I currently have a public battery.

I remember that.

But it just takes a while.

Recording in progress.

Please rise as you're able for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Under God and justice for all.

Thank you, and welcome to our August 18th Rochester City Council meeting.

This is an opportunity for everyone, uh anyone from the public to speak on items that we will not be taking public testimony during during a public hearing later in the agenda.

Each person has up to two minutes to speak for a total of 20 minutes.

One is the uh the stoplight here and then the red uh timer clock up there.

Uh I'd request that speakers be concise to allow more people to speak during the designated time.

And you are also uh 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 uh instead will follow up on any specific requests that you have.

If you have any materials to share with the council, you may give them to the city clerk who is to our right here, my right, uh, to distribute.

Um you will be invited up to speak in the order that you signed up.

And we will start uh this evening with Casey McGregor.

Please state your name, and then Casey, if you could also push the um the button to turn on the mic.

There you go.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council Casey McGregor.

The City Council should demand that Mayor Norton, for as long as she may wish to remain mayor, may not be involved with or be involved with through her husband, Randy Stone, the Dark Money Group Indivisible 507, which calls for retaliatory boycotts against businesses, including the mayor's political critics.

Randy Stone being on the board of this infamous dark money group, Indivisible 507 is unacceptable and presents a terrible conflict in the interests and potential for the abuse of power that should be investigated by the city council to avoid liability and violations of law.

J1 removing the judicial branch involvement as first step of enforcement.

This is unquestionably the shrinking of due process rights.

Again, unquestionably shrinking due process rights.

Very significant fines and penalties will be able to be handed out based upon one person's judgment or caprice, and the recourse for the affected business would be having to come before the body, the city council, with the burden of having to prove the city's agent was wrong or malicious.

Regulations and training of inspectors and city enforcements should be reviewed and considered prior to arming them with potent new weapons with a high potential for abuse.

F7 creating a broker for the city property removes control of a massive part of the city's finances from direct public oversight and control.

This kind of thing avoids oversight and has massive potential for corruption and abuse.

Thank you, Miss McGregor.

Ms.

McGregor, your time has the packet.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up we have Molly Dennis.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for the two minutes.

A month.

As I think the residents' voices are very important.

I moved here in Rochester in 2007.

So close to 20 years ago.

And I'm proud to say Rochester is my permanent home forever.

I'm so I'm a very concerned citizen.

And want to say that I believe that due process, transparency are both needed tremendously for government accountability.

So for all of up on the diet, I hope that those two issues are taken very seriously.

So I just wanted to put a friendly reminder that the trees that were promised to be replanted out in the parking lot have not been so and seem to be put grass over.

So that's something that was maybe overlooked.

And then parking spots, you hear the commercials.

I say there's 5,000 parking spots downtown.

However, I do not believe there's anywhere close to that of accessible parking spots.

And so I would hope someone from city staff could get back to me and other residents who are curious on how many accessible parking spots are downtown Rochester.

So if those two issues could be addressed, the trees and the parking, that would be wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

That's all I have on the sign-up sheet.

If there are others who wish to be uh heard, uh and Mr.

Cresel, we do you have you down for H1.

Oh, you have F eight.

Okay, go ahead, Mr.

Cresel.

Mr.

President, members of the council, Madam Mayor.

Thank you for this opportunity to address you.

With regards to H1, namely updates via city staff and DMC personnel.

This is citizens of Rochester do not feel their voices and opinions are heard.

People outside looking in here from DMC board personnel that metrics indicate that such efforts are providing anticipated results.

Visitors and citizens of Rochester feel otherwise.

A hearing with regards to such findings could provide a better buy-in on the part of citizens.

That transparency is so important.

Well, then people need to be invited to the table at a hearing and not a consent agenda item.

To be able to be available on the heard on the front side.

That's why so few personnel show up at city council meetings.

They feel as though it's a waste of time.

With regards to F8 as to how to improve the economy of Rochester, must require robust community involvement by store owners as well as those most affected.

And not to invite only a select few to speak for the citizens of Rochester.

So if you're going to ask me, how do we increase vitality?

It's a no-brainer.

You know, the peace plaza didn't work.

Millions of dollars wasted.

That's my opinion, and those of the citizens of Rochester.

It's a no-brainer to restore the Chateau Theater.

I think we've got one movie house open yet.

Let's totally restore the Chapel Theater and have something we can be proud of.

That said, I would also encourage the council to acquire Jan Daly's property and put the clock tower there and turn it into an inviting.

Thank you, thank you very much.

Anyone else who wished wishes to be heard during open comment period.

Seeing none, uh, we will close open comment period and uh clerk Caso.

Can you call the roll?

Good evening.

Councilmember Keene.

Here.

Councilmember Miller.

Here.

Councilmember Wall.

Here.

Councilmember Fredericks.

Councilmember Palmer.

Councilmember Doring.

Here.

Council President Schubring.

Here.

Mayor Norton.

Present.

Thank you.

Next up we have the City Administrators Report.

Administrators Elms.

Thank you, Council President, Councilmembers, Mayor Norton, members of the public.

I always start this off by thanking our city teammates for acting with respect, integrity, safety, and excellence, and everything that they do.

So thank you for that.

Also did want to highlight a couple of things happening in the next few weeks.

11 a.m.

to 12 p.m.

on August 30th.

That's a Saturday at Cook Park 227th Avenue Northwest.

There will be an opportunity to share your gardens, garden goods with each other if you have too many uh cucumbers and tomatoes.

Head on out to Cook Park on that day.

Um that's hosted by the library, but in one of our important public parks.

Also did just want to point out another goodness.

I'm clicking too fast.

Another opportunity to engage with community public music has their forward concert series coming to Cook Park, 5 30 to 8 p.m.

on Wednesday, August 27th.

Space Monkey Mafia with the reach outs will be coming.

If you Google that, it looks very exciting.

And please come prepared with your picnic baskets, coolers, et cetera.

We want you to have a good time.

Everybody's welcome.

Another opportunity for the public music department and parks to work together, and that will be in Ward 5.

Public parking, we have some upgrades coming, new technology and equipment coming to the parking ramps.

So it'll provide you some contactless payment options, mobile payment convenience, unified hotel parking, upgraded cards, and some other smart support features.

So hopefully to have an even better experience for folks in our parking ramps.

So we have that to look forward to.

This uh Monday, August 25th, this coming Monday, 6 to 8 p.m., the Argentine Tango will be featured.

So if that's something you don't know how to do or you do know how to do, um, you are welcome.

It is uh free group dance lessons provided by um the Rochester Downtown Authority.

And that's all I have.

And Councilmember Wall, just uh inform me that the ward three forward concert is tomorrow night.

Is that in White Oaks Park?

White Oaks Park.

Or yeah, Wednesday, excuse me.

Wednesday.

Moving on with the mayor's report.

Mayor Norton, go ahead.

Wonderful, thank you so much.

I'm gonna see if I can get my clicker to work here.

There we go.

So we have a kind of an unusual start uh to the mayor's comments, but I'm very excited to invite to the podium Mr.

Paul Regatz, representative representative of employer support for the garden reserve, and uh Sergeant First Class Siegenthaler as well.

And so if the two of you could go up to the podium and Mr.

Regatz is going to make some comments.

Welcome.

Thank you very much.

It's an honor and a pleasure to be here.

My name is Paul Raggetz.

I'm with the ESGR, the employer support of Garden Reserve, and I have the pleasure today to present the award, the above and beyond award to the City of Rochester and Mayor Norton.

This began when Staff Sergeant Siegenthaler put in our entry-level award called the Patriot Award for his employer, Matt Crawford Infrastructure Manager.

And even though I won't read his whole narration, it's all based on how well Staff Sergeant Siegenthaler is treated by his frontline superior because of the time that he is off and be has to take off as a member of the Army National Guard.

So let's say Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, Coast Guard.

There's about a hundred Patriot Awards that are uh presented every year.

And out of that, the committee then picks 15% of who goes literally above and beyond for this award.

And I'll just read you the description of the award.

The ESGR above and beyond award is presented by the ESGR state committees.

This is a we're a federal organization.

Each state has their own to recognize employers at the local level.

We've gone above and beyond the legal requirements of the Uniform Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, something that started back during the Vietnam era to defeat discrimination against any soldier, sailor, or marine.

And then this is the positive side for those who go again above and beyond by providing their garden reserve employees additional non-mandated benefits such as differential or full pay to offset lost wages, extended health benefits, and other similar benefits.

The award is given in limited numbers by state committees to employers who have had at least one of their supervisors, managers recognized with the Patriot Award, as Mr.

Crawford was, and who have signed or agree to sign the ESGR statement of support, which Mayor Norton has already done.

Basically signing something that says I'm going to keep doing, or my company, in this case the City of Rochester, doing what we're doing in terms of our soldiers and sailors.

State committees are authorized maximum discretion in considering an above and beyond award for Patriot Award nominations of smaller firms.

Those with no individual supervisor specific specified and other similar similar situations.

So every Patriot Award is basically granted and presented.

But to receive the above and beyond, you have to be literally a superior employer in the eyes of the ESGR and of course our uh uh service members.

So I'd like to present this to the mayor.

We already got our pictures in, so we're all set.

And I want to thank Staff Sergeant Siegenthaler for everything he does and his service and as far as it recognized him for this program.

So thank you very much.

And while um I brought this forward, it really is an honor um to have been honored and recognized by Sergeant Siegenthaler, and I appreciate Mr.

Regat's uh willingness to come here and and offer the award.

And so the the statement of support I'm gonna hand off after the meeting to our city administrator, HR, and public works because it is their support that allowed us to get this, and and we really appreciate um the recognition and thank you so much for that.

So I did tell you they could leave if they want and not stay through our whole meeting, but thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So next up on my little I need my monthly report um about the Rochester Visioning uh uh information, and this month I've selected housing.

Um, and so I'm just gonna give you the top four or five housing topics that came up in the Rochester Visioning comments.

Um affordable housing for low-income residents had um one of the highest number of responses in the entire survey.

And again, I want to remind you that this wasn't select one of these things, this was open-ended.

What do you think we need to be dealing with in Rochester over the next 10 or 20 years?

And affordable housing and education were the top two.

So this came up independently.

Um focus is needed for more affordable options, particularly for low-income individuals and families, and the role of city planning and public investment.

Um, another highlight was homelessness and general affordability crisis, emphasizing they emphasized rising costs, homelessness, and the lack of affordable housing for all residents.

Comments surrounded the growth of homelessness in Rochester, especially as seen downtown.

Umpartment development and neighborhood quality was mentioned.

Comments addressed the types and locations of new developments, often critiquing luxury buildings and supporting community-friendly apartments.

And again, it came back to a perception that we're building housing for people who can already afford housing and not enough for those who cannot.

Um, family and multi-unit housing needs came up, concerns around housing for families, availability of single-family homes, and the cost of rentals.

Many of the comments are asking for affordable singly single-family homes, larger housing units, and multi-bedroom rentals.

And lastly, I believe, not there's two more, repurposing and innovation, and they said creative or alternative housing solutions, such as converting underused properties like hotels into housing units.

And the last one is rent control and home ownership support.

Many comments push for policy ideas like rent stabilization and supporting first-time home buyers or reducing barriers to ownership.

Assistant needs to be given to people who need it.

So that's this month's highlight of the Rochester visiting uh data that we got back from our residents, and we're about halfway through that packet, and our summer intern has prepared packets for each of you, which I have in my office, and I'll get them to you.

Um, I wanted to make an announcement, and there's a QR code.

I don't know if this will work with the letter that thank you.

Um, if anyone wants to use it here or um online, uh Royce is the Rochester Homestead Youth Council participants, um, learn about local government, city and county in particular.

They need to be between 14 and 20 years of age, and they need to reside in Omstead County.

Um and we are really looking for youth who are passionate about their voices being heard and about really learning about local government.

Um the group we had last year had several youth join us on our um sister city trip to Japan, and they will come present to you in an upcoming meeting.

And I will say they represented us well when we were at our sister city.

Both of them made comments, which uh were were lovely and well thought out.

So I appreciated their passion, and hopefully they'll be able to do that in front of you as well.

Um they do many activities every year uh in the community, including they were just at back to school day this last weekend.

Um of the things you guys have asked for is a little bit of information about RPD and what they're up to.

So I thought I'd let you know that four members of RPD made the Office of Traffic Safety's DWI enforcer all-star team for their exceptional efforts to stop impaired driving.

We have had someone on that list for years.

We tend to be um we have a couple of folks that really work hard on that.

So um conglo congratulations to Officer Barsh, Christensen, Ulrich, and Fitzgerald for their efforts.

Uh combined, the four of them made more than 230 DUI arrests last year.

And uh the final safe city nights of the season wrapped up last week at Franklin Elementary.

And over the summer, they're estimating 5,000 people went to the four events across Rochester, which is a great turnout, and really works toward their community policing efforts.

And I want to thank the council.

Um showed up for some or all of those, and I know that's much appreciated by RPD.

Uh since launching it, it has become kind of a favorite for communities and many families come, and I'm always amazed by how many of our older generation come uh to the events.

It's not just families and kids, it's really across the spectrum.

Um we had that.

I wanted to let you know that I did go to the mayor's innovation uh project and the themes this year.

Uh they had a uh couple day meeting, uh, and it was uh the right response at the right time, rethinking public safety, protecting rights, strengthening cities, and upholding democracy, hotter days, smarter ways, innovations and stra and strategies for heat resilience in cities.

Of course, we were in Albuquerque.

Um meeting the moment, mayor-led strategies for addressing homelessness, and then we had a city tour of their public safety, which is a community they have a policing, they have policing and they also have community uh safety officers as well.

And so we got to tour the facilities and learn about how those two groups work together and visit a homeless shelter as well.

So it was uh very valuable couple days.

Um, and uh just wanted to share that with you, and that's the end of my report.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for allowing me those few minutes early on to recognize the city for much appreciated that you gave it the attention that it needed.

Uh next up, uh we have our order of the agenda.

Are there any changes to the agenda?

Seeing none, is there a motion?

I'll move to approve.

Moved by councilmember Keene.

Second.

Seconded by Councilmember Doring.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed say nay.

Uh moving on to our consent agenda.

Uh Councilmember Palmer has pulled item F3, and Councilmember Fredericks has pulled item F8.

Is there any other uh items pulled?

If not, uh I'd invite a motion to approve and block items F1 and F2, F4 through F7 and F9.

So moved.

Move by Councilmember Miller, seconded by Councilmember Fredericks.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed say nay.

Moving on to our public hearings.

We have two public hearings on our agenda tonight.

Uh before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to clarify the process for public hearings.

Uh staff will introduce uh or or present the item.

And then if there is an applicant or an applicant representative, they will have up to 10 minutes to discuss the item at that point.

I will open the public hearing.

Members of the public have five minutes each to uh to uh discuss the item, uh after which I will close the public hearing and invite the applicant back up to address any uh questions that may have come up during the public hearing.

After that, uh council members will have an opportunity to ask questions of both staff and the applicant.

And after that, we will have a discussion and vote on the item.

So with that, I will move to item G1, which is a zone change change by VELD CO.

And this will be presented by uh Mr.

Desmond McGill.

Thank you, President Schuberg, Mayor Norton, members of the council, good evening.

Uh, my name is Desmond McGill.

I'm with the community development department.

Uh, the applicant is proposing a zone change uh on a site that is about five and a half acres in size.

It's located at the southeast corner, uh, Bandel Road Northwest and Overland Drive Northwest.

Uh the existing MXS zoning district and the proposed MXC zoning district are both compatible with the underlying P2S comprehensive plan uh land use designation.

In the two and the two zones are very similar in nature.

However, there are a few additional uses uh in the MXC zoning district that are not permitted in MXS, which include things like heavy commercial services, um recycling transfer uh facility, uh mini storage, uh wholesale storage, and um things such as uh vehicle-related uh uses uh such as service and repair.

So um the applicant is not intending to do any of those commercial uses.

They are in the site development plan stage for uh uh proposing or developing their plan for a 94-unit uh apartment complex uh for the property.

The concept plan includes 94 uh residential units uh contained within seven buildings that are three-story in height.

Um primary purpose of this zone change is that the MXC does not have a maximum footprint, or I'm sorry, maximum front yard setback, uh, which would be to Bandel Road.

