Thank you for coming.

I am Norman Wall, Ward 3 Councilmember, and am honored to be stepping in tonight as uh acting council president in the absence of uh council president Schubring.

Good to have people from the public joining us.

Thank you to the staff for assisting us uh through our business this night, and uh good to have our colleagues here at the dais.

Thank you.

We always start with our open comment, our open comments uh are two minutes long.

We ask that the speakers uh talk about things that are germane to the policies that we have jurisdiction over here in the city.

There is a timer here, we'll turn red when the two minutes is over.

We also have a timer on the wall.

Uh I will call on the order in which people have signed up.

Uh please, Molly Dennis.

Please introduce yourself, and you have two minutes, Miss Dennis.

Okay, Susan, okay, thank you.

All right, thank you so much.

So Molly Dennis, and I am coming up to say that I attended I attend many events.

And as um as a resident, I think it's important for we us to have representatives, and I saw several representatives.

I saw Councilmember Miller, I saw I mean so several people during Councilmember Wall at the Juneteenth event.

So I thank you for that.

Um so okay, first off, I just I also want to say that public comment is my favorite part when I was a council member of the city council meetings, and now that it's so restricted to two minutes and at seven o'clock and a lot of restrictions, I see that very few people often attend.

So I just want to put that little plug in as well.

But also um, as uh person who attended these events, I see there's a lot of these wonderful things.

I have um there's uh City of Rochester gear, there's tons of I only brought up a few of the many.

Um I've asked for receipts when I was a council member for how much things cost.

Those were not provided.

And so I hope that people uh taxpayers know how much money is being spent, not just on media, but also on the uh things that are brought uh to all these events.

Um one of the things that was brought to the event was this really neat little Rochester Mayor City Council um passport, which I've never seen before, which is really super neat.

You put little stickers in this to you know, if uh Councilmaster Shoebring, you can put his little sticker here.

And then you get a free pool pass, which I thought was really a kind of a clever idea of connecting.

Um, but but going through this, I see that everyone has a dot gov email, Rochester Mn.gov, except for one of the mayor, city council members, all of them have a dot gov transparent data requestable email, except for Ward 5 Sean Palmer, who has a Gmail address.

And I had asked this question when I met with Councilmember Doring.

Your time is up, Ms.

Dennis.

Listening sessions, and I have not received an answer.

I would just want to know why Councilmember uh Palmer does not have to abide by the data practices and have have this uh personal Gmail instead of his dot gov email address.

So thank you so much.

I would love an answer, Councilmember Doring.

Thank you.

And we have Martha Grogan, please.

Hi, good evening.

My name's Martha Grogan, acting President Wall and Council members, nice to be here.

I wanted to take the opportunity to talk a little bit about the Lyme rental program.

I wanted to take the opportunity to talk a little bit about the Lyme rental program.

I attended the Pestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee last week.

Lyme representatives were there, and I think we gained a lot of um important information.

And the session, the season is just starting out, but there are some urgent concerns.

Some of you may know I sent you some kind of terrifying videos that I captured last week, and I won't play the screams again, but I live on a scary hill, so I'm able to document these things, and I think we just want to make our city as safe as possible.

I'll say too, I'm all for alternate um transportation.

About 8,000 cars go past my house every day.

I walk to work, my husband was a year-round commuter, so I'm not at all against scooters.

I just want them to be safe.

So, really important thing that we learned at the meeting is that Lyme has a requirement that to rent a scooter you need to be 18 years of age.

However, the city has chosen not to enforce that.

The technology is there, it could be turned on instantly.

So young scooters are going to be at the highest risk.

Kids are at the highest risk for any of this stuff.

Some of us were kids one day.

So you see these little guys.

Um, we heard that the reason we didn't want to require age verification is because we would be discriminating against certain demographics.

These kids, these little guys, we we need to discriminate against them.

Just as if they wanted to buy alcohol or a gun or whatever.

So I think that's like a really low-hanging few fruit that you could address immediately.

Second, Lyme has developed this new technology with AI cameras that they're going to be testing in Seattle this summer that will uh really accurately predict if somebody's gonna go on the sidewalk and will probably help address a lot of safety issues.

The third thing that I learned is in your city contract, you have access to Lyme data.

And Lyme gave us a lot of things in the meeting that sounded really great, but I know that they're not doing all those things.

Um I just think we should really have some active engagement of city staff with Lyme.

So thanks for listening.

Thank you very much.

There is time remaining.

Are there other additional community members who would like to address open comment?

Any other speakers.

We will take the roll.

Clerk Caseel, please.

Good evening.

Councilmember Keene is absent.

Councilmember Miller.

Here.

Councilmember Fredericks.

Here.

Councilmember Palmer.

Here.

Councilmember Doring.

Here.

Council Acting Council President Wall.

Here.

And Council President Schubring and the Mayor are absent.

Thank you very much.

We have the city administrators' report.

Please, Ms.

Elms.

Thank you.

Press harder.

Thank you, Council President Wall and Council members, members of the public.

I always start the administrators' report off.

Well, I usually do.

Never mind, it's not there.

By thanking our teammates for acting with integrity, respect, safety, and excellence.

And I will do that regardless of not having slide.

So thanks for all you do for the community.

Also wanted to highlight a couple of things for their anniversary.

So from now through July, Tuesday through Saturday, 9 a.m.

to 5 p.m.

Um, they are going to be providing admission through generous sponsors.

So if that's something that you haven't checked out, that's something that would be an opportunity for folks through those through July of 2026.

Also, we have open houses forthcoming for reimagining Sixth Avenue West project that will be on Tuesday, June 16th.

So just tomorrow, 5 to 6:30 p.m.

at Spy House Coffee Roasters, and then again on Tuesday, June 30th, noon to 1 p.m.

with a virtual opportunity to connect.

Everyone's welcome to come and share their viewpoints on that.

And then did just also want to acknowledge an award that we were we were nominated for by a community member and received the Arc Minnesota Community Recognition Award for Equity and Belonging that is awarded to only one city in the state of Minnesota.

So their recognition happened last week, and they just shared appreciation for our ongoing support in celebrating our our contributions to ensure that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families have supports.

