City Council - Regular Meeting

That's what I have to do. Good evening. Welcome to the City Woodbury City Council meeting for today. It is May 13, 2026. The time is 7:30 p.m. We are meeting here in person live in the uh council chambers. We're also uh sharing they're streaming this uh virtually as well for those that want to tune in to that. Um the meetings are recorded by True Lens Community Media. They're broadcast live and they are replayed on cable channel 799 so you can go back and look at it. Meetings are also available on the city of Woodberry's YouTube channel. Um, so is those our standard? Would you please join me in the pledge of allegiance?

I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Uh, city clerk Ashley, would you please do the roll call? Council member Morris here. Council member Santini here. Council member Stafford here. Council member Wilson here. Mayor Bert here. We're all here tonight so we're able to conduct tonight's business. Uh, the first order business is the presentation by Met Council member Mark Jenkins. Mark, oh, there you are in back. Um,

the back. I'll just state uh you know market where you were recently you were appointed in 2026 or was it even last year? You were in 25. Okay. Anyway, you've been an outstanding partner. Appreciate the diligence. You and your predecessor have both been excellent. Um and appreciate you coming just to share a little bit more about the Met Council and what you do.

Yeah. And thank you mayor and council for the time. Um when I first applied just over a year ago, most common question I'd get is what does the Met Council do? Um even people who work with the with not for but with the Met Council sometimes go what do you do? And so over the last uh 10 months in my role, I think I figured it out and I want to share it with people because uh mayor used the term partner and I think that is key to what a lot of people don't understand. So um I've got and um your clerk is going to get this for your minutes packet, but I've just got a simple one pager that goes over the main things that the Met Council does. And so I want to highlight our three divisions and how we partner with our communities, Woodbury specifically, um, in serving our shared citizens. So the first, uh, section I want to talk about is our transportation services. And I'm going to talk about transit first. It's the only service that we really put our brand on. people see uh metro transit. They may tie that with met council. Um, Woodbury, we've been very fortunate finally to start to develop more consistent transportation services, transit services, whether it's the multiple bus routes, whether it's the Gold Line, whether it's Metro Micro, but we have a number of other services such as Transit Link and even consulting services for schools and senior centers and apartment buildings to go, how can my residents get to the doctor on a regular scale? schedule. Are there options for us? So, transit's the one everyone's heard of, but there's some

other options such as transportation planning and financing. um you've um right now in our current um transportation investment plan um reconstruction for um and I'm sorry this is in transportation ease casaw 16 um gold line station EV chargers CASA 18 safety improvements there's about um seven or eight different transportation projects that the Met Council partnered with our federal and state partners to help fund to help Woodbury residents. Um we also have our um community um engagement side that can be things like comprehensive planning. Thank you for having Merritt and myself here the other day to kick off your comprehensive plan with your citizens task force. um happy to be here and and help kick off that very important process. But citizens don't see that. They do see a city being very thoughtful about how they're going to develop over the next 20 or 30 years, putting a plan together and and then working on how you execute it. We might put a guard rail or two in. We encourage our communities to be thoughtful neighbors, but at the end of the day, the comprehensive plan process is a tool for you to help communicate with your citizens both in the development and the execution of what do we want Woodbury to look like in 2050. We also do housing not in Dakota or Washington County. You have both counties have their own housing authorities, but in some

counties throughout the metro, we serve as the housing authority to provide affordable um housing as well. Um under community, we also do regional parks and trails. Um, I know that one of the things that is great about Woodbury is you've got regional trails or parks. You got regional parks within 2 miles of any border, any bordering city you have. You also have a regional trail that goes from Lake Elmo Park Preserve down to Cottage Grove Ravine Regional Park. um we help fund those. It could be the land acquisition, it could be projects and programs, but those are Washington County projects. Um, we also have environmental services and Woodbury has um two different routes for when your residents flush the toilet for where their water resource recovery, that's the politically savvy term we use. Um, when your waste water uh gets disposed, it could go down to Cottage Grove. It could go over to St. Paul. Those are services that they see the city. They may see a Met C or a Metropolitan Council environmental services truck, but most of the time that's just something they see as a city service that's provided. Also, and most recently, just added this within the last two days, we've approved um our water efficiency grants for which Woodbury is also a participant. So when you go to your citizens and say, "Hey,

we've got money to help save and conserve water." And having worked with water issues in the East Metro for many years, we know how important it is for your residents and we know how important it is to your residents that people are working together to provide safe, clean water. So, while we don't put our brand on all of that stuff, I like to think of the Met Council as that silent partner, these are services the city, the county, sometimes the state provide to Woodbury residents and your neighboring communities. We're just happy to be part of that partnership and to help contribute to your citizens well-being in ways that we can. and mayor again use the term partner. I am very thankful for our partnership between the Met Council and the city and your council members and your staff. So with that, thank you for the time.

Thank you. Can I ask you a question? You can because it um and I don't mean to put you on the spot. Maybe this is something to go do more research and come back on. But under housing, you provide affordable housing for more than 7,200 qualifying low-income households. Mhm. But you also said, is it Dakota and Washington County both that have their own HAS? So, you do not

Yeah. So, it's not something we do in my district, but if someone was to get a voucher in um Ramsey County or one of these other counties that provides it through Met Council, they may use that voucher to move to a property outside of that area, but we don't sponsor housing. We don't fund affordable housing outside of specific areas where we work with those counties. Okay, I'm going to ask a tougher question now. H how what is your what's the revenue stream for the Met Council? How do you what's

total for um it varies from service to service? So environmental services is mainly um sewer access charges and fees for those services. That's yeah, transit is a large percentage is fair, but some of it comes from motor vehicle sales tax, some of it comes from sales taxes. Okay. Um, and then is there also a property tax component? I thought there was.

There is. And I what I'm not sure of is how where that is directed. It doesn't I don't believe it goes to transit or environmental services. that may go into housing, that may go into um infrastructure like transit oriented development, stuff like that. Okay. Well, that would that would be a question I'd love a further follow-up answer on is just understand how the property tax fee structure works for your revenue stream. Um, and then seeing as and if I get this clear that you're not doing housing for Dakota and Washington County, do the residents of Dakota and Washington County have a lower fee schedule because we're not utilizing that service that you offer and I don't know what that costs, but if you can find that out and get back to us, that would be great. I will be happy to.

Thank you. Is Matt Council Is Matt Council a LAa recipient for your housing? Are you recipient of the LAA funding? The I'd have to look into that since it's not in my district. I don't Yeah, I'll get you an answer. No, you're looking for Okay. Thank you for the phone, a friend. I appreciate that. Thank you, Mark. Any other questions from council? Okay, thank you.

Um, let me see here. Okay, next up, uh, is our open forum. Okay, I just want to clarify. Open form has looked a little bit different over the last several months. just came from workshop. I have clarification from the council on how we're going to handle open forum this evening because as you can see what's been stated in our council agenda and has been the case for years is that we allow a maximum of three persons to speak. However, we know that they're they're whatever we've got a couple issues that people feel like they need to voice. So, what we decided ahead of time is that we would allow three people to speak per topic. And that's why the sheets now have a topic on them. So, let me start by saying a couple things regarding that. Number one, I have a sheet from well, so I have one sheet from Katherine Wgner regarding an ICE resolution. So, I only have one on that topic. So, you will be invited up in just a moment. Then I have four sheets on related to chickens. And I think Samantha, yours is a city survey discussion, but I think you know who you are. You like to talk about chickens. There you are. So, I think it's chickens. So, here's my challenge. I have four on chickens and we have just agreed we will take three. However, I do see that Simon Johnson and Shannon Johnson might be related. Are you? Okay. So, can you do that? Well, then we have Oh, I'm sorry. Then we have Felix, too. Sorry. Fel I already knew who Felix was, by the way. Change of hair color. Nice. Um, okay. So, we do have three. So if we can treat you as a group or one of you and then two together, I will take we will allow you to speak together since you seem to be a family unit. So is everyone in agreement with that? We've because it's a we're good. Okay. So with that, I would uh and again three minutes now. Um if you're not used to doing this, we've got a red, yellow, green thing. Uh Ashley will get it going. Um

green light means speak. Yellow light means you have one minute left. red light means you're done and the threem minute clock is parked right there. So, um that's just that's how we do it just to maintain time and everyone gets a chance to speak. So, um Katherryn Wgner, if you would be the first one to come forward and speak and if you just for the record, state your name and your city of residence. We don't need the full address. Welcome.

Thank you. Good evening. Thank you members of the council and Mayor Bert for the opportunity to speak. My name is Katherine Wagner and I'm a Woodbury resident. I'm here because I'm concerned that the council may have lost sight or never fully understood the importance of the ICE resolution proposed by John Sebastian in March of this year. Based on some of the commentary I've seen on social media and heard in public. I'm also concerned that members of this council believe that the member the community members who are showing up at these council meetings are a small group of people who are trying to be a thorn in your side just because we're not getting what we want. But that's not what you're seeing. We are part of a large community of people who are organizing within Woodbury, across the state, and across this country, passionate about protecting not only our neighbors, but our country and our democracy from lawlessness and authoritarianism. This resolution that prompted the ongoing community presence at city council meetings is more than a resolution specific to immigration. The le the resolution proposes a thought proposes thoughtful legal action to protect Woodbury from our federal government. An administration that sent an army of untrained, masked, and armed federal agents to our city who then violated fundamental constitutional rights, committed human rights abuses, and believed themselves to be above the law. We've had immigration officers enforcing immigration laws without issue for decades. As I mentioned the last time I was here, I'm an immigration lawyer. I worked alongside ICE officers in Texas for many years. I respected them and the difficult job they were entrusted to carry out. But let me be clear, the armed agents sent to Minnesota under this administration are not the professional, law-abiding ICE officers I knew. The agents sent during Operation

Metro Surge invaded our state. They ruled by terror, not by law. They were given explicit policies and orders to use undue force, disobey court orders, and ignore legal rights and protections. As a result, and as you know, members of your community feared leaving their home for weeks and months, and others were physically assaulted and unlawfully detained. This is not what a democratic society looks like. This is authoritarian rule, and I know that you recognize it, too. you struggled with protecting Woodbury against a federal government's secretive attempt to build a detainment center here. Furthermore, the reasoning this council gave for not exploring zoning laws consistent with the resolution is that you believe the laws couldn't be enforced against federal agents who violated them. Think about that. The city is afraid to pass local laws out of fear we will be helpless when the federal government tramples them. That is the current state of our government. There's a second reason this community keeps showing up. We need to know where you stand. When you took office, your job was to run this municipality, and you have done that, and I respect it. But 16 months ago, the stakes changed. Your constituents are at risk. Their safety, their fundamental rights are at risk. Our autonomy as a local government is at risk. and we are looking to our council to defend Woodbury and its residents. This is an election year and the protection of democracy is a central issue. Please take a vote on this resolution and allow each one of you to demonstrate how you plan to lead. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And then Samantha

