The Eagan City Council held a special meeting on September 9, 2025, starting at 5:30 PM and lasting over four hours. The meeting covered four major agenda items: a presentation on the year-long Community Conversations series, a joint meeting with the Advisory Planning Commission (APC) to discuss the 2026 work plan and religious land use zoning, a review of cannabis policies and retail registration caps, and an initial discussion of the 2050 Comprehensive Plan. Each item included staff presentations, council discussion, and policy direction.
All right. Uh, we're gonna start the meeting that the mayor is running a little bit late. So I'm gonna start with roll call on adoption. Can I get a motion on adopting the agenda? I'll move to approve the agenda. All in favor? Good job. Any visitors to be heard. Seeing none. The next one we have is a community conversation summary report and presentation. I'll turn that over to Sarah. Thanks, Sarah. I will shortly be turning this presentation over to our wonderful facilitators. Um we have here Robin and Paula from the Finding Human Institute. And pride in the past year, I think we've accomplished something really special. Um we have community members here in the audience to attest to the fact that I think this was a powerful experience and lots of hope for for continuing to stay in connection. Um contact with each other. I've been running around to the printer, so I'm trying to catch my breath. Um to to wrap up um this preliminary series. She has been uh my key co-partner and collaborator. Um we've been a little project team of four um over the past year. Um and uh something's going on. Thank you. Um so as you know, we've we've visited um before Robin and Paula have been here twice before to give you updates on the series of community conversations. Um this is work that really emerged from our race equity initiative as a city. So we had spent a year, 18 months studying um the data. What did the data tell us about disparities in our community? How are they showing up in wealth, income, graduation rates, home ownership? Um, and so we knew that there are disparities based on race that exist and persist in this community. Um, but we didn't know what that meant for the lived experience. What does that mean for the people who are living here and working here, going to school here? Um the only way to find out is through conversations. So we wanted to build relationships, ask those questions, and also really work together with community to discover um what it takes to thrive here. Um so asking questions of times when you have thrived. What did that look like? What was going into it? Um, and then what are the things that got in the way? What can each of us do, and then what do you need from the city? We have uh some testimonials from participants in their own words, some of whom are in the room today and may feel surprised to see themselves. Um some really really beautiful words. Turn it over to them. And impressed that they were taking this initiative at the city level um as an official stance to have these conversations and be more inclusive and um taking into consideration all the residents or people who work or visit in Egan. So I was pleased that I live in such a city taking this kind of initiative. We all talked about the fact that we were um pleased and delighted that Egan is doing this. I mean, it doesn't happen all over. So the fact that Egan is asking for our ideas was very good. This experience overall has been uh very revealing. I'm learning things about myself, learning things about other people, and meeting new people as well, and you are able to connect outside of the meeting. Then now you see that person at the grocery store, and you're like, oh hi, how are you? I saw you at this like cafe, because I've had multiple people come up to me at places and be like, Oh, how are you?