And then we have a council initiated action for disconnect connected parcel trail gap.

Off with Brian or Brian on financial financial policies.

Sure.

Thank you, Council President Shouldn't Council members.

Mayor, Mr.

Zelda.

So one of the items I was tasked with uh shortly after I got here too was to take a look at and revise the financial financial policies that the city has.

So it's going to do it so first of all, you have to find out what the Cody drawer.

Um make sure that they work for them as well too to see what else needs to be updated.

So uh did a lot of that and these uh financial policies.

I've done this for two other communities before this, and it seems to be kind of something again to bring everything back in so you're dealing with uh document isn't itself as you can see before yourself.

We have twenty-two policies before us, I'll probably just be talking about uh the ones that you see in the slide presentation or two discussions.

Uh document uh in the past and about people at the back before the council agenda on annual basis.

Uh so numbers can take a look at it, new console members have a chance to take a look at it.

Um also rating agency authors like the year the word yes that's been approved and reviewed in the last year as well, too.

So one gets approved or reviewed it all.

So it's just uh easier way to go about doing that as well.

So uh so with that I will quickly move these uh both that purpose of the purpose of the financial policies.

Uh uh taking a look at this one for the financial policies.

This was this was the first one up there was an attempt to heard.

Um study or a plan or sustainability plan or something like that comes before the city council.

Um what it states in here is that the plan should be adopted and it would be adopted by so if they're asking for an action to be done, we're recommending that.

Uh uh that way if there's a word or uh something that needs to also approve it, they can adopt it, the council can adopt it.

The latter part in it, it doesn't matter.

And then the second part in here.

Uh uh, and then the second part in here is like cursing the second part in here then relates to the city understands that the adopted document usually using is used for informational resources that provide direction without creating any future future responsibility or obligation to the council to the council's part.

Um the approach preserves the council's discretion, clarifies that the sentence is not equate to an endorsement for specific financial commitment.

I know that's where a lot of the discussion was for the fact that you see these plans that might be many pages uh might not have dollar multiple.

That's true.

So the dollars usually come later.

So with that, if you again like the plan, also the plan adopt the plan, and usually the follow-up yeah, so this states that you know there will be, or this doesn't hide the council down just because the plan has the same speed as a same.

The author with the plan we shouldn't think they're brought back for for approval to start.

So questions questions on that one show.

I think just again kind of clarifying what we incurred.

Uh uh the seventh paragraph down there simply simply states that the uh uh the city departments and entities that report to the cities that report on the city's financial statements show operate using our shared resource planning enterprise resource planning and the charter of accounts, and that's what we're working on right now.

Uh the uh the ERP and the charter accounts is all part of the project that you guys approve for dollars right now, too.

So this is stating that uh uh in the budget process that that's what we were describing maintained going forward, that we have an infrared charter for policy and shall operate under one year, I mean you're the items listed, maybe there are two uh possibilities for that as well.

So I've got a question, Brian.

So since uh I think you kind of went through a semantic exercise with adopted uh is the word shall in there in there meaning meaning that that you want them to do it, but they they don't have to do it, do it.

So it's if it's an action, so if uh staff staff is asking for action to be taken, I guess I guess it would be preferred or shall be adopted would be the option that's we're seeking the calls that actually set up received or something else.

I guess that's really what I'm asking.

It's more uh are they uh uh does every does everyone have to comply?

That's what we have.

Okay, okay.

So I'm kind of in the same vein.

I was thinking like sometimes uh a department or individual will come forward with the ideas about something we do.

Um the council you know accepts that now they're gonna use the term adopts it, but but may not it may not be the thing that they want to do ultimately because there may be better other ideas that come over the board, and they're not they're not obligating funding for it according to what you said.

So I'm I'm struggling with um some plans that we had a couple years ago.

That idea came to the city council, the city council listened to it and said that's interesting, yeah.

You know, and then and then is that you know that can be seen as an endorsement of that plan forever, or but there's no financial obligation that was given, it was just accepting um concept.

And so and so what if something better or a developer comes between now and then?

And we've had this issue come up one time this last year where so we already have a plan.

Well, the plan was kind of a pie in the sky idea, it wasn't really a great plan.

So adopting to me, then is that obligating us to farm or not?

And how would you change it for instance?

Um administrators.

I think I think the intent here is that to have a specific process and order of operations, or if it's got a board, it comes to a board and the council and it should be adopted.

But the rest of the language is that it doesn't obligate to you to anything because there would be a future action, a budget I think sort of financial resource, a specific CIP project, something of that nature, that or maybe even adopting a policy that's an idea in the plan that's that still needs to come forward to either a board or the city council thing.

That is the technically that wouldn't come to you, but I'm sure there are.

Um so I think the intent here is to show this is what we would intend going forward that it would go to the board, it would come to the city council.

The intent would be to adopt them.

And it does it doesn't obligate to use anything because there would need to be potentially other financial decisions related to implementation of ideas within whatever the product is.

So if I can follow up on that then what if someone someone else had a different idea for something something that we have discussed.

Do we have do we have to retract approval of this, or we could just approve something else, or how how would you think of handling that?

I guess I guess that was the go ahead.

Well, I guess for what I'm thinking of for these is like these larger clients plan the library has a plan that they run for system plans can be amended and things of that nature, I guess.

Um ideas are floated by it.

So it's more from a larger fundamental set.

I don't see you can use something like the amendment adopted.

Yeah.

We could bring something back in the memory.

We've got we've got uh council member miller, then council member Keene.

I guess I guess to go off to go off of that line of questioning.

One of my one of my questions is just the the need for the middle sentence regardless of which body approves it first.

Because the the sentence before says that it would be brought to council food feedback or consideration of adoption, and I almost feel like that next step is should it be adopted, then the city understands that they adopt a document.

I the one that reads funny to me, and I I'm curious of your thoughts on what that's what that sentence adds.

I I I understand that it's setting up the the idea that it should be adopted, but it's it's really at that point the council's decision.

And that and that reads a little prescriptive to me.

Yeah, yeah, when I talk to uh uh mic with the parts of the board.

I guess the the sound like they bring the like parts plan before the council.

Obviously, they've talked about it uh with their all of the board and then bring it before the council paid back all the feedback you made itself at the council levels that adopts it then, they bring it back to their board for adoption.

And that was the first time I heard that it doesn't matter if in my mind, I guess if the board adopts it first, and if that's what we want to make sure it happens.

Yeah, but he but he was kind of the one that said, well, if the council adopted first after that your board and they adopt it.

So that's why it was and I guess that's one charter board.

Um the way that this reads to me is that review adopted by the charter board, could it be relevant that to the council's consideration of adoption, and then should it be adopted, then the rest of the policy follows.

But I but I I guess the mayor's point, what I'm understanding is sometimes when we adopt plans or we we have a formal study and then a period of time passes, we don't we don't review it again.

Is that a locked-in plan, or how are we having feedback?

And I feel like we've had this discussion over the last two years of how we have we have more council input.

So I'm not sure not sure whether whether it applies in this, but I would think some of those larger plans, um area plans, etc.

etc.

We just maybe maybe the the alternative is to build back in a feedback process to the council for review progress updates.

I guess I guess my thought is these are financial policies, not and they're intended to pretty this is intended to sort of clarify the conversation.

So if it's not fair, we should make it clearer.

Um but I would argue also that regardless of what this says if the city council doesn't fund something, it's not gonna be something that was funded a plan.

So um I think the intent is to have a structure and process and to clarify that a plan is a plan and the additional actions that are necessary depending on Wilson's land, still still have to go through whatever policy process is necessary in order to effectuate and implement either a policy, a project, a new way of operating, things with that nature.

Okay, council member keen.

Um I read it to be having to do with charter boards.

I really I really think our time would be better spent really focusing on the financial marks and what's in front of us.

The policies that are things like shared service policy, what are the proposals?

What are the signature levels?

I think those sort of policy things I'm getting the discussions of a master plan.

I don't think I don't consider that under the control of financial policies.

I think really the key point for acceptance, who goes first, is it recommended to you?

That's probably that's probably not as important.

Like the key is that last sentence, you know, they're not they're not ratified or actionable, it doesn't obligate you.

And we'll have 30 million dollars of CIP requests and experience.

We have about nine million dollars to allocate.

So we can't so we can't accomplish all of the plans.

So I think this is really just saying you're preserving your authority to only implement what you what you feel like you can in a given budget's legal.

And that is that is something we hear regularly when we bring a plan forward.

It's this same question is it obligating us to do this whole plan?

And the answer is no.

And so this for all of the departments would clarify everything.

Whereas we use whatever word B is adapting, etc.

Review and your work.

We are not outloating city council currently or in future to all in all of the pieces of them.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for that clarification.

Brian, Brian.

Uh this one has to do with you know enterprise shared services.

This is uh relatively new policy, but not a new concept, basically.

Um so with this one here is to be able to get them, but to maximize the use of shared organizational services across the city of Rochester so we're not duplicating some of the larger services that share with the city of Rochester Shell, just read the policy statement real quick, but operate as one integrated municipal enterprise.

Uh so it improves efficiency and assistency and internal controls, uh service quality and long-term financial sustainability.

And then it goes on to list some of those under the service subject team specialization, payroll IT purpose management, we didn't record management.

Um then departments may not independently establish people system process or staff these functions without approval or just policy for sort of running off and hiring IT or higher uh building maintenance or something like that, where we already have that and we could share that service so education to keep that keep that as efficient as possible.

And then there's the authority uh stewardship civil administrator of the instructor EIT resources listed there, and then on the bottom you can see too, it's uh would be would be review and then with a console in conjunction with the two year budget process with going to before we placed two or things called but definitely do it after the two-year budget process and the budget and funding alignment listed there on the performance review and then the leaves on the implementation as well.

And again, things that have been done the library and stuff like that too.

So it's just uh continuation out of that for all the departments to take a look at the council member key.

Just have a point of clarification.

Do you would you like to do do as we go through the four or five different suggestions, talk about each individually, or wait till the end and then go through them?

I think if I think if uh folks have uh question questions on specific um um um policy policy areas, I I guess what I would say is how I look at this is that a lot of a lot of this is is in practice and what what you're doing you're doing is writing writing it all down and putting it in one place.

And so what I would uh uh ask ask is Brian, as you go through this to point out point out if any if anything is new.

So this one is new, new that we put it allocated with us.

Again, the prior side is then also busy, just showing this kind of comment on this one.

I was more involved in this.

I this is this is really just sort of the idea and expectation that you know we we're lumping.

Um we have a lot of duplicative services right now.

We've got yeah, we have moved toward a lot of stronger alignment um in the shared services space.

Um, but we have had a fairly decentralized environment.

Um, even since I started, uh we have consolidated services, and the council is aware of what we did in facilities and what we've done in fleet.

Um, but even those are not fully integrated across the enterprise.

Um we have you know separate IT departments in some cases.

So like the question is do you want to have you know you know more than just pick on Brian because he's up here, but like you know, two finance directors for the city, one of you and you know, a house is that is that the right thing to do?

It might be.

Um that might be the right way to do it, um, given the scope of what you know teachers responsible for, um, um, the business need within the department.

These are the areas where we're relying.

Here's where we continue to have exceptions, and there's business needs for that.

It just allows you to do your due diligence and exercise your dotier responsibilities.

But we are kind of setting a bar out that says if we have opportunities, we should always be thinking about them and talking about them and be transparent about them.

Yeah, RPU in particular is the entity that came to mind as I was reading.

So thank you for that clarification a little bit.

And does in terms of administration, do we see RPU as a separate entity of the city, or is it is it part, is it a department city?

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm with the cloud talk for a few hours about that.

Peter might have some exciting stuff to share with you there too.

But um I mean, I mean, you know, in some areas of the charter, it's uh characterizes the department of the city.

Um is also considered a department of the city.

Um, but they have some unique authorities that are provided within state law within the charters, and so you know, you know, each has a different environment they work in, RPU in particular that is uh delegated through the charter to the board.

You can you continue to exercise your authority to set the budget and your expectations for what operations look like through the budget.

Um so that's really your opportunity to provide feedback on your expectations in that environment.

Um really goes for parks.

Um they work a little bit differently, just given their funding models and all that.

But um for some of those things that you have granted specific authorities that they get to live out, but but you also have the ability to create expectations through your budget process.

Then I have one other follow-up question.

Um I think two slides back it said exceptions could exist if approved.

Uh uh one more department departments may not independently establish tree established uh systems processor stepping for these functions without approval, is like is the common council the approval of that, or is that an administrative function?

Yeah, I I think a lot of it, I mean our whole structure really is embedded in you know the budget process.

And so you know, our staffing profiles and all that um are really set to that.

So the lion's share of any of approval really does rest in those positions that are you know they're buried in the budget book, but they're there.

Um and you know, we have some ability to change that through you know, reclassifications, etc.

But generally you are you are looking at that when you approve the budget or have the opportunity to do so.

So while so what I hear you saying, and I just want to make sure I understand is that while it's not explicitly explicitly stated in this policy that the common council does that is implied through the budgetary procedure.

Yeah, yeah.

So when the parks budget comes before you, um you have a set of positions with a parks, do you have blank number of arborists?

Um their budget for blank number of arborists.

Yeah, yeah, uh landscape technicians, and a certain number of landscape technicians.

Um that's what they're appropriated.

Um so now they get to go and do the hiring for all that and the administration of that, but but you are approving position levels through budget costs.

Thank you, thank you.

Councilmember Keene.

I guess I do want to just voice just some concerns with some of the things here.

First, I think it's good to go through these reviews and make sure that the policy level reset, but I feel a lot of these policies are getting down to almost the most the operations and administration level.

Um same system across the two major businesses should help us into the future.

Um I've been watching some of the shared services.

You mentioned uh I think communications is an area over the last four years four years that you can try and bring together, and there's times where I think it makes sense and times where it doesn't, where we have brought people into a shared group or data dwelling.

But um, I I guess I get worried when I see that line that um I think it's in there somewhere which says the um all the all the authority will be with the city administrator to interpret and enforce the policy standards.

That almost almost like we're we as a council are getting pulled into like these management things.

I just want to be careful careful.

Yeah, um the other thing I want to say with this about I went through this all like my career in technology where we would have all the all the programmers together and all this other stuff, and that that would be work, but then when the big projects would come, someone was saying, like, don't pull pull the people you need together.

So it was always a kind of a back and forth with this.

But the way this works best is when the group that's getting the resources, you mentioned IT.

And the places where these fail is the service or the skills get moved to one group, but not the responsibility.

And we really have to have a good way to remove responsibility.

If the police have someone doing communications, and that person moves to administration, they can't be reassigned and not doing the work they were doing for the police.

Same thing with public works.

If they do, then we're just bringing bringing things together and reassigning work.

And that's what I worry about when we have read some.

I mean, the operational nature of that sentence makes me feel that it really is using the council to drive certain certain specific things through through the organization where I consider those to be more uh uh managerial and operational.

I guess I guess it's a follow-up question to slide five.

Customer key and mentioned communications, I don't see it listed.

I mean, I was assuming there are others other services happening within the departments that are not subject to centralization.

Is that would this be the list of prioritization?

Yeah, yeah, communications didn't make that that probably wouldn't be a relevant one that would consider.

I mean, we have mostly mostly integrated communications, but there's two exceptions to that.

Um and again, there could be great business cases for that to be you know in play.

