I know that I’ve probably said this in this blog on more than one occasion, but at the risk of being repetitive, I’ll say it again. One of the aspects that I like best about my job is the broad variety of topics that I get to encounter on a daily basis. For example, Wednesday is the day each week that I meet with my top management staff members. Here’s a description of the sorts of issues that we covered today in our staff meeting:
Fire Station #4 – The City is purchasing land for a new fire station. The transaction hasn’t been an easy one. We are hoping to close the purchase deal next week, but that may be delayed a few days. We need to make the logistical arrangements to sign the agreements and to have our money ready to go.
RV Bill – There is a bill making its way through the Minnesota House that would prohibit cities from enforcing municipal ordinances that prohibit citizens from parking vehicles larger than 15,000 lbs GVW on city streets or on private property. We have such an ordinance in Eden Prairie. Citizens have depended on it for more than 10 years. The City has enforced it on numerous occasions. We would like to maintain the local authority to have, or not have, the ability to restrict where and how people park RV’s or other large recreational vehicles, including buses and Over-The-Road tractor-trailer rigs in residential neighborhoods.
Community Development Department Priorities – We discussed a process proposed by our Community Development Director, Ms. Janet Jeremiah, to establish a set of policy and operational priorities for her department going into the future.
Traffic Safety – We will be installing a new guard rail on Landing Road before next winter. A school bus slipped off the road last week when it snowed. We’d like to try and prevent that next year.
Trail Planning – Our Parks & Recreation Director Bob Lambert updated us about the start of a complex public planning process he will start tonight to plan for construction of future of trails in the southern 1/3 of the community. The process will involve the homeowners adjacent to the trail corridors, which are defined as 1,000 feet on either of a proposed trail location. One one such trail in the Lower Purgatory Creek Valley, the City sent out 900 invitations to homeowners notifying them of the proposed process and inviting them to participate in it. It’s going to be a long road, but it’s always a good idea to get public input on a public project like this.
Parking Lots – I asked Department Directors to remind employees not to park City-owned vehicles in the parking lot areas around City Center that are reserved for C.H. Robinson company employees.
Olympic Hills Water Connection – We discussed the proposed connection fee for Olympic Hills Gold Course to connect their club house on to the City’s water system. Previous to this connection, Olympic Hills used their own wells for not only irrigation, but also for their cooking, drinking, etc uses in the club house. The cost for them to connect to our system is over $100,000. They wish it were lower. We calculated the cost based on our standard formulas. That’s where things stand right now.
Employee Health Insurance Plan – We received a briefing today from our Human Resources Manager concerning our employee health insurance plan. The City received a very favorable proposal from its existing health insurance carrier to reaffirm our contract with them for the upcoming year. We are almost ready to approve the extension. We are working on constructing the message informing our employees of the new proposal right now.
That’s variety for you. Next week, it’ll probably be a completely new set of issues. I look forward to it.
