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CC 2010 04 26 CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING APRIL 26, 2010 Mayor Furlong called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to the Flag. COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT: Mayor Furlong, Councilman Litsey, Councilwoman Ernst, Councilwoman Tjornhom, and Councilman McDonald STAFF PRESENT: Todd Gerhardt, Laurie Hokkanen, Kate Aanenson, Paul Oehme, Todd Hoffman, Greg Sticha and Jill Sinclair PUBLIC PRESENT: Patty Besser 6518 Gray Fox Curve Barb Nevin 6361 Minnewashta Woods PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: Mayor Furlong: Thank you and welcome to everyone here in the council chambers as well as those watching at home. We’re glad that you joined us. I’d like at this time to just start with the council and ask if there are any changes or modifications to the overall agenda this evening. I would like to add one item which is a resolution in support of safety and expansion. Safety improvements and expansion and funding for Highway 212 and Minnesota Highway 5 which we’ll add as item (k) under our consent agenda. If there are no other changes or modifications we’ll proceed with the agenda as prepared. The other thing I’m going to do just for ease of saving myself jumping up and down, I’m going to switch a couple of the public announcements to the item E before item D today as well so. Let me start with that. I’d like to extend an invitation to all residents and guests to our annual Arbor Day celebration. In 1876 Minnesota th became the fourth state to adopt Arbor Day as an annual celebration. On May 8 Chanhassen will celebrate our Arbor Day which we have done each year, to set aside time to consider what trees do for all of us in our community. Planting trees adds beauty and character to our neighborhoods. Reduces energy costs. Increases property values and provides other benefits as well. Elton Trueblood said it best when he said a man has finally begun to discover the meaning of human life when he plants a tree under which he knows he may well never sit. So today and th on through Arbor Day on May 8 we’ll plant trees for the benefit of others tomorrow. As I said I’d like to invite all area residents, their families and friends to Chanhassen’s Arbor Day on th Saturday, May 8 at Lake Ann Park. The group is going to gather at 9:00 a.m. at the Hilltop shelter for a welcome and we’ll have local students from Excelsior Elementary will be there to read poems that they’ve written about trees. There’ll also be a tree planting demonstration and volunteers will plant 20 shade trees in Lake Ann Park. Refreshments will be served and I would th invite everyone to come join us on May 8 for our annual Arbor Day celebration out at Lake Ann Park. Very good. At this time I’m going to come down in front and make some Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 presentations regarding our Arbor Day poster contest winners and also provide some certificates and Maple Leaf awards to some of our volunteers. PRESENTATION OF ARBOR DAY POSTER CONTEST WINNERS. Mayor Furlong: Joining me here are two of our Environmental Commission members, J.R. Relick and Amy Wenner so thank you to them for their service on our Environmental Commission and being here tonight as well. On behalf of the Chanhassen City Council and our Environmental Commission I would like to congratulate all the winners of this year’s Arbor Day poster contest. The City has been sponsoring this contest for 11 years as a part of our annual Arbor Day activities. Every year local fifth graders are invited to submit drawings based on the annual theme. This year’s theme was, “Tree are Terrific and Energy Wise”. The City of Chanhassen would like to thank all the fifth graders at St. Hubert’s school and Bluff Creek Elementary School for their wonderful drawings. We’d also like to thank Lotus Lawn and Garden for their generous donation to the grand prize winner of a potted tree of his or her choice. Please visit the Chanhassen Library over the coming weeks to see all the posters that were submitted. The framed winning poster will hang in City Hall along with the past winners as well. Each of the runner-up will receive a potted pine tree that they can pick up at this year’s st spring tree sale which is May 1, this coming Saturday out at the Public Works center. What I’d like to do now is invite the runners-up to come forward and join us up here. And I apologize in advance if I mess up any names. Shireen Golban. Timmy Zeien. Nikki Peitz. Lauren Michels. Michael Anderson. Hallie Aanenson. Skylar Risch. Not here? Okay. Hanna Lea. And Annika Wellman. There you go. Now I’d like to invite this year’s grand prize winner Lauren Tritch to come forward. Lauren’s poster won not only our city contest but was forwarded to the State competition as well where it took third place in the State. As I said earlier a copy of this print will hang up in our city hall in the hallway where the other ones, the past winners are hung as well in a permanent location and we’d also like to present to Lauren here a gift certificate from Lotus Lawn and Garden in appreciation as well so congratulations. Can we get a picture? Very good. Congratulations to all of you. Good job. PRESENTATION OF CERTIFICATES OF APPRECIATION AND MAPLE LEAF AWARDS TO COMMISSIONERS. Mayor Furlong: We’d also like to recognize some citizens who volunteer and work on our various commissions and help City Councils throughout the years. We’d like to start with presenting a couple Certificates of Appreciation. The first to Neil Anderson. Neil was appointed by the City of Chanhassen to the Southwest Transit Commission in 2007 and successfully completed his term on that commission. Neil was a very active member of the commission. Always come to the meetings prepared, actively participating and helping the commission move forward. He served as the commission’s Secretary and Treasurer during the last 2 years of his term as well. During his time on the commission Southwest Transit was recognized in many ways. Some of the most notable is that it was named the Minnesota Top Public Transportation Association System of the Year. Received the American Public Transportation Association Gold Award for Safety in both 2008 and 2009. They received the Independent School District #287 Outstanding Player Award, and also received a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in 2 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 Financial Reporting for the Government Financial Officer’s Association both in 2008 and 2009. So Neil, on behalf of the City of Chanhassen we’d like to thank you for your service on the Southwest Commission and throughout the City. Thank you very much. Neil Anderson: Thank you. Mayor Furlong: Is Thor here? No? Let’s move on then. We have some Maple Leaf Awards to distribute this evening. Kevin Dillon is the first one. Kevin has served both on the Park and Recreation Commission and the Planning Commission for the City of Chanhassen. Kevin was first appointed to the Park and Rec Commission in 2004 and served a three year term there prior to moving to the Planning Commission. During his service on the Park and Rec Commission was a time that we saw numerous special projects completed. With Kevin’s help and leadership new playgrounds were installed in various neighborhood parks including Chanhassen Hills, Curry Farms Park, North Lotus Lake, Meadow Green and Rice Marsh Lake. All these new playgrounds were installed with the assistance of hundreds of hours and many people volunteers, citizens volunteering as well. It was a great effort. Larger playground projects were completed at Lake Ann and Lake Susan Parks and Kevin helped out during the new City Center Park right here at City Hall with the dedication back in 2004. In 2006 Kevin was appointed to the Planning Commission. During his service on the commission a number of major projects were accomplished as well. Most notable the completion of the 2030 Comprehensive Plan plus many developments including Arboretum Business Park, Chanhassen High School, the Southwest Transit Park and Ride and numerous others. Kevin, I’d like to thank you on behalf of the City Council and the City of Chanhassen and all the residents for your service on the Park and Recreation Commission and Planning Commission over these last 6 years. Thank you. Dan Keefe. Dan was appointed to the Planning Commission in 2004. During his 6 years he brought a unique perspective to the Planning Commission and his passion for the city was evident