Okay.

Okay, folks, we are going to start our uh June 8th City Council study session.

We have uh three on our public agenda.

We have the 2026 fire department update, uh mail field update, and then we have a 2026 legislative session update.

And then we will have two closed sessions uh after we uh recess from here.

So with that, I am going to turn it over to Chief Poe, who's going to talk about the fire department and uh things that are happening there.

All right.

Well, good afternoon.

Uh, thank you all for the time.

Really appreciate it.

So at your request or from earlier this spring, uh we wanted to give you guys an update on overall happenings in the fire department as well as the progress of our current strategic plan.

So we're gonna take some time, we're gonna talk about a key accomplishments uh for the department for the year, uh, updates to that strategic plan, uh, overview of current operations and staffing staffing considerations, and then gonna give you a uh preview for a request to submit a FEMA Safer grant, uh, which will be coming to you more than likely next week at the regular council meeting.

Um so some big things that that happened this year.

One is we added a second battalion chief per shift.

Um, that was one of the to-do items from the legacy strategic plan.

Uh we were able to accomplish this at a zero tax levy increase by repurposing some existing positions within the organization that were unfilled.

Um secondly, uh improve technology and related initiatives for electronic documentation.

Um, so being an outside chief, putting fresh eyes on our operations and our data.

A little surprised that maybe a lack of consistent data reporting over the years.

So investing in our our staff and making sure they understand the importance of kind of telling our story so that I can come to you with uh requests when warranted and paint a picture as to why that's necessary.

Um emphasis this year on uh enhanced training, uh some changes in our training division, um, some really good opportunities as far as like joint training with our our neighbors and partners.

Uh we've got an upcoming full-scale exercise for active shooter countywide, uh at one of the local high schools.

Um metrics and deployment uh review.

So we brought in an outside contractor that we'll talk about in a bit, uh known as Fitchen Associates, to put eyes on our data and get a third-party opinion about how we're operating and how we stack up against different national standards, and we'll talk quite a bit about that.

And then um finally, a big emphasis this year on uh modernizing our policies.

Um we want to make sure that as we ask more and more of our firefighters that they know what the what the playing field looks like, uh, and they're playing from a good playbook.

Um so we've implemented or we are currently implementing uh a product called Luxapole.

It's one of the largest uh vendors for public safety policy in the nation.

Um our place currently use Luxapole Fire used to be a Luxible customer back in the day.

Uh that project never materialized 20 some years ago, so we kind of dusted the the cobwebs off of it, and we're uh implementing with modern policies and rolling that out to the entire organization.

Um so, like I mentioned earlier, Fitchin Associates is a permanently brought in from the outside.

They have clients in the fire EMS and public safety realm in all 50 50 states, nearly every Canadian province and 12 different countries.

Um, and they've got some some bigger organizations across the uh across the nation.

Uh so our goal with our end goal with them is to draft what's the one is a standard of cover.

That's a very robust document that's used in the accreditation world.

Uh it looks at all of your incident data, uh, your community risk, different trends, the growth of your city, and then looks at current deployment models and make sure that you're deploying your resources as as effectively as possible.

Um that's gonna be probably another four to five months before we see that standard of cover document materialized, but we have gotten some draft documents from them that will share some highlights with you here throughout this report.

Once that SOC at center standard of cover is done, we'll come back to you at a future study session and go through that in greater detail.

We did ask them for some deliverables on the front end, and we told them some of our priorities from them is we wanted their analysis of our current station location of our current five stations.

We wanted them to look at the proposed station six location to kind of verify that that that location makes sense for the way our city is growing.

And then we also wanted their opinion as to the plan.

The plan currently is to redeploy one of the two downtown engines to that sixth station once it's built, and wanted to like have them look at the impact of what that would be for the workload for our current apparatus downtown.

So the good news is, in their opinion, all these things are viable.

The current station locations work well.

Assuming that you guys are comfortable with the current uh travel time to emergency scenes, and we'll talk quite a bit about that uh coming up.

It is important to note, and we'll talk quite a bit about this later, that our current travel time to emergency scenes does not meet national standards.

Uh, there are no national standards police.

We won't get in trouble for that, but that's a policy decision that the city council and the fire chief get to make together.

Um, but if you're comfortable with the current response and travel times, then our stations are in good locations as they sit.

Uh, and also station six will help uh those residents in that neighborhood once that station is up and running, uh, meet national standard times.

Um, and they did confirm that moving engine from the downtown station to the new station six.

Um, while it will have a drastically increased workload on the existing company's downtown, it is a tenable work environment that at that time.

So that is a viable option for us.

So we kind of have two different plans I want to talk about with you.

Uh one is we talked about about a year ago called the eight-step plan that was drafted by the previous fire chief.

The eight-step plan, in many ways, is a plan within a plan.

Um so the eight-step plan was Chief Kerska, the previous fire chief's way to come up with a plan to staff station six when it was ready to go live.

That was part of a larger plan known as the 2021 to 2040 strategic plan.

Uh, I don't have a slide on the 2021 to 2040 strategic plan, but there are some things that aren't in the eight-step plan that I want to hit on that we've accomplished already.

Um there was we've got multiple divisions within the department, and there was some help needed in some of those divisions, one of them being emergency management.

So part of that 2021 plan included building out the fire department's capabilities in the in the emergency management realm.

That has been accomplished by the city.

So we have an assistant chief and a captain of fire in emergency management.

And in my opinion, that's going well.

I think the city administrator would agree that the current EM model works well for our city.

So that's a good thing that's been accomplished for the 2021 to 2040 plan.

Uh expansion of the fire marshal's division.

Um, so the fire marshals are responsible for code enforcement, plan review, and then post-fire investigation as our city grows, especially with the the construction downtown.

There is a ton of plan review and fire inspection to accomplish.

Uh back in 2021, the department was maybe lacking a few uh full-time employees in the fire marshal's division that has since, through the recommendations of that plan been recruited for and filled, and the fire marshal's divisions are sitting in a good place right now.

So that's the update for the fire marshal's division back to the 2021 to 2040 strategic plan.

Um fleet in that plan.

Uh the chief called that a division of one.

Uh so we have one fire department mechanic, that's our fleet division.

Um, his suggestion back then was to bolster that.

Now I know since then there's been a lot of work underway to centralize the citywide fleet and the fleet of mechanics.

Um, so I'm we still have a division of one.

We have one mechanic, but I'm confident that with some coordination with existing city fleet that we can meet the fire department's fleet needs without adding additional mechanics in the in the short term.

I also want to point out that in one of the opening pages of that 2021 to 2040 plan.

Um, one of the largest uh vulnerabilities in the department as identified by the previous fire chief was our department's single incident capability, basically saying that we can only respond to one structure fire and then we're tapped out for resources.

That's that's a scary thing for a fire chief.

His next quote goes on to say help may not be on its way, and that that's true today.

Um we have 26 firefighters a day.

That's enough to respond to one structure fire with a few firefighters left over.

That's all we had in 2021 when that plan was drafted.

That's all we have today.

Uh and that theme will get reiterated throughout the presentation this afternoon.

He does go on then towards the end of that report to it, uh recommend hiring six additional firefighters to bolster ladder truck staffing, uh, which is the same concept that I brought to you last year when we uh asked to apply for a safer grant.

Um so that's part of the presentation later as well today.

Um but just wanted to let you know that wasn't a novel concept that I had come up with.

That was actually the groundwork was laid by Chief Kurska back in 2021 in his strategic plan.

But now we'll jump into the eight-step plan, um, which we talked quite a bit about last time uh when we applied for the safer grant.

I'll let you know where where we are in all these steps.

So step one in that eight-step plan was to add an assistant chief of operations that was completed back in January of 2024.

Step two was to add a supervisor at that time was meant to manage uh to be built yet EMS division.

So that position was budgeted for and recruited for, and we hired back uh it's uh uh July of 25.

However, we're not moving forward with the EMS division.

We use that position to back to the concept earlier of adding a battalion chief.

That that FTE was reallocated as one of our new 24-hour battalion chiefs, because we, in my opinion, we need more firefighters in the fire stations uh available 24 hours a day to respond to calls, not more administrators.

So we repurpose that administrative body to become a 24-hour battalion chief.

Uh step three was to add three EMTs to the organization to respond to EMS and lift assist incidents.

We have not hired those individuals yet.

Uh, there's no short-term plan to do so, uh, but we open to the conversation here today about the future of that.

Step four was to purchase land for a Northwest fire station that was completed uh with your blessing on two of 25.

Step five was to add seven EMTs and a supervisor to expand EMS capacity, um, freeing up some workload for one of the downtown engines to move to that new Northwest fire station.

Uh, we're not there yet, and again, uh, I'm not keen on hiring EMS specific employees.

Uh, I do believe you get a lot more out of an employee that can do both fire and EMS.

Uh, it's important to note that every EMT is not a firefighter, but every firefighter is an EMT.

So by hiring a firefighter, you get somebody that can do two disciplines versus just one discipline.

Step six was to add three battalion chiefs to support uh development and leadership capacity.

That has been done.

Uh, we did it again through repurposing of other administrative positions in the organization.

So we had a vacancy at assistant chief that we did not fill.

We had the EMS captain spot that we repurposed, and then we had an eight-hour training chief that did not respond to incidents but worked administratively.

We repurposed those three positions to come up with the 24-hour uh battalion chiefs.

Then step seven is to construct the station, and step eight is to relocate an engine from downtown to that station.

Those are you know have not yet been accomplished.

Those are more long-term goals in the coming years.

And if you guys have any questions throughout this, please I don't want to be just me talking to you, jump in and ask.

Mayor Norton.

Thank you.

I did have a question.

I'm trying to think back to the discussion we had um when uh Chief Kerska was here.

And as I recall, a lot of the discussion had to do with we live in a town with very high medical incidents, and we wanted to be able to have you know less of deploying everyone, but having enough specific people there that could deal with medical issues.

And I I hear your comment about you know, trained in a firefighter also does EMS.

My question would be what's the cost differential between hiring an EMS and hiring a full firefighter that does EMS?

Yeah, so we didn't repurpose that slide from last year.

It was included in last year's presentation, but it was much closer than you would think, and I can't give you the exact number on the top of my head because um both to be full-time employees, right?

So they're subject to bargaining and wherever they fall, you know, however, that gets bargained out, but they're also gonna be subject to health insurance and retirement and everything else.

So those costs are relatively the same, whether they're a firefighter or an EMT.

So the savings I want to say was in the I would say an EMT only employee is probably about $20,000 a year, and I'm shooting from the hip here, cheaper than a say a firefighter who can do both skills.

Okay, and so you're just choosing to hire the firefighter who has the EMS talent and just paying more, which means you'll have a little money cut someplace else.

Correct.

You've made that choice.

Okay.

And we'll get into the EMS workload in in a little bit.

I think what what I struggle with is so in the state of Minnesota, as a city, we're not like legally bound to provide the ambulance service, right?

So the state parses out real estate throughout the state called PSAs or primary service areas, and private companies go to bid for those PSAs.

So we have a company here in our city that is bid to be the ambulance provider in our city.

So the question is, well, how much taxpayer dollar do we throw at supporting a private company that's that bid for that service?

Um as the fire chief, I'm happy to support them and like end of the day, we want to save lives.

Um, but should we be adding?

I think the the question for all of us is should we be adding full-time employees to the city payroll that are here to support a company that bid for that service?

Does that make sense?

And is this not Mayo Clinics?

Used to be Gold Cross and Mayo Clinic bought it out, if I remember.

Gold Cross was yeah.

It's been when even when it was Glow Cross recently, like as whenever they bought it a long time ago.

Yeah, when I first met so Mayo Clinic Ambulance Service is the provider for this area.

Um I do think that that's a valid question.

I also don't know that we had um at the time that we were doing the analysis included.

How much overtime you pay someone is really different if they're a firefighter than if they're just EMS.

So I don't believe that that was calculated in some of the prior chiefs financial.

So you end up in a higher overtime situation typically because they're not considered the 24 hour.

There's a lot of unique things from a bargaining and um labor perspective.

The largest savings was that you are moving an engine company instead of adding an engine company.

Yeah, I think what you're speaking to is uh federal FLSA law.

So firefighters don't accrue over time until they work beyond 52 hours a week, whereas an EMT only employee works 40 hours a week and then they're subject to overtime.

So there are some cost savings for having a firefighter EMT because you can get more hours of work out of them before they start accruing their overtime rate.

Uh council member Keene.

Yeah, let me just add this because I again I appreciate you going through the old eight steps and but but we really did make a call to do a different plan here over a year ago and going away from that.

But having this discussion on overtime and just nominal costs really wasn't the way we made the decision years before to say we're going to the DMT.

It really had to do with when you get further on and see the workload that's in that sort of call-outs that are full fire departments, and thinking there was a more efficient way to do that.

So to now, I just want to correct the record, at least in my mind, that that wasn't made on a 20% overtime difference differentials.

It was based on the idea of separating real firefighter work and focusing on that, and then separating out this major workload that we could do differently to free up our firefighters.

And then and now we're going in a different direction.

And and again, I went through this with you before, and and I've come to the conclusion that like there's other things at play here.

But I I didn't want to leave the discussion that it had to do with 20% overtime costs.

That's not how these things were made.

Oh, I got you.