And I think council points are relevant in terms of we still have the distance needs for these things, a lot of it can't be side of that fact.

It really is just because how's it delivered?

Um communications offer could be like a like like situation, but um use the example of IT.

If we have two of you know fairly significant IT structures, and we have a director, director, manager manager, manager manager in the you know, you know, equivalent structures, then then we we minimize our ability to scale, you know, resources and I appreciate that package.

I reviewed this list too, and I didn't see communications.

I just assumed that there are surfaces that are not coming out coming out of this policy today as a recommendation.

I think that that might have been an oversight.

I think communications are the relevant one we talked about.

Okay, okay.

Continue.

Uh right.

Uh uh so this is uh minority engineering, a special service fund area.

Uh uh, where in the past we have not had like a operating expenditure uh listed in there.

Uh state auditor doesn't recommend have a suggestion for that, like we do with our federal fund where we would have the council set of that 42%.

I think you can see that in here as well, too.

Uh for the fund balance with the demo fund.

Um we did not have one in here, but taking a look at fund balances that you can see here.

So we we have apparently 11 special revenue funds certain standards of the uh special revenue fund, they all operate differently.

Uh that's what the LEDs are why it's a special revenue fund while they function of the special revenue fund too.

So with that, we were proposing to put in there uh uh fund balance, not less than 15% uh uh unpreserved and designated expenditures.

So that's what you see in here.

If you go to page like 1005 of the capture, you'll see the actual fund balances in there as well.

If you go to page one on one day on three, you'll also see the quick definition of all of these as well, too.

So again, they all operate different, but we've uh data uh side that uh reserved and on the side um there should be some spont balance in there about the 15%.

So it's it's helpful because some of these are much higher, but they're gonna be used for something else they've done, right?

So that's so that's why we put a sentence in here to uh special residents.

Okay, right.

Uh purchase policy, this is probably one that we probably get the most questions on.

Uh yeah, well I'm clear as well.

Um we've opened up the policy and take a look at it and walk people through it.

Uh uh, rightfully so.

So what we did with this particular one is we were taking a look at it and uh uh obviously it all goes out of a state statute for the most part.

And that's what we were looking to simply replicate right now.

The threshold is up to $50,000 because then it goes to the city council uh for approval after that.

Uh what we were proposing at this time too is again the contracts for $25,000 or less.

That's all the state statute.

Sorry.

Um $25,000 or less.

And then they still have to five by state statute, and uh in that they have to get a quotation or in the open market, or basically they get at least two votes um if necessary for under $25,000.

And then there's again this is out of the statute as well, exceeding $25 to $175,000 that would allow the department heads and our design authorized to make those purchases.

Um there's also discussion in there too about the S alternative.

And then for and then for contracts over 175 over this amount must be by the city funds.

That goes for anything over $75,000.

So that is what we are proposing, I guess, to go on to buy to raise the limits.

And what is what is the what is the limit now?

The current is 50,000.

Uh uh, and so there are cities that have I think Woodbury, you know, one Fit County if I had it.

The Luke added up to 150, Bloomington has it at 175.

So a lot of cities that are size that moved it up to 175.

And for a while there, the state was was moving it.

It used to be 50,000 with the state.

And then I forget, but there's like four or five different times where they bumped it up, bumped it up, bumped it up.

And I think that's why Luth is at 150.

You probably just have updated theirs to like 175.

Um, so and again, these are for budgeted items.

You know, you know, anything non-budgeted, basically one back and you've seen those on your RCA as a budget fighting something roll.

Here's the funding source, we'd find it's Mayor Norton.

Well, well, this is this isn't gelling with what I see when a contract's come through.

So you know, maybe we need to just sit down and talk.

We've used 50,000 as the guideline.

But then department things come through on a and those are on from different.

So there's two things.

Yeah, mayor's got some signature authority, and so um for a contract approval, it's 50,000 or less.

We can be approved administratively.

175 is the state amount, and actually our few for their financial policy is also already set at 175 in the county.

So it's a relatively, you know, asked to go to this, you know, those of that amount for that.

Mary, what you're thinking about you get a voucher through something that's already been contracted, whether through the council process or or through that, the approval of the vouchers can exceed that amount.

It's more like a workflow that we have internally to review the voucher approvals, but you've already, if it's above 50, approved it, or if it's even below 50, it still goes through.

It's a doctoring process once the bill comes in.

So there's a contract and the bill, they're quite a good council member.

Council member key.

Yeah, yeah, it's my understanding that we have a separation of duties on a lot of these things because there isn't one person that can initiate and hand sign a check.

Oh, correct, absolutely.

Yeah, with those sort of tax.

That I just want to get that on the record here, that this isn't something that we're just something that's thinking open to the bachelor's.

There's all kinds of protections in place.

And I actually think this is a really good government efficiency.

We'd be going and not having the overhead of the lower dialogue amounts.

But the other process reader we have in place.

So I would I'm supporting this.

No, no, not for that to your question.

Um to check to make sure that the item is in the budget budget correctly, the revenue source with what is available.

Um and then it's quoted correctly too, but changed to move throughout people or something.

Yeah, I don't know.

50,000 or under still workflow that the department head, the mayor, the city administrator, and the city attorney all sign off on for reviewing those contracts as part of that work.

And that would be a step and part is to raise that to 175.

And again, the process would stay exactly the same.

All those people still need to sign off on there, but it would just be consistent with state statute.

Okay, okay.

Uh uh real quick insurance specifications again.

Um this particular item worked with our uh safety and risk manager on this one.

And this one is what we're proposing to do is to uh for the city for the city contract policy is to uh protect miss municipal assets um and then manage financial risk, basically what we're doing is transferring the financial burden uh uh potential accidents, injuries and property damage away from the taxpayer to the responsible party.

So if we hire somebody to do something or a company to do something, they have to have insurance.

So put in this frame to double check to make sure that they have the insurance or this gone to commercial uh uh general liability insurance regardless of the size of the project.

Basically, if you could take something that I would think would be small small, but it's a look you know, you know, personal still, or maybe it's a small landscaping but it's five busy road or something.

You know, all kinds of crazy things can happen.

So this T treats everybody the same.

This is this is the minimum.

Now things get bigger, there's more within the policy to be the requirement that should be insurance, but this would be you know for that doing work with the contract.

So just to be clear, so this is current current policy or writing it down.

Any changes beyond that?

We we kind of took a look at a tiered system, if you will, but ultimately put a lot of what is it they basically on staff, you know, you know again again to point out simple small value value property over on the road.

So I think I think this is simple is simple.

Um the baseline for uh should have city.

Uh then the final one that we have here too is the payments.

Payments of new taxes.

This is uh process that has done for a lab long time.

Basically, there's our transfer funds from the five enterprise funds into the general fund.

You can see the five enterprise funds listed out there.

Uh um and so with this one, it's basically trying to level set because right now we don't have standard practice between all five enterprise funds.

So what we're trying to do here is trying to set it at six and a half percent.

Uh um for electric water, mostly uh water revolution plan and store one utility in the parking.

Um in what there's gonna be this is too missing with your implementation for this because uh some things are a little overlap, but be now uh with that being set to the 26 and 27 would stay as it was in the budget.

We're not gonna mess with those right now.

Um you can see year two moving forward six and a half percent or again want to see where things shake out, but for uh uh something like electric, it's just pretty close to what electric currently has now.

Electric has its own issue probably in 28.

Um there might be a dip, you know, might take a little bit to come back over.

Um so we're aware of that.

Water utility if you take a look at that one uh to get up to six and a half percent.

I'm just gonna say they don't have to pay double what they are.

So that one we were going to continue to phase it.

Uh sewer is pretty close in an AP anything their pilot would uh uh go down slightly.

Um stormwater pretty much pretty much in the same boat, pretty close if anything would go down slightly again, we'll have to take a look at their revenue.

Um parking again, they're paying quite a bit more, so water parking are almost kind of the opposite of where they should be.

So that's why if you do a flat six and a half percent, it would level set things, so parking would pay uh uh proportional to what their actual revenue is on that too.

So you can see like at the end of 27.

Again, this is just a projection.

But it comes in pretty close to what maybe our estimated our actual budgeted amount would be to uh the purpose pilot would be so six and a half percent seems like there wouldn't be any dips in what we see right now on the consistent across the board.

And the reason why there's a couple if you look at the far right column here too.

Uh operating revenue is what you see uh listed in our app for that's what the author is going to take retail revenue for the top two for RPU.

That's what they was talking with uh here with our PU2, so you don't need to focus on retail revenue, it's probably more stable.

Some of the other revenues that they receive really much of the modern stuff too.

So I have a work with uh five interpretation funds on this.

Um back and forth.

I think this is kind of again place this there, I would know that there's gonna be an implementation phase until we can see how things are going again.

I have a little bit of uh a shift that we have to make that's what this we tend to do at the same time.

Question uh council member Wall.

Thank you.

Thank you.

How much would be state mandated?

How much is best practices?

Another way of asking that question would be if we went to Bloomington or Woodbury, how shifting or similar would uh their policies be to these.

I would say well, for all of them are for pilot.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, what for all of the policies that we have or for specifically the just whole roll run that you've gone through?

No, no, uh the whole run, I would say they're very similar.

Similar, I mean that's what I don't want to say I don't want to say comparing ourselves to, but that's where we get a lot of our information from.

Uh if we took a look at Bloomington, and I think they had some like they included their TIF policies and a few other things.

So there's so there's what's like 112 pages or something like that.

Um but a lot of these would varies and others.

Um I'm not going for like volume volume or anything, but that's what they have.

They have the policy, and then they have a short extra maybe on procedural.

So somebody doesn't have to go to another binder, so it's all listed in a one or two-page policy that's that's meant to be fluid and help staff staff members and uh department heads and everything along.

And maybe just to add to that, I think what you're getting to is are there much like we have the 42% requirement that we have for the general fund.

That's state auditor.

All of these things are based in government finance officers, association, and other types, types of not really benchmarks.

Regularly is a finance is a best practice because there's transparency with the with the board to understand these are the things that we should be applying.

There may be there may be exceptions sometimes because you need to do something.

Um clarity, a trend, making sure making sure that we're following policy or changing it if there's something that is desired differently, or if there's changes in the um community that require us to do something differently.

But I would say I would say that most of these are every city's gonna be slightly different because not every city operates an airport, for example, or has charter boards, things of that nature.

So there will be differences.

But the concepts of needing to have fund balance, you should have a minimum fund balance in order to have security for your park system, for example.

So those kinds of things I would say are maybe maybe standard isn't an excessive word, but it is aligned with general best practices for local government, local governments, recognizing that every local government is slightly different and has different services.

They provide different amount of special revenue funds, different enterprise fund types, um having you know the largest electric electric municipal electric utility in the state is different than other um cities and how they operate.

So maybe just extending that question into the pilot policy in particular.

Um a couple of points there.

One isn't it is important to have the policy reflected now and sort of stable.

You know, I mean I think that's something when we go through the rating agency process.

They want to understand that there's a logical methodology to what we do, and that it isn't something that we draw upon and change, you know, based on you know a budget need elsewhere.

So there's Minnesota that a 20% pilot you know, payments, uh, which is very excessive and not on point and you know, burden to their electrical, you know, rate pairs.

Um this provides us across our ecosystem to say we have a standardization much likely what the alternative is.

We don't have a public utility, and we have a private franchise agreement, and the franchise agreement pays, and you know, we buy council's franchise agreement that's approved, but within parameters within state law, you know, you know, you're in that six and a half, five percent type of range um with an Excel energy if that an investor own ability.

So I think it's just important to have some stability and predictability for uh rate planning for uh uh bond issuance, and so I think this is really an effort to do that here.

Um and just encourage you to think about that way.

It's a big change all at once.

So this tries to introduce that idea in the shop.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I think what Mr.

Wall, at least in my opinion, what we look at we look at is like the liability insurance.

Is that is that state what the state requires or is it above what the state requires?

And if it is above, what does that cost us?

Um uh the workers comp would be what I think the state requires in there too.

Are we at the state requirements?

Yeah, because we work with hops of the leads and soliciting stuff too.

So much though.

So you know, this is uh obviously an informational for staff when they're executing stuff.

Uh uh for staff to make sure that they follow um and then like an investment policy that should be paying investment, you know, that means a lot of things.

But um the nice thing about that is we take our investment policy, we have it out to our broker and say that you know what is anything other than once in a year and so on so um and and the problem about Mr.

Parish getting a let's use the the electric.

If we had a adjuster own they they would be paying us uh a franchise fee and what is that typically a franchise fee is that each each individual city is different, or is it kind of a blanket uh uh franchise fee?

There's common methodologies and you really have the same conversation when you went through the natural gas franchise discussion.

So it can be off of revenue, it can be off of utilization or firms or you know, hours or whatever.

So there is a little bit of variation, but a nor uh a very normal uh uh benchmark uh for a lot of franchise agreements would be like some percent of revenue.

So that's not a typical at all.

That's how our uh charter agreement is structured.

Um so that's a very normal typical way to approach it.

And if I and if I may you would also be receiving property tax from that private owned electric utility on top on top of that franchise.

Oh, are you you did look like you were thinking, but I didn't know how to do it tax.

Um go ahead, council member.

So property tax.

So this is really just property tax.

That's why it's called.

I would say it's two things.

Uh we we pilots are a term we use.

That's that's part of it.

Um so if there are electrical assets that are taxable or other enterprise assets that are taxable that would normally be property taxes.

This is this is designed to do that, but it's also a uh a fee to use your right-of-way.

There is there isn't private activity if it was an investor owned utility in particular that's okay that's occurring in your right-of-way and you're making money off of that, and your right-away's worth something, and they get some benefits with how they work in your right away and all that.

So if you think about the amount of resource you're dedicating to make these utilities successful in your right-away, it's trying it's trying to capture some value out of that process.

So let's let's look at parking then.

So we have parking structures downtown, and instead of paying property tax, which I'm assuming it would be quite high if it was if it was a private industry.

Six point five doesn't seem like a nut.

Is that I mean I mean, because electrical is different than parking.

We could do that.

I think the parking system very well established here.

It could have been initial conveyances to the system um for the land that create the parking, so there could be some reflection of that here.

But you're correct in that if it was that is that is more of a real estate adjustment here, and I guess you could try to value the ramps.

Now they're really only worth the cash flow they're generating, and so I wouldn't make the assumption that six and a half percent of revenue is way is way off base, but we could do that study if that was something the council wanted to do with the future.

Okay, almost done.

So Sherman Associates gets a free lot.

And so that came out of the parking fund because they were used to get revenue for that, but we're not reimbursing the parking fund for that for that, correct?

Correct.

That's correct.

Shouldn't we if it's a true enterprise fund?

I mean I mean I think that's a fair policy conversation for you all to have versus your economic development priorities.

Um the tough thing is is like how do we acquire that initially and how to turn into parking?

We've got certain lots in our system that are uh parking because that's what they can be because there's underlying environmental issues or whatever the case is, they can't be something else for a period of time.

So these each one has a story.

And do we and do we look at that?

I mean, I'm I'm using Sherman as an example.

Do we look at that and say this is this is the cost to do this development for the city of Rochester?

I'm not saying we should do that, but I think but I think we should be aware of what gif what gift they're getting from from the parking lot fund to do to do that.

That's a that's a fair thing to council member keen.

