CC Minutes 2001 01 22CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL
REGULAR MEETING
JANUARY 22, 2001
Mayor Jansen called the meeting to order at 6:40 p.m. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to the
Flag.
COUNCILMEMBERS PRESENT:
Councilman Peterson.
STAFF PRESENT:
Public Present:
Name
Debbie Lloyd
Alex Bloomquist (Boy Scout Badge)
Jeff Stewart (Boy Scout Badge)
Brian & Kyle Kemble (Boy Scout Badge)
Uli Sacchet
Linda Landsman
Steven Berquist
APPROVAL OF AGENDA:
Mayor Jansen, Councilman Labatt, Councilman Ayotte, and
Scott Botcher, Roger Knutson, Todd Gerhardt and Todd Hoffman
Address
7302 Laredo Drive
960 Lake Susan Drive
8631 Valley View Court
1782 Valley Ridge Trail No.
7053 Highover Court So.
7329 Frontier Trail
7207 Frontier Trail
Councilman Peterson moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve the
agenda as presented. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: None.
CONSENT AGENDA:
Mayor Jansen: May I have a motion for approval of the consent agenda please.
Councilman Labatt: Motion to approve and deleting item (c).
Mayor Jansen: And a second.
Councilman Ayotte: Could we please give an explanation, a succinct explanation of why we're making
that so people know.
Mayor Jansen: If you'll make the second first please.
Councilman Ayotte: I second.
Mayor Jansen: We are pulling agenda item l(c), approval of police contract with the Carver County
Sheriff's Department because we have substantiated that that was in fact already approved back in
November as part of a council motion. So we have a motion and a second.
City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Labatt moved, Councilman Ayotte seconded to approve the following consent agenda
items pursuant to the City Manager's recommendations:
b. Resolution #2001-03: Accept Public Utility Improvement, Target Expansion, Project 92-5.
e. Approval of Bills.
Approval of Minutes:
- City Council Work Session Minutes dated January 8, 2001
- City Council Minutes dated January 8, 2001
Receive Commission Minutes:
- Planning Commission Minutes dated January 2, 2001
g. Resolution #2001-04: Approve Change Order for Lake Lucy Reservoir.
h. Resolution #2001-05: Approve Resolution Designating Those Authorized to Sign City Checks.
Approve Designation of City Auditors for 2000, 2001, and 2002.
Resolution #2001-06: Approve Resolution Amending Procedures for Filling Commission
Vacancies.
k. Appointment of Randy Herman to the Southwest Metro Transit Commission.
Authorize Publication of Notice of Intent to Franchise Cable TV Service.
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS: COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT, MINNETONKA
COMMUNITY EDUCATION, DAN KUZLIK (POWER POINT PRESENTATION).
Dan Kuzlik: Well good afternoon, or good evening. This is good evening. This is the second time over the
last 6 hours I've been in the chambers here. For those of you who didn't know this afternoon Linda and
Scott and other staff graciously hosted our mayors and city managers from around our school district to
lunch today and so it was a nice chance to get in here and have a nice lunch. Thank you for that. And
that's probably a good lead in as to why I'm here. Again, I'm Dan Kuzlik. I'm Executive Director for
Education Services for the Minnetonka School District and we're just here to kind of show our face to you.
We've got no hidden agenda. We want to talk to you a little bit about how we act with the 10 communities
in our school district and if technology cooperates we even have a very brief power point demonstration to
demonstrate to you that although you're 1 of 10 communities, you're a unique community and we
appreciate that uniqueness. I think your Sergeant Dave Potts said how long will you be and I said well, if
the technology works about 15 minutes. If it doesn't work about 7 minutes with a little dance that I might
do so we'll see what happens. Again you're 1 of 10 communities that either serve all or part of and
although we are part of the school district, and of course anything legally controls our actions through our
school board or elected school board, we also have a 25 member advisory council and if you know anything
about community education in the State of Minnesota, it's a very sophisticated system. We are very
fortunate to get resources and a number of categorical aids from either local levies or from state resources.
City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
And our 25 member council has a representative from each of the 10 communities. Here in Chanhassen
your representative is Ann Osborn and you may see her face later on in our presentation, if the power point
is working, but Ann has been with us for 15 years and for every one of those 15 years of course does
represent Chanhassen. She's very, very dedicated. She makes things happen. When we're not serving her
community, she lets us know about it and I think over the last 15 years she's probably made every one
except for about a handful of meetings, unless she's out of town so she's a very, very dedicated
representative to Chanhassen. This afternoon, it's kind of unique. We didn't plan it that way, we said to
Ann try to get us on the agenda of the City Council when you get an opportunity, but today at their mayor
and city manager session we did talk, one of the agenda items was the joint powers agreement that we have
with the 10 communities. That agreement is 25 years old and it's served us well over 25 years but it
probably needs some changing and the reason it needs some changing, it's kind of evolved differently
among the different 10 communities we're serving right now. And we made it a point to bring that up as an
issue today at the meeting and we've said that when we meet again in March in Deephaven, we're going to
re-attend to that particular agreement. And we're going to be talking to everybody and I told Scott and
Linda that they'd be getting a formal letter from us just identifying that we're going to be re-looking at that
agreement and how we react. Quite honestly for your information, just briefly. I'm not going to get into a
lot of detail. One of the things that that agreement calls for was support of a 50 cent per capita support to
community education by each of the 10 communities and some of our communities we have a different
relationship. Chanhassen is one of them. They no longer support us at that 50 cent per capita. On the
other hand they do come to us for services and we provide for example the lifeguard services at Lake Ann.
And we do that on a contract basis and working with Scott and his people in park and rec too. So today
we're just here to say hi to answer any questions and again I'm going to see if Ann can get that power point
up. Is it yes or no? Okay. And what this power point is going to do again is to give you a little flavor.
We're not going to narrate it. You're going to see captions. A flavor of what we do in all of our
communities but a little bit of the uniqueness of what's happening here in Chanhassen too.
A power point presentation was shown at this point.
Dan Kuzlik: Thank you. When I asked how come the transition from Beethoven to that and she said it
gives me the opportunity to say that we'll walk the extra mile for you so. Again, one of the reasons that
we're here is to let you know we're very interested in working with the council. With your staff, park and
rec and the city staff and if you can see some areas where we can be more productive or where we can
assist with you and helping to deliver services, we want to do that. You should also know that we have
budgeted this year to do a total community needs assessment with all of the residences in all of the
communities that we serve so if there were some things that maybe we could partner in where maybe you
wanted to find out some information or just after we did our needs assessment if you wanted to see what we
learned, we'd certainly be happy to share that with you.
Mayor Jansen: Yeah, that would be excellent. We actually have talked about doing a community survey
ourselves so that would be very good for us to stay in communication with you on.
Dan Kuzlik: Great. Well again I said I'd be brief and I promised the sergeant that he'd be on right after
me in about 15 minutes so I'll just ask if there are any particular questions or comments and again to give
an acknowledgement to Ann here because she's just done a great job of representing Chanhassen.
Mayor Jansen: Thank you Ann. We appreciate it. Glad you could be here tonight. Councilmen, any
questions?
City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Ayotte: Because I'm novice and I don't know, maybe I should. District 276. We have
Chanhassen population, the student population represents what percent of 276?
Dan Kuzlik: We had that number because.
Ann Osborne: It used to be 50/50. About half of our city was in one and half was in the other.
Councilman Ayotte: No I'm saying, of District 276.
Mayor Jansen: Of your 10 communities.
Councilman Ayotte: What's the percentage?
Scott Botcher: You figure you've got 8,000 students, right?
Dan Kuzlik: Yeah, we've got 8,000 students.
Councilman Ayotte: Well if you don't know that's fine.
Dan Kuzlik: I don't off the top of my head, I'm sorry. But we do serve either all of part of the 10
communities and of course our largest quite honestly is Chanhassen and the City of Minnetonka. We're
about half of... less than half the city of Minnetonka.
Mayor Jansen: Well thank you very much.
Scott Botcher: And you all have been very, very good to work with and...the lifeguards and everything
else.
Dan Kuzlik: Well we'll keep in contact with staff. Thank you.
Mayor Jansen: Thank you.
Scott Botcher: Can I sneak in one visitor presentation?
Mayor Jansen: Certainly.
Scott Botcher: Just because I see these guys in the back. I'm an Eagle Scout. I don't know if anybody
knew that and I see those gentlemen sitting in the back and I have many times offered my merit badge
counseling. Your son's a Cub Scout, right Todd? My merit badge counseling expertise to some of the Boy
Scouts. I guess I'd just like you all to stand up and introduce yourself and I'm glad that you're here. So if
that's okay.
Mayor Jansen: Thank you for pointing them out, certainly.
Scott Botcher: I still have my uniform. It still fits. It does.
Councilman Peterson: Your Cub Scout or your Boy Scout?
City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Scott Botcher: Yeah, but I think it's great you guys are here. That's not a Badger jacket is it? Thank you.
I just want to make sure. Well thank you for coming.
Councilman Ayotte: What troop are you guys from?
Boy Scout: 337.
Scott Botcher: Alright. I was 331 in Prior Lake. He's like who cares. Thank you.
Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you.
LAW ENFORCEMENT AND FIRE DEPARTMENT UPDATE.
Mayor Jansen: Welcome Sgt. Potts and deputies.
Sgt. Dave Potts: I'll get my introductions done right away so these guys can get back to work. But as I've
done in the past bring some of the new deputies in to just meet the council real briefly. And we have 3 out
of the 4 that I had hoped to have tonight so I did pretty good.
Mayor Jansen: Great. First I'd like to introduce Mike Felt right behind me here. Mike's been a police
officer since 1998. Joined our department in April and as you know, towards the end of this last year here
we bid shifts and added hours in Chanhassen so we've got a couple extra people and some people that
moved onto promotions or other positions. We filled their slots and so I think we have 4 of our newer
people working in Chanhassen now. And Mike is just one of the, he was working out in the western part of
the County. He was in Chan. Went out to the western. The new people get bounced around a little more
than the rest of us. But with the new bid cycle he ended up bidding a shift in Chanhassen here, working
what we call the evening power shift. From 5:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m., have I got that right? Okay. Next to
Mike is Scott Tautges. Scott's been an officer since 1996. Worked for both Jordan, Clare City and also
with Minnetrista is where we stole him from. We're real happy to have Scott with us now. He was hired
back in April and again with the new shift bidding, bid his shift over here in Chanhassen. He works our
p.m. shift which is a 4:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. shift. And next to him, our gentle giant, and we'd love to have
him for back-up in our town now. Dewitt Meyers has been an officer since 1985. Has worked in North
and South Dakota. Was hired here in September. He's one of our most recent hires. Kind of fresh off of
field training and now working on his own. Works overnight shift or the dog watch here in Chanhassen
now and I just want to give you a quick name and a face in case you have to call these fellows or talk to
them at some point in time and if you have any questions or other comments for us.
Mayor Jansen: Well I would say we look forward to seeing them around town but not on those shifts.
Hopefully not. Really appreciate you gentlemen coming tonight.
Councilman Ayotte: You did offer us an opportunity to ask a question. I know the Mayor was hoping I
wouldn't but I do want to ask, I'm sorry sir I didn't get your last name.
Mike Felt: Felt.
Councilman Ayotte: Kind of curious. You worked here before. You left and you came back. What would
you say is a significant difference from what you saw before to what you see now? I'd be kind of curious.
City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Mike Felt: Well actually I worked in the City of Chanhassen before with the sheriff's office. I did not
come back to the sheriff's office. I worked in Chanhassen right after I did my field training program and
due to other shift changes I was just moved out to the Watertown area. Then now recently I've come back
to work in Chanhassen.
Councilman Ayotte: What I'm asking though is have you seen, of a category, do you see more concern or
less concern in certain categories or is it about status quo from when you were here before?
Sgt. Dave Potts: I may have confused you when I talked about he was here and he left. This is in a matter
of a very short number of months. He was, he started out when he was flesh off of field training, he was
assigned to Chanhassen because we had that open spot here. And then they moved him over to Watertown
because we had a more dire need to fill a spot there and in shift bidding he came back here so it's a very
short period of time.
Mike Felt: I can answer your question a little bit. I think it's just more of looking at a different focus just
to the time of year. Frankly when I was here earlier, you know some of the larger issues that were trying to
contend with at the time was the watering issues. Stuff like that. Now you know I come back and now it's
in the middle of the winter.., summer again, had some new issues. You know I don't think the overall focus
is a good quality law enforcement. I've seen that.., from other people in the community at all. Just some of
the detail efforts, and that's always going to change on a month to month basis.
Mayor Jansen: Thank you.
Sgt. Dave Potts: Back to work. Okay, we'll start back at the top and following my memo to the council.
On the sheriff's office area call report for December, I just had a couple of comments on that. If you look
down at the bottom where it shows the total number of calls over the month it looks like there's a fairly
significant jump there. A lot of that has to do with the weather. Traffic accidents. Cars in the ditch. All
those sorts of things. Under boat and water it shows 24 complaints and what I found out in looking into
that is those were snowmobile complaints, not boat and water complaints. And traffic stops. When we
were getting ready for this year we actually started our new schedule December 18th. That added the
additional people in Chanhassen that we were anticipating coming into this year so we've actually had
those extra bodies out there and because of that we've had some were officers, have had more opportunities
to get out there and work some of our traffic spots so you might see that there's a pretty high number of
traffic stops listed on this month's report and that is one of the main reasons that you see a jump. Also
because of the snow and that, there were a lot of cars in the ditch. People locking their keys in their cars
was another big jump for us but crime wise, we didn't have any big jumps so when you see that larger
number at the bottom of the column there, it's mostly kind of weather related and having some extra people
here and working some more traffic. That type of thing.
Mayor Jansen: Thanks for pointing that out.
Sgt. Dave Potts: I was going to say on the citation report, the only noteworthy thing I would point out there
is you see roughly half of the tickets are for winter parking violations. So we've been hitting that hot and
heavy as we pretty much do every year. Try to keep the cars off the streets for the plows to be able to clear
them real good. Any questions on either of those two?
Councilman Labatt: Yeah, I've got a question regarding to winter traffic, or parking tickets. How many of
those go to warrants? You know the residents not paying and eventually they go into warrants.
City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Sgt. Dave Potts: Good question. I couldn't speak real recently. I'm just thinking back to when I was out
there writing those tickets and working the street more and seeing the warrants come out. Far and few
between would be my top of the head kind of response to that. They're typically taken care of by their fine
or whatever.
Councilman Labatt: I was just kind of geographically looking at it. They're all kind of you know centrally,
there's certain pockets of the city where you seem to be getting more violations.
Sgt. Dave Potts: Yeah, I haven't looked at that myself to make a differentiation between one area of the
city or another. As far as where most the violations are.
Mayor Jansen: Anything else?
Councilman Labatt: No.
Councilman Ayotte: A couple of questions. Last council meeting we had a gentleman come in from the
snowmobile club and I had asked the question of him if he had any, I hate this chair. If he had any
meetings with the sheriff's department. And he put the blame on, you know the weather wasn't what it was
before. Well now seeing that you have, what is it, 61. What was it?
Councilman Labatt: 24.
Mayor Jansen: 24.
Sgt. Dave Potts: Snowmobile complaints, is that what you're looking at?
Councilman Ayotte: Yeah.
Sgt. Dave Potts: Yeah, 24 for the month.
Councilman Ayotte: 24 for the month and 61 year to date.
Mayor Jansen: Those would include the boat and water from previous so.
Councilman Ayotte: Well in that number do you see a need, would there be a benefit, and if the answer's
no that's fine. Would there be a benefit to interface a little bit more with this club and would they be an
asset to deal with in compliance or no?
Sgt. Dave Potts: I'm personally not familiar with the club. I haven't had contact with them in my time
here. I think they've had contact in the past with the sheriff's office and probably with our recreational
patrol people. But not something that I've been involved in and when I heard that they were at the last
council meeting, I read over the minutes and saw that they were here and heard what they had to say, I
thought oh, this is some people that maybe I would like to talk to. So it would be a good thing for us to
make contact with them. There was some mention of them assisting us in patrol of something like that.
There's a lot of pitfalls in that but there are certainly things that they can do education wise.
City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Ayotte: Maybe another posse or I don't know but, it seems to me it'd be an opportunity to
have some words with them and see if there's a resource there to either.
Sgt. Dave Potts: Yeah, exactly.
Councilman Labatt: Dave do you do any, these DNR grants for snowmobile enforcement? Does the
sheriff's office apply for those grants such as Hennepin County? To hire off duty overtime deputies to
patrol the lakes and trails.
Sgt. Dave Potts: My guess would be yes because that's almost our entire water patrol budget comes from
what we get from the State. So I'm assuming they would probably do that you know similar to the
snowmobiles.
Councilman Labatt: Can you look into that and see if the sheriff's applied for the 2000-2001 snowmobile
grant. And if so, how much was the award and then how the hours broke down.
Sgt. Dave Potts: Yeah, I can look into that. I think you're aware that Doug Schmidtke was our
recreational services deputy and he's not going to be moving onto the drug task force and Lance Pierce is
actually already taken that over so he's getting up to speed and I'll see what he can tell me about it. I'll
respond to the entire council on that question.
Mayor Jansen: Great, thank you.
Sgt. Dave Potts: Moving onto the crime prevention, safety education report. This is something that Beth
will be giving to me on a bi-monthly basis and I'll just be inserting into.., and any questions about some of
those I may or may not be able to answer. On the work plan, it's I think at this point kind of self
explanatory between the memo I attached and the work plan summary itself. The only thing for the new
council members who may not have seen the original work plan, what I've given you here in the summary
is an abbreviated version of the statements of the focus areas. I can certainly supply you with the full copy
of the 2000 work plan, but the summary just gives you like the first sentence of each item and then a
summary that I wrote up underneath that. And in a future council work session I'll be looking for input
from the council on, for 2001 and at that time you'll get the full 2001 work, or 2000 work plan that you
can kind of see where it was and how it came to be. But any questions on that from the council?
