trails. We've kind of put off a lot of trail projects in the past few years and we're trying to get caught up on that. So there is going to be a lot of trail work that needs to happen in the future to get our trails back up to the standard that we had previously. Some cost savings and efficiencies. So this last year we were able to purchase some fertilizing equipment and bring that service in-house. So we did have the initial cost of the equipment to do all the fertilization at all the parks and in our row ditches and stuff like that. We did have that initial cost of equipment, and then we kind of budgeted what we thought the material cost would be for the entire year, and... We're about halfway through, and our projections are we're going to be right around saving $10,000 in what our projections were. And we do have a lot better product than what we were getting previously. We've been doing a lot more areas. We've been doing it a lot more effectively and efficiently. Water testing. We do a lot of water testing. There's weekly bacteria tests that we do. We're able to switch companies to a company out of Hopkins instead of one going down to New Ulm. And we're going to be saving about $75 a week just by switching companies, or $75 a month switching companies to that company that's going to be out of Hopkins to do our bacteria testing. And then we've also saved a lot of money blacktopping this year with the ability to purchase the mill and as well as the roller that we purchased recently in the last two years. And also with the additional staff. We've been able to bring a lot of the blacktop projects that we would typically farm out to a small contractor in-house, we've been able to do a lot of street repair work on Park Drive, street repair work, and a lot of the trails that we can bring in-house and we can do that instead of hiring it out. And department spotlights, just wanted to highlight Licenses, number one, a lot of the guys go out for their sewer and water licenses, and then there's trail or not trail. There's tree inspector licenses. There is playground inspector licenses. There's stormwater licenses. There's a whole lot of licenses that they can go out and get that we give them the opportunity to have. And a lot, some of these employees came from other cities that did not allow them to go for these licenses because they weren't in that department. So one of the big benefits about Victoria is we like people to cross train. We want them to get the experience that they want to get. So a lot of people have been able to go out and get licenses that they wanted to get that they didn't previously have. So let's go down the list of what Public Works has gotten in the last year. So we have Nick Jacobson. He got his seawater and his SC sewer, and he also got a tree inspector renewal. So he was never allowed to get those licenses in the past, but he had the time in to get them, so he was able to actually get a class up license. Alex went and got his SB sewer license and he got his construction installer renewal. That's a stormwater license. Jason camera, he got his category A and E herbicide license. So that is the one that allows us to put down all the fertilizer for the fertilization program here at the city. Corey Stender got his sewer collections, his SC sewer collections license, and his construction installer renewal. Mason Weber went out and got his bituminous street inspector, so now he can go and do a lot more blacktopping, hardscape inspections, stuff like that. He can work with the Mill and Overlake Company. He can work with the, what did we just do on Cochia? Why am I blanking? Yeah, chip seal, fog seal. He can work with those companies a lot and do that inspection. Eric went out and got his SB sewer license, and he also got his smart salting license for winter. And then Russ Kerber got his smart salting this last year. So it was all done in the last year, and we still have licenses to go as far as playground inspector and tree inspectors coming up. And then a couple CDL licenses will be coming up here in August as well. The five seasonals, I don't ever remember a time in my time here having five seasonals and it's been extremely beneficial. Our parks, I don't think have ever looked better than they do now. A great group of kids. They work hard and they've done a great job. Can't speak highly enough about the five seasonals we have this year. And then just a little stormwater update since I know we were able to add that position in the budget a year or two ago to have another stormwater employee and just a little update what they've done For a year to date, they've done about 115 catch basins that they've inspected and they've cleaned out 29 of those. They dredged out one of the final drainage channels that's up in Bakelift that leads to Lake Minnetonka. They've cleaned and repaired multiple rounds of street drain tile from roots or calcium drain tile that runs underneath the street and the boulevard gets clogged a lot with calcium or tree roots from boulevard trees. So they've been able to do a lot of maintenance on that. They installed some new roof drains and connections at the rec center with some drain tile to prevent future flooding. Each of them holds three stormwater certifications that they get renewed on a two or three year basis. The big one is that they've been able to work with WSB who's been doing a lot of our, they lead the projects for the storm pond. dredging, if you will. So they've been able to go out and do some inspections of their own and work with WSB and their program called Swamp to prioritize which storm ponds we're going to be dredging out every year. So that's been a huge help and they can kind of steer WSB where the maintenance really needs to be happening and where it's more crucial. And then just the weekly and daily erosion control inspections that they have been doing based on the amount of rain that we get. They have to be out in all of the developments doing erosion control inspections, making sure that the developers are following their SWPPP. And that is what Public Works has.

Great. Council, do you have any questions for Mr. Lee?

Actually, I do. Mr. Lee, thank you for your presentation. On the topic of licenses for your staff, can you just give us a ballpark of what those cost per person to get and per license? Is there a wide range, narrow range?

So for the sewer and water license, it's about 350 bucks and that gets you the license fee and the class to take it. So per license, so your SD, so your sewer would be about 350 and your water would be about 350. And then if you go up to your SC or your C or your B, it's pretty much the same price. Tree inspector, I do not know off the top of my head. I want to say it's $500 or less. It's not overly expensive. Same with playground inspector. I know the tree inspector is a pretty intense course and it's a hard test. Same with the playground one. But I want to say it's around that $500 range if I was to ballpark it.

Okay. Well, kudos to you for making those investments in our people. They... You know, I think as a manager, you can appreciate just how difficult attrition is. It's expensive. It puts a lot of strain on the other members of the department. It takes a long time for new people to come up to speed. So anything that we can sort of, you know, increase those ties that bind our staff to our great city, those are smart managerial moves, and you get a lot of bang for your buck. So thanks for thinking of that and being an effective leader in that standpoint. Thank you.

Yeah, it gives the people who live here the chance to have other people do the work if somebody's out or somebody's had anything else that's gone on. We've got six people who can do this instead of four. So I think it's a great way to continually breed talent within the group. So echoing your thoughts, thank you.

great creativity with seasonal full time. That sounds like that's working well and a lot of growth in the future. Do you see seasonal being a big part of that growth or do you see more full time or a combination?

I see a combination but I think probably the biggest one to take advantage of if we can would be seasonals especially with the amount of after looking at the landscaping plan for downtown west and we're still trying to figure out what's going to be private versus public maintained and stuff like that but To be able to hold a high standard, especially in that area and the existing area, I think seasonals will be very key to that success.

Thank you. One more question for you, and I can't remember what it was about, but you and I were talking about street brine. Not only does it make it safer for everybody, but we were purchasing it, and then we were talking about making our own brine. Where are we with that at this point in time?

I believe I have it in the 2028 budget. Yeah, CIP. It's about the equipment that we priced out this last year was about $45,000. So we kind of need the space to do it and we'll probably end up needing some more salt storage because it's going to take that much more salt to make the brine. But it's, yeah, we're right at about that 2028. It's in the CIP to purchase the system to make our own brine.

Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem Council, sorry. Ms. Hardy. Thank you. Yes. So just a couple more comments for you all related to that. So you might recall the discussions that we had around Highway 5. One of the things that we have done here is make sure that our public works team is not an afterthought with some of the landscaping pieces. This is, you know, we design pretty things and the community wants beautiful things on this key corridor coming into our economic center. But one of the strategic smart things I feel that we did was put our public works team our leaders Brady and Ryan at the forefront of those conversations to help drive some of those recommendations and decisions as it relates to this landscaping so you could have something was beautiful but also that would be low cost to maintain we weren't putting creating safety issues for them or something that was going to be a hassle for us to maintain and require us to hire a whole bunch of more staff just to maintain a key corridor. So that's something that you don't see in every city and I think that's something I'd like to call out here. A couple other things too that we didn't spend time talking about but again driving using data to drive decisions that I think when I geek out on some of these data points I think is worth a mention the smart salting. Um, Brady correct me if I'm wrong here, I am going to try to not make it technical, but we have technology in our vehicles, in our snowplows that allow us to see, um, how much salt is being dropped. And so we have a target that we say, okay, there's standards. We kind of want to be in this range or window. And we have technology that we can look at in all of our vehicles to see exactly how much we're, what those patterns are. And that helps us make sure that we're monitoring our costs along the way and can change and pivot to based on what we're monitoring on that data. And that's new technology that you introduced. I don't know if there's anything more you want to add to that.

Yeah, we have it in all five of our big trucks now. We added it within the last year. This last winter season was our first full season with it, but it creates GPS data points the second that truck gets turned on and leaves, and it tells me if the plow is up, the plow is down, how fast it's going, how much salt it's laying, which side of the lane they're plowing, a whole bunch of data points, how many times they turn off and on their sander or if they hit the blast button or not so then we have a total tonnage at the end that tells you how many times I mean how many tons of salt they used on their route and then it kind of the fun thing is for us at least it kind of creates like an internal battle to see who can use the least amount of salt and still have the same effect you know because then they kind of poke fun at one of each other when Somebody is using 1,000 pounds more salt for the same amount of lane miles. They give each other a hard time.

They're holding each other accountable. So not only is there an environmental benefit, but that technology allows us to have more accurate, more stable budget projections as we look at that line item. And as you know, Minnesota weathers can be unpredictable in the winter. And so some winters we don't have a lot of snow, and some winters we do. And so we tend to budget on a three year average for that. So we're not budgeting for those highs and those lows. But this will allow us to be more accurate and stable there. And the other thing that I just want to mention has to do with pavement indexing rating. And that is allowing us to, again, make data driven decisions. So you essentially assign a number to the condition of the road. We go out and we map the entire community. We look at all the road conditions and you give it a baseline score. you essentially have a number that says, okay, when it hits this number, this is the range or the number that we start to look at, it's time to replace that road. Instead of just throwing it into your CIP, like a lot of communities do, and then when it hits that year, you do that work. This allows us to make sure that we're investing the limited amount of dollars that we have in a manner that's gonna give us the biggest bang for the buck. I don't know if there's anything, Brady, you want to add to that?

I think you nailed it.

Thank you.

I guess one question I had just from the standpoint of public works, like gas is a dollar more gallon than it was last year. I'm not gonna say tariffs are responsible for steel being four times more expensive, but are we factoring that into their budget for this year and next year so that we are appropriately aligning the budgets for them?

Microphone.

Sorry, I didn't know. Tricia, please, thank you. Not sure who to ask on it.

Thank you, Council Member Pedersen. Yes, we are factoring that in. So while we look at three-year averages, we also look at increase in number of vehicles and then also the higher gas fuel costs. So we are taking that all into consideration for 2027.

Great, thank you. Next up, Miss Guerin, our city engineer.

Good evening, Acting Mayor, members of the City Council. Let's see what I am going to talk about. I know it'll come as a shock that somewhere I will talk about transportation projects. Everybody's favorite topic. So department overview, as you are well aware, our department deals primarily with infrastructure, mobility, and stewardship. A lot of what we do is behind the scenes, so we're responsible for Planning maintaining and improving the city's transportation utility and stormwater infrastructure We focus on main ensuring that residents and businesses have safe reliable systems while planning for future growth and infrastructure needs Much of the work we do is behind the scenes, but we're working to support the communities in plans and the council strategic priorities going forward so budget pressures uh... very consistent with everybody else's and follow closely behind brady's so uh... certainly aging assets uh... growth pressures and funding constraints so uh... well brady is really dealing with their results of the things that Our department and Jen's department sends his way. We have to do, the engineering department has to do a lot of the planning on the forefront for him so that he can continue to be prepared for that. So certainly we have the increasing costs to maintain that you all were just talking about with the increasing gas costs. prices the increasing costs of construction that are typical in any community and then the increasing costs of infrastructure added infrastructure as the community continues to grow both in the south growth area and then the downtown area that we talked about um but then also um Has been touched on really particularly with what Dana was mentioning and with what Brady was mentioning It really is important that we continue to carefully prioritize How we spend money going forward and how we determine? what is the right order to do things and how to prioritize things and into the future so a lot of what we've been focused on really i would call it in the last two years we really have been trying to uh... look at some things in a different way and do a reset in another way so first The pond prioritization has been a big focus. So Brady touched on this a bit. His staff has been critical in this work, and we did cover this in a workshop in a little bit more detail last fall. But the city's stormwater consultant, WSB, did do a pretty deep dive in the city's, what are we up to now, Brady, 80-some stormwater ponds? 90? 90. 100? I'm in denial that there's over 100. 127? Okay, I want to just pretend there's only 80. 120 sound like a lot more. But we went through an entire process to identify a number of them that required field investigation, that prioritization was developed through the city's SWAMP PROGRAM, STORM WATER ASSET MANAGEMENT PROGRAM, WHICH IS AN ONLINE TOOL THAT HELPS ON A MAPPING BASIS IDENTIFY WHICH STORM WATER PONDS ARE LIKELY TO HAVE DETERIORATED BEYOND THE POINT THAT THEY'RE AS EFFECTIVE AS THEY USED TO BE. WE LAYERED ON THAT TECHNICAL DATA WITH ACTUAL FIELD DATA FROM THE STORM WATER Public work staff to determine which ones were the worst we did a bunch of field Investigation the consultant did to come up with a prioritization for which ponds Required what work and that is now in the city's budget so that we can budget for that work more effectively going forward And we're in the process of working through that implementation So we worked through the 2026 project and we are now starting to build out the project for the schedule for the 27 project. If you recall, We haven't had super frozen winters the last couple of years, so we want to make sure that we get that schedule and get that work bid soon enough that hopefully we actually have winter and it's frozen enough to do that work. So trying to build out those schedules so we can get the work completed at time. So we're pretty excited about that. For those of us who've been around a long time, we have been talking about the need to prioritize that pond maintenance for probably 15 years. So the fact that we now have a schedule and a program and a process going forward is exciting to some of us. Pavement planning is the next one. Dana just touched on it in her remarks. That's quite all right. We did just complete, I think within the last two weeks, the company that did the road rating has driven every single street. in the community. The rating that was completed included an AI element, so they collected data Whole lot of data on every single mile in the street I saw the first blush of the spreadsheet that has a whole lot of information about the pavement condition and that's getting pulled in with GIS data and We're going to be using that information combined with all of the history we have on the city's pavement system to create and update a new 10-year pavement management plan and to look at our mill and overlay program, our street maintenance program that would include crack sealing, fog sealing, chip sealing, to the extent that we're gonna chip seal, and then any more significant improvements. We don't have many roads that require a more significant improvement, but we'll be bringing that new 10-year prioritization list back to the council sometime this fall. So we're excited. Having that program built out for a whole 10-year look ahead will allow the budgeting process to be more complete. We'll also be taking a look at whether or not we want to take a look at some bonding opportunities to see if it makes more fiscal sense to potentially do some bonding for some of the millennial overlay work we've talked with uh... the finance department about possibly doing street reconstruction bonds to see if it makes more sense to combine some of those projects to and realize some cost savings for two reasons one economies of scale to the cost just go up every year you delay them as the price of things increase so you know depending on the Picture of how things come together it may make more sense to combine some neighborhoods and do them earlier versus waiting So that's some analysis will do with the finance department and with Dana after we have that data assembled And then lastly, I did want to highlight the MS4 audit. That was an exercise, and we've shared this with the council again, but previously in a workshop, but it was worth highlighting that the city's MS4 permit SUBJECT TO AN AUDIT BY THE MPCA, BUT THE CITY ELECTED TO DO ITS OWN SELF AUDIT ON ITS OWN. WE DID PAY OUR STORM WATER CONSULTANT WSB TO FACILITATE THAT AUDIT, BUT IT ALLOWED US TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE PROGRAM OURSELVES AND BEGIN TO IMPLEMENT CHANGES TO OUR PROGRAM TO REDUCE THE RISK OF having an audit finding by the MPCA and the public works and communications staff have been implementing the improvements to the city's program as a result of that audit. So some of the things that Brady touched on in his presentation are changes that have been implemented as a result of that audit and I'm sure Kendra perhaps might highlight some of the changes that have been made in the communications program, but if you've had an opportunity to experience the water drop presentation at Little Vic, that's one of those cool things that the city does as part of our education program for that. Lastly, department spotlights. For some of us, it's extremely exciting to see the progress on the Arboretum Area Transportation Plan improvements. having highway five eleven completed and open was exciting seeing the results of the landscaping for the two roundabouts that uh... have been implemented which was the result of a collaboration between the design team and input from the public works department as dana noted was fun to see actually on the ground. Um, and then of course none of that would, none of that work would have been possible without regional partnerships with both MnDOT and Carver County. None of that work happens without those groups and that's going to continue to be critical as we look towards future investments in transportation in particular. as you all know we're not done after we get through the highway five projects we're starting to look at uh... the south growth area with highway ten and highway eleven those projects are in the design phase so we'll talk about those continue to talk about those at future workshops as well as highway seven and the rest of rolling acres road and the intersection of rolling acres road and highway seven so

