Please ride.

Thank you.

Welcome everybody to our uh July twentieth City Council meeting.

Uh, we begin every council meeting with our open comment period.

This is an opportunity for members of the public to speak on items that we will not be taking public testimony during a public hearing later uh on the agenda.

Each person has up to two minutes to speak for a total of twenty minutes if we have more people than uh there is for twenty minutes.

I will ask my colleagues if they would like to suspend the rules to continue hearing from members of the public.

I've never seen them not grant that.

Uh but that said, I would request that each piece speaker be concise to allow more uh people to speak during the designated time.

Uh participants are also encouraged to limit comments generally to topics that are within the scope and jurisdiction of the council's ability to affect power uh policy.

Uh council members and staff do not respond to your comments during the public comment period, but will instead follow up on any specific requests separately.

If you have materials to share with the council, please give them to the city clerk who is uh sitting to my right, uh, and she will distribute them.

You will be invited to speak in the order of which you signed up, and we will start with Mr.

Jared Lucker.

Mayor Norton.

Yep, there you go.

My name's Jerry Looker, resident of Rochester.

Good evening, Mayor Norton, council members, and fellow friends and neighbors.

My name is Jared Lucker, I'm a resident of Rochester as well as a candidate for mayor.

Tonight though, I'm speaking not as a candidate but as a concerned citizen.

On Friday, July 17th, from 1130 to 130 p.m.

My son, a volunteer and I were outdoor knocking the Fallwell neighborhood where I live nearby, and my sons attend Fallwell Elementary.

We were on Fallwell Drive Southwest as we noticed numerous cars driving at excessive speeds.

And I asked her to share with me her concerns for the city.

She mentioned the speeding cars and that there was an in-home daycare nearby, and she was worried about the safety of everyone in the neighborhood.

She also mentioned that she has a disability, so it was difficult for her to attend meetings such as this.

Several hours later at around 4 a.m.

a car crashed into a home right across the street, smashing right through the front window.

Thankfully, no one was seriously injured.

Oh sorry, in addition to the concern about speeding, the State Patrol recently reported that the rate of motorcyclists killed has more than doubled since the last year.

In Rochester in recent months, I have read numerous stories just like these, and for me, this is particularly personal.

One month ago, my little sister, just 31 years old, was killed by a drunk driver while riding her motorcycle.

Although this did happen in the Twin Cities, the trend is troubling here in Rochester as well.

I want you all to continue to bring attention to this issue as is it also is it it is also relevant to the Elton Hills drive concerns as well with speeding.

We need to band together as a city to do more than just words.

We must increase enforcement, think outside the box and recognize that this is a danger to public safety that must be addressed with the most urgency possible.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Mr.

Lucker, and our condolences.

Next we have Matt Hempel.

Good evening, Council members.

My name is Matt Hampel, uh, resident of Hadley Valley.

Um I'm here tonight to oppose the Hadley Valley annexation.

Forcing a high-density housing development in a rural area like this is a prime example of prioritizing developer profits over public safety.

Squeezing 275 dwelling units onto roughly 70 acres will funnel all neighborhood traffic onto a single narrow bottleneck on Hadley Valley Road.

This poorly planned configuration creates immediate safety hazards for residents, motorists, and pedestrians alike.

The developer deliberately skipped a direct connection to 48th Street Northeast simply to avoid the financial costs of crossing a wetland.

The city must not reward a flawed design that compromises public safety and guarantees daily gridlock for local residents.

Furthermore, I must ask: why was the traffic analysis done in the middle of December?

The golf course is closed, it's not a peak time of traffic.

Um additionally, where is the infrastructure uh improvement plans for 48th Street and Hadley Valley Road?

No concrete plans have been made available to the public.

This property is also a vital piece of Hadley Valley watershed, which serves as a critical drainage system for Northeast Rochester.

As local residents, we have witnessed severe flooding on this exact land during intense storms and spring thaws.

Replacing natural absorbent terrain with acres of concrete roofing and asphalt will drastically increase stormwater runoff and intensify local flooding.

Finally, the citizens who live alongside this massive project have been completely shut out of the decision-making process.

Pushing this type of density forward while silencing neighbor local leadership set sets a dangerous, heavy-handed precedence.

Growth must be responsible.

Annexation should be a collaborative good faith partnership, not a hostile takeover.

I urge this council to reject the annexation.

Our entire neighborhood is watching tonight.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Bill Dunn.

Thank you for this forum.

Uh our council of the city.

Uh, I don't live in the city, pay plenty of taxes to the city, otherwise, but nonetheless, I'm a uh resident of Haverhill Township.

Uh I serve on a on a rapidly created uh self-proclaimed task force, which we call ourselves the Hadley Valley Community Task Force, representing multiple neighborhoods within our township uh in a non-elected fashion, but nonetheless, it was happening had to happen fast.

But this group represents the presidents of the Pine Tree Estates Property Owners Association, the president of Hawthorne Meadows Town Home Associate uh homeowners association and a variety of folks across the town, the area of the township affected by a proposal uh associated with the annexation you're discussing this evening.

Uh the uh this Hadley Valley Community Task Force uh recognizes that it's probably unlikely that the annexation is not going to occur.

But the uh the orderly annexation agreement that was uh agreed upon between the township and the city in 2005 underscores the importance of an orderly transition of density.

Uh in this R2 area that is being proposed.

Um, it is maximally squashed into uh the 140 acres that is uh pending annexation.

And the momentum of this project seems excessive to those that are already there with a lot of earth moving already happening.

And uh there's been a general development plan which has been submitted.

And uh was in fact denied in part.

But in fact, the the uh in the response to that, thank you, Mr.

Dunn Street Connectivity score targets were modified unreasonably.

So thank you.

We just like you to be aware that there's more to come.

Thank you.

Next up we have Troy Pullman.

All right, good evening.

Thank you for your time, uh Council Mayor.

Um new resident of Rochester.

I've been here about three years, and current resident living on Elton Hills Drive for the last two years.

And I'm about halfway between the point because every time I pull up my driveway, it tells me either go left or right, depending on where I'm going.

Um I just want to talk a little bit about it.

Um living there the past two years, the designated lines for like parking, the center line, even the divider line, even when it's raining or so we're so faded you can't really even see them when you're driving down the road.

So I'd like to say I think there's things we could do that would improve it without going to limiting the thoroughfare and cutting down the traffic lanes.

So what I would suggest is that you go with option four uh option three, leave it four lanes, but instead add uh designated bike markers to the outside lanes.

So the drivers clearly realize that hey, this is a shared parking line.

Put curve outs in that shorten the distance pedestrians have to cross.

Both these measures are gonna help the traffic the driver think about they need to limit, they need to slow their speed down.

Because I will agree, right now it looks like a wide open racetrack because we haven't limited that space.

We haven't created lines for people to color inside of while they're driving.

So I think that probably a lower cost effective approach to consider.

I know you only have the three options, so I'd say look at four, but maybe stick with the four lanes and see if you can come up with something a better improvement.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we have uh Craig Ugland.

Yeah, all right.

Uh thank you for having me here.

My name is Craig Eugland.

Uh I was originally a 40-year resident of Alton Hills or off of Alton Hills Drive, and I led the take back our streets um fight to keep Alton Hills Drive as four-lane.

Um that was uh uh shot down back in 2020.

Uh the big concern or the big feedback that I've gotten from the council members that replied to me earlier today was concerns of safety.

There have been two deaths on Alton Hills Drive.

The first was many, many decades ago from a drunk driver, and unfortunately, we had another one just a few weeks ago.

Neither of those would have been changed by the design, the current design of Alton Hills Drive.

They were due to that, would be a disingenuous to use that as a justification to change Alton Hills Drive.

Per the study that the city did last year, there have been six incidents between cars and pedestrians.

Five of those incidents were on Alton Hills Drive and Broadway, which is already being addressed.

The last incident was at 9th Avenue.

We'll come back to that.

Um back in 2020, Take Back Red Streets and other community members gave several recommendations to how to improve on the short term Alton Hills Drive.

Not one of those things has been done in six years.

And I will not say that that would have changed that incident from two weeks ago.

Um, you're promoting a center lane.

You're pushing cars to approach each other head on.

Is that not defeating the purpose of improving the safety of Alton Hills Drive?

The city has policies and goals, green streets or green steps, complete streets.

Um, these are guidelines, these are not laws.

Alton Hills Drive is an extremely unique road that none of these guidelines can fix for us.

We need to have common sense as part of the discussion.

If it's truly about safety, put your bike lanes on CC Drive and 14th and 13th Avenue.

It's faster to get from Broadway to 52, straighter, shorter, less driveways, or put a bike path over CC Drive or over CC Heights.

Thank you, Mr.

Ugland.

Next we have Brenda Quayle.

Quay.

Good evening.

My name is Brenda Quay.

I'm the owner of Venstar LLC.

I'm also the majority owner of the Climpt, an 80-unit market rate workforce housing project that is under construction right now in downtown Rochester, just south of Discovery Square.

I'm here tonight not to talk about the Climped, but to talk about the Civic Center North Project.

Our friends over at Sherman Associates are great developers.

They've worked a long time to try and bring that project to fruition.

But if they can't, we wanted to bring you a plan B.

Our team would be willing to do 200 units of workforce housing on two-thirds of the site, leaving one third for a future affordable developer.

We'd bring our whole team, then stars the developer, Weiss Builders as the general contractor, and Think Bank is the lender.

I've had conversations with the president of Think Bank Rochester, and she has assured us that she would stand behind that project if it made financial sense.

I brought Proformas.

We appreciate your consideration.

Thank you, Ms.

Quay.

Next we have Jennifer Den Higgeny.

I may have missed that.

Good evening.

I'm Jennifer Denzagano, and I'm the mother of three kids, ages two, four, and six.

Most mornings, sunshine, snow, rain.

We all climb into my cargo bike, also known as my bike minivan, and head out together.

We feel the breeze on our faces, we chatter back and forth, and we have the freedom of not being stuck in traffic or in the school drop-off line.

It's one of my favorite parts of the day when we bike together.

But that freedom depends on feeling safe, and on Elton Hills, we don't.

I appreciate the reduction in lanes proposed, and I'm here to ask you to choose the option that has the protected bike lane on Elton Hills Drive.

This corridor serves three schools and is a key east-west connection in our city.

Kids walk and bike it every day.

Several cyclists, as previously mentioned, have been injured or killed on this stretch recently, and there have been car crashes onto the sidewalks near the schools.

These are places our children are supposed to be safe.

The active transportation plan for the city specifically calls for all ages and all abilities bike infrastructure on Elton Hills.

If it's not done now, it likely won't be another opportunity until my kids are almost adults.

A protected bike lane here is not a luxury.

There is not another feasible route to build a bikeway on this side of Assisi Heights because of how the neighborhood streets were designed, and this option connects directly into our existing bikeway network, including the recently redone Broadway routes.

It will extend the safety of the routes that families already use.

Your choices on this decision as our city council are about convenience versus safety.

Parking on Elton Hills is a convenience with alternatives as there are ample other parking spaces around the corners and in within the neighborhood and relatively few destinations without dedicated parking lots.

There's not an alternative route for safe for safety past these three schools.

Public roads should move people through our city safely, and this should come before storing personal cars.

This is also about freedom of choice.

Right now it's not a real option for Rochester families who live near Elton Hills Drive.

With a protected lane, families would have a choice, not just a car is the only safe way.

In closing, I would like you to imagine yourself as the kid who gets to hop on a bike, feel the breeze, and get some physical activity before school, maybe ride to a friend's afterward or on a weekend.

Wouldn't it be great for all kids to have this choice?

I urge you to add a protected lane to Elton Hills Drive.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we have Molly Dennis.

Hello.

From Lived Experience, being right there as a council member.

I sadly have learned that city leaders have private meetings behind closed doors and preset agendas to silent residents, residents and to control the legislation.

When elected in 2020, I learned quickly that the city doesn't hesitate to present orchestrated propaganda to residents to protect the image of powerful people.

Residents deserve to know the truth.

This Elton Hills traffic study should be in a public hearing to amplify voices of residents, not in a reports and recommendations, which is the agenda of the city staff.

Why the city government destroys all emails, all emails after six months.

And the reason residents do not get all the data in their freedom of information requests is because information is control.

City prioritizes image over truth and self-interest over transparency.

Why do rural leaders still limit information and burn books?

Because a resident who knows the truth is harder to control.

If social media feedback and city council virtual comment sessions are eliminated, democracy begins to slowly die.

Please let us cut this veneer.

When huge local legislation is presented within hidden rubber stamping consent agenda items.

It is clear the agenda is of the city staff, not of the people of Rochester.

Please do better.

Thank you.

Next up, we have April Suter.

Good evening.

I'm April Suter, presiding at 1538 King Court Southeast in Rochester.

I'm honored to come before you this evening as you consider my appointment to the park board.

A resident of Rochester since 1992, I've served the community as a nonprofit leader, community volunteer, rotarian, and avid parks, recreation and trails advocate.

Like most residents and visitors, I view our parks, trails, and recreational amenities as critical to the quality of life in this city.

I look forward to guiding the work around these invaluable resources, ensuring access and quality today and for generations to come.

Thank you for your support.

Thank you.

Next we have Taria.

Good evening, President Shubre, Mayor Norton, Council.

To recap, for those who are not here.

State your name again.

I want to make sure I said it right.

Tiki Garcia.

Okay, thank you.

To recap for those who were not here last week, it's not too late for the construction of the safe North Loop Mayowood bike and pedestrian path.

One, the path has been completed behind the stone fence successfully, connecting the existing bike path on the existing side all the way to the corporate event center and running east behind the stone wall all the way to the green space, which has been quick claim deeded back to the city, confirming that running a continuous north side path running the boundaries of the preserve on Mayowood is a win-win viable option for our community.

Two, it is not too late.

GCUBE confirmed last meeting that the engineering plan is not in, and public works is still working on it with GCubed, who is paid by the developer.

We are excited as a community to finish the safe Zumber Loop bike path loop as originally planned, existing in the active transit plan of 2012, also honoring the established unbiased MINDAT engineering study, stating the opposite side of the road where the developer wants to outsource the path is dangerous and not feasible.

The topography is not changed.

The City of Rochester, if the City of Rochester moves forward with the developer designed and finance path, we do not consent to quit claim data back.

The liability and maintenance need to remain in perpetuity with said developer.

Thank you.

We're looking forward to this.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Next we have Luke Doskey.

And we are in Ward 5, and we are in the walk zone for Elton Hills as well as John Adams.

Cycles all over Rochester and uses a car.

Everybody has talked about speeds.

And in Rochester, we hear that you know, drivers are concerned about all motorist um cyclists, e-bikes, scooters on the roads, as well as pedestrians on sidewalks with scooters, cyclists going um in the paths as well.

I've experienced this with walking with my daughter in a stroller and not feeling comfortable on the sidewalk.

As cyclists, we feel um squeezed out of the roads, out of the sidewalks.

We want a safe place.

And then also, as the configuration is now the three with the two lanes of parking, if there are no cars parked there, there's no vision visual narrowing of the road, and narrower roads have been shown to reduce speeds.

Therefore, if you have one lane of parking, you will have more occupancy of that one lane, and then you'll have a cycling path that is delineated.

And this will help everybody.

Thank you.

And next up we have Vivian Yip.

Good evening, Council members.

My name is Vivian Yip.

I'm a working mom, an eye doctor, and a daily bike commuter through Elton Hills.

I ride to get exercise into my day and to be a healthy role model for my three daughters.

This summer I have an I bought an e-cargo bike to bring my daughter to summer school age child care because despite her being a very capable bicyclist.

I do not feel safe letting her ride through the current Elton Hills corridor.

The demand for safe routes from local families is undeniable.

I have helped lead a bike bus at Jefferson Elementary and a bike to school day with over 50 students and attended the mayor's America 250 bike parade.

I wish you could see the joy on all the kids' faces as they bike through the streets with their peers, fearless.

Parents and children want to ride, but they need infrastructure that protects them.

The city's recommended design overlooks the thousands of students who travel along Elton Hills.

Keeping underutilized parking on both sides preserves a wide, dangerous roadway that actively encourages speeding.

Installing protected bike infrastructure would narrow the roadway, naturally slow down traffic, and make the streets safer for everyone, including drivers.

As an optometrist working with visually impaired individuals, I see the stakes firsthand.

Walking safely is a necessity for my patients because driving is no longer an option.

Street designs focused solely on vehicle use, alienate the 30% of our population that cannot drive.

I urge the council to ask city staff and the engineering consultants.

Which street design option is the safest for all users.

Please choose a protected bike lane.

Thank you.

And that is everyone who signed up.

So I will close the open comment period and ask Clerk Caseel to please call the roll.

Good evening.

Councilmember Keene.

Here.

Councilmember Miller.

Here.

Councilmember Wall.

Here.

Councilmember Fredericks.

Here.

Councilmember Palmer.

Here.

Councilmember Doring.

Here.

Council President Schubring.

Here.

Mayor Norton, present.

Next up, we have our city administrators report.

Take it away administrator zones.

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

I always start the administrators' report by thanking our teammates for acting with respect, integrity, safety, and excellence in everything they do.

So really appreciate all of the work that happens every day across all of our different departments to serve the community.

Did want to point out a bit of work that's forthcoming.

So sidewalk repair and replacement project is beginning in district two, so that is going to be getting underway.gov slash sidewalks.

And check and see where you are within that area.

It's a large area, generally east of Highway 52, you can see there, and a little bit south of Highway 14.

So if that's something that is where you live or where someone that you know lives, that is an important information to check out on the website.

You should have received a notice, but that should be getting underway here.

Also, an opportunity for the community to help create a public poem for the 19th Avenue link station that is being built.

It's very easy to participate.

The glass panels are titled Every Day Analemma.

And so residents are invited to respond to the prompt everyday eye.

Please please be judicious about how you respond.

We might not pick things that are not appropriate.

But we just are looking for daily habits, a small moment of joy, or personal ritual.

The responses are able to be submitted online, Rochestermin.gov before August 15th.

Also, the community development block grant public service grant applications opened today.

They will be open through Monday, August 17th at 4 30 p.m.

There's an open house on Wednesday, July 22nd from 2 to 3:30 p.m.

at the Development Services at Infrastructure Center.

That's at 4001 West River Parkway Northwest.

So there's also a significant amount of information available on our website.

Again, Rochester Mn.gov.

Also a phone number to call if you have questions or aren't available to go to that meeting.

And then we are hoping to bring you fireworks that look more like this.

So the Rochester Fireworks take two is scheduled for Friday, September 4th, and the rain date is Saturday, September 5th.

We are still working out the details on an event.

We will be having darkness a little bit earlier at that time of September.

So we'll also be announcing the time for the fireworks to go off as we um get going, but we wanted to make sure people were aware of the makeup date.

And that's all I have.

Thank you, Ms.

Zelms.

Next up we have the mayor's report.

Mayor Norton.

Thank you, Council President.

Um I have just a couple things today.

I want to let you know that I'll be um heading to Madison to speak at a conference on behalf of the city.

I'll be doing a presentation on the regulatory justice uh work that we've been doing.

You'll be hearing about that um this evening.

Um and I will be presenting at that conference and be back Friday around noon.

I'll be done with the conference at Friday at noon.

Um in my absence, of course, council uh president Shoebring, uh, if there's an emergency will uh step in, but I am available the entire time by phone and email.

Uh Safe City Nights is happening.

We've had two.

There are two left, July 28th at Bishop Elementary and August 11th at Franklin, Ben Franklin Elementary.

So uh put those on your calendar and uh hopefully most of the council members are show up.

I know uh there's a lot of people walking around with passports that need their little sticker from uh council members.

So um bring your stickers if you come.

Uh just a reminder.

Um, I'm not sure I've talked about it here, but um, I'm hosting a youth leadership and success summit with the Rochester Homestead Youth Council.

It will be on a day where there's uh students are released in Rochester, and we're working with um schools in the whole county and inviting them as well.

Should be really interesting.