Councilman Labatt: Yeah just one more on conducting the liquor license compliance checks. And we as a
council last year decided to have a second compliance check done. You've got here it will be conducted at
the city's expense. I think there are available grants to do that. To cover that cost of doing that second
compliance check.
Sgt. Dave Potts: Okay.
Mayor Jansen: That would probably be staff looking into that.
Councilman Labatt: I think it goes to law enforcement agencies so. You know you can apply for all of
Carver County and from my understanding in talking to the Director of that's available for thousands and
thousands of dollars.
City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Sgt. Dave Potts: You've mentioned a couple of different grants now and that just brought to mind that
Paul Schmell was our main grant writer for the sheriff's office and as you know he's gone now to the St.
Paul police department and they're utilizing him very well. But we lost that aspect and it hasn't been
completely picked up. Bill Bennett still does the grant work for the Safe and Sober program. But
otherwise we don't have a specific person isolated or named to kind of be in charge of looking into grants
and that kind of a thing.
Councilman Labatt: This might be as easy as a simple application. I say grant to use that word loosely.
There's available funding that might be just a simple request.
Councilman Ayotte: And MADD is also, if I can dovetail into that, MADD's also test betting some
breathalizer applications. I don't know if that dovetails into your comments Steve but again if we can get
on, that might be something to investigate because it really increases the conviction rate because it's got,
from a litigation standpoint, you don't have to deal with what you typically have to deal with with the 48
hour turnaround time and processing a DWI. So I can talk to you off line on that but MADD also has a
testbit that ST. Paul Police is taking advantage of. Mike Jordan, their PlO has information and I'd be glad
to send that information over to you. Follow-up question back to the traffic violations. I did a cursory
review, I think it was 4 or 5 on Highway 5 and 41. That's either because we're not really congested there
or that there's more opportunity for traffic violations. Do you believe that there's a correlation between
more traffic violation activity and more patrols, or is that not necessarily the case? I'm kind of surprised
that Highway 5 and 41 has such a low number of violations.
Councilman Labatt: ... Galpin and Audubon...
Scott Botcher: You don't get a chance to pull through it.
Councilman Ayotte: I'm just surprised there's such a limited number. Does that surprise anyone at the
sheriff's?
Mayor Jansen: Well and this is just one report so you're looking at an isolated timeframe as far as the
report.
Councilman Ayotte: Let me ask the question, can I find out whether or not there is a higher activity on
Highway 5 and 41 with respect to traffic violations? Or is it a skewed view?
Sgt. Dave Potts: Whether there's more traffic violations on Highway 5 and Highway 41 versus?
Councilman Ayotte: Yes. Is that a hot spot in Chanhassen? In terms of traffic violations.
Sgt. Dave Potts: That intersection?
Councilman Ayotte: Yes.
Sgt. Dave Potts: Okay. When you see a traffic stop listed as Highway 5 and 41, it may or may not have
anything to do with the intersection itself. That's just the location the officer called when he called in a
traffic stop. They may have been speeding quite some distance west of Highway 41 on 5 and they were
headed towards 41 and that's where the traffic stop took place so that's the general location the officer gave
when he called in his stop.
City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Ayotte: Thanks.
Sgt. Dave Potts: Under the miscellaneous items. I mentioned that the council received crime alerts by e-
mail. When we have contact with our Neighborhood Crime Watch groups, or we have an incident as we
did back around Thanksgiving and December with thefts out of mailboxes and we notified some of the
block captains from our crime watch neighborhoods, we thought the council might find value in receiving
those notifications. So unless any of you have objections that you can talk to me about later, we'll be
sending you all those notifications when we contact our neighborhood groups or put out a crime alert to the
local businesses or something like that.
Mayor Jansen: That would be nice information to be aware of, thank you.
Sgt. Dave Potts: Well I know you get calls at home. You know people wondering about one thing or
another. I thought it might be some helpful information for you. And I mentioned here Thanksgiving into
December we had theft from mailboxes. A press release was picked up by the Chanhassen Villager to kind
of let people know that number one, we have had some incidents of this and number two, a couple of things
they can do to hopefully not become a victim of that. A couple of those incidents, people were able to gain
some bank account information and then do some forgeries on those bank accounts so that's the thing we
wanted people to be aware of. The banks may not have been as diligent as they should in checking
identification, those kind of things that could have prevented some of this. But to my knowledge the people
who's mail was stolen were not held responsible for any financial losses related to this. The bank took the
hit and filed a report with us that we're currently investigating a couple of those incidents. And then also
I'd like to mention some of the more significant crime activities or that may look like crime activities on
paper but there may be more to the story. And I have a couple of those just to mention quickly tonight. In
our burglary numbers in Chanhassen, when a person calls in a burglary, that's what goes down on the
statistics. It may mm out to be a little different. On January 6th, here about 3:30 in the morning, had a call
of somebody trying to break into an occupied dwelling. Very serious crime in progress when that's put out
to our officers. The first officer on the scene was actually confronted by the suspect versus the officer
confronting the suspect and this was a person who was high on chemical substances. Clearly not in their
right mind. Believing they were in a different town at somebody's house they knew and they were banging
on the doors and the windows trying to get in. So it looks very serious. At the time in fact it was a serious
call for the officers as the officer wanted to see this person's hands. They were wrapped up with a shirt
and when he demanded that the suspect show his hands, he held his hands in a manner as though he were
holding a gun and we had what you might term a near officer shooting in that situation. Although the
suspect was not armed and he was taken into custody once back-up officers arrived. Another point I'd like
to make on this situation is when that first officer arriving was confronted by the suspect, he would not
show his hands. He called for back-up and the question comes up from time to time, how much help or
assistance do we have in Chanhassen. Well within a very short period of time we had a second Chanhassen
squad on the scene. We had two sheriff's office supervisors on the scene. Two Eden Prairie squad cars
and two Chaska squad cars so when we really need help it comes from all directions.
Mayor Jansen: That's impressive.
Sgt. Dave Potts: I just wanted to point that out. The last thing I mentioned here is a robbery, and I termed
it of sorts. This was 3 young adults out driving around doing some drinking. A dispute arose about who
paid for what alcohol and should have paid and who drank it and one of those people was pulled out of the
car and his wallet was taken from him. So that was reported to us, and in fact is what we call a strong arm
10
City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
robbery. When somebody takes a wallet, a purse, what have you from another person, so that will go into
our statistics as a robbery and investigated and perhaps charged out as such. But I just, those are some of
the more interesting aspects of, what the stats don't always tell you. I just though I might point those out.
But that's all I have for the council this evening. If you have other questions.
Mayor Jansen: Well I'm not positive which one of our agendas we have the 2001 work plan on but we
certainly look forward to having that discussion with you and going through that information.
Sgt. Dave Potts: Yeah, I don't think we have it scheduled but I talked to Scott about it.
Scott Botcher: It will be in March.
Sgt. Dave Potts: Put it on a work session and come in.
Councilman Peterson: Dave we shut down 5 last week for quite some time late morning. Was that traffic,
was that incident weather related or do you recall?
Sgt. Dave Potts: An accident at Highway 5 and Audubon. A 70 year old woman rear ended a semi truck I
believe is what occurred and there were injuries involved in that so it was shut down for a period of time.
Councilman Peterson: Thanks.
Mayor Jansen: Anything else? Thank you. Appreciate you being here tonight. Then we have the fire
department report.
Greg Hayes: Yeah my name's Greg Hayes. I'm here on behalf of John Wolff. He spreads out his
welcome coming to City Council. For 2001 the big change is me. I was elected Assisted Chief and I'm the
only change that we're going to be making in 2001 as elected by the membership in December and I started
in January.
Mayor Jansen: Congratulations.
Greg Hayes: Yes, thank you. It's kind of interesting. A little different. But John wanted me to talk about
the fire board real quick. You'll see them come through here at different times. John Wolff's the Fire
Chief. I'm the First Assistant. Mark Littfin, who's also the Fire Marshal for the City is the Second
Assistant and Dale Gregory is our Battalion Chief so that makes out the chiefs within our organization so
you see a lot of us out there. You'll see us in here too. We've got our 2001 goals set and we're working
on them currently. They're over at the fire station right now working on some of our goals. And looking at
2000 we ran 717 calls, which is fairly high. It's within the top 3 out of 3 years. I think the 1998, that was
our highest and that was due to some storms and that was only about 740 so we're maintaining well above
700. We had 19 mutual aid assists which is one of our higher years. And what a mutual aid assist is is
when we go out to another community because they've called for a different, they've got some sort of issue.
Fire, weather related, it can be anything. Some of the more notable ones were the hotel fire in Eden Prairie.
We've probably been on about $10 million in loss last year alone in fires and none of it was our's. It was
all outside so we had a very safe year and helped a lot of people out with some situations in their cities.
From fire prevention, we had about 241 contacts with existing business owners. Going out. Talking to
them about fire prevention and we had 584 with new construction. Going out on a job site and talking to
them about fire prevention. Looking at codes. Not every time is an inspection. It just means we stop in
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
and see how things are going. 2001, we're already way up for calls for the month. We're at 55 and we
should be about 20. So for some reason we've seen a giant increase in calls over the first 3 weeks. We
don't know what it is. It's not weather related. We're not going out on a lot of extra car crashes. It's kind
of a puzzle right now until we can figure out what all the runs are from.
Mayor Jansen: So you'll be looking at those statistics and making that determination?
Greg Hayes: Yep.
Mayor Jansen: Okay.
Greg Hayes: Yep, and if we can adjust that through fire and medical dispatch, that's what we want to do.
To keep our numbers down because it does provide for burn out when we're running that much for people.
A couple of notable instances already within the first 3 weeks. We had crews down in Shakopee on the
Murphy's Landing fire for 6 hours. We were provided with coverage from Excelsior for 3 hours and
Minnetonka for 3 hours to provide coverage within our own city and we did have a couple calls during
those times but we did have people down at Murphy's Landing. And then the call at 5 and Audubon last
Friday was a lady who rear ended a semi and it was about 6:30 in the morning and we ended up calling in a
helicopter for a transport. It took us about a hour to get her out of the car. She was awake, alert the entire
time. And she was awake for the helicopter ride but in 35 years on the fire department, or 35 years the fire
department's been in existence, that's the second time we've called for a helicopter so that suggests the
seriousness. It shut down the highway for about 2 hours. So that was, if you were traveling east on 5 on
Friday morning, that's what that was. Other than that that's the notable points that we had for today unless
there's any questions.
Mayor Jansen: Okay, any questions councilmen?
Councilman Labatt: No.
Councilman Ayotte: Yes. 584 inspections. And when you go out there, what kind of value added would
you see in terms of, what did you discover? Have you evaluated that to get some sort of feedback as to
what bang you're getting for your buck with respect to inspections.
Greg Hayes: What we do when we go out on new construction is we meet with the job supe. We walk
through and a lot of times, instead of writing up what they call violations or corrections, what we'll do is
we'll meet with the job supe and we'll see what they're doing and a lot of times, at least from the fire side,
there's a lot of changes that occur because of something that's come up in the way they've built it. And
we've been able to alleviate a lot of questions at the end of saying okay, we had to build it this way and we
had to redesign for example our sprinkler system because of this. In a certain area. So what we do is we
meet and just talk over the issues. A lot of it from the fire department standpoint is, we want to know what
the building is because one of it's most susceptible times is during construction. Like the apartments
here...
Councilman Ayotte: I understand but I'm saying, do you have anything that would depict impurically the
value of your educating them and your avoiding problems down the road. Do you have any way of
quantifying that for analysis? Have you come up with anything to.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Greg Hayes: We do keep track of how many corrections or suggestions that we write. Other than that,
that's as far as it has gone.
Councilman Ayotte: Thank you.
Mayor Jansen: Thank you Greg. Appreciate you being here tonight. Congratulations again.
AWARD OF BIDS: ROUNDHOUSE PARK PAVILION.
Todd Hoffman: Thank you Mayor Jansen, members of the City Council. Tonight we're here to address the
award of bid for the Roundhouse Park pavilion renovation. First a little history on Roundhouse Park. It's
an 8 acre site located on, directly on Minnewashta Parkway. It's about halfway between Highway 5 and
Highway 7. This area was labeled park deficient up until the time this park was acquired. As plats came
through the development process, the City looked at acquiring property for approximately a 10 year period
of time. The neighborhood was patient and yet they would have preferred to have seen this park go in
sooner, but in my opinion the site which was eventually acquired right on the parkway with the access to
Lake Minnewashta was the best site and well worth waiting for. The overall park plan depicts the 8 acres
laid out in a rectangular fashion. The property is split by Minnewashta Parkway. To the east of the
parkway is a narrow strip of land which has a public beach, and then a DNR granted fishing pier. This
pier was acquired with a $30,000 grant from the Department of Natural Resources. It's a very popular
feature of the park and is more regional in nature than neighborhood in nature as far as the park amenities.
Then moving across the parkway to the western half or the mainland part of the park, it's really configured
in quadrants separated by a trail. A park loop trail which is very popular for afternoon walks, evening
walks and just gaining access to the park area in general. There's a beautiful picnic area with trees that are
left over from the original acquisition of the property. And then a play structure which was identified as
the top priority during the neighborhood planning process that was undertaken 3 or 4 years ago. We have a
large parking area. Large relative in terms of the neighborhood park and that is to accommodate the beach
and then all future amenities within this site that you would not typically find a park, a parking lot that
large in a neighborhood park. There's an open skating area identified currently. The City floods that open
skating area. A pad identified for future hockey at Roundhouse Park. The hockey boards are not there at
this time. Moving across the trail from there is a path for a future tennis court. The city currently holds a
policy of not developing tennis courts at neighborhood parks. They've very expensive as far as an amenity.
But in the case of Roundhouse Park and North Lotus Lake Park, which are two locations isolated by lakes
from the mainland of the community, the City has made an exception and has planned for future tennis
courts in those areas. North Lotus Lake already has their tennis court. Traditionally you see us building
tennis courts in community parks. They're a destination facility. Have a high long term maintenance cost.
In the 70's they put these things in neighborhood parks everywhere and ended up taking quite a few of
those out or paying high maintenance costs. The neighborhood elected to take out the volleyball court in
lieu of and in replacement for that putting a 50 x 50 basketball pad which is in place.., tennis court
location, and then in the future when the tennis court comes in, that pad would be sacrificed and then you
would see basketball standards go up as a part of the tennis court. Another change in how we developed
neighborhood parks is that this location has simply an open play field and not a traditional ballpark. What
you find when you put in the backstop and the aggregate infield and those type of things in these
neighborhood settings, the organized leagues tend to take them and adopt them as their own and schedule
practices in neighborhood parks. Something we try to prevent and we try to put those uses into our
community park sites. Any neighborhood family gathering or neighborhood gathering can certainly play a
game of pick-up ball in that location so it's just left as an open playfield area. And then lastly the round
house itself is located in a prominent location near the intersection of Kings Road and Minnewashta
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Parkway. It was a home on the property. It originally served as a water tower along a railroad and then
was moved to this location in approximately 1950. We think the date is 1948. When the park was
acquired, land was acquired, in addition to this building there were two homes on the property. A rambler
at this location and a farm behind it and then a 2 story home at this location. As a part of the development
of the property those other buildings were demolished first through burning the structures with the fire
department and then removing the foundations. And at that time the round house was set to be demolished
as well. The commission held a gathering out at the park. Came back to the council chambers and
determined through at that time which was a split vote, that no we should investigate preserving and
renovating the round house for a variety of reasons. First, it's a local landmark. It's not a historic
structure but it is definitely an identifiable landmark. And I did not pay off Mr. Kuzlik to put that into his
presentation.
Ann Osborne: .... Lake Minnewashta. I walk by in the morning when I walk my dog and Roundhouse
Park, you've got a picture of it.
Todd Hoffman: There it is. So how many years have you walked past it?
Ann Osborne: 4 to 5 years but it's been there, I've lived there 28 years and it's been there the whole time.
It's something that the whole neighborhood likes to have so, if that will help...
Todd Hoffman: And then to turn into what's a park namesake. The park was named Roundhouse Park.
But then to turn it into a renovated into a serviceable structure for the warming house in the winter, for the
skating features which will be there. The hockey rink in the future and then the open skating area.
Currently we put a, what would be a Satellite portable office there. Identical to the one you see here behind
the City Hall. They're not very attractive. They're serviceable and the investment for the lease each year
is about $2,000 to have that building brought on the site. Has a heater in it. No restrooms. We provide a
portable restroom and then we staff that with an attendant for the winter. Staffing costs would be in
addition to that $2,000.
Councilman Ayotte: Could you do that again Todd. Restate that portion. I didn't get all of what you said.
Todd Hoffman: Okay. Currently, since the round house is not serviceable we park a Satellite portable
office, identical to the one here at City Hall at a cost of about $2,000 for the rental each season. Satellite
Corporation delivers that to a site. Provides the stairway. We hook up power to it and then our staff
brings in the carpet, the window, protective window coverings and some of the other amenities to the
structure. Benches and then we provide the attendant for the winter. So we do that out there today. So if
the round house was refurbished then we would put the people inside this building with a furnace and have
that act as the warming house. And then in the summer a couple of uses. Neighborhood parks benefit from
a focal point. If the neighborhood was to, let's say a single family was to identify that third Saturday in
June, they were going to have a family reunion here or a birthday party here, people would congregate or
meet at the round house pavilion. They would have access to a key to the structure and they could set up
their picnics inside that building and then in the case of inclement weather they could come in off of the
picnic grounds and utilize that for shelter. So that would serve as a variety of needs in that arena. And
then lastly, as a city we sponsor Summer Discovery Playground which goes out to the neighborhood parks
on a weekly basis and those participants in that program which are about 20 or 30 children per week could
utilize this building for their crafts, games and then also as a shelter from inclement weather. That's the
background to the park. Any questions in that area before I move forward into the more detailed
presentation about the renovation itself? Okay.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Mayor Jansen: Go ahead, thanks.
