Speaker numbers apply only to this recording. Names come from transcript evidence. “Possibly” marks uncertain attribution.
The Edina City Council met on Tuesday, May 5, 2026, at 7:01 PM in the Edina City Hall Council Chambers. Mayor Havlin presided, and all council members were present. The meeting agenda was amended to move Special Recognitions before the Consent Agenda. The meeting adjourned at 10:32 PM.
All right, here we go. Well, good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Adina City Council meeting on May 5th, 2026. It is 7.01 p.m. And uh as Director Benarott indicated to uh those of you in the audience, uh, we're doing this on a these meetings on a hybrid sort of basis. We have been doing it since uh COVID started since the pandemic started, and continue that practice. People might be watching uh online. If there were public hearings tonight, they could call in for that, but they can still call in if they want to address the council on a matter of concern to them under committee comment that's not on the agenda or scheduled for a future public hearing, so keep that in mind as you get up to give your remarks, whether you're gonna give them uh virtually to us or you are here in the um in the chambers with us this evening. Uh having provided information, I'm gonna call the meeting to order and ask our clerk Sharon Ellison to call the role of the council. Councilmember Agnean here, Councilmember Jackson here, Councilmember Pierce. Here, Councilmember Risser, here Mayor Havlin. Here. Uh next folks is the Pledge of Allegiance. Of the United States and America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation on the guard, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thanks, everybody. Um, our meeting agenda this evening was pre-published. We've got a little change we're gonna make here this evening. We're gonna switch, we're gonna propose switching um uh section six and section seven. So we would move the adoption of the consent agenda behind special recognition and presentations. We've got four of those this evening, and we want to make sure those folks have a chance to uh make those presentations and accept in some cases accept awards. And so uh I'm gonna ask if there is a uh motion to adopt the uh city council meeting agenda for this May 5, 2026 in its amended form, switching sections six and seven uh in the agenda. So moved. Second, we've got a motion by member Jackson, second by member Pierce to adopt the uh city council meeting agenda in its amended form, switching sections six and seven, putting special recognitions and presentations before the consent portion of the agenda. Any further discussion? All those in favor of adoption of the motion of stated say aye. Aye. Aye, opposed, carried. Uh and then we are now at community comment. Um if there's anyone in the audience who wishes to address the council on a matter of concern to them, feel free to come forward. Um folks are here on a regular basis and know the three-minute rule. You'll get a yellow warning light when you got 30 seconds left, and you should be thinking about wrapping up your comments. Mayor, council members, my name is Ralph Sickert. Mayor Hovlin, at the 21 minute, 45 second mark of the April 21st council meeting, you and Manager Neal claimed Adina's long-standing triple A bond rating refutes my statement made during community comment earlier that evening, i.e., that a resident's perspective of the 2026 budget was unsound and unsustainable, and therefore the council deserved a grade of F minus. Yes, Mayor. Adina's bonds are rated triple A. And yes, Moody's is staffed by experts. However, the litmus test, those experts use is this. Moody's rating represents the probability of default and the expected severity of loss given a default. Moody's rating is based on the likelihood of Adina not being able to pay its borrowed debt obligations based on Adina's taxing capacity. For reference, a quick Google search. Of Minnesota Cities shows the following. Minneapolis, a city eight times Adina's population and with only four times Adina's taxing capacity, also has a triple A bond rating. Similar story for the other cities on this short list. All Adina's triple A bond rating reveals is that Adina doesn't carry a lot of debt in relation to how much it could carry. So sorry, Mayor, Adina's high real estate values, not Adina's fiscal management, is the reason for our triple A bond rating. The council's poor budget performance has nothing to do with Moody's rating. Rather, your well-deserved F-is based on the $1 million added to residence utility bills, the $586,000 added ahead of a county's tax levy, and the 1.8 million dollars deferred to future years, all three of which were promoted by this council as 2026 cuts to spending.