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CC VER 2020 11 23CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING NOVEMBER 23, 2020 Mayor Ryan called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to the Flag. MEMBERS PRESENT: Mayor Ryan, Councilwoman Tjornhom, Councilman McDonald, Councilman Campion, and Councilwoman Coleman STAFF PRESENT: Heather Johnston, Jake Foster, Kate Aanenson, Charlie Howley, Jerry Ruegemer, and Matt Kerr Mayor Ryan: Good evening again everyone. Thank you for joining us tonight. Due to the increase in COVID numbers we have decided to conduct our city council meetings via Zoom for the time being. While I am in the council chambers along with a few of the members of city staff, our 4 council members are joining us via Zoom and since we are operating in this fashion I will be taking roll call votes throughout the meeting. For the record we have all of our council members present tonight so our first action is our agenda approval. Council members are there any modifications to the agenda as printed? Please respond with yeah or nay. Councilman McDonald? Councilman McDonald: Nay. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Tjornhom? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Nay. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Coleman? Councilwoman Coleman: Nay. Mayor Ryan: Councilman Campion? Councilman Campion: Nay. Mayor Ryan: And Mayor Ryan nay. We will proceed with the published agenda. PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: None. CONSENT AGENDA: Councilman McDonald moved, Councilman Campion seconded to approve the following consent agenda items pursuant to the Interim City Manager’s recommendations: Chanhassen City Council – November 23, 2020 2 1. Approve City Council Minutes dated November 13, 2020 2. Approve City Council Minutes dated November 12, 2020 3. Approve City Council Minutes dated November 9, 2020 4. Receive Planning Commission Minutes dated October 20, 2020 5. Receive Economic Development Commission Minutes dated October 13, 2020 6. Receive Park and Recreation Commission Minutes dated September 22, 2020 7. Award Consultant Contract for 2021 Street Improvement Project 20-05 8. Adopt Snow and Ice Removal Policy Update All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. VISITOR PRESENTATIONS. Mayor Ryan: It is not going to be discussed tonight. It was at the Planning Commission I believe last week but if you would like to, it is going to come to council, is it our next meeting? December 7th or 14th. Audience: Okay I’ll pay more attention. Mayor Ryan: That’s okay, you’re always welcome so if you want to make a comment whether you’re in favor or not in favor, welcome your comments now. Audience: Well I’m in favor at least parking one trailer or recreational vehicle in the driveway. We all want…so I can understand people not wanting garbage out in front of their homes so I think there’s a financial impact…so that’s all I really had. I had some reasons behind it but that’s my… Mayor Ryan: Perfect. Well thank you for coming forward and like I said this public comment we will be taking this up, I just don’t know if it’s December 7th or 14th but thank you for coming and providing your feedback and it will be part of the consideration when we discuss it as a council. Audience: I’m sorry for side tracking. Chanhassen City Council – November 23, 2020 3 Mayor Ryan: No, that’s what visitor presentations are for so you didn’t sidetrack us at all but if you wouldn’t mind signing in as well that would be great so thank you for coming tonight, we appreciate it. And there are no other residents here for visitor presentations so next up we have our fire department and law enforcement update. FIRE DEPARTMENT/LAW ENFORCEMENT UPDATE. Mayor Ryan: Do we have Lieutenant Pearce joining us via Zoom? Lt. Lance Pearce: I am present Mayor. Mayo r Ryan: Oh there you are. Hello sir. Lt. Lance Pearce: How are you doing this evening? Mayor Ryan: Doing well. How are you? Lt. Lance Pearce: Doing good. Mayor Ryan: Alright well if you want to provide your update that would be great. Lt. Lance Pearce: Madam Mayor and council I’m going to present the data from October’s activity. Total calls for service we had 872. Looks like almost half of our activity was traffic of those. 224 traffic stops. We had 36 property damage crashes. 6 personal injury crashes and those were due to the unusual amount of snow we received last month. I’m sure that was memorable for everybody and then we also had 5 DUI arrests out of that traffic activity as well. A few of the matrix I’ve been tracking for council. The domestics and the domestic assaults are both up slightly from previous months. Mental health is trending down and then frauds and thefts and trending up significantly. In the last 2 weeks we’ve noticed a spike in theft of mail from your mailbox specifically and earlier this week I did put out another social media prevention message on the City website. Should have gone out on the sheriff’s office website as well and then I also put some focused patrol and approved some additional overtime this last week in the hopes that we could catch whoever’s doing this. It’s concentrated in the downtown area so we’re putting some additional efforts towards that. And so what I did also I looked at our total activity and compared January through October of 2019 compared to January through October of 2020 and our total activity is only down 1.9 percent compared to last year so my guess is total activity for the year will be pretty comparative to what it was last year. And the only additional item I have is, over the weekend we did not have any calls for service for reported violations of the Governor’s Executive Order that went into effect Friday. Mayor Ryan: Great, thank you Lieutenant. Lt. Lance Pearce: And if