Council any questions for Miss Guerin the city city engineering department Great progress The I heard from multiple people love the creativity on the roundabout in the design of it and the rock and It's got like three different things in it right So it's and I don't think It was crazy Those, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's not the highest level of roundabout, right? I mean, that's kind of our middle of the road, or is that...

The council selected the middle option.

But it turned out great.

Great. Sardi, anything to add?

Mayor Pro Tem, council. Am I good? I just... We mentioned it before, but for the sake of this presentation, again, we all know this is a significant investment. And Kara did mention our partners. But I think also would like to highlight our partners, our congressional, our federal partners, and our state delegates as well, because we were able to secure and MnDOT partner, but we were able to secure the 100, I'm using rough numbers, roughly $150 million project. The City of Victoria's cost share, when we first started this, we were looking at 11 million. I think we were able to, through all the funding sources, the external funding sources, through those partnerships and the support on state and congressional leaders, we were able to reduce that and the county to about two to three million for our city cost share. To put that in perspective, if we would have had to do the $150 million investment on our own, it would have taken the entirety of the city's budget for 20 years to do that one small project. And it's a big project, but in terms of number of road miles that, one project would take the entirety of our budget for 20 years. So just trying to add some context and perspective on that. So, um, I think I really, the hard work and it's a lot of work, these applications, the regional solicitation, the lobbying, um, there's a lot of work that goes into this. And so I just want to thank, um, Carver County. They've done a lot of heavy lifting and Karen, her team. Trish and Abby for being part of that process and it really has benefited our community and our taxpayers thank you great up next community and economic development director Jen Brewington miss Brewington welcome hello acting mayor and council I'm gonna be talking about our community development department

All right, some department overview. So we are a department of three, so shout out to Brian and Travis from my team. The Community and Economic Development Department helps shape Victoria's future by planning thoughtful and sustainable growth. We guide development to ensure new projects align with the city's vision, comprehensive plan, and community goals. And we also work to attract new businesses while supporting and retaining existing businesses through business outreach, redevelopment efforts, and partnerships. We also lead redevelopment initiatives that revitalize key areas. We encourage private investment, and we strengthen Victoria's downtown and commercial districts. Some budget pressures from our department. So increased development activity. So as Victoria continues to grow, more development applications, redevelopment projects, and planning initiatives require additional staff time and technical review. A lot of folks don't realize a lot of these projects that you see come on to your Meetings take years, sometimes multiple years. So it's a lot of technical review for a lot of these projects. The next one is increased demand for services. So our residents, our business owners, and developers deserve to have timely responses, and we want to make sure we're accomplishing that. So we do have more engagement opportunities and expanding planning and economic development reviews with that. And again, those project reviews is really, really time consuming as we continue to grow. And some of these are very technical with some of the shoreland issues that we have and just some of the utility connections. And the last one is just the growth outpacing staff capacity. So the pace has really increased with our development as I had just mentioned. And that just really allows us not to have new strategic initiatives or projects while we balance the day-to-day operations. Some cost savings and efficiencies. So every Thursday we have a group of staff that meets. It's called the Development Review Team. I'm very proud of that group. It's something that we really take pride in. It's departments throughout the city and we review technical issues with every project. It's something that not a lot of cities do we do this weekly and the reason we do that is to make sure that we're not Losing any steam on projects and we've got all eyes on all the technical things that we may need to review So I just wanted to mention that something that we do here in Victoria We streamline our development review process by using standards procedures templates agendas and checklists this improves our consistency reduces review times and creates more efficient experience for applicants and staff and

We also do cross department collaboration.