Um definitely we got some slides coming up about more efficient ways to provide some low acuity EMS calls as well.

So we'll get to that in a little bit.

Uh, but back to the fire side.

Um, so calls for service continuing to rise, just like most fire departments across the nation.

People are are more and more likely to call 911 as their first line of solving problems, whether medical or other nature.

Um, our city is growing, right?

Both I'd say north, south, east-west, but also up uh as we see the downtown skyline skyline continue to uh evolve.

Um so let's talk a little bit about the building situation in the city.

So there are currently 20 active multifamily projects underway.

11 of these are three stories in in height, which comes to the classification of a garden style apartment, and we'll come back to that in a little bit because there are national standards on that.

And then nine are greater than three stories, ranging from four to fifteen.

And then once you start getting those upper ranges, you're talking about high rise, which is also its own unique challenge, and there are national standards on that.

So that's the current ongoing projects.

There are an additional 13 in the pipeline, uh, two more garden style at three-story and 11 that are are um taller than that, ranging from four to eleven, so more high rises on the way as well.

And then we've got the geographic coverage, that north-south, east-west challenge, and that's where station six comes in into the works here.

Uh, but there is a need at some point to provide equitable fire service across the city for all those new homes being built to the northwest.

If you haven't driven out there recently, I would encourage you to.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of homes already currently built and hundreds more in the pipeline.

It's gonna be drastically changing out that way soon.

Councilmember Miller.

On that point of new construction, can you talk about the risk profile from older neighborhoods, mid-century neighborhoods, newer neighborhoods, and how that comes into play with the risk analysis?

Right.

So our risk analysis from Fitch is not complete yet, but I can tell you hype, you know, in general, uh you see we see more fires in older homes.

Um, so like the downtown adjacent area, there's a hundred-year-old housing stock down here, right?

So those are just more prone to fires, older wiring, maybe deferred maintenance, whatnot.

Uh, they also tend to be smaller homes, uh, social economics are different a little bit.

Uh, but then also newer homes, while they don't burn as often, when they do, they fail faster.

Roofs fail faster, floors cave in faster.

Um, so while we don't see a large number of fires, especially maybe say northwest, where station six is proposed, there are new homes that are being built there, and when they do start on fire, it's gonna be a dangerous environment for both the people living in those homes and the firefighters responding, especially if they're responding from further away because that roof is gonna fail that much faster, those floors are gonna cave in that much quicker.

Uh station six, just quick update here on the screen.

That's the parcel of land that was bought last year by the council.

The little oval area to the upper right corner is the spot that's proposed to be retained for station six when we're ready to break ground.

That site's about 5.8 acres, that does include some stormwater retention area because that's the lowest, lowest laying chunk of land.

So there are a lot of drainage concerns about it.

Um 5.8 is probably a bit more than we need, but we went with the the found uh the footprint of our largest current station uh to buy us some time until we can really dial in what exactly we want that station to look like.

Um, also some extra space for some training props and whatnot.

We do currently have access to a county-run training facility southeast, but for that crew that's gonna be there in the future to go from that location all the way southeast, that's gonna be uh a 30 plus minute drive.

We prefer to keep them closer in their own territory as much as possible.

So if we can incorporate a small training prop area there, that's gonna keep them in their firehouse more often.

Council member Fredericks.

With the with the current density we're building at out there, um, how far beyond that will that be good for?

That's a great question.

Um every council meeting I feel like I go to, you guys are annexing another 40 acres.

So whenever you guys slow down on that, we'll have a better understanding of what the future need is going to be.

Um I think that buys us really good coverage for that part of town, even with some future uh future annexations.

Um I think the next logical question would be like Southeast.

There, there are some needs.

There's already high demand there and a longer drive time from say station uh five.

Um, but that's well in the future.

But I I'm confident this will buy us many years of northwest coverage.

All right, now we'll go into some operational updates.

Um, so this chart gives us kind of a call breakdown for the past five years of different call types.

Uh, the the top one is like active fire, so something actually burning, whether that's a home or a house or a car or something else.

Um, so we're saying about two thirds of the days of the year.

We've got something actually on fire somewhere in our city.

The next column down with those bigger numbers or next row down with those bigger numbers are other fire responses.

So these are things that get called in and dispatched maybe as a house fire.

So we're getting you know numerous fire apparests on the road, and then they get there and realize it's something lower acuity.

It's a burnt pizza, it's faulty electrical in a building or something like that.

Also includes things like elevator rescues, water rescues, um cats and trees, all the those sorts of cliche things that you think about firefighters responding to.

So kind of a catch-all category.

Um, but back to one of the questions earlier about maybe sending fewer fire resources on calls.

I think there is a lot of room to be had, a lot of progress to be made in the dispatch center.

Right now, the default is we send everything to everything.

Um that that's not the norm in a lot of places.

I think we can give better guidance to our dispatchers to ask more critical questions and then make a more informed decision and send fewer resources to a lot of these calls.

To see that big of a disparity between the smaller number of active fires being found, but that higher number, you know, in the thousands of of other fire responses, we can get much more nuance in there because many of those responses involve five, six, seven, or eight fire trucks at one time.

They don't they don't need to.

Uh the next big number you see there is are those are EMS responses.

So we're looking at you know, seven to eight thousand EMS responses a year.

You'll see a dip down in 24 and 25, and that's to a change that we made in partnership with our partners at Mayo Ambulance in what we call the algorithm for lack of a better term.

So, what happens right now when somebody calls 9-1?

If anybody were here were to call and say, My neighbor's having a heart attack, send an ambulance.

A call gets answered here in this building by a Rochester dispatcher, and they ask two questions.

Are they awake?

Are they breathing?

If the answers to those is yes, they then put that caller on hold and they call mail ambulance dispatch by phone and they transfer that call over, and there's an inherent delay there.

Um, we'll talk about that delay in a little bit.

Then Mayo launches what they call the algorithm, and it's a computer-based algorithm that depending on how the caller answers the previous question, dictates dictates the next question in that algorithm.

And at the end, it's it spits out one of like 600 different codes, and you can assign different resource types to those codes.

So, of those 600 or so codes, about 300 of them involve sending a Rochester fire engine.

So if one of those 300 pops up, that Mayo dispatcher gets back on the phone, calls our dispatch dispatcher back and says, please send a fire engine along with that call to 123 Broad Street or Broadway or whatever, whatever the address is, and then we get dispatched.

I can tell you that there is a lot of wiggle room in that algorithm to look at sending fewer Rochester fire engines to these calls, and we'll talk about some of that in the next couple couple slides here.

But you'll see in 24 and 25, there are fewer EMS calls in 22 and 23.

That's because we tweaked the algorithm and said we we're confident we don't need an engine, a fire engine on these certain buckets of call types for to help the ambulance.

So we shaved about a thousand, 1500 EMS calls out of the system for us.

So that's great.

We can probably shave another thousand out of that if we got a bit more critical.

But even with shaving out that 1,000 1500 EMS calls, you see at the bottom, we we're still treading water with our call volume.

We're not actually shaving saving calls because the city's still growing.

There are more people here coming to live here and work here and having to call 911.

So these council member, great, but they're just shaving, they're just saving they're helping us tread water, not actually decreasing our calls for service.

Councilmember Miller.

So to that point, though, it looks like other fire responses is the primary driver of increasing call volumes.

Correct.

Right.

But you also mentioned uh dispatch improvements, changes to that process could shave off some of those volumes.

Well do you have an estimate for what you would hope for if that were right?

So we probably can't actually, this is just run numbers.

It's not representative of how many resources are tied to each run number.

So we're still gonna have to respond to all those other fire responses, but we could probably do so safely with one or two apparatus, not five or six apparatus in many case.

So by freeing up those other four or five fire engines, now they're available for other calls in their home territory and not coming across town for what's not actually an emergency.

And is there a way to further categorize those?

I mean it seems like such a high volume.

Yeah, to represent we went super big buckets here just for space and time, like this gets broken down.

There are national reporting criteria.

Um there's a million different buckets that these fit into.

It just feels hard to interpret that when that's driving so much of the volume, and it's not a clear category like active fire EMS has Matt.

I mean, those those feel like very tangible things, and it the catch-all being nearly half of the total, it's just difficult to interpret.

Sure.

Uh we could definitely give you some follow-up information.

I see Deputy Chief Ferguson in the back making some notes.

Um, again, like we were up against well, what can you actually absorb through a slide you know during a presentation?

Uh, we can give you some more granular data on that.

Councilmember Wall.

As one who formerly spent a lot of time with hundreds or thousands of people uh every week in large gatherings, uh I I would estimate that about once every two years we required an emergency call.

And uh almost always it was police uh showing up first with limited equipment.

They have a lot of mobile units and fire uh was always almost always second, and they came in with more equipment and expertise, and then finally uh Gold Cross or Mayo would show up with Gurnies or whatever uh needed needed to be done.

And I will tell you uh certainly as one who led a large organization, um that was very reassuring.

I we continually added levels of expertise and knew that uh the citizens were getting really high quality care.

So I just uh endorse certainly a level of care that uh I think leads to great great outcomes here in Rochester.

No, uh message received for sure.

I get that.

I'm not proposing that we don't go to any medicals.

I'm just saying being a bit more surgical with the ones that we do and trying to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.

And speaking of that, so we mentioned that algorithm and how that dispatch algorithm spits out about one of 600 different codes, so we can get really nuanced with the EMS data and the call types that we go to.

Um the problem is Mayo does not routinely share that code back with us.

So we approach them and ask, hey, can we start a six-week trial where for those six weeks, your dispatcher, in addition to calling back and asking for help, when they ask that help to our dispatcher, they share with them that code so that we can then start tying what skills we're doing on scene to different codes so we can say, okay, on these certain call types, we know we're making a difference.

So they agreed over that six weeks or 547 runs that that fell into this category.

Uh kind of the surprising thing for me at least was 40% of the time on those calls, we were canceled, like we never even made patient contact.

So that means of at almost 600 calls, 40% of those we never even got out of the rig and saw a patient.

I would argue that's not a good use for taxpayer dollars.

So if we could take a more granular look and say, all right, we know now widely that in these certain buckets we never even make it to the scene or get out of the rig.

Well, why are we sending the fire engine in the first place?

Um that would be prudent, I would feel.

So this slide here represents just the six EMS buckets that represented the most of that sample size.

Uh so the categories are on the bottom.

Um the blue represent times that we were canceled that we never even saw a patient.

The orange represents that we got there more than likely first before the ambulance, and we performed a patient assessment.

So maybe we took their pulse or blood pressure, maybe we got their name, so you know, general feeling about their disposition, but then turned care over to the ambulance crew when they got there.

Green means we provided a level of medical care, and then red is other, and that's not quite sure what's included in the other category.

Um then interestingly, I share we've shared this slide with our crews in the fields in preparation for this talk.

And the message we received overwhelmingly is that that green, so the the BLS, it's basic life support, the BLS provided, which means we did some sort of medical care or would indicate that we did medical care.

Our crew tells us that due to limitations in our reporting system, that that category they feel is routinely overused as a catch-all, and actually is probably a lot of that green is probably actually more orange, that they actually aren't providing patient care for a high number of these calls.

Um, so back to that the importance of gathering better data.

Um, we've recognized that as a shortcoming.

Our reporting software is built for fire reports, not for medical.

Um, so we are in the process of standing up what's called an EPCR electronic patient care reporting system that will give our EMTs and paramedics in the field much more uh nuanced ability to document what they actually are doing on these calls.

Like I would love to tell you on these certain categories of calls, we perform CPR X percent of the time, or we delivered a certain medication X percent of time, or wound care or bandaging or whatever it is, you know, applying a split to somebody.

Um but given the current limitations in a reporting software, we can't do that.

Um the overwhelming message is for many of these buckets, and again, there are 600 different buckets, and we didn't want to we didn't want to overwhelm the slide with 600 buckets of call types.

Um, but many of these were canceled without ever seeing a patient.

And most times when we do see a patient, we're not actually providing any medical care, we're just there biding time for the ambulance to show up.

And that still has value for sure.

I'm not saying we wouldn't go to those calls.

I think we need to make informed decisions about what we're doing with our resources.

Councilmember Miller.

Quick question on the slide.

Since these are the highest volume call types, do you have a sense of per these five categories how many calls were represented in that bar?

Chris, do you happen to have that?

The end for these off the top of your head?

Well, the whole, I think the whole sample size was 547, right?

Well, I think 800 total, but a few weren't dispatched, didn't pass the code on through.

Uh so we had 547 total in the bucket, but of that 547, off the top of my head, I can't tell you uh that count for these six specific.

Okay.

But we can follow up with you on that too, because we do have that.

Um again, I just want to drive home that this was a limited trial, right?

This was six weeks in length, so I would never propose making any sort of organizational response changes off of six weeks of data.

But in my opinion, that information should be shared routinely between our private EMS partner and our dispatch center and us, so that we can make after a year or two make educated decisions on okay, maybe we shouldn't be going to certain call types under certain circumstances.

This is a repeat slide from our uh presentation a year ago, but just showing overall uh number of fire calls per thousand of population on the left.

Um bit data, but from 2011 to 2023 showing that um even as population rises, the number of calls per person continues to rise, indicating that people are just more reliant on the 911 system every year in the same category on the right, but specific for EMS calls.