Hello, my name is Samantha Wolf and I live in Woodbury. And as my shirt suggests, I'm here to talk about backyard chickens. But I was really I mean I was excited to hear the results of the city survey really because I saw that on the agenda. Um and then because we know that there was a question on there about backyard chickens that we advocated for. Um, so in 2024 there was a survey question and then 2026 we asked it again and I was really excited to see the results of that. Um, it increase approval increased by about 14%. So that was definitely a trend line in in favor of approving chickens um in in backyard chickens on city lots. So I mean over two years we thought that was a pretty significant increase. So we were we're just um here and kind of excited to hear what the discussion is um around council. So, and I'll just hit a couple quick talking points that you all have heard before, but 92% of metro municipalities already allow chickens. So, I mean, we we think it's time for Woodbury to to join its neighbors on this topic. Um, none of the cities we contacted have had significant issues or complaints regarding licensed backyard chickens. We've talked to a lot of folks and a lot of city um city staffers in different places. It's also included in the Woodbury Environmental Stewardship Plan. Um, so it's it's already it's already on the plan. Um, we were there was a Pioneer Press article written recently about backyard chickens in Woodbury and um, I've just pulled a quote from Justin Forney who's the Hastings city planner. Uh, he said the their city has approved about 30 applications. Ultimately, he said quote, "We couldn't ignore the success other cities had with small backyard flocks despite the catastrophes some predicted would follow. the amount of chicken complaints is not even comparable to the number of dog complaints. So, I was just uh so I mean I think it's time for Woodbury to catch up with our neighbors on this issue and I'm excited to hear the discussion and the rest of the city survey.

Great. Thanks.

Well, I I will interject at this time a a couple of things. Um one is yes, we have we and we'll be getting the survey results later. Um that's really just an information that sharing so we're not going to end up having a discussion around that. It's just to share information. But you are right there is a it's almost a 50/50 now. It's gone up significantly. Um you know we have weighed this for a while and I think I've I've said many times before we are deliberate and careful when we look at making changes in you know to to ordinances and what's allowed. Um so we did allow the larger lots a few years ago evaluate how that's going. That seemed to be going fine. In addition, last week we did have or two weeks ago, whenever it was, um we every couple years we do a joint uh workshop meeting with Cottage Grove and so we raised the discussion with them and talked about when did you implement, how did it go, what what what's your structure look like, what's the ordinance require, etc. Um we just came from our workshop downstairs and this was brought up. Um and I think the direction given that at this point in time based on the 50/50 it's changed knowing what Cottage Grove is doing. Um that we have asked staff to explore and to come back with some recommendations that we will then talk about in an upcoming workshop because you can't just throw those things on an agenda and let it go. We need to talk through them. But um we starting as a starting point it seems what Cottage Grove has put in place seems to be reasonable. But staff will explore further, check with other cities, look at other things and and we'll go from there. More than anything, there is the you know there is just a general concern. There is a lot of passion for them and on the other side there's a lot of passion against it. So you know it's we have to weigh what one resident wants and what the neighbors on either side may be concerned about. So again, I think there's some um guard rails we can put in place to make it workable and reasonable. So we're looking forward to moving in that direction.

Yeah. Well, we'd love to be a part of that discussion. There's a lot of knowledge base like with our group um you know, people who have had chickens before. People have obviously we've talked to a lot of city members ourselves. So yeah, would love to be a part of that if you need. Well, and workshops are always open to the public. So um depend it always kind of depends on what the topic is. Do we allow a lot of conversation? But maybe you've been a passionate leader in this. So, I would say keep your eye out for when that workshop is in place and please feel free to come and we'll work we'll work through the next steps. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And thank you for your patience on that.

Okay. Um Felix, Shannon, and Simon, I don't how would you like you just want to come together? Did you bring your stuffed chicken, Felix? Okay, got it. All right. Okay. Yeah. Does the stuffed chicken have a name? Steve wants to know. What is it? Bill. His name is Bill. Bill. Bill. Okay. His name is Bill. Um, so, uh, we are This is I'm Shannon. This is Felix Johnson. And, uh, we live in Woodberry. Um, and we are here to talk about the the backyard chickens because what hap what, uh, tell us a little bit about you, Felix.

Um, I won the day cuz I won an essay contest about backyard chickens against 600 other kids in the state. And they thought his idea was good. And because of those surveys, we want to point out that we as a family are really uh into the chicken things. We are haven't do not have experience with chickens, but we do know some interesting facts. Mhm. For example, are chickens loud? No, they're quieter than a dog. A dog is 90 d dec. And chickens are only 60 dB.

And what do we know about their poop? Uh, it takes 10 chickens to make one large dog poop. And chicken poop is what? It is It is magic poop. Yes. It's compostable cuz you can just leave it there and it just goes into the grass and then you can and then it helps the grass.

Exactly. So along with the things he said, I want to point out that um one thing I want to say is that for my family that this that backer chickens is not a hobby or a passing trend. It's about trying to live our values in everyday life. We already compost. We do our best to reduce our carbon footprint. We've even installed a rain garden because we believe in environmental stewardship begins at home. and backyard chickens would be yet another thoughtful uh practical way for families like mine to reduce waste, care for the environment, and take a more sustainable way of living. Um, backyard hens offer real environmental benefits. They help reduce food waste because we can give them scraps, which is awesome. Uh, their manure can enrich the garden soil and they provide eggs because do we like eggs? Yeah. How many eggs can uh can six hens uh make in a year? 1,800

which is enough to feed a small army or our brother.

I also believe that if we do this responsibly um uh we can do this responsibly. I support common sense rules. I don't expect us to just say chickens for everybody. I support like banning roosters, limiting the number of hens, requiring a proper coupe placement, and maintaining cleanliness. It's not about changing the character of our neighborhoods. It's about giving our residents the opportunity to make modest, well- reggulated choices that affect values that we already hold. My family loves Woodbury and we are proud to be a part of this community. I hope you will support a balanced ordinance that allows backyard chickens to give families like mine one more way to live out our commitment of sustainability and responsible stewardship. Awesome. Team presentation.

So now, does Simon want to speak? You're going to speak independently. Wonderful. Are you You're the older brother. The brother. Okay. You're Yes.

Yes. Sure. Sure. Okay. So, uh hi, my name Hi, uh mayor and city council members. Uh my name is Simon Johnson. I am 14 years old and I am in eighth grade at Math and Science Academy and I am a first class scout in Boy Scouts. But if you but for my family who and people who really know me know that I really love animals. I have two dogs, multiple fish, and honestly I get excited about pretty much every animal that I meet. I am here tonight because supporting backyard chickens in Woodbury would mean a lot to teens and people like me. I care about animals not just because they're interesting, but because they teach us something. When because they teach us something. When you care for an animal, you learn patience, responsibility, and empathy. You learn that a living thing depends on you and your actions matter. I think those are important lessons for anyone, but especially for kids and teens. For me, this is also personal because I hope to work in with animals someday. Maybe in animal science or a career where I can where I can care for them. Not everyone gets the chance to have a real hands-on experience with animals in a meaningful way. Backyard chickens would give teens like me the opportunity to learn more about animal behavior, health, and care in a way that is real and memorable. I also think experiences like this can shape who you become. Sometimes one opportunity, one animal, or one responsibility can spark an interest that lasts for life. For me, animals are not just something I like. They are something that I deeply care about, and they are a big part of who I who I want to become in the future. I hope you will support allowing backyard chickens in Woodbury because some people some for some people it may seem small but for people like me it can make a big difference. Thank you for your time. Beautifully communicated. Nice job. Well, thank you and um I think as you

heard we will be moving forward with evaluating that and coming up with a plan that we can implement here in Woodbury. So uh thanks for your passion on all of that. Uh we will now let's see let me let me let me look what's next. Oh consent agenda. Okay. All items listed under the consent agenda are considered to be routine by the city council will be enacted by one motion and affirmed a vote by roll call and the majority of the members present. There'll be no separate discussion of these items unless a council member or citizens request in which event the item will be removed from the consent agenda and considered a separate subject of discussion by the council. So, I do open this up to people here in the audience. If you reviewed it and there's something you want more information on, we can pull it. Seeing none, I always turn because we do an online review as well to see if anybody online wants something removed. Okay. And with that, now I'll turn to council. Would anyone like anything removed hearing? None. Would somebody like to put forth a motion?

I'll move to approve consent agenda items 6A through 6N. Second. Motion a second. Any discussion? Mayor, I have something I would like to state before um we approve this, which is um 6D, which is the um approval of the annual action plan. You know, I I'm in agreement with most of that plan. I do want to just restate my objection to one part of that plan, which is the land banking part. I am not in favor of land banking. Um but to throw out and for me to give a no vote for the whole thing because that one issue is not ex appropriate. So just state my objection to that one. Okay. Thank you for your clarification on that. Anyone else?

Seeing no seeing no more, would you please do the roll call, Ashley? Council member Morris. Hi. Council member Santini. I. Council member Stafford. Hi. Council member Wilson. I. Mayor Bert.

I uh those pass. I do have a couple comments. One is just because we have people here. We don't always do. Sometimes it's quiet. Um this seems as though we go through this really really quickly, but please realize we get these packets in advance on Friday. This one was upwards of 400 some pages. It was quite a doozy. Um so again, it looks as though we're looking at this quickly, but we do have a chance to review, talk to staff, get clarification. Um and of course, there's a lot of information in the packet that we have to prepare for. So this is not done like in a hurry like this is the first time we've seen this. In addition, since we have the animal lovers here, I would like to share one particular area that uh which is important and that is um which one was it? It's about goldfish. What item was it? Fish. Yep. What? Uh,

6E.

