Really?

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

Welcome everybody to our March 2nd, 2026 City Council meeting.

And we begin our city council meetings with our open common period.

This is an opportunity for members of the public to address the council on uh issues that we are not holding a separate public hearing on uh uh later this evening.

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

I will keep track of time through two methods.

One is the stoplight here and in front of me, and the second is the red digital clock to the left of me.

Uh so please know I may need to cut you off because of the limited time, and we want to also make sure that everybody has an opportunity to speak.

I'd also ask that speakers be concise to allow more people to speak, and uh encourage you to limit comments generally to topics that are within the scope and jurisdiction of the council's ability to affect policy.

Uh council members and staff do not respond directly to your comments, uh, but will instead follow up if you need uh us two separately, and if you have materials to share with the council, please hand them over to our uh city clerk and Caseau, who is uh raising her hand right now.

Uh and so you will now be invited up to speak in the order of which you signed up.

So we start with Mr.

Barry Creesel.

I mean Barry Barry Skolnick.

I saw Barry and John walking in today together.

So Mr.

Skolnik, go ahead.

Okay, I hope this is on.

Anyway, um, yeah, I'm speaking um coming up to speak about the Rochester Economic Development Authority and the request for TIFF being associated, being assigned to the City Walks apartment houses.

Um there when you look at the number to total percentage of uh of apartments that are is go is going to people who uh are of lower income or middle income, it's actually going to be less because um the uh the heffron house, which is my uh mayor Martin Hefferin's old house, that one used to be excluded used to have m lower rents and still had lower rents up until when Nozer signed uh the apartments over to he was the former person who ran for mayor, um, sent that over to the developer and he he sold it to them.

Um so right now if you look at the total percent of of affordable housing in that unit, it's actually less rather than the more.

And some people say there's urban blight, but I've looked in in those buildings.

I don't see any blight, I don't see any rodents, I don't see any mice, I don't see any deterioration.

So I'm not sure exactly how they're defining urban blight, unless it means they really want to build their project and they want money for it, and so whatever is in their way is blight.

But in terms of doing something for the city, getting rid of the Hefferin House, Mayor Hefferin's house, um, is it is a shame.

He basically uh would constructed St.

Mary's Hospital and the Chateau Theater as well as numerous other houses.

And um again, he he was he served as sort of like as one of the only rooming houses where he was the owner and he also had served meals and things in there, and so yeah, it was one of the last ones that was left in Rochester.

So while it didn't get on tie, wasn't in a timely way submitted enough where I could get it landmarked.

It still was something again.

He was a mayor of Rochester, he was president of the board of Alderman.

He also served as a uh somebody who was doing anesthesia, a jack of all trades for uh St.

Mary's Hospital.

And I'm just hoping that not so much for the House itself, which I wish could have been saved, but I know it's not going to be.

I'm just concerned about why uh you're actually giving TIFF to it.

They already got money from the DMC, I think, through state grants.

And I'm just very concerned that it just doesn't deserve to have TIFF, because again, why?

Do we give it to all projects?

What separates that out?

And the two buildings which they say are now on some public role.

How do we know that want to stay there?

Anyway, so they you so you can't add that to the uh number of affordable housing units.

So again, please look at it.

I don't think it deserves TIFF.

Um, again, why?

There's no degradation there whatsoever.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Skolnick.

Uh, next up we have uh Mike Schmidt.

Hello, folks members, Madam Mayor.

Uh I come before you today as the chair of the Pedestrian and Bicycle Commission, also known as PBAC.

For those of you who don't know, the PBAC is a commission of eight people selected by the mayor for having strengths and skills and knowledge regarding alternative modes of transportation, focusing specifically on biking and walking.

Uh, among the many statements in our mission are the following.

Increased bicycling access to transit is needed to support transportation solutions needed to support the destination medical center initiative and walk and bike friendliness are key economic drivers for the cities for cities of all sizes, strengthening the local economy by attracting businesses, investment, and skilled workers that have the option to locate just about anywhere.

Uh I we've had the opportunity to listen to many presentations from the city and from Tool Design Group iteratively since uh September of 2025.

And through that, we've heard a lot of different options and uh uh many multiple options that are available.

Uh I come before you today to say that we support Sixth Avenue through 4th Street, not before that.

We do not support it going until 2030.

But additionally, we also support either first or second avenue as a transit from the north to south and south to north for bikers, walkers, and strollers.

I do want to draw your attention to some of the discussion that we had.

Um, through our research and study, bikers and walkers and rollers are commonly known to step to stop, shop, and linger more than a car driving 25 miles per hour down the road and contribute to a stronger economic impact to the businesses.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next we have Mr.

John Creasel.

Madam Madam Chair, uh, Mr.

President, members of the council.

I would first encourage uh all of you not to accept the mayor's um resignation.

I think that would be a mistake, and I want to thank you for all your years of service this community.

So I hope it's uh you overwhelmingly will not accept her resignation.

Um that said, encourage all of us to take a deep breath.

Parking's a big issue.

Uh relative to uh how we're going to route people and bicycles throughout this community.

Uh I would support second avenue.

I want to remind everybody that we gave the mail clinic bold move forward 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Avenue.

That created many problems.

One of the problems being parking.

The clinic owns approximately 32 surface parking lots.

Since this bold move forward has gone forward, uh the parking ramp on uh at the end of 3rd Street is stuffed every day, along with most of the surface parking.

That coupled with behind time theater.

Um I can't say uh what the percentage is, as I understand more than 50% of those spots are leased out to businesses because they need to have a place to park for themselves and employees.

Um that said uh I would only hope that the clinic then, because of the 150 million dollars that was granted to this community to problem solve the transportation issue, is problem-solved and does not linger after their construction is over.

That said, uh I encourage you and remind you uh and ask you do you want businesses downtown or not?

It's pretty simple.

There are many destination businesses that need parking attorneys, dentists, so forth.

And so give that thought.

Thank you all very much.

Thank you, Mr.

Cresel.

Next up, we have Mr.

West Lund.

Thank you for this opportunity to again speak to you.

And I'd like to share uh Governor Tim Walls's report.

I'll be leaving this with uh your record keeper so it can be given into the record and you can all have a copy of it.

It's easily available online.

This is the report on fraud, waste and abuse of the state of Minnesota.

Uh for the issue of investigation of fraud to be transmogrified into, is that a word?

To be changed into another matter is quite a different thing.

The real victims of fraud in Minnesota are not just the taxpayers.

They're actually the kids who don't get autism services because the money that's set out for those people to receive autism services is squandered or spent on non-existent phantom students and non-existent programs, while the owners of say daycares are buying large multi-acre properties in the middle of nowhere in Minnesota, or even building mansions back on the Mediterranean and driving high-end cars around Minnesota.

So to have that issue of fraud, the real victims are the homeless, for which the Department of Health and Human Services sets aside monies through the largest of Americans.

Minnesotans built a high trust society where we wanted to provide for those who slipped through the cracks in our social system to deny the real victims the funding that they deserve.

We want to fully fund programs that actually service and benefit the citizens of our state.

I mean, using TIFF monies to create luxury high-end departments on average is another issue involved there.

TIFF money should be used just for public access.

I mean, HUD homes and things like that.

But there's all manner of abuse going on from daycare centers through elderly care through the taxi services that are non-emergency medical taxis that are operating.

A lot of these have been found out.

And I encourage you to think of the real victims in Minnesota.

Thank you, Mr.

Lund.

Next we have uh Jason Bale back Backen.

Hello.

So along with that, the whole fraud thing.

So Rochester Police Department gets 27 million dollars a year to you know do their job.

So on February 5th, down here at the law enforcement center, I was trying to file a report when I was approached by the sheriff's department, who then um assaulted me by pressing his finger into my ear and getting permanent hearing damage.

I'm deaf in this ear, have ready to go for life in front of the LEC, mind you.

The whole time, not one cop, not one RPD came out to see what was going on or what the problem was, even though I was already there waiting to speak to an officer, and then being assaulted by the sheriff's department, which was um uh what do you want to call it?

Um instigated by uh the chairman or Congress or uh what's his name?

Um, down at Olmstead County administration to trespass me because I've been doing investigations on each department on whether or not they're fraud or not.

So um I would consider that willful obstruction of justice and impeding investigations on everything, and it's been like six months now that I first did my first initial complaint about it, went through every department after getting kicked out of every department because they would not help anything to do with a citizen.

You guys only help out the people down here.

Why is there no help that goes to the community that has these problems?

I always get referred back to um, you know, you got to figure this out on your own.

So if fraud includes the fact that taxpayer money goes towards this place being able to help people figure stuff out, doesn't that go to the community as well?

Or is it just to help, you know, you guys cover your butts and stuff like that?

Because every department I went to, there was no help whatsoever besides if I worked for the department or anybody down here.

Why does taxpayer money pay for your guys' jobs that taxpayers don't get no benefit from?

Because as far as I know, in any kind of contract, there has to be a benefit to each party.

Thank you, Mr.

Bale Baken.

Next we have uh Tim Schmidt.

Uh good evening, Council.

Uh thanks for the opportunity to speak.

Like to speak on item H3, the downtown corridor.

Um, I look there's a four-page thing in the packet, but if I read it right, the community engagements basically three council meetings and six bike advisory meetings.

These are we're talking changes to a built-in area.

There are already stakeholders there.

I didn't see any engagement with those.

I mean, on six, we have Cutski neighborhood.

First, we have RDA, not only just you know, RDA is the downtown business, but RDA is Thursdays on first.

Uh, First Avenue is also a historic district.

I mean, are we going to talk to usually with development?

We talk to a lot of groups, you know, Cute and uh neighborhood associations, in this case RDA, preservation commission.

I would like to see an effort before we do anything with these streets downtown to bring in other stakeholders besides the bicycle community.

And that way, hopefully we can build a project that is uh accommodating in uh best interest of everybody involved.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Next we have Lucy Creesel.

Good evening, Mayor, President, Council.

Good to see everybody.

Um, I'm here to speak on the North South Downtown Mobility Network connection.

And first and foremost, really challenging issue.

And I just want to say um I greatly appreciate all of the um complicated and sincere and respectful dialogue that I've had with the City of Rochester team with um bike advocates um with my business neighbors.

So many people have been engaged on this issue and they're passionate about it.

I don't think there's one right answer.

Um, but I trust that you all will think creatively about how to proceed so that we can both celebrate this momentum that we've built together um from all different avenues of the issue, and then also hope that we can.

Sorry, I'm looking at my time and I don't know what it is, but anyway, um, we're having a little glitch just to keep going.

Okay.

Just keep going.

Um, I'm also hoping that whatever iteration is selected, um, that we will consider applying different ways to gather data about how people move around downtown because I think that's what's missing from a lot of the conversations.

Where do people go?

How long, what do they use it for, why, what is convenient, etc.

Because I think this the reason I was interested in first um was for consistency and predictability, right?

I teach kids how to ride bikes.

If we want new rollers and new riders to go there, we want it to be inviting and something that is predictable for both cars to understand where we're going and for us to understand what we're doing, right?

Um, and so that's why I was interested in that.

No matter what we do moving forward, I'd like to ensure that we um gather data as we try this, these next steps as these experiments so that we can really find out what works, what doesn't work, what really works, what really doesn't work, because I think we kind of have to try it on to find out more before we really figure out the solution.

And especially looking at what we are you all were discussing last week about the new historic district um proposal and iterations.

If we're gonna try any of those semi-more experimental, you know, multimodal streets for Rochester, we're gonna need as much data as we can to kind of understand what works and if doesn't.

So just want to reiterate, I want to celebrate the hard work that everyone they were not they drew a short straw trying to figure out this project.

Um, the city of Rochester and everybody else who's been involved has been really respectful and want to celebrate that.

I think we all have the same goal for a vibrant and functional downtown.

And then also um let's try to figure out how to get new learners down there by gathering some new metrics and data.

So thanks for your time.

Thank you.

Next, we have Michael Wojak.

Greetings, council member, mayor, uh Michael Bojack.

I'm the executive director of the bicycle alliance of Minnesota and also a member of the state's advisory council on traffic safety.

And um, here with largely positive sentiments towards what you'll be hearing on H2 and H3 this evening.

In particular, we'd like to commend Tool Design on the incredible work they did on creating a really vibrant and um nice transition for the Cutsky neighborhood on Sixth Avenue.

We commend them for that work.

Uh, we do want to point out while we support this, we also acknowledge that the intersections at Civic Center Drive and 2nd Street are not all ages and abilities, nor is the uh slope uh south of 2nd Street.

So while this is a fantastic connection, it does not in and of itself reconnect the network.

Um we understand that um it's a that uh sixth avenue has always been designated as a secondary route, and we think this is a fantastic execution.

We are very concerned about uh replacing the third and fourth avenue uh corridor, which was the long approved plan for bicycling downtown.

And um, we're somewhat agnostic in terms of how we accomplish safe routes through downtown, whether that be on First Avenue or whether that be on Second Avenue.

Either one could work fine.

Obviously, on 2nd Avenue, we have to collaborate with the Mayo Clinic on Annaburg Plaza.

On First Avenue, we have to make sure that we're not doing one or two blocks, but we're actually creating a safe bikeway the entire length of the way.

We have to decide which direction we're gonna go, but one of them will work.

The great thing about 2nd Avenue is it takes almost no additional money.

Um, what's there already as part of Discovery Walk is pretty fantastic, and uh we can work with that.

So we do appreciate this moving forward.

It is important that we have something on first or second to truly connect the downtown.

And um just know that we enjoy being part of the process and as much as possible.

We hope that you, the city council will be making the important policy decisions and engaging the community and not uh handing those responsibilities off to administrators.

So thank you for your time.

Thank you for your service.

Mayor, especially thank you for your service.

Broke my heart a little bit today, but um you've made our community better.

Thank you for that.

Thank you.

Next, we have Aaron Mead.

Hey, Councilmembers and uh Mayor.

Um, so I'm also here to talk about the connecting north-south bike routes through downtown Rochester.

And um, following on what Michael said, um, well, I should say I'm also here um as a board member of WeBike Rochester, an advocate.

Um I think broadly, everybody um in our our advocacy community thinks very highly of the design that's gone into Sixth Avenue, but it doesn't meet the requirements of all ages and abilities, considering um Civic Center Drive and going to Soldiers Field.

And one of the main things here is that um of course these bike lanes or any safe route through downtown will um benefit people who are already biking.

But when we talk about bringing more people in, it's that last mile, these missing links getting from lower town into downtown, getting from soldiers field into downtown that will make people fearful of not riding just because of that one missing link.

Um and bike lanes through the heart of the city, where all our where um many of our local small businesses are will support people going to them again.

People on the bike are more like more likely to stop, more likely to linger, um, go into another shop.

Um and so one of the things that's really important about the um options that were presented so far is that what we see on First Avenue is a only one or two blocks of bike lanes, which really does not address this um missing link issue of people getting into downtown and feeling safe coming through, coming to our businesses, coming and being a part of the vibrant street um in city that we have here.

So if First Avenue isn't an option all the way down, we also support 2nd Avenue, which already is actually a great bike route.

Um just with some uh some calming and modal filtering would be amazing with very, very little cost to build.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Mead.

Next we have Marty Cormac.

Thank you, Council and Mayor.

Um, I'm Marty Cormac, and I'm gonna give a perspective of someone who travels by bicycle.

Um I saw plans on Sixth Avenue.

Sounds really good.

Problem is is the hill on the south end is not all ages and all abilities.

And because it's so far west of where I'm gonna be going when I go downtown, um, it's not something that would uh help me at all.

Uh I want to be able to go to the places mostly along uh First Avenue, and then also uh to the Mayo Clinic.

I'm a regular bullet donor, so I need to get to to the um Hilton building on 2nd Avenue.

And so I would encourage you to um go ahead with the uh Sixth Avenue plans, but also be sure that you uh um help all the folks like me, and um I understand there's hundreds of people who uh park their bikes downtown every day, even in uh uh the winter months.

So there's a lot of folks who do travel by bicycle, and so I would I'd hope that you keep us in mind and um make sure that we reconnect the north-south uh now that it's got um that a mail clinic is uh broken that up with the third and fourth avenue.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Cormac.

And that concludes our open comment period.

Thank you, everybody.

Uh we'll move on to uh call to order and the roll call.

Good evening, Councilmember Keene here.

Councilmember Miller.

Here, Councilmember Wall.

Here, Councilmember Fredericks here, Councilmember Palmer.

Here.

Councilmember Doring.

Here.

Council President Schubring.

Here.

Mayor Norton.

Thank you.

Next we have our city administrators report.

Deputy Administrator Parrish, take it away.

Yeah, President, Mayor, members of the Council, really agree to be here tonight on behalf of Allison.

Just want to convey a few things here.

One, really encouraging residents to provide feedback through a survey that experienced Rochester is currently soliciting feedback on on our local tourism planning.

And so it's an opportunity really to provide insight into the visitor experience, which also is relevant to the resident experience.

That'll be wrapping up by March 22.

And if folks are interested in participating, they can go to our website at Rochester Mn.gov.

It feels like we want to be in uh you know the outdoor farmers market mode, but not quite yet.

Um, but you still have the opportunity uh to take in the indoor farmers market this Saturday from 9 to 12 at the fairgrounds.

So definitely check that out at Crawford Hall.

Um it's still an exciting uh time and really uh forecasting what's coming this spring.

Our library always hosting a number of amazing events, and if you want also on Saturday after the farmers market, you can head over to the library and do puzzles and pretzels and for all ages, and if you can even design an image of your own mini puzzle to take home.

So that's a great uh activity for for many.

And then uh you'll probably all be a little bit disappointed because this might conflict with your council meetings, but uh you might be able to get to the Argentine tangle on March 9th after the study session for dancing downtown.

Um, but probably not so much for March 16th on the waltz.

But uh the community can enjoy uh dancing downtown Monday night on Peace Plaza from six to eight.

And that concludes my report.

Thank you.

And next we have the mayor's report.

Mayor Norton.

I was a little concerned when I saw acting mayor's report.

I thought maybe you didn't want to give up the role.

So it's your show for the next 11 months.

For a few months left, yeah.

Um, so I have just a brief report this evening.

Um I'm glad to see that things went relatively well while I was gone, and I didn't get too many notices of crisis.

So thank you for covering for me.