The addition of the management analyst position focusing on accessibility and a lot of the other um work that's been going on to focus on accessibility across Rochester.

So that is all I have, but wanted to just share some of those things.

Thank you very much.

I'm doing a lot of acting these days.

Uh acting the council president tonight.

I'm also the acting mayor, so I'll give an acting mayor's report.

Uh this really comes from the mayor.

I'm doing it on her behalf.

Uh, you can read the all the screens just about as fast as I can read them as well.

The America 250 bike parade on Saturday, June 27th.

There's still time to register for free bike decorations.

We hope that people will take part in that starting at the Edison Building.

Next week, uh the League of Minnesota City's annual conference will be in Rochester, June 24 to 26.

We always have a good cadre of people from our council uh at this meeting.

We are proud in Rochester to be able to host it, even as we did a couple of years ago.

Uh people were excited to be in our city.

They especially liked uh Thursday's downtown, and it was an awful night.

It was about, I don't know, 60 degrees and rainy, and they still loved it.

So we uh will have better weather this year for our Thursdays downtown.

Great uh great communication with other people, uh good keynotes, good workshops, chances to learn.

Rochester Fest is June 20th to 28th.

This year it's called One Nation, many stories.

You can find brochures outside in our chambers.

There are a few board commissions and vacance uh vacancies, the Board of Appeals, the Library Board, and the Ped and Bike Advisory Committee.

If you or other people that you know would like to participate in city government in those ways, please get a hold of the mayor's office, and I know that they will help in whatever way.

That is the acting mayor or the mayor's report, and there's a telephone number by which you can most easily gain access to the mayor's office.

We move to the order of the agenda.

Is there any difference to the order of the agenda?

Mr.

Miller.

Sure.

Thank you, acting council president Wall.

I I would like to make a motion to remove item F eighteen from the agenda this evening.

And I will second that.

We have a motion and a second that is a debatable item.

Mr.

Miller.

Thank you.

Uh this item comes from our destination medical center corporation board peers who have voted to move it forward.

I spoke with staff today, noting that uh Council President Schubring and Mayor Norton, in addition to Councilmember Keene are not here and ask if there was an urgency to opening the bids or if they might still be opened should we decide to move forward with that item on July 6th?

They assured me that this would not delay any work and would give um an opportunity to our colleagues to come back and participate and bring us information from that destination medical center corporation board meeting, which happened recently.

So I would propose that we remove it from the agenda tonight, which would allow staff to reschedule it as soon as July 6th.

Mr.

Doran, anything to add?

My rationale is very similar to Mr.

Miller's.

Okay.

Is there other discussion?

Mr.

Palmer.

I'm one of the people that polled it, and I um believe that it's uh an item that uh would be good for us to talk to in the community.

So I would not be in favor of this motion.

You would not be in favor to the delay.

Correct.

Okay.

Uh I uh too would be in favor if only because the two people who have spoken to this uh at the DMCC board uh are not here to more fully explain uh perhaps their positions as we would have questions.

Are there other comments?

There's been a motion made and seconded to uh take F-18 and move it to our next voting meeting on July 6th.

Just to remove it from the agenda.

Oh, to remove it from the agenda.

Which would allow staff to reschedule it.

I talked with Clerk Caseel earlier.

Okay, not not to a date certain, but removing it for tonight.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Oppose no.

No.

That passes four to one with Mr.

Palmer uh being the nay vote.

Is there any other differences uh that you see in the order of agenda that was sent out?

Is there a motion to approve the order of agenda?

So moved.

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Oppose no.

It passes.

We go to the consent agenda.

The one uh that had been pulled, F eighteen by two people on the dais is no longer on the agenda, which leaves one through 17.

I did not find uh through communication today that any were pulled.

Is my information correct?

Then is there a motion to receive the cons to approve the consent agenda as presented?

I will um uh president Wall.

I will be voting no on item F uh 12.

Okay.

Item F twelve.

Mr.

Dorin will vote no.

Any other discussion?

I heard a motion.

Who second?

Second.

Okay.

Anybody anybody else?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed no.

That passes.

Thank you all.

We are already to our public hearings.

Generally get that page out.

Ordinarily, we have uh a staff introduction of our hearing.

We have just one tonight.

And Elliot Moeller will be offering that staff introduction tonight.

After that, the uh applicant or representative of the applicant will have an opportunity to speak for up to 10 minutes.

Then uh members from the public are welcome to take part in the discussion.

After uh they are done, the applicant can come forward again uh to address any questions that have been raised by the public.

Then we'll close the public heel uh hearing and uh the uh council members will take over on a discussion and perhaps uh a motion and approving of something.

So we have one public hearing tonight.

It's for the issuance of conduit multifamily housing revenue bonds relating to the DEVCO Rochester departments.

And it is not Elia Moeller, even though even though his name is in pink.

Brent DLA found me too, but please introduce yourself and it's all you're present.

Wall, council members of Brent Sven B community development.

Um, as mentioned, this is a public hearing for the adoption of a resolution for the issuance of um city conduit revenue bonds in one or more series of tax exempt or taxable conduit multifamily housing revenue bonds to help finance the acquisition, construction, and equipping of a approximately 252 unit multiple family housing development located at 4395 23rd Avenue Northwest.

Um, in this case, the um developer is DRG Rochester Apartments LLC.

Um they're located in the state of Washington.

So they are requesting that the city issue conduit revenue bonds in amount not to exceed 70 million dollars for this construction of 252 um affordable apartment units.

Um they would be at the averaging of 50% AMI levels for the development.

So they may have some units at 30 and some units may be higher than 50, but on average it will be at 50% AMI levels.

Um the bonds will give the borrower access to tax exempt financing, which means lower interest rates, allows the borrower to obtain 4% low-income housing tax credits, which will generate um a great source of active equity for the apartment for the project.

Um if the bonds are issued, um, the bonds are secured so solely by the borrowers' assets, and the revenues are derived from the um loan agreement itself.

Um there's no money will pass through the city.

It's more of a conduit financing, so no money or assets of the cities will be pledged or available to pay the bonds.