Todd Hoffman: This evening we have with us Wynne Yelland. Wynne is an architect with Locus
Architecture. Wynne will speak and present really an overview of the findings of the preliminary
investigation and then some of the work he did in the renovation of the architectural renovation of the
project itself. And then we also have Mike Howe here from the Park and Recreation Commission and Fred
Berg's in the audience as well from the commission if they would like to speak to the project. In 1999 the
City hired Locus Architecture to conduct a preliminary investigation and condition review of the round
house. The round house, as a local landmark, had a lot of interest around it. We really just didn't know
what exactly we were getting into that night that we said let's save the round house and see if we could
renovate it. That report is attached and it brings to light valuable information which Mr. Yelland will
speak to. That report estimated that an investment of $61,100 to $86,800 would be required to renovate
the round house. Subsequently Locus Architecture was hired to prepare plans and specifications and to
conduct biddings for the renovation of the pavilion. The City has received bids on two occasions for this
project. The first bid opening was last September 29th, which resulted in two bids. One of $145,769 and a
second of $237,000. We had a third bidder who we thought was the low bid at the time but turned his bid
in at the wrong drop off time so his bid was not accepted and not opened. We rejected both of those bids
and a second bid opening was scheduled for December 6th of this past year. During the first bidding
process several contractors identified possible asbestos and lead based paint concerns in the project. We
wanted to make it fair for all bidders and also to identify those concerns for our information so we hired
Angstrom Analytical Inc. to conduct a limited scope asbestos and lead base paint test. Those results
identified, the results of that test identified approximately 40 to 50 square feet of linoleum in the second
floor bathroom containing friable asbestos or the bad asbestos. And generally that asbestos is locked in the
mastic. The glue mastic underneath the tile and does not pose a hazard.., identified 5 exterior and 2 interior
paint locations which exceed the lead based paint hazard threshold and generally the exterior has a lot of
lead based paint on it. The results of those test were incorporated in the second set of bid documents which
were distributed for the December opening. While both of those issues are a concern, the outside or
exterior lead base paint is a much more significant scope than the asbestos in the tile. The second bid
opening resulted in 4 bids. $119,372; $124,800 and $131,000. All which are all right in that, a tight
bidding range, and then a bid of $183,060. The low bid of Mcon Construction of Hanover, they were the
low bidder. All these bids are approximately 50% over the established project budget of $80,000.
However it's my belief that the 3 low bids represent today's prices for completing the work identified in the
plan and specifications. In other words, I do not believe a third bidding would yield significant different
results. What I do believe happened is that our estimated project costs were estimated low and the extent of
our plans and specifications went beyond what was thought would be the necessary work to complete the
project back when the estimate was prepared. Obviously at those prices we took a look at attempting to
lower the cost of the project to be closer to that $80,000. In conversation with the President of Mcon, the
two most costly elements of the structure are the steel and the exterior painting. Beyond that individual line
items drop to $3,000 or $4,000. So if you can try to imagine saving money on line items of $3,000 or
$4,000, it's not easily done. Wynne and I discussed the merits of limiting the scope of the project in an
effort to reduce cost. Wynne detailed those findings in a letter dated to me January 4th. It's in your packet.
It's my conclusion that none of these potential changes yield enough savings considering their associated
impact, it's negative impacts to the project to be warranted. The one we looked at specifically was instead
of powder coating the steel, which is structural steel which would be incorporated in the project just to
paint it, that we could save some significant dollars in that area but you're going to pay for those cost
savings 15 or 20 years on down the line when that steel starts to rust in those areas and you have to pay for
some expensive maintenance at that time. Which if you powder coated the steel you would not have to do.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Other alternatives to awarding the project, first and most easily is just to go back 3 or 4, 5 years ago and
tear the building down and demolish it. Take it out of the plan and incorporate some other structure onto
the site. The second alternative, which we looked at early on in the project, would be to reject all bids and
work with a local contractor, something I wanted to do early on, on a time and materials basis to provide a
band-aid approach to fixing the round house. Back when we first started looking at this project I was
intrigued by the idea of just hiring a local contractor to come in and fix it up. The problem with that, the
maximum bidding amount that you could spend without public bidding at that time was $25,000. If you
invested more than that in a public project you were, public bidding laws apply. Today that's increased to
$50,000. I still don't believe we could go work on a time and materials basis and make a significant impact
to this project. So again we're back to hiring an architectural firm to come up with plans and specifications
and then public bidding, which we've done twice to date. As part of your deliberation I want to update the
council on the funding sources for this project. Back when the $80,000 goal was established, $40,000 was
allocated from the 1997 park open space and trail referendum. And that was advertised in our referendum
brochure and publications. And then a second $40,000 was included in the 2000, year 2000 park and trail
acquisition and development capital improvement plan, CIP. At present the referendum neighborhood park
improvement budget is carrying a $44,733 deficit. That deficit is due in minor changes to the scope of the
other 25 projects were completed underneath that category. And that total budget of those 25 projects was
$495,000. It is my recommendation to the city manager that the $44,733 deficit be covered by the park and
trail dedication fund, which has a current balance of a million 7. Further it is the recommendation of the
Park and Recreation Commission that the City Council utilize park and trail dedication funds to complete
the round house project in 2001. And that was again their recommendation from a week ago last Tuesday.
Wynne, I think I'll go ahead and let you go over some of the specifics about, the building is very interesting
and Mr. Yelland has some details about the structure that he can inform us also.
Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you.
Wynne Yelland: Mayor, Council members, city representatives. I was an Eagle Scout too a long time ago.
I don't know if that helps but.
Scott Botcher: You should have said that when the young men were here.
Wynne Yelland: I didn't go over the report in detail in the office today but I'm familiar enough with it that
I think I can give you some ideas of why we're excited about the project and why we still think it's a good
idea. Of course once we're hired to do something, our job is to advocate for the building so. We did this
back in July of 1999 and basically were hired to do a report establishing the status of the building and what
it would need to be renovated and also our best guess at that time of what it would cost and the extent of
what we'd have to do. There was a certain amount of structural issues that had to be dealt with in terms of
tying the building walls to the foundation. And there had also been a huge amount of water damage.
Councilman Ayotte: What was that about the water damage?
Wynne Yelland: There was a huge amount of water damage. The roof had failed and water was pouring in
from the top directly onto the second floor deck and the first floor deck. The floor boards had buckled
enough that the door couldn't be opened to gain access to the building and a lot of this linoleum that we're
talking about that has asbestos content in it, had started to peel. It hadn't been painted in a long time so the
lead based paint on the exterior was peeling. But after cursory investigation with a structural engineer we
determined that the building was in relatively stable condition. That the water problems could be stopped.
The wood on the inside and outside is extremely high quality. Basically built like an old barrel. A wooden
16
City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
wine barrel with tension rods that encircle the building, basically to keep it from expanding. The boards or
stays if you want to call them that on the exterior are old growth, vertical grain redwood. It's not
commercially available anymore today. The interior is clad with a sort of a tongue and groove Douglas
Fir, not unlike what the front of this podium here. It's also old growth vertical grain, nice material. And
the frame, even the framing on the interior is in very good condition and it's nice quality wood so while our
office is not by any means experts in the realm of historic preservation, we felt that the building was a
landmark not so much in it's historical significance but it's a very unusual building and we summed up this
report. And by the way, at that time my partner Paul Neseth and I, or the partner of my firm Locus, and he
was working on it. From this point he's much better on the front end of things. He summed it up saying,
we believe that the existing structure in Roundhouse Park has substantial value as an architectural element.
Both the existing material and the history of the building are irreplaceable. The plan of the building is
perfectly suited for the suggested use and would also be conducive to future adaptation. The investment in
preservation will surely be worth it. That was before, that was back when it was $80,000. I took the
project over when we moved into the construction document phase, which is basically putting together the
plan for construction and there were really four main issues that we were considering as we went through.
The cost. Just the cost of the project. But also the cost versus value of the project. We felt that putting a
band-aid on the building, simply fixing what was there and trying to get it operable and up to code,
spending the minimum amount of money would not be worth it. It would be better to demolish it at that
point because we felt that it still would be a building that wasn't very well lit. Didn't have enough natural
light and basically wouldn't be worth the effort. So we did make some changes that probably drove the
cost up somewhat but we felt if people were really going to use the building as an ice warming hut,
obviously they'll use a trailer but if you're going to get some use out of it from family gatherings, group
activities, family reunions, that sort of thing, you're going to have to make the building nice enough to
warrant that kind of use. So that was the second issue. The third issue is taking something that's really as
it stands right now as an eyesore and turning it into a real asset for the city. And also considering alternate
ideas of handling the project. Should the building really be demolished and a new one built in it's place?
We felt that that would be even more expensive than fixing what was there and a real loss of the existing
building. Transforming it, just demolishing it and putting nothing there, or this band-aid approach. And I
think in the end we struck, I think we struck a really good, delicate balance. We made it into a viable
destination and something that's worth spending money on. I'm not going to qualify that and say it's worth
what was the bid amount. That's not my decision to make. I think we made it a really unique building.
Not only unique in the way it stands as it is today but also the additions that we made and I think that's
important. I mean this park, as Todd mentioned was named after this building and we felt that it should
stay. And thirdly I think we respected the rural and agricultural history of Chanhassen. The history of the
local building, or of the round house. I don't think we changed it to the extent where it loses it's sort of
original faCade as it stands now. And also I think it's going to be a real tribute to the users and park
residents of the park if it continues to go forward. I will address the cost issues a little bit. As I mentioned
to Todd in that letter that he mentioned to you, there are ways to cut the cost. There were five main ones.
We certainly could remove the canopy, which is shown over the door in this area here. I talked with the
contractor about that. He thought that would be a way to save anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000. He was
not specific and I didn't press him to get any really good detail. We could change the roof structure. What
we did in our proposal, the round house now basically it stops right here and there's a flat roof on that
structure which has been tarped and roped to prevent more water from coming in. We added
approximately 3 feet of space above that and that is essentially glazing which is a greenhouse,
polycarbonate kind of material which allows diffused light to come in. Natural light. And then we top it
with a conical roof as opposed to the flat one that was there. All of this framing up in here is going to be
exposed, visible from underneath. So what we could do is eliminate that 3 feet of space and bring that back
down and even go back to the flat roof which would be cheaper. So that's another possibility. There's a
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
paint versus powdercoat issue that Todd mentioned. We specified cedar shingles on this project. An
asphalt product could probably be used. I'm not sure how much savings we would gain there because the
way that you would have to sheave the building would be somewhat different for the asphalt shingles.
Mayor Jansen: Did you have, excuse me for interrupting. Did you have a number attached with the roof?
The change in the roof configuration.
Wynne Yelland: I think if we got rid of the clear story, that's probably one sum of money. I'm going to
guess $5,000 to $10,000. And if we went from the roof as we designed it to just a very simply flat roof
that you could clad on the underside with a flat material like this, and on top with a membrane roof like
that, you're probably talking another $5,000 to $10,000 again.
Councilman Ayotte: That you would incur with either a membrane or... a life cycle requirement? Then
maintenance requirement. I mean a membrane isn't going to last longer than 7-8 years.
Wynne Yelland: What's that?
Councilman Ayotte: A membrane isn't going to last longer than 8 years.
Wynne Yelland: It should, yeah.
Councilman Ayotte: Unless you do a lot of PM. We could argue that back and forth but you do incur a
PM requirement if you take that pitch off, right?
Wynne Yelland: I would expect a membrane roof to certainly not last longer than 15. I mean you'd
probably get somewhere in the 10 to 15 range out of it.
Councilman Ayotte: What's the cost per square foot?
Wynne Yelland: I don't know.
Councilman Ayotte: Take the 140 number. How many square feet of usable space is that and what's the
people load?
Wynne Yelland: The occupant load, if I'm remembering correctly, and I'm pulling these numbers off the
top of my head so they may be wrong but I think to stay, to not get into the assembly part of the code, I
think it was less than 40, which I think you'd never get that many people in this building anyway. It's
about 800 square feet I believe.
Councilman Ayotte: 800 square feet at 140K. Let me do the math quick. That's $110 bucks per square
foot.
Wynne Yelland: More than that but...
Councilman Ayotte: Okay, and what's the construction cost for a building of 800 square feet?
Wynne Yelland: Well that's hard to judge too but I'd have to say... I'd have to say in the hundred and a
quarter range, 150 range. But you have to factor in the demolition costs of this building as well.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Ayotte: Well I understand. Well that's making the supposition that you demo.
Wynne Yelland: Right.
Mayor Jansen: Thank you.
Wynne Yelland: And also we could, there's some seal pieces in the proposal that could be removed and
replaced with wood which would be some savings. I don't think they'd be significant. And I think to a
certain extent we did under estimate the structural steel work that was involved and the steel finishing,
although I think in the end we specified a powder coat finish in lieu of the painted finish and that accounts
for some of that. And there are other issues as I've outlined here. I think it's important to mention that I
contacted the construction means people and the price of construction in the metropolitan area has
increased since the, since we were awarded the project and so that's, it's effectively changed what was
$80,000 then is about $70,000 now and so there.
Councilman Ayotte: Say that again.
Wynne Yelland: What is $80,000 at the time that this project came into our office would be worth about
$70,000 now in today's dollars.
Councilman Labatt: So it went down?
Wynne Yelland: What's that?
Councilman Labatt: Say that again. You're confusing me.
Wynne Yelland: Just in the time value of money that construction has, the construction costs more today
than it did 2 years ago is what I'm saying.
Councilman Labatt: Yeah, okay.
Wynne Yelland: And it's risen, I don't have the, well I do have the factor actually. IfI can find it here.
The January issue of the Quarterly Means Construction Cost Index contains historical costs. In January of
1998 that index was 124.6. Today it's 136.1 so if you work out that ratio, construction, I stated it
backwards but what I was trying to figure out is what would $80,000 then cost now and it's about
$88,000.
Scott Botcher: You're saying that $80,000, is it 10 or 8?
Wynne Yelland: Well if you're working the other way it's a little bit more. But it's $88,000.
Scott Botcher: And would now cover what was $80,000 2 years ago?
Wynne Yelland: Right.
Scott Botcher: So it's 4 grand a year.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Wynne Yelland: Yes, right. Right. And then there was the abatement issue. The way we had specified the
projects when it was gone out to bid the second time was that it would be simply encapsulation. That they
would scrape the loose paint off and paint the surfaces of the round house with a new lead encapsulation
coat which would have to be maintained every 5 to 6 years. And at the Park and Recreation Commission's
meeting I said we had done that as a cost savings measure from the first bid to the second bid and they
suggested that they would like to see, if possible, the way that we had specified it the first time, come back
which was stripping all of the lead paint from the exterior and clear sealant. Putting more of a clear seal on
that wood. I suggested that to the contractor. He got back to me with a number of $4,000. I think $4,065
which added to his bid amount of$119,372. Made the total project cost with that addition $123,437. And
that's all I have. I can answer any questions.
Mayor Jansen: Okay. Any questions at this point councilmen?
Councilman Peterson: Based on your comment you said you could cut out some things like the upper
window area by a couple feet and lower the lighting obviously. In those recommendations, would you still,
from your own perspective, do that building or would you tear it down? Knowing that you've got to have
an inviting environment as you talked about earlier too.
Wynne Yelland: One of the commissioners from an earlier board meeting suggested trying to mimic that
affect with artificial lighting. With lighting. Electrical lighting, and I think that would partially go to me
saying maybe I would consider that but I think that would make me a lot less, I think it would make the
building a lot less interesting as a renovation and it's still, you're still spending a significant amount of
money and I think the end result might not be worth it and might not be a good investment.
Councilman Peterson: Good, thanks.
Councilman Ayotte: I see members from the parks and rec committee here and I'm really interested, the
kids need some place, a warm up place. What is the capacity, I'm from Canada but I don't know hockey.
Mayor Jansen: If we, if you wouldn't mind, if we're through with this gentleman.
Councilman Ayotte: Okay. Oh so we are going to be able to talk to the parks and rec?
Mayor Jansen: Yes. If we could finish this part up first.
Councilman Ayotte: Okay. With respect to the cost per square foot, replacement costs would be typically
what? Pure replacement cost. To replicate what you've got.
Wynne Yelland: Oh you mean to build this building again?
Councilman Ayotte: Yeah.
Wynne Yelland: It's not possible. Not utilizing the materials that are in there now.
Councilman Ayotte: Okay. To replicate the square footage to have a look alike for a warm, a place for the
kids to warm up, what would be the cost per square foot?
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Wynne Yelland: Well without bathrooms you could do it very cheaply probably. I don't know, $80 a
square foot. $100 a square foot. It really depends on the kind of, you can build something that will last 20
years and it will cost you $50 or $60 to do it. And you know if the economic climate continues to go a little
bit slower, you might even get it cheaper than that. Whereas if you built something that's permanent, I
don't know how much more permanent it's going to be.
Councilman Ayotte: Let's take the cost per square foot to renovate this. You said it'd be about $140 a
square foot.
Wynne Yelland: Yes.
Councilman Ayotte: What could you build for $140 a square foot? What kind of capacity could you get
then?
Wynne Yelland: Well again without a rest room you could build a very solid, nice looking building. Our
office could do it. But you're not going to replicate the historical value.
Councilman Ayotte: I understand that. I know you're robbing the historical portion of it.
Wynne Yelland: Right.
Councilman Ayotte: What's the distance of that facility from the ice?
Wynne Yelland: Todd would be able to answer that better than I.
Todd Hoffman: 50 feet.
Councilman Ayotte: That's pretty close, okay. Now the lead base paint that's chipping on the outside, is
that a hazard if it's not taken care of? The building's padlocked so it's not a hazard but.
Wynne Yelland: If nothing were to be done with it and we just left it?
Councilman Ayotte: Yes. Is there a hazard there?
