The Rochester City Council met on February 3, 2025, at 6:00 p.m. for a regular session. The agenda included a consent calendar, public hearings, reports and recommendations on the Chateau Theater operating agreement and the Regional Sports and Recreation Complex, a zoning ordinance second reading, and other business. Key decisions included approving a site purchase and outdoor-first phase for the sports complex, extending the Chateau Theater operator agreement, and accepting a state grant for lead service line replacement.
Wouldn't you want me to counter down for you? Recording in progress. Please rise as you're able to uh do the pledge of leaders. I probably just to the United States of America. Liberty and justice for all. Thank you, and welcome to our February 3rd, two uh 2025 City Council meeting. Uh uh we begin every meeting with our open comment period, and I've got a list of uh at least eleven names here uh just to go through our rules for open comment. Uh it's an opportunity for for anyone from the public to speak on items that we will not be having a public hearing on uh during the later parts of our agenda. Each person has up to two minutes to speak for a total of 20 minutes. If we go over that 20 minutes, I will ask our our council if they'd like to uh suspend the rules to uh to extend that period. Um but because of the limited time, we want to make sure that uh everybody has an opportunity to speak. I'd request that each speaker uh be concise to allow more people to speak during this time. And uh participants are also encouraged to limit comments generally to topics that are within the scope and jurisdiction of the council's ability to affect policy. Council members and staff do not respond to your comments during public comment, but will instead follow up on any specific requests separately. If you have materials to share with the council, you may give them to the city clerk over here to distribute. And uh when you come to the podium, please state your name clearly and make sure that the so that uh the clerk has your information if you do need um follow-up. So with that, I will uh start with our list and the first one up is Judy Young. Yep, come up come up to the speaker and then here's the the timer right here. It'll give you a warning about a minute before you supposed to wrap up. And I live in ward one. Um I am on a number of disability advocacy groups, including the Region 10 Quality Council. And very important to the city of Rochester, the cross disability focus group. Um we had a meeting today from one to two thirty and it came to our attention about the regional complex and our concern that doing phase one when the community engagement uh surveys indicated um indoor facility, you know, would be uh what the community wants by doing outdoor, we're eliminating uh many disability activities, especially for uh special Olympics. We need cornhole space, which is now a sport. We have 50 to 60 athletes throwing um corn hole bags at chip shots, and it doesn't go real well. Um so we just would like you to um take a look at that uh the data you have, and maybe give um disability groups a little explanation of why that change happened. Um, the other thing is I noticed in the final report uh for the complex is that many groups were asked. Um there were uh IMAA, Islamic group, uh different youth groups. There was no disability group. We noticed that was not asked. There are several disability groups. There's a SAM group, there's Regent 10 Quality Council, there's um, you know, ARC, Southeast Minnesota that could have been invited to give their input. So we asked that in the future that you don't forget about those. And um, I'm on several of those, so and then my son Rob uh is here, and he just would like to. This is quite the experience. He would just like to say hi, and he's one of those Special Olympics that's gonna represent Team Minnesota in the USA games that are in Minneapolis next year. Thank you. Thank you. Um I know that uh Judy did give a very impassioned speech. Uh going forward, please let's refrain from uh applause during public comment. Uh that will just give us more time for others to speak. So thank you. Um moving on to uh Bree Thermos. Bree. I I think it's Bill. Oh, I'm sorry, Bill Thermos. Is that you up here? Sorry, Bill. It looked like B-R-E-E instead of B I L L. It's my penmanship.