##VIDEO ID:HlXv0CVs0UQ## good evening and welcome to the August 19th 2024 meeting of the Oakdale Environmental Management commission very glad to see each one of you here and to those online thanks for watching and joining um we'll begin this evening with our roll call of commissioner members present and commissioner staff liaison Hannah Dunn will now be taking role Hannah chair gerding pres commissioner dittle pres commissioner Yang pres commissioner lash pres commissioner Brendan present great also joining us tonight in addition to uh oakdale's Community Development staff is uh emc's city council liaison and Oakdale mayor Kevin zel um next item is to move to our Pledge of Allegiance so if we'd all please rise together i al to flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible liy and justice for all okay next item on our agenda tonight is is uh to move towards approval of the agenda itself um everyone did receive a copy prior to the meeting um one of our presenters I will add is en route currently so um do we need pardon me do we need to approve prior to moving or we just need to just approve the just approve it as as as written and submitted thank you for the clarification mayor zel um so with that you were all sent this in advance um of the meeting so assuming no amendments or further discussion I'd like to ask for approval of the agenda for tonight's August 19th EMC meeting move thank you get a second second awesome all in favor to approve tonight's August 19th 2024 um agenda as presented say I I I opposed great thank you we will now move to our approval of our meeting minutes from our commission meeting um June 17th 2024 two months ago these minutes were also sent prior to the meeting so assuming no other amendments clarifications questions [Music] discussion I will move to ask for approval of the minutes from the June 17th EMC meeting so moved thank you get a sec second awesome thank you all in favor of approving the June 17th minutes say I I opposed great thank you now we will move to uh we would normally move to the public and open Forum section but as I was starting to say one of our presenters is in route so we are just going to hold the presentation from RCC which is resilient cities and communities um until our second presenter arrives which should be in a a few more minutes so moving on to the EMC review section which is 7.b of new business Hannah will provide an overview of the status of our commission's continued participation in the adopted drain program thank you y um for those that don't know the EMC adopted three drains um out in the parking lot of City Hall in Walton Park um so in order to ensure that they are being cleared of debris um leaves trash uh the schedule in your packet memo was created to help organize when each commissioner is responsible for cleaning in August we have chair Gering in September commissioner Yang is responsible for clearing October is commissioner dittle November is commissioner lash and December is commissioner Brendan the level of commitment is relatively low um all that's needed um is to volunteer maybe 15 minutes twice a month um sweep leaves trash and other debris off the drain service and if you'd like to um and you remember to at each meeting you can report back maybe your estimated um total debris and we can track our impact um chair gerding you're the only one um who's probably done this before do you have any tips or um things to share with other Commissioners as they do this for the first time probably I think yeah think great question so tips for sharing impact on storm sewer uh debris cleaning I would say just get in the habit of it um I know this is only one time per month per year that we're doing this over five months 6 months five months I think is what's been proposed but I guess my biggest tip is just to um think about when you're collecting uh if it's sediment or solid in terms of what are you sweeping up like sand or are you like picking up trash and leaves and more solid type stuff and just let the city know about how much of a rough guesstimate if it was like 2 lb or 5 lbs would roughly be in each of those set categories if that makes sense yeah I don't know I don't have any other any other Hot Tips really no that's great are there any issues with the assignments um we can rearrange if certain month certain month you've been assigned doesn't work um I just went ahead and took the liberty of assigning so please let me know um either now or feel free to email me and we can work something out looks good good okay thank you Hannah moving on in our agenda uh we've got I think we have the commissioner updates um starting with staff liaison um updates of the I think the content calendar is what we're going to yes move towards now on Communications thank you yes I'll uh be brief so first up for my updates is the review of the editorial calendar um and once discussion on Communications content is finished um I have a few Community Development updates to provide um looking ahead the theme for September is electric vehicles there are lots of rebates and incentives out there that we could promote to Residents uh via social media uh the theme for October is Energy Efficiency um I don't have any updated numbers uh regarding the usage of the Oakdale sponsored home energy Squad rebates I know they're being used but I know we have um we still have some available so we'll do another push on social media and hopefully in our Oakdale update newsletter um as room allows and then the theme for November is reuse and recycling I'm hoping the pumpkin recycling drop off that was um available in the City Hall Parking Lot will return that's a Washington County sponsored service um I anticipate we'd be a host site again but I would need to confirm with them so hopefully that's something we can promote um that was uh really well used last year and then um I'm not sure if you follow city of Oakdale