Um I do want to uh announce, and uh there's a lot going on this week, so I know not everyone is available, but on uh Tuesday, tomorrow evening from 6 to 7:30 at the Heinz Center.

Um, the police department uh uh will be hosting with me a town hall, and it's called uh using advanced technology and policing.

Primarily we're gonna talk about the use of drones in Rochester.

There's also a grant out there for some additional um drone support, um, but to talk about why we use it, what we use it for, how it's used, how the data is saved and collected, that kind of thing, as well as um I've asked uh the police department to talk a little bit about cameras because I've gotten a significant amount of communication this past oh, I'd say six months or so about the use of cameras and data, and we had even some folks here who who testified earlier this year with some confusion, thinking that we turn over this data that from cameras on the streets to someone, which we do not.

But um, I asked them to maybe talk about the camera use in town when you go to a stop sign and you look around, you see a number of technologies, and we don't all know what those are.

So they'll talk about that too.

So I think it should be interesting, and I I welcome you all there at the Heinz Center uh tomorrow evening.

Um also with the police department.

Um, it is the community uh police academy, which um what have has been held over the years several times.

This is an opportunity for folks.

Um Thursdays, March 26th to May 21st.

The community can sign up for uh a police academy and they will learn um how the police works, um, how it does service in the community, their topics like crime scene processing, traffic safety, narcotic enforcement, and canine demonstrations.

So you do not come out with the skills to be a police officer when you're done, but you will know better um what the police officers do and how they do it.

And so we welcome uh folks to sign up for this nine-week academy again Thursdays starting March 26th at 6:30 p.m.

to 9 p.m.

So it'll take uh your Thursday evenings, but I think you'll find it very interesting.

Free and open to the public.

Um folks have to be 18 uh to participate.

And there is a QR code there you can use or get a hold of our office or call the police department for more information.

Just quickly, um uh it I will be gone for the the next meeting, so I won't be able to announce this there.

We have the National League of Cities uh annual conference uh and a couple of us are going.

And this is um gonna happen on March 18th.

It is National Transit Employee Appreciation Day, and we want to show appreciation for our uh transit drivers and uh thank all of them for their professionalism and their service.

So I'm not announcing it March 16th, I'm doing it today instead.

And lastly, just a reminder we are coming to the end of uh enrollment for the uh trip to Germany.

It will be June 12th through 22nd, as it says on the slide.

Um, we'll be visiting both of our sister cities, uh, Moosburg, which is um a sister city that was started by Mayor Chakazama many years ago, at ending at Munster, which has been a sister city for about nine years now, um linked to sustainability and energy.

I see Mitzi in the audience who was on one of the very first trips.

So um, it'll be a really uh wonderful experience.

And um if you want to come, there's still time for about two or three more days to sign up.

That's all I have.

Well, thank you, Mayor.

And uh, as others have said, we appreciate your service for the last eight years, and uh it's interesting this to watch you.

You seem calmer today than writer, and so look forward to to working with you for the next uh 11 months.

But congratulations on your decision today.

Uh with that, we uh are moving on to the order of the agenda.

Are there any changes to the agenda?

Seeing none, is there a motion to approve the agenda?

Moved by council member wall, seconded by councilmember Miller.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay.

Motion passes.

Moving on to our consent agenda.

Councilmember Wall is pulling item F8 and I, Council President Schubring and pulling F4.

Are there any other items to pull?

If not, I'd invite a motion to approve and block items F1 through F3, F5 through F7, and F9 through F15.

So moved by Councilmember uh Fredericks.

Second, second by council member wall.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Oppose saying nay.

Motion passes.

Moving on to public hearings.

We have no public hearings uh on tonight's agenda.

Moving on to H reports and recommendations.

H1 transit uh Rochester Public Transit uh spring service changes, and we have uh Miss uh Rachel Fouch to here to give us a presentation.

Wonderful.

I was waiting on the clicker, but I can go ahead and get it.

I move fast.

Good evening, council members and mayor.

Um Rachel Gouch, interim director of transit and parking.

Oh, the microphone's not open.

There you go.

Now we're good.

Rachel Fauch, interim director of transit and parking, here to um cover the proposed spring service changes um that we're hoping to implement at the end of April.

So the the intention and the purpose of the spring service changes is really to do a variety of things, and overall it was to increase ridership throughout our system or is to increase ridership throughout our system, and we're doing that by increasing frequency on some of our routes that are um designated within the primary transit network and our comprehensive plan.

So increasing some of those uh frequencies to 20 minutes.

We're also hoping to look at increasing boardings, and so those are um reflected, and we're gonna cover that in a couple of sides, but you'll be able to see what we mean by boardings and increasing that.

Also increasing service reliability by increasing frequency.

If you if um if you miss uh your bus, you might have an opportunity to get on another one quicker, and so it's going to increase your confidence within the system.

We're also increasing collaborations, and so this service change is really focused on internal um collaborations, higher collaborations with our our uh transit operator, transdev, and working with them as we look forward to um the more background scene for our route changes, um, which is blocks and runs within our system.

So those blocks are that section of time that the bus is out on the road, and a run is the time that that specific driver is out.

So we want to ensure that the the proposed times that we're proposing that our drivers are capable of doing them.

So there's a there's a big difference between us sitting behind a computer and making a plan and when that plan is actually um enacted.

And so really looking at a height and level of collaboration to include more of our drivers in this process.

Um, and and ultimately we're hoping to increase revenue throughout our system.

So we started the whole and community engagement process for this uh at the end of January.

We did the last two weeks of January.

We had um RPT staff ride, uh do ride-alongs within our bus system and interact with our riders and collect that feedback directly.

We also had an online survey available.

So if there was too many riders on the bus at any time, we could ask them to scan a QR code and fill out that, but it was also pushed out through POCOL as well.

And so we received nearly 500 respondents on our POCO survey and our ride-alongs.

Then we did two virtual information sessions and two in-person engagement sessions.

The virtual ones were recorded and posted on our website, and we had a survey available for those that were in attendance and those that were not able to attend, along with the opportunity to interact via email directly with myself and our transit planner Sandra Narr, who's behind us today, to really create a unique experience.

So if a rider was unsure if the proposed changes were going to impact them directly, we could provide an answer.

Yep, like this stop is going to be slightly shifted, but you'll be able to access it, but it'll be on the other end of the block now.

And this is the route that will service you.

So really creating a high level of customer service.

And so all of that engagement led us to our proposed service changes.

So currently we have 26 routes throughout our system that vary in frequency from every 30 to every 60 minutes.

Some only run during peak, and as a reminder, peak hours are 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock in the morning.

And then followed up with evening service starting at 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock.

And when we're looking at those routes and their performance, we're looking at standards.

And we can't just be making choices without data.

So the Met Council recommends that 15 rides or boardings per hour for each one of our service routes.

And we actually came to that same conclusion on what we need to achieve within our system.

Currently, none of our routes meet 15 boardings per hour.

Our average is eight.

So we have some routes that are a little bit closer to 15, but we do have around half of our current routes.

So 13 routes that are sitting below eight.

And some of those routes as a as a foreshadowing here are looking to be discontinued, and some of them are being merged with other routes to hopefully increase our boardings per hour.

But we do need to reach around 15 boardings per hour for us to be sustainable as a transit system.

So really focusing on those underperforming routes and increasing frequency to hopefully increase our boardings per hour along our routes.

With our spring service changes, there is a slight modification to this.

As I said, we had a substantial amount of public engagement and leading up to the after the packet was posted, we did get additional feedback for route 102, which we did propose to be merged with 11.

And there was a lot of feedback to maintain that route.

So I'll go through the steps and the modifications to keep the 102 route.

So we're looking at 22 routes, not 21 routes for the spring service changes.

And you'll also see a reduction of stops and adding of stops, and a lot of that has to do with shifting a service from a loop service on some of our routes to bidirectional.

So in one situation we would only have one stop on one side of the loop going up and around.

In a bi-directional, we have a stop on each side of the road.

So that increases the amount of stops within the system, but it also increases the accessibility for individuals to access one of those stops.

And we'll go over each one of these in detail, so I won't go over them now.

So in the Northeast region, this is the one in which I was referring to the 102.

And so I'll kind of jump a little bit ahead here to kind of cover that.

So on the current service map, you'll see the 102 is at Burgundy route.

And that's the route that we were asked to maintain with the ridership specifically around that Northern Heights, Northern Hills loop that you'll see on the Black Route or the 101 that was being removed.

And so that was what we were asked to maintain.

So the new 102 will only be during peak hours, so those morning and afternoon hours during the week.

And it will go up Broadway, go over and do those Northern Heights, Northern Hills loops, and then loop up around Rocky Creek Drive, East Circle Drive, and then come back down.

It's Broadway.

And so those rods are still being serviced.

That frequency will be every hour.

It's currently every hour.

And so we're not shifting the frequency on the 102, but it is shifting to more of a bi-directional route than a loop service that it was before.

So if you're on those Northern Heights and Northern Hills loops, you might be on the bus a little bit longer for us to be able to maintain service to there.

But if you're jumping on anywhere on Broadway, you have probably a shorter route time.

So the um 101 and the 206.

This is one of the more interesting kind of combinations that we came up with for the spring service changes.

And now it's shifting to what you see on the right hand side with the 101 and the 206 combined.

This route, if you've noticed, does not go to Central Park.

And so this route allows quick access to those that live in the northeast to the southeast.

So it travels from that top all the way down to the southeast area to like South Target and providing service there.

And now it's moving to a 20-minute frequency.

And so it's really providing quick and steady access for our residents in a bi-directional service opposed to a loop service.

So they don't have to wait for that bus to travel all the way around.

They can get on it when it's coming by them at the appropriate time.

And that'll be, and then yeah, we'll go up ahead.

So for the southeast, so you'll notice there's really minimal changes to the southeast.

The biggest one is just shifting that frequency to off peak service to being every 60 minutes opposed to every 30 minutes.

So that really caters to when our riders need to be on the 203, but still provides appropriate access throughout the day.

So that is the only shift in the southeast region.

So the southwest, so the 306 is the Burgundy route that you can kind of see.

And this is one of our now bi-directional routes.

So if you're an initial look, you might think it doesn't feel or look much different.

But if you look on the left map versus the right map, you'll notice we're no longer doing that chunk on Broadway there.

And so just south of Grand Marina, now it's a single bidirectional route and not doing a looped route service there anymore, with frequency at 30 minutes during peak and 60 minutes during off-peak times.

And this really allows connectivity for residents as they move from the central park down to the south Walmart area.

And then for the 307, so that route is blue that you see on the left and on the right.

So that is another bi-directional service again on initial look.

It might not feel like it's looking bidirectional, but you can see it's traveling up with that green route on the left-hand map, and now it's a bi-directional bi-directional route, and it runs every 30 minutes during peak and every 16 minutes during off-peak.

But what is really an asset for this route is its connectivity for those those residents to areas like the mall.

So now that that bus ride would only be 15 minutes opposed to a much longer ride previous to this shift.

So it's really creating more quick access for our residents in that space.

For the northwest region for the the 90409 and the 410s.

So the 409 is that orange route.

It's a little bit close to red when you're looking at the map, but it's the more kind of lower centrally located route.

And the um 418, which is the Burgundy route that you see.

So those routes are being combined and it will now have enhanced frequency.

So they're going to run every instead of every 30 minutes, they'll now be every 20 minutes.

And so that's one of those routes dedicated in the comprehensive plan that we've increased frequency for.

And then this is really an interesting route.

So if you're riding in that area, this is providing access to Costco, um Cub Foods, and Hivy, all within that area at a high frequency route.

So it's it's a really impressive uh shift in my opinion, and really provides access to our residents to get to the things that they need to get to.

The 411 is the uh chartreuse, as I've been affectionately calling it color that you see on the right-hand side.

You can see a pretty substantial shift in this route.

It was really kind of centrally located south, and now it's pretty expansive as it moves up through the system.

And this one also no longer needs a transfer.

Um, so it's an opportunity for individuals to have quick and easy access without having to transfer at Central Park and still have service to Walmart North and then um travel throughout that entire system.

And then the 413 has been, and that's the ride route on here, has been realigned to serve IBM during peak times.

Probably the the only, the only real discontinuation of service that we're looking at for the spring service changes is the 505, or sometimes called the shopper route.

And so that route is being removed when we talked about frequency and we talked about boardings per hour.

This route received two on average.

Um and it only ran Tuesdays and Fridays and had really low ridership during those times.

However, it is still serviced.

The those stops are still serviced by eight of our routes with the spring service changes that run Monday through Friday.

So they're still in two situations on both the 101 and the 409, those are those increased frequency routes.

And so that is an opportunity to have increased frequency and still have access to those locations.

But be uh thoughtful in how we're providing service to our to our riders.

And then our last modification is for weekend service.

And so right now our weekend service runs 6 a.m.

to 7 p.m.

And this is an area that was specifically dialed in on those surveys.

What would what would it look like if we're reduced down to one day on the weekend?

And the resounding answer was I wouldn't be able to do what I need to do with one day on the weekend.

So one of the things we did look at is we're just reduced reducing the amount of time on the weekends.

So reducing it from 6 to 7 a.m.

And that's really we had very low ridership between 6 and 7 a.m.

And 7 a.m., 8 a.m.

and 9 a.m.

are actually kind of our peak on the weekend service.

And then it picks back up at around four o'clock in the afternoon.

And then that would um instead of servicing until 7 p.m.

We would service until 5 p.m.

And just to like for clarity on that 5 p.m.

that mid mean that when that's when the last trip would run for transit for that day.

So we'd start at five the last trips would run at five.

So really service would go until closer to six, depending on most of our weekend frequency is around 60 minutes.

And so that would that trip would be about 60 minutes long.

Everything else on our weekends would stay the same.

So ultimately, what does this mean in terms of our ridership and our hopefully our key outcomes?

So 99% of our existing boardings would still be within a quarter mile or five minute walk to one of our bus stops.

Um the areas in that one percent of reduction were around 55th Street Northeast and 19th Street Northwest.

And 20, that's about 26 of our stops now fall outside of that quarter mile.

So that five minute walk, which on average, as indicated here is around 11 boardings that we have a day.

What I really want to highlight is that increase on the very bottom one where we're shifting from 3% of our stops are within a quarter mile of 20 minutes or better service, or growing that all the way up to 14% with these spring service changes.

So we're really dramatically increasing our service with a 20 minute uh 20 minute or better service.

And then that's translated over to access to jobs.

And so that's growing from 29% currently with our our current service to 50% of our of the jobs within the city of Rochester will now be within 20 minutes or greater service within a five-minute walk.

So really thoughtful plans have gone into this, and I really want to take a moment and congratulate um Sandra Nard, transit planner, because the amount of work and dedication has gone in and the amount of collaboration that we've done internally and externally to get to this point.

Um the next steps for us will be additional outreach.

So if uh there are any the as we move into the final uh version of our spring service changes, we'll be doing additional outreach, and that will fairly well mirror what we did in the fall.

So we'll do a social media campaign.

Uh, we had a lot of success with A-frame signs at Central Park, yard signs at uh our more popular uh stops and our um park and ride locations, and then additionally um banners within the buses, and so we we intend on moving forward with all of those.

Also excitingly is that remix, which is the transit planning software that we use has added a new feature that will allow individuals to interact with the spring service changes to see um exactly what the impacts will be, and so they can start kind of tinkering around and have a kind of a more unique experience, and so we'll be uh focusing on pushing that out as well with the educational component.

So uh thank you for your time.

And do we have any questions?

Question?

Well, I'll I'll start uh thank you very much.

And I mean, it's uh a lot of work to uh really try to maximize what what we have here.

You mentioned uh up front that uh we have the average uh ride is eight riders, and that to be really optimal, we should have 15 riders with these changes.

Uh do you have a sense of where we're going to be afterwards?

So we uh our uh what I could use are probably indicators that we had with the fall service changes, and so we did see an increase of about two boardings per hour with our fall service changes.

I would anticipate potentially even a little bit more with our spring service changes with those increased frequencies.

So our best performing route uh sits at around 11 boardings per hour, and that's the 105.

So that services our North Broadway park and ride, and then the second best performing route is the 550, which services both the fairgrounds and um the 75th park and ride.

Any other questions?

Yeah.

Oh, who's oh, council member Fredericks?

Go ahead.

Thank you, President.

Uh you said your second route.

Uh the average rides per hour on the second one.

On the second route.

The fairgrounds.

On the fairgrounds route, I I would have to probably lean on Sandra 10.

Yeah, she's right.

10 uh boardings per hour right now.

11 on the first, 10 on the second.

Okay.

And you know, it's like additional reference, as I indicated, the 505, which is that um shopper route that we're discontinuing is two.

And so that's our lower lowest one, and that one's being removed from service.

Council member Keene.

Uh yeah, I appreciate going through this.

I tried to kind of study it on my own, but without the guidance, I wasn't exactly sure we're going.

It seems like there were some key numbers here with the the Met metric and then also this idea of back and forth.

But I I'm still trying to compare what we did in the fall, where we really were focused on our expenses and getting them aligned.

Can you tell me the motivation for the changes here?

Is it is it to meet these metrics, or is there an expense or a ridership um goal too?

So I mean, I think ultimately our goal would be 15 boardings per hour.

Um, but we're not going to get there overnight.

And you know, the intention of these service changes wasn't to necessarily save money.

I don't think you can cut cut costs and cut routes and increase ridership in the same and the save movement.

Um, so this really focused on creating a net neutral.

So this doesn't increase our operational costs, um, but it does provide an increased frequency.

And so that's really what we're after.

We're looking to see um how this shifts our rider ridership and hopefully increases them per hour per boarding.

And I noticed again, I it felt like the routes are staying or those stops are staying very much the same.

As an average user, how much do you have to understand about what's changing here?

The the biggest thing are those routes that are merging into one because they will have new names.

Um, so that's probably the hardest thing to grasp.

Our riders have a very they they remember the routes they have, they remember the routes that were here 10 years ago, and they remember all of those names.

So the biggest shift in this is to understand um that in a lot of ways, hopefully, this makes things a little bit easier that you can get on on both sides of the street, but those routes will have modified names.

Okay.

The other worry, and I'll just share this and see there's also this idea that stability is better than change with with uh with a service like this.