So we work really closely with engineering, public works, parks, communications, finance, admin to coordinate projects, solve issues early, and then reduce duplication of efforts across departments. And the last one here on my screen is the consultant management. So instead of hiring a full-time staff, we strategically manage consulting contracts and assign work based on project needs, ensuring that the city receives quality expertise while making the use of our available resources that we have. And some department spotlights. So we've got some new development as you've seen throughout the community the last few years. We continue to support high quality residential, commercial, and redevelopment projects that expands the housing choices in the community, strengthens our tech space, and enhances Victoria's economic vitality. We also have done some ordinance updates. This department has moderized and updated city ordinances to improve clarity, respond to community needs and create more predictable and efficient development processes. Some things that we've reviewed were noise, fences, outdoor dining, and we've got a few more on the docket coming up yet this year. And then lastly, we've got our 2050 comp plan kickoff. This is a really, really big project for the city. As most of you are aware, we have to do this in requirement by the Met Council. This year marks the launch of it, and it's going to be a community-driven process with a lot of engagement. It's going to help us guide our growth, our infrastructure, parks, housing, transportations, and development for the next 20 years. Engagement is starting this summer with local advisory committees and just the public to explain what the comp plan is and just to make sure that the community is aware that this project is online and coming to the community. And with that, that's all I have. But I do wanna give you just some quick updates on some development. So the Downtown West Condo Sale Center opened yesterday. They have 54 reservations to walk through that, which is really exciting. Those price points on those condos are gonna be about 800,000 to 1.2. And they are anticipated to share the names of the restaurants in retail in about two to three weeks. So stay tuned on that. They are working on LOIs right now. They also have three to four retail building permits being reviewed by our building department. for the construction of those retail structures. And then just some occupancy notes, so the Olivine apartment building is at 28% occupancy, which is wonderful since they opened in March, and they continuously to have four to five applications daily that are coming through their doors. And then the row, they are at 80%, I'm sorry, 85% occupancy right now, and they're continuing to get applications as well. And that is all I have for you right now.

Wonderful. Thank you, Ms. Brewington. Counsel, do you have any questions for Ms. Brewington?

I don't think I have any questions. Just a couple of comments. Kudos to you and your team. You have no shortage of things going on, and by any objective standards, it just is daunting, but I think it's important to know that Downtown West is gonna shape the view of this community immeasurably, and I wanna just say thank you for getting that RFP process started. um it's a significant asset that the city had sitting almost lying fallow for a long time and we've taken that investment to transform what will be victoria and you it's kind of hard to see it now but uh in 10 years from now it's going to be astonishing and i think that Our vision for council has been that that's our number one priority is to make that investment as successful as we can. And so thank you for setting aside some of the distractions that routinely take place where maybe some of the loudest voices aren't the most important voices, that the quiet, steady, sure-footed, and keeping vision on what the growth of Victoria looks like. And I think you've done an outstanding job of taking our view and converting that into action. So, good job, Jen. Thank you.

Ms. Hardy, anything to add?

I do not have anything to add, Mayor Burton. Thank you.

You're welcome. Next up, Alyssa Nelson. Probably talking about the rec center and, no.

I have a few things before the recs are acting here. You have a few things before?

All right, sorry.

That's okay. It's just a precursor to what's to come.

It's not on my script, so I was just taking a guess.

That's okay. We are going to get there. But first, I'm actually going to kickstart us by talking about elections. And since this department is really just self-sufficient by name, what I'm going to talk about for my department overview is actually the staff that really make our elections successful in Victoria. And to kickstart us as number one, rightfully so, it's our city clerk position. Obviously, you're familiar with Claudia Edisvold. She's here taking minutes, and she's here with us at every council meeting. of this role as our official minute taker for our meetings. She does administer the municipal elections for the city of Victoria. So what does that mean? She is working with our election judges, selecting our election judges, ensuring party balance. She is making sure our polling places are set up for election day, that everything runs smooth on election day, and also making sure that our machines are operating properly. Now, officially, Carver County administers the elections within the entirety of the county. So federal, state, and county elections, they give us more or less a baton to say, now this is your baby on election day, to which Claudia then manages. But outside of that, any sort of absentee or mail-in balloting still remains at the county. And so they take on that responsibility. So we don't have to manage that aspect of it. Since we all know Claudia is a wonder woman, but she doesn't quite have superpowers and she still has her day-to-day Responsibilities as a city clerk. We do hire an elections assistant, which is my number two here We've been very fortunate to have the last six years the same elections assistant come back as a temporary position to really help Claudia manage the election leading up to and prepping for and also helping with some augmenting of her city clerk responsibilities and The person is Jean Romer. She's been with us since 2022. She came back in 2024, and she's back with us this year, and she's helping every couple of days manage the elections process. And then third is our election judges on here. The City of Victoria hires 40 to 60 election judges, which is really the day-to-day operators of our election. They are very dedicated to the elections process, to democracy, and we're very fortunate to have these folks join us every election. And actually, I'm just going to bump right over to budget pressures, because without these folks, we would not be able to do our job. Staffing happens to be the hardest challenge for us when it comes to Election Day recruitment, especially for such a... RECOGNIZED ROLE IS BECOMING MORE AND MORE CHALLENGING EACH YEAR, ESPECIALLY WITH MAINTAINING PARTY BALANCE. SO WE CONTINUOUSLY HAVE TO ENSURE THAT WE KEEP OUR STAFFING LEVELS APPROPRIATE. WHY THIS IS A BUDGET PRESSURE IS THIS YEAR WE ADDED AN ADDITIONAL PRECINCT. SO PREVIOUSLY WE HAD FIVE PRECINCTS, FOUR POLLING PLACES. I SHOULD SAY WE ADDED A NEW POLLING PLACE. So now we have five polling places instead of four, and I know that's a little confusing, but more or less we have a fully staffed polling places, and we need to make sure that we have enough election judges to make sure that we're operating correctly. We do have that for 2026, but it continues to be a challenge each year. And then the second for budget pressures is our voting equipment. I typically don't include this on here for our budget presentations as our voting equipment is actually owned and operated by Carver County. They more or less just lend us the equipment and then charge us some fees for maintenance of the software and maintenance of the machines. However, we have been put on notice that they are looking to update our elections equipment, not in 2027, so this isn't happening for our upcoming budget, but in 2028. So we are expecting to see some sort of increase to our budget, not this year, but in next year's conversation. Cost savings and efficiencies. I'd like to shout out Claudia for receiving a state grant to increase accessibility in our polling places, which included installing an accessible door button at the Lions Pavilion, which was our only precinct that did not have so. So now it's a fully accessible precinct and polling place. And then also adding curbside voting signage. A lot of folks don't know that's an option, so we have additional signage that allows folks or recognizes that that is an option for folks and then gives them instructions on how to move forward with that process. And then an efficiency over the past year includes a new election judge training being offered here at the City of Victoria. Carver County is required by law to train our election judges and they do so quite well. HOWEVER, THEY ONLY HAVE SO MUCH SPACE AND SO MUCH TIME TO DO THAT JUDGE TRAINING, AND THIS YEAR, THE SPACE RAN OUT WITH ALL THE INCREASE IN ELECTION JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE COUNTY, SO THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE OPTION WAS TO HOST IT ONLINE. RECOGNIZING A LOT OF OUR JUDGES DON'T NECESSARILY WANT AN ONLINE TRAINING OPTION OR THEY'RE NOT ABLE TO, WE DID ASK THE COUNTY, AND THE COUNTY GAVE US PERMISSION TO HOST KIND OF A WATCH PARTY HERE IN-HOUSE TO GIVE OUR JUDGES THE ABILITY TO GET adequate training before the election process. And then department spotlights. People might not realize it in this room, but primary election day is only 15 days away. I promise you Claudia and I both recognize that. But we are prepared. We are ready at each of our locations. And we just held our public accuracy test the day that we test all of our machines and ensure that they are working properly last Thursday. And that went off without a hitch. So we are ready to go. And our equipment is stored securely away waiting for that election day. And then the second thing I wanted to highlight is our team's quick ability to pivot this last year. At the last remaining minutes of 2025, we were, at least that's what it felt like, we were put on notice by one of our old polling locations that they were unable to accommodate us for this year's election. So Claudia was able to quickly pivot from that and locate a new precinct or a new polling place WITHIN THAT DISTRICT AND WAS ABLE TO WORK WITH THEM, ENSURE THAT THAT SPOT MET OUR ELECTION'S NEEDS AND WAS ABLE TO BOOK THAT FOR THE 2026 ELECTION. AND THEN WE DID GO FROM A COMBINED PRECINCT, FOUR AND FIVE, TO A STAND-ALONE FOUR AND FIVE, AND THAT WAS QUICKLY IDENTIFIED AT THE LAST REMAINING STRETCH OF 2025 WITH THE INCREASING NUMBER OF POPULATION THAT WE'VE RECEIVED IN THE SOUTH GROWTH AREA. uh... we're really excited for this upcoming election season and we know it's going to be successful and accurate as always with that council acting mayor i will stand for any questions thank you very much miss nelson console any questions or comments uh... i don't have any questions but i'll say that uh... thank you for their presentation and it just underscores that the efforts there