I'm interested in that thing about the consistency because uh about three years ago or four years ago we looked at the electric utility thing, we're having trouble because we project the piloted one thing in the ball and by the time spring it was off those numbers.

So we so we did a reset on that on on how what the algorithm was for how to uh uh can can compute compute what the pilot would be for or RPU electric.

You guys I think you got you guys are remembering this.

Um but then when we talk about consistency, now here we are two years later changing it again.

We breaking our own rule that's you know, is the consistency important across our different enterprises or what we portray to the outside world?

Because to me, these expenses and this sort of thing on the utility affects when they go out to the open market, which they're going to be for bonds.

Um so I just want to make sure we're not breaking our own rule for consistency by saying we're going to change this again.

And I think it's about it's only been in place for about two years.

I can start, I'm sure we're all excited clockbook, but um yeah, yeah.

I mean, there was an adjustment just because you know you know there's been some unpredictability and current the current formula uh uh is more complicated than it needs to be.

And I think this is uh an effort at simplification so people can easily understand you know what it is that's happening here.

Um but also grounded in best practice.

So I would say that I think having this in place and for the foreseeable future and sticking to it for a while be helpful for all the things that you just mentioned.

Um and there's provisions within the language for us in order in order to mitigate some of the potential volatility if we have a bad parking year or we have a wastewater customer that happens to go offline, or name then the thing that can happen the revenues in these enterprise funds that we're gonna scale back and not budget 100% of the revenue, but we're looking to budget you know 95% and 90%.

So eventually if we you know have a bullet um in one of those areas that we have something to mitigate that curve.

Um, so this policy does suggest the idea, you know, the financing needs suggestions to say 95% or 90%, we're gonna work toward backing off the amount of revenue that we budget account.

Um as far as that sort of compare, I don't want to just this appears to be something that we're doing within our our our family here, say six and a half percent that we do have retail and operating pretty much the same measurements.

Is it is it who is it important to that we do it the same way for each of our enterprises as opposed to having a separate algorithm for each enterprise?

Who would care?

Yeah, yeah.

I I I mean, I think you can do it many ways.

I think this really is an effort for you as council members to understand you know what's that is uh uh important.

I think a lot I think a lot of these things you can make, maybe parking as the exception, but a lot of the other enterprises can make the argument that the basis for what you're charging is somewhat similar.

So there's sort of this equity argument in terms of what each is paying and just predictability for people, so they can when they do their rate studies, they can go in and say, yeah, it's not not three years, we're gonna change the number.

Um we didn't budget for that, and we've had that challenge in wastewater as an example where we adjusted it ahead of our rate study.

This would this would just allow people when they're forecasting the revenues to say six and a half percent is what we're you know looking to need to allocate for this payment.

Um and and in the budget cycle in the fall, we'll use the six and a half percent of projected, and then and then what we'll really collect is what's real when we go to collect.

Yes, yes.

Um it's not lost on me that our RP electric is probably 75% of everything we collect through pilot.

It's it's not just one of the five utilities, it's it's the lion's share of what we're doing.

Yeah, yeah, there wasn't much.

I mean I have a percent change, I guess.

Yeah, no, no, very it it is it is surprising and good that even though it's a different algorithm, it almost seems like probably another question, but I'm assuming that's where six and a half percent came from versus six percent versus seven percent.

We were trying to mimic what we've been doing.

Yeah, so three of the five enterprise funds come out almost equal, we don't call it.

Um, but then the total also comes out equal to the other we use six and a half, so it's split for three of the five is again what basically in my mind was a split for the total so okay.

And I I guess I want to bring this out because I mean these same same ratepayers are the same people this group represents the same as levy payers, almost the same slightly different mix in there in there.

But when I think when I think of pilot, I usually think of it as uh uh payment payment lie of local property taxes and then and then the franchise stuff.

But what is communicated to ratepayers if these things change?

I I don't think anything is, but I can't I can't tell.

Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

I think I think that depends on the utility building folks who are on the try and show that there are costs in the bill that are not directly related to service, although one could argue they are directly service because you can't provide electric water, wastewater unless you're utilizing that mode right away and that you have data to be there.

And you also can't have protective off that's the half those things, so we have intermix value.

It really depends on how the bill built up.

Okay, so as all these came together.

I mean, I do like the idea of the consistency.

I am glad to see that staff tried to do this to like it to very close to what the current uh pilot was.

And I think that's important for consistency because we I think we're in for some turbulent energy things over the next five eight years, and scares me that we're gonna show this.

But I'm also thinking that energy usage and retail sales of electricity is going to go up over the next 10 years, 10 years compared to where it's been over the last 10, where through some demand management and other things, use usage has been flat even with our population growth.

So I think I am projecting this to be a bigger funding source.

That would be consistent with me when I look at the way levy went up over the last 10 years and pilot did not.

But at the same time, I am concerned that we have to we have to represent both the levy payers but also the rate payers here, which we have these discussions.

So again, I just want to have this full discussion with my peers here.

Um supportive like distraught about the RPU water stuff just because of the big percentages, but the relative size of the numbers are so dramatically smaller that it is a different handle.

I really appreciate Ryan your comment about this doesn't happen when we approve the policy.

This is a slow methodical move so that it is so that it can be absorbed the same the same way with rates that like too late because we're still work with the residents.

Yeah, thank you for that clarification, council member.

That's all I have.

Any further questions on this?

So what I was gonna say is just emphasize Council Member Keene's point last point.

The phase phasing.

So the phasing will happen in the eight, or basically what I wanted to do was keep 27 or 28 because those are already budgeted numbers.

Okay, okay.

Okay, okay.

Got it.

Councilmember Miller.

Did I miss did I miss this?

Did we cover 13, the microcontract process policy separate from the I guess I apologize?

I hit the slide when we were talking about the first thing.

Okay, I just wanted to make sure it felt like we were talking about the uh uh purchasing, and then I didn't just close off a real quick because that was not the 2016 resolution that the council passed, and so that's just putting there.

Okay, just wanted to note that we sorry and and I think parking one is the one that feels quite different from the others.

Um I I I guess I'm curious too about some of the proposed like protected revenue seems like it's falling falling back below, and I'm curious about like how we're forecasting revenue and parking, and also it seems like it's the one getting the biggest discount uh uh compared with the current policy.

And so I I guess explicitly is it is this being set really based on trying to try to optimize the RP electric rate rate and then standardize that to the all the enterprise funds.

Maybe I'll say what they're something a different way.

Most of our enterprise funds operate like a utility.

Yep.

And those are the ones that are utilities.

Parking tries to operate like a utility, but it has different right.

So we use all room, especially the compound that's where some of our most valuable property is.

Um so it does everything have to stay at six and a half percent forever.

No, you don't have to eat you don't want to constantly animal rule of taxes because what the message that that sends is that you are trying to reduce your company by utilizing the revenue.

So having consistency is important, but changing the policy because you're looking at say parking differently, let's say that you did that over time and a study and say motion parking b.

What does that mean?

Also, for your rates that eco parking, which you've just enough did a year ago.

There's a lot of implications for that.

So it doesn't mean that you can't ever change it in the future or that you can do this this time.

But you want to have some logical methodology to why it isn't six and a half percent, why it is something different.

And I think there's probably a lot to in say here.

Parking isn't quite the same as operating electric water, um, stormwater or sewer utility, like they have different implications throughout the system, um, and different implications for major use of these property something different.

And also that other entities would have potentially built that parking identify parking as parking with the rank parking.

So we don't fully operate parking as an enterprise, right?

We buy a lot of free parking.

So if we were operating a pure enterprise, you might say like, well, after five, you don't have to pay for electricity.

No, I appreciate that point.

I think it's really getting this idea, Councilmember Keenus brought it up.

It's like what is the subsidy going into parking?

And I think this is another area where I see additional subsidy because if this pilot is decreased from the current rate, then that is likely made up by property tax.

So it feels like another area of subsidy.

So I just want to note that.

Um not looking to change it.

I think standardizing 6.5% for all these makes sense.

Um I guess my interest would be really in looking at the questions that customers at Palmer brought up as well how we track assets coming in the enterprise and go out.

And how are we right sizing that sort of subsidy versus paid by the ratepayer in that case the parker we could adopt six and a half percent for now and then do some evaluation, you know, about what the cash flow for returns is and what corresponding value for that would be and try to project the properties taxes out of that and see if we're in the same neighborhood.

I mean, there's other ways to look at how you would want to do that, or you can just keep the same and just escalate it by a percentage every year uh at the fixed dollar amount that it is now, and we feel like that's fine.

Um, so there's a couple different ways that we evaluate that, but put that as a follow-up for next year financial policies, you know, if you wanted to bring that back when you reconsider them in terms of the year.

Council member council member keen.

Oh I just think it's taking the part of your discussion in July in June in June.

We're talking about the other three data and some of the taxing.

I mean, there are a lot of all of these things, there are implications for the expanding the city or not expanding the city.

Do we have the parking utility's beyond also when I look at the council member member keen?

Yeah, yeah, I again I'm just gonna follow up on this parking one too, because I was surprised, but I'm also surprised in this discussion that we said if we had the value and we'd do it by cash flow, where I would have to think we should do it by replacement value and it's dramatically higher that way.

The other thing is we did have I thought a fairly serious discussion at some point of saying we should when when this council says free after five o'clock or free on weekends, we should still project that as revenue and say we're giving we're giving that away as a good decision or not.

Uh and then I think uh pilot could be paid on top of that.

Um I am I am worried that uh I mean I I'm not bought into the idea that all of our five enterprises have to be pilot piloted the exact same way to me.

That means nothing to anybody outside of this room.

Um but I think that consistency on how we do our um with the with the major rate payers, not parking is a different thing, or it's not it's not uh a utility, no other choice, it's it's by choice.

And we've also gone through these big discussions with how we're going to use that to stimulate downtown development.

So with those in mind, I I think I I would be open to like the part the parking thing could be different in the short term.

So thank you, thank you.

Any other comments?

Thank you, Brian.

Thank you, Brian.

Thank you.

Thank you, Aaron.

We are we are going to move to stormwater quality, quality treatment credit credit transfer policy and program development Tyler and Aaron.

Okay.

Mr.

Luxing, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Uh I have a stormwater policy idea for you, the C the C that you can consider.

Um titles and also multiple be at a good job.

I draw here in your back point.

Um there we go.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um so just to uh uh kind of set the frame um framework for this is I'm specifically seeking your feedback on three areas, of course.

Additional feedback is always welcome.

First and foremost is there's support for establishing a formal market-based program to better support two-party transfer of off-site storm treatment credit.

Which probably doesn't make any sense right now, but as I go through the presentation, think about that as whether or not there's support to do it because there's a lot of additional steps that would need to come after this.

We don't want to waste time and effort trying to move forward to something that you don't support.

So first and foremost, whether or not you would support um this type of program.

Um and even if you support it, we would like to see a few tweaks to it.

The second would be the use of credit transfer ratios.

And I'll talk about those and why we see value in those.

And a big part of that is to help support the council's responsible environmental stewardship.

As well as you'll see the way the program is set up, is it really tries to push projects that are closer together and those transfer ratios because there's a cost associated with that kind of force people to start looking closer together?

So there's some incentives for those transfer ratios.

And then the last would be whether or not you would support the city participating as a generator of these credits, they could be used by non for non-public projects.

So a private developer using credits that are created by the city.

And again, I'll explain the pros and cons around that just to let you know the city's going to have to be a generator for our own projects.

So when we do street reconstruction projects, things like that, we're required to provide stormwater treatment.

It can be very challenging.

So even if they don't become available for private entities, we're still going to have to be a generator for our own projects.

So keep that in consideration.

So those are three specific areas and speech seeking feedback on.

Again, certainly welcome for additional considerations they go through it.

I'm welcome to take questions throughout the council president.

And of course, I understand it can be a complex when council members raise their hand.

I call on that.

So council member key.

That's better to stop.

Just I didn't go through this, and I want to go through it now with you.

I also want to understand the genesis.

Is this like an industry best practice?

Is this something that came to us from private sector?

How does this come before us today?

I'm gonna talk about that in part of the presentation.

Really, what it was so that the structure is already in ordinance because it's dictated by the state.

So off-site stormwater treatment is set up under our state permit, it's in our ordinance.

But there's lots of challenges, it is not easily implemented.

And you'll see, I have a slide just kind of talks about all the challenges, and as we work through those challenges, we saw opportunities to create a solution that addressed multiple challenges.

So you'll want to staff generated map.

Does it have so I understand what I'm hearing when I start hearing that isn't like a way to stimulate infill development?

Yes.

That's a way to support development with some of the challenges that come with infill development.

Okay.

And if I can excess question, I'll again publish five weeks are going to see issues with satisfying stormwater requirements going forward.

It's hard to construct a pond when we street reconstruction in downtown, for example, right?

So a lot of this comes from that, it's taking advantage of other opportunities.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

We're going to have council member miller, and then we're going to let you get started with your presentation.

I just want to just want to build on that.

I was going to wait for a question.

Um, but would we would we be pioneering this approach in the state or there are other cities that are doing this today?

Um, this specific approach we might be pioneering.

There are two other shed districts that have similar programs but slightly different.

Okay.

Okay, Aaron.

Um, so to help set the stage, so one um per the state permit that we operate under, what is called the MSP permit, um, and which then is in our city ordinance, we require stormwater treatment um for any either new development project that is going to disturb one acre or more, including small lots.

So think about housing development, lots of small lots, but collectively generally usually disturbing more than an acre.

So they're required to provide stormwater treatment and volume reduction.

Also in redevelopment scenarios, whenever you disturb one acre or more, um, so if you're gonna disturb, move around one acre or more, or even smaller projects where if you're gonna disturb less than an acre, but you collectively have more than an acre of impervious in that redevelopment.

Now you have to provide treatment for that for that redevelopment project.

And that's really where the infill comes in.

Most of it's already impervious surface, um, and it can be very, very challenging to find opportunities on site.

So that's that's what ordinance requires.

It's mandated by state, we have to implement it locally.

It's been required since 2020, so it's still generally fairly new.

Um, uh, but is something that you know developers have been struggling with since 2020 when it was in the other requirement is that any of those stormwater we call BMPs, so treatment um technologies must also prioritize green infrastructure, which means volume reduction.

So if you can infiltrate uh reuse of stormwater, tree trenches, things like that that really promote that reduction piece.

So if the BMPs cannot be cost effectively treated on site, you can go through a process to get approval to do what is called off-site stormwater treatment.

So they can't do it here, but I'm gonna find another spot where treatment isn't occurring, and I'm gonna do it there.

And so it's a kind of a swap process.

Um, and so that is again allowed by ordinance, and um, there are two parties that have successfully done it.

I'll talk a little bit about that more.

In order to go through this off-ramp, kind of the off-site treatment process when it requires city approval, um, the project area selected, so the off-site treatment area selected, you have to go through this priority ranking order.

So again, it forces you to look as close as possible.

So the first is the same receiving water body.

So look somewhere really close, close point source discharges, the same catchment area, which is kind of our storm sewer shed.

Um, the next adjacent catchment area.

So a good example would be here.

This is South Fork is on the river, really close by within a mile is Bear Creek, you know.

So if you're close, catchment area, um, and then as long as you're kind of upstream, so you want to look upstream on that side of it, or the last one is anywhere within the city.