Is there a worry that as we go through a fall and then a spring shift, and then we look again next year that we're it it's it's uh we we lack stability?

I could see that that thought process, however, service changes are normal in in transit systems.

Um we we do them, it really depends on the system and and the community that they're in, but in larger and larger metros, these could happen four times a year.

Um so constant and thoughtful service changes that serve the riders in the best way possible, and that's what we're aiming to do.

Um kind of it feels opposite of what we should anticipate um in the system where we think consistency helps increase those things, but it's really kind of the opposite within the transit world that we're kind of shifting with the needs of the people, and I think that's a really responsible and responsive thing to do.

Very good, very good.

I I'm supportive of what you're trying to do here.

I really liked that you know, there's these metrics up front that we're we are using our services ourselves that we're engaging with the drivers.

This isn't that that I like most of these things, make it sound like we're on the right path.

Councilmember Palmer, thank you.

Um yeah, a curious question.

How do you pick a quarter mile away from a bus stop?

Why not a half a mile or a tenth of a mile?

Or how do you pick up a quarter?

Yeah, so a quarter mile is the FTA standard um that we should be looking at uh for providing service within a route.

And then uh your express hubs, how many express routes do we have?

Currently we have two, and that's the 105 and the 550.

And how often do they run?

Right now they run um depending on peak or off-peak service.

Um peak peak around 15 minutes uh for the 550 um and the 105.

And that starts at 5 a.m.

And so if I miss the 5 a.m., I can hit the 515 and in and how full are those um express routes.

It really depends on the time of the day.

Um, and I can tell you from my experience of doing some of the ride-alongs.

Um, you know, some of our buses are standing room only um during certain of our peak times.

I'd have to look at those specific boardings per hour, and I can get that to you for those specific routes, but it does depend on the time of the day.

But on the 550, we know that our average boardings per hour is is 11.

And so you could extrapolate that, but that would be the whole day's worth of coverage that went include during peak times, or it does include during peak times, but it went show I can't I don't have that metric with me right now.

And in right now, if I remember correctly from your last presentation, we're doing 15% out of your reserves.

Approximately that, yeah.

Okay.

And how big is our reserves?

Uh it's a it's around 1.7 million.

Okay.

And so the 15% equals what?

Of one point, I should have grabbed my calculator.

No, no, no.

I'm that if you have a reserve and you already are using 15% on that.

What do you so I think like as we look at those numbers from the study session in January?

Um, those numbers really depend on those are primarily capital projects and not operation costs.

Our annual like average for operation costs is around 12 million dollars.

These service changes actually are closer to 11 million dollars for operation numbers because our operations grant has a 15% match, and our capital improvement projects have a 20% match requirement from us.

And so when we look at those projections, we are trying to be thoughtful as well and and present not a best case scenario.

We understand that as projects take longer and they go out for bid, there's a potential they're going to be higher.

And so we did reduce some of those capital improvement projects.

But right now we are at a state in which operations is pretty much covered by our ridership throughout these routes, but it's our capital improvement projects that are dipping into that that that um that fund, the transit fund.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Wall.

Thank you.

Uh, do we still provide paper copies of the routes and stops?

Is that a huge undertaking with these kinds of changes?

It it is.

Um, but we do we do work with a local graphic designer to put that together.

Um we are shifting right now.

It's in a quadrant system.

Um we are shifting back to a booklet, and so all of our routes will be contained within one um easy to to use guide.

Um, we're also really focusing on ensuring that the font size is appropriate within there.

I know that's a uh feedback that we received on the the previous ones.

Um, but those would be updated.

We usually order around 3,000.

The library is probably our our biggest user of those.

But we've also been in conversations with some of our local developments that those paths will be included in their welcome packets um with the spring service changes.

Councilmember Doring.

Thanks.

I really appreciate the uh the work that goes into optimizing the system for uh efficacy.

Um and I I was worried about some of the same issues that council member Keene brought up about the frequency of changes to the system.

So I was happy to hear that in larger metro areas, those changes could happen four times a year, and and that could uh seem pretty normal.

I also heard you say that the main um the main reason for making these changes is for efficacy, but there is a there is a dollar issue attached to that.

So I'm wondering uh with these changes, uh what will be the impact on the workforce of RPT?

Are you are are we losing drivers?

Are we what does that look like for for our employees?

No, I think that's a great question.

And these service changes maintain a status quo on the necessary number of drivers.

So by consolidating some of the routes, we could still increase frequency and maintain the number of drivers that we have.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Miller, yeah, just a quick question.

Uh with these service changes going into effect, how long would you say it takes to understand the impact of those changes on ridership?

That's a great question.

And we actually were able to like start collecting data on the fall service changes within a month.

Um so, you know, we don't have a lot of opportunities to to kind of judge and and interpret what human behavior will show, but it's uh fortunate that we have this this planned and we can start collecting data um pretty relatively quickly.

Um additionally, we did kind of bump up where last year we did the fall service changes in November.

We intend on doing the fall service changes in October, so we can have a little bit quicker turnaround if we need to make additional modifications.

And so when might council expect to hear additional updates on the operating effectiveness on how some of these are changing, obviously through written communications, but the RFP processor, when might we expect to hear about transit this year?

Um additionally, so the next time I think that we have planned to be up on uh in in front of the dais would be the award of bids.

So the RFP process is being evaluated right now.

We're hoping to have that um selected in um end of May, beginning of June, you'd anticipate us coming back for that.

We did receive five um five bids, five um proposals on that.

Okay, thank you so much.

I and I I just want to recognize the the work that went into this, and I also want to recognize the alignment to our comprehensive plan.

I feel like so often we talk about land use planning and transportation planning, and I'm really glad to see transportation getting its its moment in the sun, so to speak.

And I do think that as we plan around our primary transportation networks, those don't self-enforce, so it's exactly these kinds of changes and focus on how we're planning and growing and where we're providing frequent transportation service.

And I just want to say, I think to the conversation that we had and our last study session around boulder thinking.

I think moving routes to bidirectional routes might feel fairly technical.

But I would expect uh as a former transit user myself.

Those make the system work, um, even if you don't have the exact arrival time on an app, you it's more intuitive.

And I think moving to 20-minute service is quite a lift, and I would congratulate you and your team on on making this work in a revenue neutral way and hopefully a revenue building way.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I'll just take another moment to just recognize Sandra Narr for the work that she's done on this.

So great.

Well, thank you.

Uh and thank you for uh giving us out of the box and innovative creative thinking, and we look forward to hearing uh uh progress as as you move forward.

Thank you.

Next up we have H2, which is uh reimagining Sixth Avenue West from Civic Center Drive to 2nd Street Southwest.

And we have Mr.

Mike Collins and Mr.

Steve Sampson Brown.

All right.

Uh good evening, Council President, Mayor, Council members, uh here to talk about reimagining Sixth Avenue West.

I'm gonna introduce the team of consultants that are with us tonight to share information with you, and then I'll turn it over to Mike.

Uh so first is project manager Mike Collins uh from the tool design group.

We have Mixie Mitzi Alex and Noah Hallback, and online we have uh from Gamble Associates, David Gamble.

And I would be remiss before we start to not to acknowledge the effort of our engineering department, community development, parking and transit in supporting the information that's coming forward to you tonight for your consideration.

That I'll turn it over to Mike.

Yep.

Thanks, Steve.

Um, Council President, Council members.

Um, let me just find my notes here.

Um do I have the changer.

So the requested action for uh reimagining Sixth Avenue is um to adopt the Corridor concept plan for Sixth Avenue West from Civic Center Drive to 2nd Street Southwest, and then ultimately authorizing a pre authorizing uh the preparation of final design plans and bid documents for the reconstruction of Sixth Avenue West from Civic Center Drive to uh West Center Street.

So this slide is really just to give the entire council uh a general idea of the timeline.

Um so this project, um many of you have probably um participated in some of the public engagement events uh that we've held throughout the year.

A lot of that were kicked off really in September.

Um it continued through November.

Um and we are we've actively been in uh uh you know coordinating with adjacent developments.

Um there are a lot of developments along the Sixth Avenue corridor, um, not to mention the Mayo development, uh the private private work that's happening along that space.

Um this also details the number of times we've gone back to PVAC and um obviously we had that study session with you guys in in November.

Um we do expect the design work to run through um kind of winter of 2027.

Um we'll come back to City Council at that time for approval and advertise of our construction plans.

And then construction is expected, at least at this stage, uh, to run from kind of spring of 27 through to the end of the construction season that year.

Um so that's kind of the timeline we're looking at.

Um we did a fair amount of cons of uh public engagement for this.

Um initially we did have this project combined with the reconnecting the mobility network um project.

So some of the community engagement statistics above were us engaging on both of those projects.

So you'll see a similar slide in the next one.

But we did um do quite a lot.

I mean, we did everything from door knocking to site visits to online surveys to one-on-one meetings with businesses to open house and neighborhood meetings.

Um so there was a great deal of effort put into making sure that the community was informed about this project and that uh you know that we were able to take their feedback and incorporate that into our ultimate design.

Um this is really um kind of like as we get into the details of what Sixth Avenue and and as we reimagine it, what it's gonna look like.

Um so this is kind of a schematic here that kind of details what a typical section of the roadway is.

Um as you move up and down the roadway, things ebbs and flow a little bit, but this is a typical section, so that's what we wanted to give uh give the council to look at.

And that would include an eight-foot sidewalk on the west side, followed by an eight-foot boulevard, two ten-foot lanes with uh two-foot um uh gutter, gutter pan, gutter pit gutter taper, um, a seven-foot boulevard on the east side, followed by a 12-foot bikeway, um, a two-way bikeway, I should add, and then um some furnishings, um, some parkway features, and then uh an eight-foot sidewalk on the east side as well.

Um, so that's your typical section, although, like I said earlier, it does kind of ebb and flow as as uh as the street does um as you move up and down that corridor.

Um just as we're kind of getting into the design, what was submitted in the agenda packet was uh was essentially a roll plot for that would give you guys an idea of the entire corridor.

Um for purpose of kind of uh keeping this a little streamlined.

We took a couple snapshots to give a very good idea for council so you can understand how this corridor is is planned to look.

Um and so what I'll I'll just kind of start with the uh with the image on the left, which is that um intersection at 6th Avenue and 3rd Street Northwest.

Um, that does include that eight-foot sidewalk, that eight-foot buffer, the two 10-foot lanes, a seven-foot um boulevard, followed by a 12-foot cycle track and eight-foot boulevard, and then ultimately an eight-foot sidewalk.

Um, the reason we are um going with this with kind of kind of with this concept design is it it builds a sense of continuity up and down the corridor.

It builds a project that will make people feel comfortable as they use it.

Um, and then both whatever mode of transportation, and then the eight-foot sidewalk is because we we are aware that this is a very medical-centric area.

I as you move further south in the in 6th Avenue, it does judge up against uh the Osman building, and that's a very important consideration as we consider who's using this space.

Um, and this is also you know, obviously, a primary uh kind of uh transportation corridor, both for vehicles, cyclists, and people and pedestrians.

And so incorporating all of those into kind of a complete street design.

Um, this is kind of the proposal we've come up with.

Um another thing I should note, and that is your image on your right hand side, um, is the intersection controls that we've we've decided upon, or they're that we're recommending our uh signalized intersections at the intersection of um West Center and Sixth Avenue, and that is the same intersection design at uh 2nd Street Northwest and West Center.

Um and the reason for that again is because of the the people using this corridor.

So this is juts up against a major medical institution that's undergoing a significant transformation.

Um we anticipate that a high number of people using mobility devices and people with visual visual impairments will be using this.

And so we felt that signalized intersections was um the best way to accommodate folks with those with those special requirements while also achieving the goal of the cycle track and and uh you know uh accommodating the vehicle traffic and and and all around safety of of the street.

Um just as we consider Can you hold Mr.

Collins uh Councilmember Miller Sure.

Just a quick question while we're on this slide.

On the right side, obviously the satellite view still shows the current buildings.

And at sections where there are added left turn lanes, it looks like some of those boulevards and sidewalks narrow quite significantly.

No, on the northwest corner of Center Street and Sixth Avenue, it looks nice and green, but how might we expect the coordination with Mayo Clinic and their design to manage that space?

How far will the setbacks be?

How did how is that sort of sense maintained even as those public spaces narrow because of the turn lane?

Sure.

So some of that precise work will will go into preliminary design and we'll be able to kind of hone that in.

Um but I and correct me if I'm not getting to your point here.

Um, but as we tie in to the uh to the cycle track on on West Center, that is just kind of based off the designs that we've seen for that for that space.

Um and some of that is being completed by Mayo, some of that is being completed by other city projects.

But I I'm not sure if that's what it's I guess really two questions.

One, um, you mentioned on the left graphic, eight-foot sidewalks.

Is that the minimum width of the sidewalk, even in that space that looks quite narrowed on the adjacent slide on the um Sixth Avenue heading north on the west side of the block?

Is that also an eight-foot sidewalk there, or does it narrow on the west side of the block, they're likely to be five-foot sidewalks.

Okay, yep, because that that's city standard in in in most residential areas.

So the enhanced features and kind of the the wider sidewalks would be on the would be on the um east side.

Okay, and so I guess my my other question for perhaps Ms.

Steinhauser is could you speak to the coordination and work with Mayo and this public realm obviously this is the public part of the public realm and the buildings that are being designed can you just speak to the principles of how that public space will be elevated particularly in the spaces that are narrowed by an additional turning lane.

Yeah thank you for the question council member miller so um we are uh at the table with Mayo in that construction and design coordination um every single week if not every single day to be honest okay um so we're it the interface really happens is between um let's see second to first and then first to center those those two blocks adjacent to the Ottoman building and dock building um the Steinhauser can you get closer to your mic sure what's going on there um is that better yes Lena okay so um the design for those two blocks has been done by Mayo's consultants in consultation with us um knowing that we were advancing this preferred profile for your consideration and I think as what Mr.

Collins was indicating we are at about 20% design so a lot of your more technical questions would come through the next iteration as we move to 60% 90% and then ultimately 100% coming back to you for your approval before we issue request for um construction documents bidding okay to bid the project that's helpful I I just really wanted to clarify because this is the first time we've seen these intersections they were really kind of could be a few things in earlier iterations.

And so now I I guess my my question is just seeing a quite expanded road profile with the turn lanes when we've talked about uh elevated urban design and public space and I just want to make sure and you've reassured me that that that mayo's coordination is making sure that their new West logistics entrance is not abutting the sidewalk and I would just say in terms of your question related to the left turn lane and I I would lean to our um our peers over in public works when we the options for this intersection we were looking at were um controlled intersection uh mini roundabout and I don't recall the third option um but when we collectively landed on a controlled uh signalized intersection which is better when you think about um particularly for people with some level of impairment that in that might impact their ability to navigate um a street uh traffic signalized intersection is better um that then required us to uh introduce the idea of a left turn lane uh into the design and I'll just defer to uh public works director Niemaier to correct me if I misstated that go ahead Mr.

Neemeyer thank you sorry I had hard time getting the microphone on uh that's correct uh the turn lanes were advocated for based on um trying to limit queuing um in the from the intersections especially at peak hours um it just keeps things functioning better okay and are those standard lengths uh I mean it it looks like they extend quite a ways I mean what what is the queuing capacity of the lane and is there I guess I don't I don't know the length of them I'm looking at the same image you are if I defer the consultants on a question.

And I'm guessing Ms.

Steinhauser's answer about moving forward in design will will clarify that I just it was surprising to me to see quite a bit of um the public space kind of pushed back I would uh if I could I would note that to extend um Cindy's comments about uh working with Mayo on the design um there's been a lot of conversation about how to maintain the same feel whether you're in the right of way or um you know getting beyond that into Mayo site and how those things transition and feel throughout the corridor so it's certainly uh part of the conversation that's ongoing we just haven't reached that that level of design where we can answer anything specifically I think council member Palmer um I'm Mr.

Miller's making me ask questions here.

So on the center street on the right hand side and left hand side off of Sixth Avenue are we doing any work there with this project on center street um we will connect to the adjacent project on center street just to make sure there's continuity there.

So I I think part of it is under construction with the mail work that's happening in the in and around that space.

On you're talking about West Center just on the on the right hand side between the DNA room and the parking ramp.

Yep.

Okay.

Um so that is part of that is being uh redone as part of Mayo Clinic's Bull Forward Unbound work.

Um that I think it's underground utility work that's happening in that in that space.

Um and then there is this work would essentially pick up where they left off because I think their work boundaries and just prior to Sixth Avenue.

And so it would make sense for this project to essentially pick up where it left off as as opposed to creating a gap.

I think Mr.

Neir can help you out there.

Go ahead.

Yeah, I was gonna add as well that uh reconstruction this intersection um was a requirement of the traffic study that came with mail's development.

So mail has an obligation to reconstruct the intersection, and we're working on um specifically how that's gonna play out, but it is their obligation to make sure that this looks different going into the future.

So again, if you're going down center street, you're heading into town between the two buildings we're talking about.

Is Mail gonna redo that or are we redoing it and are we losing those parking spots?

Ms.

Steinhauser.

Sure.

So um great question.

Um councilmember Palmer for a second there who was asking it.

Um we are we are designing the intersection.

Um as uh Mr.

Nemeyer indicated, it is Mayo's responsibility.

What is uh to uh pay for that and put it back in that is gonna come to you in a future agreement that we are currently in um discussions on to lay out the terms of that to your question about will we lose parking spots or not?

I I think I'd have to get back to unless Steve's able to do that.

Mr.

Stampson Brown.

Thank you.

Um so council member Palmer, specifically to West Center.

Once you hit Fifth Avenue, um there's the North Arrival City Project portion, which does some utility work that wraps the uh West Center, a block of Fifth Avenue heading north, and then uh a block east on the north side of the new North Arrival ramp.

Uh on the south side, adjacent to the church, St.

John's.

Uh we're gonna maintain pull-off parking for approximately three buses, uh, which replicates relatively what's there today.

Had a conversation with uh city engineer Donbrowski last week.

Uh we think it's currently signed uh basically during school time, no parking except for buses.

We think we could actually crunch that down to just the standard bus times and allow on-street parking on the south side of of West Center between Fourth and Fifth Avenue on the north side.

That will uh right now, by revocable permit, there is allowance for the residents in to have a pickup and drop off.