The bonds will not um be obligation of the city, and they are not secured by any assets of the city.

Um, and they will not affect any of the debt limit levies of the cities.

Um borrower is totally responsible for the payments of the bonds.

I do have the representative of the development here this evening.

Um ask Trevor to introduce myself and just give a little bit about the company because they are new to Rochester.

So with that, I'll turn over to Trevor.

And you have 10 minutes.

I promise I won't take all the time.

My name is Trevor Martinez, and I'm a development manager.

I oversee all of DEVCO's uh endeavors in the Midwest.

So our company is based out of Bellevue, Washington, which is in the Seattle area, but I live in a suburb of Minneapolis.

I'm here locally.

Um, and I've definitely been to the site quite a number of quite a number of times.

The DEVCO is a large uh affordable, predominantly affordable housing developer, probably about 85 to 90% of our assets are income restricted in one nature or another.

We have about 15,000 units across, I think 13 states now.

Um and this is our this is not our first project in Minnesota, but it is our first project in Rochester.

The other projects that we've completed in Minnesota have been rehabilitation deals.

Um we've been acting as uh an affordable housing developer in some capacity since I think the 1970s, but I believe the DEVCO entity was formed in in the mid-90s.

I've been personally uh we're developing affordable housing for a little bit over a decade, and the reason what brought us to Rochester today is that as we've been expanding eastward outside of Washington as we started to get local presence in in Minnesota, we started to look at more and more projects, and we're excited to deliver this one here and to to deliver more in uh in in Minnesota and the Midwest generally.

The project, as they noted, is 252 units.

The total development cost for this project uh is about 85 million dollars, so a little under 340,000 a unit, which in the world of affordable housing is actually quite inexpensive in comparison to a lot of projects that you'll probably see in front of you.

Of those 70 million dollars in conduit bonds that were asking to be issued, about 40 and a half million of those are in the tax exempt series and are using the tax exempt entitlement that was granted through Minnesota management and budget, and then the balance are just purely taxable conduit financing for to support the project's uh debt load.

If there are any questions about the project or about DEVCO, I think that I'm happy to answer them.

Thank you.

And we will come back to that after the public hearing.

The public hearing is uh now open.

Are there people who would like to speak to this particular item?

I don't believe we had anybody who was signed up ahead of time.

I shouldn't I should mention that.

So on these deals, we do have a bond attorney that we we work with.

So our bond attorney reviews hundreds of documents for these types of deals that the city deals with.

And Ryan, finance director is also on those emails, but we do have a bond council that reviews all the documents and um we get sign off from her.

Okay.

So thank you.

Members of the public who would like to speak to the bond issuance.

Any speakers from the public?

Seeing no one step up.

Uh would uh the representative uh want to say anything in closing.

Only thank you to the staff in this council.

Okay, and you might make yourself available.

There could be questions uh that will be the first thing we do from our council.

So, council uh open to your discussion or questions first.

Close.

Oh, we'll close a public hearing.

Uh any uh speakers.

Mr.

Miller.

Sure.

Just a question uh for DEVCO.

Uh could you talk about the the ownership?

Do you develop, own, and manage the buildings that you build, and if so, for how long do you typically own that building?

The LITEC requirements make it so that we will own the building for a minimum of 15 years, but the but we don't we haven't disposed of very many assets at all.

I mean certainly since I've joined, I think that there have been less than five assets that we've disposed of out of our out of our portfolio.

In terms of management, we we will manage properties where we have significant scale and efficiency in order to do that.

We won't be managing it here.

We're using a group called Cornerstone.

Um they don't currently have projects in Minnesota, but they have had projects in Minnesota in the past.

They currently have a footprint in Minnesota, or sorry, in Iowa, South Dakota, Illinois, and North Dakota.

Okay, thank you.

For DEVCO specifically, they have other assets elsewhere.

They're based out of Salt Lake.

Okay.

I have uh just a couple of questions.

Uh and I believe Ms.

uh Brent would probably be the better one to uh answer the questions.

You have already said it, but I just want to underscore it because of uh conversations.

Uh I want you to reiterate that there's no financial risk for the city in this at all.

We're simply a conduit.

That is correct.

Okay.

And actually, DEF CO pays for all of our legal fees for this transaction also.

So the city also does collect a issue of fees for the bonds.

So for someone to say, boy, I wonder what we're getting nicked for on this one uh as a property owner in Rochester.

The answer is zero.

Zero, correct.

Thank you.

And then uh I think that you would know this as well.

Uh the Maxfield studies between 2020 and 2025, I believe showed that we have reduced the uh need for uh affordable housing by 26%.

Does that sound correct to you?

May some vaguely correct.

And so this would assist us in our continuing effort.

Uh we seem to have these things in the pipeline.

Uh that is correct.

Yep, and the council remembers correctly just back in May 4th, you guys approved the bonds for the um project right across the river over here.

And actually, those bonds are closing next week, I believe.

So that's 149 units of 60% AMI units.

So all these projects make a big dent in the need for affordable housing in the community.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate the work of the staff in that as well.

Are there any more questions?

Is there a motion?

I'll make a motion.

I move to adopt a resolution adopting the housing program, the issuance of conduit multifamily housing revenue bonds, and the execution of related documents relating to the DEVCO Rochester Apartments project.

Second Mr.

Doran.

Nothing to speak any further on this.

Any other questions, discussion?

Nope.

Seeing none, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed no.

It passes unanimously.

We are to reports and recommendations.

We have one, and it is the FEMA Safer Grant application.

I'll call upon Chief Pooler, please.

All right.

Well, good afternoon, Council.

Or good evening.

Is there a clicker and for this one?

Okay, perfect.

Thank you.

So I'm here before you to request permission to apply for a federal grant to aid in the hiring of additional firefighters for the city.

It is known as the FEMA Safer Grant.

So the SAFER grant is a federal funding opportunity available to hire for municipalities to hire additional firefighters.

It's important to note that that grant can only be used for firefighters, not for other fire support staff, so not for EMT employees, not for civilian employees, not for fire inspectors, but only for firefighters.

And also it is meant to help communities meet industry minimum standards.