social media but Shar ging was featured featured over the weekend um he kindly provided Communications with a photo and quote about his and his family's experience with the food scraps pickup program um so it's gotten really good traction it was nice to have a post with a personal touch but I um I bet we'll we'll promote the food scraps pickup program again in November um because like the count is really pushing this ini initiative they've invested a lot of um time and resources into it so um we're doing everything we can to make sure that Oakdale residents are participating so that's what I have in store for the next few months um if any Commission have ideas about content or resources to share please feel free to offer them now or as always you can email me all I just want to note and make a comment here um that this is this is great to see into like November like a full three months ahead I know that it may depend on the content and the month but it's just again it's just nice to see everything that's that's been done and that's coming up um tell a lot of work has been put into the themes specifically around nove or October and Energy Efficiency so thank you for always supporting us in this way as we support the city does anybody have any other comments for staff L undone about the editorial calendar or questions or ideas n for me all right great well I think our um our next guest our last remaining guest has arrived yay so we'll yeah so we'll now move to the public we'll now move to the public open Forum time of our agenda and tonight we'd like to welcome Shan um and Steve Sean and Steve are the executive director and the board president respectively of resilient cities and communities or RCC as they're known um they will provide passw again they will provide an overview of what they do and how cities and businesses and residents can learn more about their work um and invite any questions from us Sean and Steve good evening the floor is yours oh thank you and then by the way Noah is on our board also with RCC and I was good buddies with Keith Miller for many years so he and I go way back I just grew up on Highway 120 over white by Century College so I always used to come down to Silver Lake and go down the slide in the summer and get would be so hot with the slide you know so um anyway the uh kind of our main message with resilient cities and communities is we want to make sure that every city in the Metro has a solid foundation for getting things done on sustainability and climate so that's the tripod of your citizen volunteers we also support a lot of Citizen environmental commissions as well as citizen coalitions like for example the um sustainable still water in the modern media area green initiative we also support City to get new teams going so we just helped Badness Heights to get their team going and then having elected leaders that care about this is also very important because if you're missing one of the three parts of the tripod either the citizen support the elected leaders or the staff support you're kind of dead in the water you can't move anything so we're really trying to help more cities to get that triod of support and then the other part of it is is sometimes you can lose momentum just as one city so we're working to get a bunch of cities to team up together um so we for example Steve is helping with our Ramsey County cluster of cities and we'd like to work with you guys to get a Washington County group of cities going we were meeting quite a lot when they're getting the comp plans started like about five years ago um but eventually it would be fun if Hannah could help us to connect with the other green subsid staffers maybe quarterly to connect and then with you guys we would love to team up with you to get together with the other environmental commissions maybe twice a year with uh mon has a strong commission there's a lot going on in Woodburry right now um so and then kind of the big picture is you probably heard this is a bit of a scary news with the hottest year on record and who knows if the the currents across the Atlantic are going to start getting screwed up with uh anyway so it's kind of time to really try to get these climate goals done on time and luckily there's tremendous amount of incentives from the federal government with the IR tax credits and all that but if people don't use them it doesn't do any good so that's where we're trying to help a number of cities let's say in Washington County to team up to really promote a bunch of residential customers to do the if you probably heard about the Electrify everything campaign where they're basically encouraging homeowners to check out getting a airs Source heed pump um maybe an electric car maybe putting an electric range and there's all these tax credits like with rewiring America so if you did it over three years basically just have the tax credits pay for it so but there's no need for all the cities in Washington County to kind of reinvent the wheel you might as well just kind of do the same campaign so with the residential customers like with the home energy Squad as well as with the businesses as well so maybe I'm going to turn over to Steve to just share how kind of they got things going with with um vness Heights and kind of the vision we have for the Ramsey County cities that we would like to try to do with the Washington County cities as well yep thanks Sean so I'm Steve joris uh I'm in vness Heights I'm on their Green Team I'm also on their Planning Commission and I'm also on the board of RCC along with Noah uh and Sean's our executive director um but with vados Heights we just uh we entered the gold leaf program um back about a year ago now and I was on the kind of the forming commission and Sean helped uh the the staff at uh uh invad Heights get the thing going the gold leaf program we had to pick two impactful uh deliverables uh that we needed to get