We are uh relocating that around the corner to the Fifth Avenue immediately adjacent to their building on both sides.

So we're gonna uh that will be shifted, and the reason for that is to maintain a similar cross section uh on West Center as you see at this intersection, but uh servicing to the eastbound into the downtown area.

Okay, and I'm just gonna follow up on Mr.

Miller was talking about in front of the old Lures.

Are we working on an agreement with Mail to do this?

Because the last I understood, we don't have an agreement that was some future date that they're gonna fix that in front of Lewards.

Am I misunderstanding that?

From from Sixth Avenue to Seventh Avenue.

Do we have an agreement that that's what this is gonna look like, or do we are we stopped in the air with mail?

It looks like Ms.

Woodward has an answer to this question.

That is part of the site development plan for the West Logistics Center, so that envisions um continuing this along the front um between Sixth Avenue to Seventh Avenue.

So basically it's a done deal.

It is part of the site development plan that has been conditionally approved.

Thank you.

Okay, we're going back to Mr.

Collins and continue.

Sure.

So it I think an important part as we think about, you know, the work that's happening on Sixth Avenue and some other streets in in downtown Rochester, are the fact that they um Sixth Avenue in particular shows up on the Mindot High Engine Vulnerable Road User Network.

Um these are frequently traveled roads by pedestrians.

Um so what we're proposing here is is actually kind of dual purpose.

One of one of the purposes uh is obviously to to reimagine the the street and and to uh you know kind of develop it in a way that that um you know that that creates a cohesive corridor, but the other side of it is is is very important, and that is to improve the soft safety components for pedestrians.

Um so what this with what this chart shows us on screen is that this is a is a corridor that's been identified by Mindot as an area where pedestrians where where it is um uh there are higher injuries in this corridor um uh than in other streets downtown.

So this is just a kind of a still image of of this isn't um a specific image to Sixth Avenue, but kind of just a more of an example of what um kind of a complete street or something like this in in this space can look like um with separated bike lanes, um, double boulevards um and more of an activated space.

Um so that's that.

Um, and then project budget.

Um, so this the funding for this was um adopted as uh by city council on the October 6th, 2025 uh council meeting um through the DMC uh funding initiative for the downtown development.

Um the funding allocated between West Center and Civic Center was 8.75 million.

Um and we just wanted to give council a general idea.

Some of these numbers are not finalized yet, but they are there there are um our best estimate at this stage, and that is that the design costs could cover uh cover upwards of of just shy of the million, and the can that would leave um 7.7 million for um construction hard costs and construction administration.

Um so that's that's generally the budget for for the Sixth Avenue piece.

The another piece that I will um that I will point out is the area south of West Center to 2nd Street Southwest.

Um that is uh that is part of the bold forward unbound initiative.

Um so that's not necessarily included in the budget that's displayed on screen.

Um and that really concludes the presentation.

Um just kind of reiterating the requested action of adopting the kind of the uh corridor concept from 6th Avenue West to uh to Civic Center from Civic Center to 2nd Street Southwest and authorizing the preparation of final design uh plans and bid documents for the reconstruction of 6th Avenue West from uh Civic Center Drive to uh Center Street.

Thank you, Mr.

Collins.

Councilmember Palmer.

Could you go back to slide 44 for me, please?

Oh, sure.

Didn't see the numbers.

So I'm looking at the I'm looking at your map, and it's 6th Avenue, it runs all the way to the bike trail there to the north.

Yeah, and then it runs past 2nd Street.

Why would we not want to do this to that whole entire section so that I can come off the bike trail in the north and ride my bike all the way down into um and past 2nd Street?

So we're actually going to talk about that in the reconnect in the mobility network piece.

Um, and that you know, the main reason that that falls under that project at this particular stage is is because of the funding matrix.

Um so what's funded between the pulled forward unbound uh project boundaries and the project boundaries defined by the DMC funding that was allotted in in October 6th, um, really just handles from 2nd Street uh Southwest all the way up to Civic Center.

Um so that section that's a little bit further south, we are gonna talk about, but it it'll just be in the next presentation.

Okay, and and I'm still going back to my bike trail and coming off a Cascade Bike Trail.

And I'm gonna come down that road, I'm gonna cross 7th Street when I don't have the the same elements, and then I'm gonna hit Civic Center Drive until I hit the the cycle track.

And so that's confusing to me, and I don't know how you transition from like Civic Center Drive onto the onto the cycle track.

I mean, do I cross to a how do I do that?

Sure.

So uh the intersection at um Civic Center Drive and Sixth Avenue is part of the project.

Um so we will be looking just north of that intersection to how to see how we can best create that connectivity.

Um our project limits do not go further north into the into the neighborhood to the north.

Um but we do just go beyond that uh subsection.

So construction wise, you're talking about finishing at the end of 27.

We have the BRT, I think is gonna be July of 27, August of 27.

Um, why wouldn't you want to have most of this done before that date?

Um, because right now we've got sec we've got Sixth Avenue turned up from 2nd Street to Center Street.

I'm assuming they're gonna put that back, I think I heard by June of this year, and then they're gonna dig up along Lures and head that direction.

Um why would you want to do that section now as a rebuilding it and then go down and do civic civic center drive?

Is everything's already for a lot of back lack of better way of saying blown up already?

Um Councilmember Palmer, I'll take that.

Um, I think what's not super clear on any of our maps is just the sequencing of the series of bold on Ford Unbound projects.

Uh so for instance, the UPUI individual breakout, which is uh the underground utility projects goes north on Sixth Avenue uh for a couple of blocks past the old Lords High School, and then we'll start to uh head east.

So it's a matter of, and myself and many of our team and public works meet to talk through this on a weekly basis.

It's sequencing the work that we can accomplish under the funded city projects in combination with the schedule needs of the Bullford Unbound projects, in combination with what roads are under construction.

We still need to get traffic inbound to the clinic on a daily basis.

So, for instance, when Sixth Avenue is not available because it's under construction, we've made a concerted effort to make sure Fourth Avenue inbound from Civic Center will be available.

And for the southern two blocks connecting the link, uh, which opens in August 26th, the Osman building will be under construction uh through 2029 and possibly into 2030.

And for that whole block adjacent to the Osman building uh behind the curb, none of that real estate will be available because it will be supporting building construction.

Therefore, we won't be able to get a continuous route in until the Osmond building uh adjacent work in the public right away that permits uh sunset, and then we'll we're planning to come in or uh who's ever responsible at that time will come in and uh finish the bike trail segment.

So Mr.

Nimer.

Yeah, thank you, Council President.

I was just gonna add to what Steve was saying and add more context around north of Civic Center Drive.

There's not really anything saying that that couldn't become a future CIP project.

Um, you know, if that becomes a priority connection at some point.

And I'll also note that right now we're contemplating some planning efforts on Civic Center Drive as well that may inform that potential future connection further.

So we have to start and stop these projects somewhere, and right now it's it is a function of the activity that's going on downtown and the funding sources that we have signed up for it.

It doesn't uh preclude us from pursuing that work down the road if it does become a priority.

Ms.

Steinhauser.

Yes, thank you, Council President Shubring.

Um I would also just um comment that next week's study session, which is a supporting transformation update.

We intend to go specifically to this topic of what projects are being constructed in what year between now and 2030 to give the council a sense of what is under construction, how we intend to sequence that, and it's driven by all of the things that Mr.

Neyer and Mr.

Samson Brown said in terms of construction coordination in alignment with our get in there dig once um approach to this work to try and minimize the disruption to the best extent possible.

Councilmember Palmer.

So if I understand you correctly, in 2030, the the next the Osmond building, that's when that bike trail will be completed and that road will be completed.

Otherwise, it's gonna be under construction until 2030.

So the the road pavement will not behind the curb, uh, will be either under construction or will be being utilized by the Osmond Building.

Now we haven't got to the uh site plan needs of the Osmond building post-2028.

So perhaps towards the second half of 28 or 29, uh they may be able to make that real estate back available for the completion of the bike trail.

Uh there is four tower cranes that are gonna be utilized to construct the Osmond building, one on the east, west, north, and south sides.

And the biggest thing is the safety concern as trucks come in with heavy beams or steel or whatever it might be, windows.

Uh, we're not picking from the public right away where the truck is and swinging it over live uh pedestrian bicycle car access.

So uh some of these are safe zones in terms of just construction real estate needed to make sure in case there's an accident, just whatever falls falls on the ground.

So um we're still working through with the bull forward unbound team to confirm when will the West Tower crane roll off that site, which will then allow us to plan in uh several years out.

But we have some time to work through that with them.

Steve, can you just clarify?

It's the remaining two blocks.

The blocks north of center would be constructed and completed at the completion of the Sixth Avenue project by the end of 27.

It's those last two blocks.

So a bike cycle track does connect to West Center.

It's just those remaining two blocks.

Is that I think there's uh a subset.

So the the northern two or three blocks are definitely feasible by the end of 27.

How West Logistics needs to tie into the utilities out in the public right-of-way.

We we haven't not received that information.

So there's the underground tunnel and uh uh utilities that are going through the corridor, and then there's also how the building comes out and connects to the public utility.

So there's two factors influencing when we will be able to get in, but the design will be done and the month that it's available will be ready to go out to bid and award a project to come in behind that.

So and council president, I have to correct myself, it's one block, not two blocks.

It's one thank you.

Any further uh questions?

Seeing none, is there a motion on this item?

Sure.

I'll make a motion adopting the quarter concept plan on Sixth Avenue West from Civic Center Drive to 2nd Street Southwest and authorizing the preparation of final design plans and bid documents for the reconstruction of 6th Avenue West from Civic Center Drive to West Center Street.

Project number J 8908.

Second motion made by Councilmember Miller and seconded by Councilmember Keene.

Councilmember Miller, you have the floor.

Yeah, thank you.

I I think that the presentation has been helpful, and obviously we've had good discussion through answering questions.

I obviously still have some concerns about how this moves to final design, uh, particularly about the balance of the public right-of-way and the um the elevated experience.

Uh but it sounds like we'll have uh a few more opportunities to review that.

And I I trust that staff have heard our feedback.

Any other discussion?

Seeing none, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay.

Motion passes.

Moving on to H3, which is uh no uh H yeah, H3, which is project update reconnecting the downtown mobility network.

And uh this is Mr.

Collins and Mr.

Samson Brown again.

Uh good evening again, Council President, Council members, uh Steve Sampson Brown, director of construction.

Uh we're gonna have the same same team uh presenting uh to support uh questions and answers and information related to this topic, and I'll turn it over to project manager Mike Collins.

Sure.

Um thank you, Council President, Council members.

Um so what we're requesting here is is um direction from council on a preferred option to advance the reestablishment of the north-south connection of the downtown mobility network.

Um so that's our that's our request for for this presentation.

Um and now we'll kind of just dive right in.

Um this is a very this is the same slide because as I said, this is uh one of the first times we're talking about these projects in as two different projects.

So the public engagement period um that that occurred in September and again in November, though these projects were one project.

Um so the statistics you're seeing on screen are our um engagement events as as they pertain to both of those projects.

Um but like I said previously, we have done a number of different things, such as open house site site visits, door knockings, one-on-one uh meetings with business owners, surveys, um, and neighborhood meetings.

Um and we've gotten good good feedback from from the community community can you hold there, Mr.

Collins.

Uh council member Miller.

Just a quick question about engagement.

Uh last Monday we heard an update on the historic district plan, which showed some road profiles and had a transportation element.

Can you clarify how those two processes interact for engagement?

Sure.

We've had a number of calls between the historic district and and this project.

Um we wanted to make sure that we were in general alignment.

I mean, um, we're still I did my understanding about the historic district project is is it's not 100% finalized.

And what we're bringing to you today is we're seeking direction.

So this is not 100% finalized.

So there's there's still further collaboration that needs to happen to make sure that both of these projects are cohesive.

Um but what what you'll see here is um very much reflective of of of what what you what you've seen in in in the previous presentation.

Yep.

Uh council member Palmer.

I'm gonna kind of go off of what he um what Mr.

Miller was saying.

So did did you, when you're looking at this use the 2010 um uh report the of the downtown report?

We've looked at a number of of different reports.

Um so that being one, um, but we've also looked at uh the 2018 City Loop Plan.

We've looked at the 2022 um active active transportation plan, um, and we've looked at the the 2015.

I want to call it comprehensive plan, but I have the I have the exact name in my in my notes here.

Um so when we looked at this, we did look at it at a at a at a number of of plans that were adopted by the city.

Um and so yeah, that informed some of the decision making.

Um, it informed at least the direction in which we were going.

Um, but recognizing some of those plans, in fact, I think all of them predated uh bold forward unbound and it put predated the vacation of Third and Fourth Avenue, which is really what spurred upon this plan to begin with.

So the reason I originally bring that up is to the historic district one.

Um and the quote that's in there in their um information is that the downtown master plan remains a um fundamental or foundational, I should say, remains a foundational policy document for the historic district.

So they looked at that as that's the base that they're using, and there's at least I think you're describing at least 10 different plans that are out there that don't always align with everything.

So that's that's what I want to.

So we've looked at that in continue.

Okay.

Thanks.

Um so first I'll just kind of walk you through the ledger here to just to clear up some confusion.

So the green and yellow um dotted areas are the areas of study that we've we've studied to reconnect the downtown mobility network.

Um the blue line is uh the reimagining sixth avenue project, which I've I've just given a presentation on.

Um and so the we did study four corridors.

Um it was initially three, but we've came back on study session and we we did hear a desire to study second.

Um, but the corridors that we did we did study were Broadway Avenue, First Avenue, Second Avenue, and Sixth Avenue.

Um and I will say, you know, part of Sixth Avenue falls under that reimagining Sixth Avenue project, and and the uh Southern half falls under uh the reconnecting the mobility network project.

Um so this is Mr.

Um Collins, can you go to just go back?

Can you uh uh let us know why the uh reconnecting uh the network go back one more slide?

Sure.

I should have mentioned it.

So why do why does the reconnecting the mobility network end at 4th Street Southwest?

Uh why doesn't it like for example on 2nd Avenue Southwest go into uh up down to 6 or Soldiers Field?

What is the thinking behind ending it at 4th?

Yeah, so I I think the primary goal of this project was to reconnect the network in and the way that was thought upon was we have the east-west connection on on uh on the south side of downtown, and that's at 4th Street Southwest.

Um the east-west connection on the north side of downtown is at West Center, and by vacating 2nd and 3rd Avenue, we lost that connection between those two east-west courts, those two east east-west routes.

So what this ultimately is trying to achieve is giving people an option to get from the north from the south side of downtown to the north side of downtown to another protected bike lane.

Now, in terms of where that takes you from there, like in you know, north north, if you want to go further north, for example, or if you want to go further south, um third and fourth do still exist as painted bike lanes if you choose to go further south, and uh third and fourth do exist as as painted bike lanes, at least at this interim, at least at this junction, if you choose to go further north.

So it's it's about connectivity is really the short answer.

Thank you.

Yep.

Yep.

Um so really what what this is what what we hope to achieve with with this slide is to um kind of find some collective agreement around um you know some of the goals we have for this project.

And so I I think there's some some very positive things that we've gotten out of this project, um, both from a public engagement perspective, um, from engaging with council members both at at the at the study session, um, you know, people interest groups, all the rest of it, um, that we do hope to see um, you know, really a vibrant downtown.

And so we've kept that at the heart of what we're trying to achieve here.

Um, I'm not gonna go through and read every every word on this slide.

It's it's it's quite a wordy slide.

Um, but I I think I just want to ground everybody in the fact that there are a lot of very common themes that this this project um hopes to achieve.

And so as we think about some of these difficult decisions, as we as you know, as we get through the various options that we're gonna talk about.

I think it's very important to know that um you know that that we've we've brought forward proposals that that we thought um were representative of the feedback we've gotten and of and of some of these common themes that um you know you know that we we hope the community at large um can kind of agree upon.

So um that's really kind of the kind of the purpose of this.

And then my next slide is going to um get into some of the data that would help us kind of um provide a little bit of clarity of where where you know where some of these themes uh came from.

Um so again, just to explain the ledger here.

Um this graphic, this map of downtown, um, we have uh proposed residential developments, identified future residential developments, and um recently completed developments.

Um we identify the um reimagining Sixth Avenue West Corridor on the screen.

We also um identify a possible um reconnecting of the downtown mobility network on there and the existing bike lanes.

Um but ultimately what we've done here is we've identified the center of downtown just for purposes of this explanation as Peace Plaza.

Um and so we want to demonstrate that the volume of developments happening in and around downtown within the walkshed and the uh bike shed of downtown is expanding immensely.

Um what's not included in here, which should be noted, is the existing um housing units that are downtown.

These are really just the new developments.

There's 22 of them of the ones that we know there, how many units or your at least have an estimate of number of units in those individual um buildings that are displayed on screen.

There's over 2,000 of the ones we know about.

So I think when we look at this map, we are really looking at a downtown that is becoming more uh more reliable on both pedestrian and bicycle facilities for people to get to and from work, to and from the grocery store.

Um so that I think just kind of emphasizes you know that downtown is changing from uh predominantly car-centric area to to it to to an area where people use a variety of modes of modes of transportation to get downtown.

Um and so I I thought this was just a very important um graphic to show everybody that that you know downtown downtown is developing at a rapid rate, and um, in order to accommodate that, we we you know the the goal is to kind of meet the moment and um and and provide safe and uh effective places for the for these folks to uh get to and from work and and the grocery store and wherever else they may go.

Um this is the same map that you've seen in the previous presentation, um, but I did want to just re kind of reiterate here as we are looking at a different maybe segment, but um, some of the roadways are the same.

Um Sixth Avenue, obviously it, you know, as from the previous presentation is on the vulnerable road users network.

Um, first Avenue is also on the vulnerable road users network as well as Broadway.

And those were all three streets studied as part of our project.

Um and one thing this does indicate is that these are they're not just um roadways that are kind of uh high injury networks for for vulnerable road users, they are frequently traveled and priority areas for pedestrians.

So as we look at that in the context, these are where a lot of pedestrians congregate.

This is where they shop, this is where they go to for their entertainment, and it's been identified by Mindot as as an area that can use safety improvements.

And so this project can be a caveat or you know, can be an avenue to achieve those safety improvements as we look at some of the proposals that we'll get into here in a minute.

Um another kind of more just context sledding setting slide.