The MXC zone will allow uh more than a 15-foot setback, which works better for the applicant's proposed uh design uh considering the unique shape of the property.

Uh the PC unanimously recommended the approval of the zone change, and staff is recommending approval as well uh and requesting the city council direct these uh city attorney to prepare a first reading uh of an ordinance.

So uh that is all I have on this intro.

Um I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have.

Uh uh we'll hold questions until after the public hearing.

Is the applicant here?

Please step forward, please state your name.

And you have 10 minutes to discuss this item.

Uh Mark Wells with GCUBE Engineering.

I am representing the applicant Veldco.

And uh the main issue is that the MXS zoning requires that the buildings be within 15 feet of the right-of-way.

And uh that would be really tough to do for the site uh with the elevation changes.

So we work with staff and the MXC provides everything we need.

So that is the purpose behind it.

Site development plan has been submitted and uh is in the review.

So here to answer any questions.

Great.

Thank you.

Uh we'll invite you back up after the public hearing.

Uh this is a public hearing.

Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward.

This is a public hearing.

Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward.

State your name, and you have five minutes.

Hi, I'm Kathy Donahue, and I live on Bandel Drive.

And I have been there for over 22 years, almost 23.

And since then, I have noticed a lot of increase in noise.

Noise and light pollution.

It's the noise starts at three in the morning.

Semi-tracks, and they're using their um jake breaks and light.

There's no dark anymore.

And um safety.

People are out walking all the time.

And children, and with more traffic and more people, housing, noise, lack of light, you know, it's just kind of concerning.

And I guess that's what I have to say, and I hope that there's changes in favor of all who live there, because it is our homes.

Thank you very much.

And uh this is a public hearing.

If you wish to be heard, please step forward, state your name, and you have five minutes.

Hi, my name is Alex Peterson, and I live on Bandel Court Northwest.

My property immediately abuts the proposed zone change.

Um overall, I am not against the proposal, but I do have some concerns about the rezoning with the increased usage of the property if this site development does not go forward as planned.

If something else comes in, um, and in particular the added 12 feet in height.

What you're not seeing on that map is that that empty lot is about 20, maybe even 25 feet in elevation above the backyards of all of those houses next to it.

Um, and I am concerned about that possibility, and I also don't believe that we've met the criteria for rezoning approval.

Um, if you look, it was on page 283 in the board or the agenda packet, it says well, both the present and proposed zoning districts are consistent with the comprehensive plan, the proposed district better aligns with the policies and goals of the comprehensive plan or other adopted city plans or policies as determined by city council.

Looking at the notes from community development, um they've said either the existing or proposed district is compatible with the comprehensive plan, the intended multifamily residential development use of the property is also permissible in either existing or proposed zone district.

Basically, it just says a lot, it doesn't really make any difference.

The only key argument they present for why we should rezone this is that the proposed zone change will allow for better site utility for the 94 unit multifamily development project allowing more appropriate spacing between structures under the current MX zoning, having the 15-foot maximum front setback, structures will need to be placed closer together as to achieve the same 94 housing unit yield.

The issue is is that my understanding, and this is also from community development's um document that they prepared on July 23rd.

Site development issues, such as site layout, building orientation, the open space between buildings is not a criteria for rezoning, and yet it seems that we're saying we need to rezone because we can better meet our uses because of the needs for site layout.

Um I hope that you know we're able to figure out something.

I think that 15-foot maximum setback is an issue.

I know it's come up before with other developments such as Southeastern Minnesota Center for Independent Living when they were trying to build their accessible playground, which is a wonderful thing.

Ultimately, I cannot support rezoning when it comes down to what their desired site layout is when we explicitly say site layout is not a criteria.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This is a public hearing.

Anyone else wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward.

Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward.

Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and invite uh the applicant uh to step forward and address any issues that you heard during the public hearing.

Really just here to answer any questions.

Uh with Mr.

Peterson in there at a site uh or at the uh the the property.

Um he has valid points, uh, but the point of the rezone was specifically because that 15-foot setback for that property was probably not the best zoning to be applied when the UDC was adopted because of the elevation change utilities and other items that are out there.

So the rezone, I think you had to see him come forward, whatever the site development plan layout is.

We happen to have the layout completed at the time and it has been used as the example for uh uh the benefits, but the rezone request it would have been coming for any development on the ground here.

So here they really answer any questions you may have.

So uh you can sit down.

Uh questions for staff regarding the rezone and the setback is uh the rezone the only alternative in this case.

It is possible that uh a variance could be applied for as well.

Um, but uh this was the the route that uh was was chosen for uh some of the reasons that Mark brings up.

And then also um there really isn't uh much difference between the two zoning districts as far as what's permissible in terms of use.

So I think um uh we were comfortable as at a staff level with with supporting the application based on those uh concerns and reasons.

What is the zoning on the adjacent properties?

Is it MX MX?

It's actually more intense.

Um, up to the north, you have uh on the vacant area uh on the west side of Bandel that that is MXG, which is mixed use general, which does even have a few additional more a few more additional commercial uses.

Um, and then to the southwest, there is industrial so um or light industrial.

Um to the to the east, you have single family residential zoning R1.

Okay, and then further north of 50 uh Overland Drive, uh you have MXG as well.

Questions, council members.

Councilmember Wall.

This is for Mr.

Welch.

Uh I think I remember from the neighborhood information meeting that part of uh this uh setback issue had to do with parking as well.

Yes.

So uh the MXS, because the buildings would have to be in the front, would require that the parking be in the backyards.

Because the residences to the back are R1.

We actually didn't want the parking lot to the back also because the site is elevated.

If the parking lot was in the back behind the buildings, uh vehicles that are parking in the rear uh parking lot would be shining their headlights towards the R1 neighbors.

So by pushing the buildings further to the east, we get them away from cars having headlights shining towards the residential.

And then also one other added item that's site development specific, not rezone specific, is these buildings will only have lighting uh on the building in the back that's similar to a residential uh doors and such.

Uh they will not be on consistently.

They'd be like if you have a um uh a wall uh uh cancer, not case drap can't think of the name of the terminology of the term light, but just the light outside of your porch.

That's what would be on these buildings to the sides and rears.

So we kind of looking at the site layout and stuff, we wanted to ensure that we weren't gonna have headlight uh headlights shining onto the neighboring property, even though they're 150 feet away.

It was just something that residents don't need to see that parking lot.

We will not have any street lights or anything out in the parking lot that would be visible by the neighbors either.

So and I I think I also remember from that meeting that um uh neighbors, while I think rightly concerned about any development in their backyard, uh, you described as Mr.

McGo uh uh described a little bit some of the potential uses of um that or as opposed to the 94 residential units.

Could you uh say more about that, both in terms of uh neighborhood reaction to uh that revelation and uh the proposed development?

So at the meeting, most of the residents were not against the residential type use, knowing that that could have been a commercial type use that could be approved as a site development plan without any hearings in front of city council or any other requirements.

Um so most of them were very happy with the fact that it would be residential of this manor still or this type.

So in fact, one person said that they're happy to see this as opposed to something commercial.

Councilmember Keene.

Yeah, this is more for staff.

Again, I these are difficult for me because I I know that we're doing this with a specific site development plan in mind, but the fact is when we change zoning, we we don't control what ends up happening afterwards.

Um can you talk a little bit about that idea of um that this would now I I I know it's not light industrial, but it has it appears to have more industrial usages, and that bothers me because it adjoins an R1 neighborhood.

Yeah, um it's from um from a use standpoint, it's not unusual to see MXG zoning next to even R1, R2 zone properties, um even right next to it.

Um the MX uh C zoning district is not the most intensive zoning district that we have in terms of the commercial zoning districts are concerned.

So and it as noted, there is uh lots of MXG to the north and to the to the east there.

Um we felt that if this was to be changed, that it would be consistent and compatible with the with the neighborhood as a whole.

Um but you're you're I think you're basing that on the fact that you know what the site development plan is.

Uh even if there were other commercial uses in there.

Um, you know, let's say this uh uh this project didn't proceed forward.

Um I think that uh uh the two zoning districts are are very closely aligned in terms of the the what is permissible in the zoning district, except for those five that I mentioned.

Right, but that that those are the ones that I assume that's why we zoned it, MXS to start with, because we don't want to have that adjoining uh R1 neighborhood.

Yeah, I I don't know the basis for the original zoning uh designation there.

Um but but again, do we know what the site development plan is?

Is there any is there any reasonable request to have a I don't know a variance on that property to block those other industrial usage, or is that just a bridge too far?

Um in terms of this application conditional zone change approvals aren't generally a good idea.

That's that made that makes sense.

Thank you.

Councilmember Palmer.

Yeah, I'm gonna go off with kind of Mr.

Keene is saying we've always been told that that in the zoning change, we're just gonna do a zoning change and and not bring a site plan to it.

Doesn't that just mess things up when you do that?

Um I I think it's good information for the council to have uh if there is a a plan in tow, if you will, um just so that you're aware of the the pro you know what's happening uh but we don't immediately behind.

But we don't have a guarantee that that's what's gonna go in.

And that's where the difficult part comes in.

Yeah.

Um second, I mean across the streets a truck stop, correct?

Across the street is a quick trip, and they they do accommodate, I think, some larger vehicles there at that site.

It's a truck stop.

Yeah, okay.

One of the things that we that I like to see done differently when we butt up against um R1, and I don't know how we do this, is to have the parking lot be in the front and have R1 next to R1.

We've had difficulty in Northeast with headlights shining on homes and stuff all hours of the night.

So is that a uh a development change we'd have to make, or how would we how would we achieve that goal?

Um yeah, I mean, like in this zoning district, it does uh require that those buildings be placed towards the front so that the parking can be located on the back side of it.

Um in a sense, the MXS zoning district would encourage that site configuration, just the way it's all laid out.

Mr.

Yetzer, did you want to weigh in on this?

Thanks, Council President Um Schubring.

I also council President Carson.

Um friendly reminder for the council just uh with the UDC to LDM switch over that this zoning district was likely a product of a like for like switch from what was in the LDM to what is now in the UDC.

So just keep that in mind of that there could potentially be a more appropriate zoning district in the new zoning ordinance that is just a product of the automatic changeover that happened when we switched zoning ordinances more questions.

And so Mr.

Yetra, how would we get if we're up against R1 in this zoning district?

How would we get that the parking lot's not in the back?

Would we have to resolve it?

This zone change would allow you that.

Yes.

This zone change would allow it to be in the front instead of in the back.

Okay.

So we'd have to get rid of the MXS.

Is that the one that when it's up against R1?

In this location, yes.

Okay.

Okay.

My last question is would you consider this to be in fill then?

Um, you know, it it generally speaking, it is um, you know, pretty developed around on all sides.

I know this is towards the fringe of the city, but um, you know, it it I would consider it to be in bill.

It'll have services to it.

Is that kind of one of the the judgment?

Okay, thank you.

Okay, any other questions?

Is there a motion on this item?

I'll I'll move to approve the zone change number CD 2025-004 ZC by uh VEDCO amending the zoning designation on 5.48 acre site from MXS mixed use street to MXC mixed use center, and part two directing the city attorney to prepare an ordinance for first reading.

Second moved by council member Keene and seconded by Councilmember Palmer.

Any further discussion?

I I just say that there, you know, there I I do have those concerns when we're moving certain things there, but I think the we the zoning, the way we have it set up, it has to have the flexibility to apply judgment, and I think that's what we're doing in this case.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed say nay.

Passes unanimously.

Moving on to G2, which is the 2025 transit program of projects, uh federal transit administration and uh uh Tia Zong will uh introduce uh our speaker and speak herself too.

Good evening, Council President Shubring, Mayor Norton, Council members.

My name is I Siong, Transit and Parking Director, and um just for the record, my name is pronounced Ia, as in Maria Sophia, Mama Mia.

So I um and then my last name is pronounced Shong, but I know it's a little harder to pronounce, so you can say song or Shong.

So I speak to or I answer to either one.

Um so I just wanted to introduce my colleague Roxanne Theobald.

She's been with the city less than a year.

Um, and this is her first time here.

So it is our annual uh hearing on our federal transit program of projects, and I wanted to introduce uh Roxanne.

She will be presenting the hearing.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Um so good evening, Council President, uh, mayor, and council members.

This is a hearing for the 2025 um annual program of projects to receive in federal funds, which include operations and capital.

These funds are federal apportionments that are distributed based on population and population density, and the description of the projects um were listed in the notice on online.

The projects listed are found in the state transportation improvement plan to step in the Rochester Olmstead um Council of Government uh improvement plan ROCOG, and then also the city's 2024 and 2025 capital improvement plan.

Um I will be here again next year with the 2026 um annual program of projects, keeping consistent with the city's um capital budget improvement plan of 2026 to 2031.

The program of projects does not include past or uh future projects, nor does it include discretionary grants.

Um discretionary grants are competitive funding that we can apply for, which we may or may not get.

Some examples of this would have been the bus and bus facilities, North Broadway parking ride, and uh Link BRT.

In the program projects, the local match.

Um, you'll see that it's RPT revenue, it's fairs, advertising and sponsorships, and um state funding as well.

Um there's city of Rochester, but it's important to note that Rochester Public Transit does not get any um city levy, um tax levy, and we are not requesting any.

Um so, in recap, this is a um hearing for the 2025 program of projects.

Thank you.

Uh questions.

Is there a motion on this item?

Oh, I'm sorry.

And there is not an applicant to this.

Uh thank you, Councilmember Keene.

Uh at this point, we will open up the public hearing.

Anyone who wishes to be heard on this item, please step forward.

Anyone wishing to be heard on this item, please step forward.

Seeing none, I will close the public hearing and invite questions from my colleagues.

Any questions?

Councilmember uh Palmer.

Yeah, I've got a couple questions, and I think this is the appropriate time to do it.

Um, in in 2019, our bus ridership was two million.

We're down to 650,000.

What are we doing to downsize or do what are we doing to get that to be more cost effective?

So um, Council President Schubing, uh, Mayor Norton, Council members.

Um, so we do have another item on the reports and recommendation on our transit uh RFP process request for proposal that we will be addressing it there.

If we can hold off on that, um writership we do recognize is down from our previous uh pre-COVID years, and more details will be coming in that.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Seeing none, is there a motion on this item?

Sure.

I'll move to adopt a resolution authorizing the filing of the 2025 transit program of projects and the subsequent submission of grant applications and execution of grants.

Second moved by council member Doring, seconded by Councilmember Miller, Councilmember Doring.

Any more to add?

Seeing none, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed say nay, nay.

Uh motion passes six to one with council member Palmer voting in opposition.

Moving on to our reports and recommendations.

H1, we have an update on the destination medical center development plan, and this will be presented by uh Cindy Steinhauser and Catherine Malberg.

Ms.

Steinhauser take it away.

Good evening, Council President Schubring, members of the City Council, Cindy Steinhauser, Deputy City Administrator, Strategic Transformation and Partnerships.

Um we're here this evening to share with you an update on the DMC development plan.

It's a really important milestone for the Destination Medical Center initiative.

We are in the halfway mark, 10 years into a 20-year initiative.

Normally, this is something that we would do at a study session.

However, you are a very busy council.

You have a very packed study session, and so the timeline which we have to complete this five-year update does not work and give us the ability to do it as a study session, so we're here before you under reports and recommendations.

There's no action needed on your part this evening.

This evening is really for you to provide you an update for you to ask questions, give us your input on how you think the process is going.

Um tonight we'll hear from Catherine Mallenberg and there are other DMC representatives that are in the audience, as well as city teammates in administration and community development who have been a part of this process.

Uh Christine, if you could advance, please.

What we're going to talk about and what we're going to cover today, of course, is the five-year update process and schedule that the team has been working on this past year.

Also going to look at kind of where we are to date, uh, what we are looking at going forward.

And it's important for you to know that thank you.

I can't go prior, not yet.

Uh no, back back.

Here we go.

Um, it's important for you to understand that in terms of a development plan.

This is a statutorily required by the DMC legislation.

So not only is it a helpful roadmap for how we do planned investment or should make recommendations coming forward, but it is also statutorily required.

Before I turn it over to Catherine, I want to talk a little bit about the journey that we have been on as a community over the past 10 years.

And this timeline is a really great snapshot, and it is, I want to emphasize snapshot because there are so many other dots that we could add along this timeline of what has happened.