Uh so one dip down during 2020.

Uh during COVID across the nation, there were just fewer EMS calls as patients stayed home and didn't go out and get themselves hurt or injured.

Um, but overall, people are continuing to call 911 in our city per population more often than ever before.

There's no sign that that would ever decrease, and this is standard across the nation and every city.

People are just relying on 911 to be their first attempt to solve a problem, whether it's fire or EMS-based.

Um, this slide uh was at the request of the council to talk about the number of firefighters we have per population compared to peer cities.

Pure cities was a bit challenging to wrap our heads around.

So what we tried to do was come up with midwestern cities of somewhat similar populations of that 100,000 to 200,000 per population range.

Um and then we tried to find cities that didn't have that weren't part of a metro area that didn't have access to routine automatic aid.

Because what's unique here with us uh or somewhat unique is that we have no full-time mutual aid partners.

We work with our volunteer partners around us, which is great.

They're great partners, but they have limitations being volunteers, right?

They're responding from home or work to their firehouse when a call comes in, waiting for other volunteers to show up and then taking a fire engine elsewhere to help out.

And also they have just different community risk than we have.

So we have very unique risks in our city, like the number of high-rise buildings, uh, the international airport.

Um, that it's not fair for us to expect, say, a firefighter from IOTA to train on air airport airport operations or high-rise operations.

They don't have that themselves.

Like they have very limited time, they're already giving back to their community of their of their own valuable free time to say, hey, come over to Rochester once a year and train on the airport stuff.

Like that's not gonna happen.

Um so we tried to find comparable cities that also had maybe just based on looking at a map, limited other cities around them that might are likely to have career fire departments.

Um that the column says number of firefighters.

We should, I should actually retitle that.

It should be number of full-time employees, because our 115 also includes all of our eight-hour admin staff, our civilian staff and everything as well, but trying our best to compare apples to apples.

Like we didn't have time to call the fire chief of all these communities and ask them all the nuance specifics of how they staff their organization.

So we just look at their published budget or the published org chart and said how many full-time employees do they have?

So this probably includes some of their fire marshals and civilians, just like our number includes as well.

Um, but uh for a quick slide for uh for a study session, this is the most accurate we can come up with, and you can see that we just rank far behind our other Midwest neighbors for number of firefighters per 10,000 the population.

Um, when looking at other cities that probably don't have mutual aid partners being the same predicament that we are in.

Council member Wall.

I looked at the slide uh quite a while and wonder are there uh efficacy uh metrics that go with this as well to say that with uh our level of firefighters, we lost so much property to fire or uh there were so many complications versus 20.6 uh in Green Bay, uh, how they covered their city.

Sure.

Great question.

Um that's a super tough thing to measure.

And when I came here, I also noticed that was one of the things that we struggle with to measure, just like my previous department.

How do you measure your fire loss?

So there are categories when you thought a report as a firefighter after a fire above property loss.

But it's very tough to train a firefighter to walk into a building that's burned and say, Well, how much do you think this house was worth or their contents were worth and how much was lost?

So I don't place much stock in that data.

So honestly, I I didn't look at it.

Um it gets reported to the federal government, it's not something that every department routinely publishes because I think every fire chief struggles with the accuracy of that data.

So we did not look at that.

We did look at other comparable things or things that we think you would compare in a peer department.

So, first and foremost, in my mind is well, which one of these run an ambulance service?

Because if you are a fire department that runs an ambulance service, by nature, you just need more full-time employees because you need that many more bodies to staff ambulance.

Uh so we don't run the ambulance here, like we've talked about earlier, so we have fewer firefighters, but on this list, none of these have an ambulance service with the exception of Green Bay.

So their number is higher because they also have to staff, I don't I don't know how many ambulances they have a day, maybe 10 a day, right?

Which is 20 more full-time employees per day times three shifts, that's 60 more people they would need to provide their ambulance service.

But the rest of these are standalone fire departments, they are not EMS departments.

And the other thing we looked at is the number of high rises in all their communities.

Um just going down the list.

This is Chris, I guess.

How did you determine the number of high rises?

Just a simple Google search and try to figure it out.

Yeah, annual reports.

Annual reports.

So Green Bay, as best we can tell is zero.

Peoria, Illinois, 12, Duluth, six, Columbia, four, Sioux Falls, 12, Fargo, 10, Cedar Rapids, 16, and then we're north of 30.

So we have a much higher risk than these other communities do.

But far a few firefighters number 30.

I think Chris has 31 listed on this.

I thought I had 35 based on another document I looked at, but north of 30.

Councilmember Miller.

So earlier in the presentation, you brought up uh population density area of the city.

I'm curious how these cities might compare in that measure uh square miles, how many fire stations they have per those square miles, how many engine companies to look at that efficiency of resource as well and distribution.

Well, that's a great question.

We did not do that in preparation for this, but I see DC Ferguson making notes as well, so we can follow up with you on that one as well.

Thank you.

Yep.

Go ahead.

All right, so now we're gonna jump into some data from Fitch regarding national benchmarks.

Um we're gonna talk a little bit about the NFPA.

Um, and I know everybody's baseline knowledge is a little bit different.

So the NFPA, that's the National Fire Protection Agency.

Uh, they're kind of they set the industry standards for the fire service.

So they're a nonprofit organization, been around since 1896, and they developed consensus standards related to fire protection, electrical safety, emergency services, building construction, hazardous materials, and other life safety aspects.

Uh they're not a government agency, their standards are not law unless they're adopted by a state or municipality to be the law, like in Wisconsin, we adopt many NFPA standards to be our law.

Um, not so much here in Minnesota.

But they do publish over 300 different standard books, usually the size of a phone book, very detailed about different different topics of fire and life safety.

So they publish a standard called 1710.

That is the standard for the organization and deployment of fire suppression operations, emergency medical operations and special operations to the public by career fire departments.

So it's a standard specific for cities that have career fire departments, like we do, uh, and tells you gives you what the industry best standard is for how many firefighters should you have, how many different fire apparatus should you have, and how long should it take those apparatus to get to the scene of different emergency types.

Um, we're gonna talk here mainly about from the time the 911 phone rings until the time the first fire engine gets on scene.

So there are numerous standards that are published in 1710 about that.

The first one is the alarm answering time.

So from the time you call 911 and the phone rings in the dispatch center until it's answered.

There is a standard on that.

That standard is that that phone should be picked up within 15 seconds, 95% of the time, and then within 40 seconds, 99% of the time.

After that happens, once the phone is answered, that is now we're in the area of called alarm processing.

So that's how long it takes the dispatcher to ask appropriate questions and figure out what unit should be going to that call.

That standard is 64 seconds, 95% of the time, and then 106 seconds, 99% of the time.

Then from for the for these benchmarks, the dispatchers are done, and now it's up to the firefighters.

And now we're talking about turnout time.

So from the time the dispatchers call us and tell us here's a call until the time we get our butts from the firehouse into the fire engine and start driving.

We should be able to do that within one minute and 20 seconds, 80 um, sorry, within 80 seconds or a minute and 20 seconds, 90% of the time.

Then getting that first engine on scene should happen um within four minutes, 90% of the time.

That's what's called travel time.

So from the time we start driving until the time that first engine gets there.

There's a standard for the second due engine that we're not going to get into today.

Um, and then there's what's known as the ERF, and we'll talk a bit about that later, but that's your effective response force.

That's for getting all of the required units to to properly mitigate that emergency to get all those units and personnel on scene within eight minutes, 90% of the time.

And I know it's a lot, so I will kind of hearken back to that after we talk about where our city performs for these benchmarks.

So, first of all, for the alarm answering time, so the time the dispatcher answers the phone.

Our city does not track that time right now.

That's a problem.

Um, if anything ever goes bad, these are the sorts of standards that lawyers are gonna be grilling me and the city administrator and the mayor about on the stand.

Um, and the fact that we don't track how long it takes to answer the 911 phone is a concern.

Um so I don't have an answer for you, and there's no column on the sheet for that because it's not it's not something that Fitch could could track for us.

The second uh thing we'll talk about is call processing time.

This is an important one.

So, how long it takes the dispatcher to figure out what units should be going to that emergency.

Again, the standard is 64 seconds for EMS calls.

We're at six and a half minutes, uh like 10 times the national standard.

Now, that's a little deceiving.

We'll talk about that in a second.

But on the fire side, it's two and a half minutes, so it's almost two and a half times the national standard for them to figure out which rigs should be getting sent to that call.

Um, so we'll go back to the EMS side of things here.

So this goes back to that nuanced relationship we have with our private ambulance partner.

The fact that we answer the 911 call in this building, that takes time, and then we put them on hold, that takes time.

Then we transfer that call over to Mayo, that transfer takes time, and then mail picks it up from there and does runs them through that algorithm.

Um we don't have access to Mayo's data.

So it's very possible for many of these calls that there's an ambulance getting dispatched, and they they've got a call for service code already created, but we don't capture that here.

So that that can be a bit deceiving, the six and a half minutes.

We are confident though that the fire time, the two and a half minutes, is 100% accurate, and it stands to reason that well, if we could dispatch fire apparats in two and a half minutes, we could probably dispatch EMS in about two and a half minutes as well.

So it's much better than six and a half minutes, but it's still a two and a half times a national standard.

That's a concern.

Um that's where we are with call processing time.

The next column over is dispatch time.

That's call processing plus how long does it actually take the dispatcher to get on the radio and do the talking and push the buttons to make sure the rigs are notified.

So there we're talking tenths of a minute, you know.

So we're talking another 15 or 20 seconds added.

That's reasonable.

Um next category we're looking at is the turnout time.

Again, national standard here for fire is a minute and 20 seconds.

You see that we are 2.8, 2.7 minutes, so double the national standard.

That's a concern as well.

Uh, there are a couple of factors that can play into this.

One is what we call unit drawdown.

So in a city like ours where we're fairly busy, uh, I use a fictional example here.

Let's say engine three is on a call, maybe they're on a car accident somewhere, they're attending that car accident, and another call comes in in engine three's territory.

The engine three officer hears that on his radio, he's got a decision to make.

Do I clear from this call and respond to the second emergency?

If I'm maybe I'm getting close to the end of finishing up with this car accident, or do I let another fire engine say engine four come from further away and respond to that call?

Neither one is right or wrong, but you have to make a decision in the moment.

So if you decide that I'm gonna, you know, it's gonna be one more minute here, and my crew will be done at the car accident.

All right, we're gonna wait the minute and we're gonna take that call.

Well, that makes your turnout time longer.

Um, and because we have a lot of concurrent calls in this community, that happens very often.

The other uh factor that plays into this is station design.

Um, all of our stations are relatively new and they're really really nice, and we thank you for that.

Um, but the problem when you build really really big, fancy, nice stations is it takes a lot longer to get from one side of that station to the other.

So if I'm a firefighter at station two, and station two is our biggest one, um, and maybe I'm in the workout room training, maybe I'm in a training room watching a online learning module, whatever it is, and now a call comes in, I've got to stop what I'm doing and walk all the way across the station.

And that sounds silly, like oh, they're just walking.

But in an old school fire station that's maybe a third of that size, you're walking two thirds faster, you're getting your rig quicker.

Um, but now because we've made decisions to build really big, fancy stations, again, thank you.

It takes longer for us to get to our apparatus.

Um, everything ebbs and flows in the fire service.

Uh, this is a trend nationwide.

So if you go to a station design conference right now, the the big emphasis is on how do we maximize that turnout time and get them there faster.

Um, so there are many station design uh tricks that you can use to get new stations and have faster uh turnout times.

So when we build station six, we will take that into account for sure.

But our other five stations that are already built, they they kind of are what they are.

It's gonna take us a while to get from one side of the building to the other.

There are some cultural issues there as well.

I I will I will not dispute that.

Um and we have shared this information with our crews as well, and firefighters are competitive, and I don't think any of them are comfortable with knowing that their turnout time is double the national average.

Council member Miller.

So uh just trying to understand this chart or this table compared with your last slide.

Do any of these at any of the stages meet the national standard there?

Or I I don't these are additive across well, yes or sometimes it looks like so.

Well, I'll talk, I'll speak to the math first, because I had the same first question, right?

So you would think that well, call processing and dispatch time are additive together.

Uh right.

But beyond that, then I would think you would if you add 6.7 to 2.7 to 6.4, that you get the total response time.

That's not the case because these are 90th percentiles, so it's each one of these categories, the 90th percentile of them.

Okay, um, so they're not always indicative of the same incident.

Okay.

Um same thing going down to the totals.

Um is there a way to create a version of this table with a reference row of what 90 90th percentile or national standard would be for that category?

Like comparing where we are on FPA 1710 as you presented before.

Right.

Like cross-referencing the previous slide with the slide, yes.

We can get that to you as well.

Okay.

Um, but to answer your first question, do we meet any of the national standards relative to these first steps of the 911 incident?

No.

Where would we be closest?

We would probably be closest on, or quite a bit often, all of them.

Um, probably closest on travel time, which we'll talk about next.

Okay.

So travel time, the national standard.

So this is once all the firefighters are in the truck and they're driving to the emergency.

Four minutes 90% of the time.

You can see here between fire and EMS were 5.8 and 6.4 minutes.

But that's truly a policy decision.

Um, going through some older annual reports and strategic plans, back in 1993, your predecessors adopted a three-minute travel time standard for their city.

