City of Eden Prairie Blogs

Earlier this year the City of Eden Prairie approved the addition of a Fire Inspector position to focus on our city’s over 6000 rental housing units. In July the new position was filled and the program has been underway since mid July. So far over 300 individual units have been inspected. Our goal is to get into every building yearly and every individual unit at least once every four years. In addition to the routine inspections, we will also respond to both Tennant and landlord concerns as they are reported to us.

Some of the issues we have discovered so far include: Non working smoke detectors, extreme clutter, Emergency exit lighting not working, un-sheetrocked walls in a storage area, grills hidden on apartment decks, and a straw basket used as an ashtray on an apartment deck to name just a few.

Over the course of time we expect that this program will result in an overall increase in rental property upkeep, as well as a safer overall living situation for all Tennant’s in our city.

I’m a Board Member of the Hennepin South Services Collaborative (HSSC). HSSC is a human services and research organization that is a joint venture of the cities and school districts of Eden Prairie, Richfield and Bloomington. At a recent Board meeting, the Board reviewed a report prepared by the HSSC staff that explored the demographic similarities and differences among the three cities that have occurred during the time period 1980 - 2000. For today’s blog I’m going to shared selected demographic nuggets from that report.

Median Age in 1980: Bloomington = 29.9 Eden Prairie = 28.3 Richfield = 32.0

Median Age in 2000: Bloomington = 40.1 Eden Prairie = 34.2 Richfield = 37.1

Percentage of People of Color in the City population in 1980: Richfield = 2.9% Eden Prairie = 2.7% Bloomington = 3.3%

Percentage of People of Color in the City Population in (2000: Richfield = 21.2% Eden Prairie = 10.3% Bloomington = 13.1%

Average Family Size in 1980: Richfield = 3.0 persons/family Eden Prairie = 3.0 Bloomington = 2.8

Average Family Size in 2000: Richfield = 2.9 Eden Prairie = 2.7 Bloomington = 2.3

Percentage of K-12 students in the District enrolled in private schools in 1980: Eden Prairie = unknown Bloomington = 7.8% Richfield = 8.4%

Percentage of K-12 students in the District enrolled in private schools in 2000: Eden Prairie = 10.1% Bloomington = 11.7% Richfield = 13.8%

Median Household Income in 1980: Richfield = $47,108 Eden Prairie = $69,098 Bloomington = $60,160 *adjusted to 1999 dollars

Median Household Income in 2000: Richfield = $45,519 Eden Prairie = $78,328 Bloomington = $54,628 *adjusted to 1999 dollars

Percentage of population living below the poverty level in 1980: Bloomington = 3.0% Eden Prairie = 2.7% Richfield = 3.7%

Percentage of population living below the poverty level in 2000: Bloomington = 4.0% Eden Prairie = 3.5% Richfield = 6.3%

Percentage of the population that has attained at least a Bachelor’s degree in 2000: Eden Prairie = 57.1% Richfield = 27.3% Bloomington = 35.4%

Percentage of population that reports working in the City in which they live in 2000: Eden Prairie = 29.3% Bloomington = 33.8% Richfield = 13.1%

Percentage of population that were not US citizens at birth in 1980: Richfield = 3.3% Bloomington = 3.4% Eden Prairie = 2.7%

Percentage of population that were not US citizens at birth in 2000: Richfield = 11.4% Bloomington = 7.7% Eden Prairie = 8.9%

Our access and use of this data can be very helpful to us as we plan for future City and School District services for our residents. The information is out there. The challenge now is to analyze it, understand it and use it.

In this day and age of complicated issues in policing, quality training and quality instructors are crucial components of high quality police service. It is also critical that successful training programs and staff be recognized for their efforts in maintaining public trust as a professional police department. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I thought I’d pass on the comments of our training sergeant, David Becker, regarding the recent performance of our training unit:

Over the past few months, the instructors of the training unit have created and instructed training that deserves additional recognition. The cutting edge classes that were taught (”Patrol Response to Terrorism Events”, the “Bus Tactics and Issues”, and the “Traffic Stops with Violent Encounters”) not only reviewed basic tactical concepts but also introduced new ideas and ways of looking at how we respond to tactical events. Officers were challenged and pushed outside their “normal” tactical comfort zone. As one officer put it, “They (the instructors) really got in my head”.

I would also like to state that the preparation for the training that was presented also took a lot of time, thought, and hard work by the instructors. The instructors were flexible with their hours and I know they used their own personal time to make sure the training was “top shelf”.

I am very proud of the instructors of the training unit. They do an outstanding job. Please say thank you (again) when you see them.

