The Blog from City Hall

There was a good article in the Star Tribune business section from last week that is worth a quick read. The article was written by Larry Werner and appeared in the December 4 edition of the paper under the title “Suburban Legend“.

The article describes the fortuitous actions of a young city planner in Edina by the name of Gordon Hughes who helped set the stage for the Centennial Lakes development there that is widely admired and emulated throughout the United States. Gordon is now the City Manager of Edina, and a friend of mine.

Eden Prairie is trying to create for Eden Prairie what Centennial lakes created for Edina, but in a slightly different way. Our project is actually a series of private projects to redevelop an area that wee refer to as the Major Center Area. The photos above show the opening project of that redevelopment. It’s called Windsor Plaza, and I know I’ve talked about it before in this blog so I won’t go into detail on it today.

City staff, the City’s Planning Commission and the City Council have been working closely on developing and implementing the vision for the Major Center Area. The Council approved another piece of that vision at the November 13 Council meeting when they approved the proposed Presbyterian Homes redevelopment project on the southern end of the Major Center Area.

There’s a lot happening in Eden Prairie right now on the economic development front. It’s an exciting time to be a part of it all.

I call the feedback I get from blog “blogback“. Occasionally I like to share snippets of recent blogback with my readers so that you can get a feel for the kind of things that people react to when reading my blog. Here’s just a few:

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Blogback #1: “I’ve been following your blog for awhile now — great forum for extra

information going in Eden Prairie. I was hoping, either through a direct email or through your blog entries,

to describe the work on Valleyview Road just east of Prairie Center Drive. As a further suggestion, maybe you could include more regular periodic updates about the road and other construction going on in the city.

Thanks.”

Scott said: I followed up with the request directly to tell the writer what was happening on Valley View Road.

Blogback #2: “I was reading your entry about the goose problem, and I was wondering if you

ever considered landscaping to prevent geese. It’s so effective; they did

it at Como Park and I used to see huge amounts of geese and now I don’t

think I’ve seen a single goose all summer. Basically, geese like expanses

of lawn and you just need to create barriers around water and throughout the

lawn like shrubs and native plants to deter them. I’m surprised no one in

your community has thought of this, it’s not like it’s an unusual or

expensive solution. I think you’ll find this an incredibly effective and cost effective long

term solution.”

Blogback #3: “Why can’t we take steps to increase the amount of water available to pump

per day? Bloomington has no watering restrictions because they got out front

of the problem and secured enough water. We do not have to have watering restrictions year after year if the proper planning is put in place. I think the Community Center should be run by a private (for profit)

company - supplying water is a service that should be managed by the city.

You should increase our water supply instead of advertising false shortages. Thanks for your time,”

Scott said: I assured this person that the City was not creating false water shortages. I told him that our water supply is controlled by how much water we can pump out of the earth, and that is regulated by the State of Minnesota. Bloomington is in a different position because they have a water system interconnection with the City of Minneapolis which uses the Mississippi River as its water source.

Blogback #4: “Hi Scott, I have been reading the Eden Prairie Blogs for a while now. Even though I

do not live in EP I find them interesting to see how another see is doing things. I have never commented before but after reading Andrew Sullivan’s guest blog I have too. He needs his own blog! Who would have thought he could make new water meters that funny. I think there might be some space on the page

with Dan Carlson’s departure…. Keep of the good blogs

Scott said: I thanked this fellow for reading the blog, and passed along his praise to Andrew Sullivan, which, if you haven’t read it, is a wonderful essay on the pleasures and dangers of reading water meters. If you haven’t read it, use the search function on my blog to go back to the middle of 2007. Read it. It’s pretty good. In fact, I recommend reading all the guest bloggers I’ve had this year. They are insightful and provide a nice change of pace from my writing style.

I did not take this photo this morning, but I’ll be taking a photo almost like it in a few weeks. As we get ready for winter in Eden Prairie this year we’ve got something new we have to talk about. On October 25, the City Council adopted a new ordinance requiring some property owners to remove snow and ice from public sidewalks and trails adjoining their property. We mailed out notice of the new ordinance and snow removal requirements to residents and business owners with properties located in the area covered by the snow and ice removal plan this week. That was over 3,000 individual letters. Needless to say, we’re getting a lot of calls this week asking for clarification and telling us this ordinance is a bad idea.