So you could be on the way south end, something on the north end or vice versa, anywhere within the city.

Um, and you need to kind of go through this process of looking and identifying those priority areas.

Um, it also must involve the creation of a new stormwater um BMP.

So think of an area that currently was developed prior to stormwater treatment requirements, our government center is a good example.

Everything that runs off here straight into the river.

Um, so you either have to do a retrofit, create a new BMP, retrofit an existing one to expand it to create additional capacity to offset, or if you have an existing BMP where there's already capacity, maybe they built it larger for anticipated growth that never happened, you know, different scenarios.

Um, you can use that surplus capacity.

But the goal is you're doing something kind of above and beyond because it's offsetting this new new construction.

Um the other requirement is it must be completed no later than 24 months after the start of your construction project.

So you can start redevelopment, you get approval, but you still have to be doing this stormwater project and get it done within two years, um, which can be a challenge.

Um, so those are the requirements in in our ordinance and in our state permit.

So here's so here's the challenges that kind of led to this.

So one infill development and redevelopment, especially in our high density areas is cost prohibitive.

We've seen developers come forward and say, I just can't redevelop because it stormwater treatment is too expensive to be able to do it on site.

If you start looking off-site, project proposers either need access to land to be able to build a new BMP, um, or you need to find a second party to be able to work with and start cold calling people to say, hey, can I buy stormwater from you?

And it's so it's not an easy process there.

So there's challenges with that.

Um, again, the timing is you have to complete a project within 24 months, so you have that going on, and if we don't have land, you're working through all that while you're trying to do a development.

Um, they're getting two parties that have successfully done it since 2020.

Both of them had existing land where there wasn't treatment nearby that allowed them to do a project.

Um, clinic and rochster public schools, those are the only two that have successfully done it.

And that's because of the access to to land and the properties, properties they're working with were constructed prior to regulations.

So it provided that opportunity.

The other thing that we talked about a month ago when we were here talking about the comp plan, the city is having some challenges.

One is we look at adding VMPs in our um older parts of town.

We don't have room.

Um, we're experiencing nuisance conditions, um, and they are expensive projects, and we would right now be relying on rape payers.

And so we started thinking about is there an alternative funding source?

We have developers that have a need.

City has a need, there's challenges.

We can do these retrofits for cheaper than it would be to do on site.

This might be an alternative funding source to help advance some of these city projects too, and not have to rely on rate pairs.

So, with those challenges, again, we came up with what we believe is a good solution and aligns with council strategic priorities.

And so, with that, we researched um what other communities were doing, and um, and so the two other watershed districts that I mentioned one is the central region and downtown St.

Paul, the capital district down there, they just have a payment program.

So they say give us money, we're gonna go do projects.

There's a lot of risk associated with that because they don't know what the construction costs are going to be and all that.

And there's this feel of give us money.

We have to commit to a project, we don't know what that project is going to be.

There's a lot of that.

The other is Washington County watershed district, they have a very similar program, but their goal if they produce them first, and then say you can buy into these, but it's just a payment payment type program.

Um, and so we thought about that that that works great, but you're limiting it to just the government being a generator credits.

You don't allow anybody else to really participate.

So as we started brainstorming ideas, there's a concept called trading, water quality trading.

Um, and if I use the word trading, I apologize.

Initially, we looked at creating a local trading program.

We've been meeting with the state a lot.

They're updating our permit and adding some language called trade.

So we're gonna use transfer instead of trading or recommendation because of regulatory reasons.

But you'll see this has a very similar approach to what a trading program would kind of look like.

Similar would also be wetland banking if you're familiar with with that concept with construction projects.

So recommendation of the proposal is create a market-based compliance program that allows the transfer of approved credit.

So you get approved credits from one entity to another, and the market base provides that incentive to recoup pooping costs.

So you could have someone that says my property really doesn't work well for e-development or additional development, but maybe I want to create a green space, nice open spot, you know, with stormwater treatment and rain garden, whatever for my employees.

This is a way to help them.

They could get money to be able to pay for that as a as a part of it.

It also is gonna be market driven based on supply and demand, and it forces entities like the city if we are a generator to select projects that are cost effective because you have to be able to sell those credits at a reasonable rate that's going to be cheaper than of course the unaffordable on-site option.

So that market really kind of supply and demand forces um cost effective efficient projects in places where they're needed.

So we also have to be strategic on merging select select projects.

Um by setting up a framework, it would provide a clear framework for both generators of the credits as well as users at the start of projects.

So under the program, um, we would approve of a generator project that would be listed on our website.

So a developer could say, now I've got into this off-site situation.

I need to find someone who has credits.

Now you have a contact and a location, and you can reach out to someone to be able to start that exchange process right at the front, and you're gonna know those upfront costs versus waiting until you either find a site later and have some of the unknowns related to a project.

Umordy, new conversation.

Um is there any sort of um not sure if the looking for a requirement that if they can, they must before they go to the transfer option, correct?

Yes, so we're not creating a situation where you're buying it, you know, because it's cheaper, buy it from the city, and then and then not do anything in the area that they're at.

Correct, they have to do it on site first.

That's really and then they have to justify why they can't do it on site, right?

The other thing is they have to do as much as possible on site.

So maybe they can't get 100% of the on-site storm on treatment, but they can get 90%.

Uh 10%, they can't quite you know fit in.

They could purchase that lost center to be able to get it in compliance.

So it doesn't have to be so I have a question.

So you you have city would be the first generator of uh stormwater stormwater treatment quality treatment credit credit.

Now would we would we also be the clearing house for these private market and and then who decides what level level credit quality of the stormwater treatment and and and whether whether they meet meet the standards so kind of what kind of what does do we do we provide are we the are we the clearing house and the the the the approver yeah so a couple different differences so yes yes the city uh uh because we are the ones that anything with on-site treatment and any development, yes, yes, it goes through our approval process so we would review and approve that make the determination of whether or not they would qualify either for off site or to be a generator of the credit.

So we would review and approve that, make the determination of whether or not they would qualify either for off-site or to be a generator of the credit.

So that and um that would be when we get to the policy, the recommended policy, council would say implement that under the water resources program, just like we do right now with construction projects.

So we would be responsible for implementing that, and that comes into one of the concerns of whether or not the city would be a generator at the same time.

We're approving the credits, right?

There's some risk level there.

Um so city city would approve these, we would uh track them, um, and then also would be authorizing the construction projects.

The others, yes, I hadn't got to that last bullet.

Um talk a little bit about that.

There the city does have a project that right now is in the engineering planning phase.

It's um currently so off of just north of 37th Street.

There's about 600 acres of um drainage that flows directly into the South Florida Zumba River, very little water quality treatment, very little volume control.

We've had lots of religion issues um through that area.

It's been washing out the bike trail by foster errors, lots of investment in there and sediment loading right into the salt for the Zona River.

We have an opportunity to retrofit that area um to be able to capture it, infiltrate um that at least the first one inch of every marine stock, three percent volume, as well as then provide that water quality treatment and rate control.

That would be again that's a good retrofit.

There isn't treatment now, so we're creating a bunch of credits.

Um that then would could become available either for city only projects or for private.

Council Member Fredericks are you on the list?

I beat you.

Okay, okay.

How you doing, Aaron?

Good, good.

I'm not doing too bad.

So the question is I'm here.

I'm hearing you say okay, they can get 90% done on their property, but then they have to buy and 10% somewhere else.

There's still there's still that 10% there.

Where do you go with it?

How does it how does it how does it actually take care of the other 10% of water it's not able to handle?

Um also at that construction site, you're gonna have an increase of software.

So um there will there will be some pollutants discharge from that property.

The offsetting is you're finding somewhere else to treat that.

So collectively, you're not taking care of it, you're just buying it, buying it out.

And it's similar to like a wetland banking.

Right, right.

I get it.

Yeah, in exchange, you have to have to produce new wetland.

I understand I just I just got hung up on well, there's still a 10% there.

Do we just not care because we're gonna pay for it?

Okay.

All right, all right, got it.

Got it.

And then do you have somebody in the office that one's that when somebody's coming in to do said development, whether big or small that can explain this to people thoroughly and get them through it without them just like oh breaks, I'm out of here.

This is too much.

This is frustrating.

Yeah, okay.

Okay, great, great.

So we have so we have uh wall miller than Palmer.

So we have uh 600 acre parcel that's possibly be banked uh in this, and it's bought over time.

Uh in 50 years, city councils are going to look at that uh land, and that will be in perpetuity undevelopable.

Uh uh, so let me clarify.

There's 600 acres of drainage okay coming into the I have a slide.

I think it'll make more sense when I get to that slide.

I'll show you where the 37th Street project is and all that.

So I so I think that'll be easier.

Okay, you hold your question.

Okay, I'll reason that for then.

Uh um does this make uh infill uh uh a great deal more expensive to develop?

No, no, and in fact, it would allow infill to happen because right now um the only way they're allowed to do off site is if they determine that it's infeasible to actually do the project do it on site, which usually means a project doesn't happen, and then that parcel sits vacant, undeveloped or not expanded anything situation.

So this actually helps redevelopment potential and use until and allows those projects to move forward at some cost to be sure.

Yep, and but it'll be a cheaper cost than if they did it on site, and that's the key because on-site is not affordable.

This allows for an affordable option uh to be able to allow that project to move council member Miller.

So my first question is do you have you have the correct staff capacity to operate this program?

You said you would just roll it into white resources.

And yes, because we don't we're not anticipating much additional work with us primarily because this is a very, very small percentage of projects that would actually participate in.

Again, they have to do it on site if they can.

They can't.

There's a robust process they have to go through, and it's largely limited to just infill.

But also the council trying to focus on that.

So the workload won't be significant other than the op front, getting it set up, building a website, things like that.

But once it's up and running, um it won't take a significant amount of resources.

And we would be committing staff time to making sure these projects are being requirements to begin with.

So you know there's a lot of overlap with the network that's involved in second question.

Can you define what a unit is that generates a credit?

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah, so it's uh again, our ordinance defines this.

So it's a calculation of one inch, so one inch over the total amount of impervious surface um across the entire development than on a cube per cubic foot basis.

So that's the volume that they're required to treat.

I guess is one credit, like how much how much area is one credit typically going to represent um that's that's a great question.

Trying to think about it.

I guess maybe once a word example, I think uh good example of this.

So the I'll just look to that slide just for a visual image.

So in the bottom right-hand corner of this slide.

So on the north side is foster airons uh um park on the south side.

This is the street.

Uh um here's the RPU complex.

So there's a small area here that got into 600 acres that flow through this one central point.

This site will be able to provide 90 acre feet of water quality treatment.

It's a significant amount.

I mean, there'll be hundreds of acres of development based on this one site.

Was that 90 credits based based and these are so this would be able to produce 90 acre feet of credits?

Yep, but acre, but yeah, one acre but would be the unit of credit in most scenarios, yes.

So my question then is if you mention not developable piece of land that's like a partial owner could develop into a great garden, green space, generic credits.

Would this be only restricted to area commercial parcels?

Would you envision a future version that a resident with some green space develop this into a ring card and get some fraction of a credit the market for this is just too rainwood?

Yeah, so great question.

Um from a workload standpoint and not have an influx of a bunch of generators.

Yes, we would our recommendation is to cap it at it.

It has to produce at least one tenth of an acre foot, which would be basically the equivalent of an acre development.

So you'd have to have a larger parcel that you are treating versus a you know, the quarter acre development, things like that.

So it's really gonna push more into that commercial commercial level.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Palmer, thank you.

Thank you.

So I'm I'm familiar with the Westland wetland banking back in the 90s when that started.

I think I think it's like a for the one acre you needed to buy two or three.

Is that is that something that you're looking at doing?

Is it one is it one for one?

Are you are you trying to increase it?

Great transition.

Maybe I'll go ahead.

Let me let me ask you a different question.

You can do that.

Do that.

The Tather, we did North Broadway that we're just doing.

We spent we spent a lot of money with with infiltration and in stormwater on that and kind of a unique type of thing.

But the prior North Broadway project, do we do any of that?

Dylan, do you want to help me answer that to extend a drive to the bridge?

Do we did we do any from the bridge to 37?

We didn't.

Yep, so we we would not be required to find an off-site.

We were able to achieve all of the water quality treatment and meet the stormwater permit requirements within the project footprint.

The new on both on both on both the one we constructed a number of years ago from Civic Center to the dam, and then on the one currently wrapping up in the next in the next week or two.

In the first one, uh what did we use we utilize rain gardens?

And we and we reduced our reduced our impervious footprint.

So we were able to help reduce the volume volume of runoff.

So that helped help by if you if you recall it was a essentially essentially a highway highway that felt like a runway, and a lot less impervious surfacing helps as well.

So my other my other last concern is you're putting you're putting this this by Foster Aaron's park.

And I don't think you know this now, but the net the prettiest things in the world to have detention pods in your neighborhood.

So why would why would I want to have that in my neighborhood or in my ward?

Um would you end up with one ward having 12 and another word having zero?

Uh two different ways.

One, we haven't received council approval to do the 37th Street project, so that is not set in stone.

We've got approval to do engineering but you took the treaty stock council.

Um our goal is to make them uh uh visually um pleasing as much as we can, and I would say we have a lot of certain water ponds that are very visually basically even infiltration based, so these were we have plant vegetation and like mining like that.

Lots of lots of cattails, right?

Like there's recognize that some of that is subjective, some people like me, some people don't want them.

Okay, but so is to make them as as aesthetically pleasing as possible within reason.

The other the other is I would say so.

Again, in order for this program to be faced and based on transfer ratios when we get to those ratios from the city standpoint, I think there's a huge benefit by having them spread throughout the city again because it's gonna promote projects finding uh generator project close to their project as much as possible.

It doesn't make sense to put 12 of them all on the the north side of town when there's development projects happening, you know, throughout uh city of Rochester and at least the downtown area.

So trying to spread them out through each of our stormwater catchment basins.

Um my standpoint, it is a smart thing to do from the city investment side of it.

And I'm not I'm not saying this is wrong, the 37 sites is uh is wrong, but I did run by Nortland today, and the thistles are high, and nobody seems to want to mow around our our our odds, but uh uh not every I guess it's like our it's in the I have older uh but um just I'm concerned about that, but I also wanted the real reason to do this is to get better water quality and help the downtown and other places that makes more sense to do yes, and that's that's less it's a two things.

One if we have sites, please send them to us because that was follow-up on that.

Keep in mind there are still quite a few private bonds throughout City Rochester and right.

So if they're city ones certainly want to know about them, yeah, the others, yes, currently all of this water is flowing through untreated largely on control based on velocity pushing sedations into the river causing erosion, things like that.

This will improve the neighborhood and provide water quality treatment to hydrate control and improve um that area by doing these projects.

Okay, but to be clear, the water the water coming into Rochester is worse conditioned than one that leaves with sediment and chemicals.

Generally speaking, yes, depending on the potency of concern.

It's either better, it's either gets a little bit better or it stays the same.

But we're not adding to the conclusion or the sediment.

For the most part, well, there's there's always discharge of pollutants into our water bodies, and this is why we have an ordinance that requires uh uh water quality treatment and redevelopment scenarios and even in development to help minimize the fluids, but they're still going to be a discharge of any impervious surface with that in the city of Rochester.

Unlike City Hall, where it goes directly to the river, a new subdivision goes to detention pot gets treated and then it goes.