I am also proud of them, and Sergeant Becker as well, for all they do for our department and our community.

So, Thank you!

One of the things that we do here in our city government to stay in touch with our local business community is to go out and meet with them and talk with them about what they do and what we can do to help them, or sometimes, what we can do to stay out of their hair. When we started the initiative, we called the “Business Recognition and Retention Program”. Now, we just refer to it as our “Meet & Greet” program.

This is a photo I snapped at our most recent Meet & Greet at a new business in Eden Prairie called Art Partners Group. The Art Partners Group is (from L-R) are Kim Cameron, Brian Knudsvig and Connie Shields. On the right side of the photo is the City’s Economic Development Manager David Lindahl in the blue blazer and City Councilmember Phil Young in the tan blazer. Art Partners Group works with the commercial real estate industry, institutions and corporations to provide them with full service art consulting and installation. They help clients decide how much and what kinds of art to display in their facilities. Then they go out and find that art and get it installed.

It was a pretty typical Meet & Greet. We toured the building. We learned about their business. We learned about their client base. We learned that they have had only a small amount of official contact with the City, mostly with our Building Inspectors through their remodeling project. We learned that they chose Eden Prairie because it has great access to the Twin Cities urban core and the airport, while being close to their commercial real estate clients in the western suburbs. We learned that they like being in Eden Prairie and are happy with their decision to locate here for many reasons.

Since we started doing the Meet & Greets in 2002, we’ve done over 150 of them. We’ve toured some of the City’s biggest employers to some of the smaller restaurants. We’ve seen traditional manufacturing to some of the most high tech production equipment in the world. Eden Prairie’s economy is humming and Eden Prairie’s business community is largely satisfied with its city government. How do I know that? Because I’ve asked them and that’s what they’ve told me.

Recently the Eden Prairie Fire Department completed the final paperwork to “purchase” a Crash Rescue Truck from MAC Fire for $1.00. This is a good arrangement for all concerned.

The EPFD gets a truck that is specifically designed to operate in an airport environment. In other words, it has plenty of the specialized foam products needed to put out a large amount of extinguishing agent in the event of a plane crash. Additionally the truck can be pumping out the foam product as it is moving, thus reducing the time it takes to get extinguishment products onto a crash site.

MAC Fire gets better coverage at the Flying Cloud Airport by giving us a vehicle that can perform the needed tasks, this reduces the amount of times they would have to come over to Flying Cloud Airport to provide coverage for a potential in flight emergency.

The pilots that use the airport now have a much safer place to make an emergency landing. The final key to the success of this new equipment is getting the word out to call the fire department at the first sign of trouble, thus enabling a timely response. This critical timing link is not unique to the airport, all fire services need rapid notification in order to be the most effective.

Pictured to the left are 8 Eden Prairie firefighters that received “train the trainer” training from the highly capable MAC Fire Department staff. From left to right: Lieutenant Jess Irmiter, Firefighter Shaun White, Assistant Chief Rick Hammerschmidt, Lieutenant Ward Parker, Captain Mark Vandenberghe, Assistant Chief Scott Taylor, Assistant Chief Steve Koering and Fire Inspector Chuck Schaitberger) We expect this latest addition to our fleet to be ready to respond by the end of September.

We held our first ever, and possibly first annual, all-employee Liquor Store meeting yesterday (Sunday) in the pavilion at the Purgatory Creek Recreation Area. That’s the City’s CFO, Sue Kotchevar, in the background. Sue is is responsible for the City’s liquor store operations. Mitch Dean is the City’s Manager of Liquor Operations. Sue, Mitch and I facilitated a presentation to our liquor store employees about a major renovation of our Den Road liquor store; our new store interior design standards; new clothing and uniform requirements; the financial operations of our stores; and some recent success stories in the area of liquor law compliance tests.

Liquor store employees work Monday through Saturday, so our best option to get all of them together at one location, date and time was to do it on a Sunday. Sue, Mitch and I thought about communicating with the employees through letter or email, but the scale of the changes we are about to make in our liquor operations are large enough that we decided a face-to-face meeting was best to explain what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

What we’re doing is taking our liquor stores up-scale. We have worked with an interior design firm on a new marketing and interior design for our stores which we believe will be more attractive and appealing to our local customer base. We’re also setting new in-house rules about the kinds of promotional stuff we’ll accept and display in the stores from our liquor, wine and beer distributors. There’s no industry with more give-away promotional marketing stuff than the liquor industry. We’ve decided that if we’re going to go up-scale and establish our own unique design, we want to keep it looking nice. We’re also setting standards for the apparel of our store employees. Nice pants. Logo shirts. No hats.