done within um 6 months I think it was uh the two de deliverables one was to form a green team uh which we did and I'm on that uh the other one was we we organized a uh a uh um adopted drain uh CommunityWide adopted drain program where we had about 15 volunteers we did over 100 drains um and did big clean up and that was in the fall which I know you're doing the adapted drain the fall is a great time to do it and because all the leaves accumulate and also in the spring we also we we organized a second one in the spring when I don't know what kind of trees it are but they really drop a lot right into the gutters that we need to clean up um so we've been working on that um the Ramy County cluster thing I've been working been working with mostly the citizen uh groups so we had resilient Roseville uh citizens for sustainability out of uh St Anthony and um St Paul 350 and sustain St Paul and then my another thing I do I co-lead a group called Northeast metr climate action um so our five groups got together a couple times and and uh prioritized actions that would happen on the county level so we were given you know TR to figure out what the jurisdiction is for the county including County Roads land use uh food scraps uh those types of things the waste recycling and we we put our heads together and got uh two meetings uh with both the Ramsey County staff and the Ramsey County Commissioners two of the Commissioners were on there including the board chair um Victoria Reinhardt and uh Trista Martinson um and to bring a coalition of groups to the uh Commissioners is a powerful message they tell you that they want to hear from you um about what what you would like from them on climate action and when you can get a coalition of groups together prioritize and bring that message to your County Commission that's a very powerful message to bring to them so those are the couple of things that I've been working on that um Sean wanted me to talk to you about today great and so then I'm going to just share this I actually brought out copy so we can pass these down so one of the things we're GNA be working on the microphone yes okay so it's so one of the issues that cities have is hey we have a climate action plan but then number one who's going to do it and number two how are we going to pay for it and so there's two different solutions for that and we're going to talk about them on September 25th which is a Wednesday night with the we're going to have Kate canth with the mpca climate Department talking about the new state of Minnesota climate action framework that they're updating and they're trying to get ideas of how to accelerate City level actions so it's going to be like at 4:30 at the um Minneapolis College Skyway Lounge so I hope you guys can join us they're going to open up the registration link tomorrow on the eqb web page and so if you make sure to get give a hand on one of these handouts too here yeah so then um and then we're going to have a separate event the eqb event gets done at 6:30 and we're going to stay in the room with anybody who wants to get together with one of your County Commissioners from Washington County as well as maybe about six or eight cities from Washington County are going to be there so you'll get to meet people from Woodburry they just passed a climate action plan Still Water um we're trying to get Cottage Grove to get back on gear man they're they're kind of falling behind a bit um but so then generally what we're looking at is brainstorming what would be some action that we could get going for example the Washington County Economic Development Authority is a bit worried because they have so much Residential Properties in Washington County but not enough commercial properties so they feel like they're tax bases kind of off whack so one way of solving that is by getting you know more of the businesses to put on solar panels to put in EV charging and to s switch out their old agac with newer heat pumps so one of the thoughts maybe we could just work together with a bunch of the cities to work on all of your little strip balls and forget who owns the dang strip ball and how to get them getting connected with all these incentives another big thing I've been hearing about is that people tell me I'm going to still water but I can't plug in my electric car and so like like they to go on a bike trip around still water but they they want to recharge their electric car when they're there so like you could really work countywide to beef up the electric charging infrastructure and then another concern people have had is um you know it's great to bike and I know Keith Miller is a big biker but how are you going to get across Highway 36 or you know there's a bunch of different places that are very challenging for bikes and pedestrians so if all of the different city commissions could team up like sustainable still water is working on this uh Woodberry is trying to become a bike friendly community so if you kind of team up and look at when is the County planning to redo these various roads so they have to kind of repave the roads about every 10 years so you could really take advantage of that to put in better bike Lanes put in some storm water things like in Woodberry where they capture the water off of the road and they capture it to water the golf course so instead of having to use Woodbury does not want to pump any more groundw because of the dang 3M chemicals so they would rather use water off the street to water the golf course so um so I'm just curious if you guys were had your magic wand and could help you know a number of the cities and Washington County to team up to get things done well would be some areas that you might be interested in trying to see actions that might be easier if you get them done all together is any like does anybody have any Master water stewards here or people working on water quality uh I think the like the adopted