We don't have any lays here, Sean.

I'll answer it.

A lot of the comes out of the city is coming from levels that are part of agricultural production outside of the city just enough.

Okay, so Mr.

Lexine and our previous slides on the water quality.

So I do I do want to get get allowed.

Allow Mr.

Lexine to continue continue with the presentation.

We do have council member miller.

Can your question hold or is it or is it related related to this?

It's related to the uh my question would be how frequently is the price of a credit set.

Um is it based on place of supply and demand?

I mean, is it bidding for these available credits?

They're two projects.

They both want to use credits from from a priority area.

How are those aside and what price?

So some of that again is gonna be market-driven.

The generator will be able to determine what price they want to sell that credit again with the goal of you want to be able to sell the credit.

From the city standpoint, we have developed what we would recommend if this is supported.

Is again these projects would be constructed so we would know the engineering cost, the construction cost that went into that, so that can go into the calculation.

We will also be able to have an estimate on the risking of the paint.

And then there would be an annual operation and maintenance payment, just like they would have had to do if they had that VMP on site maintaining, and then you can collect those fees.

The other would be you could estimate out, say over a 20-year period, what that operation and maintenance is going to be, collect that, and then re-evaluate at whatever that frequency would be first negotiated as part of the contract between the user of the credits and then what the generator is.

Okay.

So again, uh better upfront consideration because our our requirement would be in order to be a generator, you have to have the project complete, generate the credit determination is based on something already built.

We know that, then it's confirmed.

So we're not trying to sell transfer things up on known.

So it has to be built.

Our recommendation is to also include what is the transfer ratio to account for the distances between sites that helps enforce that priority level, and to create an environmental set aside that aligns with that the responsible environmental stewardship.

Um additional bonuses for state requirements.

We have to make movements in towards TMDL.

So many of these water bodies are impaired for too much suspended solids.

A lot of it comes from outside the city rapster.

We are still required to reduce that.

These are things we can report back to the state saying we're making our reductions under our permit.

Um again, if this were to move forward with the 37th Street project uh potentially coming forward, that could be a first one that could participate in this program.

So here's so here's how transfer ratios would work.

It's a um again, similar to the wetland banking, a multiplier that would be applied to that credit.

So our recommendation, and we worked a lot with these to try and bring forward someone that it's something that is reasonable, but also helps move the needle a little bit.

So within that priority one is so same receiving water body, it would be at a 1.2 to 1 ratio.

So sample would be if you have to purchase one credit instead, you have to do 1.2, you know, so that's how that multiplier works.

One tenth of that is just set aside for environmental benefit.

We can take credit for that under the TMDL, we're making advancements in water quality improvement, and then the other tenth is for that distance, recognizing there's a distance between those two discharge locations, but they're still pretty close together.

Priority two level would be again same drainage, but then further away.

Um, so that's at a 1.3 to one.

Uh priority three would be again like something in recon projects in SelfWork's number of the other ones in Bear Creek, that would be at a 1.4 to 1, and then the priority four at a 1.5 to 1 for anywhere with within the city.

Again, the calculation, you first start at a one to one, you add in that 10% uh one pen for environmental gain or 0.1, and then you add in a point one for every priority level.

It's easier to track.

I think it is supported based on um proximity within Rochester.

In comparison, um, so if we use the wetland replacement, um they have a two-tiered based on what you're doing.

It's either 2.5 to 1 or 2 to 1, as you mentioned.

Um under the state TM Dale water quality trading.

So the point source and wastewater trades, it's at a 1.6 to one.

Uh or if you do a non-point project, so you could do like a screen bank restoration project where you have lots of um uh erosion, that's at a 2.1 to one.

So these are less than what you see on the state and um better level uh to keep you know, recognizing there is a cost by the time you add that on to keep them at a reasonable rate, yeah, yet still get some of that benefit um uh for the the community, so it's community gain.

Um and it's enough of a ratio to again the difference, especially the difference between the 1.5 and one to the 1.2, really push people to say, I want to find something as close to my project as possible.

So hypothetical how this would work here here.

The picture in the top left is the government center where we're sitting today.

It's a little over five acres, about 5.25 acres, pretty much all of it is impervious.

Um so if we wanted to do a redevelopment redevelopment here project, um, and don't quote me on these numbers.

I you know, I just did some rough estimates that won't be required here.

But um, so say you want to do a project, we're just charging the southwork of the Zumba River under our ordinance if it's not a project.

So again, these are just fake numbers based on an unknown project, right?

Hypothetical 10 acre feet of water quality treatment, which would be pretty close for like a five-acre redevelopment type project.

So city of Rochester, we can't do it on site um for various reasons.

One difficult to infiltrate, we're close to the flood walls.

We don't want to be infiltrating a bunch of water underneath that city goes through the process and gets approval to do off site stormwater treatment.

Just so happens the water resources, you have council approval to do a 37th street project that got built that has 90 acre feet.

Um so that's in the the bottom right corner.

Um we would have an infiltration base that would treat um you know 90 acre feet so we get approved.

This is like what you would see on a website.

Somebody could look at a website, find this information.

Um, and and then the city could negotiate with the water resources division to purchase.

So this so this would be at a transfer ratio because the both discharging in the southwork of the Zumber River, or wherever you have that separation distance, uh it would be at a 1.3 to 1.

So uh the government center would need to purchase 13 acre feet um of treatment from our 37th Street site that would take it from 90 down to 77, and we still have 77 credits we could sell to someone else that would get tracked, that would be real time, and it would we would track it on a website just like this.

So somebody could click and say, Hey, hey, I see this project in my neighborhood, who's who's transferred the credits and what hope is crediting for.

We would also inspect each of these sites to ensure they are compliant and have that um client status on the site so that people know that the system's being operated and maintained in compliance the way it should be.

So this is hypothetically how it could work.

The benefit here is again the city's doing a redevelopment project, you know you can't do it on site, you would know a price right up front of how much it is going to cost to do the stormwater treatment and consider that right in your budget.

As soon as you make that transaction, you're automatically in compliance.

You don't have to wait that two years and try and figure something out to make that happen.

So member Frederick.

Thank you.

What's that what's that 13-acre foot gonna cost?

Um, be based on what the construction cost is for this 37th Street, which I don't have right now.

So again, that would go into that calculation of what the price would be per acre foot credits.

Um so we would know that what the project is is complete.

That didn't really give me an answer, but do you have a rough idea or don't you want to quote anything?

Um well, so I can do I think she I think she answered for you.

I mean we can use rough math and just say that um so let's say the 37th Street project costs uh try to do with 90 acre feet, say it was 900,000.

Okay, okay.

Okay, okay.

So you so you do the quick math on that, it's gonna be ten thousand dollars per acre foot.

Got it, got it.

So ten thousand dollars times thirteen hundred and thirty thousand dollars.

So for a project like that, it ain't something that's gonna stop the wheels from turning.

That's what I really wanted to hear.

Okay, so so that would be you know, that would say an all-in up front cost, yeah.

And then as part of the negotiated contract, we would say if you want to pay for operation and maintenance up front for an estimated unknown, or do you want to want us to send you a bill every single year?

Right on.

I just want to see us have our cake and eat it too.

I don't want to see developments dot, but I also don't want to just be in reckless with our resources.

That's that's all I'm trying to try to get my mind wrapped around.

You know, I essentially it's not just an easy thing cost comes in the money for these developments too, right?

So to figure out a way to chamber this water underground, right?

We've already potentially seen examples where that's cost per hit, right?

Right when you cost you stack up against an approach like this, it's much much more cost effective.

It's no different than what we're doing with our tree policy.

It's the same thing.

If you can't plan them, you pay to find them somewhere else.

Yeah, yeah.

So I get it.

So I I understand it from uh if city city has the property and we build a building, we know all the costs that uh we have to build into what that credit will be.

We know that we're going to maintain maintain it and uh and when it when it comes to the private sector doing doing them what kind of quality controls we have on their upfront costs and and their maintenance of it.

And I can I can just kind of kind of build a scenario so you have a uh uh private private landowner and and they say, Oh, we have a we have a wetland now, and then they are able to are able to undercut the the credit fees and we don't have control over the quality of that water water treatment.

Yeah, it's a good question.

Um so one anything that gets constructed that needs needs to be reviewed by the city and ensure that it meets our ordinance as well as our engineering standards.

So that's the outfront construction side of it.

Um we also then inspect those projects to make sure that they were constructed correctly.

Um and then under this program, what would our recommendation would be is in order to participate an annual inspection would be completed to make sure that they're effectively maintaining the system because if they don't, it could cause compliance issues for another property.

Um from the cost standpoint, that's a little bit the beauty of the market base approach.

It's gonna it's gonna be up to that private owner to determine what they want to sell those credits for.

If they want to sell the credits for a loss, that that's up to them, and that's just part of the program.

If they want to set them really high and try and generate a profit, that's up to them.

But if you have more people participating in this market, it's gonna start balancing it out because you need to be competitive in the market.

If you price yourself out of the market, you're not gonna sell anything and get a return on your investment.

If it's too cheap, you're losing money on that investment.

So that's again that market base.

We're not gonna review what they set for their pricing and all that.

That would be up to them.

Our role would be to make sure it's compliant that it was constructed correctly and that they've met all the requirements of participatory programs in their in their annually uh uh inspected.

And and I would add the the term terms the you know, outline city's recourse if they fail to keep up with that means, right?

But at that at that point, maybe the city could come in and back up this and offer, you know, all that would be outlined in the agreement to enter.

So there would be there would be suspenders out and just let you know we have there's a lot more information that I brought forward, but again, we got to a point where we don't want to spend more time and effort on this if it's important that we do have what draft agreements could look like, how people can calculate uh um the credit pricing to make sure they're getting the return on these and all those things are in draft form that we bring back to council for the uh great thank you, thank you.

Council council member Wall.

Did you have a question?

You know, yeah.

I did I did, but I have uh lost it.

So if you have to find it somewhere, okay.

Council member Miller, and then I'll come back to you if you basically question that I think Council Member Wall was asking earlier.

Is it imagine the hypothetical scenario where you have to have this this generator of credits for branding?

50 years from now that that needed to be redeveloping something else.

So it's no longer providing stormwater management.

What happens the credit is that purchased in perpetuity?

So they have to be transferred.

So one of the things that again, as we have draft uh what we set up as draft of the recommendation would be is one by signing on the UR agreeing to maintain and keep that BMP in the Purtuity as long as it's tied to that the development reason that it was it was constructed, so where it's useful life, right?

Um if that property transfers ownership the requirement that it be maintained under this program transfer with it, just like it would be if somebody owns a thronewater treatment pond right now that is required to be part of their building that goes with that stays with the land as part of any of those property acquisitions component.

The second thing would be so if there's non-compliance, say something happens and the site is non-compliant, um the purchase or the user of those credits, um, will have to either they will then have two years or you know, under our ordinance, or we could work with them to either find a new generator to have an agreement with, or they will need to go construct their own water quality treatment system somewhere else.

Um that's something that that we would be tracking, and then we would work with them to make sure that they're always in compliance.

The other thing that um that we'd also be allowed as long as these contracts happen in the right order is say somebody purchases credits at a 1.5 to one ratio, and then a new site is built somewhere nearby, and they can get it at a 1.2 to 1.

They can under the terms of their contract, if they're allowed to get out of that, they can terminate that and enter into a new credit from our standpoint.

They need to notify us because there's a compliance piece here.

Um, so we need to make sure that those contracts then are able to have them in the right order and that they maintain compliance that that whole time.

So that answered my questions.

Council member walls.

Does the and I'll have an example after I asked the question.

Does the city ever uh forgive a stormwater requirement for instance?

There's some infill and some developer comes in and has this project that we've just been desperate for in the city forever and fills a precise need that we have uh but the stormwater is an issue.

Do we ever forgive something like that?

Uh under state requirements, we're not we're not allowed to prove that each project needs to comply with those with those requirements.

We're held accountable if we were to approve something that just agrees.

And I would say financially you may have opportunities to make sure that if the issue was appointing the credit that you enter into some sort of development agreement that could still provide the compliance of stormwater quality, but do so in a way where the cost is not because I would imagine cost is still the issue, or cost still um is something that you could address in a different way.

That still has to also be combined with voting bullets.

Uh Mayor Norton.

Sorry, I have a quick one.

I think that's an interesting concept is that I appreciate you bringing it forward, and we've got a way more report.

Great, right?

Um I am wondering though about water quality.

So let's say you have part of the community, that is just very feasible to do.

Any people start buying the credits where they're available, and they might be a little further out.

What about the water quality in that particular area if it goes if it gets really what's the solution then?

You bought the credits, you kept other parts of the city's water clean, but that particular area of the water is not really really very good.

I mean, what's there is there a fix for that, or do we mean so because the credit idea can I like the credit idea, but I also think it could be a downside, which is maybe maybe one part of town might one stream of water might not be as clean as the others, and are we okay with that, or is there a different fix we would think about in the future?

Um great question and great concern.

So one keep in mind every single project is required to do it on site unless they can't.

This this really is for the minority projects, it's just infeasible.

So we're there should be very few developments actually going through this this process.

Um situation, especially again for more than infill, there's an there's an opportunity to help make that happen.

The second is in most of the infill scenarios, there's our there isn't water quality treatment.

A lot of them are already paved over, there's impervious surface.

This is still going to be an improvement, you know, to the system there.

Third thing I would say is again, it's the city's role in this way that water quality is important.

This is the importance of us looking at where we can do these retrofits below the city, and if we have these areas being able to do something closer.

Um, as I started these sites are challenging, we've been looking at at a few of them.

We've actually worked with Rockshire Public Schools.

We started looking at who has land next to impurch surface, right?

Like that's kind of the goal.

The city does have quite a bit of land right away, green space next to surfaces all throughout the challenge is going to be trying to bring forward a cost-effective project that meets requirements.

And so that I do think doing this the right way, we can strategically as a participant in this program and kind of generative credits be able to help get ahead of that and spread it throughout the community.

So I have a follow-up question to kind of kind of what the mayor mayor, the line of discussion.

Discussion the mayor brought up brought up.

So our goal is infill uh development.

And so if they they do not do not they have all impervious surface surface, and they don't have on site uh ability to do the water water treatment treatment.

In our in our development plan plans, would we still in a development say we don't want you we want you to have some non-impervious surf surface at that development site?

So there's is there are there guidelines for that?

So they're requirement to do as much as they can so there's it's not that ascriptive as what we're so they can do they can do some license in the engineering that goes into that, but yes, they and definitely definitely push, you would do as much as we can on the side of whether there's a rain garden, tree trenches, uh green roof, reuse of stormwater.

You can capture the stormwater use of pre-urrigation, you know, those types of things.

Um, yes, they need to do as much as they can on site.

Um again, it will get to there can be scenarios where it gets the point is just not feasible to be able to do it on site where they just you know physically can't comply because of what it would cost to be able to do it.

Um that's the remaining piece that could participate in this role.

Got it, got it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh council my room as I will not uh encourage and make it easier to not do it.

So I agree that that this really is an off-ramp for those unique scenarios.

It's just when people end up in that situation, it can push them into not redeveloping because you can't find a partner, you can't find land, can't do it.

This helps do that.

And again, from my standpoint, I see an opportunity for the city to be able to do projects in a way that can be funded by supporting development at the same time, helping to infill.