Um I think as we think about reconnecting the downtown mobility network, we keep talking about the vacation of third and fourth, um, you know, because those were the previous north-south connections.

I think we also need to talk about the magnitude of all of the development happening downtown.

So this slide represents a large number of of the of the current or future construction projects in the downtown area.

Um and the reason I bring this up is because um you know, as we think about this, there's not always going to be an easy choice.

Um so that so that makes things a little bit difficult because you know, you might find a good corridor, but there could be construction delays.

Um and that's my other point is that as we talk about some of these options, when we talk about delays or delayed implementation, there's a reason for that, and that's because there's significant developments happening downtown.

Um, and so this I just more of a level setting side slide to to make everybody aware that there are there are challenges uh to reconnecting the network, um, especially accommodating the number of development sites that are that are uh both from private and public uh that that are occurring in the downtown space.

Um now we're getting into the options.

Um I'm gonna start off.

Oh, sorry, uh I'm gonna start off um walking everyone through the first avenue options.

So I'm gonna start off with First Avenue, what we're calling option A.

And option A, just to again to kind of uh walk you through what the what the indications on the map mean.

So a solid line means a separated and protected bikeway.

A dotted line means a bikeway where you where you ride with traffic.

Um or or you know, sort of paint on the side of the road.

Um and then this circled blue is the reimagining Sixth Avenue project that we we talked about here just in the previous item.

Um so as we look at option A, it achieves the um reconnecting the mobility network goal of connecting the east-west route on the south to the east-west route on the north.

Um as we look at this, it is a separate and protected bikeway from 4th Street Southwest to 2nd Street Southwest.

Um, and then once you get into the uh Peace Plaza area, that is a ride with traffic.

The traffic volumes are so are slow enough in that space um that it's comfortable for a shared road with bicyclists and and uh vehicles.

Um there is no all we are proposing no alter alterations to Peace Plaza as part of this plan.

Um we're proposing uh no curb adjustments.

This is primarily a re-striping project.

Um and so it can be quickly deployed, it's affordable.

Um, and this provides a north-south option on the east side of downtown.

Um so that that's important because as you've heard from public comment, um PBAC would like to see a um an option on the west side of downtown and on the east side of downtown.

So I want to just make sure that everyone understands that this is one of the east side of downtown options we're we're discussing.

This does have parking implications.

Can I stop you?

Uh Mr.

Collins.

So is this considered an interim uh option during construction?

I see kind of further down you're talking about interim.

So with uh quick, is this considered a temporary solution?

Sure.

So it we're we're calling it an interim solution because we don't know how temporary it's going to be.

Um, you know, some of the construction happening downtown could last upwards of 2030, you know.

I mean, um, so that's why we're calling it an interim as opposed to a temporary, but um you're correct.

It's it's primarily restriping.

This this is not a permanent installation, um, at least not at this particular stage.

And and each of the next uh series of options that you're gonna give us our interim options or potential interim options.

On First Avenue, um they are all where they would all be considered interim options.

When we get to 2nd Avenue and Sixth Avenue, um, those will be a little bit different.

We'll explain those.

Okay.

Yep.

Um so I I left off there will be parking implications to this to this um to this option and delayed.

We do uh put here delayed timeline due to adjacent projects.

There are a number of construction projects.

Council Member Fredericks.

Uh just for a little more clarity, has parking implications.

How many parking spots would we net lose on this option?

Sure.

I've got that written down here.

So existing in that in that corridor, we have 74 on-street parking stalls.

Um with option A, this would reduce to 41, which is a reduction, a reduction of 33.

Um I will say when I get down into the um when I kind of get down into the mock-up of this area.

Um we did manage to get 11 stalls back from uh what we brought to you in November.

Um and I'll explain that as we get a little bit further along.

Still at 41 though, with the additional 11.

Are you saying you bump it up to 52?

41 stalls would remain, but the reduction is 33 stalls.

Okay.

Yep.

Yep.

Can you just add that information as you go through each option?

Sure.

The the parking implications.

Yep, I'm happy to.

Um First Avenue option B.

Um, this is um uh somewhat similar, but I'll kind of walk through the differences.

Um the um the the layout on the map is is really the same.

That the solid green lines represent um, you know, separated and protected on on the on the north and south side of downtown.

Um and the dotted line represents riding riding with traffic, and the solid line represents um a separated and protected bike lane.

Um so this is a separated and protected uh bike lane.

Um sorry, this option would start off on 2nd Avenue Southwest.

Uh yeah, 2nd Avenue Southwest with a jog over underneath the third street ramp and then reconnect to First Avenue and then take First Avenue North.

So the only area that would um require restriping is that area between Third Street Southwest and uh 2nd Street Southwest.

The area beneath the third street ramp would require some minor curb work, which is why that third bullet point does indicate minor curb adjustments.

Um but it is primarily restriping beyond that.

Um similar to the previous one, no alter alterations between P uh through Peace Plaza provides a north-south option on the east side of downtown, has parking implications and and for the request.

The current day, same as before, um 74 on street parking um stalls uh on first avenue.

This would um have 58 stalls, which would be a reduction of 16.

Um just to compare the option A had a reduction of 33, option B at a reduction of 16.

Um, and then cyclists uh could connect from 2nd Avenue to First Avenue and to Third Street Southwest.

Councilmember Palmer.

I'm troubled with your idea that that west center to second street, the traffic is slow, but it all sudden speeds up for that block.

Um have you done traffic study?

What how do we know that the traffic speeds up in that area?

Are you talking about the area through Peace Paz?

I'm talking about the area what you're talking that's speedy is from 2nd Street to Third Street on this.

Second street, so you mean second avenue?

Second street southwest.

Okay, on First Avenue.

Yep, I'm heading south.

You're telling me that that's a speedy area, but it's not speedy to the to the north of that.

I'm sorry, I'm not entirely following.

Yeah, council member, can you clarify what you're asking?

Are you speaking of north of Center Street?

Sorry to jump in.

So I'm uh can you identify yourself, please?

Yeah, thank you.

Uh, council members and uh Mayor Noel Hallbach with Tool Design.

Okay, thank you.

Consultant supporting the city on this project.

And I think you're referring to why is there the shared lane riding from center street to second street, and then we go to the separated bikeway south of there.

And that there's two reasons there.

One, just because of the redevelopment for Peace Plaza, we don't want to touch that.

You know, that there's a lot of investment put into that section of the of the corridor.

Um, and the way that street was redesigned, it was narrowed.

Um, there's there's less vehicles traveling through there at slower speeds.

So we think through that segment, the shared lane riding is appropriate for all ages and abilities.

As you travel south of there, there's just higher vehicle volumes, there's more turnover with the parking in the area.

And so that's where we think it's beneficial to have the separation of the bicyclist from the motorist on the roadway.

But he he was saying it was speed.

And in being in that area quite a bit, heading from 2nd Street Southwest South, it's not a speedy spot.

I I don't I'm I'm I'm not following your speed.

Yeah, I think the two metrics speed and volume contribute to the comfort level for bicyclists, and I'd agree with you.

It doesn't seem like a higher speed segment, um, but just with the volume of turnover vehicles, we think the separation is gonna be beneficial through that area.

We do have more space through that area too with the conversion that we're proposing.

Um kind of the curb to curb with, there's more room to work with through that area.

And now you're not showing anything north of Center Street on First Avenue.

Are we leaving that the same?

With this option, that would be the same.

Yeah.

Okay, so that that has diagonal parking on both sides once the construction's done.

So I'm gonna come down and I don't get the advantage for one block.

Um okay.

Yeah.

Thank you, Mr.

Sampson Brown.

Uh, Councilmember Palmer.

So uh Mike was correct when he originally described the project limits.

Um, however, as we started talking to people, and we all understand the value of a connected network.

Uh natural part of the conversation was uh people from lower town neighborhood saying, I ride my bike.

How am I gonna get down there?

So uh working in partnership with the engineering department.

We didn't waste the opportunity to consider how might this network be able to grow over time.

Uh Director Neemier talked about we have a constrained budget on this particular segment, but there's always opportunities to submit future capital project requests.

So, with all that in mind, we did look at First Avenue up to Civic Center.

Uh we feel that with paint and delineators and an interim build using the existing uh budget that we have.

It's actually that one.

Yes, so we have option C.

So we did look at there is an ability to make that connection if there's a desire to go all the way to West Center.

It would be more with paint and delineators, but we could create the separation that's a solid line.

It's a solid line.

That means you're not riding with traffic.

However, we're not we don't have the budget to move curbs and do the nicer things that uh uh perhaps like we're going to see uh at the end of the summer on East Center Street uh when that project comes to fruition.

Uh we have council member Miller and then council member Doring.

And just for clarification on this, is that section not possible with option B's configuration?

We only see it on the first avenue continuous.

Uh can you just clarify?

Is there an option D with the North Addum?

So I think two things.

Um there is a city mayo agreement to uh that has a line uh set of uh 480,000 to replace the bike lanes.

I'd have to refer to uh help from uh deputy city administrator Steinhauser or Neyer.

I'm not sure the Mayo City Agreement allows us to go beyond those uh limits with that funding or not.

That's I I'm not aware that it does unless so um thank you.

Uh the the um 480,000 that's was um part of the agreement as real to the street vacation um is not prescriptive.

It is for us to use for re-establishing the network.

So I think your question is Is there a secret option?

Option B have shown north of West Center.

Yes, the short answer is yes, whether it's done under that 480,000 we have or a future CIP, we could have just as easily added that segment to option B.

Yes.

And thank you.

And also follow-up, could someone clarify the timeline for that those blocks north of West Center?

Because particularly now there's still active construction at the Jacobson building, Central Park is being used as a transit terminal.

So when would those become available?

So it's I I will defer to other teammates, but my understanding is it's opens back up in September.

I don't recall when the buses are you can't you need to go to the mic to the mic, please.

To the mic, please.

Okay.

So I'd also ask for Director New Meyer.

There's the sanitary sewer line that has to run up to Goose Egg Park, and I'm I'm not certain over that route.

Um, so I think there's two things.

There's am I correct in that?

It does not run on that route.

No, okay, not at first.

That's not a conflict with that.

Okay, no.

So yeah, so the um once link BRT, I'll answer the question for Mike or finish this thought.

Uh, once leaked BRT um is done with construction of the uh platforms at 2nd Avenue and at Sixth Avenue, uh 2nd Street uh is fully open and available unimpeded.

Our goal, which will be in the second half of 2026, at that point, uh the downtown transfer is available to move back and be uninterrupted by relocating to its original position on 2nd Street near First Avenue.

So later in 26.

Councilmember Doring.

I'm wondering if I can be provided the data, or we could be provided the data that uh the block, the Peace Plaza block on uh First Avenue is safe.

Um, as a user of that block and cycling on that block during peak operating hours, I would argue that it is completely unsafe for a cyclist.

So I'm wondering what metrics were used to determine that that was a safe um safe commuting block with shared traffic.

Uh I'll uh Snow to uh come up and speak to that a little bit.

Um City Engineer uh Dylan Dombrowski has shared that the original design, which I was before my time here, uh envisioned a slow street.

I think the characteristics we see are the narrow lane lists.

Um he did reference uh speeds had been looked at previously.

I don't have that data with me tonight um to show that you know speeds are traveling below 25 miles an hour.

Um, but I'll let my colleague uh from tool design kind of speak to what makes a safe street.

Hey, um yeah, so we look at uh average daily volume on the street, and so maybe that's why you're seeing some discrepancy between peak hours versus off-peak hours.

Um, and so we're looking at total volume throughout the day as a measurement of generally how stressful it is for uh cyclists to use the street.

So what I hear you saying then is that during those on peak hours when we're encouraging people to use multimodal transportation to get to downtown.

Um, those on peak hours are the unsafest hours to ride your bike on that shared lane street based on yeah, based on volume on volume and and speed.

Based on based on volume and and speed.

You could see a reduction in speed with an increase in volume, you could see a reduction in speed, and it could help balance out.

But yeah.

Okay.

All right.

That's looking at those two metrics together.

Okay.

It's important.

Council President Shubring.

Go ahead, Miss Steinhauser.

I just want to correct a statement.

I bel and Noah, Steve, you can verify this, but I believe the reason uh the miles per hour on that segment is actually under 20 miles per hour, not 25.

It's under 20 miles per hour.

So operating at a slower speed.

That's why it's consider the criteria why it's considered acceptable to be a shared path for bikes and motors.

And how have we sorry?

I didn't mean to interrupt.

No, no.

How have we studied volume on that block?

Because I understand speed with cyclists is an issue, but also volume of traffic during those peak hours.

I've made note of that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh who is going to take the rest of this um presentation?

Uh what I'm going to do is I'm going to let you finish your presentation.

Council members, you can ask questions if you like.

We are at the two hour mark.

After the presentation, I would propose that we take a break and then we'll return back for further questions and uh and motions.

Is that work for folks?

Looks like it.

Yes.

Go ahead.

Mr.

Collins.

Collins.

Thanks.

So I can kind of we I've already talked to this option as it as it pertains to south of center.

It's it's very similar to what what option A was.

Um option, you know, the option C really just adds that northern piece that can be can come at a later time.

Um and so yeah, that uh I'll just kind of move on to the next uh to the next slide here.

I think I think Mike, would you please give the parking deduct for under this?

Oh, sure.

Yes.

So parking C existing, and and this is actually this is a little different.

So I appreciate the I appreciate the um bringing that up, Cindy.

Um this is a little different because we've included the parking north.

Um so the existing number of parking stalls on the on the northern or throughout the entire corridor from north all the way to uh fourth street southwest is 139.

Um, and then the the proposed after this is implemented is 90, and that would be a reduction of 49 stalls.

Um council member Miller, go ahead.

Could you just clarify when the last time that many stalls was available on the stretch?

Um before the Anderson building.

Uh but I I don't have a date, but yeah, it was a while ago.

Yeah.

Yep.

So just to clarify, option C is option A adding north of center street, correct?

So all of those additional uh parking spaces are north of center up to uh civic center drive.

That's right.

Got it.

Yep.

Um, am I going the wrong way?

I am.

Um, so as we talk about that segment of uh first street between uh 4th Street Southwest and 2nd Street, sorry, First Avenue between 4th Street Southwest and 2nd uh 2nd Street Southwest.

Um this is the proposal we've come up with, and it is a little different than what we brought to you in November.

Um I'm actually gonna start off on the right side of the screen, which is the one that starts at 4th Street Southwest, and we'll move our way north.

Um this area, we would have we've tried to maintain parallel parking based on feedback on the west side of the uh of the street, um, where it applies.

There are areas you'll you'll see parking, the parallel parking in that space, a two-way cycle track on the east side or sorry, on the west side of the road.

Um, and then as you get to third, we'll transition over to the other image.

Um, and that will um that will also have a two-way cycle track that is a 10-foot wide cycle track.

Um, and that will have parallel parking on the west side of the street with angled parking on the east side of the street.

Um and that is the proposal for like even if you chose option B, for example, which has that jog under under the bridge, the northern part that um that that would it would connect to would be um that image on your uh left hand of your screen there.

Can I have you go back to uh to that?

Just oh so where you're adding uh the parallel parking looks like five, six spots.

Is there angled parking there now?

under under the bridge the northern part that um that that would it would connect to would would be um that image on your uh left hand of your screen there can i have you go back to uh to that just oh so so where you're adding uh the parallel parking looks like five six spots is there angled parking there now is that where i i'm talking about the the right hand photo from third street southwest to fourth street southwest third street southwest to fourth street southwest i believe there is angled parking in that in that in that space and there's no parking on on on the um the west side on the side no not that i recall okay i don't believe so i guess my question is why do you have to take those angled parking out if the the bike lane is in uh is proposed in an area where there are is no parking now i think it's it's space um so the the bike lane in that area it it's 12 feet wide um and that might not be enough room to or at least it wasn't when we looked at this when we've we've when when tool design has come up with this um that there wasn't enough room to do uh angled parking in that space that's why those are parallel spots um kind of just shy of uh third street southwest there yeah yeah that answer your question yeah you can keep you can keep going okay sure um so this again i've i've already said this but i did want to reiterate uh through peace plaza we are not we are not proposing any changes um so that's that's really all this slide uh encompasses here is is that it it will look exactly like it is today um second avenue option um i'm gonna hand it over to my colleague noah halber from tool design give mic a little break here but um yeah so we were asked during the last council work session to consider second avenue as an alternative option and that requires there's a few segments to make the uh of the of the street to make that work um traveling from up from four street southwest at the southern point where we have the existing two-way bikeway we're proposing let's see if this helps me at all we're proposing shared lane riding through um discovery walk area the newly constructed discovery walks that's a similar approach to through as we would take through peace plaza um the feedback we've heard is that that's a bearable very comfortable current um segment for bicyclists to use um again there's lower volumes lower speeds through that section so there'd be shared lane riding through there you would travel north up to 2nd Street Southwest that's where you run into the the existing Anneberg plaza and that's where there would require some coordination between the city and mayo this is um an existing Mayo property with a pedestrian easement through it one option could be to look at uh getting an easement to allow cyclists to use the same the same space and so the the high level concept that our team has taken through here just looked at segment segmenting this out into different um areas through that plaza area so you would still have um a primary pedestrian route on the face of the buildings on the east side allowing access to those buildings the bikeway would run through the middle um that would be a a totally separated facility there'd be a detectable edge on either side to um really discourage pedestrian crossing of that facility um in the middle of the block the crossing would be encouraged to happen kind of where you see that blue teal area and really where we see that as a priority east-west pedestrian connection between the mayo building and plumber building um and then the green space that you see that's really where there could be the the more raised plaza elements the seating the planters the more areas you would expect in a in a public uh realm area and then the pink area to the left that would be required for um emergency vehicle safety access so that's an area we where you wouldn't be allowed to have the vertical elements because vehicles would need to travel through there um that's that's concept to council member miller I guess a question for Mr Spindler Craig could you clarify is there a separate thing in Minnesota state law that is a bicycle easement versus a pedestrian easement thank you council member council uh mayor norton um there is not uh there's not a separate concept and this uh this matter has been uh discussed in a few different spaces the the current arrangement is for pedestrian only does not contemplate uh bicycle so uh that would need to be a significant point of conversation okay can I clarify a little bit more on uh councilmember miller's point so is I guess the the question is how I heard it was in state statute is a pedestrian easement is there a separate uh a separate easement for bicyclists or is a pedestrian easement also somebody who is on a bicycle I'll try to answer your question even though I'm somewhat surprised by by the question so I'm not sure which statutory provision you're referencing um I would certainly take take a closer look at it the conversation to date has been the

So is I guess the the question is how I heard it was in state statute, is a pedestrian easement, is there a separate uh a separate easement for bicyclists, or is a pedestrian easement also somebody who is on a bicycle?