Okay. Six. Oh, yeah. 6E. Okay. Uh, we we did part of the consent agenda was the approval of the cooperative agreement with South Washington Watershed District for goldfish management and renewal. Here's something that may not be known. Goldfish are cute. I remember going to the to the fair with my kids at Liberty Ridge and if you win something, you get that cute bag with a cute little goldfish and you bring it home and moms and dads are like, "Oh, what are we going to do with this thing?" and you feed it for three or four days and then somebody forgets it and then you either flush it and if you flush it in is Mark still here. If you flush it in the if you flush it in this in the sanitary sewer, I'm not so sure it's going to survive. But if you put it in a storm sewer or you just drop it in your local pond or your um the storm water pond, storm water pond, all those ponds, we have 600 some of them around the city. If you drop it in there, it's really detrimental. These goldfish look tiny and cute, but they grow to be very, very large and they're very, very destructive to our environment. So, there's a lot of money and effort going into removing goldfish that have grown huge and become destructive. Uh, there's one particular area over I think it's kind of uh it's east of

P Lake. Powers Lake. Uh, where visually you can look and see this mass of gold, which is huge goldfish zooming around in that pond. So, uh, just a just a lesson. We're going to we have done some communication on it. I think we're going to have more communication going forward. Just for people aware, it it is very detrimental even though they're cute and adorable. Can I ask a question of Simon and and Felix? Sure. Can we feed goldfish to chickens? Yes, we can. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. New project. And other other than that, I suggest you just there's funding available. Are you buy and purchase goldfish crackers if you're a goldfish lover? So

just a point of clarification, you know, you had made mention that we do get the packet early. The packet is also available to everybody in the community. It is out online under agenda and council agenda and so anybody has access to that packet on Friday. I did that because my tablet broke so I had to go out to the the web and get the packet. So yes. Okay. We will now move on to our public hearing. Now the public hearing for tonight is really pretty simple. This is um consideration of approval of a liquor license. So, do we have the are those people present? The I don't believe so.

Okay. So, I'm going to save you the pain of me reading you the entire uh public hearing process that we go through with the green sheets and how long you get to talk and all that it because it's pretty procedural. Um, but with that, I would like to open the hearing officially for the consideration of approval of Mark's Cafe LLC doing business as CityWalk Cafe and Bar and handed this over to Ashley to tell us a bit more information. Thank you, Mayor Bert and members of the council. Uh Marks Cafe LLC doing business as CityWalk Cafe and Bar has submitted an application for an on sale intoxicating liquor license including Sunday and patio sales for their business located at 100060 CityWalk Drive Suite 101. And that's the former DOS for those of you that are familiar with that. Uh there are two majority owners of the business, uh Kimberly Marx and Alex Meyer. They're listed on the screen. Um both owners have submitted materials for a background check um per our process and uh no violations um were found that were concerning that would prevent them from getting a liquor license. Uh the application has been reviewed by our city attorney. The applicant provided all necessary fees and then as per our process we did mail out public hearing notices ahead of this evening as well to the uh surrounding properties. Um, with that, uh, staff is recommending that council, um, take the action on the screen before you this evening, and I'm available for questions if you have any.

Okay, that's great. Well, because we have no green sheets or somebody that wants to speak publicly, unless anybody's online, um, I make a motion that we close the hearing. Second. Motion. Kind of exciting. One of the things we do here in our survey often is, why don't we have more unique offerings of food and beverage in Woodbury? Of course, we have no control over that. Just so you know, that's all, you know, the the the market deals with that. private people come in, decide what they want to do for businesses. We do not control what kind of food that and restaurants that we offer. But it's always nice when somebody wants to come and invest in our community and and have a new offering. So, I'm excited about that. Too bad they're not here because I'd love to hear more about what it's all going to be about. The liquor license goes into effect when?

Uh, it'll be effective immediately, but they are um from what they told us planning to open June. Okay. June. Okay. So, we'll look forward to strolling up there. And I think somebody said they have an outdoor patio, so weather's going to be nice. We'll check that out. So, um, excited for those folks. So, with that, um, would someone like to make any other questions or make a motion for approval?

Questions? You know, I'm all about these approvals because I want to keep the streak going live. But I I will talk to we'll we'll see just the council had a significant discussion at the workshop just previously to this for the public that we talked about uh alcohol and tobacco permitting and and how there's licensing and compliance checks in order to make sure that we're not just um you know as the almost uh almost every liquor license in my seven years that I've been the the the guy that's done the the offer. And I say that jokingly, but we take compliance very very seriously. And so I encourage look at what uh we just talked about and and go go view the um uh the minutes of that of of our discussion about our commitment to public safety and and etc. What are you laughing at?

Because there's there won't be minutes of our discussion. Well, there'll be conversations. Yes.

Talk to us about it. It's big. Um, but that being said, um, one thing I did forget to me, it's why I wanted to mention that is one thing I forid did forget is that as part of your staff recommendation moving forward, if if we were to change and and do what we talked about in the in make the changes that we uh suggested, will that then come into the staff recommendation on the history? So, right now the the it said, hey, there were no violations found that would that violate our policy, right? But it may not have. Will we look at compliance and adding that to the stack in the staff recommendation or at least as part of the background in the packet to say, hey, there compliance checks blah blah blah blah past. That would be my only ask is that the council consider that in the future.

Yeah, I think we could look into that. I don't know that it would be part of the background check per se, but certainly could play some other role. It wouldn't be a violation of the background. Exactly. But but the the fact is that if we're going to step up the compliance renewal at the time of renewals Exactly. Yeah, renewal. This is new. Yeah, good point. Council, when we do renewals, don't we do them in batches? Batches, but it's part of the packet. Okay, perfect. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that's all I'm asking for being part of. Okay, you did. It's all I had. Yep. I will make a motion to approve an on sale intoxicating liquor license including Sunday and patio sales to Mark's Cafe LLC doing business as Citywalk Cafe and Bar located at 1,00 sorry 160 Citywalk Drive, Suite 101. Second.

Motion second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Roll call, please. Council member Santini, I. Council member Stafford, I. Council member Wilson, I. Council member Morris. Hi. Mayor Bert. I. All right, that passes. And again, I'm looking forward to checking it out. So, um, next item up, we've got three items for discussion. Uh, and the first one is the presentation of the 2026 community survey results. And I think Shelley, you're going to kick us off and, uh, and begin this. Um, so, yes. Welcome.

Thank you, Mayor Bird, uh, council members, administrator D. It's a pleasure to be here tonight to, uh, help present the results of our 2026 resident survey. Um, I'm joined tonight by Jason Newire, who's the director of survey research by, um, from Poco, and he will be uh, joining us in a little bit, but I will get us started. So every two years since 1993, the city has conducted a resident survey and it's been administered by Poco over the last several years. It's really a great um it's a statistically valid survey and it's become a great tool for city leadership to evaluate resident opinions and service levels which help inform future decisions. around the same time that we administer the statistically valid survey, we also administer a open um participation survey. And while we keep the uh results separate from the statistically valid survey, we really appreciate getting that feedback um from folks that might not have received the invitation to participate. The survey also looks at trend data over years as well as um state and national comparisons. This is helpful to know how we're doing over time, where we're improving, where we might be falling short, and how we compare with other communities across the country. It's also worth noting that when Pulco compares Woodbury uh with those national benchmarks, um we are being compared with communities who choose to invest in these type of surveys. So, these communities tend to be higher performing already. So the areas where you see us exceeding the national ben benchmarks is an exceptional mark for Woodbury. It's also good to remember that this is a snapshot in time. So um as as we look at the survey, it was taken over a window of time and you know depending on what was happening it might have influenced when somebody was filling out the survey it might influence the

results. So I've given a couple examples of um how timing might matter. So, uh, the survey, you know, was conducted in January and February. So, snow removal services, um, might be impacted if if it snowed during the time the residents filled out the survey, their influence or their, um, answers might be impacted. Um, and then we also have Lookout Ridge. And as you'll see, um, Lookout Ridge residents rated, uh, that significantly higher after the remodel. So, it jumped from 78% in 2024. What's that? He said, "I would hope given everything that was

um to 89% favorably in 2026." So, likely that's as a result of all of the great work that was done at Central Park um with that remodel, including Lookout Ridge. Um it's also important to put everything in context. So, for example, while water quality was still identified as one of the most serious issues facing Woodbury, it actually went down from 49% of people identify identifying it as an issue in 2024 to 44% of people identifying it as a city a serious issue in 2026, which is a 5% drop. Along the same line, the rating for our quality of water went up by 7% from 44% in 2024 to 51% in 2026. So, while we still have some work to do, I just wanted to call those numbers out to recognize that we are making strides in an area that is of deep concern to our residents and the data seems to show that residents can see that we are prioritizing this as an issue and acting. I also want to bring attention to an area where we saw significant gains in 2024 that we were able to maintain and in many cases um improve upon in 2026. As a whole, the entire uh the overall category is community diversity and inclusivity. As a whole, the entire section saw significant jumps from seven to 10% um from 2022 to 2024 in including in the categories of treating all residents fairly, demonstrating respect for residents of different cultures and belief systems, and valuing residents from diverse backgrounds. I'm pleased to share that all of these areas not only maintain those significant increases from 2022 to 2024, but most slightly um increased as well. And then, you know, while we've made positive gains in many areas, it's also

worth recognizing the areas where we continue to strive for improvement. One of one example um is the helping new residents feel connected and integrated. So, while we've added events like Welcome to Woodbury for new residents, there's still work to be done to increase that number. It is worth noting that this category has consistently gone up since 2022 when it was at 56% and increased another 3% this past year to get to the 62%. But we would like to see it go up even more. So therefore, along with our uh welcome to Woodbury event, we're currently reimagining our welcome packet and looking at starting up quarterly meetings for new residents to come in and learn about our city. Um, and then we'll see in 2028 if some of the initiatives that we're doing in this area will reflect that on the survey. So before I hand it over to Jason to do that deeper dive, I did want to take a moment to touch on some of the comments that we receive in the survey. So for those of you that have seen the survey, you know that we uh we receive public comments that can be pages and pages long. So you know, we try to read a lot of them, but it, you know, it's hard to sift through all of them. So I did use AI and uh put that in to to develop some themes. Um and each survey I did it for the resident survey as well as for um the open participation survey and each identified seven buckets of themes that I just wanted to touch on briefly. Um so the first uh theme in the resident survey was on taxes and government spending. Uh residents requested um concern regarding rising taxes and government spending, cost of living pressures and concerns about overdevelopment. Uh this theme aligned with survey findings identifying taxes as the top issue facing Woodbury overall. The next theme is traffic driving behavior and road safety.

Overall, residents expressed frustration regarding roadway safety and traffic enforcement. The third bucket was growth and development concerns. Uh residents commented frequently on rapid growth and overdevelopment, preserving Woodberry's suburban character and infrastructure impacts associated with continued development. The fourth theme is on affordable housing and cost of living. Um, several comments specifically noted challenges related to finding affordable daycare and other recurring recurring concerns were affordable housing availability, senior housing needs and livable uh wage jobs.