drain is a great one where you could have a bunch of cities doing that together the tree planting because of the emerald ashb like all these trees are going to get taken out um I'm just curious if if you guys any other thoughts you have of things that you would like to see happen in Oakdale that could maybe be easier if a bunch of cities teamed up to get it done across the county I think you hit on a one thing which is well you mentioned get over Highway 36 but just trails in general right no one cares about what city they're in they just want to get from one point to the other so Trails any sort of a comprehensive more larger scale Trail progam program right and the same thing goes for like Weds right Weds are doesn't matter what the boundary is for a watershed right and so having a plan that sort of a watershed by Watershed basis um would would be something that would unify people too yeah one of the things we talked to Ramsey County Commissioners about was more what we call four to three conversions uh roads like mcnight Road between Beam Avenue and 694 is this four you know two lanes each way and I bicycle that all the time and it's terrible for bicycling and what they've done with a number of Roads is they uh make that three lanes one in each Direction with a middle turn lane and then they have room on either side for bike Lanes um you know the really the gold standard for that if you ever been on a Weck Parkway from faen Park to uh KO it's fantastic for bicycling and has the they they made that again they're taking car Lanes they don't need they really don't need four lanes two lanes each way out on these County Roads make them one lane each way put put one in the middle for turning and then uh either a separate bike lane or have a uh the shoulders that's something that you could bring to your Washington County Commissioners as a as a coalition and look at the map and figure out where that would be uh really appropriate exactly and then also with this issue of the the watersheds um the Met Council has a great tool for looking at where there's potential for flooding and so when you look at the different County Road improvements a lot of times the infrastructure to replace whatever to deal with flooding is kind of expensive so if you could kind of team up with the the county to reduce some of these flood prone areas um the other issue is with all this rain seems to me like the water table might start going up and maybe people who didn't have a wet B basement before might start having a wet basement um so one of the other things you could do is work with your Watershed districts and others to figure out is there any changes in like where these flood zones are with the FEMA maps are there new households that might start having a risk and then having some different homeowner education things um to make sure if you have a su pump you know to um I guess one of the questions is can you just have your some go into the stor whatever um and then trying to prevent moldy basement and all that um but like d has been doing a great job on dealing with their flood flone areas um I'm curious Hannah do you know does Oakdale have a plan for dealing with your trees and tree diversification as well as like the emerald ashard um yeah we have in public works the city Forester um and that forestry division would handle all that so I um you know right now at the fing my fingertips I don't know what's what we've got planned but we um you know we take pride and in our tree canopy and um we I know we do a lot of work um to help combat emerald ashbo and diversify our canopy excellent so I know one may add one thing to that one we also have a tree board which which acts like a commission oh great but it's it's the the structure is a little bit different but it feels the same as as this so they're they're also in lock step with you know comp plan and oh great and bigger goals um and I would say that our annual uh gresy tree giveaway in April around Earth Day I believe is a is something that we also do we're very proud of that one because we give all trees to Oakdale residents at no cost well fantastic and it'll come out to your Earth Day I guess you have your you live in Oakdale um no no I'm just going to come to be a vendor at your next birday event so um uh that we'd enjoy right so then I think uh just in general when you're looking at your environmental commission getting things done it's not just the environmental commission that has power to do things it's also your Planning Commission and like your whatever your tree board some other cities have their own Transportation Commission so like both Thea and Ridgefield have extremely solid Transportation commissions and if you ever go to Richfield you can't believe the amount of great things they have with the different turnarounds and crosswalks and it just Richfield is like kind of an oasis for bikers um so one of the things that you could also get ready for is the 2050 comp plans are going to ask cities to have more elements related to climate mitigation and adaptation so um when you're doing that you could begin to like deal with your Planning Commission about things like zoning and new developments so I I do have a toolkit here for you if you I know you already have your big development over atation but there's a lot of things that City you know your Planning Commission can do to help shift developments into the correct direction and then the other component with your Planning Commission is um are you going to be getting any Transit quarters coming out here brt or LRT so like which Transit quars are coming out Gold Line brt so we'll have two stations serving Oakdale Greenway and helmo station great so then that's that's a key thing to be considering is the station areas around the Gold Line and how to have different High slightly higher density development to be able to then have um more people kind of living right