I'll try to answer your question, even though I'm somewhat surprised by by the question.

So I'm not sure which statutory provision you're referencing.

Um I would certainly take take a closer look at it.

The conversation to date has been the language used in the Annen Bird Plaza uh provisions specifically, um, not referencing uh state statute.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember Palmer.

So we have an ordinance that you can't ride your bike on a sidewalk.

Is that what we do downtown?

Is that an ordinance?

Uh that is true.

So wouldn't this be a sidewalk?

No, the sidewalks to the right.

It would not if we're otherwise uh defining it differently.

Okay.

Continue.

I believe this would be private property.

Um again, uh priority pedestrian east-west crossing, it would be prioritized towards the north at the Peace Plaza kind of terminus there.

And then the connection point would be to the new valet drop-off, the the roundabout turnaround from there north, the bike the cyclists would uh resume shared lane riding in that newly constructed street segment, connecting at Center Street West to a future east-west bikeway, off Street East West Bikeway.

That future bikeway would not be part of this project.

This connection through existing bikeway, existing bike lanes on Center Street that we connect to.

Um we talked about the interims option for first avenue.

This option would be kind of a more of a midterm option that require uh further coordination with Mayo through the plaza space.

We see this as a slightly longer term option, and so looking at connecting to those longer-term cycle tracks on Center Street West.

Um that would take you over to the bike lanes on third and fourth street if you want to continue north.

34th Avenue.

Uh Councilmember Miller.

So I guess uh let me ask this uh away of you mentioned interim and midterm options.

If there were an interim option on the first avenue, whatever configuration, is it possible to shift that then to the midterm option on 2nd Avenue?

Could this be a stage two out of an interim solution on First Avenue?

We haven't talked about that internally, but yeah, in my opinion, yeah, you could there are the kind of lower effort that First Avenue requires, you could shift that to a parallel quarter in the future.

So if we gave direction to work on better coordination with Mayo to figure this out, that doesn't preclude the use of First Avenue as an entrance condition, correct?

I believe that's correct, yeah.

Okay.

I can take that too.

Yeah, yeah, that's correct.

Um I just want to kind of point out that the um the Peace Plaza is currently being turned into a one-way southbound um road.

And so um we would have to wait until the shuttles are have gone away.

So there's yeah, there's a few things that would need to be navigated, but I don't I don't see a reason why not.

Council President Schubert?

Uh go ahead, Ms.

Steinhauser.

Yeah, thank you.

I I want to just bring up a couple of things that were not shared in this inner in this um option that was studied by Tool, which we would not advance as a recommendation, and a lot of it has to do with all the inherent conflicts that exist.

Um you're seeing the proposed um route.

Um it conflicts with um uh fire lane um building code egress out of buildings.

Um when you get to the north section where it shows valet drop-off, uh both the Kalar Hotel and uh Mayo east entrances will have valet drop-off.

Uh the numbers that we're hearing are upwards of 300 pedestrians an hour.

So there is a lot of intense um pedestrian activity, which has been Mayo's concern all along in terms of the conflict between people and as we think about May's, um, and I'm just kind of repeating their input to us about um this is a desired route or not it is the desired route, is the complex care will continue to grow and with complex care, it is not necessarily an able-bodied person or um a person with you know, maybe um uh a minor assisted device.

Um, and I'm just kind of repeating their input to us about um this is a desired route or not it is the desired route, is the complex care will continue to grow and with complex care, it is not necessarily an able-bodied person or um a person with you know maybe um uh uh a minor assisted device.

It is people with very complex care coming out of these entrances and the inherent conflict of cyclists is what brings um uh a great reticence to have this be an option, and quite honestly for us when we think about the value of um a bike lane, it is about getting people through spaces and through those spaces where um there is business that presents an opportunity for uh more people to have exposure, businesses have exposure to people.

This is a lower priority because it is an institution and it's the care of the hotel as compared to the um, for example, First Avenue or Broadway, which were the other two that were um leaning towards.

Okay, thank you, Miss Steinhauser.

We do want to get through this presentation, but just to the point it is in our list of options.

Go ahead.

And I'll just note quickly that one trade-off with this option too is that it does terminate at Center Street, whereas the Sixth Avenue, First Avenue, Broadway options all continue north and south, further north and center.

So that brings us back to uh our third set of options, and that's looking at the continuation of 6th Avenue further south, um, further south than 2nd Street Southwest, where we had shown in the re in the reimagining six project.

So the our team really looked at it all the way from Civic Center Drive all the way to 4th Street Southwest as a continuous corridor in terms of the reimagining portion that would complete and finish at 2nd Street Southwest.

But we do see there being a lot of value in continuing that bikeway further south, just making that network network connection down to the existing bikeways on 2nd Street Southwest, or 4th Street Southwest, excuse me.

And so that option is what we're showing here in a in a concept.

So that would be a continuation of the two-way bikeway on the east side of the street.

Um what's different for this showing in this segment is that we're proposing a reconstruction of just the east side of the street.

And so this is again, it's not necessarily a quick build interim because based on the constraints of the curb to curb width, we're not able to do it with just kind of paint and flex posts to get the sufficient width for the bikeway.

We need to reconstruct and move out that eastern curve a little bit to get the extra width necessary.

So that would be a two-way bikeway, 10 foot on the east side, continue down to four street southwest.

Preservation of all our parking on the west side.

Finally, I'll touch on the Broadway Avenue option, and so this is something that we again feel has merit in kind of the long term in looking at connections uh north and south along Broadway.

There's an existing bikeway um north of Civic Center that this would be able to tie into.

Um, however, our team felt that there is not a short-term or kind of a near-term uh option to reconnecting the mobility network along Broadway.

And so we think further study would be needed to really assess the kind of merit in incorporating bikeway as part of an overall street design for Broadway.

We know there's a lot of competing interest on Broadway for multiple different users and turning that into a complete street.

That's it for me.

All right.

Are we uh council member Palmer?

On on Broadway, you're talking about it it's um was uh built in 1989, it had a 40-year lifespan, so we're at 36 years.

Um wouldn't this be the time to design Broadway now and in in four years get it up and running?

Um so if I can I can start and Cindy, you can actually can we take up council member Palmer's uh question at the beginning of the discussion, since this is your last slide and we all can see what the next uh is.

So we're gonna take a 10 minute break.

Sounds good.

Thanks.

Thanks for telling me, Sean.

So when we last left this topic, Councilmember Palmer was ready to dive into questions, but I'm gonna have Mr.

Samson Brown just very quickly go through the options very very quickly, and then we'll go into questions.

So I'll just go back to actually I'm gonna ask colleague uh Mitzi from uh tool design to do the quick recap.

Thank you.

Um thanks for your time tonight.

There's a lot here to consider.

Uh this slide I think does a good job of summarizing the main corridors we've been looking at.

And I know you've looked at a bit of detail, but here you can kind of step back and take a look at the options.

It's Broadway, First Avenue, Second Avenue, and then there is that segment of Sixth Avenue connecting from Second Street to Fourth Street.

Um we're here to to help facilitate the conversation and answer any questions that you might have.

Broadway really does present um a little bit of a challenge for a shorter term or interim connection to reconnect the network because it is not currently in a condition that would allow for a lower cost or quicker um implementation that wouldn't would require a reconstruction.

First Avenue does present an opportunity for something to be reconnected in a shorter term with a lower cost that would be closer to the budget that's been allocated.

Second avenue, the biggest challenge there probably is working with a private property, and then also having to share the street right in front of the Kalar Hotel between the Gonda building and the Kalar.

Bikes would have to be in the travel lanes.

Um there isn't enough space there to separate uh bicycles in that space.

So that's very high level, but we'll try to answer any questions that you might have.

All right, Councilmember Palmer.

Thank you.

And so my my question was on the Broadway in that in three years it should it should be rebuilt.

Um why wouldn't we want to get that design going right now and include Broadway since that's would connect it with a lot of other our cycle tracks?

Sure.

I think Council Member Palmer, the biggest challenge is funding availability.

That's probably a million dollar plus design.

Uh that budget, there's not that line item is not in the budget.

Also, uh the city is in the process of submitting a build grant application, which would cover uh civic center and the missing section of Broadway, starting at Fourth Street Southwest.

Uh that's what we call our South Broadway uh grant that we build grant that we've received.

We are in the process of staff negotiating through Mindot and Federal Highways on the final grant agreement.

We think we're in a matter of weeks to a month to be able to bring that forward to you for approval.

That would start the design, and really that goes from ninth street southwest and goes north to fourth street, and that I think really sets the table in combination with the work that community development is doing on the historic district plan to really get as we move north on Broadway, how might this revitalize uh downtown?

But that's just a major initiative uh cost and it's we just didn't see that feasible under the budget we were provided.

Okay.

Uh questions.

Uh Mayor Norton.

Yeah, I'm I was going to ask a similar question to Councilmember Palmer, and and it is bringing up the question that um two questions I have.

One, um, if we count it out now, does this mean that it will not be dealt with as you we we hear complete streets, but is it gonna have protected bike lanes at some point?

And secondly, we have access to DMC monies, and this board, this city council can choose to spend DMC monies in a particular way.

And Broadway seems to me to be a priority for the community.

So I guess I'm I'm wanting to not just like quickly toss that away because I think that in the long run, Broadway should be bike-friendly, and we should be talking about it now.

So I'll stop talking.

Council President Showbring, maybe if I could just build off of the Broadway goes.

So we have the build grant for South Broadway.

We have applied for a build grant for from Fourth up to Center, um, as well as Civic Center Drive.

Uh we have also identified it as um a request to our federal legislators for potential earmark.

So um if we were just plot this out, say we're successful in getting the build grant.

Um we will know by the middle of summer on the build grant.

It would likely take us through the end of the year to uh an end of 27 to get an agreement.

Then we would have to go out for bid for design services.

So now we're through 27, maybe into the beginning of 28.

Um we would then um recommend applying for that same build program for construction.

And again, there would be a local match that B route would be required for the construction piece.

So it's definitely I would I would say not selecting it tonight does not mean that it drops off.

We're it's very much on our radar as um a future capital project that we are actively pursuing state and federal dollars for.

It's just it is not as um both Mitzi and Steve indicated, not something that could be implemented in the next year or two, which I think is what we heard as part of this process that we are trying to seek to do.

Councilmember Palmer.

Thank you.

So I'm gonna go back to Sixth Avenue and running it from Cascade down to Soldiers Field as a as a cycle track.

So when would the when would it be in the CIP to do that or or how much do you think that would cost estimate wise?

I I wouldn't be able to give you a sense of um a cost estimate, but in terms of putting it into the city budget, um, unless you directed us to do it as part of the supplemental budget, it would come uh the soonest it would come would be in the 28-29 uh biannual budget process, which starts in a year.

Okay.

So uh one other question, and this is kind of a safety one.

I've looked at a lot of the bike safety and read a lot of different things on this in the last couple six months.

Um, if we drop in the in the in this in the city core, if we dropped our speed limits at 20 miles an hour and we had no rights on and red turns, would that be safer for all the bikes and all the roads?

I would certainly say as a biker, uh no rights on reds uh would be a safety improvement as a standard.

Uh I can't speak to the uh traffic metrics uh in terms of uh traffic signal productivity and intersection, but many bikers sometimes get hit, vehicles looking to the left, turn right, biker or pedestrian on the right side.

That's that's a known conflict that's to occur to happen.

Uh in terms of speed limit reduction without parallel uh changing of the street character, typically, and I would say uh four street southeast is a good example.

You know, we have four open lanes, relatively low congestion, not much on street parking, and people tend to drive at their own pace or comfortable, which is north of 30 miles an hour.

So an arbitrary uh change to the speed limit without parallel uh changes to traffic calming measures to be implemented, probably isn't gonna result in the result that we want to see.

And we're talking the downtown core, not four street southeast.

Um and kind of going on what the the the mayor was getting at with Broadway, the big advantage to me is the pedestrian part because right now, if you stand in the corner of 2nd Street and in Broadway, it's it's a cavern and it does not help businesses on the other side either way.

So I you know, I I think that we need to pursue this a little bit more, and I believe that she was saying DMC funding.

I'm not particularly sure where the money comes from that I really care.

I just want to see that the that Broadway get get taken care of sooner than later.

Um so those are kind of my ideas right now.

Councilmember Miller.

So it sounds like Councilmember Palmer would like to go to the tax levy to expedite Broadway.

I'm joking.

We can use DMC money.

I'm joking.

Uh I have a question for the team about a different element of this that came up in open comment, which which was about data collection.

Do we currently have budget or equipment to do the required data collection independent of what design we we try to advance?

Uh Councilmember Miller, you're speaking to parking data collection, vehicles, uh pedestrians.

Answer that all those components.

Yeah.

Sure.

Uh so we have some resources.

Uh let's speak to vehicles first.

So uh the city currently has uh access to two softwares, one's called urban SDK, one is called Street Lights.

Uh Urban STK uh again works off autonomous vehicle data, get that gets put out that people may not realize if they have a newer car or cell phone data.

Uh that is responsive and about a 72-hour update.

So that's why we prefer that.

We find uh Streetlight is a software provides data about um about 30 days late coming in.

The challenge with using the that data set is we're having major changes to the downtown street patterns in a more frequent cycle.

So to really collect a data set on vehicles is hard to apply to a long-term solution based on what streets are closed, and there's major street closures currently.

And for data collection on bikes, pedestrians, Lyme, I I would suspect has a more robust data sort set on.

We do have some data set online.

So uh ride reports of software they provide, and uh we're wrapping up the 2025 annual report, and we'll be uh bringing that to you shortly uh as a council item.

So we do have uh heat maps generally uh from 6th Avenue to about um First Avenue east to west, uh, within 2nd Street a few blocks.

That's the primary that's where the most rides occur for e-scooters under Lyme.

And does that just give us a sense of where they're most frequent or how many there are?

Uh we can get both out of that.

So um referring to me, uh pedestrians, we don't really have a data set, we'd have to do that by counting, um, which is something we can do.

Uh we're bringing on some active transportation interns uh this summer on our team, so that that's a great work for them.

Uh bikes, same thing.

The city does have some counting devices.

We're in the process of procuring more.

We'll have better uh better capability to collect data sets um in the coming months.

We just don't have anything downtown.

And I'm missing a mode.

Uh bikes data.

Oh, parking.

Uh so we don't have uh same thing.

Meter parking, we don't have great reports.

When you pay with your credit card, we really can't track that transaction at a meter or it pay with uh if you use the park mobile app, yes, we can track that.

Um, and we have some really good the amount of one system that was uh recently installed in the parking ramps to provide some robust data sets that we're uh just starting to work with our parking uh team to uh get access to those that information.

Okay.

So how how might we expect to receive a more robust unified data set on some of these travel modes?

And and the reason I ask is because I I council member Palmer has brought up quite a few times the uh census data on commutes and mode splits by commutes, and I agree that's important.

It it feels incomplete to some of these discussions, and I'm curious how we get to a place where we have uh a real seasonal discussion about how many people are walking, how many people are biking, how many people are driving, how many people are taking transit, so that we have a real sense of the local context and not statistically modified commuter data, which is a part of people's travel patterns on a given day.

Sure.

In terms of uh monitoring over time, I'm probably not the best person to answer that.

I'm more for project uh active transportation coordinator.

Matt Lynch is in the audience.

Perhaps you'd be willing to come up and speak to that strategic plan or somebody else and I'm gonna take a shot at addressing this because I think I think what it comes down to is you have a have a counting program where you're regularly identifying where you're gonna count, what you're gonna count, and how you're gonna report on it.

And uh, now that you have an active transportation coordinate coordinator, remote shift coordinator, um, I think you're well positioned to develop that program and come back with a a conversation on that topic specifically.

Okay, and I'm gonna take this chance to bring you back to the map.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, maybe one of the burning questions here is does the council want to be in a position to reconnect the network for bicyclists within the next maybe 18 months.

I'm gonna go to council member Fredericks.

He's next on our list.

Thank you, President.

Does extending the Sixth Avenue Northwest project just two blocks, accomplish the goal of the north north and south connectivity, and then in return buy us some time to come up with a good plan for the Broadway project in Holly Mount of years?

Um then you have basically two sides that are connected on the north and south, and to me, you'd have a good product, not running through all the congestion on first, so on and so forth.

Does that extension two block extension accomplish the goal?

Sorry.

I think it depends on who you ask, because um not everyone agrees that that connection from second street to fourth street, southwest meets the goal of an all ages and abilities now.

Do we have a policy for all ages and abilities?

There's no single straightforward design that works because it's very context sensitive grades, speeds, volumes, widths, all have uh a contribution to that decision.

It's it's a nuanced decision.

So we don't have a policy.

So council president should bring it.

Go ahead, Miss Steinhauser.

I would say in short answer is yes, and then you layer in all of the things that I meant to use.

Yes, we do have a policy.

Um does it no to your question of does it solve for it?

The answer is yes.

But then you layer in the other things.

We do also have um by virtue of adoption of the active transportation plan, embedded in that plan is a definition of all ages and abilities.

Bicycle trails and on street lanes designed to be comfortable to a range of bicyclists, including children, seniors, women, people with disabilities, people moving goods or cargo, people of color, and low-income riders.

That is your definition of all ages and abilities that's adopted in the um active transportation plan.

Okay, Mr.

Niemier wanted to add something to that.

Yeah, thank you.

I'm just gonna add briefly that we have a complete streets policy.

The act of transportation plan expands on that and talks about um all ages and abilities as a concept within that plan and lays out the corridors where that could or should be achieved.

Councilmember Keene.

Yeah, um, a couple of things.

First, um, I was really interested in this discussion on counting or data because um I and and I like the way you put it that we're well positioned to try to do that.

When we talk about interim solutions or things like that, has anyone considered that as part of an interim, we would start collecting data like that?