Until this new ordinance, the City removed snow from sidewalks, so this is a change. The purpose of this ordinance is to expand the network of sidewalks and trails available for public use in the winter months and ensure the safety of pedestrians, especially children walking to and from school. This new plan requires the City to clear more areas than it cleared in the past while relying on a partnership with property owners to assist with snow removal on some sidewalks and trails. The new ordinance requires these property owners to remove snow and ice from a 5-foot width of the public sidewalks or trails abutting or adjoining their property, with the exception of any trails running between or behind homes or private property.

This will be our first winter of the new City-Resident sidewalk snow removal partnership. We know there will be kinks. We’ll work through them. We believe this new ordinance will make Eden Prairie a better place in which to live in the winter.

There aren’t many traditions with this blog. I have been doing it for over four years now. That’s not that long, in the scheme of things. But one thing I do each year is to post my annual First Day of School (FDOS) photo of my kids. Well, it used to be “kids” (plural). Now it’s just “kid”. When I started this job in 2002, my annual FDOS had three kids in it. Now I’m down to one. That’s Ethan on the left. He is the youngest of my three boys. He is going to be a senior in high school this year, so this is my last FDOS.

I like to use the FDOS to draw your attention to the many things that the City of Eden Prairie and the Eden Prairie School District do together to make Eden Prairie a great place to live, work and dream. We cooperate on traffic management to make sure that drivers, cyclists and walkers can get to school safely each year. We have police officers in the schools at Central Middle School and the High School for programming and safety purposes. The City’s Housing and Community Services employees work with the School’s early childhood education staff to insure that eligible families in town have access to pre-school programs. Our Parks & Recreation staff work with the athletics and activities staff at the High School to make sure that city and school facilities are ready to go for falls sports. I talk frequently with the Superintendent on a broad spectrum of issues impacting our respective organizations. And last, but certainly not least, the City Council and the School Board meet twice each year to talk about issues of mutual concern. The fall meeting is scheduled for September 18.

The handsome young man on the left ( the one in the green shirt) is my oldest son Toby. He graduated from college this past May. Today, September 4, he started his first professional job as a technical support engineer at a company in St. Paul called Secure Computing. He has become a fully functioning taxpaying contributing member of society. I’ve done my job. I could not be more proud of him.

Way to go Toby!

For today’s post, I will share my Friday Report for August 31, 2007 that will be distributed later this afternoon to the City Council and City staff. Enjoy:

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OFFICE OF THE CITY MANAGER½Friday Report

DATE: August 31, 2007

TO: Mayor and City Council

FROM: Scott H. Neal, City Manager

RE: Friday Report for August 31, 2007

1. Special Budget Workshop - I mentioned this in my Friday Report last week, but just as a reminder, the Council Workshop for September 4 will begin at 4 pm with a presentation and dialog with the BAC concerning their Final Report. At approximately 5 pm the workshop will shift into a discussion among the Council concerning budget philosophy and goals. We will wrap-up the Workshop at 6:30 pm. We have a number of speakers for Open Forum and Open Podium.

2. Senior Advisory Council - The Senior Advisory Council will provide the Council with a special presentation on their activities and plans at the Council meeting next week.

3. Watershed Board Meeting - I will be meeting next week with Michael Cassonova, chair of the Riley-Purgatory-Bluff Creek Watershed District. We will be discussing ways in which our respective organizations can improve our working relationships.

4. Seniors and Preservationists -I met this week with the seniors at the Senior Center to talk with them about the BAC recommendation to move their operations from the Senior Center to the Community Center. I also met this week with representatives of the Eden Prairie Historical Society to provide some insight to them on the City’s plans for several of our historic sites.

5. Students on Commissions - Mike Barone coordinated the annual Students on Commissions orientation meeting this week. I welcomed the students and gave them a general description of the program Mike told the students about the structure of city government and the general expectations of the program. Each student then met with their respective commission liaison to hear a more detailed description of their commission’s duties and expectations.