And so we're able to check several boxes under this scenario.

It's not for every scenario, it's the very few fragments projects throughout the city, but where it does make sense.

But I think this is a good solution.

So the goal is in fill.

So if uh the council supports this, and you pull it together uh your implementation plan, how soon do you would you think we could see a project come before us that says we're using using this system?

Um, I mean, I think so there's so there's some steps we'd have to do to be able to implement this, um, which which I would say you know, goal would be to make it happen in the wall to be able to get there's some ordinance updates that we would want to be able to do with the lock in support transfer rate for still should go into ordinance.

So there are some things we need to go through on that side.

I do think 37th Street inflammation infiltration basins would be the very first project, and that is slated to come back to council around the August September time frame with permission to go for bids, start construction.

We would have a project complete in 27 to have again a generator of credits be available for neither city use over again based on council feedback now and quality project.

So council member miller, then for very interesting.

I appreciate you bringing it forward, and I I would be in favor of us moving forward at least into a pilot pilot phase.

And I guess my curious curiosity is what touch point would it come back per view?

Would it be after the first hundred credits are transferred?

What types of projects were built that would have been otherwise feasible?

Are we tracking this on the KPI report?

How are we interacting with this program and making sure that you're saying that these are the right transfer ratios?

This is the right system.

How is it coming back to us for review in the future?

Um, there's several council touch points.

One one of the next steps would be we'd bring forward a policy including the draft policy of to give you a vision of what that could look like in the packet.

So draft policy would come forward.

Again, trade ratios would we wouldn't implement through ordinance, and so that would be council approved through that.

We certainly can provide updates on and we build the website, you know, to be able to attract this, and then every single every project that would fit underneath to council under the development agreement with approval.

There's always a stormwater piece in there or a father who's finding a stormwater.

This is going to be specifically called out in that development agreement.

So you'll see the ones participating in the program that way.

We could certainly, you know, uh, if there's the action plan list or something to be able to fill out either house some of that, yeah.

I think you could I think every time you're in the development bringing it forward, though, you kind of want to know like where are we on our credit availability, and also where are you on your feelings able to participate a lot in this regularly?

And that's what I was getting towards.

I mean, so say we sell uh there are 100 credits transferred percentage percentage of that are public projects, what percentage of that are private projects?

Is it is it meeting the end bulk goal, right?

Or how are we meeting the end built goal through this?

Are there any are we seeing like no 1.5 credits are being purchased, right?

Like is that too high, too low?

Are there too are too many 1.5 credits being purchased?

I mean, two things.

First, you're thinking you're trying to create a website that would everyone know what is out there all the time.

And I hear what you I think what I'm hearing you say is how do we connect this to utilizing a room like this only when necessary because we can't build on site to advance the other housing and affordability goals you can say.

I guess my question is just on ongoing review.

Just I the question came up.

Uh the mayor raised it, maybe others did as well.

Of all of a sudden, this area this area of town has been converted and all storm retention and now it's being all the all the developments happening one place, one place the cheapest land, cheapest place to do this in a different place.

We created this market.

I don't think I don't think that's gonna happen, but I I mean I'm thinking about the collective conversation and thinking about how media summarizes this and how the community understands this and how we give additional touch points to her art.

Um confidence in this working for the program review also to the community that this is meeting the goals and what are the pros, the pros and cons, right?

How is this working in reality?

I think it's sounds great.

I think it's a super innovative idea.

I'm glad that we're ready to pioneer something like this.

Uh but how do we offer reassurance to us and to the community in a forward-looking way?

Um I really want to emphasize this will be very few projects moving through this.

I don't even see a lot of generators wanting to participate because of me and sending annual inspections or the oversight and all that.

I think there's there's a potential.

I what my standpoint, I think it's important to create a structure where it's not basically providing the generated credits.

Uh, you know, there's a benefit to that.

Um, all the forward, it's gonna be yes, our goal is to be having a website so it's transparent that way.

Um, annually we all of this needs to be implemented under our state permit with the Minnesota Foods Control Agency to go through an annual audit on that side, so there's checks and balances in place there to make sure it was you know being implemented uh that we're staying in compliance with our with our promo.

The other thing is I am certainly willing to build in a report back to council to say this is the number of projects that are participating program, um versus how many inquiries we have had.

We can track number of people that reach out and say your credits are too expensive.

I again from workflow standpoint, I don't think that's gonna be very large.

So you could want to kind of build something something like that, and just make sure it's council.

Okay, so okay, we're gonna go to council member Doring and then we have Fredericks and Yeah, I I I agree that this is a very innovative approach for uh problematic obstacle for something to build it.

I'm just I'm just looking for a little bit of clarity about something that you set up a little while ago, except I'm stewing on it.

I just want to make sure I understand so the generator falls out of non-compliance, the owner the onus is on the person buying the credit from the generator to then buy credits credits from someone else.

Because that's what I thought I heard you say.

So that seems punitive for the or the person who is operating in good faith to buy credits and not punitive to the person who is falling out of compliance.

Yeah, yeah, good distinction there.

Um clarification that's in non compliance has responsibility to bring the site back in the compliance.

We will be working directly with them.

If we get to a point though where that does not happen, then it's not happening.

The user of those credits would need to find someone else or do their own.

We would work with them on that, understanding you know the scenario that they're in.

That's the other piece again, is the uh some of those some of those things can be a disincentive people for which uh people either wanting to be a generator or even this is volunteer.

Nobody is forced to participate in this if they choose to either meet it on site, go find their own, sure.

You know, they can they can do that too.

So the importance of this is voluntary tooling or some risk associated with that, but then we would also work with them in those scenarios to make sure that the sites are default and compliance and appliance is always the closest.

Yeah, thank you for that verification that I'm mediated by concern.

What's concerned?

Consul Member Frederick's.

I like I like the idea because you're mitigating a problem up towards foster errands.

You're mitigating a problem there, and it's getting funded by what sounds to be like project private public and the private second in some cases.

And we want infill.

And if you and if you got to meet state requirements, and you can have two wins, and actually more than that, if you're providing in some cases housing, whatever whatever it may be in need for for our community or for our city, I just it's a it's it's a win on multiple levels.

So I I I like it.

Thank you.

I I agree.

I think I think it's a very innovative approach.

Um but to the point of the objective is to uh see to see development in those infill.

And so I I say I say even though even though you say you're gonna uh incorporate all this work and build this website and it's and into uh what you do now, there's some kind of rationale that you made that said you know this is going to help, it's going to loosen loosen up some of that uh in fill property, and we'll see those uh uh coming coming into development.

And so that's what I'm looking forward to.

Council council member Keene.

Yeah, thanks.

Um question on uh infill infill project we did a couple of years ago on 20th Street, Third Avenue Southwest, where where they were gonna build six houses.

I don't know if you remember this, but some of our built they did eight underground water detention tank.

Is anyone remembering this?

I don't recall it on the same thing.

Oh, because the reason I asked you now now that I thought that was pretty innovative to be a major tank.

That would you say would be required or would they ever doing this?

Uh I don't know that specific you know scenario.

I think so one, whether or not that system would comply with our requirements.

I guess I don't know because there's both the water quality treatment component, you need to be able to treat that first one.

And then there's also the volume reduction.

So those some of those types of systems though are what you would have to look at.

So big tank underground that separates out the solids, you'd have to be able to extract that, and then a lot of them would infiltrate, so I just don't tell them about that.

And this was this stormwater control too, because it was it's the hilly neighborhoods there where if the water ran off whether anyone else spelled it.

There was more storm water than then uh filtration, but I just think we fear then we can put something just in place, it would get around that idea of doing that sort of stormwater.

So a project like that, if we're speaking theoretically, would still have to prove out that something like that wouldn't be feasible.

Obviously, that got installed in this case.

So with the safeguards, you know, the hurdles that we would put in place to qualify in this process, presumably we would have arrived at that being feasible for that side option.

I want to bring it up because I do worry when I hear the language such there.

Because we can say priority one thirty-two and start seeing like there's other options, and that's what we're saying.

I think that that could agree with Tyler.

I think the key there is they've demonstrated they can be compliant sometimes.

So if they can do those types of projects and over some of the things that you know, open and use one group.

She knows I'm trying to shut it down.

So that's what concerns me.

I want to understand when you talk about building the foster errors thing.

We're doing that as a as a project project already in the state rochester.

And then we're creating credits.

We're not doing it because we can get the credits.

So keep in mind again, it's in design.

Our recommendation would be to do that project primarily because yes, there's significant amount of stormwater that's flows through that site on treated that's causing significant erosion issues.

I mean, but that's I'm just trying to understand value.

If we really think like you like you the example of the school district to the other property owners, is there is there anybody gonna look at this as a good business to get into, or is this gonna be something you're doing for other good reasons that you can now get this additional value?

I think I think that's it in some cases it's probably gonna be an added incentive on top of some of the other reasons.

So you know, you know, um again, I gave the example of maybe maybe you have a business that has some space, they don't want to have it developed um yeah, perspective, right?

To me, you can construct this farmwater treatment facility that looks really nice and people like it and things like that.

So here's an opportunity and a way to generate some income to offset the cost of that of that project.

And so it's an added bonus on top of it now with that responsibility such as the final requirement.

We are the permit team.

They have the municipal separate stormwater system that mess support was to the point earlier.

Regardless of where the ocean is coming from, where it's measured in the city, we have to be able to meet our limits.

So regardless of anyone ever buys into this, the city generating value in water quality in a project like 787th Street is the primary reason that why you would do this, and then there is additional value in being able to assist with those rare projects that are private, actually, if this is approved, that really cannot treat something outside, and no matter what, you're still getting increased quality water treatment in your city.

But regardless of it if this is ever used by the private sector, we have to treat the water regardless of how it's cutting the city.

Yeah, so the the pollution from any of the sites that we're talking about, if it all came from outside the city, we are responsible for treating it based on our partners in the states requiring us to do that, and they don't care how much it costs.

Okay, okay.

One more question.

You don't want the city to be the provider, you want the city to be a provider and others too.

We have to say one to I'm good with that, I think, because I think I understand what you're trying to say.

It's not like a captive thing that only uh only the city does.

But I want to understand when you said like somebody buys these from uh like a private and they have an ongoing maintenance cost then too on top of it, because they have you you did a costume that is 10,000 per foot acre or whatever was um it's it's that and then some sort of perpetuity, like three percent of that or anger.

All that is set up is between the generator and the user that will negotiate that contract.

My standpoint again, I I would primarily look at it as a generator under the city program recognizing that we are we are owning and operating systems.

Oh, I would set up that payment structure is there's an upfront payment that covers calculated costs based on the engineering, permitting construction, hard costs that we know, those capital costs that go right into it.

Then what I would negotiate with people is that annual fee to collect the funds again based on a per-credit basis for operation and maintenance.

So when that project sells off, otherwise you're guessing, and that's the most fiscally responsible way to set it up for the city.

If a private entity wants to be a generator and they want to set it up different under the market-based approach, then that would be up to them how they would want to how they would want to set that up.

It's just that at their risk, our role is to make sure the site's in compliance that it meets the criteria to participate in the program and that they're operating and maintaining the system the way they're supposed to.

They can't come back and say I'm in non-compliance because I'm not generating enough revenue to pay for my own apps.

That's on them, their responsibility to operate for.

Yeah, that's why I was trying to make sure that's a sustainable business.

And I worry that I see a lot of like outlock uh uh retention funds that I believe your team takes over at some of these bigger residential um developments.

So try and try to think of the this idea of a developer developing on into a lot and then having it in perpetuity or how he passes that responsibility on to the new ownership.

I don't know how that's gonna work and it has me uh concern.

All right, all right.

Uh uh great discussion, more discuss more discussion to come.

Thank you.

So someone had the foresight decades ago to ensure we were building sidewalks with new developments, which was great.

Um we thought we've continued to build out paths with both the flood control network and other recreational projects.

Um but obviously as we've gone through gone through this analysis, we still have gaps uh uh within the system.

So as we're as we're um working working through our pavement management planning, you just recently uh approved the next half of the community for us to rate the street pavements.

Um we also want to look at adding on all of our paths to be able to go out and rate the pavement uh pavement pavement of all of our current path network just to help inform going forward, not only long-term maintenance, but when do when do we when do we decide whether this next project being proposed is a good idea based on everything everything we have.

So um you know, and you know, and that comes down to both long-term just maintenance maintenance, but also we continue to get more uh uh request requests for winter maintenance, right?

And and we've done a nice job between the public works and the parks teams.

Um the council gave us an additional position a number of years ago.

We continue to continue to grow the winter maintenance, but we still have you know complaining complaints about winter maintenance too.

So it's all part of the story.

Um as I get as I get to the funding slide, which was part of the CIA, uh we did add some a column to talk about policy because while you didn't ask for policy updates, there's a lot of policy questions that we need to be thinking about as we're um um looking at the data that we had.

So um I do want to just level level set here's what was in the uh the council initiated action.

Um was a real quick uh uh analysis that was completed by the the GIS group um in conjunction with our our community development and public works teams um um looking at looking at prioritization based on street classification, population density access key designation.

And our mode shift coordinator to improve criteria and then come in.

So we were really a huge huge shout out to the GIS team.

Uh they spent a lot of time uh uh you know digging into the different uh layer uh layers we have um and the criteria we're gonna lay out today.

Uh but worked with Irene's team, Tyler.

Tyler and myself and others in public works, but also we parks we review this as it relates to the park system master plan to ensure we weren't in conflicting with what they're looking at long term um connect connecting uh whether through parks or between parks as part of their overall system.

So really tonight you know, you know, we want to get your feedback on the criteria the way the way we conducted the analysis.

Uh we gave uh weighted or not we did not wait it.

We scored scored things zero to three for the different criteria I'm gonna talk about.

Um they were all weighted equally, so um you just scored it and we have the six criteria and you add it up and and that's what you'll see.

We'd like you to be thinking about are there other people.

Are there other criteria?

Um do you have certain weighting you want to put on one criteria or another or multiple that are higher than some certain criteria we did this present this to the as noted in the request to the pedestrian to the pedestrian bicycle advisory committee in April.

They were in agreement with the six that you see they did not have additional criteria that they wanted to see considered other feedback.

Other feedback from from that group was if there's further work uh uh desired by the council that comes out of tonight's uh discussion.

Um they would like to be involved and engaged in that process going forward.

So I'll walk around.

I'll walk through the different criteria of uh access to key destinations was uh the first one.

Um looking looking at grocery stores, schools, parks, pharmacies, child care, next use you see everything listed here.

So we kind of broke it out in quarter mile chunks.

Uh uh the further the further you were away, the higher the higher you scored from these from these key destinations.

Uh next one.

Next one was safety needs.

So we recently uh ROCOG completed a safety action plan.

And that plan identifies corridors throughout the community as tier one, two, or three, tier one, tier one being the highest priority from a safety perspective and uh a need for improvement.

So we so we use that um uh uh one, two, and three.

So if so if it was a tier one, it scored the highest as a three, um and you know reduced as it as it increased.

Increased in tier.

So um those tiers consider crash history, considering consider the type of roadway and what you'd expect to see on those roadway, and then also the feedback that ROCOD received from the public as they were engaging.

Engaging around the different corridors corridors within the community and the county and the county, honestly.

Honestly, it was it was obviously covering the whole county.

