Note: The agenda and transcript identify the meeting as Wednesday, August 6, 2025, at 7:00 p.m.; the supplied metadata date is August 7, 2025, 13:00 UTC. This summary uses the supplied metadata date.
The Shakopee City Council met to receive a state legislative update, approve consent and general business items, hold an Economic Development Authority session, and conduct workshops on the Capital Improvement Plan, dog boarding and daycare, short-term rentals, park security, and the Park and Recreation Advisory Board.
Let's call the Shackey City Council meeting for August 6th, 2025 to order. If we could take please take the roll. Councilmember Delaney? Here. Councilmember Wayne? Here. Councilmember Contreras? Here. Councilmember Laura? Here. And Mayor Lehman? Here. Item number three. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Legislature flags of the United States of America. Under God. Individual justice. Item number four is a special presentation by State Representative Mr. Ben Bakeberg. If Mr. Bakeberg, if you want to come on up to the podium here and have a seat, go ahead and pull that mic close to you. It's heavy, so it doesn't seem like it wants to move, but it does move. All right, how's that? Good, sir. I'll use my inside voice. So well, thank you for having me. I don't know how special this presentation is gonna be. Um so uh I'll try to try to live up to that. But um, my name's Ben Bakeberg. I have the the privilege to serve um a portion of Shackey and then the surrounding townships. I also represent communities of Prior Lake and Jordan and uh in the Minnesota House of Representatives, and I work on or I serve on two different committees the labor and workforce uh committee, uh formerly known as the jobs committee. And then um I'm the vice chair of the or co-vice chair of the education finance committee. So in my normal life, I'm a middle school principal, so that's a a natural connection there. And um, when we came into session, you know, we we did a lot of listening so that we could really try to address the needs that were were coming from our constituents uh across the district. So one of the or the the pretty consistent themes that we heard centered around fraud uh and stopping fraud. So that was one of the main pillars that uh that we worked for in the House to address uh um we're approaching a billion dollars in fraud uh in Minnesota. So addressing that making Minnesota affordable, uh making Minnesota safe, taxpayer dollars for Minnesotans, building for the future, that's the um the bonding bill. Uh those were all priorities for us, and within that bonding bill, our main focus um as a caucus was really around that critical infrastructure, so roads, bridges, water, uh, because many of our communities across the the state don't have the ability to address some of those needs, and their only avenues through the bonding bill. So uh we did that. Uh I'll say in advance if you're traveling south on 169 for the next couple years, we'll just apologize in advance. Uh 169 is torn apart. There's a lot of really good work happening there, but but that is the last stoplight between St. Peter uh and the Metro and as a major corridor of commerce. So it'll have a huge impact not only for the community of Jordan, but for for Shacopee, for Prior Lake, and all of Scott County. So that's a a major piece uh there. The the last pillar that we that we tried to focus on was raising standards and reducing mandates, and that that's really the education focus. And to be honest, that's where I spend a bulk of my time and energy just given my background. And um, I was recently at the Shakopee School Board meeting talking to them about some specific education pieces that we're working on. So I'm sure everyone tuned into that. So for that riveting conversation, and I think it really boils down to um, you know, there's a difference of opinion where we especially in an education area, we don't need a state-run school board.