maintained right at this grassroots level of having free and fair elections that we're all sitting here on the dais because of the ability to translate the will of the citizens into their elected leaders and I'm grateful for this opportunity and it's because you're able to rise above the noise and the misinformation and focus on what really matters and that is being able to bring the will of the people to have their leaders drive the decision and direction of the city that we live in. So thank you for that.

Thank you for those comments and it really is a team effort. I hope you weren't sick of me because I'm sticking here. IT next. I know. Very fitting for this.

Alyssa Nelson, Information Technologies. Ms. Nelson, welcome.

Thank you, Acting Mayor. And please, as you know, I'm not the IT guru here. Eric Schutte, our IT director, really gets that title, and you've already witnessed that IT is not always my strong suit earlier this evening. So please bear with me. He did help me craft this presentation and I really hope I don't butcher it for him because we do really have a strong IT department here. But to kick us off on department overview, what we put first and foremost is cybersecurity because that is truly the core of what we do in this department. Similar to when you want to make sure that your car doors are locked so you hit it twice to hear the honking of the horn or you're checking your house keys to make sure that you have them exactly where you left them. We're always ensuring that our systems are locked tight and we're putting in the infrastructure that we need to to make sure that it's secure and safe. Because really what we think about this is that it's not only important, it's actually vital to what we do in every city service that each of my colleagues presented on earlier. And that includes making sure that our passwords are of specific length, making sure that our firewalls are up to date or our servers are up to date, and making sure that our facilities are locked and some malicious user isn't able just to sneak behind us and get into our IT storage system. Luckily, we have a strong network, IT pun not intended, but a strong network team behind us. Not only is it just Eric and I, but we also rely on the League of Minnesota Cities. They have a robust cybersecurity team, the Minnesota IT Minute team as well that helps us understand and navigate complex cybersecurity risks. We also have a third-party management solution, Atomic Data, as well as a cybersecurity software that I'm not going to name here. But those are really a 24-7 watchdog that are paying attention to our system and our ecosystem 24-7. So as Eric is today on vacation, that we still know that our infrastructure is locked tight and being watched by somebody that we, not malicious, but somebody that is supposed to be watching it. The second one here is data and infrastructure management. In today's world, technology is required, and because of that, we have an increasing amount of it, whether it's laptops or staff, the phones that sit on your desk, or the software that our team uses on a day-to-day. WE HAVE TO MAKE SURE THAT THAT IS INVENTORIED, THAT WE KNOW WHAT THE REPLACEMENT SCHEDULE IS FOR THE ACTUAL HARDWARE OR FOR THE SOFTWARE, WHO HAS ACCESS TO IT, WHO HAS THE LOGINS FOR WHAT ARE THOSE PASSWORDS? ARE THEY SECURE? IS THERE MULTI-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION? BECAUSE AS SOON AS ONE OF THOSE GOES DOWN, OUR ENTIRE SYSTEM IS AT RISK. SO WE'RE CONTINUOUSLY MAKING SURE THAT THE MANAGEMENT OF THAT IS WATCHED. THAT IS A CORE PART OF WHAT ERIC DOES, AND IT DOES TAKE A LOT OF TIME TO INVENTORY AND KEEP THAT UP TO DATE. And then the other piece to that, the bigger piece to that, is the data piece. We're always looking at our data to make sure that not only is it stored, it has backups, but it's also private. We have a lot of public data that is a core of what Claudia does, going back to the clerk's office, but some of it is confidential, some of it is private, and we want to ensure it remains that way. And then last is support and tech assistance. Tech help support seems small, but it is a big piece to keeping us efficient at what we do. And Eric prides himself in ensuring staff does not have any technology roadblocks that come up, whether it's a printer issue, a keyboard battery dying, or even just a lost document that you've been working on for hours, making sure that that's recoverable. And then budget pressures. The first is escalating device and hardware costs. We continuously see the increase in costs related to hardware, especially the replacements, such as laptops, servers, firewalls, et cetera. So we're continuously trying to balance our replacement schedule with also the approved budget. Some things that we look for efficiency-wise is if a laptop is still operating correctly, it's still getting the required servers, it's software updates, and it's not at end of life, and it's still meeting the needs of that staff, we might wait an extra year rather than replacing it. So it's truly just looking at our replacement schedule and then the equipment and ensuring that it actually needs to be replaced rather than just following a default to our replacement schedule. OUR SECOND BUDGET PRESSURE IS CYBERSECURITY AND INSURANCE COMPLIANCE. THIS IS MORE OF A TIME SUCK THAN ANYTHING, AND IT ALSO IS VERY IMPORTANT. BUT FOR OUR INSURANCE, NOT ONLY IS THAT COSTLY, BUT THEY'RE ALSO ASKING US TO HAVE A NUMBER OF INVENTORIES ENLIST TO MAKE SURE THAT OUR CYBERSECURITY PROTOCOLS ARE UP TO THEIR PAR, WHICH IS NOT BAD BY ANY MEANS. IT'S ANOTHER CHECKS AND BALANCES, BUT IT DOES TAKE SIGNIFICANT TIME OUT OF OUR TYPICAL DAY. and then lastly it's sunsetting of a federal and state grant a number of years ago 2025 the city received a state grant which was a pass-through from the federal grant system for our mdr which was our cyber security software again that 24 7 watchdog system its first year that it will be sunset or that funding will be sunset is at the end of 2027 so now We are working with that provider as well as getting quotes from others to see what the exact cost is going to be as we lead into not this year, but next year's budget season 2028. And then cost savings, we have two for you. The first is a hypervisor migration. Hypervisor is not a common term people are familiar with, including myself, so I had Eric dumb it down for me. But more or less what we're looking at is the software that manages the physical hardware of a server. Historically, we worked with the same vendor for this, and typically the cost for that annual license was about $1,200. So not a significant cost for an annual license however earlier this year in January They did let us know that the cost was going to increase a thousand percent It's obviously something we didn't have budgeted for obviously something that we need But we didn't quite understand again why the cost was increasing and then also if we were to move forward with them what we were going to be getting different and with the increase of cost. Instead, we worked with our partners, Atomic Data, and we pivoted. We found a solution that fit our ecosystem better at a cost that was more close to our original proposed budget of $1,200. And then the second is our AV equipment upgrade that occurred earlier this year as well. So all the monitors, the microphones, the cameras that we're using this evening had an upgrade this last year. For those who do not know, we had the original AV equipment installed in 2015 with the installation of the building. From what we know from our records, a lot of that was purchased to use. So it definitely was in need of replacement. We did not use taxpayer dollars for that. However, we used our cable franchise grant funding from our cable franchise agreements. And then lastly, some department spotlights. First is building resiliency. What people might not recognize with the building of the new fire station, and especially if you walk through it, is there's a tiny closet in there that is actually dedicated for our IT network. That's one of many IT networks that we have in the city. And what's important for that is we're actually building a diverse geographical network for our IT system. So in case of Such as a disaster whether it's at City Hall fire station rec center, etc If something were to happen to one of our buildings we can pick up and continue to operate as normal In our other spaces, so we're trying to continuously build that resiliency within our network. That's just one many example and that we have related to that. Another one is related to our backups. Not only do we have backups of our entire infrastructure through our third-party managed solution, but we also have at least two copies here, including a including an off-site, offline option as well. So it is not able to reach any sort of network unless we spin it up too. So it just provides that zero-day turnaround when it comes to bad actors potentially getting access to our system. And then the second is modernizing critical infrastructure. We've been working with our public works team to improve our SCADA system for the last year, last two years. Not only is this modernizing it, but really tightening it up, ensuring that we're leveraging our new fiber network to bring our system more to a localized network. And ensuring that even just timely or we have real-time reports With our system where before we had a couple minutes behind that makes it really challenging when we're talking about water pressure Just to be really able to see how our system works in a real-time ecosystem So with that I will pause here active mayor council and stand for questions Any questions or comments from the council?