Shelley, can I just ask a question on the afford because there's sometimes a the distinct difference between affordable housing and housing that is affordable for whatever lifestyle you live or income you have. So I don't know that we've specifically differentiated between affordable housing and housing that's affordable, right? Yeah, we we aren't able to get into the detail that detail. Okay. Yeah,

but good question. Um, the next theme that was identified is under community amenities and recreation. Residents expressed interest in additional community events, more affordable family activities, and expanded dining and entertainment options, particularly in the south part of Woodbury. Um, another theme identified was around water quality and environmental concerns. residents continue to identify the following issues in the community which are water quality, environmental stewardship, storm water management, and natural resource protection. And then the last theme on the resident survey um was under public safety and enforcement. Comments reflected varying perspectives regarding crime and drug concerns, traffic enforcement, code enforcement, and government regulation and ordinance enforcement. Now, some residents called for stronger enforcement while others expressed concern about overregulation.

And then uh next we'll take a look at the themes from the open participation survey. Before you do that, can I just ask a question? Um how many did we get in the statist like how many surveys results did we collect from the statistically one statistical ones which is the resident survey versus how many on the open? I'm just curious and Jason will get into that. I believe it was 969 um from the statistically valid and then 585 from the open participation survey. You have a great memory. That's exactly right. Okay. Okay. Good. All right. So, okay. Thanks for answering. I was just curious as to what the balance was. There certainly are a large proportion of people that do want to make a comment if they didn't get it. So, Okay. Good. Just good to know.

No, it's very good. And and he he will get into all of the details. We like to just um try to frame it up a little bit. Sure. Yeah. Okay. So, you want to before Jason begins, you're I interrupted you, so you're going to go speak of this.

Yeah. So, this is the open participation uh survey themes for the public comments. Um so, the first theme identified was walkability, transportation, and urban design. Under this theme, some of the strongest concerns were related to car dependency, lack of walkability, bicycle safety and infrastructure, large roads and parking lots, and better connections between neighborhoods and businesses. Residents frequently expressed interest in more pedestrianfriendly and connected development patterns in this theme. The next theme is uh community identity and charm. Residents repeatedly discussed desire for a stronger downtown feel, greater sense of community identity, and more vibrant and recognizable destination areas. Um many comments suggested that Woodbury functions well operationally but lacks a central gathering community gathering place or a sense of place. Uh the third theme in this category is affordable housing and community change. So you'll see some overlap from the statistically valid. Um this generated discussion around concerns about density, neighborhood character, impacts of future growth and balancing affordability with quality of life. The next theme was around youth and family amenities. Residents frequently requested uh community gathering spaces and more informal spaces and activities for older children and teens. Another theme was around recreation of facility capacity. Residents raised concerns regarding recreation facility demand, pool availability, aging infrastructure, and maintaining parks and amenities as the community grows. The next theme was on code enforcement and neighborhood standards. A recurring concern involved perceptions that neighborhood ordinances are inconsistently enforced and property maintenance standards are uh vary across neighborhoods. And then our last theme is on backyard chickens and residential flexibility. Uh multiple comments

reference the backyard chickens residential flexibility and smallcale urban agriculture. And these comments of course reflect uh the strong resident engagement on the issue that was related in the survey. So across both participation methods uh residents consistently expressed appreciation for Woodbury's overall quality of life, safety, parks and city services while at the same time identifying some common priorities. So I am now going to turn it over to Jason Newmier who again was the director of survey research from Poco who will take that deeper dive into the 2026 resident survey.

Great. Thank you so much. Uh it's great to have that context ahead of time. Before we do turn into the results, I would like to share just a brief background here on PCO and National Research Center. Uh, PCO is a civic communication and analytics platform that works to unite people, data, and government leaders to help communities to make more informed decisions that improve residents overall quality of life. We provide surveys like this most recent one done here in Woodbury, budget simulation tools, advanced analytics, even some trusted AI uh that can help build stronger, more connected communities. Back in 2019, Pulco and the National Research Center combined their efforts bringing uh the decades of social science expertise from National Research Center uh with Pulco's up-to-date technology. We're probably best known for our benchmarking surveys like the National Community Survey, the Community Assessment Survey for Older Adults. We even have a national employee survey, but we also work with dozens of communities around the US on custom resident surveys like this effort here in Woodbury, as well as custom surveys on specific topics or initiatives. So ultimately taken together, Pocal provides all of the tools necessary to help empower resident voices and decision-m. So, one of the key benefits to this survey is the ability to compare your residents ratings with those from communities across the US. These national benchmark comparisons help to show how local services and community characteristics here perform relative to other communities in our database. The national database today currently sits at around 400 communities. Uh, and you'll see the resulting comparisons throughout this presentation and throughout the report of results that's been shared. Now, Woodbury received comparisons to the full benchmark database of 400 communities. We'll refer to those as national benchmarks. But in addition, the city also opted to receive

custom benchmark comparisons to two other cohorts uh other communities here in Minnesota and other communities uh in the US with a similar population. We'll take a deeper look at both of those in a little bit more detail here in in just a couple of slides. So, can you just before you go on, can you just say a little bit more about the 400 comparison communities? It sounds like Shel indicated that you know not your maybe I don't know above average cities bothered to do work like this. So we're already being compared to other cities of good standing or what have you. Can you just say more about that?

Yeah certainly. So these are going to be cities that have either conducted a national community survey with us, a custom resident survey like Woodbury does or have worked with others or internally maybe with universities in their in their communities to run these surveys. All surveys are done within the last five years. So yes, uh the idea here that you're working with high performing cities are being compared against high performing cities is accurate. Uh these are communities that have taken the time, energy, and resources to do this effort at least once in the last 5 years. Okay, that's great. Thank you for that clarification. You're welcome.

So this is the 17th time uh that Woodbury has conducted a resident survey like this. previous iterations uh started bianually in 1993 and PCO has been working with Woodbury for almost a decade now. The to select survey recipients for this most recent project a list of uh addresses was purchased from the United States Postal Service and it was cleaned using the city boundary files to remove any addresses from outside of the city in our random sample. So, from that list, 5,000 households were randomly selected to receive the survey invitation, all geoloccated to ensure they're within your boundaries. Those households received survey mailings beginning on January 7th, and the survey remained open for 6 weeks. The first mailing was a postcard invitation inviting the household to respond to the survey online. About one week later, a paper uh survey packet with an instructional cover letter was sent to those 5,000 households. That packet also included a postage paid return envelope so the individual could take the paper copy and send it back to us. Both mailings included a link and a QR code to further encourage participation. And here we can see some of our totals. So in total 969 completed surveys were returned from our random sample resulting in a 20% response rate and a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The margin of error ultimately tells us how precise these results are. So in practical terms, it means that if this survey were repeated multiple times under similar conditions, no snow or or some snow, right? Uh the results would be expected to fall within three percentage points of what we see here 95% of the time. The results were then at the end weighted with uh census data and the most recent American community survey results to ensure that the results better reflect Woodbury's overall adult population. Great.

Now, in addition to this random sample, the city also shared an online version of the survey which was available to all residents. That survey, which is named the open participation survey, was available for two weeks and received 585 additional responses. Now, the presentation here today and the main body of the report are based on the 969 responses from the randomly selected households as they best represent the community as a whole. However, the full results for the open participation survey are also included separately in the full report for your review. Uh Jason, question 20% overall response rate, how does that compare to these comparative cities?

That's it's excellent. Um it's excellent. Our average response rate last year in 2025 was 12.73%. Uh so we're above average there. Engaged. Yes. And the margin of error typically industry standard will keep it between 3 and 6%. Some people are saying 7%. Uh so for us to be at the plus or minus 3% range there is really excellent. Okay. Yes. Great. Good to hear. Thank you.

Uh so with that we'll turn to a highle look at some of these benchmark and trend comparisons before we take a deeper dive into some key findings together. 45 items were available for national benchmark comparisons in this most recent uh Woodbury survey. Results are considered to be higher if the rating given here by Woodbury residents is at least 10 points above our rolling national average of all communities who have surveyed in the last 5 years. While a much higher indication would be indicative of an average rating of more than 20 points above the benchmark. We have a few items in that much higher category and I'll highlight those as we move ahead. Similarly, a rating that is lower than the benchmark means that that item received a score that's at least 10 points below the national averages. And anything within 10 points falls in that middle category. It's considered similar. We had 25 items, as you can see here, that received higher ratings. Two items were much higher than the national averages. That's shopping opportunities and the variety of housing types. uh and only one item hinted at earlier uh quality of drinking water received a rating that was lower than the national benchmark and

we are actively solving that problem.

It's we'll get to the trends and it seems like we are on the right path. Uh similarly 45 items were available to for comparisons to other Minnesota communities. Eight items were higher than our state comparisons including again shopping opportunities that scored much higher. one item again here, the quality of drinking water scored lower than other state uh than other communities around the state. And then finally, our last comparison group looked at other communities around the United States with populations between 65,000 and 90,000 residents. Here again, you can see 14 items received higher ratings. One item uh again scored lower. So we have national comparisons, we have Minnesota comparisons, and we have comparisons to similarly sized communities. Our last comparison, which may be the most important one, is the comparison back to yourself over time. So there were 128 survey items here in the 2026 survey that had trends available back to the 2024 effort. Of those 128 items, 10 items saw statistically significant increases over the last two years, 111 remained steady and seven saw statistically significant declines. Results are considered to be statistically significant if the change from 2024 was greater than or equal to excuse me plus or minus 5 percentage points. Now, as we move into the key findings next, we'll be highlighting some of these national, state, and population benchmarks, and we'll also hit on these 17 items where we saw movements either upward or downward over the last two years. All right, so with that, we'll turn to some key findings. Our first key, oops, excuse me. Our first key takeaway here, community life in Woodbury remains strong, connected, and highly rated. So in 2026, Woodbury residents continued

to rate their quality of life highly with roughly nine and 10 residents providing excellent or good marks. That rating for overall quality of life in 2026 was on par with previous surveys here in Woodbury and was similar to our three benchmark comparison groups. In addition to this overall rating, residents also assessed other aspects related to quality of life in the city. As you can see on the right hand side here, among the higher rated items were Woodbury as a place to live, Woodbury as a place to raise children, their neighborhood as a place to live, and shopping opportunities in the city. Many items indicated by our in or shown by our indicators on the right hand side here did receive ratings that were higher than national, state or population benchmarks, including once again Woodbury as a place to raise children, the overall quality of life or excuse me, the overall quality of business and service establishments in the city and Woodbury as a place to work. Now, it's important to note here uh that dining opportunities, we just talked about this uh right ahead of this, uh received ratings that were higher in 2026 than in 2024. And this actually continues an upward trend dating back to 2022. So, back in 2022, 61% of residents gave excellent or good marks to dining opportunities in the city. That increased to 68% in 2024, and as you can see here, 73% are now giving positive evaluations for that item. Next, residents were asked to look more local and to evaluate both their neighbors and their neighborhood. About nine and 10 Woodbury residents strongly or somewhat agreed that they have good relationships with their neighbors. Around 8 and 10 also said that they felt connected to their neighborhood and agreed that they could rely on their neighbors when they needed help. And finally, three quarters said that they felt connected to the overall Woodbury community. As you can see here, each of these items were significantly or excuse me were uh similar to those reported in 2024 and in 2022.