Yes, I think we absolutely would, Councilmember Keene.

Uh, because we're not moving curbs and making permanent changes, that gives us an ability to adjust the design.

I even say that's a national best practice.

Cities put things out, see what works, a lot of it works, pieces don't.

That gets refined, and then we spend money on concrete and things like that that are much more expensive.

Okay.

I I think underneath this, we've been having a combination of a public safety discussion at a lot of but like, but really it's a lot about how do we use this like uh precious thing of our right-of-way and how best to use it, and and and is there trade-offs between safety for one group of users compared to potential business impacts to others, and that's sort of how I've been watching this discussion going.

And with that, I'm again I'm gonna make a motion to adopt option B from the presentation as the preferred option to advance for re-establishing the north-south connection in the downtown mobility network.

Motion has been made by council member Keene.

Is there a second?

Uh I will second that.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Council Member Keene.

Yeah, I'll just try to make a couple points here.

One is I do accept the city's defined project of reconnecting between the east and west routes of fourth street and center street.

Um, I again you almost have to define these things somehow to get started.

Um, I actually cringe a little bit because I thought no, we got to get to 2nd Street because we didn't vacate third and fourth avenue past 2nd Street Southwest.

But I think there's an unspoken thing here that we don't want bikes on 2nd Street, and that that drives us to Fourth Street.

So I accept that as a as a starting point for this.

Um First Avenue Northwest running uh north of center street.

Again, good discussion.

I hope someday we do that, but just scoping it down to what we're dealing with today and reconnecting.

I I think I'll leave that for another day.

Um, but I again I I am this is a good time now after that's been uh you know not been used, you know, under construction for the last couple of years.

How do we re-establish it uh when the part when the bus things go away?

I it's not a matter of pulling an existing asset out.

It's like how should we be using this?

And I do consider close to that downtown core.

Um I um we we are using words like interim, but these are four and five and six years things.

So I I don't want to call them temporary.

Um, and I do appreciate that a lot of the solutions we're talking about are uh I I don't I hate using this, it almost sounds like oversimplified paint, but we're re we're redefining what we're using our right-of-way for.

Um, this trade-off when we talked about how many parking spots there are and how many would they be after this?

That's important here.

Uh this is something that um we've established as an important uh asset for some of these businesses, but we've also haven't got the data on that either.

We heard emphatically last week that you can't cheat this system, and then Friday we got an update that said, yeah, you can, and they're doing it all the time.

And I don't know if that's one of these 74 spaces or 37 of these spaces.

I don't know.

I only get antidotal data from people who say it's certainly happening.

Um so that idea of having data to make decisions would sure be helpful.

Um of the valuable arguments against option B that uh residents have made to me is it's complicated and it's not direct.

There it and can wayfinding solve this and I I don't think so.

And will I mean will the bike people in the bike community asset this?

But the novice user, where how does he know where we've tried to establish these protections from them and they will like it to use it?

And my take is a lot when you're using this downtown stuff, you're not talking to the average novice.

You're talking about people who will use these things uh and will find them.

And um to that end, I I've been a little bit frustrated that I've got people telling me that they use First Avenue all the way through Goose Egg Park because it's much better than being on that cycle track on Center Street.

And it's sort of like, what are we doing here?

Um, and I think underneath that we have we're we're trying to make our streets safer for all modes of transportation, but we also have people who are going to make their own decisions on what's safest for them.

Um and with that, I was kind of looking at those trade-offs, and I think option B uh seems to address what this council asked for almost a year ago to say, how do we reconnect?

Thank you, Councilmember.

I as a seconder, I will uh uh take on to that.

This option, one, I really look at this as an interim option uh and a and temporary option, that temporary maybe three, four years uh from my perspective.

This uh it has the the least amount of impact on the current uh commercial district.

We're losing 16 parking spots.

I also I think this one has the best potential for connecting to the historic district, which is uh to the east of there.

Uh uh we heard last week that Third Street Southwest uh could be a connection uh to the river from uh from First Avenue Southwest.

Uh and uh and so that element of connecting uh connecting the uh the east of First Avenue to uh the primary uh uh clinic area, I think is important.

I want to emphasize though that I look at this as an interim temporary solution.

My preferred option is 2nd Avenue Southwest.

It is low traffic, it is almost designed as a cycle track.

Um, and I wasn't here when it was designed, but I wonder why it wasn't designed as a uh cycle track.

I also look at Annenberg Plaza, and I know there are issues to Annenberg Plaza, and there may be uh some right-of-way issues there, but we're in an interesting position right now where Annenberg Plaza and uh second north north of second is currently being uh constructed for a temporary, it may be three years, it may be uh four years, a uh a vehicle vehicular traffic for the clinic in that area.

So now is really the optimum time to have that discussion with our major employer.

That is there a way that we can uh bring pedestrians and cyclists together in this space to go forward.

I do hear, Ms.

Steinhauser, that you're that there may be some hesitation to push that.

I think this council is really ready to have that discussion and uh want to have some transparency with that discussion with our major employer, but I think we're in a good spot to let them know what we're interested in uh in seeing uh for a uh a permanent solution down the down the road.

But back to the motion, uh I think uh uh this uh option B really uh helps us reduce uh reduce the impact.

And it also, and from my standpoint, and I mentioned this last week, and I may be becoming the angle parking guy, but I really do not like to lose the that angle parking.

This has a uh I respect that you you put some of that back.

a permanent solution down the down the road but back to the motion uh I think uh uh this uh option B really uh helps us reduce uh reduce the impact and it also and from my standpoint and I mentioned this last week and I may be becoming the angle parking guy but I really do not like to lose the that angle parking this has a uh I respect that you you put some of that back I do believe and uh council member Palmer cited the the 2010 report that talks about angled parking and it's uh its impact as a barrier as uh as traffic calming I I got your point earlier council member Palmer that it isn't a speedway because of angle parking uh south of second on first so with that I I uh I seconded this this motion council member palmer is next caseful could you put that map up for me please and and as she's doing that um public works does have the information on um surveys on every corner downtown the number of bikes and the number of pedestrians and I have that in my file at home but I know public works has it and they can make that available to us um that's been done and that's a local one that's been done um the map that I'm asking to be put up here is from 2010 and this is the um uh downtown report and it called first avenue um the the the the main street for for for us downtown and so they did not envision this to becoming um a bike trail um but if you look at at the way that this is laid out it it it took a lot of effort and if you haven't read the report it's about 160 pages um they sent out um requests to people uh by mail doing a scientific survey they had 1800 responses to it this is what people talked about but main street being your main street is where businesses are what you're forgetting is that if you take this option B that you're talking about you're gonna lose the parking in front of these businesses and the businesses are struggling right now and I think if you take it a step back and think about this in 18 months we're gonna have the the BRT up and running and if you're going to ride your bike you could ride your bike to the to the ends of the of the um BRT and bring it into town we're gonna have a new parking ramp in north part of town that you can take the express bus down.

So you don't really have to come to downtown and everything is changing so much downtown by taking those businesses away taking that parking away just doesn't make any sense to me and I'm I offer the suggestion that we go to 20 mile an hour throughout the downtown core get rid of right hand turns on right um on red that would make it easier and better for bikes um and safer so in and saying all that I'm going to um wait to have that request done as far as as getting that information from public works and having them look at my suggestion of 20 miles an hour and no right and no right hand turns on red so I'm gonna make a motion to um table this matter motion has been made to table this item is there a second I'll second it seconded by uh councilmember uh Fredericks uh a motion to table is not debate debatable is it uh clerk case attorney spindler craig that's correct so uh so do we take a a immediate vote that is correct okay uh call the roll council member keen nay council member miller council member wall nay council member frederic yes council member palmer council member doring nay council president shoebring nay motion fails to five uh councilmember frederic so I'm an agreance with president shoe bring on the second uh option the uh second avenue option I don't understand why we don't just pursue that right out of the gate is it is it just for speed to to have a have a connection sooner on first uh because there's no parking implications I don't see any like red flags for businesses on that you said it's already designed to to operate is that why don't we just have that conversation and pursue that option then can you can you speak to second avenue uh council Fredericks I think the primary concern understanding uh Mayo's multiple pickup and drop off points during construction they plan to use second avenue to run shuttle campus shuttles until through 2030 so um outside of a legal process where we attain rights sooner it's really going to put a crimp in their long long-term plan over the bull forward unbound construction phase to um the way they get to plan to get people in and out of the clinic so and is this also plays into like Westgonda uh drop off is uh gonna be no longer available uh they're different points they're used to using come and go as streets uh become available so really second avenue is that one corridor that remains open for for business they've been valeting on the south side of the mail clinic building on set uh second avenue uh when link BRT starts to run in 2027 those are the red uh business access trans uh transit lanes they can't run uh valet off of second street anymore i heard you just say it ain't quick enough so yeah i think uh we would need to wait unless it would cause major disruption to the construction and the arrival of patients and the movement of people around the mail clinic during the construction uh council member wall thank you uh i agree with president shoe bring and with and i think second

Uh when Link BRT starts to run in 2027, those are the red uh business access trans uh transit lanes.

They can't run uh valet off of second street anymore.

I heard you just say it ain't quick enough.

So yeah, I think uh we would need to wait unless it would cause major disruption to the construction and the arrival of patients and the movement of people around the Mayo Clinic during the construction.

Uh Councilmember Wall.

Thank you.

Uh I agree with President Schubring and with Andy.

I think 2nd Street is the better route.

And instead of uh uh uh considering roadblocks, I'd like to work toward how can we get to yes rather than just say, here's why we can't do it, here's why we can't do it, how can we get to it?

Uh other uh cities, particularly European cities have uh found their way around uh uh trams and trains and and cars and pedestrians and bikes, and they have a lot more people than we do.

Uh we we can do it, we can do it.

I I will uh vote against the motion.

It's better uh B is better than A.

Uh I will vote against it uh uh primarily because of parking and supporting downtown businesses.

I reached out to uh uh a business leader uh today, and uh she was kind to write back and said business owners rely on those spaces, grab and go sandwiches, bank lobby, restaurants all need the perception of easy access, even if even if it's not easy.

Not one business owner supports losing parking spaces.

I'm not sure that's entirely right.

I think I got uh an email today from a business owner that does support that.

Um it's not so much bike lanes, it's the loss of parking.

So um I think second uh Avenue is uh the better option, and I would like to use that uh and then hopefully work on Broadway so that uh we can take the uh Highway 63 uh moniker and look off of it and make it look more like uh a city street that has been uh brought back to us like we have done on North Broadway.

So I I would love to uh uh use long-range planning to, you know, it's five years, seven years.

My gosh, we've got projects longer than that.

Councilmember Miller.

Yeah, thank you all.

Just echo what several of our colleagues have brought up.

I will support the motion because I think it is an interim solution to being able to work towards second avenue.

And I would just condition my comments as I think in many ways we're choosing between two interests downtown and and who gets to decide whether First or Avenue, First Avenue or Second Avenue is used.

And I would like to see how we move towards 2nd Avenue, but in the um situation where that is completely impossible.

I think we need an interim connection in this 18-month period time frame.

I think we need to monitor the data.

I'll just mention when I was in Portland, Oregon, there was a bike pedestrian transit bridge, and every time you walked over it or biked over it, it ticked up one and it displayed it and it said crossings today, crossings here to date.

And so there was never any question of how many people were utilizing that.

And I'll just note the the elephant in the room is the size of a vehicle versus the size of a person.

And when we only see private properties stored in the public right-of-way, it does feel overwhelming.

And I would love to say that every one of those cars parked on the curb is getting a sandwich or going to the bank or using those exact businesses that we want to support.

And I just suspect that that's not true.

I would like us to study that data as well, perhaps working with our partners at RDA to better answer that question of who is on the street, who's parked on the curb.

And I also think that we have the capability to work with our non-Mayo downtown businesses on programs that appropriately manage the supply at the curb and also access for customers and employees because we have uh Civic Center South lot that's quite cheap for daily parking, much cheaper than the ramp, much cheaper than the street, paying at the meter.

And I don't know that that's well known and advertised to downtown business owners and employees that that is accessible because I see Mayo employees walking from the southeast lots every day into downtown and walking in the evenings.

And if that's a possible distance for downtown employees to travel, I wonder why it's not more utilized for Civic Center South to get into downtown along the trail.

Roughly the same distance, the same time, a similar employee profile.

So I would like us to learn how, and this goes well beyond the motion, but I I think these are topics that we can talk about the supply, we can talk about the infrastructure.

We have to talk about the programming that helps people uh navigate in all ways that infrastructure.

So I would like to see how we work on that issue.

There was a rate study a couple years ago that reprioritized the use of the street and the ramps and reset the rates, and I wonder if that's not the time to bring an update on that and think about how we advance that work again to better manage this precious public space.

And um, and I I just think that as we've gone through all these stakeholder processes, we have an established stakeholder set of groups, set of interests, we know who's downtown, and I would really want to prioritize the non-Mayo stakeholders and understanding this use of our downtown.

And I I the comment also came up that the third street ramp is quite full.

I've seen that too.

It's more full than normal.

I'd like to see how we get that access back so that we're not negotiating over 16 or 20 spaces on the street, but we really understand where the parking is, how it is appropriately allocated to the users, and we're managing the curb.

And I'll I'll just say too, I support council members uh Palmer's comments about right turn on red and lowering the speed limit, but I recognize that that requires enforcement, and I don't suspect we have uh a staffing model to enforce that appropriately.

And I again I will support this tonight, but I think we need to continue this conversation and additional study sessions and additional work.

I would like to see how we go north of West Center Street and access the Soldiers Field Park to the south as well.

But I recognize that that's beyond what we're being asked to do tonight.

Councilmember Doring.

Yeah, despite the flaws I see in the uh First Avenue option B, I will be supporting it tonight as well.

But I'm wondering uh and really debating if I put a time limit on that support.

Uh, whether we indicate this as a council uh that this is an interim use policy that's set in place for 18 months and really give a time frame for the to press negotiations uh with the private property owner um downtown uh to give us access to Allenberg Plaza and see if that is a possibility.

Uh Councilmember, do you want to put that in a amendment?

Yes, that is your option.

I I don't know.

I'm debating it.

Uh Mr.

Samson Brown, did you have something to add while council members?

If I may add some context, just in terms of when's the right time to make a decision, three major milestones I think are coming up in about the next 18 months.

First one, uh, by the end of 2026, four new mayo parking ramps will come online.

None are open today.

That is gonna change the way people park downtown.

Exactly how we'll we'll need to measure that as it was suggested, but that's something that can't start until November 26.

Um in November, December 26th, uh the the downtown transfer for uh RPT will move back downtown.

That's over 1,200 riders a day, 1200 potential customers.

So again, we'll see that'll be happening a block north of here.

So we'll see how that foot traffic.

Does everyone just jump on a bus or do they wander down first avenue?

That will give us some guidance on pedestrian footage.

And then, of course, um August of 2027, Link uh BRT starts running 11,000 riders projected on day one.

To me, after those three main major milestones are achieved, we'll have a general idea in the downtown major east-west streets, second street will all be open.

Yes, there'll be work uh to the north and cut ski neighborhood, but to me, by August of 27, we can really start getting a sense of what does the new downtown Rochester function like in terms of active transportation, where do people want to go because that there'll be enough streets open, they can actually get to many of the places, not all where they'd like to go.

And that would be a good time to really start measuring in earnest with a real data set that's more predictable and reliable moving into the future.

So just want to add that.

Councilmember Doring.

Yeah, I'll plan to not uh amend the motion on the floor and support this motion, but I would encourage us not to wait until 2027 to gather those data points.

I would like to see a before and after of all the things that you have just described.

Uh Clerk Casew, can you call the role?

Councilmember Keene.

Aye.

Councilmember Miller.

Aye.

Councilmember Wall.

Nay.

Councilmember Fredericks.

Nay.

Councilmember Palmer.

Nay.

Councilmember Doring.

Aye.

Council President Schubring.

Aye.

Motion passes four to three.

Other discussion points on this agenda item.

I know we had uh several other pieces.

There was the uh the sixth avenue south of 2nd Street.

Uh, we did have uh some discussion on Broadway.

Any further discussion on any of those pieces, Council members?

Councilmember Miller.

Okay, I guess a question for staff are there grant opportunities to pursue for connection of those pieces, particularly the Sixth Avenue one in the timeline of construction.

I believe that was a medium-term possibility.

Forgive me, you uh Councilmember Miller, you're talking about the section on Sixth Avenue South.

Fourth Street Southwest.

Um I think first we have to uh what I failed to mention when we talked about it before is but I think you're all aware there's a slope there, so we'd have to understand what that means in terms of constructibility, um, design and constructability.

And yeah, if there's a funding opportunity, we will pursue it.

Um, it could also be something that if we don't spend the entire 480,000 dollars on First Avenue, and you direct us to um put some of those dollars towards that, like we can develop a um uh list of talking points for you to consider related to that.

So would that come back to us with further refinement of this design of the motion that just passed as as costs go in and we understand the amount being used, would that be an appropriate point to discuss remainders?

Sure, we can bring it up to other funding sources.

Okay, so we can bring an update.

Councilmember Keene.

Uh yeah, just on that same discussion.

The uh I again I I just asked staff to reassess the whole um the the agreement made on vac vacating third and fourth avenue was to reconnect the thing.

And I think the way the dollar amount was worked out was we had vacated two city streets two blocks long and did some math on that.

But as we go through these discussions, we're finding that we're actually needing to replace four city streets in two directions.

Um and maybe the funding doesn't quite cover that.

So just something to consider with our negotiates with Mayo.

I know Mayo turned over the money based on the city is the one who defines streets and how they should run, and I agree with that.

But I I think it's worth reassessing if the dollar amount was correct, considering that we weren't ending at second street because we don't travel on second street.

We are going to fourth street.

So it's a bigger, it's a bigger relocate than I think we're funded for.

Okay, thank you, team.

Great job.

Uh next on our agenda is H4, which is updates to the council rules and of procedure and code of conduct conduct.

And uh this is an item from our consent agenda that I pulled and I pulled it primarily for the section on how we deal with council initiated actions.

I I didn't feel the language changes really clarified the uh the uh how we use CIAs.

I uh and so I I I wanted I asked uh deputy administrator parrish to really look at the language so that it's clear because I think CIAs were initially developed as a way for council members to bring things forward to their colleagues and then ask staff to devote time and resources into researching and preparing an item to come back to the council.