during discussions and conversations that he had. During his tenure a number of major projects were approved. Again the completion of the 2030 Comprehensive Plan. Many developments were reviewed and approved including the Arboretum Business Park, Chanhassen High School, Southwest Transit Park and Ride, many subdivisions including Liberty on Bluff Creek, Settlers West, The Preserve, Pinehurst, Lake Harrison. Thank you Dan for your years of dedication and service to our city on the Planning Commission. I really appreciate all your contributions. Dan Keefe: Thank you. Mayor Furlong: Now I’d like to invite Curt Robinson. You made it. Curt was appointed to the Senior Commission in 2004 and has been an instrumental member of that commission during the last 6 years. A number of his many accomplishments that he served as representative of the Carver County Health Partnership, was Chair of our Senior Commission, recruited volunteers for the Smart Link Transportation, volunteered for delivery of Meals on Wheels, approached Chanhassen businesses and advocated for installation of senior citizen parking signs, which we see around many spots in the city. Volunteered to teach computer basics to seniors and arranged for the Chanhassen Lion’s Club to sponsor the Annual Senior Picnic out at Lake Ann which draws hundreds of our residents. Just a great event. The seniors in Chanhassen as well as Carver 3 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 County are very fortunate and honored to have you as part of our community. On behalf of the City Council and all the residents thank you very much for all your service. Thank you. CONSENT AGENDA: Councilwoman Ernst moved, Councilman McDonald seconded to approve the following consent agenda items pursuant to the City Manager’s recommendations: a. Approval of Minutes: -City Council Work Session Minutes dated April 12, 2010 -City Council Verbatim and Summary Minutes dated April 12, 2010 Receive Commission Minutes: -Planning Commission Work Session Minutes dated April 6, 2010. Resolution #2010-34: c. Audubon Road Reconstruction Project 10-02: Call Assessment Hearing. e. Water Supply Plan: Approve Amendment to Permit 1981-6089. Resolution #2010-35: f. Approve Resolution Establishing No Parking Zone in City Center Parking Ramp. g. Approve Payment to Chanhassen Dinner Theater for Relocation Expenses. Resolution #2010-36: h. Approve 2009 Fund Transfers to the Revolving Assessment Construction Fund. Resolution #2010-37: i. Approve Resolution Proclaiming May 8, 2010 as Arbor Day. Resolution #2010-38: j. Accept $2,000 Donation from General Mills for Chanhassen Safety Camp. Resolution #2010-39: k. Approve Resolution in Support of Funding for US Highway 212 and Minnesota Highway 5. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. VISITOR PRESENTATIONS: Patty Besser: Well good evening Council people and Mayor. Mayor Furlong: Good evening. Patty Besser: You’ve never met me. Todd has met me and Paul has met me. 4 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 Mayor Furlong: Okay. Patty Besser: My name is Patty Besser. I live up in, at 6518 Gray Fox Curve in Chanhassen. Up in the Fox Hollow development. Well last November, we’ve been dealing with this issue rd since last November. On November 3 there was a, it was a normal work day. It’s a Tuesday. There was a watermain break in my neighborhood. Right in the middle of the street. So I have a brand new driveway. My driveway is 8 weeks old. Concrete. 5 inches thick. In, does anybody have an idea of what the number one thing in emergency is? What’s the number one culprit in emergency? Anybody know? No one knows? Mayor Furlong: Well why don’t you just. Patty Besser: Time. Time is a factor in everything, right? Whether you’re having a heart attack. When you have an emergency of any sort, it’s time. So the longer it takes for you to respond, the worst the damage gets. Correct? So anyway my neighbor, lives across the street from me. His name is Ron McDougall. He called City Hall. This was mid morning. Called City Hall. The phone rings and it rings and it rings. The watermain has broken. I mean it’s just a small, it’s a small pooling at the time right. Nobody in the city has still answered the telephone. As it rings. This is now getting bigger. The water is eroding out from underneath this water. This hole and it’s getting bigger and bigger. Still no one answers. So Ron doesn’t know what to do. He hangs up the phone. He calls 911. What can 911 do? They couldn’t do anything for us unfortunately. So they transfer him back to the city. Again this hole is getting bigger. There’s thousands of gallons of water going down our street. Thousands of gallons pumped out of this watermain. This watermain didn’t just take out the road. This watermain took out the curb. The whole curb was missing at the end of my driveway. Remember this driveway is 8 weeks old. Then, after it takes out, it erodes. Takes out all this dirt. Everything. It takes out the curb. Now it’s taking out my driveway. If my driveway’s 35, I’ve got pictures for you guys to have too. Or that you can look at. My driveway is 25 feet wide by 35 feet long with a slope. You know how high pressure water is? Well guess what, it shot water approximately 25 feet up into my driveway. This concrete company did a wonderful job on it. We’ve had specialists come out and look at it. They, the sections are 8 foot. I have 3 split, or 3 sections by 4 sections high. The watermain break pushed the water so high that it damaged 8 of 12 so far. 8 of 12. The 3 first bottom ones next to the curb. That’s what was missing. The next 3 above that and the 2 above that on the left hand side have now, those 2 just cracked in the last couple weeks. Again time is a factor. The city still hasn’t responded. This water is still pouring and how much force does it take to push that water 25 feet under a 5 foot, a 5 inch thick driveway uphill? It’s a lot of force. These guys were out. They saw the specialist. Todd. Paul. Both out at my driveway. The specialist came from Knife River. He was, he wasn’t there to represent me. I had never met him before. He was a specialist to talk about how concrete reacts to certain things. This guy gave us all a lesson in concrete. He did a great job. Well the thing is is that this damage, he told how it damaged my driveway basically and how it teetered, it’s cracked. It’s buckled. All these sections are cracked. It’s buckled. We put a level on it. It teeter tottered. He talked about how much damaging that could be. So anyway city never responds. They haven’t answered, they still haven’t answered their phone call yet. It took them forever because time is such a huge factor in anything. So to me this shows a lack of concern. They finally answer the phone. When the city did answer, I 5 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 don’t know who answered the phone. I don’t know. But I’m sure we could trace it back. We can trace that 911 call back too. So anyway, but when they finally answered, the person that responds that answers the phone, my neighbor Ron told them that we had a watermain break. You know what their response was? We’ll get out there this afternoon and take a look at it. This is gushing. We already have, he said, Ron said we already have a problem. We have a river going down our block. Both directions. It was literally a river. So then, so remember time is still a factor. By the time then the city, you know who knows how long it took this person to respond to anybody. To call anybody or whatever. Nobody came out to shut that watermain off for the longest time. Again remember, time is a factor. So anyway I feel that the neglect of the city to not answer the telephone. To let it ring and ring and ring and ring and ring. If they, if we would have waited to the afternoon, I probably wouldn’t even have a driveway. Friend of mine said we probably wouldn’t even have a neighborhood if we waited to the afternoon. That’s how big this watermain turned out. The watermain measured, the sink hole. The sink hole went from a little sink hole to a big sink hole to take, to eroding out all the stuff under the curb for that to sink. It eroded half of my drive, all the stuff under my driveway out to make it buckle. To make it crack. This eroded so badly that, I mean how do you, I mean I just don’t even know what we do. It is very frustrating because they’re saying it’s not that but it’s all pushed out. There’s Class V. You know how when you put a driveway in, you have the boards in? You pour the concrete. They come back a couple days