Obviously, Destination Medical Center started in 2015.

And at that point, the vision was to position Rochester as America's City for Health.

I think you'll see through tonight's presentation the work that has been done over the last 10 years and the work that we hope to continue over the next 10 years to really live up to that vision of Rochester's America City for Health.

The other thing that I think is important as you look at this timeline, there's a lot of really great information on the timeline.

The three colored dots are really important milestones on this 10-year journey.

Obviously, 2015, when the legislation created the ability for us to make this happen in Rochester 2020, when there was the first update, five-year update to the plan, and where we're at now for the next five-year update on the plan.

But as you look at this timeline, I also want you to pay attention to the pace and amount of activity that's happened in the last five years.

And that isn't without a great deal of effort and intentionality.

When you first start out an initiative, there's a lot of planning to build towards what your vision is, and you can see from 2020 to 2025, a lot of execution on that plan and a lot of results delivered.

So as we move along in the next 10 years, again, a lot more dots will be populating this timeline.

So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Catherine who will highlight the last 10-year look back and what we've got going forward.

Wonderful, thank you so much.

Um council president, mayor, uh members of council.

I'm really excited to be here with you this evening to share this update at this critical inflection point midway through the 20-year DMC development plan.

I'm joined by several of my colleagues, both from DMC and the city in the audience and online as well with Michael Johnson, who's from the Smith Group, our lead consultants.

So should you have questions to address to him, he's available as well.

So DMC began with a bold vision, right?

To position Rochester as a global center for health and innovation while also enhancing the quality of life for everyone who lives, works, and visits here.

So this 2025 development plan update is a key part of that legislation that helps keep us transparent, accountable, grounded in community input, which informed all of those great initiatives that Deputy Administrator Steinhauser just went through.

So this is our moment to reflect and to sharpen our focus as we look towards the future.

And it's not about starting from scratch, it's about deepening our collective understanding of what guides our decisions and how our values are showing up in the built environment and in daily life.

So these are the requirements that you see here to meet and meet and exceed them is obviously a fundamental part of this, but it's also really an opportunity to build upon our existing momentum where we are today, confirm the strategic priorities, make sure those are still resonating.

Um, and then that helps inform uh annual commitment considerations, and um also I think uh was mentioned in the earlier study session about planning for post-2035 is also kind of out there on the horizon.

So back in May, when we were also in front of you all with at our joint session on May 22nd, we uh had the results of our look back, and that was really the first phase of work, right?

To say, okay, what happened, what did we say was gonna happen in the first 10 years, and what did happen, how do we measure ourselves against our five major goals?

And you see those very high-level findings there that's gonna continue to inform and be rolled into the final update, so the data will be available for everyone in the community.

And really, it was about some changes that we can all see the before and after of different locations around the district and what they where they are today, and um those fall into different types of categories and priorities, as you see here.

We've also been able to leverage additional funding sources outside of the funds that were allocated in the DMC legislation.

Some examples of that are the main street grant program, the setting up the historic district commercial fund, um, the various FTA projects that we've been involved with.

There are also some capacity building tools that have been emerging over this first 10 years, things like co-design, prototyping, the housing coalition, and others.

And importantly, our public realm investments.

The original DMC development plan called for six subdistricts and a signature public realm investment in the heart of each of those.

And here we are halfway through, and three of those have been completed.

Very exciting, and there's several more still on the horizon.

So as a reminder, at that May 22nd meeting, we also highlighted opportunities that our consultant team and staff identified as they looked back through the data as we look forward.

And you can see a summary of those opportunities identified here.

And you can see a lot a number of those are about amplifying what is really unique and special about Rochester and this identity for America's city as America's City for Health.

And how do we lean into that?

That's an authentic uh authentic brand.

How do we use that to leverage other employment opportunities when we're talking about job growth?

But this didn't come out of nowhere as Deputy Administrator Steinhauser demonstrated.

There's a host of planning initiatives that have been happening over not just that 10-year period, but especially the last five years and this year.

And those concurrent plans, you can see a representation of those in this center line.

And so when we talk about what we're building this update off of, we are integrating and coordinating across all of these other efforts that have been happening throughout the community over that time period.

So we're not, again, we're not just engaging around specifically the DMC update, but also building off of all of the findings that have occurred through these other planning processes to make sure we're coordinated.

And we were set up initially to be that way, and we're continuing to do that work and build those partnerships and that coordination.

We've also been tracking this council's conversations around their priorities and strategic goals because again, we want to find those points of alignment.

And then what has emerged from all of that review are the themes that you're seeing up here on this slide.

So this is the work of our team in going through all of those plans and sort of surfacing what those common themes are that we see that thread throughout many of those community planning processes.

So we wanted to highlight those as well and make sure those are something that you have the opportunity to reflect and comment on.

We are also doing public engagement specifically around this plan, including stakeholder focus groups, community events, and online survey opportunity as well.

There are a couple of upcoming opportunities I'd like to highlight.

The DMC annual meeting in September will be centered around the development plan update, and will highlight a number of the other plans that showed in that earlier slide so we can celebrate and also identify the intersections between all of those efforts and how they intersect with the work that we're doing at DMC.

So that is an exciting upcoming opportunity in September, and then there'll be a timeline a little later where I talk about some of the other upcoming opportunities.

So looking forward now.

This is some of what we heard at that 2025 joint session that some of you were able to join on May 22nd.

And that is the once-a-year convening we have of both DMC boards and city council and the county.

And you can see that there are a lot of really great ideas and vision coming out of that discussion.

This is that timeline that I was mentioning here, just to kind of highlight where we are today in the work and what lies ahead.

So we are going to have that public meeting, our annual meeting on September 18th, as well as the DMCC meeting on the 25th will be another opportunity for us to share where this work is going.

There will be a public open house at the end of October, and then we'll come back before this council in November with another update, and then the DMCC board will take up and have a public hearing at the December meeting for the plan update, which would be followed by another return to this council.

So now looking forward and what we think the look forward portion of this update is pointed towards.

So a reminder that we are grounded in the 2015 development plan, and this process is really about helping shape the why behind the decisions that we and our partners make over the next five years.

So the goals and the foundational principles remain the same.

And we see this moment as an opportunity to really shift from thinking about America's City for Health as maybe a descriptor or a tagline into a strategic advantage and focus as we look ahead.

So how can we think about that as a strategic advantage?

And that is falling into three categories.

So sort of three drivers that might shape our strategy moving forward.

And those are health innovation as an economic engine, health excellence as an attractor, and then health in the built environment.

And we're thinking about these as a unique opportunity.

The highest and best opportunities probably happen at the intersection of all three of these.

There's certainly going to be programs or projects that might lie more in one of these pillars or strategies than the others.

But really, those only in Rochester, unique opportunities that center health innovation, health excellence, and health in the built environment, how we do our work, how we make our infrastructure investments is really what we're most excited about.

And this is where we're headed in terms of the organizing principles for the update.

And I think with that.

Yes, I'll hand it back to Stay up here.

Yep.

So that was a very brief overview of where we've been and where we're headed.

We want to stay on this slide because I think this is where we want the biggest part of the conversation to happen.

As Ms.

Mullenberg indicated, uh, these are the drivers that we want to use to guide going forward in the next five year update.

Um again, this is not any action required on your part, but really an opportunity for us to have a conversation and for you to react to the work that we're doing to really activate the this the label of America City for Health into three very key driver components and where we can see ourselves.

Obviously, others uh people in the community can see themselves as part of the health innovation as an economic engine, others can see them in health excellence as an attractor and how that plays out across the community, but certainly also where um people see themselves in health in the built environment and particularly our role as a city body in terms of as it plays across all of those, but in particular health in the built environment.

So tonight is really an opportunity for you to give us your feedback.

And with that, thank you.

Um feedback from council members, mayor.

Mayor I'll start out.

I um had an opportunity to to meet with them earlier about this today, and I'm actually quite excited about this slide.

Um, and as we talked about it, um, I'm excited about it for several reasons.

Not only because we do want to continue to talk about Rochester as the destination place in this country for health.

And so um it plays in nicely with the idea of being an economic engine in that um we we need to think about, and I'm gonna get some information for them from something I got back from Harvard a number of years ago.

And we heard from the community in Rochester 2050 about um it's not always just Mayo Clinic we need to think about, we need to think about other jobs, and this is what this is about.

It's about looking at our largest employer, the world's best health care, and building off of that, um, and as the Harvard study suggested, finding employment factors that support the community and who we are as a community, and we are a community for health.

So it's not it's it's taking what we already do well, and they're working on making it even better, but also us looking at the ecosystem around that and continuing to find ways to build it in not the exact same product, different products that support the work that we do here.

So I'm really excited about that, and I do think we are seeing as that city for health, and how does that role entice other people to come here?

Why why why Rochester and not somewhere else?

And I think you know that's great.

And of course, I love the health in the built environment, and um, this is gonna lead in really nicely to my next move with the mayor, which is going to be a challenge to all of you, and then you can be a part of health in the built environment by helping uh participate in that.

So I'm really excited about what I heard today, and um, and really anxious to see how we move this forward uh into the community and help it be a solid foundation that we talk about moving for the next forward for the next 10 years.

Councilmember Keene.

Uh yeah, thanks.

Uh yeah, I I too appreciate that I had a chance to look at this in a small group um setting where it was more of a discussion, and some really interesting things came out, like trying to compare our comprehensive plan and what is this?

Is this fit in?

Is it like a something that's underneath it, or is it something different?

And it leads to good discussions, and it's again, I think you've captured it here with this idea of what are we trying to do?

Are we trying to you know kind of put down our direction and this becomes a plan, or are we trying to communicate to the community?

And which and and you do those two different things very differently.

Um, but I I really appreciate the thoughtfulness that DMC is doing with this and that idea of this very difficult part of our jobs of that outreach and trying to capture what's on people's minds.

And if you come up with some good techniques, tell us about them because we're struggling with it.

I'll just add I I really love the health and the built environment piece.

I we talk about uh Rochester being med city, but it's all kind of Mayo Clinics uh focus, and this really broadens it to the entire commit community.

So I'm I'm uh I'm anxious to see more in that area, health excellence as an attractor.

I think that is a given that we can really bring new uh innovative uh organizations and uh and experts here to Rochester.

Uh biolabs is a perfect example of that.

So building on that, and then the health innovation as an economic engine.

I think that uh my initial, and I I'm not sure you're asking for kind of brainstorm feedback, but it's a little bit on the edge of are we looking at you know health care as a moneymaker.

So, and we want to kind of stay away from that response to that.

Uh obviously, you read the the the text, it really is about innovation and innovation to save lives, and so kind of look at that in in that context as well.

So that's my unvarnished thoughts.

Other council members, council member Miller.

Yeah, thanks for the presentation.

I I unfortunately didn't have the chance to have a briefing before this, but at the same time, the mayor and I and some community members got the chance to visit Japan recently.

And I I think one of the things that I most noticed there was how active the community members were, people moving under their own power out in the community, and it seems striking that it was a much healthier, active, you would see people at all ages participating in public place.

And based on our conversation in the look back in the May session, I see much of that discussion reflected here, and I'm glad to see that focus really on preventative care, all the things that researchers say all the time, and yet doesn't fit into a billing model of healthcare or a service provider model of health care.

But I think that is our opportunity as a community as public policymakers to build preventive health care policy into our community so that we become a healthier community as a whole and a great place to receive health care services when needed.

So thank you.

Councilmember Wall.

Thank you.

Um I appreciate about this particular slide is that we are uh stepping into our strengths rather than trying to invent something that we are not.

Uh we are using what we are to make ourselves uh even better at what we do.

Um most of you know I love sports a lot.

Uh Rod Carew is one of my favorite hitters of all times.

He was a spray hitter.

He was one of the best pure average hitters uh for the twins.

One year he tried to do power hitting, and his uh uh average went down 40 points.

Well, we could try to be something we're not and reduce our average by 40 points, or we can do uh what we do and do very well.

So uh thank you for that.

I think that we need to step into that strength as the city of Rochester.

Uh one question I have that's not on this slide, is that acceptable?

Absolutely.

Uh to go back to uh slide five.

I think it would be helpful to me to uh hear a breakdown of the 1.6 billion dollars in state and local tax revenue if there was some breakout uh a message that we could bring to the community.

Yes, um yeah, I'm having oh there we got the thing.

Almost got back to it.

Yes.

So we will as we advance the um the work of this update, have ultimately the full set of data.

Uh we're kind of still scrubbing, double checking, making sure, but that's um an analysis that was completed um for the May 22nd meeting, and we can certainly follow that up with all the detailed backup of how those calculations were made.

Thank you.

Maybe can I just comment on that?

Just uh can you come to the microphone?

Mr.

Seeb.

Thank you.

Um Council President Sherwin, uh Mayor Norton uh Councilmember Wall.

Um on that point of 1.6 billion in that new revenue, the largest part of that is payroll taxes that have been garnered as a result of new employment.

And so the largest percentage of that 1.6 million is the wealth creation that's happened because of the growth in jobs and the payroll taxes that have accumulated.

Thank you.

Councilmember Doring.

First, I wanna say I never realized that um Councilmember Wall was a fan of sports.

Um I really appreciate the fact that in this update uh you have blown out the definition of what it means for Rochester to be America's city for health.

I think that with the the expansion of that definition, you've allowed our community to really find themselves in that definition.

And I think that's something that has been um lacking in the past 10 years uh with with um with a perceived focus on Mayo Clinic.

So I really appreciate the expansion of that definition, and I look forward to um continued work as we continue to define that together.

Any other feedback?

Thank you.

Uh is there is this the end or you had to do that.

This is the end, and so just uh just as well.

Usually there's a thank you or questions.

That kind of gives me a cue that I'm I'm the wrap up.

So um we'll be coming back to you.

Uh it you won't see it on the study session schedule.

Um you don't see it on today's study session schedule because we've submitted it, but uh from a timeline perspective, coming back in November.

I think it's November 24th study session where we've got a request in to come back with an update that will get us near will be near completion of the plan, I think at that point.

And um and a lots of engagement in between now and then.

So hopefully you have a chance to participate in the in the other opportunities.

But thank you for this time.

We really appreciate this feedback.

It's been really great.

Thank you.

Great work.

Moving on to item H2, which is a request for proposals for management and operations of transit services.

And this will be presented by Ms.

Ia.

Swang.

All right.

See, now you gave me three pronunciations, so I didn't know which one they land on.

I will answer to either one or all of them.

Um again, uh good evening, Council uh President Schubring, Mayor Norton, Council members, I'm Ia Sheng, uh transit and parking director.

Um so with you tonight, similar to the previous reports and recommendation, we are here to give you an update.

No action is um required, and uh again, you all are very busy, and so we're using this opportunity to give you an update on our progress and where we're at with with a request for proposal.

All right, um, some of these slides you will have seen from previous presentations before.

Um, before I get into the different types of services that we have, I just want to remind that back last year in 2024, through a MINDAT um uh support, we had a consultant come in and do an analysis for us in regards to our transit um how we uh service.

And so there's three four different options that they provided and they analyzed for us.

One being keeping it the way we are currently servicing with the contractor, um, second option was to bring everything in-house, and then the third option was to just bring BRT in-house, and then the fourth one was to um just bring maintenance in-house.

And so the direction that we got last year was to proceed with the request for proposal with the option to bring maintenance in-house, and so that's what we're moving forward with um with this request for proposal.

Um we are providing three different types of services in this new contract.

Uh just to I'm gonna give you foundation of each of these services uh for the fixed route.

You'll see, I'm not gonna go through the top part of it, but wanted to address the ridership as um council uh um Palmer had re uh asked about earlier about ridership.

You'll see here the 2022 and 24 ridership.

I actually want to go back way back to 2017 or 2018.

Um back then we had about two million uh ridership annually, and we were uh projected to grow.

Um so in 2018, we had about two million in 2019 2.1.

And then, of course, in 2020, as we all know, um, there was a pivotal point in our uh time.

And in March of 2020, um we had to pivot.

And so our total annual ridership for 2020 was 890,000.

Now, if you think about that, we had three about two and a half months of true ridership that we had previously.

And that really carried us for the rest of the year.

And so we were projected to grow almost like exponentially from that 2.1 in 2019.

This becomes a little bit important as I carry on our story of other things such as vehicles and service planning.