Wynne Yelland: Yes. I mean if you want to get to the specific, one piece of that building flakes off, hits
the ground and a child picks it up, or anybody picks it up and puts it in their mouth, it's a hazard.
Councilman Ayotte: So there's an environmental concern if we don't address it?
Wynne Yelland: Well yes, absolutely.
Councilman Ayotte: So as stewards we've got to address it.
Mayor Jansen: One way or the other.
Councilman Ayotte: One way or the other, yeah.
Mayor Jansen: Is that all for your questions?
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Ayotte: Thank you.
Mayor Jansen: Councilman Labatt, anything at this point?
Councilman Labatt: Maybe I missed it in the reading, are you going to keep the rest rooms?
Todd Hoffman: Portable ....
Mayor Jansen: Not in the buildings.
Todd Hoffman: ... buildings but those will be taken out.
Councilman Labatt: Okay.
Wynne Yelland: They were on the second floor and the first floor and the second floor is to be entirely
removed.
Councilman Labatt: So this is going to just be one open space. There will be no floor.
Wynne Yelland: Right, exactly. Correct. Well there will be a floor at ground level. There's a full
basement below it as well.
Councilman Labatt: Right. But there's going to be no second level?
Wynne Yelland: Right. And we did, we briefly looked at an accessible bathroom as a possibility in there
but it was going to take 40% of the floor area so we eliminated that.
Councilman Labatt: Okay. No, the next one's for Todd so.
Mayor Jansen: Okay. Mine too. Thank you very much.
Wynne Yelland: Thank you.
Mayor Jansen: Todd, realizing that you have a council that did not sit in on this project and it of course
had numerous discussions and reviews. Could you take us back a little bit through the neighborhood
process and how we reached the point of designating with the neighbors, and the level of involvement
around this building and their desire to have this maintained.
Todd Hoffman: Sure. We go back to my preliminary comments. When the land was acquired with the
Harstad development, the community had, and the neighborhood specifically, had a very rewarding
experience ahead of them. They get to plan their neighborhood park. And so neighborhood meetings were
called on behalf of the Park and Recreation Commission and the City Council and we brought together a
group of interested residents who would like to sit down and talk about not only the future design of their
park, the elements that would be included, but then also the timing for the improvements, the initial
improvements going into the park. I looked through the files today and there were 3 of them from the start
of the acquisition and there was no fewer than 6 neighborhood meetings that were identified in the analysis,
or in that review. So we started with the groups and they assembled and talked about the master plan
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
process. Once the master plan process was developed, they started identifying, worked with the
commission to make recommendations to the City Council about capital investments through the park and
trail acquisition and development. To go into the park. Their number one priority was the play area, or
this children's play area in the center. And the first phase of that children's play area has now been put in
place by a company called Miracle Recreation working with the neighborhood. The neighborhood
volunteered to get more bang for their buck. They came out and they installed it and then there's also
enough space left in that area for the second phase of playground equipment which will be purchased at a
future time. The second priority identified through that neighborhood meeting process was the renovation
of the round house. And for the reasons that we've talked about tonight. And one of those is because it's
not, it's a landmark but it's in a state of disrepair and it's not something that you would be very proud of. I
think you could still tell people to get directions to your house, to go to the round house and turn left or
right or go straight, but when they got there they would ask you what the devil is that building that sits out
there and is in such a bad state of disrepair. Because of those neighborhood meetings the referendum
promise was made that this would be included. Funding would be included in the referendum for the
renovation of the round house and the $40,000 mark was identified. The referendum was passed. We
started into the formal process.., it became evident that the $40,000 wasn't going to get the job done and so
again we held a meeting. We sent, and I apologize, I was going to make copies of all this correspondence
for council this afternoon but our copier is broken so it took me about 8 minutes to run a single copy over
in engineering. We held another meeting and just spelled it out plain and white. Black and white to the
neighborhood that the cost of this project has risen significantly. Please come speak to the Park and
Recreation Commission and express your feelings about whether or not you want to see the round house
renovated. And again the neighbors responded, and not with 100% support. And as I mentioned or alluded
to in my report, there has never up until this last vote been 100% support on the Park and Recreation
Commission to move forward with the project. All the votes were split and I think the initial vote to save it
was the most decisive amongst all of them since that time. There's been more and more ownership put into
the building and the votes have come closer. There are people that are in this neighborhood that, I believe
generally because of the state of disrepair of the building, that they would simply like it to go away. And
so there are letters on file in that regard. But again they responded, we'd like to save the round house.
Commission made that recommendation to the City Council at that time to increase the budget. The
$40,000 was doubled to $80,000 based on the report from Locus and we moved forward into the bidding.
And I truly believe tonight it would just be a formality if it was not for the case that we are at $120 some
thousand dollars now and the cost of the project have again increased. So that's some history. The
neighborhood has been involved. Neighborhood mailings and the neighborhood response and input has
been there and they are waiting for the City to complete the project.
Mayor Jansen: You called off a number 1 and number 2 priority. Did they go beyond that as far as the
other amenities in the park and listing priorities? And did we give them a timeframe on what those other
renovations would be?
Todd Hoffman: No. We are unable to give timeframes simply because of the public process that we need
to work through. They did identify, and if I can take a moment I'll find those.
Mayor Jansen: I guess where I'm going with my question, while Todd's looking for that. Part of what I
looked at was the CIP to see when the additional amenities in this park are scheduled to be built and they're
not in the next 5 year plans. So I guess as far as how far out we're projecting before we get back to this
park, it's a significant expenditure that I'm not quite sure that neighborhood is going to understand that we
put a significant investment in this building and sometime after 5 years they'll get Phase II of the play area
and whatever the other priorities are that they listed. That was part of what I was looking into today.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Ayotte: When is the ice rink, if this is for the ice rink for a warm up for the kids, when's the
ice rink coming in?
Mayor Jansen: With the hockey boards?
Todd Hoffman: The ice there is flooded currently every year but the hockey boards are not programmed in
the 5 year CIP. And if I can comment on why that timeframe is out there so far, the initial investments put
into this park are significant. And so for acquisition, initial development, grading, parking lot, the beach
area, and so the timeline was accelerated. The budget process was accelerated to get them up and running
and now in fairness to the other sites throughout the community, you need to slow them down and back
them off for a few years. You get them up and running and then you need to back off and go do some
projects elsewhere in the city in all fairness before you come back out to this neighborhood. The
investments made in this park far outweigh the park acquisition and development dollars that will ever be
acquired from this neighborhood and so that's something that we need to acknowledge. In response to the
Mayor's questions, the outcomes of the round house meeting which there was oh a dozen or so people in
attendance, outcomes were to investigate the playground, ages 5 to 12 was a top priority followed by the
exterior renovation of the round house. If funds are still available, improve the interior of the round house,
and again that speaks to the appearance of the structure. Second, is additional caution signs at the
crosswalk at Kings Road. Third, ability to clear the sidewalk along Kings Road. So they wanted some
maintenance in the Kings Road area. Four is the necessity to install a fence along the Kings Road sidewalk
adjacent to the pond, near the homes. Right at this location for safety. The idea of a half court basketball
pad within the park, which was subsequently moved forward due to it's economy. For a very reasonable
amount of money you can get that project done. We were doing neighborhood basketball pads in other
parks and so it was moved up. And then the neighborhood installation of the playground. If they could
pull that off, they wanted to do that which in fact they did. So those were the priorities identified.
Mayor Jansen: So I'm curious, they had the exterior noted as the number 2 priority. The interior as
number 3 priority. That indicates to me that maybe they weren't looking at the utility of it as high a
priority as the aesthetics of it?
Todd Hoffman: Correct.
Mayor Jansen: Go ahead.
Councilman Ayotte: Did they, you said a dozen people?
Todd Hoffman: Yes.
Councilman Ayotte: How many people in this community? In this part of the community. What's the
population?
Todd Hoffman: 200 or 300 homes. 200 homes.
Councilman Ayotte: 200 homes so you've got 12 versus 300. That sounds like a small representation for,
am I being?
Mayor Jansen: No. Any other question?
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Ayotte: Yeah but I'm not going to.
Mayor Jansen: Craig.
Councilman Peterson: As a percent, excluding this building, if you had a blank check to build out the rest
of the park, just using ballpark. No pun intended. What would it run?
Todd Hoffman: About another quarter million dollars. Something in that nature.
Councilman Peterson: So the house is a proportionately large amount of the finishing off of the park?
Todd Hoffman: To give you an idea of the hockey arena and the lights and those improvements that go
along with that would be roughly equal to this investment. Probably a little less. Somewhere in the area.
Councilman Ayotte: The hockey what?
Todd Hoffman: The hockey arena and the lights.
Scott Botcher: It's going to have lights?
Todd Hoffman: And the asphalt that would go into that would be about $100,000.
Scott Botcher: We're going to light a hockey rink at a neighborhood park?
Todd Hoffman: Yes. Otherwise you would never build a hockey rink in a neighborhood park.
Mayor Jansen: Any other questions? The other, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt. The other point that
you and I spoke about today was the cost of the pavilion in North Lotus Lake Park and if I'm remembering
you shared with me a $30,000 cost?
Todd Hoffman: Yeah. $25,000 for the structure, yep. About $30,000 for the whole project.
Mayor Jansen: Okay. And not to put you on the spot. We didn't talk about the square footage of that
structure. Do you know offhand what the square feet?
Todd Hoffman: They have about the same. Same diameter to the round house.
Mayor Jansen: Okay, the 800.
Todd Hoffman: Yeah. It's a concrete pad with a metal frame structure and a wood roof over the top so it's
an open air shelter.
Mayor Jansen: Okay.
Todd Hoffman: Those were installed as a part of the referendum at Meadow Green Park, North Lotus
Lake Park, Rice Marsh Lake Park and then Power Hill Park. Four structures went in.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Mayor Jansen: Okay. So not nearly the equivalent of this building but I was just trying to get a feel for
what we've put in in other neighborhood parks as a pavilion.
Councilman Ayotte: And when they drink beer there you can see them.
Mayor Jansen: Yeah.
Wynne Yelland: Can I say something to that? Actually I did a quick calculation and it's not 800 square
feet. I've never done this before so, I made that calculation so I apologize. It's only 450 square feet so the
cost per square foot is more like $275 a square foot. Now there's a basement associated with that, which
we usually don't calculate as part of the overall square footage so.
Mayor Jansen: Okay.
Scott Botcher: So is that basement part of the 400 or no?
Wynne Yelland: No.
Scott Botcher: Okay. That's two libraries.
Mayor Jansen: I was going to say, and the library's costing a square foot of 157. Sorry.
Todd Hoffman: If you think about the renovation of this structure, when you get right down to it there's,
it's like any remodeling job. It's going to cost you more than building new. We will have, all that will be
remaining is the foundation and the wood round shell. Everything else is torn off the structure and
replaced. So there are significant costs associated.
Councilman Ayotte: And we do have an environmental hazard.
Todd Hoffman: Yeah you have that to deal with as well.
Scott Botcher: Well, let's understand. We don't have that statement from the State or the PCA. We have
it from the architect. Potential, that's correct.
Todd Hoffman: We have a study from Angstrom Analytical which points out specifically that we have lead
base and that's it a hazard. Lead base paint which is a hazard on the exterior of the structure.
Scott Botcher: I guess my biggest question, and my questions are sort of for these two gentlemen more
than anything else is that, and I've shared my thoughts with the council and they can certainly do whatever
is in their best interest but you just start running the numbers on this thing and the costs have, since it
initially went to referendum, have more than tripled. And then we're doing the library and we see the cost
per square foot of that and you just, and the library is hopefully going to finished far nicer than the inside of
that's Todd proposing. Just with the finish work that's going to go into a library. But you know I've run
this so many different ways. If you just look at it as a utility as a warming house, at $2,000 a year, that's
60 years. If you knock off25 grand and say we're going to build a pavilion like at North Lotus Lake,
Bob's right about what he said in providing utility and if you've ever been up to that neighborhood park, it
gets used quite a bit. It's family oriented. Picnics. All that sort of stuff. It's a very nice project. You
knock off 25 grand, you're still down to 50 year payback on the warming house side of things and that's a
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
long time for a building like this. And I guess my two cents worth is, and Linda was sort of going down
that road, if we had to say to the neighborhood, and I think Bob's comment about what was the
representative sample that Todd met with, the City's going to say here's $80,000. Is this the choice that the
neighbors would make? And certainly that's up, I mean there's a lot of nice things in this park. This is
going to be a really nice neighborhood park compared to some of the other neighborhood parks we have,
but at some point when the costs start tripling, and Linda knows me well enough that, Bruce and I probably
more than, well Todd does too, we start getting really, really nervous when numbers start floating and not
that it's wonderful but as I read through the report from the architect, I see a lot of warm and fuzzy words,
which just drive me up the wall. It's, and you've said many times, it's an interesting project. And it's
noteworthy and historical value. All these non-quantifiable sort of things and if you're going to strip it
down to nothing but the wooden shell, if you want to save the wooden shell or move the thing. I mean it's
not even original to the site. That's the goofy part. If it was a historic stop for the trains and they got
water there. I've had one of those. Fine. But that's not even what this is. It's a lot of money. I mean it
just really is and I'm thinking, if I'm in the neighborhood and the city's going to spend $125,000, I might
very well fine, it will clean up the outside. Do the best you can on it but put it towards something that to
me has far more utility to the kids and the families in the neighborhood and that's, maybe that's where I'm
coming from. Because I don't think there's any way in God's green earth we're spending this kind of
money on the other neighborhood parks we have in the community. We simply can't afford it. And that's
a decision obviously you all have to make but, I just think that, I just think you really need to think about it.
Does every, does a neighborhood park need a warming house? Now if we're going to put a hockey rink
there, the answer's probably yes but does it need it now? We don't even know if the hockey rink's ever
going to go there. We have all sorts of plans upstairs that show all sorts of different things. But maybe we
just, maybe hockey rinks go the way of tennis courts some day. Maybe there's a big sheet built at
Minnetonka West. Maybe, there's all sorts of things that could happen. 125 grand's a lot of money.
Mayor Jansen: Thank you. And I don't want to dismiss the value that the parks and rec commission is
putting into having tried to look at preserving this building, and we certainly have done the diligence in
trying to make sure that if there was something here that we should be protecting, that we do protect it.
That is what we're going to hear. If you would like to have the commissioners come up to the microphone
and we can certainly do that just so they have an opportunity to speak to this. But I think as a council
again from Scott's comments, I'm hesitant to put the neighborhood's value so high on this particular
building when in fact there are other amenities that could be better utilized within this park. And to
proceed and make that decision without their full knowledge of how much we're about to spend on this
building, I don't know that they would go down that path with us knowing what the cost of a pavilion
would be. On top of that we could get them the hockey boards. We could get them the second phase of the
play area. You know do we give them those options and opportunities maybe as we start making our
comments, you know think of speaking to that a little bit. Are we needing to put this back to the
neighborhood because the project has gone up 50% in cost from when they were looking at it last.
Councilman Ayotte: Actually 200%. If you go.
Mayor Jansen: If you go clear back to the 40. They did weigh in on the 80. Well a dozen of them did but.
Councilman Ayotte: I personally would like to, Madam Mayor, the parks and rec commission's been
sitting there and I think we ought to give them the opportunity to.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Mayor Jansen: Yes. If you'd like to take a couple of moments to speak to the recommendation that you
forwarded to us, and maybe the potential of what we might be able to do to engage the neighborhood at this
point. State your name and address for the record please Mr. Berg.
Fred Berg: Yes, I'm Fred Berg. I live at 6910 Chaparral Lane. I've been on a roller coaster ride in the
back of the room tonight. Listening to all the, what seemed to me to be logical presentations from Todd
and the architect and I'm thinking no, what I've got to say is much more esoteric and it isn't logical. And I
said no, I've got a passion for what I wanted to say and I'm going to say it. Then I'm listening to Mr.
Botcher with his logic, which by the way I didn't do very well in in college so excuse me if I'm not logical
all the time. And I'm thinking to myself no, why don't I just sit here. I think maybe I don't have anything
to say to you because I don't know that I have anything to add in terms of what some people are looking for
in value with this building. I've taught at the high school in Chaska for 24 years. I've been a teacher for
27. I teach history. I understand, I think I'm beginning to understand as I get older especially the value of
history and what it means to us and what it means to us in terms of our roots. What it means to us in terms
of our past and what it means to us in terms of who we are. And I sat dutifully this afternoon and wrote
down a whole bunch of notes that I wanted to be sure that I was going to say and I'm not going to because
again I don't know that what I can add is that important, what you would feel is that important towards
your decision. Your ultimate decision. It's important to me. It's important to me that we maintain some of
what has made Chanhassen special. I was born and raised in Minneapolis and as I grew up, watched more
and more buildings being torn down. I've watched Hiawatha Avenue be destroyed so that 25 years later
they could build a light rail system and I watched the homes in the beautiful area along there disappear
because it was economically a wise thing to do. It hurts me, it bothers me to see that same kind of thing
potentially being done here in Chanhassen. We have very precious little left in terms of the history of this
community that sets us apart from Eden Prairie. My daughter tonight said tell them we don't want to
become Eden Prairie. I said Kara I can't say that. That's, we're not going to throw stones at another
town. Well I just did. I wish I had something of substance to say that could change your mind. We've
been down this road before. My passion is preserving what we have that makes us, helps make us unique.
If we tear down the building, if we raze the building, it will be done. The community will soon forget that
it was ever there. It will still be Roundhouse Park and people will say how come. Well there used to be a
building there. It's not there anymore but so be it. We will have saved the money, the city some money
and that's a good thing. As a taxpayer I can certainly appreciate that and I can certainly appreciate the
quandary that you're in when it comes to balancing esoteric or historical versus saving the dollar. But I
think that's unfortunate. I think it's unfortunate number one that you have to be in that position, but you
are. And I think it's unfortunate that if you decide to raze the building or demolish the building, that it will
be gone forever. We can't get it back. We can't get back our history. For the sake of our economy and I
think that's a very unfortunate thing.