Back in 1993, your predecessors adopted a three-minute travel time standard for their city.

That's one minute faster than the national standard.

Um the fire chief at the time, back in the 90s, told them that we can't meet this.

It's not realistic unless you want to build tons more firehouses.

At that point, it was more than 10 firehouses for the city.

The 1993 footprint of the city, which is much smaller.

So obviously that never came to fruition.

Um, but they this council still held them to the three minute standard, which they couldn't meet.

Um again, it was reaffirmed in 1996.

That's the standard.

And finally, at some point after 96, the fire chief was able to convince them to adopt the current national standard of four minutes.

Um, but that was before when we had a much smaller city footprint.

Councils before you, but after that, made decisions to move station two further out.

Station two used to be right over here on Silver Lake, and now it's up the hill on Iola Road.

Uh station three used to be much closer to the center of the city.

Station four used to be closer.

There was no station five.

Um but previous councils on fire chiefs made policy decisions to say we're comfortable moving stations out further.

Well, that creates longer travel time.

And that's fine, because if you're comfortable with the level of service that you're getting for travel, there once again, there are no national standards police.

We're not going to get arrested for this.

But those are the policy, that's the result of those policy decisions.

It's not a question.

Council Member Miller.

As a follow-up to this, since you mentioned time, can you talk to how these are trending over time?

Are they staying about the same level?

Are we getting better or we getting worse?

So that's a great question as well.

Uh, and this that goes back to the problems of maybe of this organization not routinely tracking its data consistently.

Um, and back to why we brought in Fitch and Associates to help us draft a standard of cover.

So a standard of cover is a tremendous amount of work to draft the first one.

Once you do it, and I I have this talk with my peer fire chiefs all the time that go through an accreditation process.

You better do it every year because it's far easier just to build up the previous years and update numbers so you can watch your own trends versus building one, say every 10 years, uh, because it's like reinventing the wheel every time.

So we'll go through the work with Fitch.

This will be you know, so this is a new baseline.

We we don't have a comparable set of data from we don't.

Uh I could probably pull you something from the 90s, like some of the previous previous chiefs were pretty good about this sort of stuff, but in the past 20 years, not so much.

Thank you.

So, Chief, if you can kind of we're we're at almost the hour point.

I I do see council member Palmer there.

Uh so we're asking a lot of questions.

We want to kind of let you get to your asks.

And also uh, while these uh these numbers are very important to us to hear to see and to understand, it's also we want to know what your recommended solutions to the problems that you think are critical for us to focus on.

So, with that, council member Palmer.

Thank you.

Only have a couple.

Um but the decision was made by the fire department to move the stations out so that it's easier to come into town.

That was the rationale that I remember on that.

The stations were designed by the fire department, it wasn't designed by us.

So if they're too big, then it's not really our fault that they're too big.

Um, and to me, the national standard that you look at, isn't it the IC ICO or the insurance rating and didn't it go improve for us last year that our insurance rating went up?

So if if that's really the the gold standard, the other standards, I'm not sure if they even matter.

Sure.

So what you're speaking of is ISO the insurance office rating.

So every city is is given a rating by the ISO.

Uh it's on a, I think it's a five-year cycle.

Um so in our last reevaluation by ISO, uh, we went from a rating of a three.

So the higher the number, the the worse the performance, I guess I would say.

We went from a three, which is a solid rating, to a two, which is a better rating.

Um we made it past the threshold into a two by like tenths of a point.

So we're right there.

Uh I would say almost at risk of sliding back to a three.

Um what the ISO rating does is it's not it's not a it's an indicator of performance, but for the private sector, so commercial insurance companies use your ISO rating to help determine commercial insurance rates in your city.

So for uh, you know, single family homeowner, it doesn't make any difference whatsoever.

Um but if you own a business in the city, the better the city's ISO rating, the the lower your insurance rate may be if your company subscribes to ISO.

Um and it's also that's not just fire department performance, but it's indicative of the water utility and dispatch as well.

So it's kind of a it's a multi-prong rating of different services that your city provides.

Let's continue.

All right.

Since we're strapped for time, uh well, real quick, effective response for us.

This is also uh defined in an NFPA 1710.

Uh, four key categories, but there are numerous other ones, but single family home, that's our bread and butter fire, that's where we live.

Uh NFPA 1710 recommends 17 firefighters responded to a single family home fire.

We can meet that now because we employ 26 firefighters a day.

So single family homes we're great at.

But going back to being at risk for only handling one incident at a time, we can only handle one single family home, like one and a half, but you never have a half a fire, right?

Um, but then other um categories that look at are open air strip malls.

We've got a ton of these in our city.

The recommended uh effective response force for that is 28 firefighters.

We can't meet that at any one day of the week because we only employ 26 a day here.

Same with garden style apartments, and we're building more of these, is 28 firefighters is the recommended number.

We have 26 a day, and then high rise.

This is where we kind of hung our hat on our last safer grant.

This is what really scared me as the new fire chief when I walked in the door, is you need 43 firefighters to fight effectively fight a high-rise fire, and we only employ 20 at that point, 25 a day.

Um, so we'll talk about that a little more here in a second.

So where are we where we sit today?

Effective response force, we're in partial alignment with the national standards.

We can meet the single family home one.

Ladder truck staffing, uh, we're below the national standard.

Command staffing, we're improved now that we have a second battalion chief every day.

Uh daily staffing, we're below that benchmark because again, every day we don't have enough firefighters to respond if effectively fight uh strip mall fire or a garden style apartment fire or a high-rise fire and response time.

We just talked quite a bit about that.

Uh, we are not in alignment with the national response time standards.

Efforts we've taken to fix this so far, the administrative restructuring and the addition of that additional shift commander a day.

So again, taking folks out of this building on eight-hour shift and putting them back where they're needed in the firehouses, protecting our citizens.

Uh, the improved data collection and metrics, now having a better understanding of where we rank compared to those national standards, and then continuous improvement in the dispatch center.

So that'll lead us to our our our upcoming or preview of our upcoming ask for the safer uh grant.

So as a refresher, safer stands for the staffing for adequate fire and emergency response.

The purpose of the Safer grant is to provide funding for to fire departments to increase the number of firefighters.

That's a key thing.

It can't be used to hire EMTs or paramedics only.

It has to be firefighters, can't be used to hire fire marshals or fire inspectors, it has to be firefighters, and to help communities meet industry minimum standards.

So that's those are the standards we just talked about, those ERFs and those response times.

So we're not meeting most of those now.

The point of SAFER is to help us meet those.

So last year when we met, uh again, this came out short notice.

I was new as the fire chief, and the federal government was shut down at the time.

Uh normally there's a few months' leeway on these sorts of things.

Um, last year there was a few weeks' leeway.

This year is not much different.

Uh, there was about this came out about three weeks ago, the announcement, and it closes in a couple of weeks.

Um, this slide just to show you that this isn't is not a novel thing that we just kind of stumbled across or even are making up.

There are numerous cities across Minnesota that apply for year after year and receive safer grants for millions of dollars.

So a list of those, many of those I would probably call peer communities that are getting numerous firefighters paid for uh in part by the federal government.

So some of our current staffing challenges, again, back to our ladder trucks.

Mayor Norton.

Yeah, could with the grant.

I mean, this is one of the things that we ask all the time of our grants.

Is this a one-time grant that gets people hired?

Is it or how long does the grant go?

Because we will have to pick up the tab after the first year, fifth year, whatever year.

Correct.

Yep, and we got that at the end.

So for the sake of time, if we can wait till I get to the last slide.

Cool, thank you.

Um staffing is currently behind uh the recommended standards.

Um, also some uh current limitations with our staffing that's how we respond to fire and EMS calls.

Um, and then increased drain on our fire engines downtown because there's just a higher number of fire calls and EMS calls that originate downtown.

So some reluctancy to move a fire engine out of downtown until we know we're doing our diligence to reduce the number of calls that they're going on.

So last year, our our safer request was for an additional eight firefighters total.

Um that was shot down, that was not accepted by the feds in large part, I think because we really focused in on the high-rise fire ERF.

So the feds are looking for grants that help communities meet those ERF standards, and we really focused in on high rise because things were relatively rushed.

Um, so we're we want to reimagine it this year.

We want to ask for more firefighters.

So we want a total of 15 additional firefighters.

But what that would do would put five more on each shift, and that would enable us to do three things meet the effective response force for the garden style apartments that we talked about earlier, which are built that we're building more of, meet the effective response force on the strip mall fires, and then we'd have just enough firefighters to basically respond to two simultaneous single family home fires, which does happen occasionally.

It's happened twice since I've been here in our city.

Um, but we don't have enough firefighters now to effectively do that.

So our ask would be to hire a 15 through the safer grant with the grant and these changes, these change year after year, but the last two years have been consistent.

The grant will fund 75% of a first year firefighter salary and benefit package uh for the first two years, and then 35% of that uh salary and benefit package for the third year.

Once the grant is over in the fourth year, there are four options that the feds outlined.

One is to incorporate those positions into the general fund into the tax levy, that would be our recommendation.

Another option would be to reapply for another safer grant.

There is a city on that slide.

I think it was Bloomingdon.

Bloomington does that.

So last year they got seven almost seven million dollars, and again the year prior, they got seven million dollars for safer.

Um, that's the only department I've ever seen be successful in applying for subsequent safer grants for the same position, but it is an option.

I mean, just for clarity, Bloomington went from a combined department to be a full-time department just recently, and they have them all of America.

So we're not we're doing okay.

Yes.

Uh we could also absorb those positions through attrition, basically going back to pre-grant staffing levels as folks retire from the fire department.

I I would not recommend that, but it is a tool that you would have.

Or the last option the most drastic would be to simply the fourth year reduce staffing to the pre-grant levels and lay those people off.

I would also not recommend that.

Uh for the sake of time, I won't get into the impacts, but you obviously firefighter safety, uh, having more firefighters available for our citizens, reducing overtime pressure, aligning with industry best practices.

Uh, but here's kind of what the dollars look like.

So loaded salary and benefits for a first year firefighter right now comes to just under 135,000.

That's what their retirement and the health insurance and everything else.

Um 15 positions over three years means a total outlay of 6.2 million.

The feds would cover 3.7 of that, leaving the city to cover 2.5 million of that over the over the three-year grant period.

Um, so that's roughly 60% of the grant uh that the feds would pick up.

The fourth year the tax uh levy impact if it if you were to go that option would be 2.4 million dollars a year in the perpetuity.

Uh I think there are some other options we can look at as far as maybe coming to you with proposals for like fee for service type things that we can help offset some of that cost, uh charging for numerous false fire alarms.

Like we go to a place third and subsequent false fire alarm in a calendar year, we could build uh bill back for those expenses, uh, lift assists.

We've got numerous facilities in our in our city that rely on the fire department uh to lift patients off of the floor of say a nursing home.

Um lift assists actually account for is it 20%?

Sorry, 10% of our overall run volume in this organization.

That's crazy.

Now we have a ton of nursing homes here, uh, but their staff very frequently don't lift patients off the floor, they call us to do that.

So if we could bill them for that service, that would help offset some of these costs.

Uh, there are cities that bill uh for car accident responses and things like that.

So we could get creative and come back in the future study session if there was an appetite.

Now we're not talking millions of dollars of revenue, but probably hundreds of thousands of dollars that might offset some of that 2.4.

Um, just a snapshot of the the timetable here.

So again, this was an article that got published on May 18th saying safer grant opens May 19th because of the federal shutdown and applications are due by June 22nd.

So we're likely going to come back to you based on the feedback here at least next week for request to apply.

Um, if uh once the application is in, the feds have to make a decision no later than September 30th.

We would come back to you if we were selected uh with the uh permission to accept that.

We have got 30 days for that acceptance.

Once accepted, the city gets 180 days to complete the higher recruitment and hiring, which means these folks wouldn't hit the hit the street until spring of next year.

Um, and that starts the beginning of the 36 month grant period.

How this would align with uh city foundational principles, I won't read those to you, you can read that yourself.

And I believe that is the last slide, but I'll save any.

So, Chief, I I'll start with a question.

So when you came to us uh last year, it was seven.

And granted, I I heard you say that that was focused on the high-rise, but now you're coming with 15.

So what was the change besides the high rise?

What what got you from seven to fifteen?

Right.

So because our grant wasn't accepted, uh we're making the assumption that it wasn't accepted because we could not paint the picture as to how that it was actually eight, but how that was how those additional eight firefighters would get us in line with industry industry bus standards, because eight still is far short of where we need to be for those effective response force numbers that the grant reviewers gonna be looking at, but 15 then checks the box for being able to adequately reply respond to the um open air strip mall fires and the garden style apartment fires, and that's a big risk in our city.

Still doesn't check the box for the high rise, and we're fine with that.

But if we if we tweak our narrative to really focus in on the garden style apartments and the strip mall risks in the city, we feel we have a best a much better opportunity to get our grant selected.

So with the 15, how does that align with the uh the opening of station six and the staffing that you're looking at when that opens?

So when station six opens, we've got two options.

One is to to hire all new firefighters to staff that station or to shunt existing resources that we have in our city out to station six.

So if we hire 15, um, we can retain a portion of those to bolster our ladder truck staffing.