there where the transportation is and with a lot of seniors needing to get out of the individual homes you could put in some like four-story senior co-ops or other things like that so so there is an issue of how to deal with the zoning trying to maybe reduce some of the parking requirements and and then gradually trying to get developers to put in um uh the new heat pumps so they don't have to deal with natural gas for the next 50 years maybe Steve why don't you talk about what you're doing with that one multif family building downtown yeah so we're getting affordable housing and and well it hasn't been approved yet by the Met Council but um we're hoping that it's going to get approved uh and their City Council in September but there's a 58 unit uh uh low uh affordable housing unit that's being uh R by our Walmart area near a city center which is a you know we would want to see higher population density at our city center and with your Gold Line Transit oriented development you know around there it would be perfect but I'm working trying to work with the developer on uh having them not put natural gas into that building as a you know as a a representative from our Green Team uh I'm working with them early before they get the approvals and everything and just saying you know these uh what they call the fresh pack they're uh air source heat pumps air conditioners they work as well as the the gas and then you don't have any worry about you know gas leaks blowups no carbon monoxide detectors that type of thing of course they'll probably have to put them in anyway even though you wouldn't need them but uh that would be great if they had no gas at all so um that's one of the things we're working on uh so um yeah so yeah and so So eventually um somebody has to keep the eye on the carbon footprint for your city to see if it's changing and so this is where your commission can be really powerful for that the Met Council will give you a report card every year of your carbon emissions from buildings Transportation solid waste so that's currently available on the Met council's website and they also have a separate calculator so you can figure out um if we did this action how far would we get to reduce our carbon footprint so what I'm encouraging which I think would be fantastic is if maybe sometime maybe half a year from now um before you got to get into the 2050 comp plans um you guys could meet up with Still Water um and um M wood bar um and dang what's the little city Bap what's the little one that's right right across from still water in 36 bort yeah well there's Bayport Oak Park Heights oh yeah Oak Park Heights is that always forget Oak Park Heights but anyway so there's no need for you guys to all to have to hire your own high buuck consultant to work on your climate action plans because basically the green step Gold Leaf program has all the actions laid out and then if you um kind of look at the med council's climate tool can see how far you're going to get with these actions and then another really fun thing that you could do that would accelerate action would be if let's say Oakdale and Woodburry join Partners in energy at the same time that's a program with Excel Energy with Center for Energy environment where they give you something like $50,000 worth of free staff time over two years to develop an energy action plan and then to help help you get it done so but if you kind of teamed up like with Woodberry then you wouldn't have to do as much work because you could have one committee working on Commercial Outreach another committee working on residential Outreach and and so there's you know probably a lot of overlap with the churches and things with Oak Deale and Woodbury anyway so that's on my my list of these on this handout I gave you it basically has the event for the make sure to to join us over at the St Paul College on September 25th and then the next thing is to um uh you already have your solid tripod of support in your city here so then the next thing is we're hoping that maybe we could work with you guys sometime perhaps in the fall to organize a Meetup some evening with the other environment commissions across the county so they could kind of learn from each other and hear share what they're up to so I can talk with Noah about seeing what would be a time maybe in September October that wouldn't conflict with your normal meetings you have to see when all the other commissions meet so you're not going on the same night or whatever but getting everybody together I think would be fantastic and then this first opportunity here would be to join Partners energy so you could develop a comprehensive plan to reduce energy usage within the commercial buildings and residential buildings the second thing would be maybe sometime to have a multi-city workshop where everybody comes up with a three-year climate action work plan and then um the next thing is to try to get money to pay for this stuff and so there's there's a bunch of different federal grants that the county could maybe help you apply for and then finally the getting stuff done together so that's where I would suggest like looking at this Electrify everything campaign that um Minneapolis is involved with like Eden Prairie and several other cities to get the homeowners to put in like the airos source heat pumps using the tax credits and then this last resource is this guide book we have for shaping any new developments you have so that they're Greener um so I've working on this kind of thing for 20 years so I'm sorry I have maybe too much information to share um so I'm curious Justin um what are any other issues of like that are kind of top of bind for you that or things you get to work that you like to work on well I just joined the commission this my first meeting great so I'm still kind of learning the Roop on the spot sure right we're good and then so Tim someone's like okay I think we're