Uh seconds next to next two looking looking at um um access to access to transportation options.

So we use that has a priority areas for walking score, um pause is pause is the acronym.

Uh we use we use that they it's something they've done statewide and and looked at walkability neighborhoods that really as it relates to the equity um environmental justice issues.

So we use that um and and because we were able to get that data from Mindot.

Um the next criteria you see is is it how how does it relate to our primary uh transit network and ability to access transit?

Um the further you were from the prior primary transit network, the higher you scored, because again, more disconnected, harder to connect to things.

Um next one was we looked at is it vacant land that's development ready so it it can happen in the future with with that uh development of that land?

Um and and looking at working with the planning team on where do we have areas for future growth that we could I you know identify projects that could fill these gaps, and then finally similar to our sidewalk gap fill program, we used uh uh gaps um based on distance.

So anything so that if you recall the sidewalk gap fill is only six hundred or less.

So anything six hundred or less scored zero or one.

It was I don't have the exact breakdown.

Um zero to two oh one and then up to six hundred.

But then anything up greater than six hundred scored two and then three.

Um so similar to gap.

We looked at the gaps but in a broader range than the the sidewalk program with that each remember going just are the criteria themselves weighted in any way?

They are not.

So that's something we want to hear.

Do you do you feel like one of these should be or multiple should be weighted higher than another?

Um we just went uh flat tonight.

Um again, this is our first run at slicing slicing this data.

Um you'll see some numbers ranging all the way up to 13 is the highest parcel score.

And um have this being the first time, you know.

I mean, uh each of them has some sort of discontinuity if it's scoring some somewhere.

So um it's just that you'll see some that are much greater than others throughout the different quadrants of the community.

Just a question, thank you for this video.

It does feel like it's in line with the CIA.

I I guess one of the questions I had when we talked about this in November was how many people are impacted by the current gap?

Is that encapsulated anyway in these criteria?

Like um if there are a thousand people and there is a disconnect, is that parcel emerging in any greater way because there are more people disconnected from a destination, the transit network, etc.

Or would a parcel with a 1,000 unit residence or 1,000 unit apartment building score equally to a single family home.

It is just based on parcels so it's not taking population into account.

Okay.

So that's would it be possible in any way to take population into account either current protected I'm gonna defer to Ms.

Woodward.

Yeah we could add population overlaying of where there's um greater population density and put that in the map as well.

Okay.

Yeah I think I guess I I would love to see something like that census tracts some sort of equity in that definition of equity uh consideration.

But yeah I think this this looks good.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um so I'm just gonna briefly screw I agree with having higher density areas like served technically first because it just makes sense but before that for me would actually be safety just like if there's imminent safety concerns I mean obviously there's people that are disconnected but their routes may be safer than the ones that maybe have 500 200 because there's some areas I I'm genuinely concerned someone's gonna get killed.

I really am and you're happen to be close to one first slide so I'll just let you talk.

Yeah and that would that would shake out because safety is again one of those criteria so that depending on the corridor it's it's gonna score higher um okay I just quickly clarify are you advocating that maybe safety would get a higher weight yes against the other criteria is definitely okay definitely council barber palmer in the past when people have talked about safety and you said there's been no accidents and the reason that there's no accidents because we just avoid it.

So that's kind of a a mixture that that kind of throws a monkey wrench into it and and I agree with what Mr.

Miller was saying about um the people served.

I mean how many because like at bridge at bridge view it's a whole subdivision that can't get anywhere and so that's more important to me than maybe one or two single family dwellings that so that's the safety thing that bothers me.

And I I don't sorry go ahead council member and I guess to follow up on like the uh council member Frederick's point of the people that aren't served by the transportation network are more likely to be um people without access to personal vehicles which are fully connected to our transportation network um but I would rate uh destinations particularly public schools as higher it that would be my preference is thinking about weighting destinations so particularly for um public schools that have a walk boundary of you know ranging from one to 1.5 miles or maybe a little off on that but if somebody is not able to access that key destination particularly a student I would like to see that weighted higher than somebody who is unable to walk to a less essential service or or get to on the active transportation network.

Again that doesn't give you a specific criteria adjustment but I I do think that our under served by current transportation options really gets to my intent with the CIA to understand how many people are impacted and who is impacted who who is cut off from daily life because of lack of access to transportation and I think that there's probably somewhere in the census track data and also the school walk boundaries that are important in those destination in that access to destination frame.

And I think more Palmer I think the I I guess I correct I would just do schools I wouldn't do whether whether or not they're private or not because like the Math and Science Academy on 16th Street Southwest is a tough area to to walk and and you know I would hate to leave them out just because they're not a public school.

So yeah and that's we'll have another slide coming up that gets at some of that deeper dive that you know we could go into if there's desire to desire to advance the the work we've done to date so again I'll give I'm gonna just quickly jump through you you can see that the reddish orangish yellowish those are the highest scoring parcels so the most disconnected um blue being much um much more connected uh so here's southeast uh this this Marion Road sort of corridor which again townships areas that were annexed that did not have the requirements to build sidewalks and like we would have had within our um city subdivisions and city code um so this is a you know this is an area that really lights up if you think of a sort of heat map and um where it's scoring highly um northeast uh a lot of this area was obviously um connected or developed under the old land development manual where we would have required um sidewalks and that connectivity so you know it's newer it but as you can see you get on the periphery and you get areas that are um similar to some of the others that we've talked about already tonight that are are further um from both transit and everything else we've talked through with the criteria and so there are some areas further northeast that along 48 that are not well connected

Um northeast, uh a lot of this area was obviously um connect or developed under the old land development manual where we would have required sidewalks and that connectivity.

So you know it's newer.

It but as you can see, you get on the periphery, and you get areas that are um similar to some of the others that we've talked about already tonight that are are further from both transit and everything else we've talked through with the criteria, and so there are some areas further northeast that along 48 that are not well connected.

Northwest again was more in that you know, 90s, 2000s with some of the newer developments in the community where we have access to safe places to walk, to bike, to connect to transit routes.

Um not a lot of um areas that score as high in the northwest.

You do see a couple areas you know, kind of west of Highway 52 that can be somewhat isolated.

Southwest, we have some pockets and southwest again, um, areas that were township that were annexed, don't currently have sidewalks.

There isn't there aren't paths, transit might be further away.

Um yet you have schools nearby that you know people can't safely get to.

If we even on this slide, there's Bamber Valley, isn't school very close to some of the orange and red you see.

Another area is you know, further southwest, out towards the airport.

Um just areas that were you know, quite honestly, some sprawl has occurred and out on the periphery of the community, and they're well connected within their neighborhood, but it's you know, if you want to get somewhere, you're probably gonna have to get into your vehicle to get there if it's it's far far enough away.

So um again.

Dylan, are there maps for the areas of Rochester that are not uh in the presentation?

So that's one thing I was going to mention.

Our GIS team developed a dashboard online, so we we could provide if there's a desire access to the so you could it's all online, you could get in there.

Um we'll have to get you the access to the ArcGIS online, um, work with um GIS group, but then you can scroll all over and really you know, zoom in, zoom out.

Um we just wanted to take some snapshots to give you an idea of of what the mapping looks like, and then you know, if we were to make updates, it's all sort of real time.

Um you run run the analysis and um it'll update the scoring and the colors, and so it's pretty awesome what the teams put together, quite honestly.

Councilmember Frederick's.

I just want to ask a question of the president and you guys is it the wrong time to address a couple things than those images that you just showed.

Is it the wrong time?

Is there gonna be a better time?

Because I don't want to get way in the weeds if we're gonna just keep we need to keep rolling here.

You can ask your question now.

If you can go back to slide southeast, the one with the most orange, and yeah, that one.

Um Marion Road, first of all, we put in the new splash pad very nice.

Mr.

Miller and I have had this conversation.

I really appreciate his analytical abilities because I'm not that guy, so it's great resource to have on this council.

But okay, on Marion Road, we put in that nice splash pad to get to that splash pad from the east side, they gotta go all the way down to Longfellow School, go across the street and go all the way back up.

It's not gonna happen.

There's gonna be people going across that street.

Uh it's not cool.

They're going.

I don't need to go into all the details, but I personally witness.

I live at the Marion apartments on Marion Road.

I watch.

By the way, I love how much the basketball court's being used over there.

It's being used a ton.

It's awesome.

And they seem to be taking care of it.

So I'm really happy to see that.

Okay.

20th Street, okay.

People are walking on the road at dark, and they're crisscrossing the street to try and avoid cars.

Someone's gonna hit them.

People are on their phones texting and driving.

I'm super concerned.

Like I it's it's ugly because and then it's and then the it's like you say it's a runway.

People are driving 60 in on it, it's a 40 mile-an hour speed limit, should be a 30 instead of city limits there.

You know, and I talked to the county about it.

Oh, it's you know, talk to the city, tell them to take it over.

I get in the stupid back and forth.

I did say that out loud.

But it's like, do we do we genuinely care about these people?

Do we really?

Because look at it is all disconnected, and and people are walking on roads everywhere.

Someone's gonna get, you know, people that my biggest concern is I'm driving down the road and I'm seeing people.

I'm like, oh my god, people are walking right there.

So that's my concern.

Yeah, and I aired it out, and um, and it's and I'll talk about it all you want in a later date if you want to talk about it.

And one of the the later slides, I'll I'll mention some of those challenges that we you know, as we do a deeper dive and identify barriers uh quite honestly.

But the Marion one is the splash pad is it's good you bring that up.

We actually just met with the county yesterday.

We're working on design for uh intersection improvement at the current signal by Longfellow as well as some improvements on the the where the old Longfellow access was to help people safely get across Marion Road.

It's going to be something that'll come back in front of the council county and city will be a joint 50-50 project where county contributes 50%, city contributes 50% to that.

So that that will come back to you preliminary as we talk through it with them.

We talked about a project.

Hopefully, we could do it next year.

Um it's not currently in the CIP though.

So that's that's because the kids in those communities are using the playground at Longfellow or using that splash bet.

It's an active community with kids outside.

That's yeah.

So thank you, Councilmember.

So, council member Miller.

Yeah, I appreciate Councilmember Frederick's bringing that up.

I've been very concerned about Marion Road, and I would almost put a criteria presence of a county road as a criteria because I've talked extensively with our county commissioners about the fact that they do not have a complete streets policy, even for set streets that they control within city limits.

It is a safety issue.

Um but I I also appreciate that Councilmember Fredericks is bringing up uh children, particularly who are vulnerable who are trying to access destinations for recreation and for school as again uh like a primary, more important criteria because those are the like within a distance of that destination, the ones most likely to be trying to access it on foot, unable to access a vehicle to get there and most likely to be impacted by the safety conditions.

Okay.

Um continuing moving along.

So this is the slide I did reference.

So if we were directed to do a you know a deeper dive and refine what has currently been presented, you know, the sort of things we're gonna look at are you know, is it a topography challenge that's that's becoming a barrier to something?

Is there an environmental constraint?

Um is it financial?

Is it just a truly a barrier where we're gonna have to do a some sort of grade separated crossing, which those are not cheap?

Is there a better alternative?

Um external agency challenges.

Is it a min dot highway?

Is it a county road that you know we have to have willing partners to work through a project?

So all of that we'd have to take into consideration.

But really, as we started to dig into funding considerations, you know, like I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of policy considerations that come with this because you know, there's impacts to the current budget, and where we're um allocating our funds to different pavement management and other projects.

So we could just continue to allow these gaps to be filled with both future development, like we noted where there's vacant land and/or projects that we have that will um be presented within the CIP.

Um we aren't recommending revamping the SID program.

We don't think honestly, the statute really would allow for it if we're going beyond sidewalks.

And there's a lot of areas where it's not a butting, you know, your frontage where it just isn't gonna fit that program.

Um obviously grant opportunities, we always look for those, but we have to have in the back of our mind what is what is the funding source for that match, because they usually don't have uh when it comes to construction and implementation, there's always gonna be a 20% match, typically.

Um look at shifting um or expanding existing funding, but there's trade-offs, and that's a lot of those policy considerations we have on the the right side of the screen.

Um we could modify we could talk about modifying the sidewalk gap program to include paths.

Um as we discussed with the parks department as we identify projects that could fill some of these gaps that are in their parks master plan.

We could talk with them about their referendum funding if whether that makes sense and whether it would be eligible funding source.

But really, a lot of the discussion is the right side of the screen here as we think about the things you need to be considering with when it comes down to service priority funding maintenance and how do we want to grow.

Um while it wasn't explicit in the CIA, we wanted to make certain that we we note these and you you're thinking about them and what the different trade-offs might be.

And I guess I would let Tyler and Irene add a little bit more to that if they'd like.

Sure.

Thanks, Dylan.

Um, I'll go back to the bullet on the left-hand side that was referenced about you know, existing funding levels and trade-offs, right?

Um, we have a lot of miles of path and sidewalk and street in Rochester that frankly we struggle to maintain where we're at right now.

So, you know, while we want to make sure that all users have a safe experience in town and this heat map is concerning to us as well.

We think about this in terms of what can we accomplish, right?

Outside of existing funding levels, it's hard to pick winners and losers against other priorities, right?

That um we mentioned the SID program, and if we pulled that in and tried to um rearrange that, it would probably, you know, another problem would show up within that program.

Um so we don't make sure that as we're presenting this, the the council's um keeping all of those things in mind that you know we need to balance this against the things that are already occurring and the challenges we have in maintaining the paths we have now.

Snow removal comes up frequently.

Um we don't currently have a very robust program to maintain the paths that we've built over the last decades.

Um we've had a um pretty consistent um I would say commitment in the community to initially fund construction of paths, but we haven't had a very robust way to follow up with maintenance on a um, you know, reliable cycle.

This starts to dovetail into other conversations about path maintenance, which are coming to the council as well.

But um, you know, to just look at the map and say we should go fill that gap seems um a little bit too straightforward.

Um, there's a lot of considerations that go into if we want to start chasing down some of these gaps.

And I I would just add, you know, we did a pavement management plan in 2019.

It I and we've talked about this number.

There's sort of this unfunded liability of 16 to 20 million sales tax.

We've you know, we're generating estimated you know, 3.1-ish a year, so that helps reduce that unfunded liability.

But you know, we're already struggling to maintain our roadway pavements.

We're gonna when we collect the second half, we're gonna we would intend to initiate an update to that pavement management program where we incorporate paths too, so we can understand how does it all play together and and yeah, and then it becomes you know, are there trade-offs with pulling some back from our pavement so we can focus more on walking and biking connecting?

So those are the discussions we're going to need to have.

Council member Wall.

Thank you.

Most, not all, but most people would believe that their own neighborhood is the most important.

And the gap that they identify is that which will make it greater for the kids in the neighborhood or for other people uh transporting.

Uh I just had a very thoughtful email from a fellow uh who recently moved to ward three and identified an 800-foot gap uh that I'd passed on.

Um it appears to me that there's an asphalt trail on the south side of the road, but no trail on the north side of the road where he has witnessed kids uh traveling through waste-high weeds and all.

How do how do we deal with the individuals and uh their perceived need for city action to better ensure safety, especially for kids?

Well, I mean our team, whenever we get those sort of requests, a lot of you all know you get a lot of requests for intersection evaluations, pedestrian crossings, intersection control, whatever it might be.