later. They pull the boards out. Guess what? They pulled the boards out. There’s no Class V on the side. It’s all washed out from this watermain. It’s all washed out. It’s on the sides. I have proof of it in the thing. I have proof showing the curb is gone. I talked to Kevin Crooks one day. He came out to my driveway. We did talk for a few minutes. He told me how rotten the pipes are in the city of Chanhassen. Do you think the negligence of the city not answering the phone and stuff is my responsibility? Do you think any of that? Todd tried to tell me the other day, he wrote it in a letter saying this is an act of God. Well what is an act of God? An act of God. I Googled it. It comes out that it’s a natural, a natural catastrophe. God had nothing to do with this. God didn’t put my watermain, to put that watermain in. He didn’t put the water in there. That is nothing. The City is negligent. If they would have answered the phone the first time Ron called, they could have probably saved my driveway. It probably could have, it might have been just a small little hole that would have been in the street. But no. This sink hole is 25 feet by 10 ½ feet across. It’s in the middle of the road. That’s how big the sink hole got…then it took out the curb, because we had to have a curb company come in. Then all the damage to my driveway along with it. So to me the City is liable to help fix this driveway up to what it was before. I paid some good money for, I had one pour. I had a curb. I had a walkway and I had a driveway. The driveway alone I said was 25 feet by 35 feet. And how would you feel if it was your driveway out there and you’re up here begging for mercy? Eight sections have cracked. Just give it a couple more weeks and I’m sure more of them are going to crack. I mean I love living in the city of Chanhassen. I’ve been here for 16 years. I’ve lived in the same house for 16 years. I know all my neighbors. We just had, there was just another watermain up there 3 weeks ago. That was probably caught a little earlier. It’s a smaller hole. It’s only probably about 10 feet long by about 5 feet across and it took out the curb also. But to me always time is a factor of everything. I’m, I don’t know what to say and I just think that, that the act, this is the act of negligence and concern by the City of Chanhassen. The employees. The staff. Whoever you want to blame to respond in any kind of timely manner to an emergency. That is what caused the damage to my driveway. Like I said if they would 6 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 have caught it and got out there sooner, we might have just had a tiny little hole in the road. But it took out a lot more than that and that’s why I feel the City of Chanhassen’s liable to take care of this driveway and repair what I had. Mayor Furlong: Alright. Patty Besser: And I will give you, I’ll give you the, I have. Mayor Furlong: Please do. You have some handouts for us? Patty Besser: I do. In here, in my packet there’s, I gave. Yeah, 5. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. There’s 5 packets. You can look at the pictures. When you’re done looking at the pictures you’re free to call me. My phone number is on here. There’s 30 pictures in here. They start out from the early time of showing the curb missing, which is dirt all over it. Showing how wide, wide the damage in the sink hole are. All the way to all the damage that was done on it. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Patty Besser: So the first picture if you look in your packet, the first picture here is, this is a picture of my, of the driveway. Rebar. 2 foot on center. I was told by someone that 2 foot on center, you know how hard it is to crack 2 foot on center of rebar? The concrete when it’s put on there? It’s pretty hard. You don’t have to believe me. Mayor Furlong: If you want to set any pictures. Thank you. So anybody watching home can see as well. Patty Besser: This way? Okay. Okay. The next picture that I will show you is, you can see here all the, the rebar’s 2 foot on center there. Okay. So now, the next picture, the second picture in your packet is a completed picture by the 30-30 Concrete. These guys did, when we talked to the specialist that I, that is in here a little bit farther, this company did a better than average job. They went above and beyond the standards of putting this concrete in. The joints are only 8 feet instead of 10 feet. Slab. With a 5 inch, with a 5 inch concrete base. This is one of the pictures of it. That’s one of the pictures of a completed driveway. The next, the third picture is another picture of a completed driveway. This has the boards still in place as you can see. How would you, if there was, the Class V that’s on the side. I made a notation on the side of your pieces of paper showing where some of the Class V is at right there. That’s after these boards were taken out and after the watermain broke. That’s how much it washed out. The next is a copy of a letter by a gentleman, his name was Jim Ford. I didn’t, I just asked for a concrete specialist from the company that provided the concrete. So I didn’t even meet this gentleman until that day when he walked out to my driveway. You can see he’s certified by the State of Minnesota and by MnDOT. He went through and talked about how this water that’s in these watermains damaged the driveway and blew up into it. These next couple ones are just more of his credentials from the ACI. He told me I could look it up myself. So I did. And there he is. The next person listed is James Berg. This gentleman came out to my driveway with Paul and Todd. This guy, his card says Estimator/Project Manager. Nothing about concrete specialist. 7 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 Nothing about concrete specialist and this guy is trying to tell us there’s no way water could do this. Well you’d better tell that to the concrete specialist that that can happen. And then here’s, here’s just a definition of the act of God, telling you it’s a catastrophe. And my last part is a copy of the letter in meeting about the, about the damage being done. That your water damaged my driveway. If you read down into it the City did nothing to cause the watermain break that flooded your driveway. Hard for me to believe when if the City would have responded in a timely manner and with any kind of concern, like I said we wouldn’t have had, we wouldn’t have, we’ve still, I’d still have a curb. I’d still have the original curb. I would have a perfect driveway like I had before. But now I don’t any of that. I got a good curb to a certain degree. These gentleman saw that the curb was not inspected. I proved to them the other day that the curb in front of my house was not inspected because of the last picture in that packet you’ll see the close up picture of it. What it is is just a chunk of, all they did was, they threw on concrete on piece of a chunk so it would crack right away. A week later. Now it’s almost like nothing there. It’s pretty much all shredded away. There’s very little concrete still in that spot so I still think, and so the City needs to come out and see this. They really do. Our taxpayer money is paying for this company to excavate. There’s also a hole. I forgot to show it to these gentlemen. There’s a hole in the middle of the concrete. It’s about in the middle, it’s almost in the middle of the curb. About the size of a quarter and in 2 years, I bet in 2 years that that part of that curb will be crushed because with water getting into it, freezing. You know unthawing. Getting back and forth. Back and forth. It will probably crush so really you need to go back to the excavating company. The City needs to come out and inspect them, like I was told they had done. Again, and really take a look at this work. I encourage all of you to come out to my place. And if you would like, Jim Ford said he would be more than happy to speak with any of you by phone or by coming out to talk to you all together as a group. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Patty Besser: So but it was because of time and a lack of concern and nobody answering that telephone. That’s what caused it. It was, like I said it was mid morning. Tuesday. Where was everybody? Who was supposed to be on the phone? Isn’t that a 24/7? I used to work, I used to work doing angiography. You know what? If there was a heart attack, I had to have my butt at the hospital in less than a half an hour because if you’re having a heart attack, guess what? Same thing. Time is a factor. That’s just that much less the damage so. Mayor Furlong: Thank you for your comments. I guess first of all Mr. Gerhardt, thoughts and comments on this. Todd Gerhardt: I don’t disagree with anything that Patty said with the exception that you know, I don’t know if us being out there any earlier would have improved the condition of the driveway. That’s up for interpretation. From the cause of the watermain break, I don’t believe the City is liable. We have hot soils in that area. We have hot soils. They attack the cast iron pipes in the area. They erode the pipe. The pipe gets weak from the pressure from the watermain and that’s what causes the watermain to break. The only solution to that is to wrap the pipes in a replacement when they’re time to be replaced, you would wrap them in poly to separate the pipe from the soils. With that I had to support our insurance company’s opinion on 8 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 it. You know if we drove on her driveway, if we did something to break that watermain I could see the City being liable. We try our best to get out to sites as soon as we can. We have the non- emergency number. We have, somebody’s always carrying a pager 24/7. I don’t know who Ron called. I don’t know what number he called. Patty Besser: He called the City of Chanhassen. Todd Gerhardt: But there is a non-emergency number to contact which will then contact our utility department. But he was right in calling 911. They should know how to get a hold of us too down there and we have probably 30 watermain breaks a year and this is another occurrence as one of those. Sometimes we will do damage, or the water will do damage through drainage or flooding basements and you know again, I’m trying to figure out what the City did wrong to cause us to be liable to replace Patty’s driveway. Patty Besser: Council should seek a comment about how I was treated when I was out at my driveway. I felt threatened by Todd. Not once. Not twice. Five times. Five times. Five times he did this. He did a little active motion to me. He said, do you remember what you said? If I were you I wouldn’t go down that road with me. To me I took that as a personal threat. Because I’m a woman that lives in Chanhassen, I took that as a threat. If you said it once, well I could kind of give or take that but no. He said it five times. He looked at his watch like I was taking up his time that night. Three times. Yeah, give me that look Todd. Go ahead. Three times. I watched you. I watched very closely. Not only that, you wanted to go over and play with the neighbor’s dog. Why the heck are you going over to play with the Ron’s dog and throw the ball for. You’re here to discuss my driveway. How do you think the taxpayers feel about that? Mayor Furlong: Okay. Todd Gerhardt: I’m not even going to get into what Patty said to me. And what she said to the dog you know. She was accusing me of not coming out last November to her site. She accused Paul Oehme of doctoring emails and I said you know that’s not going to help matters. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright. Patty Besser: Let me take that back. He did not come out to my driveway in November. They lied to me. Todd. 9:00. It’s documented on my calendar. It wasn’t even in November. It was rd December 23. 9:00. I talked to Todd on the phone. I was at work. I work over next to Bachman’s. I work in the medical field. I get this phone call. We discussed about getting together and meeting. Fine. I said you know what? I have most Monday’s off so let’s get together on a Monday. Why don’t you see if, he wanted to bring a concrete rep out from DayCo. Fine. But I said that’s not fair. It’s you, your representative against me. That’s real fair. That shows discrimination there. So, he goes fine. Then do you want to have someone else so I was going to have my concrete person come out. He calls me back an hour and 15 minutes. I looked at my computer. I get a phone call an hour and 15 minutes later. At 10:15 I get a phone call saying well, the DayCo rep couldn’t meet out at here, out at your premises. Why didn’t he call me? He said they went out there. Him and the DayCo rep. Went out there. Why didn’t you call 9 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 me? I could have taken my lunch break and left and gone out to my driveway and met up with them for a few minutes. But here’s the thing. They’ve caught lying about going out there that day. All three of these guys. Paul, Todd and DayCo rep all lied about going out to my house that day and they did not, and the reason is is because they wanted to see if this was, they said we want to wait til spring to see if this is a shrinkage crack or a settling crack. Fine. I said fine. Send me a letter saying that we talked about this and this would be brushed under the carpet. You know what? I never received a letter and I never received an email. If I didn’t contact the City, it was not going to get done. I finally had an email saying, hey it’s been over 3 months now. I have all those emails. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Patty Besser: I’m just letting you know. If you want to see any of that stuff, meet anybody, I have it all. Mayor Furlong: Alright. Patty Besser: So, and whenever you want to, if you want to just, I don’t know if you want to send the pictures back or what you want to do with those so you look at them good and stuff, that would be just fine with me. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright. Patty Besser: My address is on there. Phone number’s on there. I’ll pick them up at the City if you want. Mayor Furlong: Okay. We’ll take a look at those. Patty Besser: Okay, I appreciate your time. Thank you. Mayor Furlong: Alright, thank you. Anyone else for visitor presentations this evening? Let’s move on then to other items on our agenda. LAW ENFORCEMENT/FIRE DEPARTMENT UPDATE. Mayor Furlong: Tonight we get the monthly updates from our fire department. I see Chief Smallback is here. Good evening Chief. Chief Roger Smallback: Good evening. For year to date we got 150 calls for service year to date. For the month of April, as of this morning, we’ve had 36 calls for April. The year to date numbers are slightly above historical averages. The month to date, 36 calls in April is fairly nd consistent with historical averages. There were two structure fires in April. April 2 there was a structure fire on Pimlico Lane. It was a daytime call. Early afternoon for a garage on fire. On arrival we did find smoke, heavy smoke and some flames showing from the garage. We were able to confine the fire to the garage and content. There was a couple of cars in the garage. The 10 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 doors were closed. There were two cars in the garage. The cars did not burn up but sustained substantial heat and smoke damage. There was some additional belongings and content in the garage that burned up too. The fire did get into the structure a little bit but again we were able to contain it to the garage area. There’s very light smoke in the house but nothing significant. th April 10, Canterbury Court we were called to, a call came in initially as a house fire. On arrival what we found was a deck on fire. It was a 4 unit townhouse and it was one of the end units that the deck was on fire. That fire did significant damage to the outside of the building. Burned up the deck. A lot of siding and stuff like that. There was some smoke and water damage to the interior of the house because the fire, the heat of the fire took out, broke the glass out of the patio door leading to the deck and that allowed a lot of smoke and some water to intrude into the living areas. There was no fire damage to the interior of the house. It was confined to the outside of the building. That’s the report for April. Any questions? Mayor Furlong: Any questions for the Chief? Councilman Litsey: How’s it going as Chief? Chief Roger Smallback: Well I wish Jim was here because I could, I’ll quote from him and Jim’s words were, I knew a lot more about being a Lieutenant when I was a Sergeant. Councilman Litsey: Very good, well put. Chief Roger Smallback: I knew a lot more about being Chief when I was Assistant Chief. Councilwoman Ernst: I don’t have any questions but I just have a comment. Mayor Furlong: Certainly. Councilwoman Ernst: Chief you know just hearing you talk about these situations, I definitely have a much better perspective, even though I’m not in the real fire. A much better perspective of what you do after participating in the fire demo and I