So in 2020, we did go back, we reverted to what we called our core services, working with TransDev, and at the time they were called First Transit.

We worked with them on pivoting and making sure that our services were still met for those that were in need.

We were actually in the process.

Mayo also had a lot of ridership or parking changes that they were doing at the time, and so that impacted our ridership.

Most of our riders are from our what we call our express routes, which is our commuter routes.

And then you'll see another dip down from 23 to 2024.

That was due to the opening of the 75th Street Park and Ride.

We also closed our IBM park and ride at the time.

That caused a little bit of a lower ridership as again Mayo opened up another parking lot that impacted our ridership.

So you'll see that dip.

As we're looking into 2025, we're on track to project about 650 again based on where we're at with ridership.

We did see a little peak increase in June here.

Again, due to some changes that we have in the downtown parking area and Mayo's ridership and parking policies that they're trying to do.

Ramps are coming down, new services are putting out there.

And so we are looking at that.

Now, when you ask about what we're plan on doing for services with ridership, we are looking at our services.

Earlier this year, I think it was April, early April, we made the shift from our transit center over to the center street or central park, moving our transit center.

And so that was a big major service for us.

Previous to that, back in fall or late 2024, we also made some service changes.

What we're looking at now is all the detours and all the routes that we have.

Like where is our efficiency?

Are there a lot of there may be stops where we have a lot of service routes to it?

So can we like reduce some of these routes?

And the stops may still be serviced, but maybe we don't have three routes there.

So our I do have colleagues here who can help answer detailed questions if you have, but we are looking at the planning piece of the services for efficiency, frequency.

Do we still need to do again previous to this?

There was a lot of feedback when we did our transit development plan on increasing services and other locations that they wanted us to service.

So we're looking at the low riderships that we have in our routes.

As a maybe a little teaser for the rest of the year, we are gonna start public engagement.

We will be coming back to the council for your input and just to provide an update on where our services opportunities can be.

At the same time, knowing that our ridership is starting to dip, or at least staying stable.

So that's about ridership.

And then in regards to vehicles, I did want to touch on that.

Now if you go back to the history of how I explained our ridership increasing, we were we had quite a few grants in early 2018 for additional buses, and these are all diesel buses at the time.

At the same time, our park and ride was really expanding, our ridership was really high.

So we looked towards the Federal Transit Administration low and O grant and we were awarded two.

We went to 2018, we were awarded two EV buses for 60 footers.

We typically only have 40 footers, and that was our first two 60 footers.

And then we went again in 2019 for another low and all grant, which we were awarded similar to the first one with two more additional EV buses.

So that's why you have the four EV buses.

Those were to service the park and ride up at 75th Street where we had high ridership in the peak times.

Moving a little bit forward in that 2018-2019, we got awarded, but then 2020 hit and everything was on pause and demand and supply and you know played into that role.

And so our delivery of those two buses were in 2022 and 2023 was when we put it into service.

So we've had a few years of experience with these buses.

Also going back to 2018 and 2019, there was a little uh more manufacturers that were providing or starting to dabble into the EV bus.

Um so uh ProTER as an example was doing 40 foot EV buses at the time.

Um Gil Lake is starting to do EV buses.

This the situation that we have right now is that new flyers are current EV for the 60 foot, and they are local, they're up in St.

Cloud, and they are the only ones that are providing the 60 foot EV buses.

So we are working on these four that we have right now in regards to just getting our our expertise in house.

Uh all these vehicles are owned by the city.

Um back to the RFP, uh, there is no vehicles that are uh first transit or trans def owned, all these vehicles are owned by the city.

Moving on to para-transit, paratransit was actually on the flip side of our fixed route.

Um prior to the pandemic, our ridership was starting to dip.

Um, and then as we come back out of the pandemic into 2022, as you see here, it's starting to increase.

Um 2024, we're at about 50,000 riders.

We're also trending to be at or above that, actually, probably above that in 2025.

So our ridership for paratransit is is increasing, we're expanding on that.

Going back to vehicles.

Um, we don't have enough vehicles, and so we are uh heavily federally and state grant funded.

Um we had we don't have any additional funds from the state or the feds to purchase additional vehicles.

We have replacement vehicles, but not for additional.

Um so in 2023, I think it was, um, we looked internally to see what we can do to provide additional buses.

Uh looked with our transdev at the time, working with them collaboratively to see how we can support that.

What Transdev did then was like looked at the some of the other agencies that they serviced, and they were able to find two additional vehicles for us.

Um and so through that partnership and through their resources, they were able to provide the vehicles that we needed because we didn't have the funding and we didn't have the capital funding to purchase more buses.

So we do at least two vehicles through Transdev.

Otherwise, all the vehicles are for paratransit are owned by the city.

Um we also received some grants for microtransit, which uh allowed us to purchase some electric vehicles, and those uh microtransit go ended in July, and so those vehicles are now being used for paratransit.

So just on the flip side, paratransit is increasing in ridership, and we need to support that on to bus rapid transit link.

Um, as we all know, it's coming and uh it's gonna be uh estimated ridership is gonna be about 10,000 a day, estimating about three million a year.

Um this is a little bit uh a lot of planning that needs to occur for this the service.

Um we do have 12 EV buses planned for this.

We have procured those 12 EV buses.

We went through the procurement last year, um, and we actually have one EV bus that arrived a couple weeks ago.

Um and so these EV buses are uh the next generation, I think it's generation four.

The first two buses that we had were generation one and two, so you can kind of see the progression of that.

So we like I mentioned, we do have one EV bus that got delivered.

Now our biggest dilemma with that bus is trying to figure out if we need a mascot or a new uniform.

So if you're not familiar with our colors, this is the color of the bus rapid transit.

This is Roxanne here, and she blends in there.

But if you're curious to know where these stripes occur on the bus, like I said, it is in our garage, so let me know, and I can show you around.

But anyways, that's uh we've got our first new bus that arrived.

Um I also want to say we do have 30 days to accept the bus, and that's what we're going through right now.

So on to just some uh background information is our operations funding.

As I mentioned before, we're heavily funded by state and federal funds.

Um typically, these are just uh historical.

Um state has historically funded 80% of our operational minus the federal, and then our federal apportionment, which you just heard at the hearing earlier, those are the federal apportionments and federal funding that we receive, and we can use those for operations or capital.

We typically use about 50% of it for operations, and then any revenue that we receive through fares, advertising sponsorship, those are all our local match.

Um last year and this year, the state was able to uh increase their share to 95%, and so that has really helped us in regards to the partnership that they have and the support that they want to see us succeed in our transit system.

So next year we will not have 5%, but we will have 15% as a local match.

So not back to the 20%, which I think is very generous from the state.

Um just looking at uh this was projected uh net operating revenue.

Um as you can see here, our revenues uh ranging is uh set to increase again.

The 5% local match was a huge help for us for last year and this year, and then we did not put the link costs in here, but uh as you add it in in 206-27, um, that will look a little different.

So on to the contract, um, want to give you uh uh just a current status of what the contract is.

Um the contract ends at the end of uh 2026.

Uh it was initiated in 2020 2017 for a five-year term, and then it was renewed or uh extended in 2021.

Prior to 2017, there was another request for proposal for the same services in 2012, and they were also first transit was also awarded at that time.

So they've been our contractor since 2012.

Um so through two different competitive requests for proposals, they um have been our contractor.

This contract includes the fixed route, paratransit, um, vehicle maintenance, and the bus rapid transit is also was amended last year to be included in this contract.

That was a requirement from the Federal Transit Administration through the small starts grant for the BRT that we uh ensure that bus rapid transit was going to be supported.

Um at the time, the projection of opening date for bus rapid transit link was uh 2026, and because the contract for first transit trans dev was still going to be in place, we needed to make sure that they they would be servicing it.

So we did amend it last year and we came to the council for those amendments.

This is a provisional milestones that we put in place.

As you can see here, we're in August coming to you for an update.

Um, and then we our plan is to release the art request for proposal later this year, going through the evaluation or the um uh proposals uh to be due like early next year, and then going through evaluations and having interviews with the proposers uh early to the first quarter, second quarter of next year, and then coming to council with a recommendation mid-next year.

We're more we're working to shift the these provisional milestones up sooner as we do more like initiation of our research.

The big part right here at the beginning, as you see in green is um we're doing a lot of research looking at different agencies on how they're doing theirs similar to ours, um, any improvements that we could do, or uh so we're really looking into it and not just um using the previous uh template to be put in place here.

We also want to provide if at the end there at enough transition time for our for our new or for the contractor to shift into 2027.

We also want to provide enough time for us, the city internally to prepare for the link.

So for the new contract, similar to the previous, we will keep it at five years with the options to extend up to a total of 10 years.

That's what's allowed by the feds.

So there's a lot of state and federal oversight through our procurement process.

As mentioned before, we will include the three different types of services with the vehicle maintenance option in that contract.

We again the the request for proposal is a huge document.

We're streamlining some things in there.

So it's it's a very large document.

Um and uh looking at what would be important to point out is um just other terms.

We're gonna get into the performance metrics or requirements later in a little bit here, but other terms that we're looking at is just the risk and liability on how we can um shift that risk um to process claims with the contractor.

Uh also looking at the performance standards, like I mentioned.

Um, we'll talk about each of those performance standards in a little bit here.

Service changes.

I mentioned a lot of service changes that we had over the years.

Um, that first transit transdev was in place with us, just outlining like who's responsible for what, um, what the planning looks like and um the coordination of that looks like so having clearer terms um in the contract.

Compliance reporting.

Um we also uh as you um uh may or may not know, we are um implementing a new technology.

Um, it's a CAD AVL that will be our automated passenger counter, uh automated vehicle announcers, um, and uh just updating our technology.

This we're still in the process of implementing that new technology, and so with that, there's gonna be um better data, better reporting, and through that we want to ensure that there's clear and better expectations with our contractor on what is needed to be reported and what is compliance.

Okay, so on to the performance metrics or requirements.

Um as I said, we're still in the process of uh council member Keene.

I I don't know if it's a good transition, but I know you're gonna get into more detail, and I just staying up at a higher level.

The charts you just spoke.

I I do want to spend a minute just on this chart five.

I think it's page 361 when you talk about the funding.

And I've tried to work this out on my own and see if I know I I'm getting confused by the words because it starts out with saying 50% of something and then 80%.

So if if I could just like oversimplify and say the starting point of this would be that you we come up with an operating budget that we say this is the estimate for year 2026, and then somebody pay it's uh then we use the process to get 50% of that funding because I I can't see how it starts.

I can't see how this process starts.

We're talking 80%, 50% of something, but I think it starts with us making a budget.

Correct.

So um, I can't move this.

Oh, there it is.

Okay.

Um this one.

Yes, yes.

Okay.

Um so just to back up, so we uh work with on the capital improvement project um program with don't just I hate to interrupt you, but this isn't capital improvement, this is the operations model.

So I I'm trying to just stay tight and understand what it means when I say funds 80% of expenses.

We must estimate that up front that this is what we say it is, and that's work that's done by you and your team.

But is it based on a contract that we've signed?

Is it so that this is what I I want to have like a mental model so I can go to the next chart and understand what's happening, and I haven't gotten there yet.

Sure.

So um, as you all know, we're going through the budget process right now, and that budget process is then translated to this here.

Um so we work with um the council, uh the city in regards to like that whole process of what uh we will have for expenses, and that's the same process that every that we're going through.

So we're all part of that.

Um the 80% of that is so if you think about it, we have our own process and our own timeline.

Our fiscal year is also different than the state's fiscal year and federal fiscal year.

So it's a little bit confusing in regards to that.

But in general, let's just do like a calendar year.

So based on what our expenses are through our city process is what we submit to the state in regards to what the expenses are.

And then they in turn, every on an annual basis, we will apply for an operations grant.

And we again I work with the state very closely in regards to like projections of what their future funding is.

And that was through a lot of like coordination and feedback from agencies like us to say where are we herding and what do we need?

Our ridership is not back yet.

So if you still um do only the 80%, we're we're gonna be so but so but it's interesting to me that it says 80% less federal, like the federal has already been closed.

It's like we start with our budget and then we the federal seems to be covered, and then we go to the state.

Is that do you think I'm thinking about it the right way?

Um yeah, it's it's it's actually um it's a little bit more dynamic.

Uh it's not like one is done and then the next and then the next.

Okay.

What the state will do is like they will anticipate how much apportionment we get.

So as you heard in the hearing, um, we get an apportionment based on our population density and our performance.

And through that, on a we won't um get those apportionments announced until uh like second quarter of the year.

Okay, I and this is too gorpy now.

I didn't mean to get into that, but but I am seeing that it's not like A, B, C, it's sort of like but the but it really is based on a budget that we've made using MINDAT and federal rules.

We don't just make up a budget.

Correct.

Yeah.

Now within the city of Rochester, do we run transit as an enterprise?

That uh I you mentioned right up that we're not using uh levy, but do we run it as an enterprise in that if there's extra money, we keep it, and if we're under budget, we have to cover our own expenses?

Correct, that's correct.

So um it is an enterprise fund that uh anything that is any revenue driven from that is then spent and reinvested back in transit.

Um it's within the transit route.

Okay, that that's what I thought, and I'm just trying to make sure I understand it right.

I I guess when I'm thinking of this um going out for bids and this whole RFP.

I mean obviously it's it's a very controlled process by federal and state law.

It's not like we're just coming up with new ways to do things, but do we have like known three or four bidders that are going to be working this, or do we just have a very narrow set of like what's the outlook?

Yep.

Um, so of course we have our current um contractor.

Uh we do have some local um okay potentials.

Uh we have been um there's been outreach to us um asking about our um services and and about Rochester public transit.

So that's helpful.

There is a competitive environment out there, it's not it's not that we're gonna deal with one bidder.

That's helpful for me to understand because I'm trying to understand your stuff here, but I I don't know the context of it.

So this helped this is helpful.

Um my last question, or it's more of an observation is um the timeline things here is like I feel like we're against the wall.

Uh when I when I think of you know accepting bids a month or two before we don't have a contract.

That feels dangerous to me.

Um so I can walk through the timeline.

It it I don't it's not one or two months before.

Okay, so you feel like we're uh we'll be locked in, and I'll make up a date here, like six months before the other contract ends.

Correct, yep.

According to this, if you just look at that, we will be coming to you in August of next year with that contract award.

Okay.

Um and it's my understanding, or I shouldn't say my understanding, based on this discussion, you expect it to be a competitive bidding thing.

It's not like okay.

Yes, we do, yeah.

I uh yeah, I appreciate your time on this.

I just wanted before we get into more details.

I thought it was good to just want to also say that um, even though it says August, we're working towards an earlier time frame.

So why don't you move on and and uh well have questions at the end.

Okay.

So on to the contract terms, the performance.

Um just want to uh give you some basis of this.

Um we did uh look at different the different um services and then broke it out into the different um types.

These performance um requirements are not are just for the contract to provide a transit service that is convenient, safe, reliable, cost effective, has a lot of other things that is not measured in this um in this contract.

So things such as walkability, equity, ADA compliance, those are things that we continuously work on, and it's on us, the city, to ensure that we have that community engagement, public engagement, looking at the growth and development within our city, just the transit efficiency of it.

So what you see here is just based on the contract, it doesn't mean that's the report card for our services.

What you see here are the metric categories.

And the metrics that we is defined there, and then our target and how we're doing it.

There you see a lot of to be determined.

Um those are things where we're still looking at it to see does it make sense to still continue doing it this way.

Uh we do not currently have incentives, we just have the we call it here liquidated damages, but it could really is about unsatisfactory performance fees that we would look at.

Um does it make sense to do uh uh liquidated damages or is it does it make sense to do an incentive?

So that's why you see some still like determination there.

An example of that is the trip completion.

So our metrics is 97% for trip completion.

The current contractor, transdev is meeting that um, as you see in the uh quarterly report, they are exceeding that.

Um a question might be that why don't we have it at 100%?

Um mistrips can occur due to not the contractor.

It could be because if there's an accident or a bus breaks down and they miss the trip, that's all part of this miss trip or trip completions.

Uh also there could be detours, um, things of that nature that delays them to get to that point of their trip.

Um I should also back up and explain that a fixed uh route is not a trip.

So uh there's within a route, there's multiple trips.

Um so we have about 30 routes right now and about 626 trips.

So just to explain that.