Those minimum standards are set by the NFPA, the National Fire Protection Agency, and we'll talk a little bit about those standards as we go towards some of these slides.

On the screen right now, you'll see a list of other municipalities in the state of Minnesota that in recent years have applied for and successfully gotten a FEMA SAFER grant and the amounts associated with those grants, just as a demonstration that this is not a novel concept, not something obscure that we came up with.

So we'll talk a little bit about staffing challenges.

So the slide before you talks about staffing on our ladder trucks specifically, but uh just for uh maybe driving home the point.

So we currently have six fire engines staffed on a daily basis in our city.

Fire engine are the smaller, shorter ones that have water and hose on them.

We also have two ladder trucks, that's what's on the screen.

Lighter trucks are the big big long ones with the ladder on top.

Basically our giant rolling toolbox, they have the jaws of life and uh plethora of other tools inside of them, but they don't have water or hose.

They can't fight a fire by themselves.

But that gives us a total of eight fire trucks that are staffed in our city 24-7, 365.

We also have two 24R battalion chiefs, one person that drives around in an SUV overseeing those eight fire trucks.

That brings us to a grand staffing of 26 firefighters per day every day in our city.

Uh now that is outside of the uh recommendations by the National Fire Protection Agency for a city of our size.

Uh the NFPA breaks down risk by property type.

Uh so there's low, medium, and high.

So for low property, low-risk properties, we're talking single family homes.

We've got thousands of those in our cities.

Um the NFPA says that we should have 17 firefighters available to respond to a fire in a single family home at any one given time.

We have 26, so we check that box just fine.

We meet that national standard.

Uh the next risk is the medium risk, so that includes things like garden style apartments.

So those are apartments that are greater than two stories, but not quite high rises.

Uh, you just approve bonding for 212 more of those.

Um, also open air strip malls.

You can drive down Broadway or East Circle or West Circle.

We've got hundreds of open air strip malls in our city.

Uh, those are medium risk categories per the NFPA.

We should have 28 firefighters available to respond to a fire in an open air strip mall.

We only have 26 a day, so we are deficient in that national standard by two firefighters every day.

Then we have high-risk occupancies, uh, such as high rise.

So you look at our skyline, we've got 30 plus high-rise buildings in our city.

Uh, per the NFPA, we should have 43 firefighters available at any one time to respond to a high-rise fire.

So, about a year ago, I was before you guys, just like I am now, to talk about applying for a safer grant last year.

At that point, I was very new in my role, and the skyline of this uh city scares me, knowing that we do not have enough firefighters to respond to a fire in a high rise.

So, our last year application really focused on that deficiency in the high rise, that that high risk category uh per the NFPA and that that difference between at that time we had 25 firefighters a day and the 43 required to fight the high-rise fire.

Um, lo and behold, our application was not successful because we did not, in my opinion, apply for enough firefighters to check enough boxes.

So, our request last year for eight firefighters did not give us enough per day to adequately respond to garden style apartments or open air strip malls or the other occupancies in that medium risk category.

In addition to the number of firefighters that you need, the NFPA also talks about standards of how long it takes you to get those firefighters to the scene.

So there's a range you call 911 and there are NFPA standards in every step along the way, starting with how long the dispatcher takes to answer the phone, how long they're on the phone, how long it takes the fire department to get notified, how long it takes the fire department to get ready to respond, how long it takes them to drive there, and then how long on the far side of that spectrum, how long it takes to get all of your firefighters needed for those different occupancy types to the scene.

Um, and our city is deficient and nearly all of those.

Um adding more firefighters doesn't necessarily get us there faster in most cases, but what it does do is it helps us meet the far end of that spectrum, the number of firefighters, or as the NFPA would call it the effective response force.

It helps us get those effective, the number needed for that effective response force to the scene eventually.

So our ask this year is to apply for funding to hire 15 additional firefighters.

There are three shifts that rotate throughout the year, so that would be five additional firefighters per day in your city.

Uh the federal funding would cover 75% of those costs the first year, uh first two years, and 35% the final year.

Umce that grant is up the fourth year, we would have a decision to make as a city.

And what do we do with that that new uh amount of tax dollars?

Uh, you can incorporate that into the levy.

That would be staff recommendation.

You could reapply for a new safer grant.

There are certain cities that reapply every couple of years to keep that funding going.

If you saw on the previous slide, Bloomington was uh listed every couple of years.

Bloomington has been successful in reapplying for that safer grant to keep that funding going.

Um you could absorb the positions through normal attrition.

So as other firefighters, more senior firefighters come to the end of their career and retire, we could not replace them slowly walking back the staffing to the pre-grant levels, or we could simply make a decision in the fourth year to lay off those firefighters and return to pre-grant uh levels.

So on the screen, you'll see uh impacts for additional staffing, so things like firefighter safety, uh increasing that daily staffing to meet those effective response force numbers as outlay by the National Fire Protection Agency, adding four people dedicated to our ladder trucks, which would give us the ability to be much more fluid with how we utilize them.

Um right now we have three firefighters per apparatus on a daily basis.

Uh, you can't divide three into an even number, um, and firefighters always work in at least teams of two, so we can't split one of our current crews into two teams.

But if you if we enhance our staffing to get put four on uh a ladder truck, we can then split that ladder truck into two crews of two, making them much more fluid to respond to things like low acuity EMS calls at a high-rise fire when we're searching multiple apartments on multiple floors, we could split those crews those crews up to go in two different directions.

We don't have that flexibility right now with three on an apparatus.

Aligns with industry best uh standards, um increases our current capacity or our capacity for concurrent incidents.

So now on the screen before you you see the dollar amounts associated uh with applying for the grant.

So in the first year, the feds would pick up one and a half million dollars of the salary and benefit package of the firefighters, leaving the city on the hook for a half a million dollars.

And the second year, uh the firefighters would get a raise, probably because they're part of a collective bargaining unit.

So the feds would still kick in 1.5 million dollars and the taxpayers would be at the hook for $600,000.

The third year flips now to that 35% uh federal match, so the feds would kick in $706,000, leaving the city to fund 1.6 million dollars, and the fourth year the onus would be completely uh on the city at an estimated 2.5 million dollars per year.