It'll be over at the Civic Center.

Um, a lot of career learning and opportunities, some great speakers.

If all goes well, the governor plans on coming down, uh Larry Jacobs from the Humphrey School, and some others as well as some really great local business people who will talk about their careers and encourage these young people to kind of think outside the box about uh what many careers there are in our uh community for their future success.

Also, just a reminder Rochester Voices is um on the city's on the on our YouTube channel.

So if anyone wants to follow those, um we've been this month at um in well this started back in April.

We've done it on the the drone program, parks and rec, our neighbors, cradle to career, fire prevention month, on and on.

So we try to um keep you informed about what's happening in the city and by interviewing um staff members as well as uh community nonprofit leaders and perhaps some of you.

Uh also we have a newsletter.

Um we've been doing this for some time.

If anyone wants to take a picture of the QR code or or go online, we do have a monthly newsletter.

Um I would say a lot of pictures and little paragraphs, so it's not a lot of heavy reading, but at least to let you know what's happening in the mayor's office in the city.

And uh lastly, as I close out, just a reminder um the city takes board and commission applications year around.

Uh you don't have to wait for an announcement that it's open.

Uh boards and commission uh applications are on the city's website.

Um, and you can just click in and select up to three.

Uh so feel free to share your talents with the city of Rochester.

Thanks.

That's it.

Thank you, Mayor.

Next up, we have the order of the agenda.

I have been uh notified that uh the applicant for item G1, a conditional use permit, has asked for a continuance on that or a delay to September 9th.

Uh my recommendation to my colleagues is that we keep this on our agenda and that we hold the public hearing just in case there are members of the public who are here to uh speak on that item, and then we will can keep the uh public hearing open and uh consider whether or not to uh to grant that continuance.

With that, uh are there any other changes to the order of the agenda.

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

Move by councilmember Fredericks.

Second.

With the uh adjustment that you made of taking G1.

Yes.

Yes.

Uh seconded by Councilmember Keene.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay.

Motion passes.

Moving on to our consent agenda.

I've received notice that council member Palmer has pulled item F2 and Councilmember Wall has pulled item F4.

Uh anything else?

Seeing nothing, I would invite a motion to approve and block items F1, F3, and F5 through F23.

So moved.

Moved by Councilmember Doring, seconded by Councilmember Palmer.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Post say nay.

Motion passes.

Moving on to our public hearings.

We have four public hearings on the agenda tonight.

As I mentioned, uh with item G1, which is a conditional use permit by MJK LLC.

I'll I'm going to bypass the staff report if that's okay.

And at this time, open the public hearing.

Is does anyone wish to speak to be heard on this item?

Anyone wishing to be heard on this item?

Step forward and uh state your name.

Um Mark Welps with GQ Engineering representative applicant on the bike.

Mark.

Oh, sorry, Mark Wells with GQ Engineering representing the applicant on this item.

Uh I've been having some going back and forth with the airport uh staff on some items here, really, to answer any questions you may have.

Uh, understand we asked for the continuance.

Uh we do have the blasting expert um here.

We don't know if I'll have him at the next available meeting, um, but he is here if you had specific questions for the staff report, understanding that it wasn't presented.

So thank you.

Uh anyone else wishing to be heard at on this.

We will keep the uh public hearing open until we uh bring this item back.

Uh is there in as I mentioned, there was the applicant did request that this item be continued to September 9th, 2026.

Is there a motion as such?

So moved.

Second.

Moved by Councilmember Palmer, seconded by councilmember uh wall.

Uh any further discussion.

Um just just a point of order.

I I'm I'm unclear whether the uh developer was asking that the expert should testify tonight, or is that because it doesn't appear that we're gonna have that the next time, but it didn't sound like he was going to just use the open comment or the open or the public hearing.

I'm just looking for some um insight into how how this could or should work.

Well, I mean, uh council member, I guess the applicant is the is who has asked for the continuance, and so I guess that's incumbent on them if they want to provide that expertise to us uh since they are the ones who's asked for the September 9th date.

Yeah, I I think in all fairness to all parties involved, uh wait until the September 9th is probably best.

Otherwise, it's gonna be a lot of trying to remember what was discussed here.

So if you had a specific questions based on his expert testimony or his letter, um you could ask him that question.

But otherwise we'll have a full presentation at the next available meeting.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

Thanks.

Thanks.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay.

Motion passes.

I forgot your thing.

Next up we have item G2, which is an appeal by Broadway Enterprises LLC, and uh uh our uh community of development staff, Anthony Cheeky will present this item.

Thank you, Council President Schubring, members of council, good evening.

Uh my name is Anthony Cheeky.

Um before you is application CD 2026 002 AP by Broadway Enterprises LLC uh to allow for continuation of development that had an approved site development plan under the former LDM uh that has since expired.

Uh the property is located immediately west of the intersection of Broadway Avenue North and 16th Streets Northeast at 1405 Broadway Avenue North.

Uh the applicant originally appeared before the zoning board of appeals for variance request under file CD 2026-002 VAR at their June 3rd hearing date.

At that time, the board had approved a motion to deny the variance request uh for this appeal.

The development review team is recommending denial of the appeal request, which would uphold the zoning board of appeals decision.

Uh that concludes my presentation and I'm available if there are any questions.

Thank you, Mr.

Cheeky.

Uh is the applicant here and uh you have uh and I did not go through the guidelines for the uh public hearings, but quickly uh uh if the item has an applicant, then they have up to 10 minutes to speak.

After that, I will open the public hearing.

Members of the public have up to five minutes to speak on uh items in public hearings.

With that, if you will introduce yourself and you have up to 10 minutes.

Thank you.

Good evening, President Schuberging, Mayor Norton, members of council.

My name is John Beatty.

I am appearing on behalf of applicant Broadway Enterprises this evening.

And uh represent that this case is much simpler than perhaps the record that's in front of you.

We're not asking you to approve a new development as has already been indicated by staff as a continuation of a previously approved project.

We're not asking you to take any steps to weaken the newly adopted UDC.

We're simply asking you to allow completion of what is a two-phase project that the city has previously approved.

And the variance process, whether it's through statute through the UDC through the LDM, it exists precisely for this situation.

Not to avoid the rules, simply to recognize that when a strict application of those rules no longer advances the very purposes of which uh they were written to serve.

And in this instance, we submit that this project that was previously approved, satisfies the reasonable, comprehensive, harmonious nature of what already exists on uh North Broadway, and we'd be seeking to continue a unique previously approved two-phase integrated development, phase one of which that Starbucks immediately to the south, and which was integrated and designed, built precisely around this remaining parcel that you see on the screen to the north.

And I may in a moment ask staff if they would help cite to some of the sections of uh of uh our submitted documents.

I'll cite you to the pages if I can.

But for the uh council tonight, the question is whether it's reasonable to require final phase of a previously approved project with standards that did not exist at the time that that project was first approved.

To uh move forward, particularly where the city's significant public investment in uh North Broadway improvements satisfy significant number of those pedestrian friendly pedestrian walkability uh requirements that you might see now in the UDC.

To give more background on the timeline and the details of the project, I offer Mr.

Ryan Schoenfelder with WSE.

Welcome, Mr.

Schoenfeier.

Uh yeah, Ryan Schoenfeller of WSC Engineering, President Schubert, members of the council, Mayor Norton.

Um, just want to talk about this site as a holistic design that was approved back in 2020.

You can see it was intentionally designed so that there was um vehicular pedestrian circulation with the challenges of COVID 19 that came in during 2020, right when this project was approved, caused a delay that the owner didn't want to start open a bank building.

Of course, no customers are out and about.

Um, in addition to that, you have the Broadway North reconstruction that again disrupts this corridor and makes it very difficult for a newly constructed building to open up.

Um both things that the owner obviously didn't create themselves.

Um talking a little bit more about the site circulation.

Um, the Starbucks building, which is completed on the south, and this bank building on the share that drive-through, they both share an exit to the north.

Um, you can no longer turn into the site from the south to the Starbucks staff kind of cut that off after after the building was constructed for um just safety reasons.

Um between the two buildings, there is a dedicated ADA accessible route so that someone who parks in this center can travel safely between both buildings.

Um again, I think meeting the intent of the comprehensive plan, which is promoting the pedestrian and vehicle accessibility.

Um speaking a little bit more towards an integrated plan, which the UDC and the comprehensive plan promotes.

This is zoned MXT, which is a corridor district.

You look at the buildings to the south, the east, the north, their drive-throughs, single sites, 20, 22 feet tall, just like our site.

We're fitting the intent of what's there and what's constructed now.

Um, constructing a building that the UDC requires 40 feet tall, um doesn't seem appropriate like it would fit in this area.

Um, we're asking that you consider a multi-tenant building, you know, that we fit the center mindset, especially look north to the shopping area with all that parking available.

Um we're meeting the intent of the UDC.

Um, just want to touch on uh the MXT district is a transition.

Uh the node is a transitional district, so it makes more sense to transition from Broadway kind of step back towards the residential on the north and east, and then um transitioning to the west where we have multifamily or senior housing, north is the center.

Again, this just fits the character of the neighborhood.

And developing anything on the site other than the building that was approved previously doesn't make sense.

So I'm available for any questions that you have after Mr.

B finishes finishes our presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ryan.

Focusing just on a couple uh points raised in the staff report.

One of the bases uh recommending denial is that this fails to maintain compatibility.

The project that's in front of you fails to maintain compatibility with the comprehensive plan.

And I ask uh very seriously what's changed.

Nobody's pointed anywhere in uh the staff report to a policy of the comprehensive comprehensive plan that this project violates today that had previously satisfied when it was approved, part of this integrated development back in 2020.

Our comprehensive plan for the city was a 20-year plan adopted in April of 2018.

That is a 20-year plan.

Two years into that plan, this project was approved.

Six years after it was first approved, we're back in front of you.

The comprehensive plan, which is planning to succeed 2040, has not changed.

What's changed?

The streetscape has changed.

The UDC has changed.

But to make findings tonight to say that this project does not comply with the comprehensive plan would not be based on any policy that's been pointed to me.

I hope that someone could raise uh what's been changed in that comprehensive plan that no longer supports approval of this project and supports instead something that's significantly out of character on this site, a 40-foot building built to the zero lot line.

That doesn't fit in my view with the character harmonious with the neighborhood.

Uh second point, uh, the site does not prioritize pedestrian activity.

That's one of the findings.

If you look at page nine of our presentation, uh, I think that'll demonstrate the concept of all of those North Broadway public improvements and enhancements.

Those public improvements include a significant broad promenade with decorative uh walls, decorative landscaping, canopy trees, a number of the issues that are raised in the UDC, insisting that uh this project uh satisfy certain walkability, just 200 feet to the south of this project.

One of the points that we needed a variance for tonight is for a public transport, a bus stop.

And that bus stop is located right there in front of the uh the Starbucks.

We're just slightly beyond whatever is permitted because we're over an acre in size.

And those are the sorts of issues that we submit uh for those pedestrian uh walkability nature.

This is going to be a building uh similar to what we see at Beatles on 2nd or that South uh Buffalo Wild Wings with the associated bank and a professional service piece comprising it, both uh walkable, approachable, and here, given the drive-thru uses on each side of the project, a brand new caribou, a brand new Starbucks.

Uh, this is a project we submit will attract and enhance that site.

It was formally a Wendy's that have been scraped many years ago, some may recall.

Uh, what we're bringing, I think brings other users and all users that can use bus, bike, walk vehicles, supportive of the Northbrook and Silver Lake shopping centers.

Lastly, uh, I think the uh staff and planning uh zoning appeals board took the position that the developer self created these practical difficulties by choosing to move forward with this uh project.

And we submit that as Mr.

Schoenfelder already suggested, the developer didn't choose a multi-year pandemic, a multi-year north construction uh improvement on North Broadway, uh, nor the intervening adoption of the UDC.

What the developer did choose was reliance on a previously approved phase one of this project, invested millions of dollars, integrated that uh Starbucks design.

If you look to the west half of the site, Mr.

Schoenfelter mentioned it's really critical.

I think you see it on page 18 of our presentation.

The way that all of those cars are queued through there, it necessarily dedicates about half of the west side in order to get to the Starbucks site and then come back around what would be this building centered in what's the remnant.

But so much of this building has been or this site has been committed to irrevocably.

Uh, we aren't dealing with an undeveloped greenfield site.

This has already been designed, it's been engineered, it's been integrated into traffic circulation that's there.

And those were decisions that were made based on the city's previous approval under the same comprehensive plan that we have today.

And I submit that reliance cannot simply be ignored.

So I stand in front of you recognizing the tremendous amount of careful, thoughtful work that went into the UDC and its development.

And this does not seek for any sort of precedent uh to allow or find an end around that UDC.

This is very unique.

These are unique practical difficulties established by the fact that this is a previously approved project that has been uh built to it to a degree, and now we're coming looking to find some way to finish it.

Uh so we're not asking for a new project, we're asking for you to allow us to finish a project that had been previously approved, one that's proven successful through phase one, something the neighborhood has definitely liked and the cities liked, something that meets the comprehensive plan.

And we welcome your questions.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, Mr.

Brady.

Uh at this point, I will open the public hearing.

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

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

Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and invite Mr.

Beatty and Mr.

Schoen Felter up to uh any closing comments.

I think we stand on on the concern related to the uh practical difficulties or not self-created.

Uh the the if you you look closely at our packet, you'll see that there's about eight points that are raised uh for subtle or or variances, you know, specific variances that are required now as we've transitioned from the LDM to the UDC.

Primary of those is the fact that this is a 40-foot minimum height requirement.

We believe that that variance uh is is absolutely necessary to to uh to be made in order to allow continued future development of this site.

Likewise, uh there's about four of those variances that are walkability or pedestrian-oriented variances, as I argued previously.

I I think that the uh the public improvements that have been made through that area and the fact that it's oriented now with that wall and those landscaping uh cut off largely some of the benefit.

We can't have a a front-facing street-facing door uh that looks straight into a wall on North Broadway.

So the design would would be to orient and change it consistent with the ADA points that uh Mr.

Schoen filter already raised, but that gets to some of the glazing, it's a professional service building.

You know, those are points that if necessary, I think the developer can go to work on, but at a minimum, the setback that now requires the queuing to allow the integration of both sites uh for uh that that setback would be beyond the 15-foot minimum.

We're only getting to 30 feet inside of that is already a 10-foot public utility easement.

Uh and the the minimum height issues are the ones that we really are here tonight and hoping that you can just look at this project as a whole and agree that when we approved it six years ago, it stood on its own as a good project for the site and and continues to do so even if we have to get a variance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

At this point, I will invite my colleagues for questions of staff or the applicant.

Councilmember Palmer.

Uh for Mr.

Batty Bay, um, I got a couple questions for you.

If I read this right, and if I'm understanding it, um the plan was set up in 2018 for the for this site.

The comprehensive plan was adopted in 2018.

This site was, I think, first engineered 2018, ultimately approved by city staff in May of 2020.

And the Starbucks was built when right after in 2020.

21.

Okay.

And then we had Broadway construction for two years.

We had COVID before that.

Is that correct?

Kind of a circumstances what you're saying.

Um delay delayed everything.

Correct.

Okay.

Staff question.

If they're 22 feet tall, um, versus the 40, is is what what is the rationale for having 40 feet?

So the reason that the minimum 40-foot building height is triggered is due to the site's proximity to Broadway Avenue.

Uh in the UDC for this zone district, the additional district standards, there's even higher level if you're in proximity to certain high-level streets, um, which this site is.

So that's what ties the additional density or the height requirement.

Um that's likely to achieve again other comprehensive plan goal of the higher density, incorporating mixed-use development at these higher transit oriented corridors.

So, south of this um site, you've got a 22-foot tall building, the Starbucks was just recently built.

You've got the caribou on the other side, which is 22 feet.

And you got Northbrook shopping center that's been there probably since the 60s.

It has 22 feet.

And across the street is Silver Lake Shopping Center, which is 22 feet.

Um how is this how went a 40-foot tall building kind of be odd in that situation?

I think with kind of the existing context of neighboring properties, it may stick out a bit.

Um, however, the original site development plan was applied for in 2018 when the standards for those existing building heights were lower.

Um, the Starbucks was built under those standards.

Um, the inaction to initiate a project, it caused the expiry under with the LDM timeline at limits and SDP approval to one year.

Um there was no uh request for an extension at any point that staff could entertain to kind of continue the original approval.

And again, the additional district standards are UDC standard.

Um, and Broadway Avenue is again identified as one of those higher order streets that these standards are required at.

And in front of that is MXT, is that the zoning district is it's uh MXT node, I believe.

Okay.

So MXT node went all the way up to 37th Street.

We moved it to Elton Hills right by our um new parking ramp.

It's kind of an arbitrary number or arbitrary location.

Um it's easy to move.

I mean I I'm don't think I'd be able to comment on that.

Uh Ms.

Woodward.

We did adjust the MXT um after some discussion, but we also are aligning that MXT and uh still have the node up at 37th in Broadway, recognizing there's potential future growth there.

Um that also aligns with the primary transit network, so those two were in alignment of how we were choosing MXT areas.

And we went up to Elton Hills Drive and then we shifted from north of there up until 37 to MXS after some discussion of where the future growth would happen and how we prioritize certain areas for MXT.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Wall.

Thank you.

This perhaps is a question for Mr.

Schoenfelder, uh, and I'll ask it of the city as well.

Is there any documented communication between the developer and the city about the uh intended completion of the project uh since its uh approval in 2020?

Yeah, good question.

Uh I'm not familiar with any of this point in time.

Um John, maybe you are okay.

So to your knowledge, the developer has been quiet on the issue.

Correct.

They were working at that time on the Starbucks building.

Thank you.

I I would ask the same of the city.

Is there any uh uh communication that we have?

Um as stated, I was did not come across anything.

Okay.

A second question uh for the city.

How tall is Aviva River Bend, which is uh fairly adjacent to this uh uh project.

Uh I do not have that figure in front of me at the moment.

Um if you bear with me, I could likely find something I know I've been in the building a number of times.

I know it's at least three stories tall.

Um I don't know if it's four.

That's okay.

If you find it, you can come back to it.

Uh I'm complete, Mr.

President.

Councilmember Miller.

Thank you.

Question for staff.

The issue was raised as the order of planning.

So the comprehensive plan is adopted.

Does the land development plan manual get adopted updated based on the comprehensive plan, or is the UDC instead that update for planning purposes coming out of the comprehensive plan?

Who wants to take that?

Miss Woodward.

Um, just to note uh for council member Wall of Eva is four stories tall.

Okay.

Is what?

Four stories tall.

Okay.

Uh based on the quick um image in that.

Um, as it relates to the comprehensive plan, the comprehensive plan was adopted in 2018.

Um, and that led to the update.

So that the comprehensive plan is providing that overall policy.

Um, and then the mechanism for enforcement is the zoning ordinance.

So that led to the UDC update.

Um, in addition, we have made commitments, so we updated the comprehensive plan again in the fall of 2025, um, looking at every five years to update the comprehensive plan, making sure there's alignment, recognizing things also change over time.

Um so those two work together in terms of policy documents and then how we kind of go about aligning that policy out um in within the city.

But I guess to the specific question of the land development manual, the zoning ordinate, the the zoning policy guiding document of enforcement of development was quite different in its execution from the UDC, correct?

Yes, the land development manual um had predated and had been for a number of years, and then really the intention of updating the comprehensive plan in 2018 was recognizing that both the land development manual is out of date and making sure there was alignment and needing to do that first step before then moving to the unified development code.

So by adopting a new comprehensive plan, the former council set in motion an update to our zoning um enforcement documents, and that was not an update to the land development manual, but the creation of the UDC.

So there was an interim period where the comprehensive plan had been adopted.

The land development manual was still in effect until the UDC could become in Yes.

And I would just make two corrections.

There were some interim um changes to the land development manual, including looking at TOD and updating that prior to the UDC being updated.

So there were a couple of changes between the comprehensive plan and the UDC taking effect when the land development was still in place.