Uh service disruptions, as you see here, is about their failure to report to us.

It's kind of related to the trip completion piece of it.

We want to ensure that if there is going to be a trip that's not gonna be completed, there's some kind of disruption, like I mentioned as an accident or whatever.

We want to know that immediately so that we can let our um uh our riders know.

So that's a metric that's in there.

Um, on-time performance, um, again, this is about ensuring that uh what we say that is on our schedule is is being done.

So uh council member Miller.

So a question uh specifically with on-time performance and trip completion.

That's measured across all routes, all trips for a day.

Are there so are there agencies or is there a reason to look at high prior priority routes, particularly those express routes at commuting times when people are really relying on that to be able to get to and from work on a schedule?

Um should those be valued more highly than a trip where perhaps somebody has more flexibility during the day.

So I would think if if we're looking to make sure that we increase our ridership, we need to guarantee that people can get to and from the places they need to be when they expect to.

And I'm just curious thinking about those measures because I think some of the disruptions could be hidden, so to speak, you could still meet 90 or 97 percent, but have a high disruption at some of those peak times that people rely on.

Right.

So currently we do um avoid those uh we want to make sure that the high ridership uh routes are being completed and those trips are being completed, and that's one of the requirements.

Um we meet with our operator, uh our contractor every day in the morning.

Um we assess uh the situation, if there's gonna be any potential trips that won't be completed, um, and so we meet with them on a daily basis.

We uh work with them and make sure that our uh express routes or our high ridership routes are not missed.

Um we have had situations way in the past where uh we know that in whether it's an emergency or weathered emergency, um, we don't want people stranded, and so we have had where our supervisors and managers have actually gone out in their cars and picked up people, and so there's you know things that need needs to be a little bit off the book a little and not like but we we do yeah, so we we meet with them and on a regular basis and ensure that we those um expectations are met.

Yeah, continue.

So for paratransit, paratransit is um a different type of uh service.

It you you do need to be eligible for this um based on disability and accessibility to fix route.

Um so it looks a little different, although similar, um some of them are similar.

Uh again, we've got incentives down here also.

Um time performance is gonna be um similar, defined a little differently.

Um, but it's also on here efficiency requirements.

As you can see here, we're looking at um uh the target is 2.8, and what that means is that we want to be efficient about our um the way uh our scheduling is worked, where uh the riders are picked up, and we want to ensure that our contractor is doing the best they can in the efficiency of it.

We don't want them to just go pick one person up and then that's it.

So we want them to make sure that they're um like scheduling it and using the best tools that they have in order to meet that.

Um overflow is something that we are looking at for paratransit.

We want to ensure that um overflow is only used at a very minimal amount.

Um we do have a uh requirement of like uh no um we can't deny rides, and so uh we do need to be flexible and we do need to make sure that we can do it.

So if we are in a pinch and we need it, we will need to go to overflow, but that also ensures that if we have this kind of metric, um our contractor is gonna ensure that there's got enough staffing.

Uh and then some of the issues that we had previously also was due to vehicles, as I mentioned before, we didn't have enough vehicles, and so um making sure that we have enough vehicles, um, again that's on us, uh, but through our partnership with transdev, they were able to provide some vehicles.

Um so that overflow is important for us.

And so member Wall has a question.

Well, it backs up one slide.

I'm not sure I understand the difference between a passenger trip and a passenger.

So the passenger trips were say 10 10,000 passenger trips.

How many passengers is that's 10,000 passengers?

Okay.

So then my question is based on two validated service-related complaints for 10,000 passengers.

If this year we have 650,000 passengers, we expect uh fewer than 130 complaints for the entire year.

Yeah, so I can't do math on the fly.

Um, but when we looked at this, uh it would have been about two um complaints per month.

I think it would turned out to be what we're looking here and validate it, it has to be validated.

It's just not a complaint.

Um is it a true validation of a complaint in regards to like customer service or um uh vehicle or a route not being um like deviated for unknown reasons?

So it does need to be validated.

Um what we're doing right now is tracking our customer um input and uh issues uh with our contractor and ensuring that they address that appropriately.

So what we found with other agencies is like this is typical of what other agencies use.

Um, and through through our research, we're kind of leaning on to some experience that other agencies have used.

It just seems to me that there'd be more complaints than that if if uh only 97 percent if not if three percent, I'll use it the other way.

If three percent were not completed, I would think we'd have more than 130 complaints a year, but uh you've got thank you.

I have a quick question too.

Uh council member Dorian I was waving down here.

I um can you briefly again define what a validated complaint is for me?

Yep.

Um sorry I don't have it in front of me, but a validated complaint would be uh something that is valid.

Um that if uh if they were waiting at a bus stop and the bus didn't come.

Um complaint that uh the driver um did not let them on the bus.

Um something of that nature um that was not just someone saying, Oh, I I didn't see the bus, but the bus did come, you know.

So uh they could have like um uh not seen it.

So we we just need to validate that it was okay.

And does that include timing?

So does that include late arrivals and late departures of buses as well?

Late arrivals and late departures.

Um so that would be covered in on our on-time performance.

Okay, so those aren't complaints, those that's a separate issue.

Right.

So if if they are gonna complain or if there is an issue that is brought to our attention, um, yeah.

Okay, thank you.

So for paratransit, um we have the trip completion.

Uh this is at a hundred percent.

There is no ifs ands and buts on that.

So we want to make sure that all our writers get to where they need to go.

Bus rapid transit, uh these measurements that you see here are based on the negotiations and um coordination with the mail, uh, our mail agreement with them is these are the metrics that are in there.

So we worked through with them on the on-time performance being at 90 percent, and then um service disruptions as mentioned before.

Uh customer complaints look a little differently uh through through that process.

Um we categorized it into different um types of issues that were brought and the response in regards to that type of issue.

Um so they didn't want or we didn't want um an issue to come and it would would not be addressed for weeks on end.

We wanted immediate response.

Doesn't mean that it some of it may not be resolved within that time frame, but that it was responded to and addressed.

So that customer complaints looks a little differently, and then for the trip completion, it's similar to our fixed route.

So with that, those are the highlights of the performance um metrics there, going back to the provisional milestones here, um, looking at uh release later this year, looking to move that release earlier as we continue to do our research and refine our tools here.

Um looking at different agencies.

Uh again, the state will review our request for proposal and our request for proposal is uh federally um there's a lot of federal requirements and regulations that get put into the RFP.

So that's well, I have a question uh as since you mentioned the RFP, and I know you uh discussed it earlier.

Have you uh looked at uh the potential of including labor peace provisions in the RFP?

I know that these are provisions that many state agencies and uh municipalities use that with contractors that creates a neutral neutrality from the employer standpoint, and then the uh the uh labor organization then gives up uh uh work stoppages and other elements, and so it's very uh valuable when you have end users of services.

So um, and I know that there are some trans uh transit organizations that have entered into them.

Yep, so we we have um we're starting to look into that.

Um we're doing our research on that, looking at um like existing um examples or uh other agencies, so we have not made that determination, but we are looking into it.

Uh council member uh Keen.

I I have just as we go out with this, I'm assuming we're trying to do uh like the city of Rochester transit would like to have one contract that does all three services.

Is that something that we've decided is the best way to go?

Have we looked at saying no, the bus rapid transit could be a separate contract, and we I mean, can you give me any of the logic behind that, or is it really the like the um strategic direction is to have one company and if they do a sub, that's okay.

That that like can you can you react to that?

Correct, yes.

So we we did uh present that in our analysis last year, um, and uh the direction was to go with one contract.

Now that doesn't mean that they can't subcontract like right now, they're subcontracting some of the paratransit out or the paratransit out.

Um they could do that too with BRT or with um whatever service that they're looking at.

Uh we would evaluate the proposal based on its strength and and how they would respond to the the um the requirements in the proposal, and so it's up to the proposer on how they want to structure it.

Um we are looking for all three different services and then providing that maintenance in-house, um, whether that's gonna be part of that contract or not, will be part of the evaluation.

But anybody who would uh like receive our our request, they're really can't say, hey, we don't want uh para, we only want uh BRT.

We're not accepting those bids.

Correct.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um but but again, let me just ask it slightly different.

Have we we've thought that through and said this is the bad because I do think of BRT is a a different animal and it's brand new, and we're just gonna group it in there.

So I I'm trying to get comfortable with that.

Okay, did you guys go through much back and forth, or is it just it makes sense to have one company?

Sure, sure.

Yep.

Um so uh keep in mind that our technology is all encompassing.

We won't have one technology for BRT and one for fixed route.

We it will be for both.

Um so even though uh BRT is uh gonna be more frequent and a little bit different type of service, still gonna use the same type of technology that we have.

That's the equons that I mentioned earlier in regards to our CAD AVL or automated passenger account, um, all the other technology that supports it.

So it would make sense to keep it as one, otherwise we'd have two separate um services that we need to manage differently.

What about the complexities that we've worked in with the BRT where there's uh a security aspect to it that we don't have with the other bus lines that will be held separate from this contract or those because I believe those security people are going to not be uh uh a contractor to us?

Right.

So for the security Rochester Public uh the department is actually hiring um RPD officers and uh superintendent or supervisors, so that's gonna be in-house, and those positions are um budgeted to the BRT, and it will be in-house as far as city goes.

It's not part of these bids at all.

No.

Is that the only one-off, or is there other things like that?

Um well transit is not just, I mean, we we do we are part of the city, and the city, other cities uh departments also support us from time to time.

Um we have transit attendant that is being supervised by our by our public works um department, and that person is for transit um shelters and stops.

Oh yeah, and we used to have like again our department's transit and parking, and so we do have two parking technicians that used to go out to our park and rides and do the counts and maintain that, keep our keeping eye and ear out.

So we do have other positions within the department other department, not um like specifically saying they are transit staff, but they support us in different ways.

Okay, I'm gonna ask staff and council members to be brief in their questions and answers.

I do have councilmember Miller, Councilmember Palmer, and Councilmember Wall in the queue on this.

And so please be brief and look to your questions to to educate the entire council.

Councilmember Keene.

Good thank you.

I'm I'm done.

Thank you.

Councilmember Miller.

Just two questions.

Uh one, you mentioned research that you're doing for this RFP.

Do you have peer agencies that we should know about either regionally or nationwide that you're benchmarking yourself to?

I know that BRT would be different, but at least fixed route and paratransit.

Um yes, we do.

So there are some local agencies and some um like other agencies similar to us in different states.

And could you mention some of those just like for our education?

Who do you think uh so locally we've got Duluth Transit Administration, DTA, St.

Cloud, Mankato, um, and Cato is very similar to us as they are part of the city.

Um there are some agencies in I may not say it right, but out in California.

Um I don't have the other ones off the top of my head, but there's a lot of other agencies.

Okay, that's why that's that's helpful, at least the in-state ones.

And secondly, uh earlier today we had the study session looking at our action plan transit optimization was one of the auction items.

Does that happen in parallel or as part of this RFP development?

Um we are in the process next year to do our to update our transit development plan, and through that, exactly what you just said will be part of that transit development plan.

So the RFPU can happen, whoever bids it.

The the transit optimization would be a next year process.

That's correct, yeah.

And that would be done by city staff, not the contractor.

Thank you.

Councilmember Palmer.

Well, I'm gonna go off of Mr.

Keene was trying to get to, and I think that the the BRT needs to be a separate um bid and run separately because we have a contract with the mail clinic for 20 years to to make sure it runs right.

So that's one of the things that I would do.

Um I'm gonna ask you a quick question here.

Male employees, do they just show a badge and a ride for free now?

That's correct.

That's been um so previously they they would do that on the park and rides.

Um, and uh what we have in agreement with mail right now is that they do flash their badge and then we mark them down as a mail staff.

Okay.

And we then build and then um money wise we get all our money from the state and the feds basically um what I've been reading on transits throughout the United States and Philadelphia is one of them is going to go bankrupt and and obviously we don't want our system to go bankrupt but yet we're getting money from the feds which we really don't know what they're doing and the state's going to be um under budget constraints my my earlier question was and I've not heard this answered at all we went from two million riders to now six hundred and fifty thousand riders I would think your routes would go down your buses would go down and your and the costs would go down and yet I've not heard one sentence on yes we're working to to to do that and what what am I missing?

Yep so the the efficiency route efficiency that we're looking undergoing for the rest of the year that I mentioned about the public engagement is to make it more efficient so that would reduce some of the service if you um look at the budget itself uh it's not a one-to-one ratio of like uh we reduce this um to meet the ridership we still have a lot of riders that are dependent on transit that um uh when you look at the cost per ride is okay okay I and I'm I'm getting that the point I'm getting to is at some point if we don't get the money from the state and the feds it's gonna come from our property tax and and I know people on the city council don't want that to happen and we've had three years of riddership that's gone down now we're gonna start doing efficiency we didn't do it three years ago we we have been okay so what's the effect of that what what have we cut routes have we where we say we've laid off bus drivers what have we done um well to to get to the point uh we've had uh service changes um earlier this year last twice two times last year um we've made multiple little service changes as we adjust uh based on what we hear from our riders and the ridership so we consistently um update our services okay well I'm gonna go a little bit off of off some other questions and one of them was the the the complaints now uh dependability is important to me if I'm gonna go work at Mayo Clinic and I gotta be to work I have to be to work I don't I don't get to say that my doesn't my my bus doesn't show up I know that we've canceled because it was too windy I know we've canceled because it's too cold and I know that we've canceled because it's too snowy.

I still have to get to work.

So if I have to buy a car because the bus system isn't dependable it's like a death spiral.

So so is that a complaint if I'm on the bus and it dies because it's too cold do is that a complaint is that a legitimate complaint um well yeah I mean if it's so that so and go back to Mr.

Wall there's a hundred and thirty of these is all we can do.

Let's say on a Friday afternoon you have too cold the buses don't run um you're gonna have 130 complaints in that day so does this does this operator going to have problems?

Yeah so I um we'll take that back and we'll take a look at it.

I don't know if I have the true validation um definition of that but we will look at that.

Okay and and and we're this is it's about going out for a contract and and obviously I'm I'm in favor of separating the BRT and that is my opinion but we also if you put in this complaint thing as something new it then then someone's gonna bid this higher or they're not gonna want to bid it and if you go with Mr Schrebring is saying and I'm not disagreeing with them but if you add something about labor in there they're gonna bid this higher I mean is is that what most contracts in this area have at this time?

In regards to the customer complaint complaints in in in labor um niceties for lack of better way saying yeah I mean I I I would say there's any complaints that can come in so uh what we want them to do is to make sure ensure that the services are provided the way we would want um that efficiency and uh reliability um and so these metrics are driving to that okay and my last question is is that we had the um federal grant for out in southwest Rochester that that was individual cars call them up they would come get you and they would take you to a bus stop.

That got changed to we'd take you to I think a male clinic is is that a successful program that we did is it not are we not going to repeat it or do we drop those routes that that in Southwest that didn't work out.

So I think you're referring to microtransit go right okay so RBT go was a pilot program that was funded through some um state bonds and that was a one-time thing uh we are gonna we're in the process of putting the final report together and we will be sharing it with the council in regards to the ridership and the success or like the the results of that so we will be um sending that to council we did see that as we um introduced this pilot it's a new thing and it took a while for uh the education piece and people to to understand what it was so the short time frame that we had um was a little too short but we were um uh restricted by the amount of funding that we would we received okay and my my my final statement is is no property taxes have gone to the the transit system I don't want it to happen I don't want to have somebody come to me in two years and say oh by the way you're gonna have to put property tax into this so that's not an acceptable thing for me and I don't know how the other people in this council feel but um

So the short time frame that we had um was a little too short, but we were um uh restricted by the amount of funding that we we received.

Okay.

And my my my final statement is no property taxes have gone to the transit system.

I don't want it to happen.

I don't want to have somebody come to me in two years and say, oh, by the way, you're gonna have to put property tax into this.

So that's not an acceptable thing for me.

And I don't know how the other people in this council feel, but um we need to run this efficiently, and I don't believe it's being run efficiently.

Councilmember Wall.

Thank you.

Twice you've uh referenced public engagement in terms of the RFP.

Uh what does public engagement uh look like and how extensive is it?

Um so I believe I referenced public engagement in regards to the services that we're gonna be providing the changes coming this year, um, which is separate from this request for proposal.