Um, just like last year, I feel like this timetable is fairly condensed.

Unfortunately, that's the nature of dealing with the federal government, especially when they're shut down for a good portion of the year, as they were last year and earlier this year.

Uh, but a quick timeline here with the article published on May 18th, announcing basically that on May 19th, the safer grant opportunity opens and grant applications are due by June 22nd.

So this would be the last council meeting that we'd have an opportunity to go before you for a vote.

Umce that if the application is approved and submitted, uh approved by this body and then submitted by us, uh, we would expect to hear back by end of September.

We would then come back to you for approval to accept that grant.

Uh, there are 30 days built into the federal timeline for that to happen.

And then once we formally accept, we have 180 days to complete the recruitment uh effort to fund the to find the uh applicants for those positions.

So basically they'd be on the hook or on the books for us probably next spring at some point.

And then on the screen, I won't read it all to you, but align it uh when with this request for all the city's foundational principles.

And then I'll stop there for questions because I'm sure you have plenty.

Thank you much, Chief Pooler.

Questions from the council?

Mr.

Miller.

Sure, I'll start.

I I appreciate the opportunity to have this this continuation of a discussion when we had a quite condensed hour study session and maybe didn't get to some of this.

I hopefully we don't have to add an hour or two tonight.

Uh all night.

My first question is you you you list other communities in Minnesota that have been successful in applying for and receiving the safer grant.

Do you have any information of whether or not they retained those additional firefighters after the completion of the grant period?

Maybe many of them are too recent to be beyond that three-year period.

But yeah, so all those on the screen are probably still under that initial three-year grant period, going back, I think.

Um it looks like 22 was the bottom one there in 2021.

So they did reapply it looks like a few years later, and they they use that method, but the rest of those I can't speak to what their plans are after the grant.

But in general, those departments are growing.

Correct.

Okay.

Um so my second question is should we be successful and the council uh approve the acceptance of the grant award?

What metrics would we look to over that three-year period to say this is the tangible improvement in public safety?

How would we measure success of hiring 15 additional firefighters?

Yeah, a couple of things.

I think one and foremost is going to be our ability to get that effective response for us at ERF to emergencies in a timely fashion, especially as we continue to grow northwest, which is where the new station will go eventually.

Um, making sure we can meet those customers' expectations of a timely fire response in their neighborhood.

Okay.

And so speaking of growth, we know that we're we're growing quite rapidly.

There are different ways to grow.

What should we and citizens of this community know about how we grow?

What what pressures outward growth, upward growth?

What's what's the bigger impact on staffing needs for fire?

Right.

It's a balance of both.

So upward growth has its own unique challenges.

So as the downtown skyline continues to evolve, that makes more work for all of our stations, but particularly station one, which is stationed here downtown.

Um, you know, every citizen comes with it a percentage of you utilizing 911.

Like Americans as as a whole are relying on the 911 system more often for their their first line of defense, whether it's a medical emergency, a fire, or just the oddball thing that happens to them.

Um so as we grow taller, uh, we're seeing more more dense call volume downtown, as well as unique challenge that goes with trying to mitigate an emergency in a high run.

Simply getting access takes that much longer, is that much more difficult.

Um what we're seeing right now, though, I think, is uh the effect of the city growing geographically north, south, east, and west.

As the city spreads out, um, there's just new homes, there's new businesses that are paying a tax rate comparable to the people that live downtown, but yet they don't have that same access to service.

Sure.

And uh uh okay, so the the growth outwards is the primary driver of our current needs for the for this request.

And so the I appreciate also that you sent some supplemental information by email after our study session.

And I I was adding in a an extra calculation for population density based on the numbers that you'd provided uh compared with some pure cities.

And I guess uh what struck me is that using the numbers you provided, Rochester has the lowest population density of all of these, which would seem to imply that uh unless we grow additional people without growing outwards, we're gonna continue to disproportionately pay per person for fire coverage for for these kind of increased staffing needs after a federal grant, perhaps.

Yeah, that's that's an interesting way to look at it, but I would fully agree.

So Rochester proper is roughly I'm not sure after the latest latest annexation, but we're in the area 57 square miles or so, and that's the same as Duluth or I'm sorry, the same as uh uh Minneapolis and St.

Paul.

They're roughly 57, 58 square miles themselves, much more dense.

So they're therefore they're they're sharing that cost of fire protection amongst more people in the same geographic area.

Now you focus, or you factor in the fact that we cover the townships around us as well.

And that was one of the slides or one of the data points I share with you, we're now 130 square miles, I think it was.

That's a tremendous amount of real estate for us to cover with few firefighters and as you go further out, you know, less dense tax base paying for that coverage.

Okay, thanks.

Mr.

Palmer.

Well, I'm I'm I'm trying to remember, but didn't you say that we're getting these extra firefighters because we have taller buildings, and you're afraid about the taller buildings?

That was my focus on last year's grant effort.

Um, and last year when I was here talking to you, I was probably about two months on the job.

So that was the obvious threat, but there are there are multiple threats that we don't are aren't prepared to meet right now.

So the tight the height of the city, but also the geometry of the city.

Okay, but didn't you say you saw the skyline you were scared or you were you is that what am I hearing that correctly?

I would say any fire chief would see that skyline and the number of firefighters that we have every day and be scared.

Okay.

Because uh if I remember right, you said that um the single family dwelling ones, we have enough firefighters to cover that.

Yeah, if we're one at a time, correct.

Okay.

Um we also have a hazardous hazardous um uh engines that that state is state funded, is that correct?

We have a our department provides a contracted fee for service with the state of Minnesota for hazardous materials.

So we receive funding back to train up firefighters in a dual role.

So they are still city firefighters out at station four, but they're also trained to be part of the statewide hazardous materials response team.

So they get a call from Elberley or or Austin or or somebody else who doesn't have that, but the state doesn't they have us be trained for that, isn't that correct?

Correct.

Okay.

Um what's always struck me is that Rochester, I'm gonna use the the word it's an island.

You know, if I'm living in Bloomington and I have a fire, we can always call a Diana or we can call over our our other neighbors and all around the suburbs, they can do that.