Now, when asked about several broad aspects of the community, roughly nine and 10 respondents gave high marks to their overall feelings of safety, health and wellness opportunities in the city, the overall image or reputation of the city, and the overall economic health of Woodbury. As noted here by the numerous indicators on the slide, nearly all of these ratings exceeded some or all three of our benchmark comparisons with the variety of housing types standing out in particular. So this item was rated higher than our national or than our Minnesota benchmark and was rated much higher than both our national and similar population cohorts. Can I just make a comment? I was if you go back.

Yes. This clicker is touchy. fitness and exercise opportunities went down a bit. I feel like we have more and more options, but maybe people aren't finding the one they want. I don't know. It could be. There was a couple of private um organizations that ended up closing and it could have been around the time the survey came out and so it could have influenced. Okay, thanks.

Key finding number two, city services remain a strength for Woodbury. Many of these ratings also exceeded national norms. So roughly nine and 10 survey respondents rated the overall quality of services provided by the city as excellent or good. You can see that this rating is on par with previous years similar to peer communities in Minnesota and it scored higher than our comparison communities with similar populations and across the US. When asked about some specific city services, around nine and 10 residents positively rated fire services, ambulance or emergency medical services, uh the Eagle Valley Golf Course and its facilities, the M Health Fairview Sports Center uh programs and facilities, and the condition of city parks. About nine and 10 respondents also gave high marks to Central Park, Lookout Ridge, police services, and finally sanitary and sewer services. And as you can see here on the slide, and as Shelley noted at the beginning, ratings for Lookout Ridge, did see a statistically significant increase of 11% when compared back to 2024. And then finally, the lowest rated city service, drinking water, was rated as excellent by around 1 in 10 respondents and good by around four in 10. Therefore, about half of Woodbury residents rated drinking water as either fair or poor. This rating was lower than our national, Minnesota, and population benchmarks. However, the rating did see a statistically significant increase from 2024, uh, bucking a 4-year trend dating back to 2022 that had the rating down in the mid-40% range. So, an upward trend at the end of our timeline there. Key finding number three, residents continue to see strong value in city services, though support for tax increases has leveled off. So roughly twothirds of respondents rated the value of services for taxes paid to Woodbury as either excellent or good. This rating

is on par with previous years for a long time as our trend line shows. Uh it was rated higher than the national benchmark and similar to Minnesota and population uh benchmark comparisons. About half of Woodbury residents uh supported an increase in property taxes to maintain city services at their current level. This rating was slightly below the 2024 level and marked a pause in a moderate upward trend in support for tax increases to maintain service levels uh that we've observed dating back to 2015. This was January

January 7th it launched. Correct. Key finding number four. Residents appreciate many aspects of the city's leadership and staff performance. Similar to past years, more than eight and 10 survey participants strongly or somewhat approved of the job the mayor and city council are doing and rated the job performance of city staff as excellent or good. About threequarters of respondents positively rated the city for treating all residents fairly, while around seven and 10 highly rated the job Woodbury government does at welcoming citizen involvement, the city acting in the best interest of the community, and their overall confidence in Woodbury governance. Four items here scored higher than the national benchmark, acting in the best interest of the community, the overall confidence in Woodbury governance, treating all residents fairly, and the job uh government does at welcoming resident involvement. Those final two items on that list also scored higher than our population comparisons. Key finding number five, Woodbury maintains high marks for inclusivity and respect for all residents. Around eight and 10 residents positively rated Woodbury for providing a safe and secure environment for all residents or for residents of all backgrounds. A similar proportion gave excellent or good marks for treating all residents fairly, demonstrating respect for residents of different cultures and belief belief systems and making all residents feel welcome. Finally, around six and 10 rated the community uh positively rated the community for helping new residents feel connected and integrated. Now, although each of these ratings were similar to 2024, they did maintain their rather large increases uh that we saw from 2022 to 2024, indicating that residents continue to see these improvements throughout the community or maybe

don't let this go to your head. You know, this is a lot of the work you do, but you know, but thank you for all the work you do. So within the report of results, I I would like to point out one of my favorite parts as a data I guess nerd for lack of better term uh is that there are crosstabulations uh throughout the report that show results comparing residents of different demographic or geographic characteristics. So this allows us to understand if groups of residents are experiencing life in Woodbury differently than other groups of residents. These comparisons you see on the slide here examine differences between white and non-white respondents as well as between Hispanic and non-Hispanic respondents. I'd like to note here there were no statistically significant differences between Hispanic and non-Hispanic responses in this category except for the ratings of demonstrating respect uh for residents of different cultures and belief systems. Their Hispanic respondents actually gave higher marks than our non-Hispanic respondents. And similarly, there were no statistically significant differences in this category between white and non-white respondents except for the item helping new residents feel connected and integrated which were higher among non-white respondents. So the overall absence here of large or widespread differences across de demographic groups suggests a broadly shared pers perspect perception of these uh various community values. And again, every single question I we just pulled out diversity and inclusion, but all 128 items can be subdivided by these different demographic or geographic characteristics. And that's really the meat and potatoes of the report. If you're if you're going to look at one section, find those cross tabs.

That was a really interesting slide. That was really, really interesting. And then finally, uh, res Sorry, Donna. Did you have a question or comment? I certainly can. Yes. We talked about diversity and inclusion. And that's ethnic backgrounds. Yes. In this slide, it's Hispanic versus non-Hispanic. Uh it's kind of the gray or the I'm color blind. It is I tan and purple. Yes. And the white and non-white is on the right hand side uh of the slide. But we will have crosstabulations for length of residency, gender, renters versus owners, geographic location. We just pulled these two out here for you, but the report has all of that data for you.

Okay, thank you. You're welcome. I need to remind our slideshow person to make these a little bit more colorblind friendly.

And then finally, residents hold steady views on code enforcement, but we have split opinions on backyard chickens. Residents were asked about their familiarity with residential code enforcement in Woodbury. Uh roughly threequarters of respondents reported that they were very or somewhat familiar with Woodbury's ordinance requirements. This was very similar to previous iterations. Survey respondents were also asked if the current level of code enforcement was acceptable, excessive, or not enough. Over half of respondents indicated that they thought code enforcement for residential areas was acceptable. Fewer than one in 10 respondents felt that code enforcement was excessive. Another one in 10 ft that there was not enough code enforcement. And then finally, as you can see on the lefth hand side pie chart, about three in 10 respondents indicated they were unfamiliar with the code enforcement in the city. Proportions uh of respondents in each of these categories were very similar uh to previous years.

Eric would give me a water police badge. That number would significant. And then finally, in 2026, residents were asked how much they would approve, if at all, of the city allowing residents to have chickens on any standard single family city lot. Around half of all residents somewhat or strongly approved of backyard chickens being allowed on a standard single family city lot. Conversely, the remaining half, as you can see in the top bar chart, uh strongly or somewhat disapproved of backyard chickens being allowed on a standard single family city lot. Uh the overall level of approval for allowing backyard chickens on a standard single family city lot increased from 36% in 2024 to 49% in 2026. Although I would like to note uh that some of this increase may be related to the changes in how the question was asked. So we included both questions here 2024 on the bottom 2026 on the top. In 2026, the introductory language was slightly modified, but I will note that in 2024, the question referenced not only standard single family city lots, but also urban properties of 1 acre or more and rural properties of 3 acres or more. Uh, again, I think we can make solid comparisons here, but it's just important to note they're not the exact same question year-over-year. So, we should take that into account as well. So, with that, uh, we have a summary of our key findings here. First and foremost, community life in Woodbury remains strong uh connected and highly rated. City services continue to remain a strength for Woodbury. Uh residents continue to see strong value in city services, though the support for tax increases has leveled off. Residents appreciate many aspects of the city's leadership and staff performance. Woodbury continues to maintain high marks for inclusivity and respect. And finally, residents hold steady views on code enforcement as opinions split on backyard chickens. So with that, I'd be happy to take answer any questions you have on the

implementation of the survey, on the report of results or on the presentation that we just went through. Thanks so much for your time.

Yeah, I just would first I don't know that I have any questions because that was a very thorough report and of course we have the whole entire document which we can peruse and Shel, I appreciate you're kind of putting the comments into trying to make sense of all that because we do read through them all and it's like wow. But based on that, I just want to send an appreciation out to our residents. Yes. Who uh statistically did this and those that took the time to comment to us. It means a lot to hear back. Um I'm proud that this city has done this survey for this number of years. Uh we believe and feel that we are a premier city and the only way to continue to remain premier is to ask the questions of our residents. How are we doing? And we strive to maintain that or get better. Um, I think overall I've heard that I mean these sound like really in general outstanding results.

Yes. Uh, with water quality being an issue, we've known that for a number of years. At no fault of our own has that ever been an issue with water quality. Um, but we are working very hard to get that problem fixed permanently. I do want to re reiterate, we have a temporary solution in place and the vast majority of your water right now is treated and is safe to drink to the standards. Um, but we are building that permanent long-term water treatment plant in order to provide the best quality water possible for the next century or more. So, that's all I want to say. Any other questions or comments you'd like to throw out to Jason or Shelley? Okay, that was really great. We're always available if questions come up as you're reviewing.

Thank you so much. Um, okay. Next disc discussion item is the consideration of the approval of the Cottage Grove Drive master plan. Gina is here to tell us more about it. Welcome, Gina. And I'm just curious which council member was at the planning commission meeting where this was addressed. Council member Stafford. Stafford. Okay, great. Thank you. Because we might have extra questions for you, Miss Stafford. I didn't go.