So right now we have three firefighters on a ladder truck, and you can't split a crew of three because you you need the you work in pairs.

We're working in an environment with toxic gases that's completely black where you can't see, we can't send one person into that environment that's not allowed.

You have to have at least two.

Well, I can't split three firefighters into two crews.

But if I put an additional firefighter every day onto each of our ladder trucks, now I've got four people on that truck, and I can split them into two crews, and they can go out and do different things.

So I'm much more comfortable taking an engine from station one and moving it to station six when it opens, if I've got enough firefighters on my ladder truck that's already at station one to say, oh, you can do the work of two crews now because I've got four of you on a truck.

So one last question.

So uh uh at the outset you talked about the travel time, and you said uh that we and you illustrated this.

We don't meet the best in-class travel time with the five stations, but that we would with six we do better at with six because now we're serving that portion of the city that's do we do better across the city or just in that quadrant?

Is a little bit of both.

So definitely in that quadrant, right?

Because right now the few homes that are there are waiting 15 minutes for us to drive there.

Like that's it's that isolated.

Um but also then you're gonna we're gonna decrease on unit drawdown, right?

So now right now, if somebody calls there, they're either getting engine three or engine four to respond there, leaving engine three and engine four's territories empty, and now somebody calls for 901 in engine three or forest territory, they're waiting for somebody else longer away in the city to come.

So the the wider you can spread your resources, the more often you're gonna not have that unit drawdown where one unit is responding into the territory of another.

Okay.

Mayor Norton.

Yeah, I I don't want to get too far afield from the discussion of staffing here, but I just spent uh several hours at a conference yesterday, and we were with the firefighters folks, and one of the issues that they talked about that's in crisis mode right now has to do more with the expenses of purchasing equipment.

Um, three and four-year waits for them, there's a monopoly which is impacting uh the ability to purchase that needs to be broken up.

But with everything that you're talking about, particularly if you're talking about adding a new station, or if you have equipment that's getting aged, you know, are how is this much?

How are you weighing those needs with what you're talking about here, which is adding 15 people?

Right.

So the equipment you're talking about, the delays are really on the apparatus side, so new fire engines.

So years ago, pre-COVID to build a fire engine took nine months.

Uh just that's what it took, always without fail.

Now it's multiple years.

You place your order and you wait.

So we just took our city just took ownership of a new engine that was ordered, I don't know how many years ago.

Four four years we waited to get that engine.

Um the good thing with adding staff and then redeploying the engine from station one is we're not we're not proposing adding any apparatus to the fleet.

We we've we already have two fire engines at station one because of the workload, but if we put additional firefighters on the ladder truck that's down there, we can split them into two on emergency scenes, redeploying an engine and crew that are already there out to station three.

So we wouldn't we wouldn't be coming back to you and asking for an additional engine to add to the the fleet.

And and I guess that my question is is that true of all your fire engines?

Because what I'm hearing and what what we discussed was that across the country, fire engines are being are failing, and there aren't you can't even get parts.

I mean, it's getting that critical.

So, you know, we have six or seven fire stations, and we think about adding another one, you know.

What is the whole fleet look like?

And and again, uh, you have to balance that on where you're gonna spend your money and is it staffing or is it fleet?

Right.

No, absolutely.

And uh our I'd say our fleet overall is in really good shape.

You have been very supportive, and I think we've got a pretty robust admin staff that stays on top of those, our mechanic is great.

Um, so we're comfortable with where our fleet is.

We did as a cost saving measure recently just buy a used ladder truck as a reserve.

So our oldest ladder truck serves as our reserve, so we've got two frontline, one ladder truck as the reserve.

So, like if they go in for an oil change and they pop a tire, they jump in their reserve ladder truck, but that reserve ladder truck was failing to the point where it was not economic to upkeep it anymore.

So our staff went out and found on the East Coast a used ladder truck that it was newer than our reserve ladder truck and got it for pennies on the dollars and drove it back here, and we're currently upfitting that to be our our reserve engine, but a far more economical solution than going out and buying a three or four million dollar brand new ladder truck to serve as the reserve, because that would not be fiscally responsible.

Councilmember Miller.

Sure.

I have three hopefully quick questions.

Uh for this list of other Minnesota communities awarded, is there any indication of in the amount of how many firefighters that relates to?

Is there a formula that you can put in and say this community received award is reward for 10, this community for six, this community for 20?

That's a great question.

I don't believe that's published data.

Um or have you done any outreach to these departments to ask what they what was in their application if the for the use that were successful?

I have not, but I would say that if we took our that 135 figure for loaded salary and benefits, that's probably pretty close to across the state what a firefighter costs, because insurance costs roughly what insurance costs.

I mean there's some small nuance, but we could reverse engineer that and come to a pretty close number.

My second question is if this if we were to authorize you to move forward and the safer grant were awarded, what data would you collect or how would we measure success when we think about post-staffing models?

Right.

I think first and foremost, it's getting that first standard of cover document published and really laying out what are our baselines.

Um where is the council comfortable with certain benchmarks?

Are we comfortable with that six minute travel time?

Are we comfortable with a minute and a half turnout time or two-minute turnout time?

Are we comfortable with some of those dispatch times, or do we want to improve those?

And I would hope the goal should be to continually improve all like you we can invest in policy changes and uh organizational changes that impact many of those, except for travel time.

That really is where are your firehouses relative to where is the demand?

Okay.

And then when would the standards of cover document be complete?

Would it be likely to come by the time that there would be an award decision for the safer grant?

Or we're hoping later this year.

So yeah, okay.

Okay.

I'll say I I feel comfortable um, you know, supporting application uh for this.

Uh I I think we have more to talk about, uh and we're obviously over the first hour, but clearly more to talk about in the higher operations and help us feel comfortable with some of the policy areas.

But I think at this point I I would express support for application of this program.

I appreciate that.

Council member Keene.

Yeah, again, I do appreciate kind of going through this as a very operational look at what happens.

And and frankly, I appreciate your openness of the things that we need we need to improve.

Um my own observation is that uh our um operational efficiency as a as viewed across a couple of years in the city and looking at different events that happen seems to be much better than when we compare it to standards.

That we seem to have better results than what we should get with the way we're not following often standards.

And I'm not sure if that has to there's a real operational reason for that.

Um I think the I mean it is it's not lost on need that more of our incidents are in the older part in the city center and all of our and and then when we do coverage models, we move the stations out to get closer to where the where the populations are, and it almost feels like we're in the wrong direction.

Um as far as you know, supporting the request for 15 additional, which is a huge raise on a uh and like this and talking about I I read it as a six million dollar hit for one specific service that would probably drive at least a six percent impact on on the levy that it makes it it it I am not ready.

That it makes it I am not ready.

I just want to clarify something.

The annual cost is two point four million dollars.

So I heard that, but I I thought that and again I then I did my math wrong because I I heard 2.5, but I also saw that we're being covered up front with federal, but that goes away after two years.

So the what the way the math was on that slide was showing you the three-year cost, and the actual fourth year where you're absorbing it all is the 2.4 million.

15%.

In a department that I think you have about uh in the range of 110 firefighters right now.

It it just feels and and if I had a very specific problem that I knew I was addressing, but just to chase these standards, it's I I I'm not there yet.

That's a valid point.

Other thoughts.

And I would just note that we do plan to have this on reports and recommendations on the 15th, not on consent.

So council member Palmer.

Just to follow with what Mr.

Keene is saying that I mean the ISO, I mean, if you make it by this much, you still make it, and so you lower their insurance rates, and and as you said, it doesn't count for this for the residential, but the residential is already covered.

So um, I'm I'm not sure I want to add 16 more people to the city payroll.

So um we'll have to think about this.

Sure.

Thank you, Chief.

I'll just leave you with a quick quote because I came across this while while digging through some of this.

So this is from Chief Dave Kapler, who's fire chief numerous fire chiefs ago to the city council president back on October 28th of 1999.

Starts with it's quote, like a youngster who was outgrowing last year's snowsuit.

Rochester is finding its current boundaries a little short in the sleeves.

And this is the preparation for preparing the council to hire additional firefighters to open new station five.

That wasn't open.

So kind of finding ourselves in the same situation.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Next up, we have uh Mayfield update.

Um, Mr.

Whitman and et al.

Good evening, uh Mayor, Council President, and Council members.

Mayo Field has served the community for many decades.

And to begin with, today we're gonna have Mike Nigber talk about the condition of the stadium.

And he'll also address the planning for an update to the stadium that is in our current uh parks and recreation system plan, but talk about the how things have changed and circumstances have changed since that plan was adopted in 2016.

From there, Ben Bolt is going to discuss how the regional sports and recreation complex will accommodate the demand for baseball, except for the honkers who've announced that they're uh leaving after the end of this season, or they're no longer being going to be playing at Mayo Field.

And finally, with the upcoming relocation of the parks and forestry uh operations center to the new main uh facility to the new maintenance center.

Uh there's an opportunity to look at the long-term future of this area.

And Irene uh Woodward will conclude the presentation by outlining uh a proposed planning process.

And so we'll uh start out with Mike.

So as Paul talked about, there's a long history here.

We've got about 120 years of ownership of the property.

Well, thank you, Ben.

Um and over that time frame, things have changed in that property quite dramatically.

There was a stadium built, that stadium went away.

We had Buffalo and Deer there, those went away, built a new stadium there, which is there today.

Uh we've added our park and forestry building there.

Again, long time history there, long time buildings, which create their own challenges along with that.

So the current stadium is is built in 1946.

Lighting was added in 1951, about 2,000 people capacity up there.

We've got deck space, we've got stadium space, etc.

Um, those are there still till still today.

And in 1946, it was brand spanking new.

2026, not so new anymore.

Um that's part of the challenge we've got.

And in 2013, we I came to Park and Rec in 2011.

We knew there's some challenges going on with our facilities.

Our park and forestry operations building, we talked about that early on.

Uh, thank you.

We're getting a new building here shortly, so it's very exciting to have.

In 2013, we had a report done on the stadium itself to find out what was going on there, what are the challenges with that?

AD accessibility, the plumbing, the wiring, the stadium itself, the condition of that rusting and and kind of just falling apart in many cases.

Um there's some costs that were assigned to that building to correct the immediate needs and then long-term issues.

And in 19 uh 2013, that was 770,000.

So not a not a big chunk of money, but still a big chunk bigger than our budget at that point in time for our CIPs.

Along with that, in 2013, we had a failure of some lighting or a lighting pole during a storm event.

Said, wow, that's kind of unusual.

Did more some more research, brought a consultant in, and lo and behold, the same issue we had back then in that single light was affecting all of our lights.

So we got a new set of lights out there, not planned for, so council funded that in that time frame.

Those same issues that we have back then, except for the lighting, the stadium issues, the rusting, the cracking, the delamination of the wood, you name it, is still there today.

Now our team maintains that facility, and we do maintain it.

So we we change wiring, we we make modding uh plumbing modifications, but that's just it.

It's putting lipstick on an old building, is really what that's doing.

There's other terms for that.

But um the quality we provide to our our community members is our field, and that's we've received several awards over the years to show our commitment to that facility.

The stadium is just an old facility that you just have to deal with.

So the continuing issues that we've got out there are AD accessibility, that's still the same plumbing issues, same electrical issues, and just the overall experience of people going there and the players using that facility.

Some of the pictures we've got here for you, and you probably see those in the in the packet, but again, it is just um old and just worn out and likely so that it should have been redone many years ago.

And as Paul alluded to, we have a park system plan that we did in 2016 that we adopted.

We talked about this, and that park system plan acknowledged the stadium needed to be updated significantly or replaced.

Uh community input providers to us said we want a new facility out there for our community members.

I'm sure that's provided by other users, that's whether it be soccer, the honkers, or or uh the Red Hawks, you name it, wanted to see a better stadium to be playing in.

Um, in our park system plan, we talked about this is a long-term vision.

We had no funding applied to that.

So we said, okay, what's the real estate time frame?

Just like in our pool conversations, we didn't have funding for two pools.

We said, okay, let's let's shoot for one big pool and make it really good.

We had a goal for a stadium here.

Well, realistically, 2030 and beyond, and not even our own money.

We had to partner with people.

Our our goal and our park system is partners.

It makes our world go round and does a very good job for that.

So again, we're looking at a partnership out in 2030 when we had no money or commitment at that point in time.

Well, come along 2020, and the referendum came about, and we were successful in that endeavor, and we have two million dollars a year going towards our our asset preservation enhancements and community growth, etc.

For that, worked really well.

We set priorities for ourselves, we've been working towards those priorities ever since.

In that prioritization, though, we said 2030 was that goal.

Let's continue that along.

And we've not provided CIP funding for that stadium at all, just our own operational dollars to correct those issues that come up on an annual basis.

Well, around the time of 2021, 2022, someplace in that range, hawkers were meeting with us, and they kind of said, you know what, it's nice, great field to play on, but the stadium is not long for this world.

We're gonna be looking elsewhere or looking at a different facility.

They had concepts developed both at our site and other sites to see what can happen, what can be that new vision.

And in the end, here in 2026, they provide notice of termination, which is outlined in our lease agreements with them, given that option for them as well as for us.

And they chose us uh chose to go forward in that in that time frame.

So where we're at today, it's a new vision.

What is that gonna be looking like?

Right now, the property is of overall is about 8.75 acres.