So the request for proposal is strictly a uh procurement process that we will again use federal and state requirements and uh oversight to manage through that process.

Okay, so how extensive is your public engagement and what does it look like?

Who who's engaged?

Yeah, we um so we have the citizens advisory on transit that uh we um use them to um help provide that feedback to us, bring it to the council here.

Um services are uh again going through public engagement through that process.

Um so things that we have heard previously in regards to our routes and and what we have heard.

Um, doesn't sound like many people.

How many would you say that is when you count the council and your advisory board?

Yeah.

Um so the the procurement piece is not going through public engagement.

I want to be clear about that.

Um the procurement is strictly a requirement that we need to do to meet the requirements of federal and state, and that's what we're going through right now I'm still not sure I got kind of the number when you do public engagement, it doesn't sound like there's many people that are engaged.

We do a lot of public engagement in the transit development plan that was approved a couple couple years ago, extensive public engagement.

Um I don't have those numbers out there, but we have several um meetings virtually and in person that we have done.

Uh we had good attendance on those.

Um we had previous uh public engagement on some of our service routes that was done earlier this year.

Um in one of them, we had a room full of um residents that attended.

I don't know the number count, but it was full.

We did receive good feedback from that.

Um so our public engagement is pretty I think um Okay, that's helpful.

Thank you.

Councilmember Miller.

Yeah, I guess uh to build on just a couple of things that my colleagues have said with engagement.

It is true that the citizens advisory on transit meets once per quarter, correct?

And that's been canceled at least once this year.

I would agree with Mr.

Wall that I I think that when we say public engagement, there is more that could be done with that commission, um, particularly as we look at efficiency in the system as we talked about.

I would love to see more engagement there.

I know that's not part of the RFP, but just our transit operations generally.

Um it's a changing community.

I think that there are a lot of changing travel patterns, but that's an important group that I would love to hear more from uh in a meaningful way.

Uh on ridership, I know that's come up a few times just annualized.

Uh are there ways that we could have more detailed breakdowns of ridership from quadrants of town around commuting times and better understand is ridership down across all routes, or are there very productive routes that are growing or stable and these other routes are seeing very limited ridership?

That would be really helpful to understand.

Sure.

And then I I guess just philosophically, it feels like we keep talking about ridership and then separately we're talking about transit uh efficiency.

Uh would it be fair to say that we haven't designed a system for high ridership?

Okay, so three you had three points there.

Um so for the citizens advisory on transit.

Um, we do used to meet uh regularly on a monthly basis.

Um we've had a lot of turnover for our um that those membership, and so we're still trying to get our cadence in place.

Um it was shifted to quarterly because we found that uh a lot of the we couldn't get a quorum going.

So um with this new uh membership, um, we will definitely bring that back, and we've got a new um well, so we'll bring that back.

Um the other one was more detailed ridership information.

Yep, so detailed ridership.

Uh we have started providing quarterly reports on transit, and in the last report, we did break that down into like segments, I think it was, or areas.

Um we can certainly look at that.

There's a lot of data, so we can certainly break it down into different um metrics that you want to see.

Um so we will reiterate that and um take a look at the next report on that.

Uh and then have we designed we keep talking about ridership as like a goal of how we're scoring our transit system.

Would you say that we have designed a system to have a high ridership, or are we prioritizing something else, perhaps coverage of the city?

Yeah.

Um so I I would say that uh we our planner probably can explain it better than I can.

We do have a planner on staff here.

Um, and I'm not a planner.

But uh our transit um we we design the the transit system.

I think we have a planner coming up behind you.

There you go, Sandra.

So we Sandra Narr is our planner, and she can help answer that.

Hello.

Welcome.

Please state your full name to it.

My name is Sandra Na, and I'm the transit of patients planner.

Great.

Nice to meet you all.

So in transit planning, it's difficult to make choose coverage or efficiency.

We need to say if people need to go where they need to go.

So it has to be a bit of coverage and a bit of efficiency as well.

Currently, most of our routes have a lot of overlaps.

So we have one stop that has three routes, seven them.

In my opinion, that is not efficiency because our buses are not even half full.

So in the false service change ERFET su I'm working on how do we make sure that our high ridership routes have more frequency because they are the ones people are using the most in the low ridership routes, we would use the overlaps.

So if we have three routes seven, one stop, and the bus is half full.

Can we have just one route seven that stop?

And just looking at how much is costing us in general to carry people, so cost per rider, cos pa, and looking at those changes and how to make our routes more efficient.

So definitely in our false service change, we are all gonna see MOFIC and public system.

Thank you for that information.

And that's what I suspected.

I'm just bringing this really to our our conversation here because I keep hearing the the metric of ridership, and it doesn't feel like that's what we're trying to maximize here.

I mean, the mayor and I and some other community members were just in Tokyo.

We never looked at a schedule.

We walked to a stop and we expected that within a short amount of time there would be a vehicle coming, and that was reliable, and I think that that's what's driving higher ridership, particularly on high utilization routes.

And so I I'm glad to hear that we're working on ways to improve the the reliability and um frequency of of those routes because I think that that's really what we have to understand in a system that's working for people and giving transit a chance to be competitive in a transportation option, it has to be reliable when you need it, and especially along this high frequency or high ridership potential routes, high frequency is is a key metric, and from what I've read, um those are where you really see increases in ridership is when you increase frequency so that people don't have to memorize a schedule or know that a bus is only coming every 30 minutes or every hour, which is not reliable for how life planning works.

So thank you.

Thank you too.

Councilmember Doring.

Yeah, I just uh want to reflect a little bit on the um citizens advisory on transit.

I'm I'm disappointed to hear that it's only meeting quarterly too, and uh especially when we're gonna be talking about uh community engagement as a um uh we've talked about it as a uh a goal, a strategic priority.

We're gonna talk about an item here in a little while.

And I I I think um I think their input is is essential for our um public transportation system.

And I think uh maybe we should be asking questions why uh why there's been such uh turnover in that group and why uh why we're only meeting quarterly.

Um I also agree with the idea of maybe separating the BRT out of of this particular contract, and if if not, uh I would maybe commend uh to you in the RFP process uh again with customer complaints to not then treat the regular fixed routes differently than the RF than the than the um BRT.

I would hold the regular fixed routes to the same stringent standard that you're holding the BRT to in terms of addressing customer complaints.

Any further questions?

Seeing none, thank you so much.

Uh and uh we will see you next.

Is it with the RFP in December?

Yep.

Um we're going to solicit, uh, get that out there, get the proposals in, evaluated, um, go through contract negotiations, um, just typical like any other request for proposals, and then come to the council before awarding it.

All right.

So council president, just to be clear, just to make sure everybody understands.

Our our intent is to post the RFP and then bring back with the results, not to have another.

So we will we will not see an weigh in on the RFP.

Correct.

The next time you'll see us is um next year in the city council RCA to award contract, as you see in the August date there, which we're trying to push forward.

Uh Mayor Norton.

Yeah, I wasn't gonna weigh in, but I'm a little concerned with what I'm hearing because I'm hearing some people, several people on this council saying they're concerned about a single RFP.

And so I guess I'm a you didn't hear that?

Okay.

I heard that there was concerns.

Yeah, I think there was uh definitely some concern about uh whether or not the BRT would be included.

And there was also the uh proposal of looking at labor peace as a option.

So I I do think we'd like to see it again.

Yeah, I I'm just a little worried that you're gonna move forward with a single RFP, it's gonna come back here, and everybody will be scratching their heads saying we kind of wanted so I something else.

I don't know if you want to state that.

Last year we did get direction and approval from council to move forward with one single contract with the option.

And I'm not arguing about that, but this is a different time and a different council.

And so I'm just wondering is the do they so you're bringing this forward, but you're basically saying we can't weigh in and change anything, if that's what I'm hearing.

And I'm seeing the administered.

Okay, we're we're hearing from uh I think council member.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I assume some of this is based on my questions, but I was asking my questions just to understand it.

I wasn't trying to redirect.

Okay.

Um was there staff wanted to weigh in?

I heard from I think two council members or three maybe that were interested in seeing it separated.

So, President, there's an interest in seeing it separated, but when we're talking about putting, if I may, go ahead and then you're asking for someone else to talk.

Um and let me clarify what I'm hearing is there's a question of whether or not the council has another opportunity to weigh in before the RFP is published.

And I'm getting a sense from council members, there's not a vote here, that there is interest in seeing that because there are some issues around what's going to be included in that RFP.

That's not correct in your standpoint.

I'm I'm hearing it.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Council President, if it would make the city council feel better to bring additional information back, there it that is why we have a city council is to provide that.

And it sounds like it might be valuable because I think that would allow the staff to explain why separating RFPs versus making a lot of clarity in the RFP about the different types of services that are being provided and the expectations for those services, some of which have a direct contractual relationship with a business partner that's making something fare-free, and others of which do not have some of those same considerations, um, could be valuable.

I would be concerned if we left here today thinking we were doing multiple RFPs versus creating an RFP process that allows for some of these concerns to be fully reviewed in a response to a proposal process.

Conversely, I think the staff is concerned about making sure that they're bringing you the most accurate RFP, and it still may not be fully in its final form if you want to meet this schedule to come back to you with additional information on that item.

So hear the concerns also concerned about the idea that separating RFPs will provide you better service.

And we have experience with that in a building across the street where when we had multiple operators in the same building, it was very challenging to actually get positive service for both of those because they have to figure out how to work together.

So just those are my two cents, 10 cents.

Mayor Norton.

I reiterated this because I was sensing not unanimity in uh in the conversation.

And I guess a question I didn't ask, but maybe needs to be asked, is we currently are having lots of missed routes, and they're happening, we're getting calls from Mayo Clinic staff saying I'm not getting picked up.

And I would think they would want some sort of guarantee, and and and I I don't even know how to say this, but they can't be having missed routes on a bus rapid transit line.

As uh you know, we were just hearing about seeing in Tokyo service.

And if that isn't going to happen if a a driver calls in sick and we don't have a replacement on a BI BRT service, to me, that's a different beast than and maybe a more frightening one with the relationship we'll have with them as opposed to what we're dealing with now, which is still frightening for male clinic staff, right?

Quite frankly, but that's it's a it's a whole different type of ridership.

So I just I want to make sure we're not gonna double a problem by having a lack of right riders or a lack of consistency in two separate I don't even know what they call providers server services because we have one provider.

So that that's why I raised it.

Yeah.

So um I just want to say that uh as far as like um the trip completion um and what's perceived or what's real is uh obviously if you are the person that is expecting that right, it's important, right?

And I'm not um um negating that, but they have met the metrics.

Um they have not gone down 97%, which is the metrics.

Um so it in regards to what that is, it they are still meeting it.

Now for bus rapid transit, um you you could still get the same issues that you're kind of bringing up in regards to uh the staffing and that can happen with any contractor.

Um the metrics that we are putting in place is to ensure that they do that.

Um that might mean that their proposal, whoever's proposing, may want to ensure that, and it might it might impact what their staffing count is.

Or we're not telling them like how much staffing that needs to be done, we're just telling them these are the services and this is our expectation.

So you you need to make sure that you you do that.

Um so if, for example, um we don't want missed trips, and uh they might have to structure their staffing a little differently in regards to what they currently do.

Um so those are things where where these performance metric requirements are put in there so that we know we're gonna get the service we want.

Um council member Miller.

Yeah, just to weigh in on uh what I'm thinking about.

I I don't have any concern with this being one RFP.

I these are integrated transit operations that will be nodes for each other.

Um I do think that it would be helpful since we've had some discussion uh talked about various factors to see some update ideally before the RFP releases uh because it does feel like a long time to wait, roughly a year for us to talk about this today and then award it a year later with no conversation in between.

I know we'll talk about optimization.

Uh and then finally, my question would be because it's come up about Mayo commuters and Mayo transportation between facilities.

How does Mayo weigh in on this RFP and give their feedback on these performance measures for BRT?

Yep, so these performance measures were identified in our mail contract.

So we have talked about this with Mayo like long before, and we it was over a couple years negotiations, so we have really looked at the So they've weighed in, right?

I mean, so their their needs are reflected here in the BRTU performance, just for our information.

Okay, thank you.

Well, I I would agree with uh councilmember Miller.

I don't feel that we need to separate them.

Uh but I I I do also agree with uh him that I think we'd like to see a little bit more on kind of some of these issues.

Some council members may uh need more information on whether or not it's one RFP or or uh there's a sub-RFP uh component to that.

So I think having a another time to push those things out, I think would be beneficial.

Yep.

We'll take this feedback in and come back.

All right.

Thank you.

And we will have a seven-minute break.

We're gonna get started.

If folks can come back into the chamber, Councilmember Miller, Councilmember Palmer.

So can they hear me out there?

We're starting.

Yes, on nothing.

We've all for coffee when we're done.

Not Brittany.

That's what it says.

That's good.

Two or three hours to go.

We're on to item H3, which is support and commitment for the democracy innovations for public meetings project.

And this is presented by Mayor Norton.

Thank you.

I'm excited to finally bring this before the city council.

This particular item started almost a year ago, I guess a year ago this fall, when council member Wall and I were at the National League of Cities meeting and ended up sitting next to each other in a workshop.

And the workshop was hosted by the National Civic League as one of the main speakers.

And we started talking then.

And I'll just I want to give you just a tiny bit of information about the National The National Civic League, which is with NCL and NLC, it gets a little confusing.

National Civic League is a hundred and hundred plus uh year old organization.

Um it was actually one of the founders was Teddy Roosevelt, believe it or not, um, and other reformers back uh founded the organization back in 1894.

And uh the mission of the National Civic League is to advance good governance and civic engagement to create inclusive thriving communities.

And so that's that's their sole purpose, and that's what they do, and they've been trying to be creative in helping councils, county boards, school boards, whomever is interested, I think, in uh running better meetings and running and really having um supporting a democracy.

And so uh there have been a number of concerns have been brought up over the last number of years, actually, since I've been on the council about frustrations with public comments, with civic engagement, and uh so through that meeting um we followed up with National Civic League.

I joined the organization as an individual uh mayor and had some subsequent meetings, and they called and said we have received a grant.

So if you're interested in moving forward, um initially we had talked about having to help fund you know the uh their process, um, but they received a grant.

And so uh we started a few information sent sessions, a couple of you attended, and really the goal is to um assess public engagement and public input here during our public comment section.

I know there's been interest on some of the the city council members about looking at boards and commissions.

I heard that again tonight.

Are they running as efficiently and well as they could be?

Um, and other uh ways that we do civic engagement to so that what they will do is come in and they will measure, they will do measurements about what you're doing.

They will be evaluating our current processes, and then that takes several months.

Um after that is done, we and during that time we work cross-collaboratively with a team of um three city council members, uh three staff members, I believe.

And um myself and I've committed um after talking to Michael to having her be there because we all know we have busy schedules, and if someone cannot attend, we will have a note taker there that can share the information after the meeting uh with anyone who might have missed.

Um we know that it'll take a couple hours a month at the beginning of the process.

There will be um after the assessments are done, there will be a time where the uh investigator, uh, who I think is on the line here today, um, will go home and work out the information and come back and share what they have learned through the assessment process, and then bring forward ideas and brainstorm with us about how can we do things better and differently.

And so that will be and it's iterative.

Um we have control over the process.

We will it will be Rochester specific.

There's not a cookie cutter um outcome that is expected.

Uh and uh there have been a couple questions raised about you know what happens, how can we make this our own?

And in talking with Nick this weekend, not this Nick, another Nick, um, this weekend, uh he assured us that this is going to be using your information, the way your city works, and you will decide what you want to do moving forward, if anything.

So uh a couple questions had come forward.

Um so it'll be Rochester specific.

Um they had initially uh suggested uh that the city might need to uh provide some funds, but as I mentioned, they did receive a grant for all the costs at their end.

So his the researchers travel, all the information, you know, all he'll need to do uh will be funded at his end, and if there are funds needed at our end for whatever pilot projects we do, whether we need to rent gathering space or have food or provide flip charts, that sort of thing, that will be funded through the mayor's office.

And if there are funds needed at our end for whatever pilot projects we do, whether we need to rent gathering space or have food or provide flip charts, that sort of thing, that will be funded through the mayor's office.

And so no city direct city funds, city budget funds will be used.

They will be mayor's budget funds for the next this next year.