Okay.

And so I I guess a question for the applicant.

You you acknowledge there was a one-year expiration.

Correct.

Yeah, we we we've disagreed with city staff about what the LDM provides with respect to that.

They've taken the position that it expired at one year.

Uh we took the position that that zoning did not ever change.

And and these are separate parcels, correct?

The Starbucks parcel and the parcel in question today.

That is correct.

That's what it looks like here.

Okay.

But as approved and presented, they were presented together.

So the the phase one was on a parcel was completed.

And your your proposed phase two is on a separate parcel, uncompleted.

And now we have the UDC in effect.

And I guess my question is in terms of extending that that approval that you've noted challenges of the pandemic, construction challenges.

And staff say there was.

Where is that miscommunication happening?

Uh those communications don't happen until 2025 when the project becomes viable again.

Okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Councilmember Keene.

Yeah, uh, this is again, I'm gonna try to direct this at staff just because I'm trying to understand.

I mean, I'm hearing words here about variances from certain things, but but in fact, this project didn't come in to be approved under the UDC in the zoning.

In fact, what we're trying to do is take the project that was approved back in 2020 and create variances for anything that has changed up to now.

Is that is that accurate?

That that's an accurate uh description of the applicant's response.

Okay.

And then going through the narrative, I again I'm this is my prep here.

The previous site plan failed to commence development within the one year approval date and therefore became null and void.

Is is that what the staff's position is here, or is it that this project needs to be higher, or is it just that you can't come in with that plan because it's out of date?

So the reason that the approval is null and void is due to that lapsing timeline of the one year.

Since then, it's been a few years and the UDC came into effect 2023.

There's new policies currently in place that that development in its current form do not meet.

And that's why the list of variance requests, that's uh a long form of what deficiencies there are with the current design.

Okay, but but again, I I'm just trying to get across I I even if the even if there weren't all these variances needed, if a if a site development plan or a general development plan goes null and void, you can't just bring it back and say, but now we want to build it.

And if we start doing that, is that a precedent that anything approved in the past could come back as what we still need to be able to do this?

Because I think that's an important standard that if nothing's done in a year or whatever a time frame is, or no extensions are requested, the plan is null and void.

Yeah, so the both the LDM and the UDC have that limit on approval timeline.

It's it's laid out in both it's laid out in the LDM and it is in the UDC document.

And again, that's to kind of ensure the situation doesn't happen.

Um, because again, uh comprehensive plan documents, the unified development code, um, they're living documents.

There may they are meant to be updated uh on a regular basis to reflect current standards, development goals, objectives that a municipality has.

Um so really extending an approval from an old former development manual that wouldn't meet state's standards, it's kind of the situation we're trying to avoid here.

Okay.

That that's helpful because I I'm I'm getting testimony that makes me feel the issue of certain sort of variances, but in fact, the issue really is do we allow things to just live in perpetuity because they were approved back in 2020.

Um I I was trying to follow council member Miller's questions, but um you know, in fact, if there were there was a time, a transition period where we had projects that had been approved under the land development manual that had to follow that even though the UDC was in place.

It's just you've got to have a point where you you move off of one and onto another.

Um I consider this less about variances from what the new things are and much more about we we can't just allow things to be resurrected back into the system and said we're gonna start building this now after we've moved on after a year of of or whatever it is, whether it be a year or extensions requested.

Um so that's kind of what I'm thinking about this.

And if anyone thinks I've got it wrong, let me know.

Councilmember Doring.

I really appreciate Councilmember Keene's uh approach to this, because that's what I've been sitting with as well.

And I have a a couple follow-up questions for staff.

Um the first one is what is that extension?

What does that extension process look like?

If a development is approved and that year time frame doesn't happen, what does the developer need to do to get that extension?

Yeah, so really it would start off with the basic communication of we're running in some roadlocks if it's funding.

I I don't really want to give too much information just because we want to try to avoid this situation.

Sure, if at all possible.

Um really it would be a request, we'd have a meeting to see kind of where the deficiencies are or what the timeline true timeline will look like.

Um and we'd probably evaluate that on a case-by-case basis.

Um that being said, I don't think we've come across it very often.

It's pretty rare.

Um I think really in practice, it would be similar to essentially a continuance request.

Um much like the earlier item today.

We'd formally note that, give a new extension date and the reason why we're support allowing it.

Um so I think it would have to be a supportable reason that staff can lean on if uh to allow that extension.

And then uh I you probably won't want to answer this question too, and I appreciate that.

Has there been uh history in Rochester where a reasonable extension request has been placed where that extension has not been granted?

I'm not aware off the top of my head.

Um of either side, right?

Um I think they're pretty quite rare.

Okay, yeah.

So thank you for that.

So where I see the issue too is is a lack of communication on the developer's part at this point to talk about why the project was being uh uh delayed.

Uh and without that communication, I kind of agree with with my my council member colleague Keene here about we have to draw the line somewhere.

Otherwise, we could have a you know far out development that was approved in the 1980s, and we could come back and talk about it at this point.

And and that makes no sense to me on on a policy level.

Uh so um yeah, I think that's my questions.

Councilmember Fredericks.

Thank you.

I'll put myself in the developers' shoes a little bit here.

And I just want to say when you're going through these projects like this and you're and you're ramping up and you're trying to get things going, and you do run into projects on Broadway, you run into um COVID issues, which I ran into personally in a big big way and ill-advised open during it and had a bit of a disaster.

But um, you know, the first thing you're not thinking about is I gotta run and tell the city that I'm having these issues.

What you're doing is you're covering your rear end and you're trying to make sure you can get it put together still and make it happen and have it work.

Ultimately have a plan that works.

So with that being said, that covers the first part of it.

And the second part of it is I've heard of things kind of getting looked down their nose at when people want to go bigger, higher in an area that's not zoned for it and such.

That that becomes an issue, but when we're actually asking to go smaller, is that correct?

John?

Uh that's the variance that we're seeing.

You're trying to stick to your original plan.

And there's a lot that goes into redesigning and such.

Just common sense tells me, let the person that's investing the money do what they want to do, because these are the type of things that developers, uh, even just home builders, even just uh personal business owners, these are the very things that get upsetting to the people that are trying to do things in this community, and you feel like your hands are tied, you feel like the city owns your property until it comes time to pay the taxes, then you get a pay them and it's yours.

So they have to have the freedom to operate within their space within reason.

We don't want a junkyard on Broadway.

I mean, that's obvious.

This seems to me like we're getting caught up in policy, this, that, and everything.

Just use some common sense on it.

That's that's where I'm at.

Thank you, council member.

Uh so I have a question for staff on so if we uh if we deny this appeal and the developer uh continues to want to develop the property, what uh what process would they go through if they did want to uh to build the 22-foot building rather than the 40-foot building?

Um so in the event the appeal is denied this evening, their request is denied, they'd have to take it back to the drawing board.

I mean, they can come forward for a new variance request if they're changing the scope of the project, if they're just focusing on the height, for example, it's a single variance request, just the building height.

If they have dressed the other items that are deficient, um, then it's a new request in itself.

So it would go back to the zoning board of appeals for approval.

Um really, this is kind of their avenue for getting a reduced height building here.

Mr.

Cheeky, can you go through again those other areas that are deficient that may not align with the UDC?

Sure.

Um a lot of them are those MXT additional district standards.

Um there are a few, so bear with me.

Um for the first floor of the front facade of each primary building, it needs to be located at not more than 15 feet from the front lot line.

That would be 65% of the building uh needs to be located within 15 feet of the front lot line.

Uh Broadway Av is the front lot line.

Um in this zone district, there's a minimum zero lot line, a maximum 15-foot lot line in the MXT.

So they're currently outside of that.

Um the setback areas between public or private streets, excluding alleyways and structure shall be occupied with pedestrian-oriented space.

Um currently there's a drive aisle in their proposal, so that's a uh item that does not match up.

Um the minimum building height of 40 feet due to the proximity to Broadway Avenue.

Uh there needs to be one at least one pedestrian entrance on each facade facing a public right-of-way.

Um, and then if the lot has frontage on those portions of North and South Broadway, 2nd Street Southwest, Fourth Street, Southeast, Calls View Road, or 12th Street Southeast or Third Avenue, the required entrance shall face those streets.

I get again because it's Broadway app has to have that.

Um there are a couple more window transparency requirements, uh require 65% at the ground floor facade area, needs to be glazing between three and eight feet, um, 30% uh or more for each uh facade level above the ground floor uh requires a glazing requirement.

Um pedestrian design and accessibility requirements would also apply.

And again, that's um entryways, pedestrian-oriented spaces, um, pedestrian focal points.

There's quite a few in that list.

Thank you, Mr.

Cheeky.

Uh Councilmember Palmer.

Thank you.

Well, one of the reasons that we we have an appeal board and it comes to the city council on appeals that we can look at something and say, boy, that doesn't really fit the rule book.

But I I've got a question.

Did when we did the UDC update, I know that we reached out and and looked at other um developers and other pieces of property that have were going to be changed.

Did we do that with these guys?

Um based on the timing of this application, they were intending to come in under the LDM with their original file date to get ahead of the UDC standards coming into effect.

So what date would that have been?

Um I think Council President Schubert, can I chime in here?

Uh go ahead, Mr.

I just want to note that the broker of this of this deal was actually on the UDC steering committee.

So they were well aware of the changes that were taking place at the time.

Okay.

Um the site's value plan was applied for in 2018.

200 what?

2018.

Okay.

I'm not an attorney, but we have one sitting here for the city.

So Mr.

Spencer, Craig, when I was a building inspector, we had a permit.

And that permit stayed in effect until we actually sent a letter saying we voided out your permit.

Why would zoning be different than then the building code?

Councilmember Palmer, Council President, Councilmembers, Mayor.

I think the short answer, Mr.

Palmer, is that um this is just an entirely different process.

There's already an agreement.

The the um the party is on notice of the one-year timeline in effect already, doesn't need a reminder email or a status check as to uh um an update on where the project is at.

So I think it is not part of the typical process to attempt to reach out to a developer and and get a status check.

Okay.

Go back to Mr.

Yester.

On your because you were zoning when we did this, or or community development.

Didn't we reach out to different build uh builders and developers and say, hey, um, we're looking at your property and we're gonna change the zoning.

Am I remembering that correctly?

Yes, notification would have been sent directly to this property owner, as was along the entire corridor at the time of the overlay, which is different than the UDC, but I think that's what you're getting at is when we did the overlay zone.

The property owners were uh directly mailed like three if not four times, uh, which is how they knew to submit this on the eve of the change.

Um so that they were definitely aware at the time.

Additionally, their their consultants at the time, uh Mr.

Schoenfelder's colleague as well as others were involved in the process.

So there was certainly an awareness of changing rules, yes.

Mayor Norton Thank you.

Uh I'm certainly um, as we've heard from some of the colleagues, uh, sympathetic uh to wanting to do something that you can't do any longer.

And I'm I'm sure that's a frustration.

But as I understand this, we're making a quasi-judicial decision.

And so we've been down this path before where feelings get in the way of the quasi-judicial nature of a city council.

And so I was hoping perhaps our city attorney could define again as he often does when we have quasi judicial rulings, what that actually means and what how we should be making the decision.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I appreciate the chance to to review that piece.

I do think that the um the materials that are in the packet do address this pretty pretty squarely, do remind you of the nature of a quasi-judicial proceeding, um, that you're really bound um by the uh criteria um as well as um the uh the specific areas of findings that are relevant to to law here.

Um so um again, and it if you need specific reference back to the specific criteria that were in question here, and if you are considering a different direction, which criteria you need to make different findings on, um we can certainly talk that through in more detail.

Thank you, Mr.

Spindler, Craig.

Is there a motion on this item?

Councilmember Keene.

I'll move to deny appeal number.

Thank you.

I'll move to a deny appeal number CD 2026 002 AP to allow for continuation of a development under the previously approved site development plan application prior to the UDC standards for the subject property based on the findings outlined in the community development memo.

Uh motion made by council member Keene.

Is there a second?

Second, seconded by councilmember Miller.

Councilmember Keene.

Uh yeah, yeah.

This is uh I I don't like going through this.

This does look like a project, a project that fits into the what's built there, but realize when we're dealing with the UDC and these things, we're talking about what this council perceived and what the UDC and the unified development code was trying to do with those first and second tier neighborhoods right outside the downtown.

It is does have a 20 uh two-foot drive-in coffee shop, but that's not what the future wanted to be there.

The it does have some of these other things, but it it what our zoning and what the UDC was trying to look is saying in the future we want it to be different.

So to go back to a project that was approved in, I believe it was 2020 and not acted on, which is key to me.

That that's the key standard here that we have to have projects once they're approved, they have to act on them, or they the their approval goes away.

So that's where I'm coming from today.

Councilmember Miller.

Sure.

I just add I appreciate Councilmember Keene's questions earlier.

And I I agree that we can't have zombie approvals that could always just come back to life.

Um and I think we're talking about kind of a chicken in the egg problem here.

Does the comprehensive plan and the UDC set the direction of development, or does the existing development pattern?

We've talked about this with the urban three analysis about land productivity, about building the city for the future, and I appreciate the the challenges through this period.

But when I look at our our policies, we we've set quite clear policies, we've set expirations, we've set processes, and it seems very clear that based on the findings that this one does not meet our our qualifications for approval of this project.

So that's how I plan to move forward tonight.

Councilmember Palmer.

Yeah, I won't be supporting the motion.

Um I think that um part of the UDC is that we have the ability to have appeals and and and we need to listen.

And and things do change.

I would have done criteria C under the circumstances are unique.

Um that created by the owner and would have been the two years of Broadway reconstruction and COVID.

Um I think that uh if you look at the whole area that that would make more sense to have a building that's about the same size and type of building, um, because these buildings aren't going to go away for a long, long period of time, caribou indoor Starbucks.

I'll just weigh in.

This is a this is a really hard one.

Uh I am uh someone who wants to see development, economic development.

But I think with this issue, and what really drives it for me is you know, it's not just one thing that's not a part of the UDC, but there are others there.

And we do have a process with the UDC.

I can think back, I was on the planning and zoning commission when the UDC was being discussed.

It was did not come out of nowhere.

And so those standards were uh combed through by uh planning and zoning by this council and very clearly understood by the development community as uh uh as standards.

There was a transition period that seems to have been missed as well.

And uh what I would say is that I encourage you to come back with a development and uh work with staff under the UDC.

If there are some variances that you're asking for, we'll be uh I'll certainly be open to those.

But with uh the issues surrounding this, it really doesn't feel like it's something that uh that I can support this evening.

With that, uh all in favor of the motion say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay.

Nay.

Motion passes five to two with council members Fredericks and uh Palmer voting nay.

Moving on to item G3, major land subdivision by Bigelow Homes LLC to be known as Westbury First.

Mr.

Cheeky.

Uh thank you, Council President.

Uh good evening, council members, uh Anthony Cheeky again.

Uh before you is final plot application CD 2026-014 plat by Bigelow Homes LLC.

Uh, this is a final plat request for 105 single-family lots over approximately 34 acres.

Uh this is located in an R2 zoning district in the northwest uh end of Rochester, uh southeast of the intersection of 60th Ave Northwest of Kingsbury Drive Northwest.

Um, this is the first phase of development under the Westbury General Development Plan.

Uh this plot is consistent with the approved GDP and with the major land subdivision that was approved in January this year.

Uh this plat provides continuation of local streets, storm armor management, and uh the storm all man stormwater management will be addressed by utilizing proposed treatment areas shown on the GDP.

Um the proposed subdivision helps address the city's current shortage of single family residential units uh and development review team is recommending approval of the application subject to the five conditions contained within the report.

Uh this concludes my presentation.

Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mr.

Chiki.

Is uh a the applicant or a uh representative of the applicant here?

Please step forward.

You have 10 minutes to discuss the item.

Uh good evening, uh mayor and council.

I'm Kyle Scove with uh WHKS representing the developer Bigelow Homes.

Uh we are in uh agreement with the five conditions as presented, and um looking forward to uh having some homes available should be seeing some uh later this year.

Thank you.

We'll invite you back up after the public hearing.

Uh this is a public hearing.

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

This is a public hearing.

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

Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing.

Mr.

Stove, if you have any additional comments, Council members, questions for staff or the applicant.

Is there a motion on that?

I think a motion.

Adopting a resolution approving major land subdivision number C D 2026-014 PLAT by Bigelow Homes LLC to be known as Westbury First with five conditions, subdividing 34 acres into 105 residential lots and four outlots.

Motion made by Councilmember Fredericks.

Is there a second?

Second.

Seconded by Councilmember Doring.

Councilmember Fredericks.

Any happy to see addressing a housing need in this community.

Thank you to Bigelow Homes.

No additional comments for me.

Uh Councilmember Wall.

As well, I'm thankful to Bigelow Holmes uh doing a lot of business in Ward 3, and uh that they continue to provide a great product for people at a wide variety of price points.

So uh I look forward to this new home uh addition as well.

All in favor say aye.

Pose say nay, motion passes.

Next up we have G4, which is a major land subdivision by Roger Payne to be known as Century Valley Fifth.

And Mr.

Desmond McGill.

Hey, yes.

Thank you.

Uh Council President Schubring, Mayor Norton, uh members of the council, good evening.

Desmond McGill with community development.

Uh this is a request for a major land subdivision for Century Valley Fifth.

Uh the 17.6 acre uh is zoned R2.

It's located between Silver Creek Road Northeast on the south side, and then the terminus of Bella Vista on the north side.

And this is located just south of Century Valley Fourth, final plat.

This development consists of 16 uh lots and two streets, each terminating with a cul de sac.

Uh the subject lots uh south on the southwest and southeast sides are oversized, and so those areas are generally not developable due to having steep slopes.

Uh stormwater for the subdivision is uh collected on street and then routed over to uh a pipe that daylights at a retention basin uh south and west of the subject property.

Uh preliminary plat, major land suit subdivision for this site was approved uh in February of 2024, uh with the same number of lots and same lot um uh street configuration.

Only a portion of that was final platted at that time.

Um and uh the um that application has since expired, and therefore uh this is um uh uh application for uh uh revisiting and uh bringing that back to uh fruition.

So uh this plat is consistent with the R2 zoning.

Uh the 2023 revised general plan for Century Valley.

Uh the previous plat submitted for this site is identical.

Uh and commission unanimously recommended 8 0 uh that the council approve the subject uh application subject to the four conditions of approval after the commission decision.

The council uh the uh applicant has provided staff uh uh two um documentation showing compliance with two of those conditions, uh which are conditions two and three.

Um they have addressed uh the issue of the uh wetland uh replacement order of the LGU and provided new documentation for the um flood wave flood fringe being shown on the plat.

So um I therefore condition in two two and three can be stricken uh if the council so decides.

Uh staff is recommending approvals subject to condition one and two uh found in your staff report, and that concludes my presentation.

I'd be happy to answer any questions after the public hearing.

Thank you, Mr.

McGill.

Is there the applicant or a representative of the applicant here?

Please step forward, uh identify yourself, and you have up to 10 minutes.

You do not have to use all 10 minutes.

Um thank you, Council President, Council members, Mayor Norton.

Um, yeah, so thanks.

Uh thanks Desmond for giving us the um the over overview.

Um items two and three have been complete.

Can you can you identify yourself?

Oh, yep, sorry, Connor Burke with SDH, um, representing um owner Roger Payne.

Um, and then the developer uh Bob Fleming Bob Fleming couldn't make it tonight.

So yep, uh guys option are items two and three of um subsequently addressed.

Um item number one, that'll be uh working with public works on getting the the plans um submitted, reviewed um and approved, and then subsequently we'll come back and um apply for the final platform at that time, which will be um accommodating item four.

Um with that said, uh nothing else to add.

I will be happy to answer any questions.

Sounds good.

Uh we will invite you up after the public hearing.

Uh this is a public hearing.

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

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

Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and invite uh my colleagues to ask any questions of staff or the applicant.

Or um a motion.