anybody has any questions. Chanhassen City Council – November 23, 2020 4 Mayor Ryan: Perfect thank you. Council are there any questions for Lieutenant Pearce? I guess I’ll go around so I know for certain. Councilman McDonald? Councilman McDonald: I guess the only question I’ve got is when you say there were no calls for service for the Executive Order. What exactly are we enforcing on that? Are you going after people not wearing masks or just gathering or what exactly are you enforcing? Lt. Lance Pearce: Well what we’re looking for is voluntary compliance from the public and so I think that’s what we’re getting right now at all since that order went into effect on Friday. Obviously that’s, the Executive Order has a number of different components to it and so it depends on specifically what you’re asking. What we’re asking from the public is because of the impact of COVID-19 and we’ve all been living through this for months now that we’re hoping that people will read the order. It’s been on social media. It’s been on the regular media. It’s on the internet that hopefully people will abide by that to allow us to hopefully get past all of the restrictions that are currently in place. Councilman McDonald: Okay thank you. I have no further questions. Mayor Ryan: Thank you Councilman McDonald. Councilwoman Tjornhom any questions, comments? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Not at this time. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Coleman? Councilwoman Coleman: None from me thank you. Sorry the husband’s on a fire call right now. Mayor Ryan: Councilman Campion? Councilman Campion: No questions here. Mayor Ryan: Perfect. It’s fun to see the little guy so. Lt. Lance Pearce I don’t have any questions either. Thank you for the report and really appreciate you staying on top of those numbers that we’ve asked for specific attention so thank you for bringing those back to your monthly reports. Lt. Lance Pearce: Thank you very much. Mayor Ryan: Have a good night. Lt. Lance Pearce: Thank you very much. Chanhassen City Council – November 23, 2020 5 Mayor Ryan: Chief you’re up please. Chief Don Johnson: Mayor, Council this is our monthly report with stats from October. Staffing remains 44 paid on call firefighters with one on extended leave. November has held some challenges for us with quite a few staff being exposed, as I’m sure everybody understands in their personal lives so we’ve been working really hard with Jake and making sure we’re following all protocols for COVID in regards to exposures and just want to thank my staff, as much as council. These are citizen servants and with all that’s going on in the responsibility we have in the community coupled with what they’re dealing with in their family lives, they’re still here to respond. They’re still doing their job on a daily basis. With our schedule they’re still filling in for each other when we’re pulling people off to serve with quarantine so I’m exceptionally proud of our staff and what they’re able to do with all that’s going on right now. With that October we responded to 84 calls which is back to about our normal service level. I’m happy to say that those continue to trend our general alarms down using a day staff only model and our expanded duty crew. 41 of those were rescue and EMS calls as Lieutenant Pearce talked about we had 7 motor vehicle accidents in the month of October. We had 5 responses for structure fires. This small brush fire involving some juveniles that were started a fire in a very grassy remote area. We had one cooking fire and 3 structure fire responses with one residential fire on Highland Drive. A mutual aid to Long Lake and a mutual aid to Excelsior and we responded to one unauthorized burning call. With our duty crew staffing we’ve been able to ramp up our on shift training versus just pending on these Monday nights and I would like to be here stating our accomplishments in that area of reducing our overall training costs but unfortunately we’ve been forced to find this through COVID. I would like to reiterate that through some of those methods that we’re able to keep our staff from transmissions at work so kudos to the training staff for finding suitable and needed online training for staff but then limiting our hands on experiences to the duty crews that are assigned. Met with Superintendent Kevin Crooks of the public works and utilities in regards to the response mitigation plan for the west water treatment. As you know there is chlorine stored out there and part of the federal guidelines require you to meet and talk about response there. Out of that we’re planning an emergency drill sometime next year involving their staff members to train on things out there so we’ll make that that gets out so there’s no surprises. It’s a great opportunity to kind of combine in a functional exercise for emergency management. I had the opportunity on November 5th to participate with a virtual tour of the fire station for some students, young students in Spain. This was set up by one of our previous firefighters who has a mother in law that is an actual teacher in Spain so kind of a neat experience to do a station tour and use Zoom to meet with some elementary kids and show them a fire truck and fire gear and some of those things that we’ve really missed out on this year during Fire Prevention Week and get some of those experiences so we’re talking about potentially keeping that relationship up on at least an annual basis. It was a lot of fun. And then on November 5th, and then this is printed as November 21st from when I published this report but actually it turned into November 20th we assisted with the home games. We had to make a last minute change when they went from Saturday to Friday night but we, the Athletic Director Collin Bond had a lot of nice things