I wouldn't say so much questions But, well, maybe I'll phrase it in the form of, it's fair to say that cyber security is really public safety. Wouldn't you agree? Absolutely. That these, for instance, you mentioned the SCADA devices and we have our public works director with us that being able to keep that secure and from threat is really protecting one of the biggest services that we provide to the city of Victoria and that's clean safe drinking water and I think as we approach the budget on that, we certainly need to be budget conscious, but we also need to be very wise that those are things that we really need protected and protected well, and it's not the kind of thing that we can try to cut corners on because we really with the exception of what you know chief sugar is responsible for uh... this is probably the next next biggest thing to protect citizens of victoria from damaging Staying focused on making sure that we have the right resources dedicated it feels like is one of our top priorities and council should be Right. It should be record recognize the fact that This is one of the places that we really need to make sure that we get it, right? I

Absolutely, and I will say we're really thankful to the entire city team. Eric and I talk about this all the time. Our team is very hypervigilant, and that is not just an Eric and IT thing. It's not just a management team, but it's a culture level thing within the entire city staff. We're continuously talking about improvements. We're continuously talking about changing passwords, although sometimes we get the eye rolls, but everyone truly does get it and understands why we're doing this and why this is important work.

Great, thank you. And to close it, I was triggered for a password reset just this evening.

Great, thank you, Ms. Nelson. We on to Parks and Recreation now? Thank you.

Put on your glasses for this one now.

This is the one I thought was going first.

Sorry. Just wanted to change things up a bit. All right, stuck with me for one last one. I promise you I'm done after this. Let's pivot to parks and recreation. We have three core areas that make up our work and our team here. The main one is parks and open space, and I'm going to throw in trails as part of that, too. We are the city of lakes and parks, and we really do live up to that moniker. Over 26 parks, 18... playgrounds as part of that and over 50 miles of trail and sidewalks so we definitely understand the connection to nature that our residents reach out and look for and the reason that they move here parks are just one element of it open space is another piece we talk about public works there's a level of maintenance for all three of these open spaces those wetlands Our wooded areas, but also just can be open grassy areas that does need some care sometimes We leave it natural But other times it is a grassy area that we want to make sure is still usable for residents Whether it's just a space to have a picnic put a bench down or to throw a ball play a game of catch and whatnot so We have a very robust parks and recreation system on here. And then located in D-Town Park, of course, is our recreation center, which includes two gymnasiums, two ice rinks, a fitness center, and a multi-purpose room. So budget pressures, this is nothing new to this workshop, but it really is related to just the cost of doing business. In the parks and recreation world, what that means is that we have aging infrastructure, and just infrastructure in general when it comes to this realm of parks is expensive. We have, like I mentioned, 18 playgrounds, and almost every single one is up for some sort of replacement schedule. So instead of just replacing all of them at once, we're trying to find out the best path forward related to that. We're doing a deep dive. We actually had our summer intern review each of these for us and give us some honest feedback of how these playgrounds are actually shaping up, what they look like, what needs the community has, and we're continuously to assess that as we look at the capital improvements plan for this year. WE ALSO ARE HAVING BUDGET PRESSURES WHEN IT COMES TO NEW PARK DEVELOPMENT. AGAIN, THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS IS THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS. AS WE LOOK AT DEVELOPING NEW PARKS IN THE SOUTH GROWTH AREA AND OTHER AREAS THAT ARE CONTINUING TO GROW, WE WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT WE'RE PUTTING IN WHAT THE COMMUNITY NEEDS FOR THOSE SPACES BUT RECOGNIZING THERE IS A COST ASSOCIATED FOR THEM. Cost savings and efficiencies. This year we did migrate to a cashless system in the recreation world, specifically at the recreation center. What this means is that if you want to pay in cash for a program, you are no longer able to, especially at the recreation center. This helps with our efficiency as well as our auditing practice. This is a big risk for us to have cash at the recreation center. And this also helps our staff in reducing their time needed to count cash, reconcile their cash, It's a quick, simple process at this point. We also migrated to this system in June. Summer seems to be the busiest, except for at the recreation center. This gives us the time to learn, to digest, to find out where errors are in this system, work with our more frequent patrons, and then when we get busier, closer to the fall and winter timeframe, we have a system already in place that we're used to. The second is utilizing partnerships to increase programming. We continue to leverage our partnerships in this way. We work with Carver County Parks to offer some additional programming that happened to be at Lake Wasserman Preserve. We also work with Holy Family on some of their partnerships or some of their programs as well. And then new this year, we worked with the Minnesota Recreation and Parks Association to offer a pickleball tournament that will be in our own pickleball courts here in town. And that's a state qualifier, so we're expected to see some lively games on the court. And then third, related to partnership, it was a really cool one for us, was the Ike's Rink partnership with Omni Brewing. This winter we didn't have a secure or just a nice enough or ready to go ice rink over at Lyons so we pivoted to a temporary space at Omni Brewing. Our public works team set that space up for us and then Omni Brewing really served as that warming house and then they're looking at continuing that program for next year as well as they're looking at offering some sort of like curling training potentially just ice skating programs to go along with that to really leverage and utilize this partnership. And then last for department spotlights, I have a photo. I don't see you, Christian, on there. We do have in-house fitness programming. That's the photo on there is our 5.30 early morning. At 6.30, 6 a.m.