Mayor Jansen: One of the things that I learned here tonight that I didn't realize until I heard it said here
tonight was that this building isn't originally from this property. That it was actually relocated to it. So I
had gone through the same mental exercises that the commission has as far as if there's historical value
here, how do you put a value amount on that. But I've also gone down another option and I'd throw this
out to you, since you've spent more time on this project than I have. As far as the neighborhood, their
number 2 priority was the exterior of the building. If in fact there is a lesser expensive way to just simply
make sure that the building doesn't collapse, and as I drove past Bandimere Park and saw the silo sitting, I
think it's a silo. That's just indicating the history of that property, and I think what we did in order to make
it safe to leave it there was just took the ladder up so kids couldn't be crawling up it and getting themselves
hurt. Is there a way to maintain the exterior integrity of the building, lock it up. Have it be a landmark
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
without putting what now we've already spent $20,000 on the project so actually we're looking at
$145,000. $150,000 as we continue down this project. Is it worth it for that landmark sake?
Fred Berg: My answer to you is the one that I never let my kids at school give and that's I have no idea. I
don't know. Standing here before you now quite honestly, anything to keep the building up is better than
knocking it down. I would love to deal with you and work on some sort of compromise, if that's at all
possible.
Mayor Jansen: To explore options.
Fred Berg: Yeah. It's not spend $125,000 or light the dynamite tomorrow. I think calmer heads and
sensible heads and prevail perhaps and look at least, be willing to explore some sort of compromise. My
first concern is the historical nature of the building. Because it's not exactly located where it was originally
or because it's location doesn't have significant historical value doesn't detract from the historical value of
the building itself. Lots of buildings have been moved. There was a wonderful little school house in
Chanhassen one day that the people in Chaska decided they wanted to have so they took it and now they're
holding it up as an example of the first school house in the area. It's our's but who knows that?
Mayor Jansen: Interesting.
Councilman Labatt: Can we get it back?
Fred Berg: I've contemplated ways to do that but I'm not so sure they're all legal.
Scott Botcher: Is moving it again an option?
Fred Berg: You're asking someone who doesn't know the logistics of that.
Scott Botcher: And I don't either. I'm just...
Fred Berg: I think in terms of preserving the building I would.
Scott Botcher: That would be a better option for you than taking it down.
Fred Berg: Speaking for me, yes. But I represent absolutely no point of view other than my own.
Scott Botcher: But your own, and that's fine.
Mayor Jansen: Understood. I've put you on the spot for your opinion Mr. Berg.
Fred Berg: I'm also here to give it.
Mayor Jansen: Does anyone else have questions for Fred while he's here?
Councilman Labatt: No. I've just got some for Todd.
Mayor Jansen: Okay, thanks.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Ann Osborne: When you get done with that, are you going to hear a neighborhood person talk?
Mayor Jansen: Actually this isn't a public hearing and I think we probably have spent almost an hour on
this particular subject and we may keep moving it on. Not to say we're going to.
Ann Osborne: ...neighborhood I guess is all I was going to say.
Mayor Jansen: That's I think maybe where we end up going. Mike.
Mike Howe: I'm Michael Howe, 2169 Stone Creek Drive. Mayor, Council members. I'll be brief. I'm
batting clean-up here. There's not a lot really to say. I thought I would summarize briefly what the rest of
the park commission thought about this and how we arrived at this decision. About the round house.
Before I begin, this is my first presentation before the council in a long time. Certainly the first before the
new council and one of the things that struck me about the park commission, and I've been on it now for
over 6 years, I think we're very good with our money. We don't make recommendations like this unless
there's a deep seeded reason why we think we should definitely do it. We've always been that way. That
always impressed me and I don't think you'll see us making a lot of wild we need this, we need that
because we realize that funding is going to dry up some day and we have to be very careful with what we
have. Keep our cupboard dry so to speak but the round house we thought was a definite landmark. The
way it's built. The materials were very unique. I'll say those words again. For many people I've spoke
with it's really their first noticeable landmark in Chanhassen outside of downtown and I think that means a
lot. It's the re-use of the structure. We've heard a lot tonight about a warming house. Sure, a warming
house is a great idea and I think this would be used for that but I think in the summer there are many more
activities that might fit in this type of structure. Picnics, Dynamo's, a lot of things you could do. If you
built it I think you'd find that out. As far as the neighborhood, yes. This is a neighborhood park but I
think the commission looks at this more as a, as Todd mentioned, a regional park. It's got a beautiful
beach. If you've been there. Very large parking lot. When I'm there in the summer, I find a lot of the
people at the beach certainly I don't think are from the neighborhood. A lot of people do drive there from
other parts of Chanhassen, or even outside of Chanhassen. So I think that's something to consider. And I
know it's a lot of money but again I don't think the commission takes these decisions lightly and we had a
unanimous recommendation in what has been sometimes stormy sessions about the round house to get me
up here to talk about it so that's really all I had. Any questions?
Mayor Jansen: Go ahead.
Councilman Ayotte: In talking to the community by, what was your sense. I heard 12 residents. What
was your sense outside of the immediate neighborhood and can you give me an idea of the feedback you
got?
Mike Howe: Well frankly I think, if I remember back to those days when this neighborhood was just going
in, it's quite common you don't see a lot of turnout. I think we sent out a lot of letters to folks that live
there and apprised them of what we're going to discuss and it's probably immaterial to them as far as what
they're going to pick in their playground or their park. It was new at the time. I don't know even if all the
houses were completed 3 or 4 years ago when this was done. I think it's important but again the
commission is looking at this more as this is something that everybody in Chanhassen would use. Sure, the
neighborhood would be important to solicit their opinions and what goes into it but I think we're looking at
this in a bigger picture than just the neighborhood.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Ayotte: Thanks Mike.
Mayor Jansen: Thank you Commissioner Howe. Appreciate it. What I would share, piggy backing on
your questions since we were just all out knocking on doors through a couple of months. In speaking to
neighbors over in this area, they didn't appreciate the aesthetics of this building but their primary questions
to me were when are we going to get the rest of the park facilities? So hence my hesitation to now go to the
CIP and realize that they're out beyond 5. Now that was just from the people that I spoke with and I can't
say that I've got a representative sampling or anything but that's where part of my reaction is coming to
wanting to make sure we're attuned to the neighborhood if this is going to be changing. Let's bring it back
for council comments and see if we can reach some sort of agreement on how to move forward with the
project. If someone would like to begin.
Councilman Labatt: I've got a couple questions first. When we built the warming house at Bluff Creek,
what was that as far as cost?
Todd Hoffman: $225,000.
Councilman Ayotte: Say again?
Todd Hoffman: $225,000.
Councilman Labatt: Okay. And was that all, was that a combination between the school and city or all of
the city expense of that building?
Todd Hoffman: All city expense.
Mayor Jansen: And that's brick and lavatories and correct? It's a lot different than what we're talking
about with the shelter.
Councilman Labatt: And I can't recall, in the CIP if the warming house at City Center Park is in the next 5
years?
Todd Hoffman: Yes.
Councilman Labatt: And what are we slating for that?
Todd Hoffman: I believe it's $225,000 or $250,000.
Councilman Labatt: So that will be similar to what we have at Bluff Creek.
Todd Hoffman: Correct.
Councilman Labatt: Okay.
Todd Hoffman: With an exterior covered shelter. Interior warming house, bathrooms and concessions.
With a look of construction similar to the recreation center or city hall.
Councilman Labatt: Okay. Do you recall what it cost to remove the depot back downtown?
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Todd Gerhardt: $10,000.
Councilman Labatt: And do you have any idea what it would cost to raze the building and granted with the
asbestos and lead base paint before moving it? Any estimate at all?
Todd Hoffman: I don't have an exact estimate. I can tell you we could do it and just have landfill costs
but with the asbestos there and the lead base paint it becomes more complex and so $10,000 to $20,000.
Councilman Ayotte: I bet you it'd be more. $85.00 a square foot for a demo.
Councilman Labatt: Yeah. Okay. Well I'11.
Todd Gerhardt: It was $12,000 for the railroad depot if we decided to remove the lead paint off that. And
that was 4 years ago.
Councilman Labatt: And that was $12,0007 Yeah, and that's kind of the same size building? Two levels
versus one level?
Todd Gerhardt: ... about the same. But Todd's right. It's probably, that was 4 years ago so it's probably
up to the 15 to 18.
Councilman Labatt: Well I guess I'll make my comments first. I kind of, you know, frankly I agree with
Mr. Berg and Mr. Howe. There's, how do you put a price on historical value. You know yeah, it was not
original in this location but it's been there. It's a significant landmark on the western side of the city. So
I'm hesitant to say destroy the building and get rid of it. I think Mayor you brought up a point that frankly
we should look at further as far as you know, what would it take just to do the exterior of the building.
Clean it up. Clean up that site. Keep it as a landmark but then yet is it possible to build a couple of the
pavilions in that park to provide the shelter. And not finishing off the inside of this building and look at
that option versus completing this building completely. You know it is a $123,400, it's a lot of money but
I'm not in favor of destroying it so I think we should get it, come up with some option to keep it there and
hang onto it.
Mayor Jansen: And what's your opinion about going back to the neighborhood?
Councilman Labatt: Well I think the neighborhood's fine but I think Mr. Howe brings up a valid point that
you know, I mean what are you going to consider the neighborhood? Just the people down Kings Road.
Mayor Jansen: No. No, that area.
Councilman Labatt: There are people up on Stratford Road that use that park and down on Red Cedar
Point that use it and heck, I've driven from where I live out to the park to use the beach.
Mayor Jansen: I would think of that whole side near that area as being the people that really need to be
engaged in some sort of conversation.
Councilman Labatt: Yep. Yeah, I'd be in favor of that, yeah.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Mayor Jansen: Okay. Thank you. Councilmen?
Councilman Peterson: Todd, what's going to be the ceiling height inside when it gets refurbed?
Todd Hoffman: Full two stories and then with the look up into the roof so the second story would come
out. Just a third story to the full two story building.
Councilman Peterson: Have we thought about the heating costs of that? I mean you're talking a small
building, 400 feet but it's a lot of height to be heating for a warming house.
Todd Hoffman: Yeah the warming house, you would have a ceiling fan up in that area. It's open for a
month and a half time period. Short period of time. Operation costs are going to be there but I don't, we
heat the current buildings with electric. We heat the other buildings with gas heat...
Councilman Peterson: Okay.
Todd Hoffman: Timely question considering.., with our heating bills.
Councilman Peterson: Yeah. You know I don't like dismissing historical values of any structure. As
noted tonight we don't have a lot of them in Chanhassen. However, placing a price on it this evening is
really what I'm struggling with. We've got a 400 square foot building, which is a pretty darn small
building, with a pretty high price tag to it that for what in all probability, and if I had to prognosticate it
would be used not for much more use than just the warming house. I can't fathom somebody going into
that building in the summertime. Even if we do raise the roof and put skylights, it's just going to be a
genuinely darker building and not very open building, which usually when you perceive yourself going to a
park you don't go inside an enclosed structure to be entertained. So I really do see the value of usage will
be a relatively short period of time for a small number of people. So then you're really bringing it down,
you're saving it because it's a unique landmark but we're placing a pretty high price tag on that and I guess
on the surface I think that the residents would be better served to finish out the park with items that have a
greater utility value and I think to the point of, you know I would like to really place the question that
there's a chance that the house may be torn down and we're struggling with that. We need some
community feedback, but give them a point blank statement saying that we have a decision to make. Either
to spend a lot more money than we had hoped, or we're going to tear it down to hopefully get more than 12
people there to see if we can get an assessment of really what some of their values are. But the cost per
square foot is just, it just seems like an awful lot of money for me to do it without really having a
community that really wants it.
Mayor Jansen: And any comment on just preserving the exterior in order to have it be a landmark
depending on the dollar amount that would be attached to that?
Councilman Peterson: Just from past experience, the cost of the outside is going to be pretty substantial so
then you're really placing a value just on a round building that doesn't have any more value historically
than being a round building that was moved onto the site. So I wouldn't be for that on the surface at least.
Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you.
Councilman Ayotte: I'd like to arrest the degradation. But to include ventilation on the inside to counter
any further degradation on the inside. I'd like to get a cost impact on that. I'd like to know if there is an
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
environmental issue. Not just, and I'm not down playing the fact that you're an architect and you may not
know but there is, we have as stewards a need to determine if there is an environmental issue and I'd like to
know that. I think the mayor's point about making sure the neighborhood is aware of the implication, has
to be brought up to the surface. And Commissioner Howe brings up a very, very key point that regionally
it has to be addressed and I'm thinking because it's a Chanhassen landmark, that we ought to also address
it from the total city survey. And get some reaction from that standpoint in terms of it being a city
landmark. And then revisit it.
Mayor Jansen: Okay. That's an interesting point. And at this point the total city survey conceivably we
think we can get one done this year but it probably would not be until sometime during, towards the end of
second quarter.
Councilman Ayotte: And that's why I'm saying, let's stop the degradation and then at that point get it.
Mayor Jansen: Got it. Okay. I too have a great deal of difficulty walking away from this building. I see
the significance. I read all the warm, fuzzy language that's in the report from the engineer that went out
and looked at it and I like those things. I mean there's character to the building. It is the landmark for the
park. I realize that to the neighbors there's some significance to this building and that it would behoove us
to do what we can. At the $125,000 price point I look at how much more we can benefit these residents,
and I just want to make sure that if this building isn't going to have the utility for the neighbors, that we
don't tear it down until we figure out if there's something we can do to preserve it as a landmark and I'm
agreeing with what Craig just observed. I listened to Commissioner Howe talk about the summer use, and
in the summer months I'm not going to be drawn to go inside an enclosed building unless there's a storm or
something going on so I understand the rationale of the summer use. However, I don't know how much
that's actually going to be used compared to an open shelter area. So I'm wanting to strike a balance here
someplace and again I appreciate all of the discussion that happened at the Park and Rec Commission level.
It certainly brings it to our attention that we're dealing with an issue that we need to be sensitive to as far
as a historic landmark structure. I don't think I'm hearing anyone here wanting to bulldoze it tomorrow or
burn it down for firewood. But I do think we do have things that we need to look into and I guess in trying
to pull together maybe everyone's comments, as far as giving staff direction, maybe we do need, we need to
direct staff or the commission to look into just the exterior cost of preserving this as a landmark. One step.
I realize in the course of that we've got the environmental issue that will definitely be addressed depending
on what measure we do take. And we realize we need to deal with that. And on the neighborhood and
maybe as I'm thinking neighborhood, I'm visualizing that whole side of the lake that would be using this
and that's not the same definition maybe as the half mile radius on a neighborhood park but I'm thinking of
that whole segment of the community that would conceivably use this park and find utility in it. Somehow
we need to engage those people in this discussion and in the options and alternatives and I liked Craig's
comment about if you just give them the two alternatives, you may get them coming in in droves at the
thought of our tearing it down. And if they are going to come in and we're going to get them at either end
of this discussion, if we're then prepared, staff and commission, to be able to talk about the cost of
potentially just preserving the exterior, I think council needs to see those numbers maybe before we go back
and have any discussion with the neighbors to Craig's point that that might be the most significant part of
this number. But I think that's what I'm hearing councilmembers say. If someone wants to maybe come
up with a motion.
Councilman Ayotte: Councilman Labatt wants to think of a motion for that.
Mayor Jansen: A motion.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Labatt: I'll motion that we.
Mayor Jansen: Table.
Councilman Labatt: Well I don't know whether to table or put this back to the Park and Rec Commission
for further study and to.
Mayor Jansen: I think we might want to hear that exterior number before that starts getting batted around.
Before it goes back out. Maybe part of your motion that staff gets back to us with the exterior renovation.
Councilman Labatt: Okay. So motion is to table it for staff to look at, come up with a number for the
exterior refurbishment of the building. Just leave it at that for now.
Mayor Jansen: Okay. Do I have a second?
Councilman Peterson: I'd second.
Councilman Labatt moved, Councilman Peterson seconded that the City Council table action on the
award of bids for the Roundhouse Park Pavilion and direct staff to prepare numbers for the exterior
renovation of the building. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Mayor Jansen: Todd, are you clear on the direction?
Todd Hoffman: Yes. We'll bring that number back at the next City Council meeting and that way if you
then want to move forward with a neighborhood meeting you can do that in the last meeting in February.
Almost the exact wording of Councilman Peterson was in the last public notice to all residents from
Highway 7 to Highway 5 and we had actually less response at that time than the initial planning meeting of
12 and again, so I hope we'll get the response that, I think we're getting down to where it's either now or
never so. And I think the council can recognize that the exterior cost is going to be the majority of the
$124,000. There's very little interior work here and so it's going to be a high number.
Mayor Jansen: That's why my thought is for us to see the number in case it isn't even one we want thrown
out. That it might just be the two options.
Councilman Peterson: I think it'd be interesting to see that notification. If you could e-mail it to us or send
it to us. Because that may preclude us from going out.
Todd Hoffman: Okay.
COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS: HOUSEKEEPING ITEMS, MAYOR JANSEN.
Mayor Jansen: I just put together, because we had somewhat of a short agenda tonight. It went a little
longer than I anticipated. I have this short little list and we can get as far as we can tonight, but I wanted to
make sure that we're keeping everybody in the loop on what we're working on currently and projecting into
the next couple of months so that at least everyone knows what's, if you would, on the radar screen. One
of the discussions that we've had off and on and we've started to change some of the work session
philosophy already as to how we're handling those meetings. I'm going to start right off with the agenda
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
item 1. The whole work session philosophy. When, for what and where? Currently we're starting at 5:30,
preceding the council meetings and of course standard procedure to date has been to discuss the agenda. At
this point what I would like to propose is that instead of going over the agenda at length prior to the
meeting, if we mm that into our work session items that we're discussing as far as any of the conceptual or
policy issues, review issues. Similar to what we did this evening with staff presenting us with the Bluff
Creek Watershed. There will be longer meetings that may need to fall on the inbetween weeks because they
will take longer. Meetings with the commissioners. Our interviews of the commissioners. Similar to what
we're doing currently with the interviews for the council position. That those are occurring off council
weeks where we need a bigger chunk of time. There is just a thought as Scott and I were doing a little bit
of brainstorming as to whether or not we can conceivably get our work done in just that hour and a half, or
hour before the council. If we started at 7:00 with our public hearings instead of 6:30, and I believe
Planning Commission starts at 7:00, correct? I believe Parks and Rec typically starts at 7:00.