pretty much done yeah yeah yeah so we'll we'll circle around to figure out how we can get all the missions together this fall and then I'll talk with Hannah about getting the city green step City staffers together and then um how many people are free on September 25th that Wednesday night do you think you could join us downtown at St Paul College that would be I think you'd be able to meet people from the mpca who are working on the state's climate action plan so Sean when did you say the registration for that goes live yes it goes to live tomorrow okay so so now the eqb will have about limited spots but for the second part of it with RCC we're going to say anybody who comes can can join us so but I think if you sign up tomorrow there should be no problem to get in there yep hey thanks you guys thank you both so much thanks yeah thank you and then here's my extra copies of our hand outs that as thank you great thank you very much nice to meet you all right we shifting back and next up we're going to continue on our uh agenda item number seven the EMC review and as we just finished talking about the editorial calendar um I believe that um Hannah has some Community Development updates for us to learn about I sure do um I don't have too many to share um first I do want to remind Commissioners that the Citywide fall cleanup event um is uh basically a month away um this is an opportunity for Oakdale residents to uh conveniently dispose of furniture Electronics other hardto recycle items this event is Saturday September 2st from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. um you'll be seeing more Communications regarding this on social media and our Oakdale update newsletter um this is open to only Oakdale residents fees will be charged for almost all items um and they must be brought to Oakdale Public Works um and then Additionally the Willowbrook Common's Park is coming along nicely there's still lots of work to do um but we're on schedule um so I just wanted to give you a heads up to keep an eye out for um an invitation to a grand opening that will occur this fall so we'll be sending a flyer out to all the commissions um and other other guests it'll be open to the public um but I just wanted to give you a heads up to keep an eye out for that invitation if anyone has any questions I'm happy to answer them for the Willowbrook or Forefront development is there I I forall can you remind us what the retail is is it I've been identified yet the Aldi and Starbucks are going in yes right um in front of Forefront thank you to my knowledge that's all that is confirmed there great next we move to any any commissioner updates you like to share wow all right yes I mean hearing none uh Mr Mayor emc's city council leison that's we can give it to himy May thank you Mr chair and Commissioners um I have a number of updates since we didn't meet last month so there's a lot going on first and foremost uh a big welcome to Katie and atin our newest Commissioners here on the EMC we are very excited to have you um we're always excited to see people willing to step up and serve in these roles so uh look forward to uh providing valuable advice to the city council going forward so thank you for volunteering um our City's Park system plan is still open it closes at the end of the month uh August 31st um this plan includes different concepts for each Park in our city so I think we in total have 28 Parks um one area of interest to the EMC you know part of this project is looking at some of our passive Parks um and identifying those areas that might currently be turf grass figuring out a different use for those obviously there's environmental benefits in converting that land to maybe a more natural use there's also operational um benefits not having to mow that grass so that is something that the city is looking at and we we are asking everybody to provide feedback on those concepts by the end of the month um my phone just went to sleep on me so um you can find that on our city website um pick as many parks as you like there's one there's a different survey for each individual Park um there's even some parks that we didn't even know where parks in Oakdale so um we definitely want to figure out how to best utilize that land and be good land sewards um so please weigh in on that uh Hannah mentioned the city cleanup day this is so exciting for us you know for Oakdale we haven't done this in 15 years um it was an idea that popped up earlier this year late last year um city council said we wanted to do it and we handed it off to Hannah and she's absolutely crushed it so um thank you Hannah for all of your work on this um Council got A Sneak Peak at the the fee schedule there'll be a nominal fee for for the items we got a sneak peek at that at our meeting last week I think it'll be finalized this week or next week and we'll get that out to the public um there's a Facebook event created for it Hannah mentioned it's going to be at public works so easy drive in drive out police will be out there directing traffic we want to collect a lot of trash um and for anybody like me that's been working at home during the co Years A lot has built up so we are excited uh we have some great Partners who are helping you know remediate that trash so um yeah it's definitely something we're looking forward to bringing back and we definitely want to keep going in this community uh budget work continues this is always the biggest lift of the city council's year usually we start in late spring um and it goes all the way through December so our next milestone in terms of the budget um state law requires us to adopt our preliminary Levy by the end of September we usually do that at our first meeting in September setember all this means is this is the ceiling for our property taxes for the year from September through December the city council works with our staff to get that down as low as we can um but