It was a good meeting and a beautiful day in the park.

Something else………..

While I was at work last Thursday, my home and cars were getting bombarded by baseball-size hail. Before Thursday, I did not believe that baseball-sized hail really existed. I’ve heard of it before, but I always thought it was just weather hype. It’s real. That’s a baseball in my son’s right hand and a chunk of hail that bounced off the hood of my wife’s car in the other. Wow! We had lots of damage, but nobody got hurt.

This week I returned from a vacation and what do I find? A barbecue thrown in honor of my return! OK, there was a barbecue, but not in honor of my return. Wednesday the department chaplains hosted a barbecue for the police department. This is a biannual event that is much anticipated, at least by those of us who are dining ( I think the chaplains have fun too).

While writing this I was overcome by the feeling that I had just written about a dinner with the chaplains. As it turned out, I did. At the end of June we hosted an appreciation lunch for the chaplains and I blogged about the dinner and a short explanation of the chaplain’s role in our department. From the number of blogs about chaplains and lunches it would seem that our relationship with the chaplains is built around food. I think we’re coming out on the good end of the deal since we only feed them once and they feed us twice plus there’s that thing about donating hundreds of hours a year in service to the community and department.

Thanks again chaplains! Your barbecues are great and the service you provide the community and department is more important than you could ever imagine.

How many of you work in a job where the accuracy of your work is checked everyday by not only your supervisor, but also an outside third party? And, what if the information about your accuracy was shared not only within your company, but it also became a matter of public record?

In City government, the employees in the Records Unit in our Police Department works in this atmosphere. Police records technicians code the data in police reports and do data entry of a great deal of information, including offenses, clearances, stolen and recovered property, and arrests, into the City’s records management system. That data is then transferred electronically to the Minnesota’s state Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program which in turn submits information to the FBI’s national UCR Program. You can see why it’s so important that the information is entered correctly.

In July this group had a total of 716 transactions with no errors. That’s zero errors. The group usually ranks in the 98th or 99th percentile for accuracy, but 100 percent is outstanding and reflects the teamwork, dedication, and hard work of this group.

Congratulations to the Police Department’s records unit– records technicians Stacy Boyer, Julie Bergstrom, Sandy Kelly, Jenna Scadden, Pat Sullivan, and Tina Zucchi, and customer service representative Carri Haberle. It’s their hard work that moves critical information from the law enforcement system into the legal system so that we can all, eventually, see justice served.

Our Records Unit does outstanding work. Thanks for a job well done.

The Habitat For Technology (HFT) was formed five or so years ago by local business, education and government officials who shared a vision of creating a “Silicon Prairie” economy in Eden Prairie. The HFT did not achieve that goal, but actually turned out to be a valuable venue for the same representatives from Eden Prairie’s education, business and local government institutions to come together and work on matters of mutual concern.

Recently, the group has turned its attention away from continuing its work in the world of high tech economic development and towards a new goal: developing and sustaining business, educational and governmental relations with China. I represent the City on the HFT Board of Directors. The Board met last night and agreed to change the group’s mission and vision to be consistent with this new goal.

What will the mission and vision of HFT mean? What will the HFT do to carry out this new mission and vision?

The HFT will work with the School District to support the establishment of a relationship between Eden Prairie Schools and schools in Loudi, China. HFT has agreed to financially support the travel costs to send two representatives from the School District to Loudi late this year in order to meet their counterparts and talk about how this relationship will be set up. The HFT will also financially sponsor other exchange trips between the two school systems, including some student exchanges.

The HFT will support the establishment of a relationship between the two city governments. One of the potential goals for the HFT in that regard is to facilitate a joint electronic meeting of city officials from the two cities. HFT would also financially support travel costs for sending city officials from here to Loudi in order to assist in the develop of business relations between businesses in the two cities.

State Representative Erik Paulsen (R-Eden Prairie) wrote an opinion piece in yesterday’s Star Tribune that is right on point with what the HFT wants to do. The Governor and the state government have the lead role in this venture. However, I don’t think that you can underestimate the importance of encouraging local government officials to be involved too. More connections with Chinese officials at the local government level just has to be better than a single connection at the top of our respective State-Provincial governments. The HFT is going to do our part to facilitate a relationship with China this year. Keep watching.

As the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches you will hear more and more about what is currently happening down there. As I have mentioned before, I was down there doing relief work about a month ago. If you are interested, I wrote a commentary on the subject for the Eden Prairie News last week. Click HERE if you want to check it out.

The Street