Go ahead, council member Fredericks.

I'll make a motion adopting a resolution for major land subdivision number C D 2026-009 PLAT by Roger Payne with four conditions to be known as Century Valley Fifth, subdividing 17.62 acres into 16 residential lots.

Motion made by Councilmember Fredericks.

Is there a second?

Second, seconded by Councilmember Keene.

For any further further sound like a stuck record.

Thanks for providing for our community.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Poe say nay.

Motion passes.

Thank you.

Next up, uh, we are on our reports and recommendations.

We have H1, which is Elton Hills Drive Northwest Traffic Study and Alternative Selection.

Uh, and we have Mr.

Sam Bazina here to uh make a presentation.

Yes, thank you.

President Schubering, Council members, Mary Norton, Sam Basino, Public Works, uh City Traffic Engineer.

Um I do have a presentation.

There it is.

There it is.

Push the button.

Yeah.

Haven't been up here in a while.

Uh here to talk about Elton Hills Drive.

Uh, we did just have a study session just a month ago on June 22nd.

Um, so try to not recap a whole lot of that, but I do want to uh go through how we kind of got here.

Um go through the remaining options that are still up for uh for your consideration.

There were some good questions from the study session that we feel like we have some better answers for you here tonight, and then get into our final recommendation.

So to recap, we did do a traffic study, uh, wrapped it up this spring.

We analyzed 14 different options.

We then hosted a neighborhood meeting, uh, we did a public survey, and we had our study session I just mentioned where we presented seven options.

Um that was three three-lane options, three four-lane options, and a five-lane option.

Um, and then here tonight we've got three options left.

They're listed there.

I'm about to go through them, and then just a quick recap of our our survey results there, too, which again I went over at the study session.

So remaining options.

Option one, this is our recommended option.

Uh, not to spoil the presentation, but three lanes with parking on both sides.

Um, we did draw up what that could look like on this stretch of Elton Hills, and there is a higher quality PDF attached to your council packet if you want to zoom in and really get a good look at it.

Um we are looking at uh curb extensions at the intersections.

There is a section of median there close to 14th Avenue.

That's a T intersection where you don't have to, there is no westbound left, you don't get to go anywhere.

So add a median for traffic calming, uh, improve the crosswalk location there.

Um so this is just kind of an example, right?

And we'll do as much of that kind of stuff as we can get in within the project budget.

Um, but might have to scale it back a little bit.

But this is just giving you the idea of what to expect with option one.

There is no bike facility with this.

So if somebody wants to ride their bike on here, it's either gonna be sharing the lane, they'd have to, or in the parking lane.

Parking we have said is underutilized, so a good stretch of that you can ride in the parking lane.

Obviously, when you get to these curb extensions, you will have to enter the drive lane.

Um, otherwise, you can ride on the sidewalk.

This is not downtown, riding on the sidewalk is allowed.

Um, you cannot ride your scooter on the sidewalk anywhere in the state of Minnesota.

So just things to keep in mind with this option.

But option two.

Uh so this option uh was recommended by the pedestrian bicycle advisory committee, which I'll talk about a little bit more later.

Um, three lanes, one lane each way, center turn lane, parking on one side, and a two-way cycle track on the other side.

I'll say this also aligns with our our complete streets policy and our active transportation plan with us as far as what we can achieve with a retrofit project.

Um Pedestrian Bicycle Advisory Committee.

Well, I'll talk about them later.

Um, there's no whole slide on that.

So this is what option two could look like.

Um again, curb extensions, they're a little bit smaller here, uh, the median again, and then sections of what could be a raised concrete uh median island in the buffer between the drive lane and the cycle track for short sections.

Um we'll talk about barrier options and and a little bit later on, too, and what that'll look like.

Uh at the study session we did here that you all would like to see a four-lane option, so we brought this one back too.

Uh it's keeping the four lanes undivided, uh, and then we'll add some curb extensions at intersections.

So, again, um, this is what that would look like.

Again, no bike facilities.

Um, we still have parking on both sides.

Um, and we would do as many curb extensions as we could fit in with our project budget.

So at the study session, we were asked about snow clearing.

How would that work?

So, options one and three, no real changes.

Um, seasonal parking restrictions are in effect.

Um, so there's alternate side parking every other day.

We'd get the curb on one side, come back the next day, get the other curb.

Um, with option two, it would definitely take us more time to clear.

Um we may need potentially need to bring in smaller pieces of equipment.

I I'm not saying we need to buy smaller pieces of equipment.

We do have plows or uh like your one-ton trucks that clear cul-de-sacks.

We do have skid steers that clear our paths and things like that.

Uh but they are in use at those times, so again, it would just take more time to get them in here to clear another space.

Um, with option two, there's only parking on one side, so seasonal parking does not apply.

So cars that want to park on the street, they're always going to park on that one side.

So what that means is we're we may not be able to get to the curb.

If that happens, snow can continue to build up along that curb line.

Parked cars may eventually shift further and further away from the curb, potentially encroaching into the travel lane.

If that becomes a problem, what we would do is go out and stick sign, no parking.

So we would displace all the parkers for 24 to 48 hours until we can get in there.

That gives them enough time to notice that they need to move their car before we would actually tow them out.

So that is how we would clear that one side if it became an issue.

Garbage collection again with options one and three, wouldn't change anything.

They would just place their cans at the end of their driveway or in their boulevard.

With option two, they would have to bring that out further into what is would be the buffer between the cycle track and the drive lanes.

It could be challenging when there's snow piled in that space.

Obviously, if the wind blows, I I've certainly come home and my garbage can was not where I left it because of the wind, so it's more likely to either get blown into the cycle track or into the drive lanes.

Would not get blown back into the yard, most likely.

We were asked about safety.

So Castle More Palmer had reached out to us previously asking for some comparables of you know what does safety look like with some other projects where we've added bicycle facilities.

So we only have 10 years of data, so it only goes back to 2016.

These are three projects that we did in 2018.

So we we left 2018 out of it to get a reel before and after.

So it's two years compared to seven years, not exactly apples to apples, but this is what is available to us.

19th Street Northwest has a section of four to three lane conversion.

The others really don't.

Those were more taking parking on one side to add the bicycle lanes on the street, so they still have parking on one side.

Um but six street southwest, we saw an increase of 33%.

That's only one and a half crashes per year.

So it's a lot large percentage, but not a really big number.

Um 19th Street Northwest, uh that's so that's the stretch where there is a portion of four to three lane conversion, uh, where we saw a reduction of 23%, and then 14th Street Northeast.

Again, we went to parking on one side with bike lanes and saw a reduction of 43%.

In general, FHWA does report uh crash reduction can be expected between 19% and 47% and speed reductions of three to five miles per hour.

So and that is in the 85th percentile speed, which on Elton Hills is about 38, so that would get us between 33 to 35 miles an hour.

As far as what a barrier could look like, um these are real cycle tracks that are in the United States.

Um, top left option there is I believe First Avenue South in Minneapolis.

Um I showed this slide to our street maintenance team, and they first looked at that one like where do they put the snow there?

Questioning maybe they actually haul it out.

I hope we don't have to get into a situation like that.

I don't think that we would.

Um I think we do have boulevard space and a much wider buffer than what is depicted there where we would be able to pile snow.

Um the top middle picture is actually the same cycle track, it's just around the corner on um first at I say one of those is first Avenue South, one of them 2nd Avenue South.

Um facility, all they have there is some flexible delineators.

I don't think that would provide enough protection.

Uh so that's not directly what we would propose to do, but that could be an option.

That's what we've done in other areas.

Top right, um, they do not have any flexible delineators.

That is in Miami, Florida.

Uh, we would probably want something a little bit taller that would stick out above the snow.

But between the top right and the bottom right, those are the same, it's called a zebra product.

Um, so just showing some different configurations of how that could work.

Bottom right is in New York City.

They did a one or maybe two block pilot project on the east side of Union Square.

Uh, and that was back in 2022.

I'll say if if you look at that facility now on Google Street View, they have April 2026 on there.

It doesn't really excite me with those products.

Um of them are missing, and where they're some of them are just sitting there, clearly not in that orientation anymore.

Where they're missing, you see some bolts sticking up out of the pavement.

Um it doesn't excite me.

I think something like that would give us some headaches, so needing to go back in and replace it.

Bottom left.

So where I said we'd use top left close to intersections, we probably do something like bottom left on the longer stretches between intersections.

And then if you look closely at that picture, also there's some gaps where there's some driveways, so we would leave gaps for the driveways.

But that would be the general idea if option two is the selected option.

So final recommendations, talk about pedestrian bicycle advisory committee.

They did pass a motion for these three things.

Support our over overall project goals.

They set they support the fully separated cycle track with what is essentially option two before you here tonight as an alternative.

If budgetary constraints do not allow for full separation with this project, and I can confirm that budgetary constraints do not allow for full separation.

Mayor, do you have a question right now?

Okay.

Okay.

And then they added uh a couple a project goal, increasing neighborhood connectivity and increasing safety for pedestrians crossing L's.

I spoke to Citizens Advisory on Transit.

This is the motion that they passed.

So they also support our project goals.

They did not take the step of actually selecting a preferred alternative.

Um so leave that open to your interpretation.

But obviously, with all things cat, they do uh primarily have concerns about transit and uh how people get to the stops, making sure that our buses are on time and provide good service and all of that.

We did receive a letter of support from Archester Public Schools, which is attached to your packet.

Um just a couple SNPs from their letter here.

Uh they support either of the two proposed three-lane options, so either option one or option two, based on the benefits that a three-lane section would provide over a four-lane section.

Um at our study session, we went through these key decision points.

We talked about the number of lanes, so we do recommend three lanes, uh, bicycle facilities.

That was kind of open-ended at the study session, but tonight we're saying no bike facility for ease of implementation, uh, long-term maintenance and the survey feedback that we got.

It was not a very popular option among the respondents.

Um so we would still plan to implement all ages and abilities facility with the future reconstruct.

It'll be a while from now.

Um parking lanes, keep parking on both sides.

That was important to the residents that are out there.

I would say they definitely need it on at least one side, which would be reflected in option two as well.

And traffic signal at 14th or 15th, we looked at whether that should be relocated.

Uh we say keep it at 14th Avenue.

We'll bring a separate project forward for that.

So nothing that you need to take action on tonight.

So our recommendation, option one, three lanes with parking on both sides.

Um so if there's a decision here tonight, then we'll immediately go into final design and hope to get construction going as soon as school ends in the spring.

And I want to say genuinely thank you.

I've been working on this for a very long time, and I know you've all gotten a lot of emails and phone calls and had a lot of conversations.

A lot of people came to our neighborhood meeting, and I know Councilmember Doring was out there helping set up chairs for us.

So we really thank you very much.

Uh, appreciate it.

I'm here to answer any questions that you have.

Thank you.

I'll start off.

You said the the staff recommendation for uh the option one without the bicycle lane was due to ease of implementation.

Can you talk about if you did do uh the option two with the bike lane?

What implementation would look like for that?

What uh what would be the timeline and the the uh barriers to implementing that?

Um it's just the amount of the the level of design that would need to go into making sure that um we aren't having any negative impacts on transit.

We impact the residents along the corridor as little as possible.

Um the center line of the road will shift a little bit with that option, so we need to make sure that our traffic signal uh mast arms are long enough to actually get a signal indication out over the road.

There's just a lot of little things like that.

Um we'll have bikes traveling on your right hand side coming towards you, so we call that ContraFlow, uh, which will require dedicated bicycle traffic signal heads uh at signalized intersection.

So a lot more design needs to go into making sure that we get that right.

So you say that that's gonna take 20 years.

If I mean, why is it now or 20 years from now?

Is there a medium option for if this choke council chooses to go with the three-lane is uh is there an option to three years from now, five years from now to uh move to the option with the bicycle lanes.

Uh with the you you mean the fully separated, like with a full reconstruct project, that would probably be a good 20 years out, um, just due to age of utilities and things that really don't need to be replaced right now.

Um so I think option two that's uh here tonight, you know.

I we wouldn't be presenting it if if we said this is not achievable.

I do think that this is uh a good retrofit project, it's not impossible.

We can certainly do it, and our goal would still be to start that construction um as soon as school is out in the spring.

Mr.

Neymar, did you have something to add?

Sure, thanks, Council President.

Um, what I was gonna add to the first question was what this corridor really deserves in our opinion, is a separated bike facility where we're grades separated.

So the list of things that same was listing there, uh, as far as implementation goes, a lot of those challenges come from the nature of the corridor and how that doesn't exactly fit with the ideal situation to achieve the all ages and all abilities um planning that's been laid out.

Thank you.

Councilmember Miller.

Yeah, I guess just uh quick question.

What is the overall project budget?

Uh so that is in the packet, I believe it was around two million dollars total.

And for these kind of products that you're showing for potential separation, what percent of that project budget would that be?

Or or what would be the cost of those?

Just rough estimate the if we were to do.

So if we were to do the bottom left uh and do that on the whole corridor, it'd probably be in the ballpark of a hundred thousand dollars.

Okay.

Uh so by the time you add in all the medians and everything at intersections, it it would it would go up quite a bit a lot faster.

Okay.

So I I frequently see grant application opportunities, technical assistance grants, implementation grants, is something like that potentially possible as a funding source to help with these additional considerations of programming alignments, shifting the center line and adjusting the mast house.

I feel like Mayor Norton just presented an opportunity from a conference that she attended where it feels like exactly a corridor like this would have been the target.

Have you have staff considered other funding opportunities to help support what the staff time and the project cost for option two?

I would say that we we have not that I'm aware of.

Okay.

Would it be possible for us to advance a three-lane design tonight and still leave that option open since the construction documents would be under consideration and a parking lane versus a separated bike facility feels like a relatively limited infrastructure modification across this too?

Is that fair to evaluate other funding opportunities?

It wouldn't, if you were to approve option one tonight and then come back later and say that you want to convert the parking lane to a cycle track.

I think that would be quite a big change.

I guess let me ask that question differently.

If we were to approve option two on the condition that we find an alternate funding source, could it be converted back to a parking lane if we do not find one and successfully achieve one?

It would be a very wide parking lane.

Okay, but it could be done.

All right.

Councilmember Palmer.

Thank you.

You said something that kind of upsets me.

Um at the very beginning, you said that you may not have the budget to do all the curb extensions for all the pedestrian um crossings.

And to me, that would be the number one concern is that we're able to get those curb extensions at every single intersection.

So I I don't know where extra money is gonna come from if we can't even do that.

So I would expect next spring that every one of the corners had a curb extension um on it.

Um you're talking about cost, and and in the email that you sent to us, the actual cost to install all the poles and um snow removal is an annual cost, and somebody's gonna install them, someone's gonna take them out.

And what really what the pedestrian bike people want, and I agree with them, is that they want to raise separated bike like we have a North Broadway.

And part of the problem I have with the survey that was done is is um I think I got this right, is the average speed on the road is the average speed is 32 miles an hour.

That was on your presentation.

Yes.

And that was probably that was off of that.

And so you know the perception is that everybody's speeding down the corridor.

And granted, some people are, and and but average speed is 32 miles an hour.

And overwhelmingly, since the last 10 years we've been working on this project, the neighborhood has spoken that they overwhelmingly that they want four lanes.

They want to have the curb extensions for safety, and and that's what they're there they're pushing for.

So that would be option three.

And to me, that makes more sense, and that's something that I would support is the option three with the four lanes, um, because I don't know what you do in front of those businesses.

And I know your accident report, you know, percentage wise, but you're talking two more accidents, I think is what you saved when you when you did the other ones, not a large amount.

But we also re just did for a large cost.

We redid Broadway and North Um Elton Hills Drive.

And so that's been improved already, correct?

The as the intersection, yeah, that was part of the Broadway project.

And then the other end of it is you got 19th Street up there by the bridge.

We're not touching that.

So you're going to come off the bridge at four lanes, and then you're going to go down to two lanes, one in each direction.

I see that as a huge bottleneck on that bridge, and it's already a bottleneck.

But again, I go, I, you know, we ask citizens to come out and do a survey.

They do the survey, and and then the results come up, and it's overwhelmingly um uh four or more lanes.

Um in overwhelmingly not not wanting bike lanes.

So to me, at some point you have to add, you know, if you're asking the citizens and they come back, you gotta have to kind of listen to them.

So that's my push or my motion would be for the for option number three.

Mayor Norton.

Thank you.

Um, a couple things uh come to mind here.

I do like the three-lane options.

Um, as I'm looking at this.

My my frustration is that this council and the previous councils voted for complete streets and they voted for active transportation.

Those are the policies that we're supposed to be working within.

And here we are bringing back recommendations that don't follow the two policies that the board has adopted already.

So that's a frustration for me just from a conceptual what's the point of having policies.

You know, we're always told you can't do this because of the policy.

Well, now the recommendation actually is against the policies, right?

So I'm a little frustrated.

Um I want us to support the policies we put in place.

Um the reason we have things like complete streets and the active transportation uh policies are because we want to make sure that people with disabilities, people that are on bikes, people that are in strollers, you know, walk, roll, whatever, ride, that everyone is safe.

And so as someone who is a special ed major um and who's worked with people with disabilities for years, if we had rules that didn't care about that person with the disability, we would build nothing for people with disabilities, and they even though they're in the minority, they would be hurt.

And I feel a little bit like this saying, well, the majority of people drive cars, we know that, right?

Uh, growing number of people are riding bikes, but because they're not the majority, they don't get a safe route.

And and so this idea that people have weighed in, it makes sense that people in cars would have a higher proportion, but percentage, but that that doesn't mean that we don't we shouldn't be providing the safety for walkability for bikeability and for rolling.

And in particular, with this particular area, I'm concerned because of this is a road I take nearly every day, and it has three schools on it.

And lots of children walk around.

I walk by moms who are walking their kids to school, and you know, we heard from someone who wants to ride their children to be able to ride their bikes to school.

And yes, um for young children that aren't supervised.

Certainly, if we don't have protected bike lanes aside a sidewalk would be safer, they still need to cross the streets.

So I I guess I'm just I I got says that we should spend the extra money and put in protected bike lanes.

That's my gut.

Have parking on one side of the street, they do it during the winter when it's single-side parking, it works just fine.

And my personal belief is if there's parking on the one side of the street and just the three lanes, it will make people drive slower.

I really worry about the three with parking on both sides, that it's still gonna look like a roadway that people are gonna, you know, speed on.

So I guess I'm I'm encouraging us to do our complete streets and our active transportation plan and put in protected bike lanes.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Keene.

Uh yeah, I'm gonna refer back to what you talked about with the funding.

There's the 1.59 that's in the uh levy funded that's funding for the uh the mill and overlay.

And that's really how we got to here today.

We have this mill and overlay.

And because of that, now does that also cover the work to do these uh bump outs and things like that?

Or is that part of the mill and overlay, or is that part of the improving the street with the state aid money?

The the $500,000 in state aid is uh for the intersection improvement project at West River Parkway.

So that's it was scheduled near the both in 2027, so we're gonna pair them together and do them together.

Okay, but no, the one the 1.5 million that you mentioned, that's going to include our bump outs or potentially barriers or so I I I want to drill down on this a little bit just to make sure.

Is it possible we're gonna be able to do that with the 1.5?

Or we have this design to the point that that is part of the project.

Because I I heard a lot of things in the, you know, we could do it this way, we could do it that way, but it all that also means we might not be able to.

No, we'll be able to do a lot of it for sure.

And we're gonna start from a point of looking at every single intersection.

Uh, but we're also going to try to stay within our budget.

So if we need uh, you know, choose prior prioritize them, you know, some of them the intersections may get dropped, or maybe we choose to only do one side of an intersection or something like that.

Okay.

I again I'm just a little gun shy here because I I heard some words that I mean, I know we're not fully engineered and done and saying this is exactly what we can do and have bids.

So I understand the the differences there, but I am also worried that we're going to show some things here that would be good ideas, and maybe we'll come up short.

And I think that's possible, but I think your feeling experience tells you that's probably not going to happen with the intersection work.