That includes the mail field and our current operational site.

So if you look at the yellow area, it's about 2.7 acres.

Our operational area is about two acres of that.

And again, thank you very much.

We're getting a new building out there coming up shortly here in August, September.

So we'll more than double that size and be very effective at that new location with our public works friends.

So very exciting time for us.

Maybe, however, that will still remain.

We're looking at operating that through 2027.

Um, but at this point in time, you know, we've got high school teams there, the honkers play there.

It's about 90 games a year, plus some several events.

So again, it's a very active site.

Um, what happens in the future going forward?

Mr.

Nigber, did you just I thought you said that the honkers are not going to be there in 2020?

This year they are.

This year they are.

In 2020.

27, they're the go-way.

Yes, correct.

I may have misspoke.

My apologies.

Um, so really it's a matter of what we're looking at both for now, today, next year, and then forthcoming years.

Um, so the small area plan, we'll have we can talk about that in just a second, but it covers a lot of small property areas, including Mayo Field.

But we've got some goals for our park and rec area in this location.

So we think there's about two to four acres of redevelopment space that's available, keeping some recreation space there for the community members to utilize in some fashion.

What that will be, we don't know.

That vision's not been developed yet.

Um we want to keep some space along the river corridor area.

Again, there's bike trail there right now.

People like the river corridor to go bike along and utilize.

So again, keeping that segment there.

Um and then what may happen with those sports groups going forward.

And I'll let Ben talk about that and what that may happen.

Sure.

Thanks, Mike.

Um, so just briefly on the current users uh they were outlined on the slide there.

There are several different uh baseball teams that utilize the space during the course of the spring and summer.

Um in the spring, especially many high school teams uh sharing space both at Mayo Field as well as Hudson Field, Rochester baseball complex, and then um each of the high schools has a a ball field at their high school location as well.

So the way we envision accommodating those additional teams and those games, those 90 games that are uh displayed on the screen here would be once the new fields are ready at the uh Rochester Sports and Recreation Complex, those could be utilized in the spring.

A lot of these games happen on weeknights when we'll have those community users there and um and be able to accommodate them in that way.

As we've talked about before, we expect that we'll have the opportunity to host many different types of community events at the sports complex as well.

So movies in the park or things like that could certainly be accommodated out there.

So we think there is a way to accommodate that.

Uh maybe the one thing I would just add to that would be um it will potentially mean that the groups will need to consider how they develop their schedule in general.

There are some teams who like to play on Saturdays and Sundays.

We may have to modify that based on what we have for uh tournaments going on at the new facility when that time comes, but that would be our plan to accommodate those teams and activities.

The last thing I just mentioned is that you know, we've got a park system plan update coming forward here, starting at the end of the year, going in through 2027, and that update of the master plan or park system plan will help guide some of the reuses that may happen in the park space specifically, but um it won't address the overall vision this prepared may have for redevelopment.

That's really where Irene's team comes in and starts talking about the small area plan.

So, Irene.

You want to go to the next slide?

Sorry.

Oh, that's right.

Um, so really part of this um stemmed from last year.

There was a study session back in July where we started to identify all of our parcels that the city owned parcels.

There was kind of a rough map on the side that we have identified this particular parcel and these two, and then what does it start to look like if you look at this area together and help to really look at what's the future development is that?

If you want to go to the next slide.

Um, we tried to start to lay out a little bit of what what this would look like.

This work would be um led by the planning team within community development.

Um it's kind of one of the things we've identified in the comprehensive plan is you know, there's these high-level versions, but we've also identified the need for kind of these more small area plans of really diving in a little bit into more detail of what could happen in these different areas and help guide that future development, along with really building off of some of the existing riverfront plans.

There's been some planning work just to the south.

How does this really incorporate into that?

Um, this area really hasn't, we've not identified or really study it in great detail.

So, what does these development opportunities look like in terms of land use connectivity?

What does that really look like?

Um, we would also envision that there would be engagement with neighborhood and stakeholders that would be led by the planning team in conjunction with probably communications kind of assisting with some of that.

We also expect to kind of work with parks, public works, RPO in there in terms of identifying what those needs are, what's available, what's really going to make sense in terms of what does what are the potential for these sites long term and what does this area really look like within the city?

Um, and so I we estimated this work to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026, um, and really being led by that planning team, which was something that we really envisioned as part of the comprehensive plan is the ability to kind of take on some of these smaller ones in-house and really start to drive some of what that looks like that would be consistent with our comprehensive plan moving forward.

That's all the information we had for you to share, kind of give you a high-level overview of what we're doing right now, what the plan is going forward, and to answer any questions you may have.

Okay.

Uh I'll start off with the with the final point.

So with the small area plan.

And and you know, my my the challenge I have with the small area plans that we have is we did one for the uh waterfront, AMPE, Kmart six years ago.

We did the two sites that uh bookend uh the government center uh three years ago, four years ago.

And I don't know what we do to we do the small area plan, and then we really don't uh follow up and really market it, peddle it to developers and see progress on you know the vision that we have.

It's a great vision for both, but so what do you have planned to actually do the follow-up and get uh get those private sector partnerships kind of moving and saying that's a good space down there, there's a good space here, there's a good space there.

Now we're looking at this one.

So I I think the benefit to that small area plan is really identifying like what should those do changes need to happen within the UDC or the land use with these properties, and it also really helps provide guidance to council going forward of how should these be reused, what would make the most sense in terms of redevelopment to be able to kind of move forward and partner through this process, we'd be looking to engage with stakeholders, which could be developers in terms of what are they seeing.

Um I think some of the you know, we've seen other planning efforts, and some are with private developers, and there's there's that challenge of how quickly they need to move forward with different projects.

There's also just the changing dynamics that are happening within Rochester in terms of development happening and growth.

So, this really is to me the start of that small area plan is really identifying what what should this area really start to look like as we are continuing to change and taking that into account and prepping so that you can identify those future partners of where those redevelopment opportunities are within the city parcels in this general area that we as the city would have control over, or the council would help guide some of those um discussions and decisions later on.

Let me add just one more thing.

Is this piece of property?

We've been talking about redevelopment of this site for about 30 years, by the way.

So again, having a vision in place at least gives you a step forward towards what may happen to that site.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Palmer.

Thank you.

Um, whenever I've been at an event there, everybody is parked at Mail Civic Auditorium right across the street there.

Do you know how many parking spots we're losing with Sherman Associates uh building there?

I I would have to double check and get back to you with that number.

I'm gonna assume it's it's quite a few.

And so then I look at this area here, and and do I really want a parking lot that that's along the river?

I mean, it's a great trail and that's wonderful and stuff.

Um, and so I I'm not a particularly fan of having a parking lot there.

The other inquisitive question I have is is it looks like towards the east side of the property there, it's it's a boundary line there.

Is that included in this or is that separate?

So if you can see my cursor, there's multiple parcels that are owned by the city in this case.

So our property boundary goes to this line right here, comes back around the north side of the railroad tracks, down to the river, back down.

There's a sliver here where the yellow line is, and then back straight across.

That's our total property equaling about 8.75 acres.

That's the 8.7 the whole thing.

Yep.

And I know there's some conversations about what we may have owned in the past.

We have never owned these properties in the south side of the ball field.

Okay.

And then um, only other two questions.

One is I know we have the American Legion in there, and that comes from the Mayo Civic Auditorium, and then there were some covenants that were put on when the when the gift was made.

How do you how do you deal with those?

So it's a great question.

I mean, there's a hundred years of history here, including that history of deed restrictions and the use of the agreements, things like that.

We're analyzing those and we'll make a better decision as we have time to do that.

Um it's not immediate right now to make the decisions, but we are looking at that.

Councilmember Miller.

Thank you.

Just a couple of questions.

Uh you said the uh the analysis of a small area plan would likely could start at the end of this year.

How long would it take to complete that process?

And if a developer came to the city and said, here's an idea we have, and you're in the middle of that process.

Do you say, wait?

Do you bring them into the process or and how do we engage with that sort of conversation while the small area planning process is in happening?

I think it could likely take six to eight months.

I'm giving a rough um ballpark depending on some of the other work that is happening.

I think if uh someone was coming in interested, I think there's going to be some some balancing of things.

It doesn't mean you stop some other things as you're doing that, or we consider multiple options when we're evaluating some of these properties.

Um I also recognize things can change in that six to eight months, and I think we can accommodate some of that, or identify if there's a developer interested, what those options are and and balance those things.

And I think both of those things can happen at the same time.

Okay.

My second question is about some of the bullet points where it says park goal, preservation of neighborhood park space.

Obviously, there's a trail there, it connects immediately to the north to Silver Lake Park with different playground amenities, a pool, green fields, etc.

Just south, you can immediately connect to a playground at Mayo Park on both sides of the river.

Uh at our last study session, we talked about trail funding, uh covering gaps, giving people access to the park system as a whole.

I'm curious why would um neighborhood park space need to be preserved here when there is immediate access and we have other needs in the park system that we don't have funding sources for.

I'm curious how those goals uh balance out here and what would you mean by preservation of neighborhood park space here?

Yeah, it's a great question.

You know, when when I look at this piece of property, it's right downtown, it's big and open, there's no trees blocking the way.

Not being, you know, you can't really look at that other spaces that say, here's a big open space to go play in.

Silver Lake, you do in a couple spots, mail park you cross the street, you do not have that.

It's all full of trees.

So again, how you play in the space uh does make an impact.

Um so again, being selected.

What is it, like a 10-minute walk to Silver Lake from here?

I mean, it feels quite close.

I think that again, you raise a valid point.

The question, though, is as a person who's living in this area and had access to green space for a long, long time, um, losing that green space right now, what would they say about that?

Now, green space, by the way, right, it's available, has been used by community gardens and just open space and use space right now.

And it's not a very big space at all, but it's still available.

And again, losing all that, I think is is a harm to the community members.

Now, again, that's a debate.

But again, how you incorporate that space with a development, I think it's very easy to do.

Sure.

So I think that layout is key to this function.

And again, the trail connectivity is big, but again, offsetting what's in the neighborhood already is the question.

Okay.

Mayor Norton.

Yeah, I I'm a little frustrated by the conversation here.

And I'm I I have to say I get frustrated by, you know, we've been talking about this for 30 years.

The city has changed drastically in 30 years.

So what we talked about then and what we need to do now are completely different.

And I'll just push back a little bit on the small area plan uh issue.

Since I've been mayor, we have created several small area plans.

They've sat on the table, no one's developed, no one's interested.

And I'm and we spent a lot on consultants uh to do that work.

And uh some of them have been done, and then right across the street, we said we want some apartments here, and then right across the street, a huge high-rise goes up with 145 apartments.

Maybe we don't need that there anymore.

And so I'm hesitant to continue to do plans for something that we may or may not need in the future, and would like to see us do a little bit more dreaming about what could be there.

We've had been approached by several develop several folks um who have ideas about things that we know the community wants and needs, but we say, well, we already have a small area plan, it can't go there.

And I don't want us to continue to be in that position where we have small area plans because of something that happened 30 years ago that maybe isn't relevant, or even seven years ago that isn't relevant anymore.

And we're not opening the space up for creative development by people who are ready to do things like now or in the next few years.

And I I feel like um we're spending a lot on consultants for things that maybe could wait, or we could put it on the market, or we could look for something that we want and say, is there anyone interested in building something here and do those P3s?

So I'm I'm just I'm very leery about this, partly because I have what I've seen on these other small area plants, which have been built during my time as mayor, and they're still empty and ugly and nothing's happening on them.

So I'm just frustrated.

Go ahead.

I I appreciate that.

And I think sometimes with small air plans, it's also setting that vision for those areas.

And so sometimes, you know, things do change and you kind of adapt.

And I think part of what this is doing for this area is setting that vision.

What are some of that feedback and how do you start accommodate all of those different things?

Um, I think it's also building off of the work that was done in the comprehensive plan in terms of some of those priorities and really starting to focus in on this area in terms of like what are those big opportunities that can be done, and how do we build off of the other planning efforts?

And I will just note for this, we're we're really just focused on using our existing uh staff to do it within planning departments.

So, in terms of any professional services, it would probably be very minor.

We're not looking to hire a consultant to do all of this work.

And that is something we kind of identified within the comp plan is an opportunity for us to kind of like pilot and do some of these because we recognize some of these areas are going to happen where there's available property, and how do we best utilize them going forward?

Thank you.

And I appreciate that, and I appreciate the the work and the creativity that the community development team does on all of these uh small area plans.

I think the piece from my perspective that's missing is that it isn't community development, it's that economic development handoff that that should happen once you've complete a small area plan.

And I don't know where that handoff happens.

The uh obviously we have ready here in this community, and there are other opportunities, but I I guess holistically to the city administration is we have to think about what where those handoffs are as far as economic development and uh and uh make sure we follow through with that.

And I knew somebody would be able to speak to this.

Mr.

Yetzer, go ahead.

Thanks, Council President.

Um if I can chime in here really quick.

I think you're asking the right questions around economic development.

I think that's a whole nother conversation that we should have.

I just also want to just make the note that I want to caution that just because we're not seeing the economy or the like, say downtown waterfront smaller area plan on a study session monthly or yearly that it's not being used.

We we speak with that developer very frequently, and that plan is absolutely guiding the conversations that are happening there.