just really want to thank you for allowing us to do that because it gives me a whole new appreciation. I appreciated everything that you do anyway but this gave me a whole new appreciation so thank you very much. I appreciate that and thank you for what you do. Chief Roger Smallback: Yeah. I’m certainly glad that you enjoyed the experience, and that was our objective in this whole thing was to give you a better feel for what really goes on in the fire service area. Mayor Furlong: Maybe you could just explain for the rest of the council and other people watching the training exercise. th Chief Roger Smallback: Yeah. April 19 we were doing some live fire training at the Edina Training Center and earlier we had invited City Council and City management to either come out and observe or participate in this training and Todd Gerhardt, Laurie Hokkanen, Mayor Furlong, 11 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 Councilwoman Ernst all took us up on the offer and so we went out to the Edina Training Center where we had them suit up in turnout gear and helmet and boots and went into the burn building and you know we weren’t able to actually start up the big burners in there because in order to do that they have to be on air. Have to be on these self contained air apparatus that they have and it requires a lot of special training to be able to use that but they did crawl into the building. Drag the hose line in. Opened up the hose line. Flowed water. Did some search and rescue. Rescued a fire fighter. Got him loaded onto a back board and just did some of the things that the fire service does. We had, we were fortunate to have some photographers out there and recorded this and got some good photos of them there. Councilman Litsey: Potential new recruits. Mayor Furlong: No. Councilwoman Ernst: Not me. Mayor Furlong: We would be very desperate at that point. Councilwoman Ernst: Not me. Councilman Litsey: You made it out. Mayor Furlong: We made it out. Yes, they allowed me out. Councilwoman Ernst: We even found a live person. Mayor Furlong: That’s right. That’s right. The best part was he was still alive when we were done. Chief Roger Smallback: So it was definitely a win/win situation. We were glad you guys were out there and glad it was helpful to you. Mayor Furlong: Well and thank you for creating the opportunity. I will echo Councilwoman Ernst’s comments that it did enhance our appreciation, my appreciation for the work that you and the fire fighters do and it was nice just to spend some time with some of the members of the department. You’ve got a good group there and we knew that before and it just reaffirmed that for me so thank you. Chief Roger Smallback: Thank you. Mayor Furlong: And please extend our appreciation to everyone in the department for all their help. Chief Roger Smallback: Will do. 12 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Lieutenant Olson is not here tonight. I’m guessing that he was called out on an issue or had a conflict so if there are any questions, we had the monthly report in our packet. If any member has a question for Lieutenant Olson that you’d like Mr. Gerhardt to follow up with, I’d certainly entertain that at this time. Okay. Any questions on the report? Okay. We’ll have the Lieutenant here at the next meeting. Likely at the last meeting in May to follow up. Generally the trends appear to be going in the right direction, including in terms of calls for service and crime and everything so things are going in the right direction. With that we’ll move onto our items of new business. 2010 SEALCOAT PROJECT 10-04: AWARD CONTRACT. Paul Oehme: Thank you Mayor, City Council members. Staff would just like to give a brief presentation on this year’s sealcoat project. We incorporated additional scope in the bid this year, and I’ll get into that a little bit later. We’d like to talk to you about what’s included in this project and where we go from here. The sealcoat project, typically the City annually considers a contract for sealcoating to help extend the life of our streets. Streets that are proposed for sealcoating are identified through our pavement management system and we also visually inspect each of the streets prior to proposing for that year. In total this year we’re proposing to sealcoat 4.2 miles of our city streets. We have about 107 miles in our system currently that we maintain. Sealcoat, it provides longevity for the streets. It delays or eliminates further aging of pavement due to water or sun. Seals provides a moisture to the underground sub-grade. Fills minor rattle pavement areas and enriches under pavement and seals cracks temporarily or even permanently. Also performs minor leveling so water’s not sitting on the streets and restores surface friction to the traveling public as well so it’s an economically viable and cost effective way to extend the life of our city streets so. This year the streets that are proposed are shown here on this map. I’ll just go through real quickly. Off of Galpin Boulevard, areas, residential streets that we’re proposing are mainly in the Walnut Grove area. Manchester Way. Windmill Drive. Those areas. Walnut Curve and then also Prairie Flower Drive down here. We also would like you to consider sealcoating Lake Lucy Road from Galpin over to Powers Boulevard shown here. This road was sealcoated I think about 5 or 6 years ago now and it’s time for a sealcoat and crack sealing as well. And then also we’d like to include in the project sealcoating the downtown area, thth including Market Boulevard, Great Plains Boulevard from 78 Street to Trunk Highway 5, 79 th Street and 78 Street all the way out to 101. Also included would be just to crack seal Chan View and then Market Boulevard, the stretch in front of the downtown park and then also Santa Fe Trail. Just crack sealing those areas. So that’s the scope of the project. Incorporated in this project is joint powers with several other, four other cities, communities within Carver County as you’re aware. There’s a joint powers that was approved by all these cities approximately 2 months ago in which the City of Chanhassen led the bidding process for these communities along with our project and the thought here being that the more, bigger the project the better cost, unit cost you’re going to get for the product and for the project so, and we have numbers to prove that we did okay with these bids. We did have seven bidders that submitted bids and we do have three low contractors that we would like to award tonight for this road work. In total, including all the cities the contract would be worth $365,000. Total of $365,000 worth of work. The work was also separated out into work items. Crack sealing is one contract we’d like to consider awarding. Sealcoating is the other one and then striping. By grading out these items 13 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 we figure that we saved additional costs by not just having one prime contractor mark up the cost for the subcontractors that typically you see in a prime bid situation. So in total the City of Chanhassen’s portion of this bid is a little over $189,000 which was budgeted for in the 2010 CIP. So staff took a little time and evaluated the bids and compared them to other, our past projects that we’ve let in other years and we also compared them to the City of Burnsville. The City of Burnsville also has a joint powers contract. They’ve been having that joint powers contract for a number of years. They contract with several communities in Dakota County and also in Scott County and typically annually that contract is over $2.5 million dollars so this table just shows a comparison of costs. Trying to do as much basically apples to apples as we can so the first line here kind of in 2010 shows what the square yardage cost for sealcoating with this particular oil. This CRS2P and then also the next line here, or sealcoating with the same aggregate with CRS2. It’s a different oil. One’s used more for collector roadway type applications and one’s more used for residential. So looking at those two numbers, Burnsville unit price for that particular item is $1.19 and City of Chanhassen, our joint powers contract for this year is $1.21. That is roughly really close considering 3 cents off so it’s just under 2% difference there. And likewise with the CRS2 oil, it’s really close to what we see this year what the City of Burnsville bid out for their contract. Going down the list, 2009 we did not have the joint powers as we did this year. We actually took quotes on this contract. It