No, I I don't I don't think we'd be coming up short.

I again our concerns with option two is that we we really want to make sure that if that's the one that we do, then we want to make sure that we do it right.

Yep.

Okay.

I I do want to go back to that option.

I'm sure Nemeyer was going to add a little to that question.

Yeah, thank you, Council President.

I was just gonna add quickly that the intersection improvements, the bump outs are of a cost scale that probably falls within a lot more of our flexibility with the budget than, for example, building building a whole separated facilities.

So there's a scale of those costs and a likelihood we'll be able to fit those into the budget or modify the budget down the line.

Okay, thank you.

Um, I did want to just follow up too because I heard um you know, public works being worried about this, and I think this is the difference between option one and option two is option two is this is what we can do versus this is the right way to do it if you were doing a real street reconstruction.

Mr.

Neemeyer is shaking his head up and down.

Yeah, I can advise yes.

Yeah, I I again I I know there's always this the do as much as you can, but I I think what I'm concerned about here is we we don't have the the funding and the right way to do a real protected bike lane, but we can do something.

But when I look at Elton Hills on both sides, from the whole length of this, there's sidewalk pedestrian facilities on both sides all the way from end to end.

Uh so I mean, I'm finding it that if we were gonna do a real protected bike lane and do it and do it such that it had safety and buffering and didn't cause problems with the garbage cans and with the snow removal, I would think I'd be for that.

But I think what I'm hearing is that we're not recommending that because we don't have the exact right way to do it.

It would just be a much much more expensive project.

I mean, I mean, we're talking about the difference between installing some curb stops and delineators versus raising up the whole thing and moving it over, maybe planting a row of trees behind it.

But that would also involve moving, you know, all of the storm inlets to a different location, uh, which could affect the spacing from the water line to the sewer line.

And so it would just be a very uh a much larger project, full reconstruct.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Again, again, I'm just trying to make sure I understand.

I'm reading it and have my own interpretation.

So I'm interpreting it as this is the one that we can do.

Um, and and it and it does reflect the public input that we got too.

The combination of um street safety, uh um uh roll walk um bike uh facilities if you can, but then also and really focusing more on what we're doing with since we're doing the mill and overlay, since we have this thing in front of us, what can we do with that?

And I think that's where I'm starting out here.

Yes.

Councilmember Wall.

Thank you.

In the study session last month, the presentation said that there was no perfect answer, at least until the road might be rebuilt in 20 years or so.

Uh with no perfect answer, it's going to be hard for me to vote against the people who actually live in the neighborhood.

All of us council members have received uh any number of communications uh through email calls, personal conversations.

Uh my analysis of the addresses provided by the emailers when they did provide an address, is that the people that favor continuing with four lanes are dominated by people who live in the Elton Hills neighborhood, including those who live right on Elton Hills Drive.

Not all, just a significant majority.

On the other hand, those promoting a road diet with bike lanes come predominantly from people who live outside the neighborhood, not all, but a significant majority.

That is backed up by the responses in the study session presentation.

When given a choice of the number of lanes, 115 out of 177 preferred a four or five-lane option.

That's 65%.

When asked if there should be bike lanes, 108 of 175 said no.

That's 62%.

So the issues are many.

Uh some people have talked about them here.

Uh safety, conveyance of traffic, garbage collection, snow removal.

Perception of the road as an east-west corridor or a neighborhood road or more and more.

I'm in favor of uh option three, keeping the road at four lanes, but adding safety features that were suggested six and seven years ago, as suggested by a couple of our early speakers.

Uh, we can make Elton Hills drive a safer road, and we should do so.

And as a community, we need to drive more slowly and more safely in every neighborhood.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember uh Fredericks.

Thank you.

Are you sweating a little yet?

Doing all right, okay.

So what I heard you say is uh schools in that area are good with the three lanes, right?

And I also heard that the residents in vast majority were against bike lanes, correct?

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Miller.

So, what are the questions that came up from an open comment speaker was which of the three options proposed here is the safest for all users?

How would you respond to that statement?

I I think either of the three-lane options certainly safer than the four-lane option.

Um both for the benefits to drivers, um, removes the weaving from having to change lanes.

Which one is the safest?

Would you recommend if I know we're talking about project constraints, but on that item of safety, which one would you, as a professional in the space say is the safest?

I would probably go with option two.

Okay.

And my other question is I know we've talked about sidewalk riding is legal here.

It's my understanding that sidewalk riding for bicyclists is actually less safe than riding in other spaces because they're often traveling faster than pedestrians are and are unexpected by people using driveways or intersections.

Is that true?

There has been research that has reached that conclusion.

I I will say I, in my opinion, I would look at it the similar to a cycle track that's off the street and protected.

Should not be sharing the same space with pedestrians.

But if you look at the type of people that ride on sidewalks versus in the street, they're typically more likely to get in crashes anyway.

So I would not immediately come out in my professional opinion and say that riding on a sidewalk is significantly less safe than a separated cycle track.

Okay.

And then my other question is I I brought this up in the study session about if we were to do a separated cycle track on the north side, how long are we committing to that?

And you at the time said three years, roughly.

Is that true as far as when restriping would be to again?

So typically when we mill and overlay a street like this, yes, we'll come back in three years and do a chip seal project.

So if there are striping modifications, that would be the time to do it.

And do we often use temporary pilot projects to determine whether or not something is feasible, what increase in use, what changes to crash profiles, all of that.

Do we collect data when we try something new?

Uh we do, uh, and we we certainly will with this project for sure.

Um, I guess I'm I'm struggling and I I'm uh in agreement with the mayor.

And then we have people coming to talk to us who are not all in the neighborhood but are proposing connections to that school or one of many schools along there.

I've also noted in the comments that many comments that come in as vehemently opposed to any lane reductions, any changes.

Start with I've lived in this neighborhood for 30, for 40, 450 or more years.

And I would just acknowledge change can be hard.

I've also noted that in many of the responses in favor, there have been very detailed personal stories about connections to children.

And so I'm I'm noting a difference between I I've gotten used to using this one way versus I am concerned for my child who I wish had more independence in the world.

And so I'm just noting that as well.

I know Councilmember Wall has received many of the emails I've received.

I've tried to respond to as many as I can and spent much of my day in uh open comment period for this item.

But when I look at what we're building for the future, I find it hard to say, well, you gotta wait 20 years.

And so if you have kids today, my daughter won't experience any ability to travel this corridor safely until she's an adult.

And I have concerns about that, especially when there are ample grant opportunities to solve the problems that you're addressing of implementation of budgetary design, of technical assistance of all of the the features that would change.

And I'm fortunate unfortunately shocked that we're not recommending option two in the staff recommendation, which I would say aligns with policy and looking for funding opportunities.

Councilmember Doring Um I'm gonna make a motion.

So go ahead.

I move to approve the design concept and advancing to final design, a three-lane street with a two-way cycle track and parking on one side along Elton Hills Drive Northwest from Broadway Avenue North to 500 a foot east of a CC Drive Northwest.

Project number uh J7313.

Motion made by Councilmember Doring, seconded by Councilmember Miller.

Councilmember Doring, go ahead.

Yeah, I might speak at length a little bit about uh about this motion.

Um I live in the Elton Hills neighborhood and have had the opportunity to talk with many of my neighbors uh over a number of years about this project.

I remember uh the project when it came in 2020 and how that was divisive in the neighborhood.

Um and how that how that ultimately came to the council not taking any action on making Elton Hills Drive safer at that point.

Uh during this process, I do agree that we have heard from residents who uh who would like a uh the four foot the four-lane um I think I'm gonna use a word that was said an open comment thoroughfare to continue on Elton Hills Drive.

Um, but we've also heard from a number of residents who are concerned and who have read the data supplied to us by city staff who have worked with engineers and experts in the field who have stated that three lanes is uh significantly safer, uh, especially through a uh a residential neighborhood.

Um as for the cycle track.

Um I am a cycler in in this community.

I choose not to commute by cycle.

I I choose to be on recreational trails, which also have it has its dangers, um, which we'll talk about later this evening.

Um I think that 22 years is way too long to wait to make any improvement uh given the policies that this body has adopted to create cycling infrastructure along Elton Hills Drive.

So again, I appreciate every constituent who has reached out to me.

I have paid absolute attention to your thoughts and have taken them into consideration.

I was prepared to not um bring forward a motion for the cycle track if it was not protected at all.

Um so I was glad that our city staff provided us with that option that there was some protection to create that.

Um so um I'm gonna leave my comments there.

So that's why I support the three lanes uh with a cycle track and perking on one side.

Thank you, Councilmember Doring, and I really appreciate you making that motion, and I will also support that motion.

And uh to take your last point, I also was looking for some a separation that was beyond just paint and uh uh the options that were presented here today seem like a good option for uh for now.

Uh I also believe with the the uh great comments that the mayor made that this is our complete street policy.

This is the direction that we are going as a society.

I am a recent commuter cyclist, and uh and I have been to many uh events that are in our close neighborhoods, and the number of cyclists in Rochester is growing.

And we have to be able to accommodate multimodal transportation throughout throughout the city and starting in a uh on a thoroughfare that is a problem thorough fare for the people that live there.

They know that it has been a problem.

And we do know that uh that narrowing the street, going to three lanes, and uh and adding a protected bike lane does add to that calming effect for uh for that street.

As council member Miller said, change is hard.

It's always hard, but change is really what moves uh public policy and uh good public policy, whether it's health care, safety.

People didn't want to put on seat belts.

Now we wear seat belts and we're safer.

And so uh I will be supporting this motion.

Councilmember Palmer.

I was the second.

Oh, I'm sorry?

I was the second on the motion.

Oh councilmember Miller.

Thank you.

I didn't want to interrupt the council president.

And I I did I I do apologize, Councilmember Miller.

I did recognize that you were the second, but I also recognized that I was the only council member that had not spoken on the item.

So that's why I talked about it.

I take no offense.

I just wanted to.

So I will go to Councilmember Miller, then I will go to Councilmember Palmer.

Yeah, I I I really appreciate all the folks that have reached out, and I I've tried my best to respond to everyone, whether they're a war to constituent an Elton Hills neighbor, a user of this space.

And I've heard from a lot of folks who don't live in the neighborhood and say I drive this frequently, or I travel through here frequently, or I have some other connection.

I'm a bus driver.

I I don't live in the neighborhood.

My daughter attends school at John Adams Middle School, which is in the neighborhood.

So I think counting this as what the immediate folks who have been most opposed and have some immediate proximity to the street as the the most important constituents in this space.

I I don't want to discount their perspective, but I would just say that we are making policy for the whole city.

Our active transportation network considers a network across the entire city.

We don't say that people own the street in front of their house.

Those are used by all city members.

So with that said, some things that have changed, and just I think that are worth noting since 2019-2020 when this was last discussed.

The Active Transportation Master Plan has been adopted, prioritizing this corridor for facilities for protected facilities, which I would argue that option two gets us toward.

Uh we've completed additional work on North Broadway that creates a connection to the rest of the active transportation network, creates a connection uh potentially with this project to the recreation center to 125 live to the trail network to um places for socialization, Silver Lake Park, other improvements are best utilized when they are connected to other pieces of the network.

And so I would say those other improvements that we've made are worth less if we don't build out the network and close the gaps.

And this is a significant gap.

I took my daughter to a babysitting training class at Hoover Elementary over the summer.

We biked there.

I biked in the outer lane.

Wasn't my favorite time, but we did it.

And I biked to the public hearing.

I I bike around town and I I use a bike that is on the trails in the bike lanes and when necessary on the streets.

And that's a risk that I take, but we are building the network for the city of the future.

I would also just note that other cities, cold climate cities, including Montreal, have twice the amount of snow, very similar climate, and it made meaningful investments that have gotten to the goals that they have adopted that we too have adopted in our mode shift goals.

So we have set the framework for this, and this is our opportunity to say that the policies that we adopt mean something, or well, that's just too hard, so we'll push it off for 20 years.

And so I think that we have funding sources that are readily available that we can apply for.

I think this is readily possible, and I would encourage everyone to think about who we are protecting and how we are building a city that works for everyone, that is America City for Health, that are we are designing for well-being for social connectivity, and I think this could be a meaningful investment in that policy and in that vision for our city.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Palmer.

Um I won't be supporting this um uh this motion.

Um I would have uh made the motion for option number three with bump outs at all corners.

We if you listen to what public works is saying, they don't have the money to do all the bump outs.

So it I don't know where this magic money is coming from.

As one of my colleagues likes to say, um, hope is not a plan, and um uh we need to be planning to to do this project.

I I think that um having the bike lane there, uh two-ways uh direction is going to throw people off, and it's gonna be very dangerous for them.

I think not having people using it um seven months out of the year is gonna have it be open, which is means you're gonna have uh higher speeds.

I think that garbage trucks are going to be sitting there trying to pull garbage up in uh once a week, you're gonna have traffic backed up.

Um and I think that you have to remember, and I've said this many different times, and and people going to work on bikes is less than one percent of the people in the in Olmsted County.

And so I don't see the advantage to doing this.

There's a plan.

I'm a little insulted that people go, well, they're just old people and they don't want to change.

I I don't think that that's the case.

I think people are open to it.

Um I think that it was pointed out by Mr.

Wall, the number of people making comments, I'll throw out weren't even from Rochester.

Um we have a lobbyist group that did a very good job of sending out a letter to say this is what you should do, and most of those keywords were used when I read the letters.

I read every letter.

I tried to respond to everybody.

I believe I did 90% um response a for or against.

But we did ask the residents, and if we're gonna take the staff time to go out and ask them for their their opinion, I think we should use it.

And I go back to my original statement.

We don't have the money to do option number two.

We barely have the option to do option number one with bump outs.

I I don't see going to do something we don't have the money for.

Councilmember Keene.

Yeah, again, I'm still coming to this project as it started as a millen overlay that creates opportunities us to do other things.

Um, and that's kind of why we're here.

Um, the idea of going to the three lanes, this is difficult because you've got this the for whatever reason the local people's kind of saying they'd want it the way it is, they have their own reasons, but then you have your engineers and your city experts and your transportation people saying there are better, safer ways to do it.

Um I I come down and supporting the better, safer ways and going with the professional opinions.

Um, and I know we've had trouble on 19th Street West, that there's complaints, but um it it does end up working.

Um, as far as the cycle track though, this is one that's hard on me because this is something that is not the right way to implement these things.

It is an opportunity that you can do it here, but now we've created these other problems with garbage pickup, with snow removal, um, and and and I I also look at something like Elton Hills and say with the sidewalks on both sides, all the way back and forth.

I I just don't think it's needed for the extra risk and financial uh risk and also operational concerns it puts on the streets.

So I'm not going to be supporting the motion at this point.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Uh Clerk Case, can you take the role?

Councilmember Keene.

Nay.

Councilmember Miller.

Aye.

Councilmember Wall.

Nay.

Councilmember Fredericks.

Nay.

Councilmember Palmer.

Nay.

Councilmember Doring.

Aye.

Council President Shoebring.

Aye.

Motion fails.

Is there an alternative motion?

I'd make a motion to approve the design concept advancing the final design of three lane street with parking on both sides along Elton Hills from Broadway Avenue north to 500 feet east of uh Sissy Heights Drive, project number J 7313.

Second.

Motion made by Councilmember Keene, seconded by Councilmember Fredericks.

Further discussion.

Yeah, I mean, we've gone through it here.

It's it's it's one of these things that I kind of went through this with the staff as far as like, is this the right way to do the bike things and we're and and I do understand the debates with I voted for the active transportation thing.

I want us to be able to do this.

You shouldn't have not being able to do it perfect, be the uh get in the way of doing something, but I really don't like the when the uh the traffic is on one side blocking uh residents from getting out to the street.

Um I uh so this one I I was not gonna support.

So that's where I'm at.

Uh council member uh Palmer.

I'm gonna make an amendment to the motion.

Um, and that is that the public works has um bump outs at all um corners on the route.

Is there a second to council member Palmer's uh amendment?

Second, seconded by council member Doring.

Go ahead, Councilmember Palmer.

I just think that it's very important for pedestrians and bike people that um each each prone has a bump out to shorten the length of walk-in across there.

Um I'll leave it at that.

Uh let me ask.

I okay.

So we do have a we we do have an amendment, and if our mover and our seconder agrees with the amendment, I don't see a nod.

So uh council member keen.

I I mean I don't think I as a motion, I don't think I have to agree with them the um you don't I was just trying to speed things up a little bit.

I got it okay.

You would have agreed to it and council member Fredericks would have we could have just done it all together.

So I you have the floor, council member.

No, I wanted to reach out to public works and see what is happening here.

Is this did we just change the project in a big way, or is this uh I I can't tell how much more um I can answer this one, uh council president, mayor, members of the council until we get into design and understand all the curb lines we're moving and have better quantities.

We can't tell you tonight that we can with the current budget that we can do every corner that's every intersection.

We would love to do that, and you know, if the council gave us that direction, we'd have to work to find the budget to make sure we can provide that.

Um, but we can't assuredly say tonight that we're going to be able to get every intersection.

We're gonna want to focus on if we were as Sam noted, have to scale some back, we're gonna want to focus on the highest volume intersections, the higher highest use, so we can shorten that crossing for pedestrians.

Thank you.

I'd uh council member Frederick.

Thank you.

Hate to do it to you, buddy.

I I I want to stick with our original motion because we're we're trying to stick to budget here.

We're trying to stick to the plan, what we had in place.

Um, I'd just like to stick to the original motion.

Uh administrators elms, council president, council member um, and this is to both prior questions.

I the way that this would come forward though after design is as you've seen in many projects, it is possible to bid this in a way where you have bid alternates, and it is possible for you to determine outside of the budget process that you either want to use contingency or reserves or something of that nature if you wanted to do something like that.

If you gave that direction, there are steps proceeding forward that could happen and future discussion and votes that would allow you to make that final determination once the design is complete.

Thank you, administrator.

So then there's a motion, there is an amendment on the uh on the floor uh by council member poemer, seconded by council member Doring.

All in favor say aye.

Aye aye, opposed, say nay.

Nay, the nays have it.

We are back to the original motion.

Is there any further discussion?

Council member Miller.

I have a question uh for staff with bump outs that might be put anywhere along here within the budget.

Does the construction of the bump out preclude future conversion to a protected option two in an interim 20 years?

Would we be spending more money over time if we do option one because of restriction in budget and then force ourselves to spend more money in the future if it is a priority of a future council majority to advance a protected design ahead of its full reconstruction?

It would make it more difficult.

Um I think it would we would have to scale all of them back, everything that we put in, we would have to take it out essentially.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so I'll just say again, I I can support this reluctantly because I do think it is an improvement in safety, but I'm disappointed because I feel like this goes against our planning, and I would love to see a design that allows flexibility for future councils at this point of transition of our community.

Thank you, council member.

Uh seeing no uh council member Wall, I'm sorry, go ahead.

A question for the engineers uh is it possible from the river to Broadway to uh move it to four lanes uh so that uh the commercial properties have the opportunity for uh more uh uh access.

Um thank you, council member wall.

Um, with this project, we aren't changing any access.

So um we're not proposing consolidating driveways or moving driveways, so we wouldn't be advocating for a four-lane section.

I mean, we'll have some transition as we approach the turn lanes at Broadway to to fit that intersection design, but um, we would essentially um start that three-lane section near the rec center.

We would even have space for parking, which is a big challenge for events at the recenter, so that would also help with that.

We'd be able to get parking uh for events at the rec center.

So we would really want to use that section that's being presented uh for the length of the corridor.

Councilmember Keene.

I'm sorry, point just point of order.

This is on my original motion for option on the uh motion for the three lane with parking on both sides, option one.

Councilmember Keene.

Council Member Miller.

All right.

Councilmember Wall.

Councilmember Frederick.

Councilmember Palmer.

Councilmember Doring.

Council President Schubring.

Motion passes six to one.

Even though we have a minute left in our break, I'm going to get us started since we're all in our seats and ready to go, and we've got lots of items on our agenda here.