I'm not going to be there that early.

Well, it's our morning class. So this year we did bring our fitness programs in-house. We've had fitness programs, our FitFit program since the building started operating over 20 years ago. But we looked at ways to be more efficient. We talked to our two group fitness instructors. And we worked on hosting or bringing them in-house to paid staffed positions. And this has really shown in our culture over there to be an increase or just an increase to our culture. But we've also seen a change in our programming levels to be a positive one as well. We're actually running out of space for fitness class programs, which is a good problem to have, but something else to navigate and try and figure out how do we adapt to that. The second is the Brookmore Engagement Event. This year we brought our Parks and Recreation Committee to the vacant Brookmore site as a future park area for us to look at and hopefully develop in some day. So we invited the neighborhood, brought Little Vic the trailer out there, and ask residents what they would like to see in that space and what was really cool is not only to see the recreation committee interacting with residents in that organic way, but we also saw neighbors meeting neighbors for some time the first time, kids playing together out in the vacant park and just having fun as a summer neighborhood event. And then the last I wanted to highlight our city volunteers. We have some really great volunteers that operate in the city's park system and help maintain some of our city parks, pick up trash, work on some of the weeding, and just really have a special place. They take our system and they really make it into a special place. And one of them is the Upton family. They manage Kirk Locken Park, and we're just really thrilled to have this group of volunteers here, and we're thankful to have them here as well. And with that, I am officially done. Not quite yet. Whatever questions you got for me, sir.

We'll open up to questions and comments from the council. Anything?

Just one comment, and you brought it up here in this awesome engagement with the residents, listening to the residents, taking it all in, little Vic being at events, that over the last couple years, that's been a huge positive change, I think, around Victoria. So awesome job.

Well, I cannot take any credit to that, but I will put the communications team's presentation because she will be next as on the spotlight here. Really, we've done a great work in collaboration with the communications team this year. I'm really proud that our teams have worked together and were able to bring Little Vic out and just show that there's a lot of energy in the city.

And I was looking at you and Kendra.

Thank you. Alyssa, I'd say thank you, but I think you failed to miss a really good shout-out for you and your team that, as I mentioned earlier, Downtown West is, I think, one of Council's really areas of focus on making that a success because of the investment that we have in it. And I think that it's good to understand we are quite prescriptive in some of the park and rec features that that space should have. For instance, the central green that's in flight and then just some of the vision that we have about community spaces. the types that are gonna really fit with the direction that Victoria's gonna move forward in terms of how the community's gonna develop into its next 10 years. There's the perfect space for that. I know that you and your team have dedicated a lot of time and gotten some community engagement on it. And it's just our push to really changed the vision of the park and rec committees to be ambassadors to the community, to bring those visions to us. We certainly saw how that has really created those challenges and opportunities, but has also really improved the quality that we're gonna get in terms of our parks and recs going forward. So thank you.

Thank you. Only thing I would add is that I know it sort of works along with the streets on coming up with some level of economy of scale, of replacing some of those trails along with the streets. And I don't know if there's anything formalized, like a 10-year plan, but I know that you guys talk about, with the Park and Rec Committee, you talk about which ones need to be fixed. If there's a way to... butt up with them and try to work with them I think there might be a chance to replace some trails that need help more than others and do it at a cheaper cost since we're talking about budgets and things of that nature I know we've spent half day workshops talking about all the various aspects of the rec center so I won't go into all of those things but I think you've done a great job especially with the common areas and everything else but from a budgetary standpoint seeing if you can work together with the streets and coming up with areas of trails that may need the maintenance at the same level. Not really sure I spit that out right, but you get it.

Understood.

And I also want to note the trail gap, that's not quite where you're going, but we do have a really comprehensive trail gap list that the Parks and Recreation Committee CREATED AND ALSO REVIEW ANNUALLY. AND WE JUST POSTED THE UPDATES TO THAT LIST LAST WEEK. SO IF ANYONE'S INTERESTED IN LOOKING AT THOSE, A LOT OF THEM HAPPEN TO BE ON COUNTY CORRIDORS. AND KARA AND I MET WITH COUNTY EARLIER THIS SPRING. THEY'RE GOING THROUGH THEIR OWN TRAIL MASTER PLAN. and looking at it regionally, but we provided them that list to kind of give them an idea of what we're looking at, especially as they're thinking about major transportation projects that are coming through outside of Highway 5, which is scary, sorry.

Awesome, thank you. Anything else? Would you like to add anything, Ms. Hardy?

I do not have anything to add, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Nelson. Up next, community engagement with... KENDRA GRALL. WELCOME.