And but for that, we would be floundering a bit on how to guide those conversations.

I also think oftentimes those developments come and we hear things like, well, how come the community didn't have a chance to um weigh in on what they would like to see in this area and those sorts of things, and that's the opportunity that that small area plan allowed us to do to then help have those conversations.

I I know you're very familiar with that process and how the community was involved.

So I just want to note that just because it's not being used or talked about at regular council meetings, that it means it's not being used because the team does use them still.

And we don't own all of this property.

So 60 acres of the empty site is owned entirely by one person who's going through a GDP, and that's what Mr.

Yetzer is referencing.

But we did utilize that in order to encourage the federal government to help support Sixth Street Bridge access and all of the other road improvements, which then is part of the economic development to encourage there to be additional development there.

But we also don't have sewer capacity for that entire site.

So a lot of challenges to struggle through when we have those infill projects.

Um and I'm not aware of development that's been that has approached one of those that we haven't at least considered.

But if it many of those folks also come forward, not with all of their financing lined up.

Councilmember Wall.

You know, I I really hardly know what to say in this discussion.

Um I think that I have spent more time at Mayo Field than almost everybody here.

Many of them enjoyable hours, some of them really bad hours, like counting 30 minutes after a lightning strike or waiting two and a half hours to sing the national anthem, or you know, it's it's really been a great ball field.

And uh it's it's too late in 2026.

Uh we've kind of missed the boat uh for 40 and 50 years to continue to update that uh stadium so that uh we can be proud of that.

Uh I go to lots of stadiums uh across uh the region, uh many of them in the Twin Cities.

And uh boy, Mayofield just it I think that probably what some of the community needs to hear.

I've seen at least one letter to the editor.

Uh I think that somebody probably here has to say this will never be a ball stadium again.

Thank you, Councilman.

No, no, I'm not done.

Okay.

I'm I just I think we need to put that on the table for the community to say this will just never be a ball stadium.

I'm not hearing anybody affirm that.

Well, I think what I, if I may, I can say that our park system plan is not identified a new ball stadium other than this field right here.

And because it was identified before the hawkers have said we don't want to participate in this future process, that plan part of the plan is really no longer valid.

So our next iteration of the park system update would probably say, you know what?

There's no bigger ball field here needed because there's no bigger players here.

We've got the new Southeast Complex that has already said we can absorb those other other players.

Again, why would we have something else in addition to that?

So it's not a no, but it's not a yes either.

I I'm going to hear yes in that that you're affirming that that will not be a ball field.

Uh the South Sports Complex will be of uh such value that I think that uh our especial local high school teams uh will uh find great honor in playing there.

And and I really believe that a community of our size needs to provide a place whereby our uh especial high school ball teams can be very proud of uh where they're playing.

Uh the Royals honkers are different things since they need a stadium to be sure.

Um, it's a this is such a beautiful spot in Rochester.

Um it kind of reminds me of CHS Field in St.

Paul where you shoehorn a stadium kind of in the middle of a neighborhood, and you can't believe that they actually play baseball uh in this place.

I mean, it is I I sit I've sat there thousands of hours.

I really believe that's true.

Uh, and and look at the skyline and wow, this is a jewel that uh we we need to do very, very well with I'll be done now, but I got lots of emotions.

Thank you, Councilmember.

It very well said.

Any other thoughts on council member council member keen?

Go ahead.

Yeah, again, I've struggled with this too.

And it's consistent where we have areas where we have our park, uh, our park system, and then we have like amenities that are maybe sports related, but they're really more economic development or other things that are off to the side of parks, uh similar to a volleyball thing.

Um I think of this this ballpark, I don't think of it as a park the way I think of neighborhood parks or regional parks.

This is not really for other people to come to.

This is where there people go for entertainment.

I know that plenty of families love to go.

This is an evening event or a weekend event to go see the you know, the semi-pro level ball or the the entertainment they do there, but I find that those are very difficult things to fund, like when you talk about the sports or the um parks referendum, I can see how it can get on the list and I can see how it never moves up the list because it it just doesn't have that sort of backing.

And as far as partners, I mean these other groups that are out there think we're the partners that we're gonna be doing this investing.

So I I don't know how this is gonna work.

Um and I I have thought about, you know, I think one of the reasons when we did the whole moving the park headquarters to Northeast was this idea of getting this development opportunity there.

And if it ended up being a paved over parking lot, we've totally missed the boat on what we were trying to do.

Um I actually appreciate the fact that when we had money over the last 20 years, we kept the field itself in really good shape.

The field itself has a good reputation as a as a really good playing field, good line lines of sight, good lighting, things like that.

And I think that's money well spent.

Uh, but clearly we've let everything else run down.

And I don't think it's not a soft, like here's how you fix it.

The one part of input I've gotten I'll share with my peers and the staff here is like, you know, we'd love you to fix this up, but please don't do it to the extent that it costs me 17 to get in.

Like, don't fix it up to the point that I can't afford to go anymore.

And I think that's important here too when we look at this trade-off.

I'm kind of sad when we were doing the sports complex that we didn't look at one of the fields having room for a thousand seats or outfield seating or something, so that we could have potentially looked in the future as that as an as an option for this.

Um, I agree with Councilmember Wall that I'm kind of looking here and saying, like, we've got this beautiful field there, and until things start developing there, we can continue to use it, but I don't see it as the long-term solution.

Thank you.

I don't know if you guys want to realize I'll say is is the quality of field we're providing out southeast, you know, is really uh from a standpoint of operational, much more efficient being out there, much more cost effective, and it's a great quality field.

People are expecting to play on synthetic turf nowadays than artificial than regular grasses.

They still appreciate grass, and we do a great job.

It comes at a price, though.

Councilmember Palmer.

Well, I mean, again, I'm gonna say, you know, when we gave that property the Sherman Associates, we kind of cast the die on on getting rid of the park because there's really nowhere else to park in that location.

Um, I also have to smile because last week we opened up Silver Lake Pool, which wasn't on your plan, and it was in bad shape for 20 years, and I remember for the last eight years getting the phone call going, cast iron may not go, but uh, you know, we not open, but uh we made it work.

And so um I don't see the whole pier for this field, and I think your answer, Mr.

Wall is that there will not be a ball field there, and and I think you're right to say that um for many reasons, but one of the big ones for me is that there's no parking in um I I don't want a parking lot along the the river.

Point of order.

Uh go ahead, council member.

The ramp is only one more block away.

I park there a lot.

Oh my god, a whole lot.

Thank you, gentlemen.

We will take a um eight-minute break.

Can I I just quick, I'm not gonna I have to leave because I'm actually throwing the first pitch out at the hawker stadium this evening.

After after we spent two, we had 200 children uh between the ages of six and twelve at the honkers field today doing play ball, which was really cool.

And guess who was out again this year?

Okay, we're going to get started.

We have yes, we are restarting.

Uh, we have Heather Kirchner here with our legislative session recap and update.

So take it away.

Thank you, Council President, and Council members.

Excited to be here today.

It's been twenty-one days since the session ended on May eighteenth, so we'll talk a little bit about what happened there.

And then we're also no rest for the weary, looking forward ahead to the next legislative session, and wanted to start the ball rolling with some potential ideas, and really just to kick off the kind of next part in our cycle and process there.

It also was an electric, it's an election year.

Um usually when I give this slide during the beginning of the session, I put a question mark after bonding year.

I took that away, as you'll uh hear in a second.

And there were a ton of bills introduced, just even this past part of the session, not counting the ones from the previous year that were still able to be activated on.

91 bills are signed into law.

Obviously, a lot of those did include smaller individual bills because we have omnibus bills in Minnesota.

So when we walked into the legislative session, even before then, you all had given us the direction to seek some specific Rochester legislation, which you were excited to do.

These uh basically four requests here, in addition to lots of other requests that were included in your material.

Um, the multi-page booklet covers a lot of the issue areas that we are ready to respond to if they come up during the legislative session.

And I'll just cut right to the ending.

Um, we had really remarkable outcomes in this space this session.

It's not up there.

Thanks.

Maybe Ann is working on you can continue to do that.

Well, that was the drum roll, but we do have it on our um keep it rolling.

We we have we can we've seen it and perfect, yes.

You memorize these because it's it's good news uh for the city.

We were able to come forward um and through the legislature's really key activation in having a bonding bill this year, and our request being at the forefront uh for our East Sombro sewer and water infrastructure, we were able to receive 13.224 million dollars.

Um, and I'll talk a little bit about that request in a second.

After the second year of the requests related to Chateau Liquor, we were able to get that through as well in April of the session.

There were two other provisions related to work on uh sports and recreation that were able to um be favorable to continue the work and conversations that are happening locally related to RCTC and also the regional sports and recreation complex.

Cool.

In your materials, you can see if you want to read more since it might have been a while since we've talked about the East Zumbro uh sewer and water project, but just a reminder this is queuing off of a previous request that we've had federally, and we were able to receive a million dollars earlier this year federally, and then we went to the state legislature with a 9.2 uh million dollar request for the first phase of the project, thanks to those of you who helped with.

Thanks, Ann.

Um the bonding tours that were held in Rochester over the fall.

Bonding requests are a long game.

Uh, we put a lot of effort into making sure that our story is told uh in advance of the legislative session, not only to our local legislators but the bonding committees, and then during key moments during the legislative session, being ready to respond to their questions, um, potentially pivot or request, downsize or upsize it.

In this case, um, they were able to provide additional funding than what we had originally asked for, which we're very grateful for.

And that was uh a bipartisan effort, and we're really really uh pleased with that and excited.

You'll see some next steps there on the slide.

Uh, it'll come to you again as a council in um later this year uh further, and we've got the public works teams already um working hard to roll that out along with RPU in a coordinated fashion.

And this again will help open up uh more housing by upsizing the sewer and water pipes throughout the city, focusing on the southeast southwest part of the community.

We also had a lot of positive outcomes just generally for cities that then uh are positive for us, things that we would apply for or benefit from potentially.

Those first three related to local road and bribbage improvements, uh lead service line, and the library construction grants were from the bonding bill.

We would presumably apply for some funding through those as we have in the past.

Um housing infrastructure bonds and the FHPAP program related to homelessness prevention are also something we support in our priorities.

Those were funded pretty robustly through the housing bill, and then um our partnerships with other groups that um the city participates as a member through the Greater Minnesota Parks and Trails groups, the municipal utility association, uh the League of Minnesota Cities, um, the Minnesota Library Association all had other requests that um some of which we echoed and saw positive results on that you can see listed here.

I also included a little note about some things that did not get through that are on our list and um pending council approval later this year when you consider 2027, those would be things that we would continue to carry on forward.

Wanted to provide you a slide on LGBTQ.

Before you go to that, can I just ask a kind of a uh a background question?

So you with the uh East Sombro uh sewer and water, we asked for nine.

We we got four million more.

What's the backstory on that?

What uh why you know is that something were they did they overfund a lot of projects, or did we did we get something special here?

I I said the long game in that when I was describing it because I think it was a iterative process that all of you, I think ever almost everyone in this room uh participated in some way to tell our story though, whether it was a photo of the future pipes or um housing being a really hot issue at the Capitol.

I think the other part was um sometimes we get lumped into the other cities of the first class, and there's interest in providing parody there when they look at what other communities are getting.

We're also a very unique growing economic engine of the city or of the state, as we've talked about.

And and I really want to give a lot of credit to our local legislators because they were tenacious in asking for Rochester's fair share um to the bonding committee chairs and and doing a lot of advocacy in that way, and we are seeing the results of that with this amount.

So a really team effort um from top to bottom.

Thanks.

Uh council member Palmer.

If I remember correctly, back in January when we said we wanted to go to one um issue, and I think um people were recommending three.

Um, would you say that was obviously successful to do that?

Uh yeah, I think we had really um positive results from the bonding request that we put forward, whether it's one or multiple, if there's a desire to fund Rochester's requests at a certain amount, they will do that presumably for you know what we're looking to get funding for.

Do you recommend that for next year?

That could be something that yeah, we we should have further conversations about whether you'd want to just go in for the future phase requests, so asking for money for phase three and four, or if you want another project in addition.

Okay, just before you go to the next slide.

You're talking about parity with the other cities of the first class.

Now we'll go to the next slide.

I did give you that one, yes.

So not not necessarily a legislative outcome because there were no changes to the LGA overall appropriation during the session.

Um in some ways that's you know something to be noted because sometimes that gets cut when they're looking at um changing funding around.

But as part of the legislative session, there's typically a projection run that's shared at some point when there is a bill um related to LGA, and so as part of that we wanted to forecast that the LGA amount is projected to go down for the following year.

And this is something that the folks will remember we encountered back around 2020 and 2021.

There was a temporary hold harmless provision that was um funded to prevent that cliff basically from happening at that point.

Um and then there's kind of been other efforts since then, but if there's no other changes to the overall LGA appropriation, then this would be the around what's estimated that it's not certified until August of this year.

Remind us when the LGA formula is to be looked at the next time.

Great question.

It's teed off of the census, so every 10 years, but then usually a year or two after that census update.

So 30 32.

And it's certified every two years.

I mean, so you know more cities coming in and out of the formula as well.

I would just note though, I mean, you you can't understate the impact of this.

I know as you reconcile budget challenges, we'll start to talk about that over the summer.