So we're going to move on to H two, which is supporting economic growth and vitality.

An update on the economic development ecosystem with Miss Irene Woodward.

Go ahead.

Good evening, Council President, Mayor, Council members.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide an update.

Just because I'm presenting, there's a lot of other folks behind here that are doing some of this work.

So just wanted to say thank you to them.

Really wanting to start out with grounding us with our council priorities.

There's strategic opportunities to create a more integrated economic development ecosystem.

Collaborating to map the system can help us better attract, retain, and grow emerging sectors, which really led to the start of identifying where we started to look at that academic the academic development ecosystem and what does it currently look with our partners.

On top of that, this is you know, the Urban Three presentation was really looking at different land uses and how there's impacts over time in terms of densities and what type of development are impactful and where that's happening.

So all of this work is really aligning with it.

This work, in addition, back in 2023, is I'm sure you all remember very we talk about this a lot, that there was 50 million dollars allocated for academic vitality and the voter-approved sales tax renewal.

Within that 50 million, we often talk a lot about housing and the creation of housing, but there was an additional bucket that was identified for workforce and business development.

These are a couple different categories within that, but really recognizing that we need to continue to look at how we support workforce and business development and what does that really look like.

And so it was important as we had started to look at we have some funding available and how does this align, what is our current system really look like.

And to do that, we really needed to work with our existing partners.

There's a lot of different entities, um, many of they're all listed on there that had participated in this work that we were doing.

They're all centered around doing work within Rochester, so that's kind of how they were selected.

The first priority is who's already doing work within the system, who's here, what are those resources, and what does that look like.

So as we started to look at some of these questions that were floating to the top, we wanted to really start there.

Um, and the approach we really used to gathering our partners, and we kind of convened them back first in August 2025.

And we really established this kind of timeline of saying, here's kind of this work that we're looking to do.

And we really wanted to make sure that we kind of move through this.

We probably extended a little bit beyond January 2026.

We were a little um, I'm gonna say hopeful that we would take it would take a little less time, but we also saw a lot of great questions coming about, and we continue to re-engage with our partners.

So we initially convened back in August 2025, and one of the key first steps was having what we called self-assessments, and we asked each of the different entities to answer a number of different questions that we put together to really understand what is the work that they're already doing within these different categories, as well as providing feedback on how the overall system is working.

And from that, we provided, and this is a very high-level summary of really starting to break down each of the different categories within the ecosystem.

On the screen, the stars really represent those primary services that are provided by the different partners.

These are the things that they are, you know, that's the main reason people are going to them.

The additional services are also things that are happening in the work they're also doing, but wanted to recognize those differences and really started to pull these out.

This is intended to be high level.

Um, as we start to share some of this, one of the notes we would say when you look at probably the financing and incentives, there's going to be some differences in each of the organizations in terms of what services or what incentives they may offer, and they might have more targeted for individuals, but we really wanted to really look at the assessments as an overall in terms of what might be gaps and opportunities across the whole ecosystem.

And this really started to help shape that work and be able to kind of see where those things are happening.

I will say the partners were really helpful, and they really provided a lot of information to us and were really a part of this process.

The other piece, and this was like some of the key takeaways we took from the self-assessments.

This was feedback that the economic development partners really shared with us in terms of some of those priorities and what those takeaways were for what they viewed, some of the needs for Rochester.

And really supporting entrepreneurs and small businesses was at the top.

It was one of the main focuses, I think, that kept coming up through this work of how do we do that better.

And also how are we strength strengthening downtown vitality?

Um, and then continuing to look at innovation beyond Mayo, advancing equity inclusion, and then building trust through community engagement and continue to share that work out.

Beyond once we kind of evaluated the assessment piece, we also recognize and we did do a short survey using those economic development partners to share out the information on the survey.

It was only about 35 businesses that responded, but it was really trying to understand some of what they're kind of seeing in the environment and how they access services if they did.

When we were doing this, we recognized that the majority that filled out the survey were probably in business for 16 plus years, about 51%.

So they were more established businesses, where only 37% had operated for seven years or less.

We had a range of different ones that really provided responses to it.

It was anonymous.

And what we saw was some of that were these takeaways, including a communication gap that exists, a need, a workforce concern in terms of what's their long-term needs, needing growth stage early support of how they're going to scale, how they're going to grow their business, and then additional navigation and help would add value.

So I think understanding what regulations exist, how do you maneuver through those pathways?

And these are some of those items that came up through that process.

So through all of this, then we kind of took the assessments.

This drawing is probably a little hard to read all of the different pieces.

It was kind of intentional too.

But at the center of it is the entrepreneur and small business.

And what we're trying to build from that is really understanding where all of the primary services are lying within that whole network so that we start to see if you're looking for marketing and branding, who is done doing some of that work, the policy advocacy, and these align with those primary services and making sure we start to see what this work really looks like and what is being done by our partners, along with this also helps us just to move to next steps potentially of what does that really look like going forward.

Now, what we also found during this process is that we probably weren't reaching everyone that we could in terms of gathering insights into what services may or may not be provided.

And so one of the items that came up was identifying a co-design process for this economic development work, recognizing that we're not necessarily capturing all the voices that we could and really looking for an opportunity to gather impact from those that might not be the first ones to fill out a survey, but will be impacted by future decisions.

And so we really viewed this as what the next step in this work.

We've kind of identified the ecosystem, but as we were identifying future gaps in some of those needs, we view that this was a missing piece to this work in terms of what does this really look like, in terms of gathering that input.

And so this is a process we're kind of in right now in terms of starting to put that together.

And as I will mention as we go forward, we're also aligning it with some of the economic mobility work that I'll speak about and finding a way that we can probably combine those efforts to kind of start out and then see where that work leads us.

The other, you know, within after the ecosystem, we also have some other initiatives that are actually going on as well, and wanted to kind of provide some updates on that as well because I think they are, while they're not all the same, they are related to each other and they're all happening together.

Um, the first and foremost is I think the mayor spoke about this briefly earlier, the regulatory justice initiative.

The mayor's office identified this opportunity back in June, actually in 2025.

Um, it's a it's a cohort with cities work and mayor's innovation project.

I think this was the first cohort they did in this regulatory justice initiative.

Um there were five other cities selected besides Rochester.

We had an opportunity to very focus in on small business regulations.

So, for example, through this process, we took our and mapped our map the process to start a business within Rochester and the number of steps that that takes.

And that also really recognizes that includes working across with the county and the state of all the different ones.

We also recognize through this process we were a bit different from other communities.

For example, some communities have a business license, so they have one department that really starts and ends with a business, and we don't necessarily have that.

We have some businesses that are going to the clerk's office to because they're gonna get a liquor license, and they're helping funnel people, or they're just looking for a building permit as part of their what they needed to do.

So this was an opportunity to kind of identify what are some of those challenges that are existing, what are some recommendations?

Um, the the cities work team also evaluated some of our regulations as we went through.

So, for example, and I'll talk about it a little bit more.

Um, they looked at kind of the UDC as it relates to home-based businesses, um, and kind of scoring some of those things, and then ultimately providing recommendations.

Um, I would also note note throughout this work, we worked with the RDA in Collider.

They also provided recommendations and feedback from clients that they have worked through with this process.

So that also helped inform some of this work and also some of that engagement of the information they had talked to or heard, or this is an issue, or this is what we continually hear year every time, or this business comes to me with this particular issue.

Um, and through this, there was some different recommendations that were brought forward.

One was to establish a one-stop shop.

Really, what that is entailing is how do we pull the information together in one space within our city website so people know, like if you're gonna go about opening a restaurant, here's the general steps you need to follow, and how do you go about doing that so that you know, yes, you're gonna also need to contact the county.

The county is engaged with our development process through some of our predevelopment meetings, but how do we make sure that that entrepreneur needs are gonna need to do that for a particular restaurant?

In addition, we kind of it's kind of a development of an inspection checklist.

This is really to help, and what we heard a lot is someone goes and sign the signs a lease for a different space, and then they realize they might have to do all of these code things, or there's zoning requirements with the UDC.

And so this is really intended to be a proactive tool for somebody to kind of be able to take with them.

Um, and so our attend is also kind of build this to make it accessible, but then share it with our partners, partners who can give out information in terms of where can you find the zoning information, where can you find the building code information, here's things that you should be thinking about.

Um, we're in the process of also making sure that we're getting it reviewed by other departments, so they will be seeing that too to make sure that we have the correct information so that we can share that out with them.

And then the last was really looking, as I noted, on home-based business in terms of some of those requirements around what's allowed number, and so some of those will probably take a little longer for us to review.

We viewed the first two as really being something that can be shared and updated and implemented fairly quickly.

And so I think those really align not only with some of the stuff we're hearing with the ecosystem from our partners about information sharing, but also what we're hearing from entrepreneurs and small businesses.

And then the next thing that I really wanted to provide an update on is the economic mobility.

Um, this is the initiative underway through ICMA.

The work is being led by Amanda Leitner, who joined the city earlier this year.

And this grant provides both implementation funding and technical assistance.

So it's kind of taking a separate approach to really looking at economic mobility, which is a little bit different from economic development, which we're gonna kind of talk through because I think there's probably some questions of what does that really look like.

When we're talking about economic mobility, we're we're really looking at how do we ensure residents can benefit from the growth that's happening, and whether that's access to quality jobs, ownership, long-term financial stability, and removing barriers to participation compared to that overall economic development, which is really the growth within the local economy in terms of business attraction and expansion, the industry growth and investment, commercial development, and job creation and tax-based growth.

They work together, but there are very specific things in terms of what we're looking at with economic mobility under this ICMA grant, and also the how that fits into the larger economic development system.

So, as part of this initial steps that are happening in the past several months, we're it's been kind of this discovery phase where the local systems either expand or limit access to economic mobility.

Um there's been a kind of this explore and refine stage of understanding where the challenges are and identifying areas where there is an opportunity for the city to have a unique opportunity to have outcomes that come out of this.

The discovery process has included over 30 one-on-one interviews to date.

There's been two cross-departmental workshops with about 50 plus participants.

There's also been an analysis of data, which is a key component of this as we start to establish what data do we have to be able to look at long-term outcomes and track them.

And then there's also been analysis of city priorities and plans and how these things align, along with other technical assistance and peer learning from ICMA as part of this overall cohort of 15 other cities.

And so, as these things align, it's how do they look in terms of these first systems in terms of land use, transportation, housing, and economic development, and how they merge together to provide those outcomes and economic mobility.

We kind of have an overall timeline here.

Um, and I've kind of discussed, you know, touched on the discovery piece, but this is also really taking those initial things and further refining them, asking questions, doing both community engagement and stakeholder engagement of what does that really look like and continuing refinement of the work and assisting in the potential of what might be a pilot work going forward.

Um, it's been kind of an iterative process of what does that look like and how do we refine that to be able to keep moving that forward?

But what is starting to emerge through this work, um, which probably will not be there's a lot of alignment with some of the city priorities within this, um, but across that, we've really seen long-term economic opportunity depends on only on continued growth, but whether residents can successfully access, navigate, and remain connected to the systems that help shape housing, transportation, employment, entrepreneurship, and community participation.

And some of those the city has an a lead, sometimes we support and sometimes we influence in those spaces that are identified on the screen.

But we see opportunities to approach that and looking at how do these things over time, the initiatives that are already underway, along with what are these others, are they aligning to be able to increase economic mobility within the community?

Some next steps within the economic mobility work.

Let me make sure I'm on the right side, is continuing stakeholder and resident engagement to more precisely map where the system breaks and validate where with lived experience.

So as we're starting to identify these drivers and these information, we're still kind of testing are those the right ones, or other things coming up.

These are very complex things.

You could have a number of them, but being able to also hone in on what data is going to help support and be able to track over time.

The other piece is really mapping the workforce ecosystem, it's understanding the bringing partners together to validate and really look at some of that.

And where we're looking at workforce, we're looking across the entire, including, like for example, the school district.

How do all these things work together as it relates to the workforce, which also builds off of kind of the economic development ecosystem work as well, because those sometimes are often looked, they're integrated but also have some separate policies and processes that they follow.

And then also starting to test potentially some internal pilot projects that could dress immediate economic mobility needs while informing longer term community strategies.

And then at the same time, there's also kind of a look at co-design within this, as I kind of already mentioned, of how we can align both the ecosystem, economic development, and economic mobility into one co-design.

While we might have some different questions, I think there's some alignment there that we're going to kind of approach together.

So one that we're also recognizing there is some engagement fatigue in the community, and so how can we make the best use of our time and our partners and individuals to really engage with this work and be provide us some really recommendations and feedback as we continue to move forward?

So the next steps.

How can we better support them in the long run by having some information in a particular area within our website or materials like the inspection checklist so that we can better help them navigate that process and hopefully reduce the challenges that they're facing through that process.

And then the third item is really looking at creating a citywide economic development strategy.

Um where this kind of came from was one identifying within the action plan, um, how do we really identify the city's economic development role?

As we asked all of our partners to provide feedback as they're doing their self-assessments, I think the question that kept popping up for all of us is where do we align as a city and how do we establish that overall vision?

Not that we are going to be taking on that work of our partners, we're there to support them, but there's also a role for the city as we establish this longer term vision, and also understanding that as the city continues to grow, are we are we appropriately aligning resources and policy to be able to accommodate that?

And so, really looking at all of those different needs, including also workforce needs, um, what might the job growth be going forward?

How are we going to accomplish that?

Um, these things also align really well with some of our other initiatives that are happening.

Um, how do we envision this work happening?

Um, we would still build off of utilizing and working with our partners.

All of this work that we've done to date would help really become a basis of we're starting to build out this strategy, but also really further engage and build out an engagement strategy for other businesses that still can provide feedback.

It would also be additional residents feedback, city teammates, all of the work of the co-design would also help inform this and be kind of ongoing so that those could be incorporated in those voices.

We would expect this to be an RFP process.

Um, we don't have one yet drafted.

It would be kind of identifying and finalizing that scope of work and being able to move forward with this to really help establish that longer term vision.

And with that, I will open it up for questions.

Councilmember Palmer.

Can you go back to your last slide, please?

Certainly.

So on slide 61, um, you got all the stars to tell you who's doing what, and uh DMC had eight stars and ready had seven for for economics in I think the city had one star.

So you're asking here to hire a consultant.

Don't we have people already in the community or these organizations that have seven and eight stars?

Wouldn't it be better just to ask them how do you want to do development and and and send people to them instead of saying you gotta work with the city?

I I don't think we are taking away from any of the work that the partners are are doing or will continue to do as we are suggesting developing an economic development strategy.

Part of the overall strategy is also identifying where does city policy align with where is this longer term vision?

The city really doesn't hasn't specifically focused on economic development or had we have various people who do do different parts.

The city really doesn't hasn't specifically focused on economic development or had we have various people who do do different parts and as we kind of talked about earlier we have kind of TIFF policy we're kind of doing some of these initiatives we're also doing economic mobility and how do all these things kind of come together in terms of a longer term vision is how we're starting to see the economic development strategy.

I think it takes into account the work that is being done by our partners and then also starting to identify are there other gaps that whether they're seeing or not seeing or we are starting to see that has that alignment so that we can start to really look at what does that future look like well I I guess I'm not I'm not thinking we need to hire a consultant to do that.

I think for me from my perspective the number of phone calls I get about this project's being hung up or this is happening and that's happening and and having someone research that and get back to us.

And as we've talked before 90% of it is on the developer or the engineer's problem but still I I think it would be nice to be able to have one person just to say call this person and and instead of saying call your council person because I'm assuming everybody gets the same calls that I get um you know my permit's held up this is held up so I'm I'm the economic development the other thing is is we're doing darn good and I don't know how we can do much better than we are.

I think our unemployment's less than three percent um we're moving ahead we have the advantage of having a large employer in and subgroups off of that large employer.

So I'm not particularly sure where else you go with economic development.

Well I think what we're also looking here is also identifying like yes there's a lot of great things happening in Rochester but there's also going to be some challenges as we continue to grow in terms of workforce development how many jobs are really are we expecting over time what does that really look like and do we have the structures in place to be able to support that and I also think where we go with that economic development strategy is also as we kind of go back to that economic vitality and some funding how do we support if there is this gap that we identify from the city and through this engagement we can align those things.

I also kind of view it as like a larger overview that also helps our partners understand some of those priorities.

And then it allows others to kind of plug in as you know our partners are going to have priorities of their own but it also provides some framework of like we all recognize it these things are going to be happening within our community and we're all working together in our various ways.

And that kind of goes back to that chart like not everyone's going to be doing the same thing and nor would we want them to and we're not suggesting they replace it but they might have to shift or now that we know in five years this is going to be this concern that we need to address we're kind of trying to get ahead of that ahead of that with this strategy.

Well I'll end with this is that I remember we had a grant to to get jobs I think we had nine jobs and it cost two million dollars they spent to get those nine and there's got to be a better more efficient way I would I don't know all the specifics but yes we're trying to look at how do we align and have impact.

So I think part of really that strategy of economic development strategy is setting some of those benchmarks of what do we need to accomplish over time and being able to track them and setting up those metrics as well.

Thank you, council member I so I have I've got a couple questions and one I I appreciate you uh defining uh economic development and economic mobility and kind of clarifying that I have questions on both.

So from an economic development standpoint one of the issues that we've talked about a lot at this dais is we have all these small area plans we have community development that really brings it to the place where this is what we think should be there.

Would economic development be the one that kind of sells that land is that a function of economic development often that's the case that economic development is kind of looking or seeing hey there's these gaps within our current system or there's these businesses that we don't have or these other opportunities for workforce and how do we align to create that more specific economic development as opposed to some of the the planning documents that are might be looking at a specific site of what could be there in that future planning.

But so this consultant would identify either partners here that are local that can help peddle our properties small area plans to bring economic development to those sites or or we could do it ourselves.

I think what we're looking for the consultant to do is identify like where aren't those resources so how are we doing alignment in terms of are we need to go out and do XY and Z and find somebody for that site is that work happening or do we need to align with a partner that's already doing some of that work and maybe that's somewhere okay that's happening here there's alignment that's missing right now.

Or do we need to align with a partner that's already doing some of that work and maybe that's somewhere?

Okay, that's happening here.

There's alignment that's missing right now.

Um so I think it's building off of where our partners are doing work, but also refining what we're seeing in the gap overall from that consultant when we're looking at the city and the structure that is continuing to grow compared to other communities.

Here are things you need to really think about in terms of where you're going to need to go to and be able to provide that framework.

That that's what I was looking for.

Okay, in uh on the economic mobility.

And I think this is a really important piece from a and looking at the presentation, it felt like it was more coming from a business side.

I really look at it from the uh the resident side.

You know, do they have a job that they can have that provides them a livable wage, one job rather than two, do they get the benefits?

Do they have mobility?

And that's what this sounds like.

And one of the things that we really have to here in Rochester is recognized we have a major employer in this community that hires 50,000 people.

They have an advancement uh programs, and one is pathways to health care, which uh bring uh brings in new immigrants and uh and trains them to be phlebotomous.

They get into the mayo ecosystem, they're able to then uh have options to move in other places.

So one of the things that I would really encourage on the mobility uh the economic mobility front is really tighten that relationship and those other workforce development relationships and find out what do they need so that we're you know, being the handoff and working with our major employer to make sure there's access to them to uh to our residents.

No, I appreciate the comment.

And I think some of the 30 some interviews, some of them have been for with providers and nonprofits and various organizations, not just individuals.

So that work will also continue.

So I appreciate the comment.

Yep, great.

Um Mayor Norton.

Thank you.

Um couple things.

One, I want to dispel the kind of belief that cities don't have a role in this.

Um, if you look around the country, most cities, our size and larger have someone whose job it is is to focus on, and it's their name different things economic mobility, economic development, small business development, it goes on and on.

So it's not unusual at all.

And um, I'm thrilled that we're we're finally digging into this.

Um I I would say one of the things that was, you know, for me participating in this tiny little piece of it was doing interviews with people who have either looked to buy a building here or start a building business here, or have a business here and the lessons they learned.