Scott Botcher: Everybody else does.
Mayor Jansen: It would allow public to get home from work and a little bit more time to be able to get here
as far as our public hearing times. So I think it would be instead of thinking of it as an inconvenience, it
would be more conveniencing them. And over the last 2 years we have gotten comments from public that
they would like to see our meetings be more convenient to them and that that half hour would make a
difference. So those are some of the thoughts that I'd like to maybe hear us talk about as far as our work
sessions and how we handle those. I saw some head nods to the possibly moving our public hearing out to
7:00 instead of 6:30?
Councilman Peterson: Steve, what's your thought on that? It's probably going to affect you more than
anybody else going to work at 10:00.
Councilman Labatt: No, because actually April 1st I'll be going back to day shift so it really doesn't have a
bearing and I have a working understanding at work that if we're into a discussion item that is leaning past
my 10:00 departure so I can get to work by 10:30, and I have to be late for work, ifI can just excuse
myself and make a quick phone call. I can get one of my partners to cover for me so I'm fine with 7:00
actually. I mean I've gotten far too many complaints about the fact that people have a hard time getting
home from work, from their jobs whether they're downtown or as close as Eden Prairie with the way
traffic's been, and get to the meeting here at 6:30 so they can, when one of their items that they're
concerned about is on the agenda right away and they miss it. So no, 7:00 is fine with me. 7:00 is fine.
The off week only if necessary. That's kind of Mark Engel hours. Mark Engel meetings. I like those. If
it's necessary we have them, let's have them but if it's just here to discuss a 5 minute, 10 minute topic, you
know. Not only is it burdensome on the council to come in just for a short, quick meeting but the staff. I
mean I'd rather stay late or come in early some Monday's and have less meetings. But just devote more
time to them. If staff's going to be here anyways and we can start at 4:30 if we have to. No longer
discussing the agenda. I love that. I never agreed with that. Getting into the discussions about the items.
The consent agenda questions can be asked like we've always done but other than that, I'm not in favor of
any talking. And 5:30 preceding council meetings. Does that just mean a work session, right?
Mayor Jansen: Right. That's just yeah. On our regular council meetings. And then because everyone's
really coming directly from work, I know there's maybe been some discussion about the fact that we do end
up eating during that 5:30 meeting but I think that's only fair with everyone coming from work who's on
the council needing to be able to have dinner.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Labatt: Either that or get Bob's wife to make us dinner and cater to us.
Councilman Ayotte: I don't think she could feed you. I've seen you eat.
Councilman Labatt: And let's see, conceptual policy review issues. What did you mean by that?
Mayor Jansen: That that's what we're trying to keep the work sessions to. We're not diving into more
detail but we're actually doing, well like this evening with the Bluff Creek plan.
Councilman Labatt: Yeah. Yeah, I thought that was very beneficial, you know so. Okay, those were my
two cents worth.
Mayor Jansen: Thank you. And one of the things that Steve said Scott and I also brought up as far as the
cutting back the number of meetings that we're actually committing staff to, is the preparation time that
they end up going to. When we're meeting every single week, it's a huge amount of staff time and that was
one of our discussions about cutting back the number.
Councilman Labatt: Staff has families. We have families. I mean it's you know.
Scott Botcher: And it takes away from doing a lot of other stuff. I mean we spend Wednesday screwing
around getting reports written. Reviewed and sent back to the department heads so they can put them and
get the packets put together. You burn up a lot of time doing that.
Mayor Jansen: I think economically it makes better sense with staff and we can just hopefully be more
efficient in the council meetings as far as what we can get done during our regular meetings.
Councilman Ayotte: Is there anything that we can do, may I ask some questions?
Mayor Jansen: Sure.
Councilman Ayotte: Is there anything we can do to shore up Scott's work load and our work load to
instead of getting the detail that we get, to get executive summaries in lieu of some of that detail in the
formulation of staff recommendations. Rather than.
Scott Botcher: Well frankly Bob, I mean I've never had a council that I guess wanted, I don't know if they
do or not, but got. We'll say that. Received as much detail as this council has. Not this council but this,
my employer has, let's try that. Because in the past my experience has been far more along the executive
summary route. Where my councils in Wisconsin and such would receive you know a brief memo that
would delineate the recommendations and that was it. Frankly though at the same time I've never had an
employer who needed verbatim minutes.
Councilman Ayotte: You never what?
Scott Botcher: We have verbatim minutes here which is a, I mean ask that fine lady back there how much
that costs us to do. I mean there's just, Linda and I have talked about a lot of procedural things that have
gone on here. Some for a long time. Some for not so long time, that I think we can do better and if the
council's willing to try that, that is a good thing to consider because it does improve our efficiencies. It
helps keep the council up here you know instead of delving into some of the other stuff and you know the
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
minute thing is sort of separate but you know, Roger's also available tonight. I asked him to give his input
on what his other clients do. That may be beneficial to us and jump in whenever you want but. My guess
is most of your clients don't take verbatim minutes.
Roger Knutson: That's partially correct. Not most, none of them except Chanhassen.
Councilman Peterson: Can you be more specific.
Roger Knutson: You're the only city I know, and again I don't know the cities of the first class that have
verbatim minutes and that's for 850 cities and we represent 15 of them.
Councilman Labatt: How long has Chan been keeping verbatim minutes?
Roger Knutson: They were doing it when I arrived so I can't answer that.
Councilman Labatt: When was that?
Roger Knutson: Mid 80's.
Councilman Labatt: Obviously there must have been a reason for it way back when.
Roger Knutson: Presumably. I don't know what it was.
Councilman Ayotte: Do we tape everything?
Scott Botcher: Sure. It's tape recorded and as soon as Todd can convince the cable company to come run
the cable from underneath the bush inside the building, we'll be going live at the same time. So yeah, we
have a verbatim electronic record.
Councilman Ayotte: So we have a verbatim electronic record but if that can be categorized.
Mayor Jansen: It's not kept for that long though. It's not a permanent record. I think maybe we can have
that verbatim minute discussion at some point. In fact as you've brought it up, and one of the things maybe
to think about is do we need verbatim Park and Recreation Commission minutes. You know is there a way
to step back from it maybe a little more slowly. You know I think we're hearing public wants access.
Public wants availability of information. I don't know if now's the time to cut back the verbatim minutes
maybe on Planning Commission and ourselves, but maybe we start stepping back on, I think of Park and
Rec.
Scott Botcher: The only rationale is that for all the stuff that we all say up here, the stuff that's important
is the motion. And so you can have a summary of it and you know what, the motion is what you all do.
Frankly the verbatim minute thing is almost more so people can read what individual people said so they
can call them about it, which is not without value but as we go live and as we start doing other things, and
you talk about streamlining, maybe that's something you look at but I would tend to agree that it's a
discussion for another time. Because I don't think there's one, they're just different choices.
Councilman Ayotte: But definitely we have to do something about the structure of the material that we
receive. And I'd be interested in hearing from you Roger on what the other cities do with respect to
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
preparatory packages provided to councils and commissions. Is it the 17 pounds of stuff or do they do
executive summaries or what do they do?
Roger Knutson: It varies all over the waterfront on that. I do represent some other cities that have just as
much if not more material that goes to the council, and I have some that it's lightweight reading. What
many cities do is they'll have an executive, really an executive summary on the front page that says staff
recommends you to say the following. Your proposed motion. Here's what it's about and so for a lot of
routine things you can read the whole thing or you can just read the executive summary and it may be
adequate for you.
Mayor Jansen: And maybe what we do is request that we end up with an example of what the executive
summary would be compared to one of the staff reports. Maybe on an issue Scott where you would feel
comfortable asking or directing, since you've been involved with doing just an executive summaries, and I
don't want to put staff to extra work on an issue but if maybe you had a template or you could use one of
the issues as an example for an executive summary.
Scott Botcher: I think the whole issue of minutes and the packet can be held sort of together in terms of
staff council communications. I can bring you a template from other cities that have nothing, no issues that
you've ever considered but you can see sort of the basic synopsis of what was trying to be done. But
frankly I remember the Planning Commission minutes in Delafield and we had as much going on as you
did. They could easily be 1 to 2 pages. That's what they were. They were summaries. Frankly we didn't
care what individual members had to prophetize about. We wanted to know what the basics. What was
the basic discussion and what was the motion. And this community's been raised on 15 years of having
like a court reporter here and this is not court. So your...
Roger Knutson: Rather than redoing the whole report for the City Council, they'll have a cover sheet over
it and say, summarize it in two sentences and say the Planning Commission recommended approval. The
staff recommends approval with the following changes and it saves staff work and it's less to read.
Scott Botcher: We can take that on some other time.
Mayor Jansen: Yeah, that's an interesting perspective though because we do end up generating brand new
reports with very little changed and it could all just be summarized on the one sheet. Okay, thanks for
mentioning that. Appreciate that. And so Bob, how are you on the other points as far as not discussing the
agenda item during the work session. I'm just trying to make sure we've got some agreement here on these
items. So that our work sessions go to.
Councilman Ayotte: Yeah I think, well let me ask, what I did today. Like I was ignorant on some stuff.
Some stuff. I was ignorant on a number of points so I wrote e-mails out. If that is acceptable then I have
no problem because if I have a question on something, I want to make sure that I'm correct and going back
to your no surprises down here.
Scott Botcher: That's another reason.
Mayor Jansen: That's absolutely the best way to handle it is to get all those questions into staff because
then if they need to do preparation before the meeting to discuss it, then they're able to do that. And that's
part of why I wrote on here, especially with the consent agenda questions, if those are handled ahead of
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
time then we don't have to pull things off the agenda and have lengthy discussions during the meeting.
Nope, that's exactly the way to handle it. Okay.
Councilman Peterson: Maybe just not 35 at the time, or my server goes down at work because of Bob's e-
mails but you know.
Mayor Jansen: And you're okay with the off week work sessions then when necessary? And we'll be able
to talk about what those issues are. And then how are you with moving the meeting starting time to 7:00?
For the public hearings.
Councilman Ayotte: I always get indigestion with the dinner because you never give me enough time to eat
for crying out loud so I think that will work.
Councilman Labatt: We're still going to keep the 5:30.
Mayor Jansen: To start the work session.
Councilman Labatt: So that will give us an hour and a half.
Scott Botcher: We need the time.
Councilman Labatt: Yeah, okay. Okay.
Scott Botcher: Now just to confirm then, and Roger's confirmed this. Our next, it sounds like everyone
likes this idea. Our next meeting though will start at the regular time because we have to change it by
resolution. That will be on your consent agenda next time and then the meeting hence you can start at 7:00.
Mayor Jansen: Very good, thank you.
Scott Botcher: So everyone's kosher.
Councilman Peterson: You know if we don't discuss the agenda at the work session, that's going to be
more questions to you guys, staff during the week. You know Thursday, Friday and Monday is going to be
potentially 5 different people asking you the same question.
Scott Botcher: Except that generally what happens is that 5 different people don't have the same question
and what we've found, or what I have found prior to the first of the year is that we spent the work session
not answering questions but doing debate preparation for council members on different sides of the issue.
We weren't answering questions and we were just all sort of sitting there and then, we were playing games
with each other and I'd just as soon keep it broad based. Let's talk about an issue for an hour and a half.
Tonight we would have put another issue on there after Kate because 45 minutes for her and 45 for
something else. We could use the hour and a half because we've got some issues to deal with. But in terms
of the prep time, we would expect that the newer council members would have more questions than the
more experienced council members. That's just the nature of the beast. And especially with e-mails
anymore, it's really easy to answer. I mean if somebody asks the question, I try to ship it out to everybody
and so like when Bob's questions came in and the responses, I tried to have everybody get a copy of it and
sometimes that will answer the question that Steve for example may not have gotten around to asking yet.
So I'd rather do that because it's far more productive than screwing around in the work session.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Peterson: Okay, so noted. I haven't got a problem with 7:00. The negative of that means it's
going later for people too. You've got equal number of people that would have preferred to start them
earlier and not go til midnight so there's, I struggled with that in the Planning Commission is that, can we
start earlier? We couldn't because some of our members couldn't come earlier but those meetings would
historically run til 11:00 and that's late.
Mayor Jansen: It's a really good point because the other facet of the discussion that Scott and I had is that
we have begun, or we were at least over the last 2 years conducting extensive public hearings at the council
level even if it wasn't a public hearing on the agenda. So I would like to be more disciplined ourselves in
keeping the public hearing comments with the Planning Commission, and I do think we will have to again
give proper notification to our residents because they're used to being able to public hearing in both places
and it may be on our meeting notifications that we'd better draw that point out. That if there are new
points that need to be brought up to council, you know we certainly don't want to completely shut off the
input but we may be able to pull back our discussion a bit. But I appreciate your noting the fact that they
could go long.
Councilman Ayotte: Maybe there's a way of limiting it even more so with, I know a lot of times I ask
many, many, many, many, many questions and maybe we need to figure out how to.
Mayor Jansen: We need to stay out of the detail also helps.
Scott Botcher: I know councils that limit the amount of time a council person can question. Not many, but
they do and to me I've never seen it be an issue and frankly I don't think you've gotten to that extent at all
and you're going to have a lot of questions and that's okay. But that is an option that.
Councilman Ayotte: You mean that you want to self govern?
Scott Botcher: And some councils say, we used to have a drop dead time in Delafield. If it got to be a
certain time, the meeting's over. And they knew it and most of the public knew it more importantly so if
they're waiting for a decision, you don't have this parade. Everyone in the neighborhood won't come up
and speak because they'd like the council to make a decision so you know. Supply and demand.
Mayor Jansen: I think if we clearly communicate it will work. We can do this.
Councilman Peterson: We can just hook up a 12 volt buzzer to them like the Cliff Clavin buzzer.
Mayor Jansen: Okay, onto the council meeting procedures. We've now already after what, our second or
third meeting started to fall into this routine and this is more probably for Steve and myself. Habits that
we'll be breaking. I would like to see us go to the order of discussion being simply volunteer versus my
actually calling upon individual council people and the order that you will then discuss an issue in. And
that was the previous structure. I would just as soon that everyone make your comments when you're
comfortable doing so. If everybody hesitates at the same time, we're drawing straws and that's me. I'll
start calling but.
Councilman Peterson: We started doing that in the Planning Commission for about the last 2 ½-3 years
and really at Roger's recommendation. That's one of the Robert's Rules of Order stuff and you will get
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
hesitation down time. People are processing and I really don't want to go first, so you'll get that but I still,
I haven't, I never moved away from that because I think it's still a better way to go ahead.
Mayor Jansen: Good. Okay, and did you find that the different members do alternate then on issues?
Councilman Peterson: Yeah, because they know that I will call on them or I would have called on them if
they wouldn't have brought it up so, it is a smoother way to do it.
Roger Knutson: This was the only city I know of that has used this method of going around and asking in
order. What do you want to say?
Councilman Labatt: We're a very unique city...
Roger Knutson: ... you can make your own decision. Just one thing I've observed over the years, when
you do that, if I'm a council member and I really have nothing to say about the subject, when the Mayor
tums to me and says what have you got to say, I don't want to look like a dummy so I'll say something.
I'll feel compelled to talk because I was asked to talk.
Mayor Jansen: Okay. So I may not never even necessarily turn to everyone and if you don't have anything
to say, then you won't feel the pressure but.
Councilman Ayotte: Well that's what happened to me tonight because you kept, I felt that you were
prodding me. Otherwise I wouldn't...
Mayor Jansen: I just won't look at you at all. And then we will need a motion to adjourn.
Councilman Peterson: Who's benefit is that, your's or his?
Mayor Jansen: We will need a motion to adjourn at the end of the meetings, which we have not
traditionally been doing so if we could follow.
Councilman Labatt: So all of those meetings are still in process then?
Mayor Jansen: Yes.
Councilman Labatt: Wow.
Roger Knutson: Just so you know under Robert's, you don't need a motion to adjourn.
Mayor Jansen: Okay.
Scott Botcher: But you want one for the record.
Roger Knutson: You can have one and most cities do. You don't have to have one. What Robert's says is
the presiding officer, they don't talk about mayors, but the mayor essentially says is there any other
business to come before us and before anyone can open their mouths, slams the gavel down.
Scott Botcher: We'll take a motion to adjourn.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Mayor Jansen: We'll formalize and do a motion. And then it is not necessary to read the consent agenda
once we've approved it so you may have noticed I cut that out tonight so we didn't do that. Saving a little
time there. The one thing that procedurally has always seemed a little bit awkward is if someone is going
to abstain from a vote, if you also acknowledge your abstaining from the discussion, correct Roger? If
we're not, if there's a reason why we're not going to vote, then you can't affect a discussion, correct?
Roger Knutson: You've got various, but the recommended procedure is if you're not going to vote because
you're going to abstain because of a conflict of interest, you should not sit here as a council member and
discuss it as a council member. If you want to say at the beginning of the issue, I'm going to abstain
because this involves whatever the issue is, you can of course go down into the audience and speak as a
member of the, as a citizen on the subject. But you shouldn't be speaking as a council member on it.
Mayor Jansen: In one of our, I was actually at a seminar. It was the newly elected officials 2 years ago as
a matter of fact. They were suggesting that if you were going to abstain, you should leave the council
bench so that it's just that much more obvious that you have not participated in the discussion.
