The Climate and Infrastructure Committee convened on September 18, 2025, to review consent agenda items, hold public hearings on assessments and service districts, and discuss franchise fee updates. The meeting included approvals for routine matters, supportive testimony for the Downtown Improvement District, concerns about special service district effectiveness, and deliberations on increasing climate funding.
Good afternoon and welcome to the regular meeting of the Climate and Infrastructure Committee for September 18th, 2025. I'm Katie Cashman, chair of this committee. Before we call the meeting to order, I want to offer a friendly reminder to all the members, community members, and uh staff members that these meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation. Please keep your speech at a moderated rate so that the captioners can fully transcribe all of the comments for the broadcast. Thank you. At this time, we'll ask the clerk to call the roll to verify quorum. Councilmember Rainfall is absent. Vita? Present. Osman is absent. Chavez, present. Vice Chair Koske. Present. Chair Cashman. Present. We have four present. Thank you. Let the record reflect we have a quorum. And if you're here for any of the first four public hearing items, please go over to see Clerk Michael to sign up if you'd like to speak. All right. And then as a reminder for committee members, we'll be using speaker management, so please sign in. We'll start with the consent agenda. Items five through eleven. Item five is authorizing a cooperative agreement with the Department of Transportation for the 26th Street and Hiawatha Safety Improvement Project. Item six is approving an event permit for dinner dinner during Nord event on Nicolette Mall. Item seven is authorizing a utility easement with the park and recreation board for 53rd and York Avenue South Flood Project. Item eight is approving the concept layout for phase two of the Upper Harbor Terminal West River Parkway Project. Item nine is authorizing a contract extension with various community organizations for stormwater, wastewater, and community resilience planning grant. Item 10 is approving a legislative directive related to the city's recycling rates. Item 11 is amending a resolution passed on June 18th for the Lake Harriet Parkway Paving Project to update wording related to the minimum design standards and the project road stations. Colleagues, is there any discussion on the consent agenda or items that you'd like to pull for discussion? Councilmember Chavez. I have some questions. Okay, we'll pull item six out. Any other items that folks would like to discuss. Seeing none, I will move approval of items five, seven, eight, nine, ten, and eleven. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Any abstentions? Those items carry. And then I think we can take up a couple of questions on item number six before we move into our public hearing. Um, this is the Dinner Do Nord commercial block event permit, which took place last week. I did have a chance to connect with some city staff just to ask about what was all included in the permitting because I do know that they go through several several items to make sure that they're getting um all their permitting done and even liquor licenses and and sound permits and everything that was involved in that. So planning to hear back from DCO uh Jelly in the next couple of weeks about what could be streamlined for permitting such large-scale events in the future. So I wanted to let you know of that. Um, and with that, I'll uh recognize Councilmember Chavez. Uh yeah, thank you for that overview, Chair Cashman, and that's helpful background. My questions are more for staff about the event. I would love to know how much public funding went into uh this event.