6. Xcel Energy - I described a meeting last week the Mayor and I had recently with officials at Kroll OnTrack regarding their concerns about the unreliability of their electrical power supply from Xcel Energy. I had a meeting this week with a resident from the Boulder Pointe neighborhood regarding the same issue. I am getting a meeting together with Xcel to talk about the general issue of the reliability of their Eden Prairie infrastructure.

7. School District Meeting - Our annual joint workshop with the School Board is planned for September 18 from 5-6pm at City Center. If you have any potential items for that agenda, please let me know at your earliest convenience.

- end -

Some of my friends are interning in Washington D.C. this summer. They are working for congressmen, senators, various departments and lobbying firms. They were called to make the voyage half-way across the nation in hopes of impacting public policy in some substantive way. Perhaps they have. They ask me what I am doing and I launch into stories of protesters to blog entries, budgets to geese, finite details to impact reports, they just roll their eyes. As I prepare to conclude my summer on the Prairie as Scott Neal’s intern, it behooves me to at least say a few words about my experience. You see, things have been interesting to say the least.

“Not in my backyard” or “NIMBY” is a popular term I have spent a great deal of time learning about. It describes a feeling people have about a policy that would derogate their life in some way. I think it is a sense of disdain towards government employees who aren’t supposed to care about the people they are affecting. But things have been different around here. I have worked with residents over the course of the summer and listened to countless conversations with city staff about how to best limit the negative externalities on the lives of residents in Eden Prairie. It is evident that active stewardship is very alive among the staff. I think it is something that my friends in D.C. miss out on because they don’t see their constituents in the grocery store or in church on Sunday morning.

That is what makes local government so exciting. It epitomizes accountability. While it may be easy to pass an omnibus tax bill or cut a department hundreds of miles away from your constituency, it is much more challenging to raise taxes or lower services in a community in which you know your neighbor. The debate which follows policy proposals is had out in backyards, coffee shops and at athletic games. The impacts of each governmental decision are very real. Groups organize and dissolve and the factions James Madison spoke of flourish. Each community becomes an incubator of this whole notion of a democratic republic.

Local government seems to require a careful hand and a tendency towards a nuanced policy making position. The “good life” isn’t as definable as a black and white response which we have all become accustomed to. I have liked that part and what it has meant for Eden Prairie during my time here. It has been great to be mentored by a professional staff that has consistently worked to improve the community. This summer has shown me that local government is the place where the action happens-it isn’t in D.C. I am thankful that Scott Neal, City Staff and the City Council were willing to give me a chance.

That’s me on the left and Sgt. Carter Staff on the right. This photo was snapped last week during a lunch hour cookout in the loading dock area of City Center. The cookout was care of the Police Department chaplains. The chaplains provide lunch to the Police Department employees a couple of times each year. They do it as an act of service to those who serve and because it gives them a chance to get to know our officers a bit better.

Just the week before, the City hosted its annual appreciation luncheon for the chaplains. Sgt. Staff is the chaplain program coordinator. He organized the luncheon and gave the group a few well chosen words about why the chaplaincy program is important and what it means to have chaplains available to officers and to residents who have suffered tragedy.

Some people get a little nervous when thinking about the fact that a government, such as the City of Eden Prairie, associates with churches and people of faith, such as the local ministers that serve as our chaplains. There is a history of division in our country between the government and the church. I appreciate that division. Church tethered to government is not good for the church, and vice-versa, in my opinion.

But the chaplaincy program is different. It is not a proselytizing environment for the ministers involved. There is none of that. They don’t do it. We don’t allow it. Our chaplains care for the officers needs when they are involved in public or personal tragedy. Most of us don’t encounter death scenes in our day to day work. It can be tough to deal with sometimes. Chaplains can be very helpful with the right words at the right time.

The same is true for chaplains connection to residents who forced to deal with the untimely or unexpected death of a loved one. Police officers must sometimes be the one to inform someone with tragic news. But it’s often the chaplain who can stay and talk and comfort someone until the shock of loss has dissipated. Again, chaplains are trained ans experienced in the art of comforting someone in shock and despair. They have exactly the right skill set for some of the sad situations our officers face in the community.

Our Police Department is a better Police Department because we have a chaplaincy program. We are fortunate to have them as part of our city government.