And that was pretty eye-opening, I think.

And so I'm excited for the future of taking that next step at some point.

We're gonna do the the maybe stage one things, the easy things first, but really delving into how can we improve those processes for people who are giving sometimes their life savings and loans to open something only to find out that you know they can't open for six months and you know, they don't have the the building isn't in the shape it needs to be in order to open the kind of business they were looking for, and they didn't know that to start with.

So that's part of the important work that's being done here.

And lastly, I just wanted to say on um slide 73.

I wrote down you have um, I think business development or workforce training.

And I would just say I also think one of the key pieces missing, and I don't think it's really missing, but it's not stated explicitly, which is education.

And we can do workforce training, and that's great.

We have great places in town to do it, but we also have a community and technical college and several major universities who are need to be partners with us in training that workforce for these really either high-tech or jobs, you know, specific things that that we need in our community for people to stay here.

So I think that's a component while we you may have talked about it is training.

Um, I think it's education and training, and hopefully those partners will come to the table and and be part of this as well.

Yeah, I think it's part of that workforce ecosystem is building out where do our um educational institutions also align and and what programming and making sure that we're identifying that as part of this process.

Other comments, council member Keene.

Yeah, I'll just uh again comment.

I I did like the idea that differentiation between economic mobility and development, and there are initiatives, and it's good to see us identifying the partners up front right away, because this isn't something I mean, I still think the city has got to focus first and foremost on what our job is and not on what somebody else's, but that idea of regulatory justice and making sure that you know too many times I think we start out with our regulatory, and I know the community developments through this on their permitting and and on their inspections is do you assume somebody's there doing it wrong and and it's this adversarial and um unfortunately it is sometimes, but those are the things I hope a program like this could help root out.

Um but then again, the when you start talking about economic mobility and access to quality jobs and entrepreneur support and stuff, it's a vast front.

It's it's not something that you can you know tackle with you know, bring in a new person on staff and that.

It's just a big thing.

The only thing I would try to say is like if you're gonna talk about that access to quality jobs, how do you like start from the individual's perspective versus the cities at the center of it and try to try to see what our issues are that way as opposed to solving individual problems?

No, that's a great, and I think that's also why we're starting to look at getting some of that lived experience and perspective so that we're not just isolating but seeing over from numerous um engagement efforts, what some of those themes are in terms of individuals and those experiences.

Councilmember Miller.

Yeah, just a couple of logistical questions about this slide specifically.

You're not asking for action tonight from the council, correct?

I'm I'm just trying to gauge general interest.

Any any formal action would need to still come back before you.

So just for an RFP uh consultant, um, how much money are we thinking that would cost?

What is the funding source for it?

What is the timeline and specific deliverables and how would that come back to us?

So I we I don't have a specific timeline.

I think next step would be developing an RFP in terms of budget.

I don't necessarily have a specific, but I would not funded by the grant, so we have I would envision it being funded through economic vitality funding to help guide that overall where we're gonna spend some of that funding, recognizing I think those things align with that funding source.

Um, but then building out the timeline as part of the RFP.

Um, we wanted to get some general feedback today before we went and entered and got into the more specific details, which we would next need to build out for this process.

Okay, thanks.

So just to clarify, uh, Councilmember Miller's question.

So you you have a future study session uh to share the findings.

Does the RFP come after that?

A potential RFP.

Um we would the RFP would probably be before the academic development strategy.

I believe the I'm not certain what is the exactly the phrasing for the study session.

So apologies for that.

Current momentum and next steps, it's slide number 23.

Let's see here.

Maybe that's uh that has to do with the um that might be for the economic mobility work.

Um so that there's some separate actions kind of being pushed um in terms of next steps there, but really pulling together the economic development strategy would be next steps would be establishing and drafting that RFP and then kind of going through that process and then making sure there's alignment with council.

And on the economic mobility, do you have a sense of when that study session sharing the findings for that would happen?

Likely um I don't know of the exact date, so I apologize for that.

Quarter is it I mean you you have um you have summer fall 26.

You've got some pressure text testing.

Is it after?

I mean, is it like I think it would likely be this fall in terms of being able I think there needs to be some additional engagement in terms of some of the community experience and pulling that to make sure some of what is coming through aligns.

So this fall, not next winter.

Okay, that helps.

It's actually currently scheduled for August 24th, though.

Oh, it's sooner rather than later.

Okay, good.

My apologies.

I did not realize.

Any other questions, thoughts?

Thank you.

I hope you got some good feedback, and uh we look forward to talking in August.

Thank you.

Next up we have H3, which is home ownership creation program, the American Cooperative of Rochester recommendation.

Ms.

Terren Eatons.

Good evening.

Get away.

Mayor, Council President, members of the council, Terran Eidens of the Community Development Department.

I'm here to provide a request uh for funding through the homeownership creation program for the development named the American Cooperative of Rochester.

So I'll give you some quick context that you've seen before, but good for the public record to kind of remind us uh about this program and why we've supported it and it's been approved in the past.

So this specifically aligns with the council strategic priority to support housing access.

Just as well, the homeownership creation program in this particular development aligns with some of our community housing needs.

This was updated in 2025, and the priorities essentially remain the same and recognizing two of them are met by this development, both the creation of four-sale housing and creating additional senior housing options.

A lot of you are familiar with different short shortfalls in the supply of owner-occupied homes in our community, but just in a lot of them are aren't really known and they're vast in nature, right?

But three to kind of remind us to consider is essentially we have large demands for for sale housing in our community, almost 7,000 in 10 years in the next 10 years, and we haven't exactly been keeping pace with that need.

And so I'll talk a little bit more about that data, just as well.

There's certainly other external factors such as the cost of construction has increased.

So there are certain challenges that exist for meeting this need, and therefore the city has made the decision to support the creation of four-sale housing through this program.

This is an example of what our production has been in Rochester specifically of single family homes, and what you'll see and what you're likely already aware of is we're averaging around 200 a year, which won't get us to our goal in the next 10 years.

So with that, the homeownership creation program was launched or approved in February 2022.

Since then, it's been used to support about 600 housing units to date.

I would say support, so they aren't all constructed yet, but we've allocated funding to support that many units.

About 9.9 has been allocated.

Once again, allocate allocated, not entirely spent as each project has different milestones and must meet for payouts, such as this one that you'll hear you'll hear on tonight.

A lot of these have leverage other funding sources.

For example, the Coalition for Rosch area housing has a zero interest construction loan, and then all three of those subdivisions you've approved previously shows you the number of units, and those all leverage that funding source.

Just a reminder about the program, there are two ways for eligibility.

The one that is going to be used for this evening is we wanted to essentially recognize ways to spur the creation of housing development in large volumes.

So if a proposal comes forward with more than 50 units, we can entertain essentially an upfront subsidy, and that's our goal of incentivizing those developments.

The trade-off we ask for is that a portion be priced under a certain price point.

We look at that price point annually.

I'm happy to talk about how we arrive at that number, but essentially we're revived, we're we're looking to get a ceiling.

I would say that a ceiling price point based on households of four earning 150% of our area median income.

So it's a ceiling, recognizing we look for flexibility in price ranges just as well.

Also reminding you how we fund this program, similar to the last presentation.

We use the economic vitality fund that specifically calls for using those funds for housing creation, housing preservation, and as you heard, workforce and business development, much of it to support housing creation.

Specifically within the housing creation, uh, we we use about we allocated about 14 million to the homeownership creation fund as a portion of that EV funding.

So you saw before we've allocated about 9.9 million.

We anticipated to allocate up to 14 million.

So the project before you tonight is located in the Danielson Farms General Development Plan at the intersection of 18th Avenue Northwest and 55th Street Northwest.

It is a senior cooperative that will have that will that proposes 95 units.

All homes price uh in have a range in price between 188,500 and 439,000.

Therefore, all of them technically meet our requirements below that price limit, affordable to folks earning 150% of the AMI.

The amount of subsidy requested is 1.9 million, which equates to 20,000 per unit.

That's what we have laid out in our guidelines once again is sort of being the ceiling of what it might cost in city-related fees for new development.

The development will house a five-story building.

The overall design is uh intended to require low maintenance.

We can talk more about that if needed, but uh essentially saying because it's a cooperative, there's some responsibility of the homeowners to maintain the property, and that's considered as well.

Units range in size, and the target market for this project is seniors since it is age restricted as well.

It's worth noting that this project secured a HUD section 213 loan, and that's different besides the fact that this is a senior cooperative, so different from other projects we've seen, but still meets the eligibility by being a for sale development.

So, with that loan, uh there are additional restrictions and we would typically see or have in other subdivisions we've had, right?

So typically when we're looking at each project, we're looking at a trade-off for a number of things.

We want to see large developments, we want to see quick timelines.

In this case, the development uh has two years to complete after development commences, and there's an ultimate end date as well.

Um, and we're looking to restrict uh rentals.

We want this to support for sale uh um property owners specifically for a period of time.

In this case, this property comes with a lot of additional requirements from the homeowners, such as a common interest community declaration, bylaws, and an occupancy agreement.

So therefore it can never be rented.

So it already satisfies that requirement.

Often we're also looking for a resale restriction.

So the intention behind that is we're providing a subsidy, and the trade-off is that that that sale price is lowered by the amount of the contribution made, right?

And so the resale restriction, what that does essentially is it carries for a period of time.

So if the unit were to transfer, the next homeowner would essentially get a similar benefit, and that was our value or priority essentially to see that benefit sustained for a period of time.

In this case, a similar uh requirement already exists via the loan and essentially limits um uh equity to 4.5% annually.

So more stringent than what we'd require, and essentially satisfies what we would typically look for.

So that's the context I have.

I have additional questions.

I would like to make note that uh the developer is here this evening.

MickComlin with Grand Mercy Companies, if you have additional or specific questions on this, but the request is to adopt a resolution approving the contribution of uh 1.9 million dollars to the American Cooperative Rochester development to support the creation of 95 owner-occupied senior cooperative units via the home ownership creation program.

I'll pause for questions.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Palmer.

Well, you know, my first question is gonna be Yes.

Um we'll start out with 1.9 million dollars.

We got about four million dollars left in the pot.

Is that about right?

Essentially, yeah.

Okay.

And they have an age restriction.

I asked, and I don't understand really why we can't have it be that you gotta be from Rochester to move into these, because I think the plan would be for seniors is to move out of their home, Country Club Manor, Sunset Terrace, those type of homes, and move into this, and then we incentivize that, then that house becomes for sale in an existing neighborhood.

Why can't we make it a requirement that it's just for Rochester residents?

Because you can do age, why not Rochester residents?

Yeah, it's a great question.

I'll answer it and I'll invite uh the developer to answer it as well.

And recognizing the intent here aligns with the intent of the program, right?

What we're what we're trying to do is add housing units in our community, add to the housing supply to reduce sort of that market that market tension and market pressure.

Um essentially, there are legality concerns around residency requirements.

So that's more or less the rationale.

Um I would say the question did come up, right?

So we did inquire of about this, and what uh Mick would say is that majority of the residents will come from Rochester within a five to ten mile radius of the project specifically.

Some targeted uh marketing is already occurring in Rochester as it stands, but I'll let him answer any other thoughts on that.

Thank you and welcome.

And if you can restate your name.

Thank you.

Mick Conlan with Grammar C development.

Uh councilmember, thank you for the question.

I think it was uh when I read it, I was I was impressed that you know the stewardship of city funds is obviously um very important.

Um, and what I'll tell you is um as uh Tara mentioned, we do all of our marketing here in Rochester.

So we're we're you know, our sales offices here in Rochester, we're on KTTC a couple times a month.

Uh we we do all of our social media advertising, Google advertising, all of us here based in Rochester.

Uh we will get some stray folks from outside of uh the the city who inquire about it who either want to come back and be closer to family, uh, usually that's what it is, is they want to be closer to grandkids and have an interesting in coming back to Rochester.

But the vast majority of folks who are on our interest list, currently there's about 150 of them right now that were kind of working through the sales cycle.

They're all the majority of them are based here in Rochester.

Um the concern that I would have with that is if we were to uh just offer it to folks that were outside of the legal questions.

If we were to offer just to folks who reside in Rochester, um there's going to be that perception of, well, how come they're getting a better deal than I am?

And maybe this isn't right for me, and that ends up slowing down our sales cycle and makes our project less viable.

Uh, the the obviously the thing that's most important to me is that I can actually produce this building for the folks who have uh signed on with us and and are interested in in buying this building just with pictures uh right now who are putting a lot of faith in us to get this done.

And if I were to slow that down at all, uh I would be hurting them and and their expectations for this project.

So that would be my concerns with it, is just how successful would we be if we were to do that.

Thank you.

Further questions?

Uh Councilmember Miller.

Just a question, Mr.

Conlin.

Uh, could you talk about how cooperatives work?

I think many people in our community would see a building like this and assume that that is not a for sale opportunity.

So I I there's some senior cooperatives in town.

And I just wonder if for the record and for the media who are here, if you might talk a little bit about how a cooperative works.

Yeah.

Um, how the community works, how the equity works.

Sure.

Uh, thank you for the question, Councilmember Miller.

Um my father built one of the first co-ops here in the cities uh uh at uh Grimer Sea Park, and that was in 1997.

And since then, there's been, I believe there's four now in the in the uh in the city of Rochester.

Extremely popular product.

All of them have wait lists uh with hundreds of people on them who are waiting to get into the building, and I would encourage them to come check us out if they are interested in moving forward.

Uh the idea of a co-op is that you're forming a not-for-profit company.

So there's no uh uh landlord involved once the building is built.

Uh the members own uh the corporation.

There's 95 shares within that building.

Um, and those will all be owners within the building.

Uh they have self-governance, they have control over the decisions that are made by uh by the by the board, and of course, uh the property management company works for them, carries out the the actions of those folks.

Everybody in the building is an owner, it's one of the requirements in the CIC declaration is that um at least one member of the family needs to be 62 years old and uh they need it needs to be owner occupied.

So everybody within the community, it's kind of a microcosm of a neighborhood.

Uh everybody knows each other in a first name basis for the most part, and it's an incredibly popular model.

Uh they essentially purchase a share in the building that becomes their equity.

And uh as uh Tara mentioned, our our HUD 213 project uh product that we use uh limits appreciation.

It's a limited equity co-op, it limits appreciation, and we set that number here for this project as a developer at 4.5%.

So we can literally peg for folks the day they uh place their share uh payment into escrow with our title company.

Uh that appreciates out.

We if they told us they have a five-year plan to move, uh, we could tell them exactly what their share value would be when they sell to somebody on the wait list.

So it's incredibly predictable.

It's very easy to get into and out of.

And um, it's a community of of friends and neighbors who who own their housing and have uh agency and control over that.

So it's a very popular model.

Great.

Really glad to see it.

I think it's a great model, and I think it's really good land use too.

Thank you.

Councilmember Doring.

Um, how is the sales cycle going?

Because I know for the uh the HUD um loan, you have to secure 60% of uh uh shares before that those loan funds are released.

And as we're talking about a 1.9 million dollar city investment.

Uh I just want to be assured that we're we're getting close to that 60% to free up that other funding source as well.

Yes, thank you for the question.

Um, we began really sales in earnest when we had our legal docs approved by HUD.

That's one of the requirements or CIC declaration, the rest of it in April.

Uh, we've been moving forward now.

I think we're at about 15 sales.

Our goal is to hit about five to six a month until until we get to that 60% threshold.

One of the things that I worked with city staff on is uh structuring our agreement with the city so that we're not taking any funds until we hit that 60% threshold because I didn't feel comfortable with that A and B, I think that's just a good policy from my perspective is that if the city's making a commitment, we're it's not fully committed funds until we are um hit that 60% threshold.

So my goal is to hit that in quarter one of next year and get off and running.

Co-ops can take up to two years to market and sale experience tells us that that can be the case, although um Rochester has quite a need, and there's uh it's really known product for our uh market uh in in the city.

So I anticipate that we'll do well, but I'm kind of hedging my bets.

It's it's outside of my control, but we're pushing very, very, very hard to get that done.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Councilmember Palmer, quick question.

HOA HOA fee right now?

Uh the HOA fees for these buildings, which includes their share of the master mortgage, all of the real estate taxes, uh, operating and replacement reserves, professional management, and all of their utilities except for electric.

So let's start at $2,000 a month and they work up, you say it's basically about $2 a square foot.

So as you get get into those larger home plans, it's roughly about $3,800 a month, but includes all of their expenses.

So if folks will come to us and they'll say, boy, I'm used to townhome HOA fees.

And we say, well, that's like comparing apples to oranges because in a townhome, you have maybe some snow removal, the lawn gets cut.

Uh in a co-op, the co-op owns everything within the building, right?

So it includes uh if your refrigerator breaks, that's paid for by the co-op.

If you're uh you have some sort of a plumbing issue that's taken care of by the co-op.

So because the co-op owns everything, it's responsible for maintaining everything, which is completely different than what you would have in a townhome or a uh a condo, even.

It is it is more money, but it includes all of the costs of your housing, so it makes it very predictable and most important, and there's there's no sliver for a landlord profit at the end of every month that can be raised uh over time.

Um it's it's run at cost, and that budget process is controlled by the members who live there, and it's also overseen by HUD to make sure that it's not being personality driven, as that's always a concern with HOAs that uh there's one or two personalities get on there and they're using funds in a certain way.

So the HUD HUD acts as an additional protection for our members as well.

Thank you.

Councilmember Wall.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh I think I enjoyed uh a Midwest access uh with you and your sister uh some little while ago.

Is that you're very pleasant?

Uh I think you did a very good job, Sal.

I'm gonna tell my wife you said that.

I appreciate that.

Uh some indelicate questions, however.

Uh if you did not get the 1.9 million dollars, is the project defunct?

What we would do, what we are doing with this 1.9 million dollars is we included in the materials.

We took all of our share prices and just lowered them.

So if the 1.9 million dollars wasn't there, our share prices would be more expensive for the people who are buying into our building.

Um, I didn't set out to use these funds when we first started.

We've never used TIFF or anything for a project that we've done, but the opportunity was there, it aligned with what we were doing, and I thought it was a great opportunity to make this uh more affordable for folks.

I think the toughest thing for me is when people come into our office, uh, they are right on the cusp of being able to afford this.

They think it's the beginning and ending of everything that they've been looking for.

Uh community, you know, stability, uh, control over their housing, and they're if they fall short with with uh being able to afford it.

And so what I'm looking forward to being able to do if this is approved is to be able to go back not only to the folks who are our buyers now, but the people that are out there in the wait list and say, look, we've the city of Rochester's made investment in this.

We now have the uh ability to lower our share costs so that people more people can afford to live there and hopefully accelerate the sales cycle so we can get this bill quicker.

Um, but it's it's not a butt for test in in my mind.

Okay.

Which you've kind of answered my indelicate question number two.

Uh many months ago, you put up a sign that says coming soon.

Sure.

Now you have one on the corner, which is sided like this with nice pictures, much miser than what we see on our screen there, uh, which says coming soon now selling.

So say I've already bought in at 300,000.

Uh, should you get this 1.9, you're gonna come back to me and say we've reduced your uh cost to 280?

We are.

Um, and the reason I'm doing that is because I don't believe that we should have different levels of ownership within the building.

If something is offered, now granted we're at about 14 or 15 sales right now, so it's not a dramatic number, but it's real dollars, and those are dollars that are you know contributed by sales tax, and and so I understand the question.

Um, I I don't want to have to go back to those folks and say because you had faith in us and you believed in us from the very get-go before we had all these other pretty pictures and we just had this to show people you you had faith in us and wanted to move forward.

You don't get the benefit of this program.

Um, but everybody else does.

And so, in the interest of fairness, my plan was to open it to we we've published a price list for every home plan within our our building.

Uh, it showed the before price and the after price and how we are planning on allocating these funds.

And so my plan was to go back to those folks and and share with them that we had received this award.

Okay, thank you.

Is there a motion on this item?