So I think that's an advantage that I don't think a lot of people know that.

Um the other thing that that bothers me is that if you look at our buildings that we have downtown, there's some um unique situations going on in those buildings, and it would be not something that you see like in Winona or in Albert Lee or some other places that do have higher buildings, but not not a lot of them.

Would that be correct?

Very very true, correct.

Yeah, the the hazards in our city are are probably unique compared to a lot of other cities of our size.

Okay.

And I think one of the questions Mr.

Miller had and is I'll paraphrase it was that you know what do you do at the end of the the how do you prove that this was good?

And it's kind of hard to prove a negative.

I mean that that we prevented this many or we we saved this many lives because um it just happens, and the better we do our job, the less it looks like you need us.

It's kind of a yeah, okay.

Thank you.

Mr.

Doring.

For the sake of those watching online uh tonight, can you describe or give um Yeah, what what it how do how would you define a high rise?

I'll look to uh Deputy Chief Ferguson for this.

It's a vocal definition.

There is a federal kind of recommendation.

What's our actual definition?

75 feet or taller is what we go with.

Okay, thank you.

That was my only question.

That would be seven stories.

There's no set number of feet per story, but roughly correct.

I have uh a few questions.

Uh last week I I asked if there was any kind of efficacy metric.

Uh uh, how are we doing with our nine point was it six, I forget, uh per 10 10,000 versus uh a city that might have 14 or 15 in terms of loss of life or loss of property.

Yep.

Super tough question to quantify.

Yeah.

Um so luckily, fire deaths are so few and far between that it's hard to speak to.

Everywhere.

Everywhere, especially in our city, though, and I would say our city is better than most that way.

So we've had we've had one double fatality this year.

We had one fire death last year.

Prior to that, it had been, as best as I can tell, it's been a decade.

Um, so that's really great work by our fire department and our fire prevention bureau.

Um that number, if you break it out on a per capita basis, it's better, far better than the state as a whole, but you have got to recognize that a lot of our state is covered by volunteer departments like you know, acres and acres of farm field.

So the response time in some of those places is very, very long.

You would not expect the highest survivability rate.

Uh when looking at other departments, say in the metro area where they tend to have more career departments, we're still doing better than them.

Um our social economics are pretty good in the city.

Uh, that plays into it.

Our building codes are pretty robust in the city, and that also plays into it.

Um you look at dollar loss, that's a bit more interesting.

Now, I'll preface this by saying this was heavily aided by like AI.

So like I had to not have the opportunity to go in and verify these numbers.

Um, I would say our dollar loss per fire is on the higher side than what we see across the state and other career departments.

Um I think some of that plays into that that the delay in getting an effective response force there.

As our city has, I would say right now has failed to keep up with the growth as far as number of firefighters.

That means our firefighters are coming from further away to a lot of these fires, meaning the fire has time to grow and more damage is happening before our firefighters get there.

So our dollar loss per fire is higher than most of our peer cities in the state.

Yeah, that is helpful information.

Uh for me, this comes down to two things.

Uh, one is public safety and a desire to absolutely support public safety, uh, not just fire, but police and emergency.

Uh and the other is budget.

And uh that's uh that's such a hard thing.

Uh and to look out three years and believe that uh 2.5 million dollars, uh, which would represent about uh unless I'm mistaken, about a 2.5% increase in the levy.

Um so about 2.5% on every property tax bill.

At that point, it'll probably be about two point.

Well, it wouldn't be on every tax bill, it would be the year over year increase in your total levy, and each tax bill would change based on our assets valuation, et cetera.

So it could be a lot, it could be smaller.

But the total would the total spread would be 2.5 million dollars larger across all of your property types.

And so part of part of my reticence is it's not just uh the 15 firefighters, it's uh all of the other departments that we have in the city that uh with growth in the city are of necessity, uh probably uh going to need uh extra personnel as well, uh, whether it's uh for safety or whether it's for public works or park and wreck or uh administration.

Uh so it's uh and even in the first three years, it's not like uh uh a free thing uh for us.

Uh clearly we would need uh some property taxes to uh fund that.

Um you you talk about we have quite a few options at the end of three years.

How likely or have you seen fire departments actually reduce force uh when it comes to an inflection point like that?

So I don't have I'm not a good steward of history here in Minnesota.

I can speak to where I came from in Wisconsin.

I can think of one time when a a city chose to cut those positions and give them back.

And uh it's not an easy position to be in on I wouldn't envy you in that in that position.

Um, but that's a tough choice that we would all have to make.

But yeah, it's I'd say it's rare, but it has happened.

Do you think uh that there will be uh uh future safer grant opportunities?

Does this come every year?

I would say historically it has.

Um we've seen a lot of changes in federal grants over the years in recent years.

Um even this grant used to be three years, well, I don't know if it was a hundred percent, three years at a hundred percent, and it was just till last year when we saw this this change to the two years of 75 percent, one year at 35.

So a sign to me that things are changing, that they're getting more they're getting more conservative with their spending uh at FEMA.

Uh so I'm not sure what the future of this grant might look like.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Mr.

Fredericks, yep.

Intercommunity public safety is number one and uh budget would be a close second.

Um so um there's no harm in applying for a grant.

Obviously, I'm gonna support applying for a grant.

It gives us sounds to me like it gives us two months though to decide if we're gonna accept that grant or not in in the event that you are awarded the grant.

And I would just uh I would just like to have more talks with staff and and you obviously and and and people within the community in between now and then, but I have no problem supporting applying for a grant tonight.

But I just don't want to go into applying for the grant thinking it's just a shoe and we're gonna accept it when it comes to the table.

Fair enough.

Thank you, Mr.

Miller.

Yeah, I'll echo those comments.

I I previewed that I plan to support this at the study session.

I plan to support it tonight, but it does sound like we need to have more holistic conversations about how we grow as a city, and I appreciate you bringing up the pressure, right, of public safety and the budget, which seem to be coupled closely together as public safety grows, the budget grows, the property tax grows, and it seems like uh from future conversations that we'll have even at our next study session, there may be some opportunities to talk about how we interrupt that cycle or that pressure.