Roger Knutson: That's fine and just, I don't think it's always necessary. For example, if you have
something on the consent agenda. It's a routine matter but for whatever reason you feel you have a conflict
and it's going to take 10 seconds, I personally think it's more disruptive in that situation to get up, go down
there and come back rather than just abstaining. On the other hand, if it's a major land use file in front of
you and it's going to take some period of time to discuss, it's not routine by any means, then yes. I think
that's appropriate to get up and say I have a conflict of interest because I own the property. Or I'm selling
the property or whatever you're doing, and then sit down there and everyone knows that you're not a
council member on this issue.
Mayor Jansen: Okay.
Councilman Labatt: So do you need to state your reason for abstaining?
Roger Knutson: I would advise, there's no law that says you have to but it makes a difference. If you
abstain because of a legal conflict of interest, and we can discuss what that is sometime, but if it's not just
that you're uncomfortable. It's your neighbor and you don't want to annoy your neighbor, but if it's a
legal conflict of interest, that reduces the size of the council, assuming there were 5 council members, from
5 to 4 and that can affect the simple majority vote. So it's like you only have 4 members but if you abstain
just because you know I'm uncomfortable with this or I know the people involved, something that is not a
legal conflict, it does not reduce the size of the council. So in some situations it's important to know why
you're abstaining. It could be, you don't have to get into the details. You could say I'm abstaining
because I'm uncomfortable. That would tell me this not a legal conflict but something else, you're just
uncomfortable. Or I'm abstaining because I have a financial interest and if you tell us that, then I know it
reduces the size of the council and how to count votes.
Councilman Labatt: Okay. The mayor, ifI may, I had a similar question on voting. Can I interject?
Mayor Jansen: Sure, sure.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Labatt: In years past every once in a while you'll be, there will be 5 of us up here and you
only hear 4 votes. One person won't vote yes or no. Just remain silent. How is that vote recorded, if you
can explain that.
Roger Knutson: Under the rules you used to have, up until I think the first of the year, it was clear that
silence was a vote in the affirmative. So if you were silent, you are deemed to vote yes. Now you no
longer have that and what I would really prefer rather than having that, and I can read Robert's that says
that's still the case. Silence is an affirmative vote. Silence might be you didn't, you were doodling or
whatever it was and you didn't catch it. I mean I would prefer rather than having to ferret out what your
intention is, if you'd just stated what your intention is, which could be simply I'm not voting. Register me
as a no vote. Not voting. Or register me as yes or no or abstaining or whatever it is. Some cities get
around this issue by having a roll call vote on every single thing they do.
Mayor Jansen: And I guess if I don't hear someone verbally commit to their vote, there's nothing wrong
with my asking and getting them to clarify, and I think that's one of the differences Steve that we can
operate under.
Councilman Labatt: Yeah. Yeah, I think that was always confusing.
Roger Knutson: I think the person taking, you know writing up the minutes, when they come across that
there must be sometimes listening to the tape what happened. How was it registered? And we've had some
interesting times on that issue.
Mayor Jansen: That's a good point Steve. I'll just make sure.
Councilman Labatt: So I just want to, you know. Enough said. We know what we're going to do for the
next 2 years so.
Mayor Jansen: Got it. Okay. And then I wrote no surprises. More in thinking of ourselves with staff.
You know again, if we've got issues on something that's coming up on the agenda, get that information to
staff. If it's something you really feel like you've got to cull it out in the meeting, I hate to see things come
up and catch those folks off guard. So more just out of respect that again, you know no surprises. They
don't need to be caught off guard with the microphone and same with us. I think they try to avoid
surprising us with things in the course of the meeting so I just think that mutual respect. And then anything
else on that or we'll move onto Roger's presentation on the open meeting law.
Councilman Labatt: Are we, you know Scott you had mentioned the drop dead time.
Scott Botcher: Just think about it.
Councilman Ayotte: Say that again.
Mayor Jansen: A drop dead time for when we end the meetings.
Scott Botcher: Yeah, it really depends on, it was rarely used because frankly they were so efficient at
running their show that rarely did they get to it but at the time where you get such a hot issue that the place
is packed and you know we do the agenda, the mayor had to call me up and say why is all this stuff on the
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
agenda? We've got big enough issues. I'm sorry, it's, we've got to do it. Those things will happen at a
certain time, the meeting was just done. By the joint agreement of the councilmembers.
Mayor Jansen: And I think I'm remembering from again the same procedures that Roger's recalling, we're
not operating necessarily under right now. I believe it said midnight.
Scott Botcher: And you can simply do that as an agreement amongst yourself to do policy. I mean you
don't need 5 pages of written stuff to do that.
Mayor Jansen: But I know we continued past it when we were still trying to work something out.
Scott Botcher: Then you always have that, and it's hard to say no, I'm tired. I'm not thinking clearly
because you want to do something for the citizens but sometimes it's in everyone's best interest to say you
know, we're cooked. Because that will happen.
Roger Knutson: Just one more thought on streamlining. As your consent agenda, and we tried this, two
thoughts on it. In one community I work in, they rountinely after they go through the consent agenda and
say, does the council member want anything removed. Then they ask, are there any other candidates from
the council to put on the consent agenda.
Councilman Labatt: You mean are there any items on the.
Roger Knutson: On the regular agenda.
Councilman Labatt: The regular that you could have on consent.
Roger Knutson: Yeah, and for whatever reason the staff might have put it on the regular agenda and you
can just say this is a no brainer. You know whatever. Let's just move this and say I would like to put
items 6, 7 and if anyone on the council objects to it going on the consent agenda, it does not. But if
everyone's in agreement, yeah we don't need a presentation on that. Then it goes on the consent agenda.
Councilman Labatt: Okay.
Roger Knutson: And like some cities, like I believe the practice here is almost no land use matters go on
the consent agenda, and maybe there's a good reason for that. Because it can be difficult issues. But some
of them are truly routine, or at least I think they are, where say the staff recommended approval and the
Planning Commission recommended approval, and there was no interest in the community on the issue. A
lot of those go on in some communities rather than having a full presentation on it. A small matter that no
one's really interested in.
Mayor Jansen: Okay. Thank you for mentioning that. Appreciate it.
OPEN MEETING LAW DISCUSSION, ROGER KNUTSON, CITY ATTORNEY.
Roger Knutson: Open meeting law?
Mayor Jansen: Please.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Roger Knutson: I started out with an hour and a half. Now I'm down to 3 minutes so.
Councilman Labatt: 2 ½.
Roger Knutson: 2 ½, quick.
Mayor Jansen: And this is more so we don't unintentionally, committing a violation. It's not to suggest
that anyone would be doing anything intentional. Just some of the little things that we can slip up on.
Roger Knutson: I'll squeeze as much as I can in 2 minutes now. First, what does the open meeting law
cover? It covers a quorum of the council. That means when 3 of you are together, 3 of you are together
and 1 of the 3 following 3 things happen. 3 of you together and you make a decision concerning city
business, you discuss city business or you obtain information on city business. If any of those 3 things
occur when 3 of you are together, that is a meeting of the City Council and unless it's properly called,
there's a violation of the open meeting law. Where inadvertently councils get into trouble, and I've seen
this many times is you, one of you gets a call. I'd like you to come to our neighborhood meeting at the
school. We're going to discuss this issue and you say, love to be there. You show up. You don't know
that that same person has called everyone on the council. And so you walk in the room and say on look at,
everyone's here. Isn't that interesting. To discuss potholes or whatever the issue is. 2 of you should turn
around and walk out.
Councilman Labatt: 2 or 3?
Mayor Jansen: Only 2 can stay.
Roger Knutson: Only 2 can stay, excuse me. 3 should get out, and ifI were one of you I wouldn't want to
be the one violating the meeting laws so I'd be the first one to hit the door. And you just explain to people,
you know we can't do this. Whether it's at someone's home or whether it's a community room or whatever
it is to discuss business. 3 together to discuss city related issue, you've got a problem unless it's a properly
called meeting. Calling meetings is very simple. All it takes is a posted notice on your main bulletin board.
That takes care of it. We also recommend, although it's not required, that you call the newspaper just to
give them a head's up on it as well. So if for example you think you may be going someplace where other
council members are going, could be in attendance for one of these things to discuss something to get
information, all you have to do is let folks know in advance and Scott and Karen can take care of the
proper noticing and you're taken care of.
Councilman Peterson: How far in advance?
Roger Knutson: 3 days in advance.
Mayor Jansen: 3 working days, correct?
Roger Knutson: 3 days. Just days. Calendar days.
Mayor Jansen: Just 3 calendar days. Not even necessarily business.
Roger Knutson: There are few exceptions to the open meeting law and what I'd really like to do is not tell
you what they are. But I will though. The reason I would like not to tell what they are is, don't, I'll give
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
you this one piece of advice. Don't close a meeting unless you call me. There's potential problems every
time you try to close a meeting and you've got to do it just right and you've got to make sure it's done
appropriately. People have thought they were doing it properly and they didn't. And they've been sued and
they've lost. Things like someone, in my 2 minutes I can't tell you too many stories but a county board
was in litigation and the chairman of the county board talked to their litigation attorney and said we need to
decide something about this piece of litigation. So the county board chair called the county board meeting,
closed the meeting. Violation. The attorney wasn't there. And the court said if you're going to have
attorney/client privilege, you're going to discuss litigation, you can't close the meeting unless the attorney
is there and a very large county around here got burned for a violation of the open meeting law. That is it,
just a little bit on the open meeting law.
Scott Botcher: Generally when we've done closed sessions we call Roger even to approve the verbiage on
the agenda so Minnesota is very, very strict and.
Mayor Jansen: And then also the multiple, what's the term for it?
Roger Knutson: Serial meetings.
Mayor Jansen: Serial.
Roger Knutson: Let me just briefly talk about that. There is another area where we have frankly one line
of discussion in one case and everyone knows it's true, it says you can't have serial meetings to violate the
open meeting law. Let's just briefly tell you what that means. That means Councilmember A for, and this
can happen many ways. E-mail is the easiest way. I mean I'm amazed. I imagine it happens
instantaneously. I don't know how e-mail works but Councilmember A calls Councilmember B and says
hey, we have this item on the agenda. How do you feel about it and the two of you talk and B says
something and then Councilmember A calls Councilmember C and says, you know I talked to
Councilmember B. B feels this way. How do you feel C? A serial meeting because the 3 of you, you've
shared your views. Discussed it just like you were in a meeting in the same room together only you did it
sequentially. That's a violation. So what I always tell people, it's almost going to be impossible someday
on e-mails because I know I'm sitting there and I get a lot of them and it pops up on my screen and I reply
instantaneously sometimes when I happen to be on the screen and then someone else pops up and then you
respond and all of a sudden you're, you know. So just be very careful.
Councilman Labatt: So when Scott, when we get forward to the council mailbox where it says council, for
all of us, one e-mail to discuss something or inform us of something, that is not.
Roger Knutson: No.
Scott Botcher: And that's why what you get is you know a question and a response. It's not, and frankly I
don't often get, I don't know if I ever remember really getting them, where I got an e-mail like from you
saying, Scott I'm going to vote in favor of item 2 on the agenda and I forward that. I mean that's not, that
would be a violation. But if it's like how many dogs did we pick up in the, that's factual. That's different.
Mayor Jansen: You're not expressing an opinion.
Roger Knutson: Well and what, 3 council members have not shared their collective ideas. You might have
told the rest of the council what A feels but B and C have not joined in the discussion so you know what the
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
3 of you say. You can send e-mails just as you can send faxes or anything else. It's just a means of
transmitting information. It doesn't matter what the medium is. The best way to think of it is, it doesn't
matter whether it's an e-mail or a fax or a phone call or in person, the idea is 3 of you are communicating
to each other about how you're thinking about something.
Mayor Jansen: And if 2 people meet with a staff person, neither one of those 2 council people can then call
up another one to then share any of the opinions or discussion from having met with the staff person.
Roger Knutson: Sometimes I've gotten calls, not this year, from previous years from council members
asking me about something, and I had the discussion. Then someone else will call me on the council and
ask me about the same subject. I will never say you know I just got a call from A about this. I don't want
to be part of inadvertently causing a problem.
Councilman Labatt: How about, let's just say that with the February Festival coming up.
Councilman Ayotte: The what?
Councilman Labatt: With the February Festival on Lake Ann. I know I got a call from one of the Park
and Rec guys to help out. You know do whatever.
Mayor Jansen: We'll probably all be there.
Councilman Labatt: So let's say we're all there. Okay, but we're not sitting around some fish hole with
our jig sticks fishing for crappies. But we're all there.
Councilman Peterson: Be assured of that.
Roger Knutson: You can all be there. You can all go fishing together, but you just don't want to talk
about city business.
Councilman Labatt: So it's any item related to the city.
Roger Knutson: Talk about those darn Vikings or something.
Councilman Labatt: The Vikings, the Wild or whatever.
Roger Knutson: Whatever.
Councilman Peterson: Curling. We can talk about curling.
Councilman Labatt: Teach you all how to curl.
Mayor Jansen: Craig, did you have a question.
Councilman Peterson: No, more of a statement I guess and a request from all of us and the new person.
Talking about when we get the phone calls from groups or whatever that if we do go, I think it'd be prudent
for us to send an e-mail that we're going so we know who is going. Where we're going. And it may be
appropriate that another person go so we have 2 people there. I mean it goes back to, I think that's just
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
reasonable because many times we're, you know all of a sudden one person can be speaking for the whole
council or what is presumed to be the whole council's opinion whenever we open our mouths, it can be
construed negatively so I think I can certainly do that and I think if you all agree, let's just make a pact that
we inform everybody when we're going out and going in the public.
Mayor Jansen: And actually under one of the items in here I have calendar review as an item under council
presentations. That we actually speak to those be it before or be it after.
Councilman Labatt: Craig, I think that's a great idea. We tried it 2 years the last 2 years and it didn't
work. We got road blocked but I strongly support you on that. Thank you.
Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you. So then onto point 4? The council orientation program, we all got the
notice from Scott that he's pulled that together for February 28th from noon to 4:30. That should be a real
interesting time for everybody...
Councilman Peterson: Do you want lunch or no?
Scott Botcher: I run both ways. To me it's like no, you're going to be too busy to eat but I just want you
to know that coming in. Grab something on the way in
Mayor Jansen: Good mention.
Scott Botcher: Or if you're riding I the fire truck, snow plow truck, have them drive you through Wendy's
or something.
Councilman Labatt: ... I want to go with the inspectors on the snowplow.
Scott Botcher: Do whatever you want. You have 50 minutes with each one of them.
Councilman Labatt: 157
Scott Botcher: 5-0.
Councilman Peterson: Can we get a helicopter before the 28th?
Scott Botcher: No, but we have an alumincraft boat out in the fire department.
Mayor Jansen: Okay. Scott and I have started to kick around this planning for the City Council retreat.
Depending on how quickly we get position number 5 filled. Obviously we want to wait for that person.
Looking at getting a facilitator. Having it be a team building and really talking to that person about how
much we can manage to accomplish, be it in an afternoon or whatever we can set aside and that was one of
my questions for all of you as we're trying to pull this together. Can we do a halfa day on a Saturday or
otherwise we're looking at maybe to do a long evening? And my thought and one of the suggestions that
I've heard the facilitators give for any sort of a retreat like this is do it when you don't have the pressure of
coming from work or needing to go to work. If you can get off site so you're clear in your head of
everything, and especially for Scott because he'd probably be backing upstairs all the time. If you can get
off site so you can really focus on what it is you're trying to accomplish.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Ayotte: I don't feel comfortable in saying it should be a Saturday, half day or evening
without, I don't think we should train to a time line. I think we should train to a standard so based on what
we're trying to accomplish, first I think we have to emphasize that. And then figure out how long it's going
to take rather than saying... 4 hours, you don't know.
Mayor Jansen: It's relatively standard and we'll work it out with a facilitator that if we can block out a
halfa day on a Saturday, I don't think you're going to get all of us committing to a full weekend or full
day. We need to get at least some motion, and I understand what you're saying.
Councilman Ayotte: Why don't we do this then. First of all it should be a Saturday. You know to do it
during the week is just nuts. But I really would like, you know team building and visioning, boy that's
really.
Mayor Jansen: You don't like this warm fuzzy stuff. So don't worry about it. We'll take care of it.
Councilman Ayotte: Well I'm just saying that it'd be nice if we could kind of provide definition of what.
Mayor Jansen: We will.
Scott Botcher: And we're going to have to get.., potential moderators.
Councilman Ayotte: I have a hard time opening up to people, you know what I mean?
Councilman Labatt: You did a lot of... enough to get elected.
Mayor Jansen: So we've got one okay with the Saturday.
Scott Botcher: ... we're worried about a round house that's 3 times over budget and we haven't gotten to
the good stuff yet.
Councilman Labatt: What if we, and I don't know what Craig and Bob what your availability during the
week but, frankly I mean I'd rather do it on a weekday. During the day when Scott's working.
Councilman Ayotte: I don't have a problem with that either as long as we're not doing it in the evening.
Councilman Labatt: No, I'd like to do it between 8:00 and 4:30.
Councilman Ayotte: Can you do that?
Councilman Peterson: I'd prefer not to take a vacation day so, but that's just personal preference.
Scott Botcher: Linda we'll just have to talk to some moderator.
Councilman Peterson: I'd rather give Scott a half day of vacation then me take one.
Scott Botcher: We'll just have to see what happens Linda.
Councilman Labatt: Well I get one weekend offa month so we're all king of.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Peterson: Can you think of 3 better people to spend it with?
Councilman Labatt: Yeah, my wife and 3 kids.
Councilman Peterson: Bring them with.
Councilman Labatt: Well let's discuss this more.
Mayor Jansen: Well what's your Saturday off we're taking in February?
Councilman Labatt: It's already taken actually for a hockey tournament with my kids in Bloomington. It's
March 3rd.