Also, there the question was raised about is there a concern because we're going to be vacating this room and that might make it harder to collect accurate information.

I talked to them about this.

Um actually looking back because and I I had a talk with the city clerk about this.

We actually do, we ask people when they come to speak to give their their address and their um uh and or email.

And so we actually can utilize speakers that have already come if we wanted to this venue.

Then they will uh the research will have to be taken while we're at RPU, knowing that that's a different venue, but uh and maybe less people will find it.

We don't know.

We will watch for that.

And he is willing to extend it so he can do some um uh sampling for his research when we come back into this room afterwards.

So he's willing to extend the front end of that to make sure that we are getting an accurate picture of public engagement at our meetings.

Um then um the other question that came up was about the timeline.

And as often often happens with grants, there is a timeline for the grant.

Um they received the grant as I recall it was back in April.

By the time we went through our processes here to have some folks learn about it, be able to ask questions and have the meetings that we had leading up to it.

Um here we are now kind of at the end of the time period.

We really need to get approval to move forward.

The resolution does not um require that we follow through doing something we don't want.

As I mentioned, it's iterative.

We will do what you want.

Um and you can be involved in the process as we go along.

Uh they are just there to do the assessment, provide the results of the assessment, and bring forward some best practices they know about, but also to learn about our best practices because we know we have them uh here in this community and make sure that we don't do anything that will undermine the good work we've already done, but that perhaps we can make improvements in some areas we're still struggling on.

So that's the goal of the resolution is just to let them know officially we will participate in this over the next 12 months.

And um and again, our our involvement as staff and as uh city council members will vary over the time depending on whether it's research, the time um late in that if we do a pilot, there may be uh at the beginning and the end a little more staff time needed, but uh or your time needed for the meetings, which he said would be between 30 minutes and an hour every other week.

So that that's what I have for you.

I'm hoping um this was brought forward uh at the really at the interest of the council in doing better in our public comments and public engagement.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh yes, and the mayor did invite me to one of those sessions with the team from uh the civic group and uh my uh uh well it's a step back as I've said to the council when I took this role six months ago that making sure that we have quality public meetings is my top priority uh for this year.

I think just looking back over the six months, some of the priorities that uh I've had, I've seen a lot of good progress on, and I thank Administrator Zelms for uh giving us longer glide paths on some issues and bringing uh topics that are of great interest to our citizenry to our study sessions for us to deliberate on and from my perspective, I think we're we're a uh a uh quality group of elected officials who want to discuss public policy, and we also want our processes to be the best they can be.

So I'm very uh comfortable with having a group come in and help us make what we do here on our regular council meetings and our study sessions.

And uh I also do like the idea of adding the uh boards and commissions.

I think there they are part of our inner infrastructure here.

They are public meetings and the the connection between uh the council and the boards and commissions, I think can be strengthened as a uh group that feed up and down uh um uh issues and issue information.

So uh I will be supporting this.

Councilmember Miller.

Yeah, thank you.

Uh I also had the opportunity to uh participate virtually and then as a follow-up with staff about this project, review some of the documents, and I also went on to review uh some of the reports from the National Civic League with other communities that they've worked in, and then I looked at um particularly with Boulder Colorado, how they structure their public meetings.

And I I just see a lot of differences with what we do, and I I would love the opportunity to work with a somebody with a broader perspective of public meetings more generally, um, who's working on public engagement, and I think we have a real opportunity here.

You know, with the national community survey results that we reviewed earlier this year from 2024, we see inclusivity and engagement the lowest um scoring area where people expect a higher 62 percent as importance, but it scores 46 percent.

And then our our discussions about strategic priorities, we highlighted the need for inclusive decision making and inclusive growth management.

And to me, that means a lot of bringing the community into our processes, educating, involving and and making sure that we are representing the community in all that we do, and particularly in these public meetings.

So I too look forward to supporting this.

I'm grateful for the mayor and councilmember Wall for kicking off this process a year or so ago, and I look forward to participating at the National League of Cities as well.

So I think we do have a lot of opportunity to learn.

Um community with uh a lot to learn and grow and innovate, and I think this is uh a step towards that innovation as a value for our community.

Councilmember Keene.

Yeah, it it would be difficult for me to sit up here with when they go through like strategic priorities we went through and say, yeah, there's something on in front of us that uh has to do with uh better community engagement, better uh public interface, things like that, and say I'm against it.

But but I do have my concerns too.

Um it says there's no expense involved in this, and there isn't any money being paid, but we ought to consider the expense of how we engage our staff and what we ask them to do.

And and again, there's a lot of this falls into the realm of what some of those jobs are.

I guess I'm wanting to listen into this discussion because I see words like participate, facilitate, collaborate, and consider.

So there's things that are saying I can I can all read I can read those very differently, and so can everybody else.

Somebody could say what you passed said that your communications group must now do a bunch of things.

And I I'm not interpreting it that way.

Somebody else could interpret it that now you have given over control of something to someone else, and I'm not interpreting it that way.

And I want to make sure that if if there's a vote up here right now, we all have the same sort of things in our mind that we're actually going to engage with an uh someone who has some expertise and someone's gonna bring some ideas to the table, but he's not going to drive our city to do things differently.

He's not going to take control of you.

You said you would um run these surveys, and it's my I don't care if you know if it takes as much time.

I want the staff to be able to decide that.

Well, I should say what I'm want to vote on, and I want to make sure I'm voting with my peers, same uh assumptions is there is still a lot of the the control on this is whether it fits in with what the staff's doing.

Um I get worried about that because when I you know when I read the alternate thing there, it had this idea that like this isn't gonna work right now because we're it's going to churn us during bad times.

And I think some of that could be resolved by like an agreement that these words like participate facilitate are we all understand them as um getting this expertise, getting this help, and then going forward with what works best for Rochester.

Someone's interpreting it differently.

I I'm interested in that.

Mayor Norton.

Yes, and and we I called this past weekend and had a lot of this um uh clarified for me.

We are going to be the drivers of what we do.

We are going to collaborate with the person doing the research.

We're going to discuss amongst ourselves and with them about where we want to go at the end of the process.

They and this this was one of the questions.

Is this a cookie-cutter approach?

Absolutely not.

It's iterative.

We have control over what we want to do.

They may provide some examples of things that have worked in other communities.

Have you thought about this?

I think one community was focused on youth engagement, for instance.

And I don't know that that's going to be our focus.

I don't I don't think it is, although certainly we want youth engaged, and we have ways you know that we can talk about it, but that's not going to be our focus.

I think the the point is that we make the decisions about where we're going to go.

No one else does.

Right?

We will.

And that's why it's important the staff is involved because we don't, they have to be able to say during the process, you know, I don't have the time to do that.

That would be too much.

I could do this, but what you're asking me is a step too far.

They will be at the table for those discussions.

And just to my understanding, and I I think I would hope we all have the understanding in that any recommendations that come out of this process, that those recommendations would be decided on by this body as part of our rules and guidelines.

It's not nobody's deciding anything for us.

Councilmember Wall.

Thank you, President Schubring.

Uh, I was going to make precisely that point that uh we can accept or reject whatever findings uh that uh are brought to us.

Uh my interest in this uh came from uh a couple of years of experience with open comment.

Uh when I first started, uh we had so many open commenters that regularly we were asking for permission to extend that time, perhaps reducing the number of minutes uh by each speaker so that everybody had a chance.

Really a lot of uh that was unhappy.

Uh there were diatribes uh which had very little to do with uh anything on our agenda or anything within our scope of jurisdiction.

Uh just really not not productive.

We changed some rules, whether that coincided with uh some of the public's uh disinterest in uh being on TV uh every two weeks, I don't know, but they stopped showing up.

And tonight we had two uh commenters, and I'm not certain that we're engaging the public in uh uh the most robust way that we possibly could.

So to hear the uh National Civic League uh talk about a possibility uh and that would have to be tailored to uh Rochester, uh a way to better hear a greater voice uh of the City of Rochester.

I would be very open to that.

And uh administrators Elms has given me a couple of examples of uh communities that have done some various things.

Uh I think that we are I am open to any number of with Mr.

Keene, though, I certainly want to protect staff time.

And I believe that this process, uh the onus and the reward belong to uh the council.

This is on us if we choose to uh move move ahead.

Is there a uh is there a motion on is there a comment?

Councilmember Palmer.

I've heard I've heard in a conversation that we can do better and that we're struggling.

Um I'm hearing that there's no cost to us, there's no cost.

The the staff are gonna just volunteer, I guess, to do this.

Um the planning and zoning update that we just did three years ago, we had a lot of engagement, and we had free tacos, and we had people in the park and and and very few people ever show up.

Um I think Mr.

Wall, you've mentioned many times that you've been to planning zoning means neighborhood means that no one shows up.

Um part of it is that you have to have a public that wants to be engaged, and and I don't know if this is going to get us to do that.

Um North Broadway is a great example for me.

Uh no one knows what's going on until the road gets ripped up, and now they want to know what's going on.

We've been planning this for three years.

So I don't know how this company is going to come to us and say, oh, geez, we're gonna figure out how people are gonna be engaged.

And my fear is that it's gonna be the same old, same old people who show up and we're gonna talk to them.

We're not gonna go out in the public and find them to do it.

Um, I I'm not particularly sure this is good use of staff time.

Um, and we have very little of that uh staff time available.

Mr.

Chair, could we have uh if it's a question for the the Nick, if he's on, uh maybe Nick could address Councilmember Palmer's concerns that it's the same old same all.

Well, I I I let me make an effort at it first.

I look at this and and I we we talked about our meeting, it's better public meetings.

It's the city council meeting, it's the study session, it's the boards and commissions.

And on the boards and commissions, and I believe, Mayor, we have 20 plus boards and commissions.

There's probably sixty plus uh citizens that have proactively said I want to serve on this uh commission.

So that's 120.

So those 12 folks, there is already engagement there, but I don't know that they're engaged in what we're doing.

So I look at it as how can we, as a council either at our meetings or before or after our meetings, uh do the uh the engagement to really fulfill that inclusive decision making.

It doesn't always have to be at the meeting.

And then our deliberative process.

How are we deliberating?

How are we working together so that we are bringing up the best public policies?

So that's that's how I look at uh it, and I've got ideas.

I'm not gonna share them now, but uh I I have ideas that I would share with the group as so how about this?

How about that?

So so I'm just gonna repeat what I think I heard.

Council member.

And and you're basically saying to to us is that this is for our study session, this is for our city council meeting, this is for our open comment period, and then it's also for our our um committees.

That's all this is for, and and that's what you're telling me.

This is what it's gonna be for.

And it's not gonna cost us any staff time, it's not gonna cost us any money.

Is that what you're saying?

Well, I didn't add those last two points.

You do well, but that's been said.

Um I mean, no, okay.

I would like to clarify.

Uh Mayor Norton.

It will any funds it takes on the pilot project or whatever above and beyond the work that the National Civic League's staff do to look at the data will come from my office, not out of it.

For this process because I am that much committed to better meetings and civic engagement to work on this.

The staff get paid their normal salary, and we are asking for an hour every other week or an hour or two every other week from the two or three staff members that might want to be involved, and I know there are some that do.

So is it going to cost us extra?

No.

Is it going to mean they are going to dedicate an hour every other week to this at certain points during the process?

Yes.

And I also want to say our we sent our staff to a civic engagement training at Harvard this year.

And so they have lots of great ideas.

And the nice part of all this was Nick has worked with both Harv Harvard and Bloomberg on civic engagement in the past.

So he's well aware of the type of training materials and the work that they went through and has every intention of making sure that the staff training that they went for will be utilized in an appropriate way.

Councilmember Keene, did you have a question?

Uh yeah, I I again a c a couple points.

I um I did bring up this idea of the staff stuff, and I think this has been a good discussion that if we approve this, I think we'll have put a set in record what we think it is.

And I think that was an important thing for me to do.

Um Councilmember Palmer, I mean, I remember watching the uh the public or the community development team trying to get people out to talk about the UDC because how important it was and the ice cream things and the party at the park and things like that.

And it was difficult.

Uh if you uh when you try to get input on policy, it is a very difficult thing for the average citizen to come in and want to talk about that.

Um councilmember Wall talked about you know some other meetings, but uh with um Ms.

Mrs.

Young Ms.

Young here today, I went to a meeting that had 30 people in it because they changed the bus route.

Yep.

And boy, you tick people off like that and they're gonna show up.

Um it was it was a very interesting thing.

It was a you know, you look at the route was changing, but there was 30 people in that room because they had an extra 25 minutes of sitting on the bus.

And that's not the kind of public engagement I'm looking for.

I mean, that's important that we hear their concerns, but this idea of that to me, the one big thing I've seen in my time is the is the code of uh co-designers.

Um and it is it's a very dedicated, very like focused sort of uh public engagement, but that's a process that seems to be working for us.

Um but with those caveats and this idea that now I think I know what it's doing.

I'd like to make a motion to adopt the resolution for support and commitment for the democracy innovations for public meetings project.

Second.

Moved by council member Yeah, we'll get it to it after the motion has been put in.

Uh council member motion made by council member keen and seconded by council member Miller, council member Keene Miller, any more?

Councilmember Fredericks, go ahead.

Thank you.

Uh administrator Zelms, how do you feel about staff time being dedicated to this endeavor?

Uh council president, council member um Mayor Norton, I I think the key is we do not have unlimited staff time, so know that if you are prioritizing this, there may be other things that don't end up happening.

So know that if you are prioritizing this, there may be other things that don't end up happening.

And the same people work on this that work on many of the other things that you just saw in your strategic priorities.

That doesn't mean that we can't do it, but it means like the timing to be able to get this done, suggesting that adding an hour every other week is not significant when people are already working 60 to 8 out 80 hours a week is not insignificant.

So I'm not concerned about if this is a priority and if it's narrow as it's been described, but I am concerned if we're suggesting that staff does not have good feedback.

I would say in the front row alone, we probably have worked in 10 to 15 different cities with many different ways that public meetings happen over the course of 35 years of service, 100 if you add them up collectively.

Any uh further comment, Councilmember uh Palmer, yes.

Yeah, um I'm not I I don't want to be wrong that that I'm I'm for trying to do better and I'm for better meetings, and so I don't know if this is the proper way to do it, but I see the the handwriting on the wall that it's gonna pass.

So um good luck, and and you know we'll see what we can do.

Uh Mr.

Spindler Craig, did you want to Mr.

President, Council members, Mayor Norton, if I may, given that we're gonna have some further discussion later this evening on contract language and interpretation.

Um I do just have some concern, and and I did mention this to to the mayor, the resolution that was in your packet and before you does seem to um indicate that you are entering into a contract.

I don't think we've seen that contract.

Um I haven't seen that contract.

Maybe it's a nothing contract that is fairly generic and doesn't say much, but I I don't know that it's not even exactly clear to me through the resolution who the party is that we're contracting with.

Um so there are just a few concerns there that maybe can be cleaned up on the back end, but to the extent that this resolution that presumably is being approved by this motion references a contract that none of you have seen, um, and your legal advisor hasn't seen, just does cause me a bit of a bit of concern.

Mr.

Mayor, do you will there be a contract?

Um we're today we are signing a resolution.

If there is another contract that needs to be signed, it would come back to you.

Um if you want to ask Nick, who is online from National Civic League, if there is a formal contract or if the resolution is the contract, saying just an MOU, he could say that.

Nick, are you on the line?

Yeah, I'm definitely on the line.

This is not a contract.

Yes.

Do you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Can you speak to contracts?

Yeah, no, this is not a contract.

What you have before you is an example resolution by another community, specifically that's going to be the second cohort of this better public meetings ground pilot.

Uh that's Anchorage.

And so this is just the language showing a little bit of commitment that the community wants to um uh they want to support the work.

Um it doesn't mean that you're gonna be implementing anything that's part of it.

It's just that you support that we're gonna be undertaking that work and and we find that it's actually helpful um because at the end of the day, you know, we're gonna be having a look at the different types of meeting aspects and and having you know yourselves show a little bit of support for the work and a little bit of buy-in goes a long way, especially you know, for for any sort of intervention or or work that happens uh that you you decide to to undertake at a future date.

Thank you.

So so this is a resolution showing that we will support it if we need I'm looking to Mr.

Spindler Craig if you feel that there needs to be some form of contract between the entity and the city.

We can follow up with that.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Uh I was not trying to assess the need for a contract.