to say about the fire department. We Chanhassen City Council – November 23, 2020 6 appreciate being there but with the level of injury with both protecting the fans and players it’s an honor for us to serve and we’ve been doing that at least since I’ve been here over 7 years and so that continues and Go Storm. Great job. We assisted with the tank removal, part of the Fire Marshal’s responsibility at the old Marathon site so the tanks came out of the ground there which was a welcomed site for development and hope for some regeneration in that area. With that I can stand for questions. I’d say one thing, I kept myself a note and I’m glad I did. With Thanksgiving coming up nationally fires are based on food and cooking so I know some of us may be scaling back but if you are cooking, especially using turkey fryers please make sure that those aren’t on your decks and that they’re safely away from your homes but unattended cooking has some significant results so we wish everyone a happy gathering in whichever way they’re attempting to do that but please be safe with your cooking. And then secondary I was on the phone with another resident that called my office over the weekend. Unfortunately didn’t get a hold of anyone but had some concerns about several of his neighbors burning leaves so I’d like to reiterate as long as we’ve here is in Chanhassen you cannot burn your leaves. They have to be disposed of by bringing them down to a site or having your hauler take them away. Neighbors don’t really like to have smoke in the area. It generates calls for us and generates some concerns with the citizens so that’s my plug for tonight. I stand for questions. Mayor Ryan: Alright, thank you. Thank you for the friendly reminder on the burning of leaves as well. I’ll go around. Councilman McDonald any questions for the Chief? Councilman McDonald: No questions for the Chief at this time. Thanks Chief. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Tjornhom? Councilwoman Tjornhom: No questions at this time. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Coleman? Councilwoman Coleman: No questions, thank you. Mayor Ryan: Councilman Campion? Councilman Campion: No questions. Mayor Ryan: And I don’t have questions either and I meant to say this before we began when Lieutenant Pearce was still on. I know a year ago in November at one of our November meetings we had your whole fire department and we had members from law enforcement and we took part of the beginning part of our meeting, since it’s the month of thanks. We took the time to recognize all of your team for their tremendous work and support and service to the city of Chanhassen so while we can’t have the council chambers full of the fire department and the Carver County sheriff’s office I just want to again express our thanks and gratitude for your service to the community and Lieutenant Pearce I hope you’re still on and listening. If not I’ll Chanhassen City Council – November 23, 2020 7 send him an email but I just wanted to again acknowledge how much we appreciate all that you do for us. Oops, there you are. Just want to again acknowledge how much we appreciate all that you do for Chanhassen so, and I know with the holidays coming up, with Thanksgiving and Christmas and the few family events that a lot of time it’s your team that gets pulled away from the dinners and family time and serving our community and so we appreciate that, you know that commitment and that sacrifice that you provide on behalf of our residents so thank you very much. Lt. Lance Pearce: Thank you Mayor I’ll pass that onto my staff. Mayor Ryan: Perfect, thank you Lieutenant. Thank you Chief. CONSENT AGENDA: 9. RATIFICATION OF AMENDMENTS TO THE CHANHASSEN FIRE RELIEF ASSOCIATION. Mayor Ryan: With no old business and no public hearings we’ll move onto new business and we removed consent agenda item number 9 to new business. I’m not sure who is going to, I know Julia brought this forward. If you want to share your question or comment on why you wanted to pull this off the consent and put it on the main agenda that would be great. Councilwoman Coleman. Councilwoman Coleman: Thank you Madam Mayor. As I had mentioned earlier my husband is a firefighter and so this item will directly impact me personally and our family so just out of an abundance of caution I did not want to personally vote on this item so I removed it from the consent agenda so no questions or anything like that. Just recusing myself from this vote. Mayor Ryan: Perfect, thank you Councilwoman Coleman. Ms. Johnston if you want to provide or Chief, I’m not sure who’s going to provide an update on this item. Heather Johnston: Madam Mayor, council members I can give a brief overview of the item and we actually have the Fire Relief Presidents here as well, Matt Kutz is here so this is an item that you get every 3 years and so it’s actually helpful that Councilmember Coleman pulled this so that we could give a little bit of an overview. Every 3 years the council considers as part of it’s budget process an increase to the firefighter relief pension and so what we do is we look at the KFS cities and what the increases over the past 3 years have been. We’ve generally rounded up if you will to just account for sort of the fact that we don’t make this an annual action and so to accommodate for that piece and what this means for the City from a payment standpoint because there is an actuary required contribution amount and that’s based on a whole bunch of things and I could talk pensions for a month but I won’t. I will keep it to the short version even though I get excited about pensions. Is really the basic thing, the mortality, the length of service, things like that that are all brought in together to really come up with what you’re required contribution is and the other big piece of it is investment returns so we get an actuary to actually give us what that contribution is. There should be just a minimal contribution impact in terms of, and that is Chanhassen City Council – November 23, 2020 8 incorporated in our budget document so we make about a $50,000 contribution and so based, and we’ll get confirmation of that from the actuary when they do at that at the end of the year and that will become part of our CAFR but we don’t impact additional, impacts beyond what has already been taken into account in the budget document. I can stand for any questions. Mayor Ryan: Thank you Ms. Johnston. I will go around and ask if there are any questions. Councilman McDonald? Councilman McDonald: No questions. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Tjornhom? Councilwoman Tjornhom: No questions. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Coleman? Councilwoman Coleman: No questions, thank you. Mayor Ryan: Councilman Campion? Councilman Campion: No questions. Mayor Ryan: And I don’t have any questions either and so with that thank you for the explanation Ms. Johnston. Heather Johnston: Madam Mayor I should have said the Relief President is here because they did vote unanimously to agree to what the City’s budget recommendation is as well so I just wanted to make sure that for folks who are in the public who maybe didn’t read the item that that speaks. Sorry. Mayor Ryan: Did you want to, okay. I just want to make sure I provided you the opportunity if there was anything that you wanted to add to the report. I will take the head shake as a no. Alright with that is there a motion from any of our council members? Councilman McDonald: Madam Mayor I’ll make the motion. Mayor Ryan: Councilman McDonald. Councilman McDonald: I would propose the motion that the City Council approves the attached resolution and amended by-laws of the Chanhassen Fire Relief Association effective January 1, 2021. Mayor Ryan: We have a valid motion. Is there a second? Chanhassen City Council – November 23, 2020 9 Councilman Campion: Second. Mayor Ryan: Thank you Councilman Campion. With a valid motion and a second I will take a roll call. Resolution #2020-64: Councilman McDonald moved, Councilman Campion seconded that the City Council approves the attached resolution and amended by-laws of the Chanhassen Fire Relief Association effective January 1, 2021. All voted in favor except for Councilwoman Coleman who recused herself from the vote due to a conflict of interest. The motion carried with a vote of 4 to 0. Mayor Ryan: Thank you. COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS. None. ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS. Heather Johnston: Madam Mayor, council members I actually have several items today so the first is really an update on Metronet. I know there’s been a lot of interest and we’ve gotten additional inquiries from citizens as to that process and how that’s moving along. We haven’t yet gotten a draft franchise from Metronet but we have talked to an attorney who deals with these issues and we think that there are several things that we can do to start the process moving and so we will begin to do that. Some of those require council action. Some do not. The retaining of the attorney will require council action so we thought it might help us keep the process moving if we brought that to council at a future meeting. Also there are things that publishing are interested in seeking an additional franchise so we can do that without council action and so we are just, our read on council is do you want us to move forward on this to make sure that we give options to our residents on their cable and other internet options and so we plan on moving that forward. Number two. Sorry. Mayor Ryan: May I ask council, do you have any questions about Metronet? Okay. Heather Johnston: Number two just to let folks know that the fire department is doing a Toys for Tot donation and so we have a drop off for that as well. There’s lots of information on our website but I’d thought I’d take the opportunity since we had a bunch of fire folks here today, a bunch of fire items tonight to add that one to the list. And then number 3. The third item is really related to the conversations on the Prince sign. I wanted to just provide an update on that. Actually in preparation for this update for you all I did go back and look at the August 24th, re- watched the August 24th hearing when Mr. Finn came and proposed, made his proposal for changing street signs and council has since, he did during that presentation he actually mentioned Augie Mueller which for, I think didn’t really register with us because Augie Mueller was not a Carver County legislator but represented other counties so I think at the time that that Chanhassen City Council – November 23, 2020 10 presentation was made staff did not realize that there a part of Highway 5 that was actually for Augie Mueller. We have since heard from his niece I believe with a concern. There are no signs up currently. We have kind of raised this issue to the legislators. Obviously that, the Highway 5 designation is something that is for the legislature itself to sort through. With respect to the local roads I think we have some to, we’ve gotten a bunch of feedback as you all know from residents about whether we should change it or not change it and may be the best course of action which is actually consistent with Mr. Finn’s comments from August 24th would be to do a memorial sign and not officially change the name of that. We don’t have, we can get, move forward and get estimates for that. I think Mr. Finn indicated he thought he would be able to do, to find funding for that but in terms of additional information other than the Augie Mueller piece we don’t actually have much more than was