was a lot smaller than previous years and here’s the numbers that the City of Burnsville had with their joints powers versus the City of Chanhassen’s where we quoted out, it’s about almost 13% more than we received so going back to 2008, 2007, same thing. City of Burnsville joint powers contract is somewhat considerably less than what we had received in the past so just doing some analysis there. Looking at the average difference from 2009 to 2007, there’s roughly about a 12% difference annually that you can average over those years so if you look at what that cost difference would be potentially in 2010, add a 12% cost if we didn’t have the joint powers, you know we would probably see a 12% additional cost in terms of this contract which roughly the amount of miles that we’re looking at is about $19,000 potentially that we would be above this contract so with this estimation, with this analysis we think we did fairly well going with the joint powers contract for this year so. As we move forward, if this contract would be awarded, th we’d like to start sealing cracks in June and up to July sometime. And then after July 4 sealcoat contractor would come in and sealcoat the streets and have the contract completed by the end of August. With that if council has any questions I’d be more than happy to try to answer them for you. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any questions for staff? Councilwoman Ernst. Councilwoman Ernst: First of all I want to thank you Paul for your efforts that you put into this because I believe that this is the first time we’ve ever done this, is this correct? Paul Oehme: That’s correct, yes. Councilwoman Ernst: On this collaborative effort. Paul Oehme: Yeah, when I was in Burnsville I worked on this project with them as well but this is the first time we’ve implemented it here in the City of Chanhassen. 14 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 Councilwoman Ernst: This is great. It looks like some of the other cities may be benefitting a little bit more than we are to some extent but my question is, is are we going to administer this? Is the City of Chanhassen going to administer the project? Paul Oehme: That’s a good question. The City, it’s specified in the contract documents that each city is required to contract separately with the low bidders so for example City of Victoria will have to contract directly with the sealcoat contractor. We’re not going to administer the contract. We don’t have to have anything to do with anybody else’s city. They have to provide their own scheduling and make sure that the project moves forward. Todd Gerhardt: We just coordinated the bid process. Mayor Furlong: I was going to say, there was some coordination. Staff coordinated the bid. Paul Oehme: Yeah. Councilwoman Ernst: Okay. And do we get an administrative fee by doing that? Paul Oehme: There’s a little stipend in the agreement that we’ll be invoicing the other cities for that work. TO compensate our costs. It’s not much but it’s something to cover our costs. Councilwoman Ernst: Great. Great job on this. Councilman Litsey: Yeah, good job. Mayor Furlong: Any other questions? Comments I guess, you know it is 12% for us. $20,000 and it’s well worth the effort and Councilwoman Ernst to your point, I think the other cities, Victoria, Mayor, Cologne, they’re probably seeing tremendous savings for their council. It’s nice to not only see savings here but to help other cities as well within Carver County. I’m guessing that the City of Mayor doesn’t have the purchasing power that Burnsville does and yet the costs are very much in line so thank you for coordinating that and for pursuing that idea. It was generated I think by Councilwoman Ernst was one that brought that up as well as others at the council as far as talking about how can we work with other cities to reduce our costs and we’re seeing that here. Mr. Gerhardt. Todd Gerhardt: Yeah, Mayor, council. I asked Paul Oehme to send over his report to those other cities so they may follow suit in doing their measurements and then we’ll do a combined report to see you know the benefit of the overall program in all communities. Councilwoman Ernst: Great. Councilman Litsey: Great. 15 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 Mayor Furlong: It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the other cities that for whatever reasons didn’t participate this year may be interested in participating next year as well. Paul Oehme: I know I talked to Norwood-Young America. Their engineer today. Their sealcoat costs were somewhat higher than what we received so it’d be interesting to see if the city, if that city would participate next year too. It’s up to them but. Mayor Furlong: Sure, absolutely. Absolutely. You know it’s everybody working together for everyone’s benefit so, very good. Any other questions? On this for staff. Is there any discussion or would somebody like to make a motion? Councilwoman Ernst? Councilwoman Ernst: I make a motion that we award three contracts for the 2010 Sealcoat Project as follows: Number 1. Pearson Brothers for roadway sealcoating in the amount of $176,975.50. Number 2. Traffic Marking Services Incorporated for pavement striping in the amount of $7,516.70. And Number 3. Precision Sealcoating Incorporated for pavement cracksealing in the amount of $5,185.00. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Is there a second? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Second. Mayor Furlong: Made and seconded. Any discussion on the motion? Resolution #2010-40: Councilwoman Ernst moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded that the City Council award three contracts for the 2010 Sealcoat Project as follows: 1. Pearson Bros. for roadway sealcoating in the amount of $176,975.50. 2. Traffic Marking Services, Inc. for pavement striping in the amount of $7,4516.70. 3. Precision Sealcoating, Inc. for pavement cracksealing in the amount of $5,185.00. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. REVIEW FIRST QUARTER REVENUE AND EXPENSE ACTIVITY AND LONG- TERM FINANCING PLANNING DOCUMENTS. Greg Sticha: Good evening Mayor, council. What we would like to do this evening is give our residents the opportunity to get some feedback about how we are doing the first quarter of 2010. One of our key financial strategy goals for the 2010 budget year, because of the tough financial times that you know as the city and others are having, was to give City Council an update quarterly on our activities and revenues and expenses for the year so that we can plan appropriately throughout the year, not just for 2010. To keep you up to date on what’s happening for 2010, but to also give feedback for the upcoming budget year in 2011. So this evening we’re just going to go through a few documents that the city staff reviews on a consistent basis throughout the year. The first thing we’re going to review is some of our revenue and expense activity through the first quarter of 2010. One of the most key or crucial 16 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 revenues within the general fund is building permit revenue and as most of you may recall from last year’s budget process, when market for all construction changed and how the world changed when, or the country changed in terms of activity we’re seeing relating to building, our revenues changed drastically in 2009 in regards to building permit revenues so one of the key focuses this year is going to keep the council up to date on building permit revenue for the year and where we’re tracking throughout each of the quarters of the year. As you can see, based on this graph, based on the first quarter of building permit revenue in each of the last 8 or 9 years, through the years 2002 through 2007 building permit activity was fairly consistent. In 2008 you’ll notice the one blip in the first quarter. We had the high school building permit pulled in first quarter of 2008. That was a very significant, large permit for that particular year and then as you can see in 2009, the amount of building permit activity began to shrink substantially. This led to us having a number of discussions on revenue shortfalls for 2009 throughout the year and making adjustments to our budget in 2009 and going forward into the future into 2010. The first quarter for 2009 finished the year at about $133,000 in building permit revenue. For 2010 we’re actually slightly ahead of that schedule, which is a good indication that I think we are on par for budget this year. This year’s budget was based on a very