Uh but we know in the last uh actually two months, we've had uh a few resolutions that came through CIA's where uh the council was ready to uh make a decision on that CIA that evening.

So I I wanted to make sure that we had flexibility as a council to be able to take those resolutions and items where we as a body can make a decision that evening, but also uh ensure that we're also able to use the CIA's uh for the purpose of uh devoting staff and resources to further study.

So Mr.

Parrish, did you want to um present what you uh drafted to um tighten that language up or yeah, your honor?

Uh there's there's three options, and Ann, if uh or Heather, if you could pull those up on the screen.

Um option one really just uh refines the language slightly um, but then says if you do want to take action on an item, uh you have the ability to do that by suspending your rules, which is really the case with most things with the rules, but uh that does require a five out of seven vote.

So there's a little bit of a higher standard if you wish to uh bring that forward for action that particular evening.

Um when we initiated council initiated actions a while back, you know, the focus really was it was to provide research, bring back a recommendation that the council then could uh adopt a subsequent meeting.

Um, but as you acknowledge, council president, there are times where you know things certainly are more contemporary and in need of consideration.

Uh so then the second option um would really um kind of soften that a little bit and say it's just it is not anticipated that council action will be taken on an item um and that the CIA is is really directed um to direct staff time.

So it doesn't mean you can, it's just not anticipated, so it softens it a little bit, but still orients you in the direction of it being a two-step process, but doesn't preclude it in this particular case.

I mean, if you'll know we tried to walk both of these changes with this evolution of mayor initiated action requests, so the process is in essence the same.

Um and these are you know just modifications to existing language.

Uh and then last is you could certainly approve any of these other two rule changes that are included this evening with regard to remote participation.

Um, and uh, well, I think that's really that one.

Um and you could ask us to bring back some language, you know, based on your feedback and conversation tonight for consideration at a different date.

So if you have a particular one you want to make a motion around, option one, two, or three, we're certainly happy to answer any questions.

And did I catch everything?

Do you think?

Okay.

So we're gonna start with the discussion.

Council member Wall.

I am going to stray just a little bit from that to go to uh the mayor initiated action.

Um that's novel uh nomenclature to me.

Uh I I don't recall hearing those words when we were talking about council rules.

Uh and I thought that these that what was coming back to us was a reflection of what we uh had talked about as a council.

So I I when I was reading through this, I wondered where uh the MIA uh came from.

Yeah, and um an unfortunate acronym probably.

Um certainly I could go through all the funny acronyms.

None of us were here when this was discussed.

Uh and uh we are all MIA.

Yeah, go ahead.

Sorry.

I am um maybe uh city attorney uh Spiller Craig wants to throw me a lifeline here, but I I think the goal here was to align the CIA and MIA process together.

Um there is a little bit of difference with the mayor's current uh ability to add actions to the agenda.

Um in essence, there isn't like you all have to find a friend um to do this.

In her case, that's not the case.

She has the ability to put things on the agenda.

I think it was really just an effort to provide clarity and alignment between the two processes, but with that I'll defer to City Attorney Spindler Craig if I missed it.

And I'm gonna go to first mayor Norton since this impacts her most directly.

Well, this took me by surprise to say the least.

Um, I'm not a council member, and so when we keep trying to align, and we've been doing this a number of times.

I I don't have the privileges of voting for things like you do.

There are differences.

I'm the CEO of the city, I'm not a council member.

And so for me, when I see something like this, it is a demeaning action toward the office of the mayor.

And I'm very concerned when this hadn't come up, and now we have this kind of language.

And I will say a couple things that are um difficult to understand the thought process here.

Currently, our office and historically our office does RCAs for board and commissions.

We don't do CIAs, we don't do MIAs, we do RCAs.

My staff puts together the RCA for boards and commissions that come to the meeting that these guys vote on.

We do RCAs for travel permission.

We put together the RCA, it goes in the packet through Allison through the county administrator or the city administrator.

And I think there have maybe been two other times that something that an RCA was used that wasn't on one of these standard topics.

It's rare.

Um I was taken aback by this language, and it does not allow me to do my job in the current roles that I'm doing it by putting these rules and regulations.

And in fact, if you because it was tried to be paralleled with the council, it says it would have to, it could not come for a vote that I would put together a CIA for board and commission members that would come to you that you would say, Oh, okay, it's okay for you to put together a an RCA for a board and commission appointee.

I mean, I do there are a hundred and some board and commission members.

I don't do a hundred a year, but I do probably 40 or 50 a year.

And so it just doesn't make sense.

And so I would please ask that this be removed and leave the initial language as it is, um, not treating me like a council member, but treating me like the mayor of the city with the responsibilities that have historically been with this office.

Um, not treating me like a council member, but treating me like the mayor of the city with the responsibilities that have historically been with this office.

Thank you, uh Mayor.

Any uh I I just want to add also I and I agree with the mayor, I I would support not including 2.03 C, which I think is the changes to 2.03 C.

I also uh think the added language to 2.03B is unnecessary because we uh and and it puts further restrictions on us as a council that we uh that we didn't have a month ago.

It uh we passed uh passed two resolutions without suspending the rules.

So I I'm really concerned with uh language, and I don't know that we discuss this at length um during our study session, but I'm really concerned with putting in language that uh that puts added shackles on our council.

I think we've done in my tenure in the last year a good job of distinguishing between CIAs that need research and staff time and CIAs that we uh know that our um public want us to uh make a decision on quickly.

So I I think actually I would uh make a motion to uh to remove well, I don't know what the I know we're we're looking at the entire the the entire rules and uh and guidelines, but I would remove both the the changes to 2.03B and 2.03 C and So maybe your honor if I don't know here, but maybe you'd want to make a motion to approve removing the proposed changes in those two sections.

I'll second you on that.

Uh yes, that motion and second by council member Fredericks.

Uh council member Keene.

Uh yeah, I I was just gonna add some context here, but do you guys want to speak first since it's your motion?

I think I did speak to my motion.

Yeah, again, I I do remember we had some discussion on the uh 2.03B in our in our discussion, and part of it was the old history, and this is something that you know it's hard to keep up with, but the history with council initiated actions was to get staff time.

It wasn't the way we've been using them lately.

And I know there's some concern with that, that um and and both sides of concern, obviously on the council side that says no, we need to do something this week as opposed to bring something in.

Um, but I think there is the worry uh from a from a staff perspective that um we'll end up with something in the council initiated actions, and all of a sudden the other council members are voting in something that they didn't expect to.

And I think that's what I read this language to be protecting from.

It was to go back towards more of the idea of um a normal council initiated action, it would be for the council to discern whether staff time should be spent on that.

Um, and the exception being, um, and that's suspending the rules.

The exception being is no, we're going to take action right now.

Um, and I so I I'm not so much weighing in one side or the other, but giving that sort of background to it.

And I think that's where it came from.

As far as adding the mayor stuff, I I don't remember the disc, I don't think we had a discussion on it.

Um, I don't think it necessarily belongs in here, but at the same time, it is a way of saying it's it's a collection of here are the different things that can get on the agenda.

Um, and I think the I thought the the idea was, and this is the old going back to 2015 before my day before council member Palmer, where it was who had control of the agenda and who and did council have the ability to say I need this on the agenda, and that was debated back in those days and changed.

And I think now we're talking about like no, we want more control of it.

Um, and that's something that I'm trying to get comfortable with.

Further discussion on this.

So the oh, go ahead, uh city attorney Spindler Craig.

Thank you.

I would echo um some of councilmember Keene's comments there about what the discussion was that we heard from you as we discussed the rules, and I do want to be clear with the body that we weren't attempting to make something up here.

And I do want to be clear with the body that we weren't attempting to make something up here.

We thought we were reflecting what you discussed, not only what you discussed that night, but the discussions that we had on a number of prior occasions related to CIAs.

And um there was a theme that developed of each of you at times were putting your colleagues into tough spots because you were bringing CIAs and ready to vote on them.

And we heard um from various angles that some of you felt that these had been sprung upon you, that you didn't have time to review them, and suddenly you're rushed to a vote.

Okay.

Um so I do I do want to be clear with the body that we were attempting to reflect what we thought we were hearing from you, that you generally don't want to be doing that to each other, okay?

Recognizing that for each of you, when it's your CIA, sometimes you want it to move forward quickly, right?

So you kind of do it to each other.

But it seemed that your conversation was you kind of wanted to put a little bit more of a hurdle in front of that process, right?

So that was part of what we were trying to reflect.

Here's the other challenge that that is created by that dynamic is the whole point of the CIA is that staff is trying to hear from the body that you want us to spend time on this topic.

And what we end up with instead at times is if the hard push is coming to us, and we know that the CIA authors want to vote right away, right?

They want action, they want to spend money, they want to pass a resolution, they want to do something like that.

Then we're already in a position where we need to spend a bunch of time on that topic, right?

Because if we see that you have a resolution, a draft resolution that you want the body to vote on right away.

We need to try to get that into a form where we think the body can digest it, consider it, give it thought, and vote on it that night.

So it really has the effect of putting staff in a position where we're needing to dig in and spend a bunch of time on it, even though it's still just a CIA and the body hasn't really directed us to do that.

I think you've seen that play out on some of your recent CIAs.

Maybe you're okay with that.

Maybe you want it to continue that way.

But I thought that the discussion that you had was in part an attempt to avoid some of those situations.

Thank you.

That's enough on that topic.

Thank you for your uh very clear clarification.

Just the other the other piece of the the mayor's piece.

I would also just say, like yes to uh Mr.

Parrish's point, those provisions read in parallel previously, like that isn't the the concept isn't new, right?

Those provisions were meant to be parallel and read in parallel previously.

Um so to the extent that we were putting that concept editing the language for the CIA and what the expectations were.

Um we thought that it made sense to make it parallel with the mayor's language as well.

But you should understand that the concept of the mayor bringing um a similar action, something similar to the CIA, isn't new.

Those were your prior rules.

Yeah, and I did see that as naming it.

It was prior to that a request.

Uh other council members want to be heard on this item.

Councilmember Miller.

So I guess I also I appreciate Councilmember Keene bringing up the context.

I I do remember that discussion about um how we bring the CIA potentially as a point of discussion that's likely to receive action at a future meeting.

The the point that I think starts to build up, though, is having a review period of 15 business days only than to have it on a council discussion.

It feels like it extends the process quite long up to five weeks.

And I wonder if there's a point of understanding that if if it's just well, two council members fill out a form and put it on the next agenda.

If it doesn't start with staff review, I think that that's a different process.

But I think this does both as as written as proposed.

It puts that three-week review period and it puts it on to the following council meeting, which I think is the pushback I'm feeling like it's it's limiting council's ability.

And obviously we could suspend the rules, but I I suspect this is going a little bit further in the discussion that I heard.

I I think that would be my concern is the five weeks of potential time between a form being filled out and actually council action.

It's quite a long glide path.

Okay, so um council member Doring.

Um thank you, Councilmember Miller.

I agree with that.

Um I'm wondering we have a mechanism now to uh not take action on a CIA at any meeting by uh tabling a CIA, um, which is also in our purview and doesn't require a change of the rules.

Um I'm also wondering what the difference is, and I I heard you speak about this uh city attorney, and I appreciate that the time and effort.

Um I'm taken aback a little bit uh by the idea uh that reviewing a CIA and being prepared to make a decision on it is any different than any other item on our agenda when it's which is published again the Wednesday before a meeting when we have no clear indication what every single item is on the agenda and a review period for those items as well.

We are asking simply the same thing to take action with four days of review as we do for every other item of an on our agenda.

So it's a little troubling to me to hear uh the feedback that we need more time to make a decision when we haven't really adopted any rule to have other items uh placed on our agenda uh uh have a longer glide path to use the language that council president Schuebring uses a lot to make informed decisions.

I think we're making a uh distinct separation.

Um, and I I again I think it limits our ability to um listen to our constituents and and and be the spokespeople for those who we were elected to serve in this community.

So that's my my opinion about this.

Okay, seeing others, no others to speak.

We have a motion on the table to accept the rules and guidelines with uh except for the changes to 2.03 B and 2.03 C.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay.

Nay.

Motion passes five to two.

Moving on to uh H5, uh Minnesota Office of Justice Programs 2026-2028 crisis response grant.

This was polled by council member Wall.

Mr.

Wall.

Thank you.

Uh I polled it for uh two reasons.

Uh one is uh I think it's a really good demonstration of the Rochester Public Uh Department, uh Rochester Police Department's uh uh recognizing needs of the community in terms of mental health and would love to uh have them talk a little bit about that uh so that we and the public are even better informed as to our response to people in need of those services.

And then also uh that the council uh I'm sure is very well aware that perhaps after 23 or 24 months, if this is uh something that is very well received, uh, that it could uh come back to us as a responsibility for funding going into the future.

Thank you.

Uh Captain Hodgman, do you would you like to absolutely absolutely thank you very much, uh Councilmember Wall for that.

Uh the police department is currently seeking approval to apply for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Crisis Response Grant.

Uh this is in order to sustain and to strengthen a service model that we are currently demonstrating with measurable results.

As council will recall, last March we entered into a contract with Terry Dose, who is acting as our persons experiencing homelessness navigator.

That position was funded through the one-time public safety funds, and that those dollars will be ending at the end of this year.

This role has allowed us to really create a true proof of concept here in Rochester.

Uh through our focused outreach, our coordinated engagement, and persistent follow-up, we are moving individuals from repeated crisis contacts into stabilization and to services while we're strengthening the coordination between law enforcement, community partners, and social services.

If awarded this grant, um this would this would fund this position for the next two years.

It does not obligate the city long term.

It is an opportunity for us to pursue the external funding to continue to model this model that is working and to thoughtfully evaluate the sustainability before we enter into anything that is more long term.

Thank you.

Uh any questions.

Is there a motion on this item?

If I had it up, I would make the motion to approve uh move to authorize the police department to apply for the 2026-2028 Department of Public Safety.

Umnesota Office of Justice Programs Crisis Response Grant.

Second.

Motion made by Councilmember Keene and seconded by Councilmember Fredericks.

Anything to add?

Councilmember Wall.

I love stories.

Can you just give us one story that says here's how we have used this to the benefit of the public?

Absolutely.

Thank you.

So Terry is one of the things that she does is provides us with a lot of of stories about her contacts that she's had.

And there's a lot of people without giving you names, faces that I know that you would very easily recognize from just being in the downtown area.

And these are people who, based on their current situation, have not been able to get into housing for months or get into treatment for months.

And Terry, alongside with our CAT team, going out there and being persistent with them, getting them into those those spots where maybe they feel like today's the day, we've been able to place a lot of people into services that are either here in Rochester in our housing options or getting them out to treatment, maybe outstate, um, where they come back to Rochester and they're living productive lives as citizens in our community.

Thank you.

Councilmember Miller.

Yeah, thank you.

I I appreciate Councilmember Wall pulling this item and also Captain Hodgman, your coming tonight.

I remember the last time we had a discussion about some of the challenges downtown.

I asked Chief Franklin, how do we scale this up?

If it's working so well, how do we move it up?

So I'm glad to see this uh attempt to scale up our our ability to provide service for people in a difficult time in their lives.

And I also appreciate Councilmember Wall uh bringing up the nature of grants and and how we build in sustainable programs.

And I just wonder if how we think about an overall operational analysis of some of our public safety services.

Um I mean, it it is uh nearly 60 percent of our general fund, which is significant and important, but just how we understand the the needs that we want to see rather than there's a grant application so we could add it in.

And and I just want to understand how we're thinking about grants and are we being driven to change our operations based on available grants, or are we proactively seeking grants that meet our strategic goals?

Uh administrator parish.

Uh, your honor, I and Councilmember Miller.

I think it's yes and all that.

I mean, so we're in a process of continually evaluating, you know, how do we maximize and optimize our response in many areas?

Um, our teams are obviously you know going through some continuous improvement efforts on an ongoing basis.

Um, we have had conversations in the past about you know, is there opportunity to do larger evaluation of you know core services?

And we've done program reviews and things like fleet and you know, name the name the city service.

Um, and so we could talk as a staff again and and see what uh options might exist.

Um police fire, etc.

I mean, obviously, fire's got a lot of transformation happening too.

And as you're looking at adding another station, um, you know, these public safety evaluations do take place.

We've had some conversation, maybe it wasn't quite with the current council, but in the past, I know the police chief reported out on some benchmarking and metrics that um you know they had completed with what we'll call peer agencies, and so we can think about how we best bring forward some ideas for you all in that space.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Doring.

Just for my colleagues at the our next study session, I'll be presenting a little bit about the AnyPath Home Initiative and uh Terry's work with with the service providers um here in this community for those experiencing uh homelessness has been um I can't speak highly enough of the stories they share about uh her involvement uh with those individuals and they uh her involvement has part been part of the the success metrics of that initiative that I'll be happy to share with you at our next study session as well.

Thank you, councilmember.

Uh seeing no other uh anyone else who wants to be recognized, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay.

Motion passes.

Moving on to our council initiated act.

We have no council initiated action actions.

Um, and moving on to ordinance first readings.

Go ahead, Mr.

Sprindler Craig.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Item J1, an ordinance rezoning approximately 2.71 acres of land located south of Highway 52 southeast and east of Highway 6263 South at 77 Wood Lake Drive Southeast from LI Light Industrial to MXG Mixed Use General and amending ordinance number 4478, known as the Unified Development Code of the City of Rochester, Minnesota.

Moving on to item J2, an ordinance rezoning approximately 1.2 acres of land located northwest of the intersection of 7th Avenue Southwest and Center Street West from R2X, low density residential infill to R3, medium density residential, and amending ordinance number 4478, known as the Unified Development Code of the City of Rochester, Minnesota.

Thank you, Mr.

City Attorney.

Next up we have other business.

First item.

Opposed say nay.

Moving back to our city council uh agenda.

We are on other business.

Is there a motion to adopt the findings of the Rochester R EDA?

So moved.

Second.

Moved by Councilmember Keene and seconded by Councilmember Miller.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay.

Is there any other other business?

Seeing none, is there a seeing none?

Is there a motion to adjourn?

Second.

Moved by council member miller, seconded by council member Doring.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay.

We're adjourned.