Um I did want to just ask for clarification on your financial consideration slide where you the one that's up right now, year one should we be awarded would be 2027, correct?

Correct.

So it for year 2030 is when we would potentially have to absorb the full impact of these positions.

So I have a question for administrators elms.

Are there any additional firefighter positions represented in our budget forecast looking out at future levy increases today, or would these all be in addition to already forecasted levy increases?

Thank you, Councilmember Miller.

There are not additional specific fire positions forecast in the levy.

When you look when you see the uh levy rate forecast, there is some capacity built in for decision packages.

But as was noted by um acting.

I'm just gonna call you, Councilmember Wall, because I can't get it right.

Um, as was noted, um, the we we don't assign that to anyone.

So um we also do not have funding in that projection for fire stations.

So those are things that you would need to be considering um, whether or not there are ways that you could ease the cost in rather than having it all happen on one property tax levy year.

However, at the end of the day, at the end of that period of time, people would across all of those property categories be paying more.

And the question for you is what is the per capita?

Whether or not it makes sense to do it that way, or whether or not it makes sense to consider a pathway where you would be adding something to the property tax at some point, um, whether you have this grant or not.

Sure.

So I I also think about our discussion in the study session about uh legislative priorities, and we had a discussion about uh local government aid from the state.

And I appreciate that councilmember Palmer brought up uh the differences that Rochester is in many ways on an island compared with metro cities, many of whom are represented in the safer grant.

I think it gives us a different opportunity to talk with our state partners about the growing needs of our city.

And I think this is a strong case to continue to make to our state partners that we um depend on local government aid to support our growth.

Uh that this is a disproportionate impact to our property taxpayers and is not something that we as a council are ready to um scale back public safety.

Um but it is a challenge that we just have to keep talking about.

So again, I uh I'm in support of it.

I agree with my uh my neighbor, Councilmember Fredericks tonight that we need to have more conversations.

I'm not fully prepared to accept it should we be awarded it, but I think at that point I would really want to see uh what the opportunities are accepting it, adding 15 at once, what alternative actions there may be to scale up positions over maybe the same period of years, but at lower levy impact.

And I would hope that over the summer we could have a better handle on that um strategy through this FEMA grant and other strategies to improve our safety.

I can appreciate that.

Okay, thank you.

Mr.

Palmer.

Thank you.

Um I do plan on voting for this and support it.

And large reason for that is is is my experience with our fire department is that they're very professional.

Um we have a great group of of tradition of firefighting.

I go back to um when the Miracle Mile Fire happened, and that was back in the 60s, I believe.

And at that time, the fire chief was ready um and and got a uh a proposal uh passed here that at 5,000 square feet that we would sprinkle all our buildings.

Um not a lot of communities had done that at that time, and I think that that when you have a lot of older buildings at 5,000 square feet that um uh doing that showed um foresight.

I think this is one of these things that shows foresight, and um I think we are very proud of our fire department.

I think we need to keep doing that.

I think one of the things that we need to remember from a budget perspective is that we have a lot of TIFF projects that are maturing, um, which means that we're gonna have a lot of um money um coming to the property tax from these buildings that we've invested in.

A lot of them are the seven-story buildings or the four-story buildings or the the buildings that you're talking about that will now start paying their uh fair share.

Um I always had to point out to Mr.

Miller that uh the city of Duluth is uh larger um than Minneapolis and St.

Paul, and so is the city of Hibbing.

Um also I have to point out that uh Duluth gets 40% of their budget from the TIF, um, which is a large amount of money, and their city is declining in value in their homes and their um properties, and the city of Rochester is increasing in the value.

Point of order.

Do you mean uh LGA?

Government aid.

Um you said TIFF.

TIFF LGA you mean budget from LGA?

No, they yes, they get yes, okay.

That is what they get their budget from.

So I mean what kicks back to us is that DMC is is is ours and and uh we're doing well, so we don't need the money, and that's something that we need to correct with the people.

But um again, I go back to my rationale and my rationale is that we have professional and we expect our our fire department to be professional, and we can't just let them out there um without enough help.

Appreciate that.

Uh point of order as well.

And in the attached resolution, at least what I'm seeing um lists eight firefighters and you've said 15.

So it says eight.

It might be last year's resolution.

So I just wanted to make sure before we have a motion before we took any action that the attachment is correct.

I've seen are you seeing I'm seeing 15.

Um cover page is 15.

Okay.

I I'm looking at the resolution itself in the legislate app and at the header it says eight.

One I'm looking at online says perhaps it's been updated.

Eight.

It says 15 and 6.

Seems like it has the correct numbers.

Okay.

Not yet.

Uh I want to respond uh perhaps to the two gentlemen to my right.

Um I don't believe that uh this is a risk-free thing uh in terms of applying and then saying, well, you know, in two months we can make another decision.

I think that if our decision in two months was uh not to receive the grant, I think that that would uh strain uh uh our uh capital, not necessarily money capital, but capital as a city of uh Rochester.

So I don't want to uh uh quite glibly uh go into an application process, uh just thinking, well, I mean, we can just say thank you, but no thanks.

Mr.

Fredericks Okay, I'm not gonna talk for an hour about that.

But my question, my uh Sean beat me to Councilmember Palmer beat me to the punch a bit.

But in my mind, I'm sitting here thinking we have all this expansion going on.

Yes, I'm talking to you, uh, administrators now.

I'm sorry.

Uh all this expansion going on, all these all this housing, single family housing, twin homes, apartment housing, not all of it's getting to financing, so it's going live with taxes, even you know, within a reasonable amount of time.

Does not that growth pay for our needs going forward?

I don't I don't get why we always got to go back to all the rest of people in the community and like, okay, we're gonna raise your levy to cover this.

Doesn't growth keep, you know, don't we have systems in place to keep up with that?

Or am I off-based?

Or am I basically Ms.

Elms has a great answer for that in terms of the growth every budget cycle?

Um council Councilmember Fredericks um Council President, the it yes-ish.

Um so the way that the property tax levy is applied is each year you'll see the total what what they estimate to be the total value increase.

I believe what we had showed you in April was something on the order of four percent, a little over one percent, so a quarter of that was new construction.