You know, our team's gonna look at that and do an engineering evaluation and understand what makes the most sense.

Is it something with that we have within a current program?

Is it a do we know we have an upcoming capital improvement project that will address it?

Um we take all that into consideration and you know, prioritize and bring that back to you for projects.

Yeah, so I told this uh person that we were his timing was great, and we were going to be discussing that uh at a council meeting the next day, I think it was only yesterday.

Uh and I will report back to him uh our conversation here.

Uh and I know that uh you will uh get to him and the email that I sent as well.

Uh, but this GIS thing I think might be uh kind of helpful to so that people can see the scope of the issue across the city and say, well, yeah, I maybe my neighborhood ain't so bad.

Isn't as bad as I thought it was.

I don't know.

Is that a possibility?

Yeah.

Uh can I just add something?

I think the other thing that could be interesting because going back to the slide we looked at in Southeast Rochester, the way that the city developed is not consistent, right?

We didn't develop Southeast Rochester.

We inherited Southeast Rochester, which is great.

We have a larger Rochester, we have water quality in a different way in that area.

Um, but also it didn't develop to city standards generally.

So being able to build sidewalks there could be challenging, paths may be more likely, and people that live in different areas, as you're well aware from sidewalk apps as well as trails.

Um not everybody likes to have the trail or the sidewalk.

So there's also that concept of how connected, where is it, are there key areas and being able to understand that could be helpful because getting to all of that red is really expensive, but are there key destinations where it's creates uh better connectivity, but also in keeping with the type of neighborhood that is there, which is more rural development.

But are there key destinations where it's creates uh better connectivity, but also in keeping with the type of neighborhood that is there, which is more rural development.

Yeah, and I should have shared this.

I um, you know, just looking back on a couple recent just path projects.

We're at 700,000 to 825,000 per mile.

That's gonna continue to go up.

So it's it, you know, these aren't we don't have endless funding to just really quickly fill all these gaps, unfortunately.

Councilmember Palmer, then council member Miller, then council member Keene.

I I appreciate the winter ones, and and I get the biggest complaint is on the County Road 22, where the county has a road and people complain because it's in the Rochester, we should plow it.

Um But saying that though, one of the reasons for me doing the CIA was this this bridge view subdivision out in Southeast Rochester.

You either go on Highway 14 or you go on College View Road, and we're building a new apartment building up there, and the path is going to be put in, but it's gonna end.

And so you're just gonna dump people at the end there.

So that's frustrating that and I call it an orphan subdivision because it was built prior to 2008.

Things went the hell, and and and we need to get this taken care of.

And I didn't see it on the map on it, it didn't come up on this one.

But somehow we've got to do a better job of connecting when we put new apartment buildings up.

One of the things you put in there was to modify the sidewalk gap one is is can we do sidewalk and do a path?

And and where do we make that determination?

And I'm a little baffled by the the trails that that I've been on.

I'd say 95% of them are in pretty damn good shape.

Probably the only exception is one at seventh street alongs um Silver Lake by the old snow dump.

Um but most of them are are pretty good shape that that I don't see where you know it's a big concern.

I I think when we get when we can gather that the pavement rating, um it's it's going to show that we do have more challenges and imperfections in our path system than might be imagined.

And and not necessarily for the able-bodied person who can you know get over that heaved path that's got roots growing through it.

But um there's a lot of that that's occurring as I as I you know just move around the path system.

So that's why we want to collect the data and really understand where our biggest needs are.

Like if you go up by 41st Street, north on north side of on the south side of the street but north of Target.

That I mean, that's an example of a path that's in terrible condition.

We had one like that in your cost go along West Circle Drive that the maintenance, our maintenance team um repaired and and pay did an overlay, and it's great now.

But that one by target is just another example of there.

We had we do have some that are in near disrepair, quite honestly.

Well, the ones along the flood control project, aren't we using flood control dollars to fix those?

We we are so you know, thankfully we we did a nice job when the flood control project happened to incorporate recreation into that, and we have a funding stream that helps with the maintenance along that corridor.

So go go back to my original question.

This bridge view subdivision.

How do I how do I get into into Rochester?

How do I get to RCTC where there are trails?

There's trails right there at County Road 20 East Circle Drive, and in there's a path right there.

Safely, you have to drive your car down to RCTC and and then rec you know, recreate from that point on, or and yeah, it's we have others as you could see as I was scanning through the map.

Uh even some of those in Southwest Rochester, you you get to Highway 63, you can't get past 52.

Once we have the Willow Creek Path project, that'll help some of that, but they're kind of isolated to what they have in those areas.

Um, at least they have some sh shopping and other amenities.

Well, but at Bridgeview, we're adding more as you go east, we're adding more houses, we're adding to the problem.

And again, you you're gonna hit the school property and then the trail is going to end.

It doesn't take much more to to get that done.

Can we force the school district to put put the path in?

Okay, we have uh Mr.

Nemeyer and then we're gonna go to Council Member.

Council President, my comment was gonna go back to a previous question, so I'll make sure that one that one gets answered.

Uh I mean we we can't force them to build pedestrian facilities there.

And I mean, our typical approach would be when that project happens, as we noted when the development occurs, that could be the point at which we achieve that.

And you continue to work through these policy considerations and prioritizing certain areas and how much is reasonable to either not reprioritize and adjust generally the tax levy in order to be able to provide some of those things.

It probably doesn't happen overnight.

But what are the ways that this council wants to prioritize any of those gaps?

And what we're explaining is we have challenges with pavement maintenance, both road and trail.

And it's likely that if you're going to fill gaps, you are going to increase costs both for capital for those, but you could come up with something that's reasonable.

We've done this throughout the history of Rochester.

That's how you got here today.

And we also want you to know that as you grow that system, we don't want to forget the maintenance cost of any capital that we put in because just because something looks great now does not mean that it will be in 20, 30, 40, and 50 years.

So if we plan ahead for that, then you don't have some of those cliffs.

And I still go back to Bridgeville.

I got 600 houses or 600 people living out there that you can't you can't highway 14 is your route.

I don't think anybody wants a person to walk along highway 14.

Well, I think if if you know, if we're directed to do a little uh some additional analysis, if we bring pop if I heard population is one that seems I'm seeing head nods like that probably will help get at, you know, as we rescore, we'll see where it then lands.

Um compared to others.

Okay, we're gonna go to council member Palmer.

I think you you made your point.

Councilmember Miller.

Thank you.

Uh I just reiterate some of these points.

I think as a next step, GIS map transparency is a great next step to make sure that people are able to uh us included, understand the scoring, how it lays out beyond these screenshots.

Um glad to hear that maintenance of uh pavement condition of trails is coming in.

I even think about the the quality improvement that happened around Cascade Lake last year, filling in the expansion joints, much better experience.

Um definitely would love to see how we incorporate population uh getting to people impacted, census tracked and proximity to a school as like key parts of understanding who is more likely to be impacted by that gap in transportation.

Um I think like key destinations, definitely schools, but to Councilmember Palmer's example, also RCTC, Quarry Hill Nature Center, other destinations that are proximate but disconnected.

Um, you know, with our growth pattern, we just had this conversation at the DMC tour with the collaborative session, looking at the potential of um new development of contributing to our tax base.

And I would wonder with you know, parkland dedication or other programs of working with developers, how we um make sure that our system is connected even when a new development is our is benefiting from existing investments.

So we have great investments in the DMC district, a lot of investment incentive to grow there.

Um, but my hope would be that that growth pattern helps us create a more robust connected system for the whole community because even if you live in that district, you are likely to want to use the Bear Creek Trail, the Douglas Trail, all of these places that go beyond, which goes to then the economic development aspect of this.

We have the Med City Marathon, numerous 5Ks, the Med City Meander that all utilize this trail system and are planning their routes depending on where there is a quality connection to the trail.

Um my family and I did the 30-mile route on the Med City Meander this past weekend.

We did not go into Northwest Rochester.

Um I think the quality of connections in Southeast Rochester, Northwest Rochester are different than than other parts of the city.

And I think understanding the connectedness, you know, and understanding the community benefit.

I would not recommend that we modify the sidewalk improvement district model either, but I think it does recognize that the benefit of a connected sidewalk network extends beyond the individual property owner to a district.

And I think this similarly a funding model should understand uh a community benefit to a complete connected and well-maintained trail network.

And I I hope we can move in that direction.

And then you know, as a final point, and when we think about the jurisdictional challenges, ROCOG is a place where these different road owners, transportation network owners come together.

And I would just uh mention that the Wolmstick County Parks and Trails Master Plan process is happening.

I hope that this process can at least help inform or create some opportunities for collaboration and understand how that project is directed and what recommendations it lays out so that we're working as a community and not saying, well, that's a county road, that's a county parcel, that's a school parcel.

I think we have some partners in the space.

Um, and I think uh I would think that Rochester Public Schools and other school systems have some uh shared values and uh safe and access, particularly for those students who are walking or biking to school and not generating a cost for busing as those boundaries have increased over time.

So those are my points.

I thank you, Councilmember.

We're gonna go to Councilmember Keene and then Councilmember Doring.

Uh, thanks.

Yeah.

I I uh really did find it interesting to see the maps and just to see that sort of thing.

But um, but I also realized, as you said, it was based on criteria, it wasn't weighted.

And what I've heard from this meeting is like, do we have the right weighted and the right criteria?

I've heard public safety is obviously higher, but this whole thing about population and and I almost think it's like the trade-off between is it reasonable to move to the outer edges of Rochester and say, give me a clean connection to the to the networks and all that.

Uh is it I mean, I'm watching right now the amount of population moving west of 60th Avenue, and that's going to be a probably a 40, 50 mile an hour street.

It's we're we're, and I look at this when I when I heard my peers kind of going for this council initiative, and we call it gap analysis.

I think of gaps as not so much the the sidewalks as much as how can I get from this neighborhood to a safe trail head.

Um, and there are places that it's really good to I mean, slightly difficult to do that, but to me, getting access to those and getting on a trail.

And then I know we've done some some investments over the years of trying to say once you're on the trail, we try to keep it connected.

We don't we don't have places where you just run out of sidewalk or jump in the street.

There are places like that.

Um, but I do want to get into in my view of gaps.

A lot of times I think of it as um West Circle Drive, Highway 52.

I consider them walls that are blocking population from one side to the other.

And there's a lot of those that sort of like, how do I get to these assets?

Um, it's different than the criteria we used right now.

Um it's it it's different because I think we will see those older neighborhoods who are built without sidewalks saying that's where the investment needs.

And I I guess I would want more understanding before we did something like that.

Um I don't I um I I think there's a I uh Councilmember Palmer talked about we owe that to them to get to the city resources.

I understand that, but these are also people who are deciding to be on the edge of town.

And I've had these hard discussions about you can't move out to that area and expect the city bus for you know three times an hour.

It's just it's just we're not a big enough community to do that.

And I think the the trail thing's gonna, we're gonna run into that.

Um I also want to be careful having these discussions outside of the constraints of a budget discussion.

I really like that you put in these funding considerations, but it's easier to say we got to do all this stuff when it's we're not looking at trading off against street quality, and we're probably already looking at a seven and a half percent levy thing.

So um I worry that we get too now.

Let's do this, now let's do this.

And I think we have to kind of like pull back our our interest to make sure we're doing the right things, but the things we can do within a reasonable budget instead of sending this team off to like let's go through and redo this reduce, and we look at the maps and look at the maps and then say we're gonna change the cap from 9 million to 11 million.

I I don't think we're going to.

Um, so that's the kind of stuff that makes it hard on me.

I really like the idea that this uh one of the things that was talked in there is like you're using these other resources like the the bike and pedestrian, but also we have a mode shift like on staff now.

We have to bring those to bear on this and get to the point that um, you know, I might peruse the community and hear from certain people, but we should have professional opinions on these are the five biggest problem areas, or these are the areas that if if um if we had an extra, we're gonna do an investment in 2027, these would be the ones and some not just criteria is good, but also like get that professional judgment.

So thanks.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Dory.

Yeah, I was gonna echo a lot of what uh council member Keene just said.

Uh that being said, I would argue that just because a sidewalker or trail exists doesn't mean there's not a gap for members of our community.

I'm thinking in particular those who are have mobility challenges, right?

So I really appreciate the sidewalk improvement district uh implementation to address some of those concerns.

Uh but I would love to bring in a professional who who deals specifically with that population to help identify where the gaps are in our system that don't allow people to recreate if they have uh mobility issues.

Um I think that would be existing, yeah.

Totally existing, not even new.

Uh I think that would be a fascinating uh overlay along our our map as well.

Thank you, council member.

Uh I just want to echo some of a lot of what I've heard.

I think, you know, safety and density are important uh weighting factors.

And I really liked Councilmember Keene's idea of really you folks, the professionals come back to us and say these are the priority areas.

We heard, you know, impassioned uh plead from council member uh Fredericks uh on along Marion Road.

We heard uh uh councilmember Palmer and the connection across from RCTC and there are others.

Uh but to see the heat map, I mean it is scary, but I think we need a lot more prioritization if we're going to say, okay, we're gonna trade something off because this area really has some safety concerns and it's got a density of traffic there, whether it's uh pedestrian traffic or or uh gaps from uh pedestrian cycling.

So with that, uh councilmember Miller.

And I guess a final comment on the funding as well.

When I think of one of the reasons that my intention of bringing this forward with councilmember Palmer was to highlight the the gaps and the challenges in the current conditions, because we will have budget discussions, which obviously are important.

We will also set our legislative priorities, and the reason that we have sales tax funding going to road maintenance and road condition is because we made that a legislative priority, went to the legislature and got an alternate funding source to maintain part of our roads and help uh close that gap in deferred maintenance.

So I I think having this discussion doesn't obligate us to a certain expense, but it helps us get us uh a better handle around what where we are today and what this future vision is for our community and how we close that gap over time or those gaps as it were.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Ballmer.

Oh, go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Um Parkland parkland dedication, we're looking at maybe adding trails to that.

And I think community development and parks is working towards that.

The other one is is one of our priorities was to change um right now you have to subdivide property to to get um parkland dedication.

So for example, the old YMCA site, they contributed nothing to parkland.

And somehow we've asked for that to be done, and we need to work together to get that done.

But adding trails to parkland dedication would be helpful.

Miss Woodwick.

I I just want to note that um it was an action plan item to look at parkland dedication.

So um the parks department of key development have had some initial discussions.

We will be coming back before council to kind of review high-level policy in terms of what needs to be incorporated into parkland dedication, what we currently have is existing, and what are those options?

So that is something that we're working to get on the counter.

Not quite July, but we were we're identifying a couple of calendar options and working together to get something on the calendar.

All right.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Great report, great discussion.

Uh next study sessions.

Ms.

Selms.

Thank you, clerk.

I so appreciate your help when I don't have this open.

Um, so your next study session is on the 8th of June.

And um, you will have an update for the fire strategic plan and some information they had from an overview that they did, excuse me, an operational review that they did.

Um discussion about Mayo Field and um the obviously there will be a new site north um with the joint maintenance facility that then provides some opportunities for you to discuss the general area that is the current parks maintenance facility as well as Mayo Field.

And then um a 2026 legislative session update.

Um and I just did want to note that it looks like we will potentially be going over that evening on the eighth.

Um we do have some um need to meet in closed session.

So um I'm hoping that you will consider that for your calendar timing.

All right, thank you.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.