All right. Thank you for your patience as I got that pulled up and thank you mayor and members of the council. The city of Woodbury has prepared the Cottage Grove Drive master plan. The intent of the plan is to document existing conditions, provide guidance on home and lot types, roadway design and access management, storm water management, parks and open space, and pedestrian movements. The general master plan area is located surrounding Cottage Grove Drive and Dale Road. It is south of Bailey Road and west of Manning Avenue. and the master plan area is approximately 370 acres in size. City council directive 3.26 provides policy guidance and direction for the creation of master plans. They are required uh either prior to the opening of a development phase or subphase or prior to the approval of a planned unit development for properties with common ownership within the MUSA that are over 100 acres. And the master plan in front of you this evening was created prior to the opening of a subphase 4 development. The city council has seen this item in the past with two previous workshops and on that on the master plan itself both in February and in March. The planning commission has also had two reviews of the plan as well. Excuse me. Uh diving right in here is the concept master plan for your review. The area consists of 22 properties with 19 different property owners and some anticipating to be developed, others with a partial subdivision and still others with no intention to develop. The proposed development patterns align with the 2040 comprehensive plan. Within the master plan, we keyed in on

some main components of focus, which include regional storm water management approach, housing diversity, a new small lot type, 45 ft minimum or town home lots, preservation of highquality woodlands with a zoning flexibility, and park and open space network and street and trail connections. The report further reviews these concepts starting with utilizing a regional storm water management approach. A separate environmental study was performed by bar engineering and identified a large majority about 250 acres shown in blue on the screen can be ser could be and can be served by a regional basin identified in approximately where that uh red box is shown on the screen. This will greatly improves water management, subdivision design, and long-term maintenance efficiency. The next component studied within the master plan is housing diversity to provide a variety of housing to for all incomes and age levels within the city. This was further refined by reviewing market conditions, property owner feedback, and researching development trends and issues. The plan identifies areas for 165 and 55- ft single family lots and also identifies 45- ft small lot single family or town homes as an opportunity. So the concept plan on the screen, I'm just going to walk you through the colors since we did the in-depth dive at the previous council workshop. Uh it's colorcoded for recommended area and acreage for each category with the intent of providing 50% single family and 50% multifamily which is a guiding principle within the comprehensive plan. So the extreme light yellow on your

screen kind of in this general location and this location is identifying 100 ft lots. The vibrant yellow shown in a number of locations identifies more of a standard single fi single family lot along with some of the lighter orange color that can be seen throughout is a 55 ft which also pretty standard for a single family. And then you have this dark orange brown color uh which is identified as either a 45 foot minimum lot width or a town home. Town homes have traditionally represented multifamily within our goals for 50/50. that due to challenges within the industry on insurance costs, rising HOA costs, we're identifying some flexibility to provide that small lot uh single family, which I'll dive into a little more on the next slide. So, to further address the flexibility necessary for small widths, the plan recommends establishing a maximum sale price through the planned unit development. Uh and this would uh the goal would be to cap the uh all-in sale price between 110 and 120% of AMI. And then if town homes are delivered or lots over 50 or 50 ft or over, they would not be held to that price cap, but they would still need to meet the standard requirements and findings of fact for a planned unit development. I just want to comment that this is a really revolutionary idea and I'm sure we'll talk more about it, but um it's been a challenge that we've been dealing with for a long time and that is as we keep shrinking lot size, we're not finding housing that as we talked before, is it affordable housing or housing that's affordable? We'd like to make sure that we can offer housing that's affordable and this is one way to

do it. But in the past, as we've shrunk lots, uh houses maybe have not gotten cheaper. builders build houses based on the profit that they want to make. And uh they've got small lots and expensive homes on them. So this is a really revolutionary idea um to put a a price requirement on it for the exchange of getting a 45 foot lot. So I thank you for the innovation of offering that and look forward to seeing how all that comes to fruition. I just want to comment on that because it's an important one. Thanks.

Yes, great comments. Thank you. And then on the other end of the spectrum are the 100 foot lots on Dale Road that I just want to highlight really quickly here. Um it was identified in meeting with the property owners that they all have a variety of timing and development interests and it made sense to allow them to be separate to separately control what they wanted to do while creating value for their property as municipal services are available. Um, so additionally, the referenced BART engineering study highlighted the area shown in red as a high quality woodland area. So, keeping both of those comments in mind and creating value for the homeowners and respecting individual timing, the plan identifies establishing these 100 ft lots with private drives and retaining the existing homesteads while uh also facilitating an easement over the tree area for tree preservation and that open space.

Remind me what's nor directly north of that red box. Great question. Uh, Council Member Morris, that is Andy's Bark Park surrounds this area on both the north and on the east side as well. Okay. So, that's city property then. Correct. And Gina, if I remember correctly back when the circles are where there are existing homes and will remain there. That is correct. Throughout this concept document, you'll see a couple other circles of existing homesteads. Those are intended to remain based on our conversations with those property owners. Andy's Bark Park is large. Do we know the acreage of that? I I think we had looked previously is

60. I mean, it's a really good sized piece of open land that we keep available. It's awesome. The the the area the the road in to Andy's Bark Park, the the parcels left, which is where the community garden is, and the parcels right, that's farmed. But is that city property that we then sub the the farming out to that? Remind me that that's correct. We we own the property though essentially to this boundary where it becomes these properties off of Dale Court. Y um I have a better context map that I can show after the presentation if that's helpful as well.

All right. The next component we reviewed within the plan was uh to enhance the park and open space network. The plan establishes two greenways. One that's east west connects to Woodbury Drive and one that also would run north south uh to future development area or urban reserve and then all the way up to our next uh phase for development. So, extending that um and providing an opportunity for a neighborhood park in one of two locations, which are what the two stars are. Not two parks, just one of two locations. Parks 110. Oh, here we go. Six plus.

Great. Put that in the memory bank, Eric. Been a trivia question.

Yeah, because we're so good at trivia trivia. Thank you. Move on. All right, the final uh main component studied are the street and trail connections. The graphic on the screen highlights the attention to detail for future trails uh in blue connecting to existing or planned trails shown in red on the screen. Further review was completed to ensure that future neighborhood streets are interconnected to existing while still maintaining access management spacing requirements and connections to each individual parcel. As we stated, there's 19 different property owners. So, making sure that we're accounting for development if those uh people want that. All right. and staff has engaged with the property owners within the plan area, including two formal uh property owner meetings uh and over 20 individual property over meetings with multiple people at the same time, sometimes multiple meetings with the same group. Um and we also held a neighborhood meeting for those surrounding the plan area to inform them that this was coming. This is a future phase. This is kind of what it's shaping up to look like. but also that there would be future process on these uh subdivision requests. And at the planning commission meeting on May 4th, planning commission recommended approval with a 6 to zero vote. And with that, staff recommends council approve resolution 26-63 adopting the Cottage Grove Drive master plan. And we have planning commission liaison here for the planning commission report. And this is uh Commissioner Marshian Kennedy. Welcome, Commissioner Kennedy. It's good to see you back again. Thank you, Mayor P. Council members, staff.

We did um meet on May 4th about this particular project and we did approve it um unanimously. Some of the discussion that was um involved in that did uh uh include the retention of trees, especially along Andy's Bark Park. if that would were to be um moved or paved. I know that council member Stafford Stafford and others asked about paving some of the dirt roads that were that lead up in into that. And as um one who has a garden um Yeah. It's a slow grow so that the the car still gets dirty no matter what you do.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that was that's interesting. But but the council the commission was um focused on making sure those those trees are retained or moved or shifted. And so there's there's a plan for that if that should happen. Staff was able to answer that especially all of these questions. um the storm water management is located on one particular property and so commission was um interested to make sure that the owner had given approval for that and not only approval I think staff was able to to share that that not only approval but but was um welcoming the that basin on her property. They probably can explain more about that. Um then the the focus also two a couple of other things. The karst um topology there are shallow areas of this project and so um the soil boring is one thing that staff is focused on also doing and especially informing future buyers about the shallow shallowess of that property. Um there are some I don't know if you have that slide but there are some areas in the project especially in the central part of that that are um a bit shallow.

Can you just say the implication of that then? Is it Yeah, additional um soil borings could be necessary. It could also lead to not being able to create basement. So you're having more of a slab on grade product with some of the homes. Okay. because of water table or what's the boring rock? Oh, okay. Sorry. Shallow bed rock. Got it. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. And then one of the um uh one of the other major discussions was about the price cap for the for the property width especially the for 45 and to 55 foot um properties. And I think um after the discussion it was more um well understood that the price cap wasn't for qualifications for the purchasers but for the sellers and it only at the initial sales point of that particular uh house. So it was to incentivize the builders to offer a product um as Mr. Surls said uh in the commission meeting to incentivize them to offer a product at a different price point than is actually available now for that sized product. And I'll tell you, I just think that's terrific. Personally um and so the commission then um approved unanimously this project. Fantastic. Thank you. Um just in general, we have been large proponents council in general of doing these master plans when the the area of the land um allows for that. Um and just to make it just makes so much sense to plan for storm water and trails and roads and put it all together and the variety of housing. Again, we just saw in our survey how much it's appreciated for the variety of housing and here we go again. The housing diversity is very important and that's part of the entire plan. I do have a question for staff. Um, explain the storm water pond and the the desire or the confidence to have it all in one piece of property. How can you say more about that? Yeah. So, uh, Bar Engineering, uh, conducted a future environmental study of numerous areas throughout the community to identify whether our standard uh, basically development by development approach uh,

for storm water would be efficient, a regional or more of a hybrid approach. And they did this based on studying soils, studying topography, how you would get water to those locations. Um, as Commissioner Kennedy previously stated, this area does have a lot of that carst and the shallow bedrock that could cause issues to occur, creating larger size basins, different types of basins. And so this was really kind of keyed in on early. Um, and so we uh just approached the property owner just to see what her vision was for her property. And it does have a FEMA uh conveyance easement on the property. So, it already has um some restrictions. It conveys water from this general area through and then all the way to Woodbury Drive. And her desire was to keep it open, have an open feel. and she um appreciates the idea that it could become it would become city-owned with native plantings and it still maintains that open feel. She would still retain her homestead on the property, some land to if she wanted to develop in the future. So, it's it's kind of been a win-win um for all parties.

Okay, that's terrific. Good to hear. Yeah. Wow. Um council members, questions or comments regarding this project? I I would make a a a general comment overall and I think this is this and I was sad to see that she she left because our state senator was in the audience earlier tonight and this is one of those former for both Amanda both you're right former and current current state senator I didn't see him and and the point I'm trying to the point I want to make is is this is a a perfect example and staff I know has has testified many times in front of state you're part of the what's the goofy acronym group sensible land use coalition sluck. Sluck sluck. Sluck. Yes.