So any tax levy, even if it's the same amount in the next year, is first absorbed by the new new construction value.

But at the same time, all of the valuations get updated within every five years.

So if your home or your business is revalued, your assessed value increases, you're still absorbing more of the pie than your neighbor who maybe didn't get re reassessed or doesn't have an increasing value.

So you're always going to have both the valuation of the property absorbing some of the levy after new construction absorbs its part.

So the question is how much is in each year is going to come online as new construction value.

And of course, if something receives its certificate of occupancy on January 25th, 2027, we won't see that new value on the tax roll until pay 2028.

So there's timing as a factor.

There is the question of was there tax increment financing applied to that project and how long and how how much of a difference is still coming to the city and when, but it's really about when does that new construction value come online?

It does pay first to your property tax.

So if you increase the million dollars, a quarter of that, just for round numbers in the current projection, would first be absorbed by new construction.

But three quarters of that is going to be absorbed by existing properties and all of their valuations are going to continue to shift.

So one property isn't necessarily going to absorb the same amount as the next property.

So it's a little bit more complex math than saying each year when we talk about the levy, we talk about every million dollars is about one percent.

It's a little less now.

So the levy grows, but every million dollars is about one percent year over year growth in the total dollar number that you're collecting.

And people hear my rate's going up a percent, but that's not actually how it gets applied to your individual tax bill, because first the new construction absorbs its portion, then the remainder is spread across every class of property, and however your valuation changed is your biggest factor on how much your property tax bill changed.

At the same time, people are moving further and further out of their homestead exclusion.

So they're paying more tax because they have less that's being excluded from their taxable value.

So there's multiple different factors at play that impact how the levy each year impacts property.

But yes, new construction is the very first absorber of any levy.

It's just not always a significant, as significant as how your valuation changes, how each piece of the property tax value pie changes.

If commercial is going up more than residential, commercial absorbs more of the pie if their valuation changes more.

If it doesn't go up more than residential, residential absorbs more.

So it's it is sort of complex.

Um generally people hear that this is the increase year over year of the tax levy, and they assume that's what their bill is going to be, and it could go be anywhere from zero to twenty percent, depending on how their valuation changed.

Um, and that was even true in the zero tax levy year.

Is that helpful or not helpful?

That's great.

I was crazy to think it was gonna be a short answer, wasn't I?

I mean, you were overly optimistic.

You did great, thank you.

And one last thing, uh, council president Wall.

Um you alluded to because what I hear them say, what I heard them say in what I read in our documents is we don't have to accept it when it comes in.

No, that's true.

So I read it as black and white.

It's like, hey, there's no harm in in in applying when we when if we are granted it, it's up to us to receive it.

I I I guess I don't know that that implies maybe you want to elaborate to me what you're saying, it may imply sure.

I'm trying to think of um you don't have to be nice.

Uh uh a simple example.

Uh, you know, if if someone if you ask for something and someone offers it to you, and then you say, Well, I guess I really don't want it.

I I don't think that the next time that person asks, you're going to say, well, they're not all that serious because they ask before.

And then they didn't act.

You're saying it for as a perspective from the grantor.

The person's from the from the federal government.

Yeah.

Got it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I kind of go off what Ms.

Elms, but but I was talking about TIFF.

In in the next three years, we're going to have a lot of large projects come off that will then be full value.

And I think that that will add a lot of um finances that so the last 10 to 15 years, we've added a lot of high rises and a lot of buildings like that that now will start paying for themselves.

And that was an investment that we did, but but we'll have more um funding coming in on those.

Do you know how much that is?

No, but we can ask the staff to go there.

I mean, I I yeah, and we have gotten that in the past, and uh Brent generally kind of kind of knows that stuff.

I think the council will be discussing that on Monday.

Okay.

We're we'll discuss that on Monday.

That's fine.

Is there a motion on this item?

I'll make a motion authorizing application to the FEMA Safer Grant program to support the hiring of 15 firefighters.

Second.

Uh Mr.

Miller.

I think we've had a good discussion.

I was going to say uh stay tuned next uh Monday.

I think we have two relevant discussions to this problem of how do we grow and provide adequate city services at a reasonable cost to our residents.

Uh I think both the TIFF discussion and the urban three analysis of our city's finances and our growth development pattern will be quite relevant to this and other public safety and city service discussions.

I'm ready to support this tonight.

I think we still need to have an intensive process of understanding how with whether we accept this grant or we grow by other means, uh a really detailed analysis of how we're growing smartly.

And obviously, part of that is in fire, and part of that is in our development and growth of our tax base.

So I'm ready to support this tonight and appreciate the discussion.

Thank you, Mr.

Palmer.

No.

Okay.

Uh and I will add um I've been knocking on a lot of doors already, hundreds and hundreds of doors, and uh uh the growth in a property tax really is uh a just a real hurt for some people.

I'm not going to say for a majority, uh, but for some.

And uh while I I would love to explore ways to be able to meet uh the needs, maybe not 15 firefighters, but explore the needs of the fire department.

Uh I'm I'm not going to support this while at the same time saying I'm really grateful for the wonderful work that our that RFD does.

Any other comments?

All in favor say aye.

Aye aye.

Opposed no, nay.

It passes four to one with wall against.

Thank you very much, Chief Pooler.

Very much.

We are now to ordinance first readings.

Mr.

Spencer Craig, please.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

There's one first reading, item J1, an ordinance repealing in whole chapters 7-1 through 7-10, and replacing with new chapters 7-1 through 7-10, and creating chapters 7-11 through 7-15 of Title 7 of the Rochester Code of Ordinances relating to housing code.

Thank you.

Uh they just did a great job, as well as the fire department, as well as the county, as well as emergency.

I mean, it was a great night.

So I commend uh all of our public safety crews as well, uh commend communications for putting tools in our hands for interaction.

Uh the booth that I was in, three of us uh council members, thanks especially to Mr.

Palmer.

Uh, we had no end of interaction with adults and children.

It was nonstop for two hours, and it was so fun.

So if you haven't been to a safe city night, there are three more this summer.

Look them up.

Is there a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Opposed no.

We are adjourned.