I was trying to read a resolution that I thought was presented as your resolution to be passed tonight.

Now I think I heard the speaker indicate that it's not your resolution, it's an example resolution.

It is our resolution taken from an example from Alaska.

We used their framework and took out all the references to Alaska and made it ours.

Council member resolution.

Council member Doring.

Can I make so then there's some grammatical errors in the resolution then?

So it's it's dated August 11th.

And then it also says project and is hereby approved an execution of the contract.

Right.

So I just, yeah, I mean, so we just have to change some of that language, right, before we sign it.

Yeah, right.

Contract to resolution.

So is the mover, Mr.

Keene and uh the seconder uh approve of those grammatical changes to the resolution.

I I I would have made a motion similar, but I I don't know if uh I'd like the attorney Spindler Craig to weigh in if you want me to change the resolution so that it includes language that says or do or are we really doing the thing that we're amending the resolution in front of us to take words out of it?

I'm I'm not sure what what we're doing yet.

I I would suggest we amend the resolution before us and take the words out of it and fix the date and go forward.

Yes, that was what I heard councilmember Doring suggest.

And from my perspective, that is fine.

I think with that clarification that the reference to a contract was not intended to be a reference to a contract.

There is no anticipated separate contract.

The resolution is the only thing.

Yes.

Okay.

We're clear.

Yes.

Just I I would just clarify that we would strike and execution of the contract is authorized from the resolution and amend the date to the 18th.

That's my understanding as the mover.

Yes.

Okay.

So helpful from my personal.

Mover and seconder agree.

Mr.

President, if with your patience, just maybe one other point of clarity.

Maybe it's clear to everyone else.

Um, but um the motion and the resolution is anticipated to cover boards and commissions and to involve them in this review process.

Uh I've heard a mix of things from the council tonight.

Um they will determine that when they meet with this individual.

But what I was told was boards and commissions, public comments.

All of it is there's nothing written in stone that we have to do it a particular way.

It will be iterative based on what they want to do.

Okay.

Um is there more?

I'm Mr.

Just to clarify who they is when we're talking about who they will decide.

The city council, three members from the city council, the three staff members, myself and Michan are the committee that will meet.

Okay.

Ms.

Elms.

Do you need to appoint the three council members in order to understand who's meeting?

And to my knowledge, according to your charter, they can't make any decisions that don't come back to the city council.

True.

Providing input.

If you would like me to designate three, I could.

I would prefer to wait and send a memo out afterward rather than doing it on the fly.

Okay.

Um that uh Mr.

Palmer, go ahead.

Well if it was the tables were turned and I brought this to you, and we have a city attorney that's telling us that we have problems.

We have motions made and people making corrections to the motion in not knowing what we're doing.

Um I wouldn't get very far.

And and I'm not particularly sure why we're rushing into this.

Um I'm gonna make a motion to table this um resolution.

I'll second it.

Uh so uh does the motion to table supersede the original motion, Ms.

Cazel.

Is that correct?

Yes, I believe so.

Okay.

So we have a motion to table by councilmember Palmer and a motion and seconded by uh councilmember uh Fredericks.

And so I'm not trying to mess this up.

What I'm trying to do is make sure we get this clarified and then that it's as legal as we can get it, so we all know what's going on.

Um that's my rationale for tabling it.

It's not to not to not vote for it, but Mr.

Chair.

Uh I'm gonna weigh in here first.

And uh and maybe you're not of frustration on my part to the level of detail that is being asked here, and it behooves me to understand that we had another issue last week's council meeting where staff brought us an issue, and it's back on our on our council agenda in uh the two items from now where we did not get all as much detail on a hundred thousand dollar expenditure of that was a match to a 400,000 dollar grant that we're being asked to give for this item that is at a far less uh level of uh commitment.

So that's where my frustration is on this uh need for so much detail on it.

And so with that, Mayor Norton.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And as I mentioned before, we are already uh the the grant that um the National Civic League got was in April.

It has taken us this long to get there.

We we do need to move this ahead.

My apology for the date change.

I actually thought this would be such a no-brainer, if you will, that it would come while I was gone.

Um and it became clear that that wasn't going to be the case, that I needed to be here to provide the explanation.

I didn't want to leave poor norm uh wall, Norman Wall, Councilmember Wall alone on this, uh trying to do it while I was gone.

So I did change it, and I'm sorry that that didn't get caught.

Um it is not a contract, it is a resolution, and I would ask that you vote on it this evening, please.

Okay, we have a motion on the table to table this item.

I'm gonna ask uh um Clerk Caseel to please call the roll on the tabling motion.

Councilmember Keene.

Nay.

Councilmember Miller, nay, council member Wall.

Nay.

Councilmember Fredericks.

Yes.

Councilmember Palmer.

Aye.

Councilmember Doring.

Nay.

Council President Schuberg.

Nay.

Motion fails.

Call the question.

We have the original motion, which is uh the mayor's uh resolution.

Uh all in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed say nay.

Nay.

A motion passes six to one, is it?

Uh councilmember Palmer, did you vote?

Yes.

Okay.

Uh we have uh council uh six to one with council member Fredericks uh voting nay.

Moving on to item H4, which is a contract with SRF consulting group for professional services for 65th Street Northwest and Fairway Drive Design and Moore uh intersections.

And this is an item that was pulled by Councilmember Palmer.

Yeah, I I've got quite a few concerns on this, and and um I sent out a note this morning about it.

And I'm gonna kind of go off what Mr.

Keene's been uh kind of harping about lately, and that is is you know, how do we do things and are we doing it correctly?

And I'm just gonna give you a small example of today during uh the the meeting.

You know, Cook Park isn't at 227th Avenue, it's at 722 7th Street.

Um, you know, it may not be a big deal, but but but it's the details that bother me.

And so now I'm reading this that we have a road that was improperly built, um, 18 feet higher than it should have been built.

And instead of fixing it, we decided that we're gonna have the same consultant come back and he's gonna do more work for us.

And it just doesn't sit well with me that we would have the consultant that's already made a mistake turn around and it's gonna do more work for us.

And so um, I can't in good conscience vote for this, and I I don't understand it.

Maybe public works has a better um explanation than I've been trying to um figure out, but um again, I won't be supporting this.

Uh is there any other is there a question in there, Councilmember?

I didn't hear uh question.

Okay.

Uh any other discussion on this?

Is there a a motion on this item?

Um I'll make a motion authorizing a contract with SRF consulting group for in-kind services and the amount not to exceed 197,598 dollars for professional engineering services associated with 65th and fairway drive design at 51st Street Northwest traffic calming design, Civic Center Drive intersection and control evaluation reports and 55th Street Northwest and 50th Avenue Northwest ICE report.

Motion made by Councilmember Keene, and thank you for reading the entire motion.

Uh is there a second?

Second.

Uh seconded by Councilmember Doring.

Council Member uh Keene, you have the floor.

Yeah, I I do understand why the concerns Councilmember Palmer brings up, and I I would I knew about this because of an accident that happened uh out there.

But I also looked at it and said this this idea of like how are we working with our consultants?

And I I did not I found this to be uh like probably a savvy business decision by by public works to both extend you know basically get these other things done at a reduced thing and and get our get this intersection resolved.

So I I looked at it different than he did as opposed to a like a failure up front that we shouldn't deal with the company again.

And I looked at it and said, like um I I like the way it was resolved.

Council member uh wall.

Uh with just a few different words, I think that I would pair it exactly what uh Mr.

Keene just said.

Uh I I can appreciate what Mr.

Palmer said about uh the mistake that was done before, but I would believe that uh somehow the staff uh really highly values what we're going to get in return for uh that mistake and uh correcting.

Would that be correct?

Uh Mr.

Niemar?

Yes, that's correct, Councilmember Wall.

Uh Councilmember Palmer.

You but here's here's the problem.

Here we have a mistake that's made.

We have a lot of big projects coming up, and and it it to me doesn't make much sense.

So if I'm living out on 65th Street, I had this road that was ripped up for almost a year.

Now I'm gonna have a uh uh a roundabout, a mini roundabout put in that I didn't want or didn't think I needed, and now I'm gonna have that road closed again because we've got a contractor who didn't do their job.

Um this is not the first time this has happened in Rochester, and and we somehow don't want to hold consultants to to doing their job.

And if I'm wrong, somebody please tell me I'm wrong, but but I don't think I am.

Is that rhetorical?

Well, I don't see my talking.

Mr.

Neymar, sorry.

Council President.

It's not late, but we've been here for a long long time.

So I I would counter that just a little if I could.

Um SRF is um as a consequence of that error, they are offering a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of engineering consulting services at no fee to the city.

So it's not that we're not holding them accountable.

Other council members have said.

We tried to find a way that we could ums up some of the costs that were caused by that error um to the funding sources that fund streets around the community.

So um this situation got a little bit more complicated than it might look at face value.

I do want to uh correct for the record that it wasn't 18 feet of height on the hill, it was 18 feet of sight distance.

Um so the hill isn't 18 feet different than it should be.

So that's maybe an important thing to note.

But we had a complex situation where we had multiple issues going on with the corridor, and that complicated the resolution with the consultant.

So the consultants actually been working with us to resolve both issues, a speeding issue on the corridor as well as the original design flaw.

Um, so since they had so much invested in helping us diagnose the issues on the corridor, this solution became a little bit um more attractive um as opposed to um as council member Palmer put in correspondence earlier today, just writing us a check um and moving on with life.

All in favor say aye.

Okay, all opposed say nay.

Nay.

Motion passes six to one with council member Palmer voting nay.

Uh moving on to item H 5, which is a sub award agreement with the International City County Management Association, and this was polled by Councilmember Fredericks.

Yes.

I just wanted to open it up a little bit to have a little more discussion just for clarity and to see where the rest of my uh council members are at.

And then after we get to the uh there's a motion on the floor, I'll add some more.

Well, I'll ask a question of uh Mr.

Spindler Craig.

Uh uh at our last discussion, we talked about include including the Minnesota data privacy uh portion into the contract.

Can you uh can you talk about uh that process and and uh and that it's in there now and and uh your level of satisfaction with that.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Council members mayor Norton.

Yes, um, did appreciate the pushback, frankly, last week that was helpful.

Um maybe context matters a little bit, understanding that um this contract template from ICMA, I think goes back some period of time and did did uh did prompt some cleanup work for them.

So there were two particular areas that I heard the council's primary concerns focused on.

Really, it was mainly about that Article 16, uh, which talked pretty generally um and somewhat rigidly, though, about um proprietary information.

We had the concerns about the Minnesota Data Practices Act, making clear that that is a requirement that's somewhat unique to Minnesota, but needs to be an exception.

Um to the extent that that language was generally controlling and seemed to confine the ability of us to have conversations within the community and even within council meetings themselves to discuss this project that was concerning.

That's what I heard from you.

And I think the language that was changed accomplishes that very clearly.

We do explicitly reference now in 16.4 um the Minnesota Data Practices Act um application.

Um the header to Article 16 explicitly um indicates that the scope of work um exhibit A is an exception to the proprietary information control concept, and then maybe most importantly, what should give you reassurances 16.5 in the in the new language, which is really the catch-all, which just makes crystal clear that the subgrantee, which is the city, is permitted to disclose and discuss in any public or private meetings all information reports or data derived from the work that directly or indirectly stems from the identified exhibit A scope of work.

So I think that addresses the concerns that were voiced by the council appropriately so.

And then the second item was Article 25, which Councilmember Keene referenced.

I just wanted to make clear that both parties can exercise the termination right um within 30 days.

So I think those are the issues that you uh rightly focused on and are fixed with the new language.

Thank you, Mr.

Spindler Craig.

Uh, Councilmember Doring.

I'm gonna make a motion to authorize approval of a uh sub-award agreement with the International City County Management Association ICMA for the award of 416 uh thousand five hundred dollars grant to support economic mobility in Rochester.

Uh motion made by Councilmember Doring.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Uh seconded by Councilmember Keene.

Councilmember Doring, you have the floor.

Yeah, I I appreciate I appreciate the explanation by the city attorney.

I think it uh I think it met the criteria that I was asking for last week.

So I'm happy to support uh moving forward.

Councilmember Wall.

So it's become a kind of a theme tonight, maybe for me or for others.

Uh last week we talked about co-design, which has a little bit different um uh connotation in this agreement, and we talked about collaboration or collaborators.

Uh we talked about stakeholders.

Um do we have any sense of uh how how much public engagement will be done in terms of completing the work uh of this?

Steinhauser.

Sure, thank you for the question, Councilmember Wall.

Uh as shared last week, the the biggest um collaboration will occur with our partners in economic development, the stakeholders in economic development.

They are the uh that's the group that's already been convening that I think Ms.

Woodward uh discussed at uh last week's meeting.

There they are the group that we intend to tap into to help build out the work plan that's defined in the scope of work under um exhibit A or one of the exhibits.

So uh for the purposes of this work, um, the those most greatly impacted are the providers of the services around economic development, and that's who we intend to be the group that we reach out to so just Joe and Joan walking down the street are not likely to be touched.

Council President.

Uh go ahead, Miss Sounds.

Councilmember Wall, I think this probably is good to hearken back to the discussion you had at your study session about all of the economic resilience work and maybe some of the housing access and um gonna totally space it on the other one, inclusive growth management.

Gonna um and so I do think that there as we build an initial work plan, we'll probably be a lot more engagement because depending on what some of the more detailed aspects of that are that we shared will come after your comfort level with the strategic priority goals and tasks are.

Um I think that will inform more work.

Uh why we're starting with the economic development partners, though, is that they are doing really important work and we don't want them to feel overshadowed, like we have to start somewhere to show all of the different opportunities that are happening.

I think maybe the mayor is going to share a little bit about some work that she had done already two years ago, which seems more recent.

Um, but really making sure that that is a piece of it.

And we had always also intended to talk to some business owners that either are newer or maybe longer term to understand how they've been navigating the system.

Um also some of the more informal business ownership that happens.

There are any number of different um business owners that are not necessarily traditional brick and mortar um that we consider sometimes in our economic development.

Um we wanted to start there in order to have something to hold on to in order to then say how else are we building out some of your strategic priorities, the strategies and tactics associated with that, and how can we prioritize those recognizing that's very helpful to have partners that are supportive of that and and feel like they're represented in it because they also have important resources that are for I can't remember their names, Joe and Jill Citizen.

Joe and Joan, I think.

Joe and Joe citizen who might be um could have been Rod Grew.

Um but so I think there will be.

I just don't want to predict exactly what that will be because part of the goal of this grant is that you don't predict the outcome you which is outlined in the scope of work that's attached, um, which is why we attach the scope of work.

Mayor Norton.

Yes.

Um I wanted to give just a tiny bit of history because we have a new board from two years ago, and it is kind of shocking that's been that long.

Um, with I was involved with National League of Cities, and uh we received a 45,000 dollar grant, and I supplemented that grant with $15,000, which is one half of my annual budget, um, to give each of three nonprofits $20,000.

So ready, got $20,000 to do ecosystem mapping.

I don't know how far they got on that, but they should have at least some start and thinking about this issue.

We got $20,000 to Collider, who worked on informal entrepreneurship, which I just heard mentioned again.

And we gave $20,000 to uh cradle to career to look into the child care uh entrepreneurship and child care issues in this community.

So what I'm hearing here is hopefully a building on some work that started a year and a half to two years ago that has had a little bit of funding to you know whet their whistle, I think, and hopefully, you know, increase their interest.

And I'm hoping this can take it even further.

Um, I do want to just give my two cents worth it.

Child care is part of the important work of workforce.

And so please don't leave out cradle to career as the work that they're doing is vital to at just as collider and just as ready and just as the other organizations should be working with.

Um, and they have worked together before, they're aware of each other's early work through the National League of Cities grant, and I'm hopeful, hopeful that they'll be very helpful to the efforts here.

There's a motion on the floor.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed say nay.

Motion passes.

Uh moving on to ordinance first readings.

Go ahead, Mr.

Spindler Craig.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Item J1 and ordinance amending section one-two-three of chapter one-two of the Rochester Code of Ordinances relating to administrative enforcement procedures.

Thank you.

Uh any other business for this evening.

Seeing none, is there a motion to adjourn?

So move.

Second.

By council member uh Miller, seconded by councilmember Keene.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed say nay.

We are adjourned.