The sensible land use. And And this is this is another example here of Woodbury both leading but but doing what we say we want to do and putting our putting into action our our comprehensive plan. And part of this and part of the conversation that I know staff has had at the state level is that conversation of just because you can doesn't mean they will. And that's the point that the mayor was making of just because we make a smaller lot size doesn't mean they're going to make be affordable. This I think and and this is important and why I was hopeful that the senator would have been here and she'll probably hear the the comments here, but uh is allowing the city that this tool in our toolbox if used properly and used to do we can make these things and make these projects to fruition. We can can get the goals that I think a lot of we all share with that housing bill. But this is the example here of of fantastic staff leg work with the with council and and everybody making sure that we can do this and this is going to be great. But um yeah, I'm like I can't be happier couldn't be happier about this master plan.

Anybody else? Um could you just um the slide that talked about the AMI the 110 to the 120 in exchange for the 45 foot to 49 foot could you tell me what that price would be then yeah we had looked at that at the workshop and I believe that number currently for today's number with a few other circumstances is between 445,000 to 490 So, and so that's attainable. Yes.

Just want to be clear on the just want to be clear that we're I mean when we're talking about reducing the lot sizes to build houses that are attainable. We're talking 450 to $500,000 homes. Statistically, that's the area median and income. No, I understand. So I I I that freaks us all out. I understand what it is. I'm just pointing out that it it sounds great until you hear what it is. Okay. So um and so to be clear then the sale of the the original sale price has to be within that. Correct. And then after they purchase it, they can go ahead and make their upgrades. Correct.

And then turn around and sell it for whatever they want. Correct. Okay. And there is no income restriction on that. Correct. So a business or a millionaire could go in and purchase these homes, make improvements on it, and then turn around and sell it for a high price. Okay.

Okay. And then regarding the um high quality woodlands and the easement that we have over that, can you just explain to me what do we have an easement over their property to care for those trees? Is that what that would be? Uh it would be we would not care for them. The easement would memorialize um development couldn't occur on there. I think we would want to lay it out. So obviously home improvements could still occur and investment. Um but really making sure that the trees and the resources are are managed. Okay.

So I'm I'm going to make a comment and these are the same comments I made at the workshop regarding this. So it's not a surprise to anybody up here. Um, I think it's um a a great step to try to um come up with creative ideas to offer what is considered attainable housing. Um but I don't think that we have enough safeguards in place for uh for a 45 foot lot 44 five to give to give that variance to these people and the special uh and the and the special lot sizes. I don't think that we have enough in place to um make sure that that's going to happen and that it doesn't exceed.

Help me understand that. What do you mean safeguards in place? Well, so I you know I I remember when we started making our lot sizes smaller and the idea was that like as the mayor stated, the idea behind that was builders are going to come in and they're going to be able to build a less expensive home and in actuality what happened was they just built more they just built more homes. So So nice luxury items and things and amenities and things inside. Correct.

Correct. So, and so while we can cap the original sale price of the home, there's nothing to say that I'm going to u purchase this home for, let's just say, $450,000. So, that's your sale price. And then you're going to get u maybe hire your builder to do uh to finish off the basement or something or whatever if there's basements or put in higherend stuff. So there are ways around I can see ways around this and what we are end what we end up doing is not offering attainable housing but just offering builders an opportunity to build more houses and make more money and that's my concern. We have no um income requirements on it. We have no turnaround uh resale price on it and we have uh there's just too many

Well, it's private property. We can't well I okay so it is private property but whenever we give a variance and especially something this small we as a city have an opportunity to to make uh stipulations and controls over it like it or not we we do have that ability you think about a deed restriction say it again a deed restriction is that is it not talking about deed restrictions or anything else I I brought it up at the council meeting I was talking about at the workshop I I was talking about how Um, you know, there's no there are zero income requirements to purchase this home.

Okay. So, um, because it's a private transaction. Well, right. What the mayor Bert, help me out. I know you know. No, the point is it's not affordable housing. It's housing that's attempting to be affordable for the AMI. Well, but I mean

whenever we give restrictions, whenever we give variances, and I've said this before, we have the opportunity to come in and put some sort of restrictions on those on those homes. Now, whether it be understand they're selling and it's a private transaction, but in this case, I think we are cutting our lot size down. We have a city ordinance that says our standard lot size is 80 80 feet. We have decreased it to 65 ft. It didn't do anything. We're now decreasing it to 45 ft and it's not going to do anything except cause um close houses more money in the pockets of builders whether it be uh originally building or aftermarket um sale price. We do not have enough controls on it and maybe we can't. So if we can't then I uh will stick by my original statement in a workshop and says I don't like this idea. I think that we put too much in too much faith in the builders. Um, and not enough uh not enough common sense goes into knowing that they are not going to build something. Um,

do you have recommendations on I I guess okay if I agree with you, what's the recommendation for us to consider? Well, I think we talked about it at the workshop and I think I was pretty much shut down. I think that would have been it's a great time to like brainstorm some ideas on that. But it's out of it's I know I don't remember.

I know. Um I expressed the concerns at the workshop. I I um I I don't we're we are putting we are saying yes to 45 ft lots. Yes to a 110 to 120% of the AMI. So the homes will be 450 to 490,000. I think that's great. That's great. It's I don't think it's attainable for a lot of people. Um but so be it. Um we have nothing safeguarding. There are no income restrictions to purchasing these homes. There's uh it it's it's too willy-nilly for me. I made I made these legal legal way to do that.

I ma I made these Well, do we not make affordable housing someplace in Woodbury? Right. But this is not this is not affordable housing that definition. That doesn't mean that we have to go and give everybody what they want.

Just so just so we're clear, I made these concerns at a workshop. At the workshop would have been time to uh vet vet this out a tad bit more and have a brainstorming session. I I expressed at that time that I was not in favor of this for a number of reasons. One of them was the 45- foot lots with zero safeguards in place to to protect the affordable or attainable housing. There's nothing that says it's going to remain affordable or attainable. It's the original sale price and that's the only thing that makes it affordable or attainable. These are private transactions. I understand.

Um, Council Member Morris, I understand what a private transaction is. I've I've had a few in my life. I understand that. What I am saying is as we are a council, we are giving a variance to build a attainable housing and we are putting no safeguards in place to make sure that it remains attainable. We have no income limits. We have nothing. They can do buy it. Anyone can buy it, make improvements and turn around and sell it. Tell me what makes that attainable. We have this problem. What's our My question then is what's our authority to try to to govern private transactions?

We can't. But why would But why would we give this is my point? Why would we cram housing in to an area and give this in the hopes that somebody's going to do it? Why do we say yes to every time somebody wants something, we say yes to it. But so is that's my point. Is this not at least a better alternative than not having this type of restriction, having somebody come in offer a two to three acre lot of a home that's $2 million and then not have people possibly be able to move out of their homes.

I love how we go from one extreme 45 foot lots to two to three acre lots. There are some stuff in between. Well, but what I'm just saying is that, you know, it is like to me it's also a step like I I and again I was with you when we saw those numbers at the workshop where it was like that's a hard pill to swallow. like that's not a I agree like you know our notion of what we think is a reasonable price um is not those numbers you know but if that's what the the math does when you say you know you can put a bow on this and try to sell it to the public that this is considered affordable or attainable housing I don't know how I don't know how it is but the AMI is not a number that is made up

I Okay, Council Member Morris, I understand what the AMI is. I understand that it's a percentage. I understand that it is grounded in facts. Correct. We are here saying, do we want to put build 45 foot? Do we want to put houses on 45 foot lots and cap it atund what's a what's the 120% of the AMI in the in the original for the original sale price and that's it? Y that's the question that's at hand. That's the question in front of us. Yes. Yeah. And I'm saying that we as a council do not have to do that. Correct. Okay. We can say no to development because we can see that this is not something that is going to remain affordable or attainable very long. Well, we can't say no to development

and we also can't say whether or not that's the case. You know, typically when you're in a community, you don't always want to be the highest price of a, you know, Yes, I'm aware that, you know, I think there is when you build a community, there is some character and you know that seems to be maintained. Okay. If we say no to this master plan and we say this is a this is a an area this is 2 C 2D 2D. So this gets opened standard lots as defined in code right are a certain amount of uh housing units per acre. That would be the re that we would we would have to approve that because that's what code is. Correct. If if I have yet to see a development that ever comes in again,

I'm saying if we said no to this and we just said, "Here, here's the open land. Here it is. Here's the the housing code. Go ahead, knock yourself out. This is what you can build." They'll build the most units possible, a typical developer, but the most units possible is allowed by code. Those are not going to be anywhere near 110 or 120% AMI. Nowhere near it because our standard our standard lot by ordinance is going to be there. So, and keep in mind that these can be town homes. They're not necessarily single family homes. So, they could be one level.

The the chances of town homes going in, as was stated earlier, are are turning out to be minimal. The the HOAs the HOAs and the insurance on town homes are causing developers to not want to build these town homes. desirable product. That's up to them, not up to me. I understand they come in.

Okay. I've stated my objection. I cannot wait to see um the um builders come through with this. And I am hoping that everybody um that is using rosy colored glasses here and not um the crap glasses I'm looking through at this project. I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. and that these houses are going to sell for 450 and people are going to move in and and they're just going to live there and be happy and that they're not going to turn around and resell at market value. Um, which will be much higher because then it defeats the purpose of this project. So,

and as you get into the mortgage market, some mortgage companies, if they're families or individuals, require owner occupied. If it's investor, it's a whole different ballgame. So, we don't know who it's going to be yet. Correct. So, an investor could come in and purchase all these homes and rent them out.

Mayor and council just was going to mention you you kind of mentioned at the beginning this is an innovative idea. There's no guarantees it's going to work the way we want it to work, but at the end of the day, these lots are going to be smaller and they will be less expensive than a lot that's 65 ft. At the end of the day, there's a correlation there of they will be whether you want to say more affordable or less unaffordable, they will be that. I'm gonna push back on that be only because we tried that with uh all the new developments that go and we lowered our standard lot size from 80 feet to 60 feet and then 55 ft and we didn't see the house go down in price. They were just building that you can see a correlation with lot size for sure.

Yeah. And and this now has a restriction on Eric, will you remind me? We have and I just I can't remember if they're rental properties, but we had some properties from way back when that are like truly like affordable housing that have like a 25 year restriction. That's why I was asking like deed restrictions,

right? And that and is that uh owner based or those rental based of that restriction? The only ownership product that we have that has um restrictions is the habitat product and we do have a number of habitat that is an ownership product and those the value appreciation is restricted on those products. Um we had done a development a town home development in the early 2000s that had a point of sale requirement and had some affordability layered in for the buyer as well. um that was challenging to implement as well. All of this is challenging to implement. I think from a staff uh standpoint, the concept here is to explore the carrot approach with the development community. We certainly have some stick approaches that we can use as well, but this is an opportunity to call them a little bit on their narrative. And their narrative is is if you

reduce the lot size, everything will be cheaper. And council member Wilson is correct that we have heard that and we haven't seen it as tangibly as we wanted to. Our concept is let's make it tangible if this if this equals that and that's as tangible as it gets. That was our that's what our hope is to administrator's perspect our point. Time will tell how successful it is and and there will be opportunities for us to refine this as we get the players in the room to ultimately have this conversation. We are asking council to approve a framework with further information to come.