THAT'S A TOUGH ACT TO FOLLOW JUST IN SCALE OF DEPARTMENTS. I ONLY HAVE ONE. BUT GOOD EVENING, ACTING MAYOR AND COUNCIL. THANK YOU FOR HAVING US HERE TODAY TO CHAT ABOUT OUR DEPARTMENTS. So the communications and public engagement department is made up of myself, our communications specialist, Paige Whalen, and our new engagement coordinator, Emily Brush. Beyond our little department, though, I always say everyone at the city is part of communications because we really couldn't do anything we do without them. But please don't put their salaries in my budget, Trish. you'll see a lot of them in this presentation today the communications and public engagement department exists to make the city of victoria approachable easy to understand and easy to engage with so our work is centered around three goals inform support and connect and we inform residents by providing timely transparent and easy to understand communication about city services projects and decisions but more importantly we help explain the why behind city projects making complex topics more accessible so residents understand how decisions impact their daily lives. You can see that in things like our council briefs, to our social media posts, to the guides that we post. We support every city department by developing communication and engagement strategies, creating educational materials, coordinating public meetings, managing the city's website and social media, producing videos and graphics, and helping projects succeed from planning through completion, making sure that we have that engagement involved. And then we connect our community by planning, coordinating marketing, and supporting many of the city's free events and engagement opportunities, whether someone attends a Live by the Lake concert, a Donuts in Victoria chat, community survey, an open house, or simply stops at the Mobile City Hall, affectionately known as Little Vic. These interactions help build relationships between our community and the city of Victoria. So as Victoria continues to grow, so do expectations for communications and public engagement. Residents want more than announcements. They want to understand why projects are happening, how they benefit the community, and where they can provide feedback, and what impacts to expect along the way. At the same time, nearly every city initiative now includes a communications and engagement component. Transportation projects, utility improvements, park planning, recreation programming, community surveys, and long range planning. all rely on clear communication and meaningful public participation. So the department also continues to support an increasing number of community events and engagement opportunities as well, each requiring planning, marketing, educational materials, logistics, and on-site coordination, which we're very appreciative to now have Emily on board for those as well. Like every department, we continue to manage rising costs for printing, postage, software, advertising, and creative tools, while balancing digital communication with traditional outreach. Our team is small, but our impact reaches across the entire city. By centralizing communications, public engagement, branding, marketing, and creative services, we reduce duplication across departments and minimize the need for outside consultants. Departments have one trusted resource that understands our brand, our residents, our audience, our communication goals, allowing them to focus on delivering services while we help connect residents to their work. We also take a strategic approach to communication. Every project begins by asking who needs the information and the best way to reach them sometimes on social media Sometimes it's mailer a project web page yard signs face-to-face conversations at a community event and using the right communication tool for the right audience helps maximize taxpayer dollars while ensuring residents receive information in ways that are accessible and effective and much of our work is completed in-house including graphic design photography website management publications educational campaigns event marketing and the list goes on and on but producing these services internally allows us to respond quickly maintain that consistent look and feel of all of our materials and then also reduce outside CONSULTING COSTS. THIS YEAR WE ALSO WORKED TO STRETCH CITY RESOURCES THROUGH PARTNERSHIPS THROUGH AN EXPANDED PROGRAM. OUR VICTORIA WAVE SPONSORSHIP PROGRAM INCLUDED SEVEN PLATINUM WAVE SPONSORS, SEVEN GOLD SPONSORS AND 14 SILVER SPONSORS WHOSE GENEROUS SUPPORT HELPED FUND MANY OF OUR LIVE BY THE LAKE CONCERTS. and offset the cost of marketing and other initiatives for community events like truck rodeo, our pop-up splash pads, and park after dark. And we're actually able to support even more events this year than the ones we originally had in the program. And then these partnerships allow us to expand that programming while reducing the financial impact on taxpayers. And then beyond sponsorships, we collaborate with local businesses, nonprofit organizations, and community groups. to enhance events like Victoria in Bloom and Light of Victoria. And these partnerships bring additional expertise, volunteers, activities, and resources that make our events even more memorable while maximizing our investments that we're already putting into them. So it gives our partners an opportunity. It also gives our partners an opportunity to advertise within the community at a relatively low cost. Okay, so department spotlights. The best way to understand our department's value is to look at how we put communication and engagement into action across the community. So to us, every major city project is also a communication and education opportunity. Whether it's road improvements, trail safety, the comp plan, the community survey or marketing, our rec programs, our team works alongside departments. And our goal is to reduce confusion, encourage participation, and build trust by making complex projects easier to understand. And then turning events into learning opportunities. One of the things that makes Victoria unique is that we don't just host events. We use them to educate and connect with our community. For example, the Victoria Truck Rodeo introduces families to the people and equipment that keep Victoria running. while incorporating educational activities about public works, water conservation, and public safety. Our pop-up splash pads focus on fire safety. Our water conservation, like Kara mentioned, really focuses on that water drop campaign, which helps residents understand simple ways to, they can help protect our lakes and conserve our natural resources. And then our beloved mobile city hall brings city staff directly into neighborhoods in downtown making it easier for residents to ask questions, learn about projects, and connect with the city in a welcoming environment. And these experiences make learning about local government engaging, approachable, and memorable but also uniquely Victoria. And then the third one, meeting residents where they are. No two residents consume information in the same way, which is why we work to meet people where they are. And so we use a variety of tools. We're able to reach more residents, gather meaningful feedback, and make city government more accessible. But this approach has also earned statewide recognition. This year, the department received multiple Northern Lights Awards from the Minnesota Association of Government Communicators for excellence in public engagement communications, including first place recognition for the Victoria Fire Department's social media, their Facebook page, WHICH WE WORKED ON WITH THE REST OF THE TEAM. IT'S BEEN A FUN COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE TWO DEPARTMENTS. THE PARKS AND RECREATION PROGRAM GUIDE, WHICH IS A NEW COLLABORATION OF REVAMPING THAT GUIDE WITH THE PARKS AND REC TEAM. AND THEN JUST IN THE PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT CATEGORY, WE RECEIVED FIRST PLACE FOR OUR MOBILE CITY HALL AND THE WORK WE'VE BEEN DOING WITH LITTLE VIC. So as Victoria continues to grow, our department remains committed to finding innovative and efficient ways to support every city department while making our work approachable, transparent, and easy to understand. And I stand for any questions if you have any.

Thank you, Ms. Scrawl. Council, any questions or comments?

I don't have any questions, but I'll throw some comments at you. As you've concluded all of our staff's presentations, one thing is clear. If we had unlimited amounts of money, There's no question we have the creativity and the talent to pull off anything here. I've spent the last, we got it down, trafficking through the northwest suburbs of areas that 60 years ago were what Victoria was 10 years ago. A small, rural, agricultural community that blossomed and grow. And everything that happened there is being done here except supercharged. So I think that there was a comment that somebody said, you know, Claudia doesn't have superpowers. I think that that's untrue. You guys are able to do amazing things that have brought an amazing amount of services, vision, creativity to the city of Victoria. However, we don't have that unlimited budget. We do have somewhat finite resources and our ability to transform those very carefully balanced resources into the highest level of service is the hallmark of what Victoria is. When I tell people from other places that I live on Victoria, I always get the same response. Oh wow, yeah, that's a great area. Love to be out there. And I think that other council members would share that response that they get. so thank you thank you know man of city manager for leading this team and helping us counsel drive the decisions that make this community what it is think thanks to every single one of you are sitting in this room tonight well stated the only thing i'll add to that is you guys all the departments team together so well you guys feed off each other and like

everybody brings up another department or three of them and you guys work so well together and that's evident completely. So specifically to on your team, approachable is watching people come talk to you guys. Nobody's afraid to come talk to you guys. And that's what we want. We want people to engage. I don't care if they're three or 95, right? So it happens and it's great to see. So awesome.

Let these guys speak for us. Very good. You do an excellent job. Thank you, Kendra.

Thank you. Mayor Proton.

Ms. Hardy, do you have any comments?

I do just have a couple parting comments before we adjourn. I just want to formally recognize our team. They are amazing. I am so proud of the work that they do. And behind each of these directors is a team of pretty amazing people. They step up to the plate every day. The work that they do is hard. Um, and I'm, I'm proud to be a part of this team. And I just want to say, um, thank you for putting your trust in us to deliver your policies, your vision. Um, I hope we are making you proud. I think we are very proud of the work that we do. We're passionate about the work that we do. So thank you for putting your trust in us. Um, and I just want to say thank you guys for being here, um, and to our entire

staff we are a small but mighty crew and we're getting a lot a lot done so thank you all thank you thank you seeing no other discussion um there are no other items on our workshop agenda this evening may i have a motion to adjourn i'll make a motion to adjourn second I have a motion by Councilman Evanski, seconded by Councilmember Reif. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Aye. All opposed? No one. Thank you. Motion carries. We are adjourned, and our regular council meeting will begin in five minutes.