provided in the background absent additional guidance from the council so. Mayor Ryan: Thank you Ms. Johnston. I think the question here council and we’ll just go around and have a quick conversation about it is, you know if council in light of this new information that one Highway 5 already has a designation honoring Augie Mueller who was instrumental in getting Highway 5 to be a highway all the way out to Waconia and I’m not sure who if on council from the niece but it was a very emotional plea. Her family felt a little offended if I could use that word that we would consider renaming it and taking that away from her family because it’s something special to her family but as we know that that, that designation comes from the legislature so I know that it’s in their hands in terms of whether or not they want to move forward with it but I just wanted to bring that since our last meeting this was what was brought forward when it got put, I believe it was in the Star Tribune and then in the Villager second about the renaming of Highway 5 and then in terms of Audubon, I think a number of us, although we did as council receive positive comments you know from what I heard, the overwhelming majority was some of the challenges associated with actually change the name Audubon to something else because of what has been required. Homeowners, business owners to the process and expense to go through the name change and so when Heather was looking and reviewing the meeting that’s when she realized that we had discussed at another meeting having a memorial sign recognizing Prince’s contributions and memory and putting that sign up along the road so I think tonight what Ms. Johnston is looking for us, for direction from council is are we comfortable getting more information on a memorial sign that could be placed on Audubon and then if the legislature decides to do something then you know obviously they have that prerogative because that’s out of our jurisdiction. So when I go around if you could, if you questions of course present those. Any thoughts or additional comments but really looking for direction if you’re comfortable with moving forward with a memorial sign or if you still prefer a name change. So I’ll just go around here. Councilman McDonald? Councilman McDonald: Yes Madam Mayor. I actually received an email and I thought it was his nephew and that was the first time I became aware that Highway 5 it’s from the split down with 212 all the way up to I believe it’s just past Audubon was what he told was the designation so I passed that information along. I agree that that part of it would be up to the legislature to decide what they want to do so I’m perfectly fine with putting that in their hands. I like the Chanhassen City Council – November 23, 2020 11 option of doing the memorial signs on Audubon because of the impact it could have on the entire road and at least that way there is a recognition of Price and his contribution to the community and I think that that would be, I would support going forward with looking at a memorial sign. Thank you. Mayor Ryan: Thank you Councilman McDonald. Councilwoman Tjornhom? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yes I’m in agreement with Councilman McDonald. I am all for moving forward and investigating the potential of having a memorial sign in Prince’s honor. Mayor Ryan: Wonderful. Thank you Councilwoman. Councilwoman Coleman? Councilwoman Coleman: I’m completely on the same page Madam Mayor. I agree that this kind of changes the scenario quite a bit and in favor of looking further into a memorial sign and again I will plug potentially purple if we can. Mayor Ryan: That is on the list. Charlie’s hard at work. Thank you Councilwoman Coleman. Councilman Campion? Councilman Campion: Similar. I think the memorial sign given the extra background is the best path to proceed down. Mayor Ryan: Alright perfect, thank you Councilman Campion and I agree with the memorial sign and council I think too in addition to the sign we can’t forget that we have an entire neighborhood, The Park that new development where I believe there’s 8 roads in there that we approved all of those, those names that are named after Prince. His family. Some of his songs and they got approval in order to do that they had to get approval from the family so there is definitely homage being paid in his name and roads are named after him within the city of Chanhassen so I wanted to point that out as well so I think Ms. Johnston you have direction from council to pursue the memorial sign so thank you for bringing that back to us. And thank you for I know you and Mr. Foster have been working hard on the Metronet. This was one of our council priorities this past year that we hear from residents. I think we could all say if there’s one consistent message that we heard is the questioning of options and fiber and so I appreciate you pursuing that, and or I know they came to the City but really looking into that and coming back with a franchise agree if there’s the next step so thank you for looking into that and please pass along our thanks to Mr. Foster as well. Anything else in terms of administrative? CORRERSPONDENCE DISCUSSION. None. Mayor Ryan: Before we adjourn I would just like to wish my fellow council members, all city staff and all of our residents a very happy and safe Thanksgiving. Certainly a lot even in difficult times have a lot to be thankful for so just want to wish you and your family well and a very happy Thanksgiving. With that is there a motion to adjourn. Chanhassen City Council – November 23, 2020 12 Councilman McDonald moved, Councilman Campion seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. The council meeting was adjourned at 7:30 p.m. Submitted by Heather Johnston Interim City Manager Prepared by Nann Opheim