I mean, if you look back even to 2019 and we were on a some form of decline even back then, I mean, we've you know lost about four almost four million dollars of LGA.

I mean, that's you know, a four percent levy increase on your end to have to accommodate that reduction at the state, and obviously compounds year after year.

So I mean, the formula is just not friendly for us, uh given all the things that go into that, but I think it's a real thing that you all have to consider, and we'll talk more about the how we address this gap and the budget process, but it's not an immaterial consideration.

Council member Keene.

Uh yeah, just on the like from the state perspective, are they do they continue to fund LGA at the same level, or is that funding dropping too?

I think it's the same level, but there's no inflationary increase automatically, and that's one thing that the League of Minnesota Cities often advocates for.

So if they don't increase it on its own in next year during the budget year, then it will have less to spread out.

I had heard some discussion about it potentially getting cut as part of the budget reconciliation.

I don't believe that happened in any big way, but uh was that a discussion?

Definitely last year more than this year.

Yeah, toward the end of session, if you'll remember, there was um do you have a high-level number that at the state they fund uh LGA at like uh 400 million?

I I I don't have any I don't have a number.

I do, I can get that to you.

Okay, we can do it separately.

We don't need to do it here.

Great.

So before we transition into next year, I just wanted to really again thank everyone again that participated in various ways at the Capitol, and you'll see a lot of uh familiar faces on this slide.

We had a high amount of presence at the Capitol, and again, I think that does keep us in the forefront of our local legislators' minds and others at the Capitol, and so really big thanks.

I know it's a not a small effort to take time to do that, but it is noticed at the Capitol and appreciated.

We participated in a lot of association days with the Library Association, utilities, transportation.

Um, I think that you notice that council member Miller looks really happy in his pictures, and I do not and and many people came up multiple times for the League of Associates Day, and we had a lot of new teammates too that engaged in the process at the Capitol, and I think that was noticed as well.

So appreciate that and the time that people spend so this might look familiar.

This is kind of our annual cycle, and I didn't put an arrow saying we are here on this slide because we're kind of in between two of the colors.

So on the left side, we're you know, at the end of May here, but not quite to July.

So getting ready to kick into the League of Minnesota City's policy committees and our own internal process before we turn the page into 2027.

As we look at potential priorities, obviously these are on the front of our minds, looking at your council direction related to your priorities and principles.

And then uh, you know, just other context to walk into the next year.

Um obviously it'll be after a big election where all 201 legislators will have been um running for their seats, we'll have a new governor, we know for sure.

There could be new committee structure.

Um different uh parties have elected to have different focuses.

For example, you know, eight, 10 years ago there wasn't even a dedicated committee to the housing issue.

There could be other emerging topics that they want to focus on.

There'll be new committee chairs, and part of that is the 43 plus retirements, and someone total up the years of experience that those people have, and it's over 500 years.

So 43 isn't really a remarkably odd amount.

It's about a third of the legislature that seems to happen every general election cycle, but the amount of experience that is leaving the Capitol is something that is rare and will have an impact.

Um, it was also noted, for example, all the um GOP members of the tax committee in the Senate are retiring and won't be returning, including our own Senator Nelson.

And so thinking about how the institutional knowledge about the wide variety of topics they cover will be a steep learning curve and an opportunity for us to educate um incoming legislators.

So this is just to get uh, like I said, kind of uh idea generation, not meant to be cream comprehensive, not meant to be anything really with uh you know firm backing or or uh you know uh strong research, but looking to you all for guidance on what could be our uh requests going into the next session and how do we use these next months to research further and to dive in on some interest areas as uh deputy administrator parrish mentioned, what does bonding look like for us?

It's not a typical bonding year next year, but we should certainly be ready and have requests if there is interest in that.

Um, queuing off of previous discussions around the um disconnected parcels, are there other ways to fund trails or sidewalks or um ADA public infrastructure right-of-way improvements?

Um RPU certainly has a few, you know, energy and also water related based on depending what comes out of their water resource plan.

Um that could be part of our request at the Capitol, and then and really, you know, looking to you all in the conversations you're gonna have over the next couple months on what topics are rising to your um interest, and we'll also be asking teammates for theirs as well.

Councilmember Palmer.

How are we doing with parkland dedication?

We've been in active uh conversations with community development and parks team as they're doing the work that they've shared with you and seeing what statutory changes versus local policy changes make sense in that space.

And I think when they come back to you all um with that, we would be able to take further direction on on what statutory changes, whether it's asking for the same clarification we've wanted in the past years to collect on redevelopment sites essentially, to do what Minneapolis and St.

Paul have special authority to do.

Um, and or if there's a if there's other things or other ways we want to describe that issue.

Would that get us to our priority with our our um our cities again to do that?

In a unique way, yeah.

Would that be pretty easy to do, really?

I I don't know about easy.

What's necessary?

It would have a really great impact locally, yes.

Um Mr.

Parrish, you mentioned when we had LGA up that there were some ideas around kind of that type of funding.

Is that coming up or is that is on another slide, or can you speak to that now?

No, I I think I was talking about the bonding projects as something forthcoming in terms of if you have specific areas that you want us to be looking at.

Um we obviously have phase two of the eSumbro project, right?

I mean, that's uh you know something we can continue.

However, you know, a lot of times you want to have made some progress on phase one by the time you're making the ask, and you know, really you're trying to get your requests in to position yourself for the bonding tours.

Um and we submit into the state systems and all that just to you know really kind of get our uh projects in front of people.

But I mean that we're we're also open, you know, and we at the staff level will go through the process, reflect it on the you know, on the chart here, and bring you some recommendations on what we think are good projects.

But it's also an opportunity for you to say, like we'd really like you to spend some time thinking about project A, B, C or D as we go into this uh late summer, early fall time frame and when we bring you legislative priorities toward the end of the year.

Council President, if I if I may go ahead.

And maybe you were asking about when when we mentioned that we would be talking about the LGA drop during the budget process, and um, you may or may not recall, but in 2024, when we saw that the the hold harmless, we actually applied we didn't the lion's share of that million two.

We applied to additional payments into the CIP for pavement preservation.

So that's really your question there is do you we tried not to put it in the general fund and then have a surprise for you in general operations.

Um so, but that that becomes the question, the additional funding for um pavement preservation that had been going in there and whether or not you absorb that into the levy as additional funding or not.

So we did try to isolate it, knowing that whenever the hold harmless was going to go away.

We assuming that the hold harmless might go away so that it wasn't as big of a disruption.

Not that it's not a disruption, but we weren't putting that all of those dollars in the board.

So there's implications, but there's options.

Councilmember Keene.

Uh yeah, and and next year, again, I know it's good to have the bonding thing.

I I agree that it'd like it'd be nice to have some progress, and I I'll call it phase one and two of the um Zumbro, and then trying to get three.

But I my take would be is this is like looking at non-bonding uh and what some of those things are.

And and I don't have a big list, but it's a couple things I'll mention is that we have been participating in the um uh League of Minnesota Cities policy things, and there are some like things there that can that can be non-funding kind of things that make improvements for staff.

Some things been working in the clerk's office, but also we've had some good luck with uh benefits and for uh certain things.

So those sort of like under the radar sort of things are good to do in those years.

The other one that does jump off the page of me, this RPU related.

There's so many things going on now, potentially with water and that in and I don't know if there's help with the state, but I don't think we generally look at that.

So it's good to think of that as what are those sort of things with water, but also with the as we move into the um move away from simpa into our own generation.

Are there things that that municipalities, especially large municipalities like ours could get benefit through state things?

What one of the things that's come up um and when we look at putting things onto transmission, there's a 50 mega megawatt megahertz megawatt limit.

Is that an old number that should be 100 meg now?

And there's things that don't cost people of the state anything to do that could really help us going into the into the 2030s and beyond.

Councilmember Miller.

Thank you.

Um I I know in the prior bonding projects area and thinking about bonding tours, we've talked about Civic Center Drive and Broadway redesign.

I think that's still important to the development of our downtown, and I think is a very compelling tour, seeing their current state and understanding the connectivity gaps that they cause, uh particularly for our modal goals and thinking about the work that we've done uh north and and surrounding areas of those that then become barriers to entry and exits from downtown.

So I would express my support for a version of a bonding project that involves redesigning those.

I think the trail system too is a great asset that we have in the city that we know doesn't quite connect all the way downtown and doesn't um provide the safety that people are looking for and an experience when they're uh in the outer areas of our uh of our trail system when they're totally off-road and able to be safe and protected from any vehicles on the roadway.

In the transportation area, I I do wonder if there's an opportunity to look at our regional city partners of as ourselves as a regional center and a regional health care center.

Um there's the Go Marty automated rural transit project that's happening in Grand Rapids and seems to be experiencing quite a bit of success and is quite popular.

And I I think of many of our own um neighbors in this region who travel into Rochester for health care who would benefit from a system like that.

I think there may be a regional partnership case to be made.

And also thinking about how we're um moving into a new transit operations contract in the future, if there are ways that we can tell the story of Rochester and the need for investment in our transit system, or any any ways that we might advance and be a model for the state with our fare free BRT pilot and telling the story of innovation that we're doing through transportation.

Uh just to highlight those, and then I when I see the RPU related priorities, I think of our renewable energy goals for 2030 and what avenues there may be through a a different alignment of the legislature to tell that story and and potentially solicit additional support to be able to meet those goals or exceed those goals.

I think we can certainly continue to yeah, evaluate and monitor all those things, and some are operational, some are capital, and bonding obviously tends to be in the capital space.

We're closely monitoring the county's uh parks and trail planning process for those regional trail connections that hopefully will connect into Rochester, but then connect Rochester to regional trail destinations.

Um there's also some collaboration and conversation with the county around the potential for regional public safety training facility investments, and think we'll continue to monitor that as we bring forward recommendations to you all.

So that and all what else you said certainly we will put on the list.

I just want to uh add that, and and I do agree this past year with councilmember Palmer that having a single message really was helpful.

It really uh, you know, you think about those 201 legislators and they're getting so many messages from so many different directions.

And if they're getting one message from Rochester, I think that's helpful.

I also think that we've done a uh really good job in the last two sessions of telling the story of Rochester as an economic engine, but at the same time talking about that we do not have the benefit of a regional planning agency that does transportation, parks, and sewer and water, like uh a lot of uh the uh the cities in the metro area and and so I think that message is starting to get through.

And I think there's a a huge opportunity with the uh with the turnover that's happening at the legislature to really uh refine that message and let them know that Rochester is that economic engine, but that you know we we do need state support and and then adding that the the piece on LGA, that we do not get that level of support that some of our peer cities do.

Councilmember Wall.

It is not as if the legislature will not work on housing, because I know they do that a lot, but I would certainly be supportive of uh Rochester throwing its weight uh behind anything that would help enhance our ability to provide housing at all different kinds of levels uh in our city isn't the only city that needs that, but boy, we need to be advocates.

And to that point, council member, and I I do want to commend our team, uh, Mr.

Yetzer and others on really putting Rochester out there as a model with our unified development code and really helping educate legislators on what uh municipalities can do.

I think that helped uh in that discussion when it comes to to housing.

Other thoughts?

None?

Thank you.

Oh, go ahead.

I know it's in the slide about LGA, but using the areas where we're ready to work with the state legislature on reform, housing policy reform, zoning reform, et cetera.

As a carrot to build into the LGA formula, I think is a compelling message as well.

Uh, when we've seen other city councils react to potential reforms by saying they would stop development entirely, stop platding lots.

I think telling the the the case and being very clear that we're ready to work with the state um to capitalize on this opportunity is I I would support putting LGA in there as a potential formula revision to further build that into the state code.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And uh study session schedule.

One minute.

Um council president, council members.

Um, I did just want to note one adjustment here.

Um on the 13th, we are looking at adding um that study session that you talked about for um financing options for um additional um sports and recre indoor sports and recreation.

There's concerns about that, it would be helpful to know.

You don't have to tell me today.

Um, but we are looking at eyeing that um July 13th option there.

Um so your next study session, June 22nd.

Um, some hot topics here, Elton Hills Drive, Northwest Concept Design Review, the longest way of saying Elton Hills Drive.

Um, urban three.

Um, so we are bringing back um much more robust data than what you saw at the DMC joint meeting.

Um that has been completed, and then um an update on tax increment financing.

And what that's really looking at is a look back of where you are on a lot of your different districts.

That's the primary focus of that um to kind of tell the story of how that has helped develop, but then where we are with those being able to be um defused at some point.

Thank you.

Uh next we will go ahead, council member the tax increment financing update include projects that are coming off or will soon come off within the next two, three, five years.

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

Uh next we will be going into executive session.

Uh Attorney Spindler Craig, can you lead us into that?

Yes, Mr.

President.

Um, these items do not need a vote to move into closed.

You will adjourn uh to handle two closed topics consistent with the published agenda.

The first item is uh pursuant to Minnesota Statute 13 D.05 subdivision 3B.

That is the matter uh to discuss potential litigation matter related to the CapEx 2020 transmission lines.

And then the second item is pursuant to uh Minnesota Statute 13 D point zero five subdivision three C three to consider uh offers or counteroffers for the purchase or sale of real property.

I won't list all of the um PINs uh that are in the published agenda.

Thank you, Mr.

Spindler Craig.

We will recess to room 104 in eight minutes.