similar amount to last year’s actual numbers for the entire year, so the fact that we are ahead of this year’s point, at the same time last year, is a good sign for the budget for the year. Staff is anticipating that we will come in on budget for building permit this year. Now with that said there’s a lot of the year left to be played out. A lot can happen in the rest of 2010 but early in the year we have some good signs that we, the budget that we put together for 2010 should be met for the year in terms of building permit revenue. A number of the other revenues within the general fund based on the report that you see in the staff report are pretty inconclusive at this point. We don’t receive our property tax money until later in the year and a number of our other State aids and other revenues that we do get, and I emphasize minimal State aids. We don’t really get any but the dollars that we do receive come in much later in the year so there’s not a whole lot to report in the first quarter of the year in terms of permit, or in terms of other revenues aside from permits. Expenditure activity, as the report shows in front of you, is tracking right on schedule through the first quarter of the year. Most departments are about 25% spent, which would make sense for this time of the year. The one exception in the report which we discussed earlier this evening is the city hall maintenance line item which is already 85% spent but that’s because we pay our insurance at the beginning of the year and that hasn’t been allocated to other departments or other funds yet for the year so everything seems to be in line through the first quarter of the year. We have no, we’re not aware of any unforeseen expenses or shortfalls in revenues at this point so for the upcoming year it appears that, at this point anyway, things look to be at or near budget for 2010. Couple other documents that staff wanted to go over with the City Council and kind of keep all of our constituents up to date on are some of our key long term financial planning documents that staff reviews on a consistent basis with City Council and one of those documents that I wanted to highlight this evening is our bond tax levy document. This shows all the levies that the City has for it’s debt that it needs to pay off for the upcoming 20 years or so. In particular an item that we watch fairly closely is the last column which shows our anticipated total levy dollars for, to pay off debt for each of the upcoming years based on the bonds that have been issued. It has been this council’s goal and the last several council’s goals to attempt to keep that levy flat from year to year. The debt levy flat from year to year. That flat number we set at a bar a few years ago of right around $1.8 million dollars. We’ve been able to do that. In some years we’ve had to use 17 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 some cash to buy down that debt levy and as you see going forward in future years, some levy dollars become available because debt has been paid off or some of the bond payments decrease in size. So the column, under Column Q here you can see is the potential excess levy that City Council would have available for either additional debt levies or other levies going forward into the future. It has been targeted kind of by the City Council and staff, at least intended as a planning and practice tool, to use this excess levy to help fund our street reconstruction program. Our revolving assessment construction fund. Each year it is the hope that these levy dollars are able to be forward or transferred to the revolving assessment construction fund. You will note in a minute when we get to the next document that details, what the future of that fund looks like. These numbers tie exactly to that document. One other quick item of note, on our debt levies you’ll notice that in 2002 the library bonds have been shifted to a new column. Early in 2010 we advanced refunded our 2002A G.O. Library Bonds into 2010A. Did not change the payments up until 2011 when the bonds can be called. Those stay the same. But in 2012 they were or are being advanced refunded. Some cash was used to do this refunding but the majority of the savings you’ll see in the bond payment is due to the fact that we were able to refinance at a lower interest rate. What that ended up doing for the levy was you’ll notice in years 2012 and beyond the numbers are about $50,000 larger than the last time we reviewed this document. So that would be an extra $50,000 that would be available for either the revolving assessment construction fund or some other need. That then brings us to the revolving assessment construction fund. And in reviewing this document at this point in time, the first assumption that we had to make was, what is our year ending balance for the fund at 2009 and right now we’re waiting on an audit but we’re anticipating that fund balance will end 2009 with approximately $3.6 million in it. And then the rest of the document projects out future construction projects and funding. Revenues or funds coming into the fund for the year 20 years. Bottom line, line 20 on the graph here shows the fund balance, the projected fund balance at each of the upcoming years. The top line is the line that we’re anticipating or planning on street reconstruction projects for each of the upcoming years. Now it’s important to note that this document is a very fluid document and we’ve discussed this with City Council before. This document changes on a semi frequent basis. We update it quarterly, semi annually and annually with any new information that we get as time goes along. This document changed a little bit from the last time you saw it late last fall. I believe at that point in time the fund balance in 2017 or 18 was around a half a million and in 2018-19 it was, the deficit was a little closer to $700,000 or $800,000. Due to the current fund balance that we’re projecting and the refunding of the library bonds, that has given this fund a little bit of cushion and you’ll notice that the numbers are slightly smaller than what we saw late last fall and as we discussed earlier this evening, you know the positive point of this particular spread sheet is that we see the deficit balance slowly shifting to the right and going out into further future years. Very positive sign. Hopefully we can continue that trend. You know there certainly could be things that could cause some of the assumptions to change or some of the information might be slightly different than what we’re anticipating right now, but right now the trend has been that this fund has seen a little better, been seem to be in a little better shape every year when we’ve taken a look at it, so that’s a good positive sign. Those are the two main documents that I would like to review with council this evening. The other thing that I just want to kind of go over with City Council and also make our residents aware of for the upcoming year is our 2011 budget calendar. The process starts fairly early in the year. We’ve already begun, staff internally has already begun starting to think about some of the things that are going to be 18 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 coming up for the upcoming budget year. Keeping an eye on what our current inflation is and all kinds of other things that we’re keeping an eye on right now early in the year. Some important meeting dates coming up for the City Council. At the end of June we plan on reviewing our long term development trends with the city and the impact that that may have on some of our long term infrastructure. As we discussed earlier this evening we also will probably add a discussion to that on what the City Council’s expectations for the upcoming budget year are so that staff has a clear understanding of what the City Council’s expectations are for the upcoming budget year. In late June, early July staff will begin preparing documents and getting those documents back from the department heads. Todd and myself will review those documents in late July and then th in early August, the first meeting in August which is August 9 at the work session we will give City Council the first preview of the preliminary budget for 2011 where we will discuss the initial numbers that staff has put together and as Todd said earlier this evening we will review a number of options that we see for the upcoming budget year. The second meeting in August we plan on moving up our work session discussion, our detailed power point presentation discussion of the budget, which