that is the high watermark for for um our our property tax levy so uh work continues as always we're looking at a few more staff additions we're growing city um other highlights you know we continue to fund our vehicle equipment replacement program um this was something that we changed over a few years ago no longer issuing debt for vehicle purchases and using cash instead um as interest rates have climbed over the last few years that's been a very big benefit for our our financial planning as as a city um we also have a development proposal at Tanner Lake this has been working its way through the through the process the last couple of months um that parcel has been living in city government for 15 years maybe in 20 years you know um you know for history it was the old toes and black e site as well as Harmon autog Glass down there by Tanner Lake the city Eda bought it 2008 2009 2010 did the cleanup and we have struggled to find a developer ever since we are very excited that we have a a very interested and engaged development partner um of interest for the EMC you know the EMC has um shared concerns many times with that parcel just in terms of storm water runoff so we are excited to get that parcel developed get all of that buttoned up obviously that will be a big positive impact on the lake so we are looking forward to working that development Pro uh proposal through the process uh I'm going to make a plug for the home energy Squad audits uh the city is still offering rebates for that program I went through it uh June I think I did it it was right when it opened um it is a it is an easy process residents should be taking advantage of this the city will pick up 50% of the cost of the home energy audit I think the other 50% you can get a federal tax credit so it's a win-win it takes a few hours um but you know like my home built in 1991 one I had never even been up into the crawl space in the Attic CU that kind of creeped me out um just to have experts go up there and tell me do I need insulation up there are my walls do I have good enough insulation in my walls what about my original Windows having somebody look at all that put together a report that also includes um possible funding recommendations for Grants or or other funding sources to make those repairs or upgrades is huge um I thought it would be a little daunting going through that report they really made it so easy so uh MN ce. org you can just go ahead and sign up there they already know oakdale's a partner so they'll take the 50% off right off the top and Bill us you don't have to come to the city and get your rebate um check it out it's very worthwhile just knowing how we can make our homes more energy efficient last update I promise uh this one's exciting the city has taken ownership of the new Public Works campus at 32nd in Granada we have complet well the uh 3M the previous land owner has completed the pfast soil remediation it has been certified by the mpca um they transferred the deed over to the city so we are the owners we will be breaking ground on the new Public Works campus next month next month right yep September um and the new campus will be opening late fall 2025 this has been a very long process we are excited to get a going at our last city council meeting we approved a bulk of the bids for the project um $32 million project the largest Capital project in City history we are very excited to get this going obviously getting that the past and the soil room mediated is a huge benefit as well so um I want to offer a very big thank you to 3M they were tremendous Partners in all of this um just you know owning up and taking care of the problem and donating the land to the city saving us some money and land acquisition costs um it's going to be big positive for our community so we are excited to keep that project rolling how about questions any questions for me um I a question about the old public work site what happens with that one uh the current plan is so the water filtration uh plant is going to stay there um and eventually will be expanded using the 3M settlement dollars in between that you know the other project we have coming up I think next year is an expansion of the police department so that we have looked at police temporarily relocating to that Public Works building while the work is going on here and then once they move back here then we'll demolish the existing building expand the water filtration and that'll be the sole purpose or the sole use down there we're hoping all these Legos or dominoes or whatever toy you want falls into place that's the plan but the best laid plans we know how those go so any other questions regarding the new Public Works facility on Granada um is there a place that residents can go to check for status updates uh yes so we have a City website um I think you I think it's actually probably on the the homepage of the city website um and then once construction begins there will be more frequent updates so you can sign up under the notify me tab on the city's website and get text alerts email alerts as things are going on um there was talk once upon a time about doing a site camera don't know if that's still a thing where people people can watch the construction in real time um we we'll check on that that'd be kind of cool um but yeah um that'll be the bulk of it those text and email notifications as well as any you know updates I mentioned in the Monday Morning Minute yeah any other questions all right thank you everybody thank you thank you well this brings us to the end of the agenda for this evening our next meeting of the EMC will occur on Monday September 16th in here in council chambers if there's no further discussion I will call for a motion to adjourn tonight's August 19th meeting of Oak Tales EMC please so moved there second second all in favor of adjourning tonight's meeting say I hi hi I post meeting is adjourned thanks everyone