Uh I'll make a motion adopting a resolution approving the contribution of 1.9 million dollars to the American cooperative of Rochester Development to support the creation of 95 owner-occupied senior cooperative homes via the home ownership creation program.

Motion made by council member council member Miller.

Second.

I'm seconded by council member uh Doring.

Councilmember Miller, any further to add?

Yeah, I'll just add uh we've we've seen it only single family homes and more traditional development patterns with this program before.

I'm really glad to see a multi-unit uh multifamily building coming out as a viable option for use of this.

We've talked about how we most efficiently use land infrastructure, and I think this is a great way that we provide housing alternatives that also are pro-community, bring people together and create that sense of shared community and shared ownership.

So really happy to support this.

Council member Palmer.

Yes, I didn't um it hits two of our things.

It hits home ownership and it hits um senior living.

Is that correct?

Correct.

That's a good goal, isn't it?

It is.

Thank you.

Councilmember Wall.

My parents uh moved here from a cooperative uh in E Dinah.

And they came down and uh looked at many things and they were hoping uh to buy into a cooperative, and they were not able to find uh when they uh came.

So I too am grateful to have more options as Mr.

Miller has suggested.

Thank you.

Uh all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay.

Motion passes.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next up we have uh H4, which is amending the effective date of the City of Rochester Financial Micro Contracts Process Policy.

Um this is brought to us by Mayor Norton.

Take it away, Mayor.

Thank you.

Um we had uh a brief uh study session and this issue did come up.

Um I was unaware at the time there wasn't a lot of discussion about I was unaware that it was going to be brought forward so quickly on uh an agenda, and and as you know, um the council president and I were out of town when I when it came to the the floor, so didn't have a chance to share my concerns at that time.

So I've talked with administration um, and they rightly pointed out that this council voted for it on a consent agenda item.

Um so in having that discussion about should I ask for a repeal um or is there a way to compromise?

I settled on a compromise approach.

Um for those of you who don't know, and I think most of you probably do, I don't always think the community knows.

Um, my name is on all contracts and a document signed by the city.

I know council uh the council member that served uh while I was gone knows from the number of contracts that I get.

Um there are many that I sign every week.

Um one of the things I look for all the time when I sign those contracts is has this gone before the council?

And I know for contracts under 50,000, we've had a process where they didn't need to, they were just if they were in the the budget, they got you know somebody could bring something forward.

And um, and you know that that's fine.

That's the way it's been for the my entire time um as mayor.

But when I see this and I see us moving from that $50,000 limit up to a hundred and $150,000 to $175,000, I I paused.

And at the time I said this makes me feel uncomfortable.

I thought we'd have more time to discuss it before it was on an agenda.

I I just had not expected it there.

Um personally, I would always err more on the side of more transparency than less, as I state here.

We do know that you know community trust and government is is low.

It's low, you know, at other levels, but it's also we've struggled in the community right now.

And so I've asked as my compromise that you um continue as we have currently and use that $50,000 limit, which I think is personally think is more appropriate.

You guys, you know, have made a decision maybe that's a little different than that.

But I would like to ask you to honor uh my request to uh implement that at on January 1st or 5th or whatever when um when I'm done with my term and another mayor steps in.

And I just want you to know I take those contract signings very seriously.

My name is on them, and as you also you all know, I don't have the vote, right?

So I have to sign things whether I like them or not, um, that come before me, but I take it very seriously.

And I'm I am more comfortable with you you all seeing those items that are between 50 and 175,000.

That makes me feel more comfortable in signing.

I already look at them for errors.

I found a few over my years as mayor.

Um you know, I'm not a I'm not an attorney, um, but sometimes there have been errors, and I've caught those.

I try I do take that job very seriously, but I'm asking you uh tonight to um you don't need to retract your vote, but to uh have the implementation date be um at the completion of of my term uh in January.

And so I'm just asking that of you and would appreciate your support for that.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh are there any comments, council members?

Councilmember Palmer.

Just to ask the city administrator a question.

If I remember correctly, ever at the first meeting of every month, isn't every check that's written published?

Every expense for the city that is more than zero dollars is on a detailed report and a summary report at the beginning of every month on your first council meeting.

So really the city council does see all the all the the uh money that we spend arguably, yes.

I mean I saw checks for four thirty four dollars and thirteen cents.

Correct.

Also, all of any credit card purchase also goes there.

Councilmember Keene.

Uh yeah, I again I'm familiar with this.

I I do agree that we that we would want through the finance policies that it made sense to look to move the dollar amount different.

But as I remember in the discussions at the uh when we were having the um the public or the um meeting where we discussed the different changes, we talked about different timings of them.

So I don't consider this to be a big change in policy.

We did say that we're gonna change the dollar amount.

We didn't in the meeting say a specific date, but then we did pass it that way.

So I'm comfortable with the um mayor's suggestion of just moving it to a January 1st date.

Um so I I'd like to make the motion to amend the effective date on the financial policy entitled microcontracts process policy to January 1st, 2027.

Okay.

Uh motion has been made by council member Keene uh and seconded by council member Palmer.

Councilmember Keene.

Yeah, uh again, I I it this isn't there, probably are as Mayor said there's different ways to bring this to us.

That you know, you this is you could say that we've already passed this and we shouldn't do it, but I I feel this is uh uh an easy compromise because I don't think we had a full like full-throated discussion on what those issues were.

I still support the idea of changing the uh the dollar limits for council things.

So um I think this is a good middle ground.

Any further discussion?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay, motion passes.

Moving on to H5, which is appointments to bar boards and commissions.

Uh this is a uh item that was polled by council member Palmer.

Yeah, this is a an appointment to the uh park board, and the mayor makes those appointments, and we are the um body that um approves them.

Um I went back to three different uh meetings and there was no opening um for this um opening uh published.

And so I think it would be better to uh table this and then turn around and have um an application out there so if people want to apply, they would know to be notified and they could apply.

Thank you, council member Mayor Norton.

Thank you.

Um I'm not gonna go into the long and ugly history of how we got where we got, but I will tell you um that uh as I mentioned earlier this evening, board and commission openings are there all year round.

Uh anyone can put their name in any time.

I went and looked back, and since 19 or 2022 um or 2023 till now, we have had 12 people apply for that board, and they've come in periodically throughout the year.

Um of those 12, there was one for ward four during that time.

And uh so when the uh board reps year or term was up, um I, as I told the committee that I would do uh at the time when the last person was approved, I would continue to find look until I found someone who wanted that position.

Someone stepped forward from Word 4.

Um and they are a dedicated community member with interest in parks, and um, so I was very pleased to be able to fill the position.

Um the other thing folks need to know is I take applications all year, I interview people all year, and we save those names until the next opening occurs often.

So I have people, for instance, on the library board that I interviewed a year ago.

Um, sometimes boards uh board of appeals, you know, they may have applied a year ago.

And I hold that name after I interview them and I make notes that this was a very qualified person, we just didn't have time to fill it.

When the next opening occurs, we slip them in.

It doesn't necessarily mean we repost it.

We if we have qualified candidates.

So both of those things are true.

So this is uh the first interest we've had um in the last four years, and um a very qualified person, and I was pleased to bring it forward to you.

Thank you, Mayor.

And I'll just say uh we all sit here at this dais, and during the mayor's report, I don't think there is one mayor's report that doesn't talk about boards and commissions and openings.

So I do believe the mayor does a great job of letting the community know that uh there are openings on boards and commissions.

So is there a motion on this item?

Oh, you have a question?

Yep, council member uh Fredericks.

I agree that April is a qualified candidate and engaged in this community.

I see you're out, I see you're working hard doing things within the community.

I just uh was Mark not interested in continuing his role on the park board.

Mayor Norton.

I didn't want to really get into the ugly history of this, but you weren't on the board when all this went down.

Several of you were.

Um, when I brought um Mr.

And I asked for them to consider putting him in until another board member could be found.

And so they said yes.

And until the end of that term, which was one month, month and a half, maybe, and until another board member could be found.

And so for these last years, I talk regularly.

We have posted regularly about this particular ward as well as others, because that was the direction of the council.

And so he finished his term on June 26th, I believe.

And um I made a personal call and talked this through with him, and he was very understanding.

And in fact, says if if the new council would uh be so inclined, he would love to continue his service in this community in some other way.

So I certainly will keep that in mind.

And if he's interested in another position, I'd be happy to bring him forward.

He's an excellent public service for certain.

Councilmember Palmer.

Well I think Mr.

Bilderback has done a good job, and I like to see him renewed.

Um, and we have not had again no posting.

This is a little different.

This is one of the charter boards.

Um of the three charter boards, this is a very important one, and they work very hard for our park department.

So um I'll make a motion to um um delay this until the second meeting of um August.

Um motion has been made by Councilmember Palmer.

Is there a second?

Fails, but with uh lack of uh a second.

Is there an alternative motion?

I'll make a motion approving the mayoral appointment of April suitor to the park board ward four, effective immediately to their first four-year term ending June 30th, 2030.

Second.

The motion made by Councilmember Miller and uh seconded by council member Fredericks.

Further discussion, all in favor say aye.

Aye opposed say nay.

Motion passes uh H6, which is a parking res uh restriction changes to various locations uh for today's date.

Councilmember Wall.

I move to adopt a resolution amending the comprehensive traffic and parking resolution uh book to amend parking restrictions on various streets as of July 20th, 2026.

The motion has been made by council member Wall is there?

Second, seconded by Councilmember uh Keene.

Councilmember Wall, go ahead.

Uh I move to amend this motion to uh eliminate changes to Prosper Avenue Northwest.

Second.

A motion uh for an amendment has been made by Councilmember Wall and seconded by Councilmember uh Palmer.

Uh Councilmember Wall, go ahead.

In my door knocking on Prosper Avenue Northwest this summer, the subject of parking came up and possible changes.

Since the agenda came out, I uh with this item.

I've had good interaction with residents, and I'm grateful to Mr.

Boudzina for sending me the actual surveys that were completed.

One resident has reached out to neighbors and reports that they would have answered the survey differently, given his experience of parking and traffic on uh the streets.

My computer went wild.

Uh he even sent a picture to me this weekend of cars that were already parked on both sides of the street, in spite of the fact that there is no legal parking on either side of the street, noting that he could not get his truck uh between the two cars uh without folding in his mirrors, and that emergency vehicles would never be able to navigate the narrow space.

And so uh certainly with uh those residents' concerns, that's my uh plea for eliminating prosper, just prosper from uh this resolution.

Uh staff, do you want to speak to the amendment and what it does to um your recommendation?

Yeah, it's it's fine.

I mean, we we did send out a survey and the the results were I don't have any major concerns with perfect.

We sent out a survey and you know, with the surveys we got were so based on the first answer.

Uh council member can I go just as an aside uh on the same night that uh no, no, no, it was a couple nights later.

Uh I actually met Mr.

Boudzina on his bike in that neighborhood with his uh with his daughter, I think it was.

So it was fun to talk to him there.

Councilmember Miller.

I guess my question in response to Councilmember Wall is uh how are staff planning to enforce the no parking restrictions, which seem to be violated uh by this anecdote.

I mean it doesn't seem like this is getting away from if there's no parking a lot today and it's parked, but not enforced.

None of these situations address that.

So I I think part of our recommendation of removing the parking restriction from one side is that there is clearly a demand out there.

It is pretty close to the edge of town uh and parking control officers primarily being downtown.

They're not going to get out there every day for that proactive enforcement.

So it is primarily going to be complaint based.

And I think the neighbors out there just know that sometimes people park on the street.

Okay.

So there is an amendment on the floor.

Uh and um by council member wall, seconded by councilmember Palmer.

All in favor say aye.

Pose say nay.

Uh uh motion passes six to one with council member Miller voting nay.

On the amendment, yes, that's right.

Uh moving on to the uh the main motion.

I'm sorry.

Main motion.

We have a main motion with an amendment.

Uh uh all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Pose say nay.

Motion passes unanimously.

We are now at council initiated actions.

Uh we have a council initiated action on the history of the red owl and the time theater.

Time is it time theater or times theater?

Time.

Time one word.

I mean without an S.

And the small area plan update.

Councilmember Palmer.

Thank you.

It's a pretty simple proposal.

Um, the city owns the two buildings.

Um, one's the old Red Owl, the other one's the old Time Theater.

Uh history was presented by Judge Lund that a couple council people um attended.

And I thought it would be great, and Mr.

Wall agreed that it would be great for a presentation um for the public and the council at a study session um to bring Judge Lund to to give a little 30-minute um presentation on both of those buildings.

Okay.

Um councilmember Wall, do you have any?

Yes.

Uh I uh I think I recall at least three of us council members who were there uh that night.

Uh and uh we were invited uh and it was really an informative uh presentation about buildings that we currently own.

And it was such a good update about current city-owned property that uh when Mr.

Palmer suggested that might make a good study session.

I thought, boy, that doesn't seem like information that uh we could profitably use.

Uh administrators, can you talk about it uh this uh do we often have um presentations on I mean this is this is a um small area plan a city small area plan and we're we're asking a non city expert to discuss.

I I respect Judge Lund.

I I just wonder it should it be wrapped in a greater presentation just to kind of save 30 minutes for uh for I don't know what it is.

So um count Council President, Council members Mayor Norton, I don't know what it is either when it is a council initiated action.

I know what is in the council initiated action, which indicates that it would not just be a presentation from Judge Lund on the history of the Red Owl and the time theater and city and city staff to provide an update of the progress of the small area plan along with a possible funding source on the October 12th, 2026 study session.

So it would be helpful to have more clarity on what is being looked for.

Is it a presentation, a narrow presentation from Judge Lund that is on as a council initiative action to determine whether or not you want us and for you to spend your time in that manner, which is atypical, which is why it's coming before you in this way.

Uh can I ask the council member Palmer a question?

What is the possible funding source uh of this?

I'm unclear on that portion of this CIA.

Well, maybe we need to narrow it to just a presentation on the history of the Red Isle and Time Theater uh by Judge Lund, and I would say that he's a local expert on our history, and I think if we could narrow to 30 minutes, he would abide by that.

He could probably talk for hours.

Um, but I'd like to narrow it to 30 minutes so we could eliminate the the funding source in the small area plan.

So if you wanted a motion, I would make a motion to invite Judge Lund to do a history of the Red Owl and the Time Theater at an upcoming study session.

Uh it's can you hold on your motion?

I do think we have some more questions.

Councilmember Miller.

I just say I attended the presentation as well.

I thought it was a very well done presentation.

It was open to the public.

We received invitations.

I I'm glad that many of us took a Judge Lund up on that opportunity.

There was a series that the Chateau was hosting of history of the city.

I also went to the lower town presentation.

These are all great.

I feel uncomfortable with a precedent independent of this topic of inviting community members who are actively engaging on these topics in the community to come and present formally to council.

I know Judge Lund has been quite active in this space, has done a lot of research, has been made himself available to all of us individually, but I don't I don't feel comfortable with setting a precedent of inviting community members to the dais.

I would be interested in a broad update from staff on where we are with our small area plans, what progress there has been, what are some of the infrastructure, other barriers to development that we're hearing, uh and how we might advance those.

But I think these in my mind are separate things, and I'm not inclined to support the CIA for those reasons.

Councilmember Keene.

Um yeah, I my concern here early on was you know the precedent in, but I also see that thing then now council member Palmer has pulled it off that it was also the city staff coming with an update, which implied to me we were putting this more into the active projects thing, which concerns me because we have enough active projects things going on right now.

Uh but councilmember Palmer has sort of pulled that back at the same time.

That that's my concern reading this is that it's basically changing the agenda between now and year end to say we need to start focusing on other than our main projects, which I'm still concerned that we those we I don't think we have enough bandwidth to be um trying to do second street and then take those same people and take them back to a project they were working on and have them do other things.

So that's my concern as I read this.

I I did appreciate Councilmember Palmer's change to take the staff out of that, but to me, you can't have an update at a study session where the staff is not going to have any viable interactions with it.

Councilmember Wall.

Uh we regularly ask consultants to come in and give us expert testimony.

Um I see this as a consultant giving us expert testimony, uh, information that can be helpful to us uh without any and without any expectation of action, simply giving us an update of uh what is happening to a city-owned building.

So I I just don't see how it's setting a precedent.

It would be by invitation of the council.

So it's you know, it's not asking Norm Wall to come in and do a presentation on the Minnesota Vikings, uh, which likely is not going to uh get a half an hour, probably not even a half a minute, Dan Doring.

That's uh so Mayor Norton.

I'll just say, like many of the great presentations we have across this community, whether it be the History Center or the Chateau, there are lots of great presentations with lots of very talented people in this community.

Sounds like three or four of you attended it already.

It doesn't sound like it's appropriate for a study session.

And you know, as far as this other issue, I'm not sure this is the time, as was pointed out to be bringing up um these other topics and until the staff is ready and it moves up on the priority list as something we're gonna work on.

So I guess I just I but I think the chateau is great.

I've known Kevin since I was back on school board with him.

He loves history, he knows a lot about history.

I'm glad four of you got to see it.

I'm sorry I missed it, but I don't think it's appropriate for this setting.

I I wish I were there.

I love I would love to hear more about the red owl and the time theater.

And uh but I do agree with uh the mayor and and some colleagues in that it has to fit into the context of what we are doing and uh with the small area plan.

I don't know where that is in kind of the cadence of it.

I'd like to see it move up and have a developer there, but uh am interested in the red owl and time theater as a part of that, uh, but I don't know that it's appropriate uh at this time.

It seems to that it would just be there and with nothing wrapped around it to uh bring us to decision.

Councilmember Palmer.

Well, it it was an interesting um uh presentation.

We do own the buildings, and I think a half hour of our time to see the history of of a building from an expert in Rochester um is different than just a random um um history for something else in Rochester.

So I'll stick to my motion, and my motion is that um to ask Judge Lund to come to a study session and present the history of the red owl and the time theater period.

Uh motion made by Councilmember Palmer.

Second seconded by Councilmember Wall.

Further discussion.

Uh Councilmember Keene.

Yeah, um, I appreciate the update on that.

I want to make some statements here.

It's my understanding then that this would just be a one-off discussion.

I would not expect staff to be ready to come back with it.

Um I saw something in the write up that talked something about funding sources, which implied to me that we were going to try to resurrect this, but now I'm hearing that's not part of the resolution in front of us.

Uh, and based on that, I think I can support it.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Any further discussion?

Uh uh Clerk Caseau, please call the roll.

Councilmember Keene.

Aye.

Councilmember Miller.

Nay.

Councilmember Wall.

Aye.

Councilmember Fredericks.

Aye.

Councilmember Palmer.

Aye.

Councilmember Doring.

Aye.

Council President Schubring.

Nay.

Motion passes five to two.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh moving on to uh ordinance second readings.

Mr.

Spindler Craig.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Item K1 and ordinance repealing and 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.

Move approval.

Second.

The motion made by Councilmember Keene, seconded by Councilmember Wall.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay.

Motion passes.

We have no tabled items.

Councilmember Doring, you have a other business.

I do.

Dogs and trails, I believe.

It is about dogs and trails.

Just I uh encourage uh and and would like to remind the public that we do have a dog leash uh ordinance here in Rochester that your dog is required to be on a maximum uh well is required to be leashed on uh public city trails, um, and that leash can be low no longer than 10 feet long.

Um this uh ordinance applies whether your dog is friendly or not.

I met a very friendly dog last Friday, Burmese mountain dog named Bailey, um, who in her exuberance knocked me off my cycle and broke my knee.

So uh very remorseful, licked my face, all that kind of stuff.

It was a nice interaction, but nonetheless, as an active trail user in this community, I see uh this particular ordinance being uh broken far too often.

So just out of uh out of concern for public safety, I wanted to to raise this up again as a reminder for our larger community.

Thank you, councilmember.

Is there any other business?

Seeing none, is there a motion to adjourn?

So move second.

Motion made by council member Wall, seconded by councilmember Fredericks.

All in favor say aye.

Aye, opposed say nay.

We are adjourned.

Close.