is broken out by department. Moving that up to the second meeting in August rather than last year when we did it at the second meeting in October. Important to note that last year one significant change in the budget process is we tried to streamline our budget process a little bit and make that meeting one meeting where we discussed all the information at that one meeting. So that had allowed for more consistency and flow in the discussion rather than having it over 2 or 3 work sessions which made it a little more difficult to maintain the theme and the consistency of a budget discussion so, in improving the process last year we were able to consolidate that into one meeting. This year we’re going to make an attempt to provide that information or data to your earlier. The hope is that for the second meeting in August you will have those detailed department presentations to you so that you can make a more informed decision earlier in the budget process. At our first meeting in September we will have at a work session setting a brief discussion on any items that might still be lingering from our previous two meetings that will need to be discussed before we pass the preliminary levy that evening. That evening we do need to pass a preliminary levy and as City Council is well aware of but just for the listening audience out there, that preliminary levy is the levy that’s used to provide your preliminary tax statements which go out to the residents in November. That levy is the levy that is, is the amount that is not to exceed amount. That is the levy that we cannot set higher than that amount come our final levy setting in December. Later in October we will have a review of our third quarter revenue and expense activity with the City Council and the plan is to also discuss any other remaining budget items. Budget items that may have come up in order to keep council informed along the way with the budget process. That might be important in making any decisions for the 2011 budget. We also decided this evening to move up the CIP discussions to that meeting to give us a little more time to make an informed decision on the CIP. Also to free up a little bit of time at the second meeting in November. In November we then discuss our utility rates for the upcoming year and review our rate study with our financial advisors. And then in the second meeting in November will give us some more time for any remaining budget issues to discuss and the CIP for the upcoming year. The first meeting in December will be the Truth in Taxation hearing which we hold every year, and then the second meeting in December we will set a final levy and CIP for the 2011 year. It’s very important for the residents to note that in particular the work session meetings in August and in October and November are key, critical points in providing, not only information to City Council but to our residents so that 19 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 they’re aware of everything that’s going on in the budget process. A lot of times people target that first meeting in December as their opportunity to come and give their input on what they want for a budget for the upcoming year. We would like to think that if they could become more involved earlier in the year it helps make a decision later in the year much easier. Getting their input or feedback at that late of time, it becomes more difficult to make any substantial change to the budget that late in the process so we encourage any discussion or information that residents would like to present to the council, to please come forward at some of those earlier work session meetings to give us that information for a later decision making ability. That’s all I have on the budget calendar and key financial planning documents that I wanted to go over this evening and unless the council has any further questions. Mayor Furlong: Any questions for staff? On any items. Councilman Litsey: Maybe just a comment. Mayor Furlong: Councilman Litsey. Councilman Litsey: I appreciate the adjustments that staff’s made to adopt a little more aggressive schedule in leading up to that preliminary levy in September. I think that’s good and it’s a good approach. Little bit of a new approach to get us hopefully more information in advance of having to make that determination. And I also appreciation the input from the other council members to try this for this year. See how it works and we can evaluate it after that but I think this is a good process. I appreciate you laying it out for the residents too so if they want to become involved early on, I think it gives them the opportunity to do that. Because like you said in December we’re pretty well done with setting the budget so if they could, their input would be helpful earlier on so thanks again and hopefully this will be a good process moving forward. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Any other comments? Thoughts? Very good, thank you. Appreciate all the information. That completes our items of new business this evening. COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS: Councilman McDonald: I’ve got one thing I just want to say that I did attend the Teacher of the Year celebration yesterday. Mayor Furlong: Yes. Councilman McDonald: I made it and you know the speech went okay. Didn’t get thrown out. Fortunately my candidate, our candidate from the City didn’t win but came in close. It was a good, it was interesting to hear about all these teachers and the one comment that I kind of took away from all this, all the presenters used the word that the teachers try to make it fun for the students. That was the common thread through all of them and I think that, I met all these teachers and they all you know try to help the students as much as possible and they try to relate to them so I think we have a very good crop of teachers here in District 112 and it was a real honor to go on. 20 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 Mayor Furlong: Well thank you and I appreciate you standing in Mr. McDonald for me. I was invited to represent the City, had a conflict and Mr. McDonald as our Deputy Mayor was nice enough to step in and do that so I appreciate you doing that and glad it was a fun event. Councilman McDonald: Thank you. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any other comments under council presentations? ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS: Todd Gerhardt: Well just a couple. Tomorrow the Mayor is going to be giving an update on the State of the City at the Chamber Breakfast at the Legion at 7:30. I think we still have room for more people so anybody. Mayor Furlong: I’m sure the public is invited so 7:30 at the American Legion. Todd Gerhardt: Yep. And also want to thank Tom for taking time out of his day on Saturday to throw the first pitch out at the Chanhassen High School. The high school team was playing Northfield so I know they appreciated it and he threw a strike right across the plate so. Mayor Furlong: You’re setting expectations in a public forum. Todd Gerhardt: He had all this disclaimers ahead of time but you know I appreciate you taking your day and I know that the coach and the players appreciated it. Northfield was nice enough to lose on the day that the Mayor threw the pitch out so, that’s all I have. Mayor Furlong: Very good. Any questions for Mr. Gerhardt? No? Very good. CORRESPONDENCE DISCUSSION. Mayor Furlong: Very nice letter in there that I received and Mr. Gerhardt also put a memo for one of the employees who did a good job working with our residents so. I’ve heard good comments there and his last name is escaping me now so help me out. Gordy? Mayor Furlong: Stauff. Mayor Furlong: Stauff. Yep, so thank you and please extend our thanks to him. I think it’s well, he received a letter there. I think it’s representative of the service that I hear about our staff doing on a day in and day out basis and we’re really proud of the work that everybody does in working with our residents. Focusing on customer service and being responsive so please extend our thanks to Gordy and a recognition there as well. Anything else? Any other discussion on the correspondence packet? If not, if there’s nothing else to come before the council this evening, is there a motion to adjourn? 21 Chanhassen City Council - April 26, 2010 Councilwoman Ernst moved, Councilman McDonald seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. The City Council meeting was adjourned at 8:25 p.m. Submitted by Todd Gerhardt City Manager Prepared by Nann Opheim 22