Mayor Jansen: Okay, we'll work on it and get back to you. So, but you know we're kicking that around
and Scott's looking into some different options for us there. Also looking as far as the planning the
community survey. Again, we don't need to get into detail right now. Decision Resources has done the
original survey for the community back for the park and trail referendum. Scott's going to have some
conversations with the gentleman who had done that. He's contacted Chaska. Chaska just had one done
for their community. Decision Resources has been involved in really the majority of the metropolitan
surveys that are done so it gives you a good set of input based upon the other municipalities. And then at
some point we do, and I wrote this on here Scott, if we can get the '97.
Scott Botcher: ...
Mayor Jansen: We'll get the '97 survey to everyone so at least you can get a feel for the questions that
were asked then and we do want to make sure it's an instrument that we can use to years after the fact and
get some continuity of information that we're collecting so we can see if we're in fact making progress or
not.
Councilman Ayotte: I would ask that there be at least a cursory call made to Bud Olson who's got his
survey that he's been working on. I don't know if you're aware of that. I talked to him today.
Mayor Jansen: Yes, they've been working with staff and he's had that on the radar screen.
Councilman Ayotte: Well maybe we can fold that in or not, but at least.
Mayor Jansen: I think we need to keep some of these things separate but we do want to document...
Councilman Ayotte: That's cool but I'm just saying... Just to coordinate.
Mayor Jansen: Item 7, I didn't bring a copy of these with me but the League of Minnesota Cities
conference came out to us if you recall in some of the correspondence packets. And I would highly, highly
recommend that conference to everyone. There's one for newly elected and there's one for re-elected.
Councilman Labatt: Seasoned veterans you mean?
Mayor Jansen: Yes.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Councilman Labatt: Okay.
Mayor Jansen: This seasoned veteran, one term. I am planning on attending the one for re-elected. If you
can't find your form, if you contact Karen Engelhardt, I'm sure she can probably get her hands on it for
you.
Scott Botcher: It's also on the web. All the forms are on the web.
Councilman Labatt: Where is it at? Is it locally?
Scott Botcher: I don't know this year.
Mayor Jansen: Yeah, I've forgotten.
Councilman Labatt: One year it was in Rochester.
Scott Botcher: It's been in Rochester. They've been in St. Cloud. They've done them.
Mayor Jansen: They have different sites but there's usually one within the metro area. And that's where I
wrote down the 16th and 17th is whichever one is metro.
Scott Botcher: lmmc.org.
Councilman Labatt: Okay.
Todd Gerhardt: To piggy back on what you're saying. Then you're going to be getting a monthly
newsletter for LMMC. I signed you up for a monthly bulletin of the Minnesota City activities so it's
coming electronically to you by e-mail. So when you see that, I signed you up for that.
Councilman Labatt: Thank you.
Mayor Jansen: Great. Then the next couple items, I'm just wanting to make you aware of some of the
other groups that I'm currently attending. Now the first one is the Southwest Transit Commission. That's
a monthly meeting on the fourth Thursday of every month. What we have not been very good at is my
actually reporting back so that you get the information from that meeting. So I'm going to ask Karen to
add on the first meeting of every month a reporting item on there so I can at least give you the highlights of
what we're covering. It's never anything real earth shattering.
Councilman Ayotte: During the working session there?
Mayor Jansen: Probably during the council meeting. So at least you've got that input. I listed some of the
documentation and it's just an awful lot of documentation as far as trying to do any reporting or Xeroxing
of things back to the council. The community leaders group is a little bit less formal. They meet every 2
months I think has been the standard. The next one is on February 2nd. I noted the location and the time.
That group is really hosted by District 112 and it's an effort to keep the school district coordinated with
Chaska, ourselves, Victoria. There's nothing formal about it. It's just the group coming together, the
Mayor and the staff people and Scott attends and just doing an informal reporting of what we all have
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
going on. Currently the big issue has been transportation and all of the road projects that are going to be
occurring so the most formal thing you're going to see happen is our trying to come out with a coordinated
map and schedule of all of the road projects that are going to be going on this summer and really making
everybody's lives difficult. So that's the first formal effort I've really seen come together with this group.
Councilman Peterson: Roger, that being said, if we're reviewing city business with other people, having 3
or 4 council members there, is there an issue?
Mayor Jansen: It's a rather, I don't know that the City would want more than currently the way it was, I
was attending as a council person and the Mayor representative was there so I think maximum, otherwise
you're overwhelming the group with too many representatives from one city.
Roger Knutson: Same rules would apply though. If you had a quorum of this council there discussing city
business, you want to publish it, post the notices of a city meeting.
Scott Botcher: You guys will have enough meetings to go to. You don't have to worry about it. I mean
frankly I wouldn't.
Mayor Jansen: And that's why I guess I'm saying, this one's pretty informal. There really isn't a lot going
on as far as action being taken other than that transportation information. But of course, you know if
somebody wants to e-mail me and say that you want to attend this meeting, I can make sure that we don't
end up with 3 people there if the second person wants to come along. The Minnetonka you heard
mentioned here tonight. They've only now, I think they said was the third time. They've just started trying
to do the same scenario within their communities so it's brand new. That group seemed to only be the
mayor representatives. There weren't council people. I think it was mayors.
Scott Botcher: And city managers.
Mayor Jansen: City managers and then the school district representative was how they structured that one
so far. But again I can make sure that I'm reporting back what's actually being discussed and how it's
affecting us but this was a pretty informal again exchange of information. I had volunteered to serve on
two of the District 112's planning forums this summer and it's an effort that started clear back last
January. From those two planning forums they formed a long range steering committee and I had
volunteered then to go onto the long range steering committee so we're now down to fairly limited meetings
on those issues currently and we're taking the final vision and mission statement to the school board end of
this week. But that was more the residents that I threw my name in there. That was one of those notices
that had come through in our correspondence package. If you watch the correspondence package, we get a
lot of those notifications on meetings. Staff and I attended the affordable workshop on Friday and that was
something that had in fact been in that correspondence package so you do get a lot of good information in
there. We're almost at 10:00, should I jump to the library information?
Scott Botcher: I would.
Mayor Jansen: I'll stop at 10:00.
Councilman Labatt: Okay, but you're going to remain the Southwest Transit Commission representative,
right?
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Mayor Jansen: Yep, if everyone's okay with that.
Councilman Labatt: Yeah, that's fine.
Scott Botcher: And 11 you can pick up in 2 weeks and that will be more lengthy anyway.
Mayor Jansen: Yeah, it will be.
Scott Botcher: And 14 is in your packet. Met Council Mayor's Report is what I gave out at the work
session, that's 14(b) sort of. 15 is strategic plan. You have that. I gave it to you tonight. I have to run the
old task plan I can run for you and I'll just, maybe even I'll do it electronically because I think it's on that
spread sheet format. Do it that way and then those are those 3 things but yeah, do you want to do the
library thing? I gave her the dates that you'd like exhausted. She said I can't sit still that long and I said
we should hang together. I'm going to call her in the morning and give her the.
Councilman Ayotte: At some point I'll e-mail you Scott or the Mayor and we can have a development
strategy, I think that's really key at one point. I'm not sure what we're doing with that.
Mayor Jansen: It just needs to be a discussion. We haven't even gotten there yet. I put the last.
Councilman Ayotte: Okay, just as a thing to hit.
Mayor Jansen: Yep. I put the last 17 on are just to have them on your radar screen. They're out there.
Councilman Ayotte: Alright, library.
Mayor Jansen: Library. Initial discussions with the architecture firm, trying to come up with some public
hearing dates so that we can get this rolling. This was trying to work around Barry Scherer's schedule as
well. Looking at the initial public hearing date of February 8th, is a Thursday at 7:00 p.m. The reason
Scott was catching up with Melissa was so that we can already maybe start to get some of the discussion
and at least some notification out there that this will be occurring. And if she gets something in this
Thursday it will give 2 weeks in a row to give it attention. We'll make sure that we get it to the Friends of
the Library so they know what's going on but we can start spreading the word.
Councilman Labatt: Can we put the date on our calendars?
Scott Botcher: Yes, will do.
Mayor Jansen: February 8th, 7:00 p.m.
Scott Botcher: And we're planning on about 3 hours.
Mayor Jansen: In this room. And part of the discussion that Barry was bringing up was that our presence
can have a tendency to limit some people's discussion as far as the public because now if they really want
to be able to express what they think about the building, if one of us or some of us are sitting in the
background, they may have a tendency to hold back and maybe not feel as if, or comfortable. It's more of.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Scott Botcher: I think the bigger issue is that you all are going to have so many whacks at this thing. More
whacks than you want that this process at the outset is really to garner input from the public as to what's
happening. You're going to get that. You're going to get that both in terms of the renderings that are put
together. You're going to get that in terms of representation from, and Linda can talk about this, the
building committee structure but from that Building Committee structure. Frankly if it was me, and as
many meetings as you guys go to, I govern up here again. Do I need to really physically be here to hear the
input?
Councilman Labatt: But this is a public...to solicit. For Scherer and his group to solicit input.
Scott Botcher: Yeah, and frankly I don't think staff. I'm not planning on staff being there unless they need
somebody for clerical support because it's truly for the consultant that we've hired to go to the public and
say okay, now it's time.
Mayor Jansen: It's like what we did with the task force and it then turned into the two public hearings
where it was the public talking with the consultant and the consultant trying to give them the big vision and
draw out from them their comments. And they're planning on having someone there to be able to keep
notes so that they're able to give us the feedback from the public so it won't be as if we're missing
anything.
Councilman Ayotte: I think it's a good idea not to but we are.., consultant stipulate the ground rule that
that's the intent so they don't, Linda and I...
Scott Botcher: We already had the discussion of ground rules.
Councilman Ayotte: Good, good.
Mayor Jansen: Yeah, okay. Conversation was around having 3 of these public hearings and trying to
stagger the nights or the days that they're having them to allow for people's schedules. If you can't make it
on the Thursday night, we then talked about a March l0th, which is a Saturday. And they're coming in and
starting at 9:00 a.m. on that Saturday and hosting the same sort of draw from the public, their input. At
that point they would have had the results from the prior meeting to be able to move on to a more advance
discussion. 9:00 to noon, March l0th is a Saturday.
Councilman Ayotte: Are you going to have them in different locations?
Mayor Jansen: No, we discussed just this room.
Councilman Ayotte: Okay.
Scott Botcher: Sort of the center of the community. Community gathering place.
Mayor Jansen: Then if they need to use the power point or the slides, they've got all the. The third meeting
then would be March 27th, which is a Tuesday. So we've got a Thursday, a Saturday and a Tuesday. And
a Tuesday night would be 7:00 p.m. Again probably 3 hours. A Thursday, a Saturday and then Tuesday
night.
Councilman Ayotte: Okay.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Mayor Jansen: We then talked about the council receiving the update of all that information directly from
the consultant coming into our April 9th council meeting. April 9th council meeting to present their findings
as this moves forward. Now the piece I didn't tie into this at the beginning, and we talked about it over the
course of I think as we were reviewing with the architects the building committees, or a building committee.
So at least there is a group that is able to steer this at the policy level. Again, not getting down so much
into the detail. You know we're not doing the mechanicals of the building or really getting into the
functionality. There's certainly going to be opportunities for being able to express those opinions and ask
those questions, but this group more so to be able to steer more at that policy level. And what Barry was
suggesting was a staff representative being Scott, City Council representative being myself, the Library
Director so Melissa Burchone would be able to bring the.
Scott Botcher: County.
Mayor Jansen: Thank you. The County perspective and the library board and the county commission are
both very comfortable with Melissa as their representative so she does manage to meet both of their needs.
Rather than actually having a library board member on there. And then the possibility then of, well giving
friends the opportunity to come forward with a friend's representative and then a citizen at large. And
again, go ahead.
Scott Botcher: I'm sorry, who's not affiliated with friends or anybody is our goal. Just Joe Schmoe or
Jane Schmoe.
Mayor Jansen: Did I get them all? So 5. So you've got 5 people and again, all those 5 people are doing is
making sure that the project's proceeding as we've perceived it's going to. If there's issues that we need to
involve council in as far as any discussion, we can certainly raise those issues as we go along but I don't
really anticipate there being anything until we get to that April 9th. Once the public is really weighed in.
Scott Botcher: And in a project of this scope, the building committee frankly may meet more often than the
council. On a regular basis my expectation in a project of this nature, the building committee may set a
regular time. Like building a church. Once a week. Once every 2 weeks we either gather or we
conference. Conference call sort of deal and say where are we? ... whatever. It is, I mean we're not doing
the drawings obviously but it's more micro level than the council, but not, we're not the consultants and
that's a good filter for the council to have. It allows us to drive it without you guys being burdened with it
because it's going to be a full time job in 2 years plus. And at the same time allows you all to focus on
again the bigger picture stuff and I think that's what you want to do.
Mayor Jansen: Yeah, and initially as part of the whole public hearing process we didn't have that group
potentially meeting until after that first input meeting. So we've only blocked out one period of time in
which to say, okay. You're going in the first direction once they at least get some initial things on paper.
Scott Botcher: But that group will set their regular meeting schedule when they form...
Mayor Jansen: Did I miss anything from the library discussion?
Scott Botcher: No.
Mayor Jansen: More so wanting to bring it here.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Scott Botcher: Get the word out.
Mayor Jansen: Let you know that we can move forward on this kind of a timeframe.
Councilman Labatt: When is it slated to dig the hole?
Scott Botcher: Well we're going to bid in January.
Mayor Jansen: We should get a copy of that work plan that you had e-mailed me.
Scott Botcher: I can e-mail it to everybody.
Mayor Jansen: Yeah. It's got the month. It doesn't have what we just went over here. This is what they
had up on that board that you couldn't read from here. As far as the design time, the documents. The
negotiations and so forth so we'll make sure a copy of that goes out to the council. Any questions on the
library? Okay. Everybody look at the last page though because on here your city council appointment
process. You're trying to get me to adjourn, right?
Councilman Labatt: She's into my travel time.
Mayor Jansen: I just noted everybody that the dates that we had talked about the last time as far as the last
date to submit applications being Wednesday the 24th. We get the copies of the app's the 25th. We're in
here on Monday the 29th at 5:30 to review the applications and determine our interview schedule. Which
we talked about doing on that Monday, February 5th. I tried to work backwards. That if we're going to try
to stop at 10:00 p.m., to get 4 interviews in with them being about an hour a piece, we'd be starting at 5:00.
Scott Botcher: The boarder question is, you have more applicants than that. You don't have to answer this
but think about it. Do you want on the 29th to then cut down whatever the pool ends up being, into 4?
Mayor Jansen: That's where I was going yeah, with this. Either you end up adding another night or
increasing the amount of time or do we.
Scott Botcher: I'll shut up now.
Mayor Jansen: That's okay. We're tracking the same.
Councilman Peterson: I think we can answer that question when we see the applicants background.
Scott Botcher: I haven't looked at a single one.
Councilman Peterson: If we've got 3 ex-governors and a senator versus somebody who's been.
Scott Botcher: Those people aren't allowed, right?
Councilman Peterson: Yeah they're out.
Councilman Ayotte: Have you gotten any applications yet?
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Scott Botcher: I think we have 8.
Councilman Ayotte: You've got 8 already?
Scott Botcher: I believe. It was 8 in or 8 people have taken out the paperwork.
Mayor Jansen: I was aware of 2 on Thursday who had submitted and 8 who had picked them up.
Councilman Labatt: We should make them put some money up like, you know we all paid money for a
campaign.
Mayor Jansen: Yeah 5 bucks. Put in your $5.00 filing fee.
Scott Botcher: Expectation is that you'll have more than 4.
Mayor Jansen: And then I just, I tried to work through how the time might break out. Just so we all have a
feel going into this whole interview procedure in case somebody wants to get feedback. I just put this down
for discussion sake. We give the applicant 5 minutes up front to do an introduction. I don't know if that's
too fast for some folks. Scott then had provided us the four conceptual categories. If you care to explore
those 4 categories, if we just looked at allocating 10 minutes per category, with 4 of us asking questions,
it's like 2 plus minutes a question per category.
Councilman Peterson: My sense is I don't think we're going to get, all four of us aren't necessarily asking
questions. You know one or two people can take the lead and then the others would just augment from
there but. I think an hour is fine. How it flows, I've never been a proponent of an overly structured
interview but I think an hour is reasonable and then we can kind of play it by ear from there.
Mayor Jansen: We can kind of give a feel.
Councilman Labatt: Are we going to eat? I'm just trying to think of 5:00 p.m. I mean we tried to say
we're going to feed the council, maybe we should hit a drive thru on the way before we get in.
Mayor Jansen: Good point. Eat ahead of time.
Councilman Peterson: So we're eating at 4:30? That's a little bit early for me personally.
Councilman Labatt: Well, try 3:30 in the morning for your dinner.
Mayor Jansen: You're going to eat at the 5 minute break, right? Inhale.
Scott Botcher: And just for what it's worth. I don't expect any staff members to be present because it's
not really a staff function so.
Mayor Jansen: Okay. Thanks for mentioning that.
Scott Botcher: On the 29th, the interviews.
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City Council Meeting - January 22, 2001
Mayor Jansen: We might need someone for staging purposes though, because I think.
Scott Botcher: Either that or we can.
Councilman Labatt: Put a sign out there.
Scott Botcher: One person instead of a whole team, you could sort of, yeah. We'll figure something out.
Mayor Jansen: Because we'll do the green room thing again like you did with the library.
Scott Botcher: We'll figure something out.
Mayor Jansen: Okay. Yeah, let's talk about it.
Councilman Labatt: The green room or the padded room?
Mayor Jansen: The padded room. Anything else? Motion to adjourn.
Councilman Labatt moved, Councilman Ayotte seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor
and the motion carried unanimously. The City Council meeting was adjourned at 10:10 p.m.
Submitted by Scott Botcher
City Manager
Prepared by Nann Opheim
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