My last comment here is going to be this is the exact example of where um our land banking policy would memorialize that and and restrict its we can then we have every opportunity at that point to then restrict the the sale price or the the ceiling etc. So this is an example of where land banking would do almost exactly what you're asking for. Yeah. And I'm not for the city investing in land and land banking. That's not the city's responsibility. We shouldn't be building things to lease out. We shouldn't be holding property for future. That's just not how I You're advocating for us to do it to meddal in the private side.

No, I'm not asking us to meddle in anything. I'm saying I don't like this plan based on the 45 foot lots and the things that you're trying to put into place. Okay. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. And thank you very much for sharing your opinion. Okay. I'm Yeah. Where are we at? I make a motion. There we go. Turn on your mic, Donna. I'll make a motion to approve resolution 26-63, a resolution adopting Cottage Grove Drive master plan. Second. Motion a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Roll call, please. Council member Stafford, I. Council member Wilson, no. Council member Morris. Hi. Council member Santini. I.

Mayor Bert. I. That passes. We'll now move on to 8C. And by the way, tonight is the Jason show. We had Jason Newmire. We're going to have Jason Shermacher and the Jason Arsalt. Jason. Jason. Jason. Um this is uh the last topic in discussion is consider the approval of the issuance and sale of general obligation bonds. Welcome Jason. And then the other Jason when you're called up the other Jason. Thank you mayor. I just want to bring to your attention if you want things to get done, bring Jason's into the room. Okay, there you go. There you go.

So, I join you tonight to uh bring forward a resolution that will um authorize the city's finance division and the city's financial adviser, Ellers, to move forward with a June 24th um bond sale of general obligation sales tax revenue bonds. This bond sale is being done to as part of the financing plan for the city's uh public safety campus expansion project. Um joining us tonight is Jason Arzswv from the uh Ellers to go over the bond sale. Great. Welcome Jason to hear this.

Thank you mayor, members of the council and good evening again. Jason Arsald with Ellers. Good to see you all. Uh as Mr. Sheracher pointed out uh we are here to talk about a proposed bond issue of 41,295 uh for uh general obligation sales tax revenue bonds again to fund the uh police facility. uh you have authority to do this by virtue of your special legislation and sales tax uh uh that passed. And so that is how these bonds are being issued. Uh because the sales tax revenues are coming in a lot more uh aggressively than were originally projected, we're able to keep this down to a 10-year issue, 10 years of principal payments, roughly 11 years from the date of closing. So So that's good. And even with that, we anticipate those revenues are still going to exceed uh the debt service by by quite a bit. And so you'll see in the report here as well that there is a a call feature meaning that we can prepay the bonds after about seven years. So if we get to the point you know seven years down the road uh where there's enough uh collected then to you know repay the rest of the bonds we can do that. We can do that at at year seven effectively. Uh we will have the bonds rated as is indicated here and as as has been the case in the past for all of your debt. You do carry a AAA rating with standard and pores which again is the highest rating that's available. uh no reason to expect that that would change, but we'll work to uh schedule that or have that call scheduled actually with them already and we'll have that discussion and a rating that will be assigned again to this bond issue as well. Um we generally and will again for this uh issue sell these on a competitive basis. So what that means is that we'll take bids in our office and uh effectively the lowest bidder for the for the debt will uh be the one that will be awarded. will come to you that evening with the recommendation and and uh the what that number looks like for that lowest bidder and then uh there will be a resolution awarding the sale of the bonds that evening as well. So uh I think those are the highlights. I'll stop with that. I'm happy to answer any other questions that you have about the sale.

I may have missed it but so we have today and then what's the timing for coming back? Right. Uh so we will uh have that rating call here. Uh that'll be kind of the next thing that happens. There is a schedule in the report here. Uh that'll be right away in June. Uh we will come back to you June 24th right now is is the current timeline that we'll take those bids in our office that evening then come back to you and ask you to consider awarding the sale. Okay, great. Questions or comments from anybody?

Motion pull it down up. I'll make a motion to adopt resolution 26-64, resolution providing for the issuance and sale of general obligation bonds, tax revenue bonds series 2026A in the proposed aggregate principal amount of 41,295,000. Second motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, the roll call, please. Council member Wilson, I. Council member Morris, I. Council member Santini, I. Council member Stafford, I. Mayor Bert, I. That resolution passes. We're just seeing you back here in a few weeks or at the end of next month. Okay. Staff reports. Commissioner or not commissioner, administrator, administrator.

Mayor, I don't respectfully I don't want to be a commissioner. Yeah. Okay.

Uh thank you, Mayor Bert. Uh a couple recognitions tonight and then a couple events coming up um in the near future. Uh some exciting recognitions. Central Park just the Central Park project uh recently won a award. Uh super excited about that. Um it was selected the the park project was selected by the MRPA which is the Minnesota recreation and park association won its award of excellence. This award is presented to the one project that best reflects innovation, creativity and forward thinking uh forward thinking ideas and work that ultimately helps shape future trends, introduces new approaches, resources and brings forward exciting concepts within the parks and recreation profession. Um, I was specifically impressed after hearing a little bit more about the award uh uh that the uh the collaboration that was needed for this project with the county um with the county library, the YMCA, Trulands uh school district uh that they recognized the collaboration and the partnerships involved in this really innovative uh project and all the funding sources that came with that too. Uh so major props to uh director Okada, her whole team, the organization, the council, and the community for really supporting that. And we needed everybody on that I just mentioned to support the project in order to make it happen. So we're going to uh have the team come to a future meeting and and they'll talk a little bit more about the re uh award. So way to go uh parks and recck and way to go Woodbury for a fantastic facility.

Yeah. Uh, next, uh, recognition. It's been a good week. Uh, we've, uh, recently been awarded the, uh, GFOA, which I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, Jason, uh, the Government Finance Officer Association. Sweet. uh the distinguished budget presentation award. Uh our budget presentation and the document uh that that is uh that that um uh encompasses all of the the budget work and all of our enterprise funds. Uh it's it's thick. There's a lot there, but there's intention and reason for that. Um, specifically, uh, the components of the budget document that really stood out to the, um, the committee were the overall the the summary, the budget summary, and all, believe it or not, all of the graphs and charts that we go through. They really do tell a story uh, about all of the enterprises, all of the revenues, all the expenditures coming in, and that leads to transparency and understanding to the public as well. So, kudos to our finance team. Uh I don't know uh how you know finance folks are are maybe a little bit less boisterous than parks and recck. So I don't know how we're going to celebrate and party if we're going to come to a meeting shortly. But no matter what throughout the budget process that's coming up, we'll make sure to uh recognize that and call it out. So props to uh uh direct uh um deputy city administrator Gorl and uh Jason and and their teams. Um, speaking of uh the GFOA award, um, one of the one of one of the most important members of that team is Michelle Keer. Um, so this recognition is for her as well, but also she's just, uh, uh, sent her uh, retirement notice. So, we're going to be looking for another member of that team, but kudos to her. Uh, she served us for four years

as our our budget co-zar along with uh, Lynn Hley. Um, so this is an appropriate award that we just received to honor uh Michelle's competency um her motivation, her creativity, and her overall overall smarts in leading that project or process. Addition, I want to uh recognize Scott Richardson. Uh he's our current building official. He's been with the organization for 25 years. Uh he is retiring at the end of this week. we really appreciate his service. Uh our building department um is really known for their customer first approach and their responsiveness. Um so really want to commend him for just building a great team, putting customers and our residents first and you know most of leading is about getting the right people in the right place and hiring the right talent. He's done a great job doing that. So uh we're going to celebrate him tomorrow uh here at city hall. But thanks Scott for all your your service in the community. Um lastly, two events. Want to reminder give a reminder of the Upper Afton Fire Station open house tomorrow. That's between 5 and 7:30 at the Upper Aftton station. Come. It's it's open to everybody. Come one, come all. Uh we'll have the fire trucks out. There'll be some activities for uh family-friendly activities. And more importantly, we're going to be able to showcase and highlight the the improvements that have been made in order to have a presence in that part of town and also have a presence in the entire community uh with our new staffing schedule so we can respond uh and have even better service um and and keep that moving forward. Um, lastly, May 27th, just kind of a reminder to the council and for the community, um, prior to the workshop, which is going to start a little bit

later, uh, we're going to be at the miracle field, um, for their league opening, and I believe uh, Mayor Prom, CH, Council Member Jennifer Santini is going to be storing the first in the sports center is my understanding. Yes, thank you for that. It will be

actually not at the field. It's at the sports center. And I believe you've been practicing for the ceremonial first pitch as well. So high expectations there. Uh looking forward to that. But so we'll start the workshop a little bit later. So, uh, for council members that are able to attend, they can attend at, um, at the, um, it's going to be at the sports center, but we will be showcasing and talking about the Rotary's uh, contribution to make more shade structurers at the facility uh, to help with the whole um, um, um, viewer experience for people that are watching because it's pretty there's not a lot of trees out there, so that the shade is welcome. So,

thanks to the Ro Rotary for that. Speaking of your experience, the wild game is still out. Let's go. That's it. Council member noticed the guys that they're winning. So, we'll see if they still are. It was three to one after two periods. I don't know. Just one question. Just quick, is the community survey out on our city website? Question. It it is just by fact of it being on the uh in the council agenda, but we don't have it posted on our website someplace. Uh that's a great question for uh Miss Schaefer. Yes, this is council uh councilwoman. Sorry, it's okay. Just Kim tomorrow. It's uh scheduled to go tomorrow with the survey and the PowerPoint and um we have a one pager that we put together as well.

But the entire survey will be out on the city website tomorrow. Perfect. Thank you. Great. And just one more important thing, Steve mentioned this. I'm glad you were thinking about it. Memorial Day service here. Oh yeah. 11 o'clock on Monday, Memorial Day at the Veterans Memorial right here in Woodbury. It's always a lovely, lovely ceremony. They do a beautiful job. So, welcome. Everyone's welcome to attend. And there's usually free Culver's ice cream, custard, frozen custard at it. So, please that's our staff cleaning it today. So, it's going to look beautiful. That's great. Cleaning the Culver's machine. Um, all right. That wraps up our meeting. So, I make a motion that we adjourn the meeting. Motion second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? I I uh we are adjourned.