The Blog from City Hall

SMPSTFA: South Metro Public Safety Training Facility Association
The SMPSTFA was formed several years ago by the cities of Edina, Eden Prairie, Bloomington, and the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) to construct and manage a new state-of-the-art training facility for the police and fire employees of the three cities and MAC. In 2002, the group’s efforts finally culminated with the start of construction on the project. The photo below shows the main entrance into the facility.

Inside this part of the facility are classrooms, meeting rooms, training rooms, and a firearms training area. The firearms training area will be available to the public, during designated hours and days. This facility is modeled on a comparable training facility in Maple Grove.

The SMPSTFA will also train area firefighters. The picture below shows the fire training tower.

This seven story tower will be used to simulate many different types of fires. Attached to the tower are replicas of a commerical building and a residential building. These structures are all made with reinforced concrete and special heat-resistant wall coverings. Fires will be set in the buildings with combustible materials and firefighters will practice “putting the wet stuff on the red stuff”, as they say.

The total cost of the project is about $6,200,000. Eden Prairie’s share of the proejct is about $1,800,000. As you can see, construction is well underway. The facility is located in Braemar Park in Edina. We expect the project to be completed and ready to occupy in mid-August 2003.

This is a great project for our public safety employees. It really will provide them a state-of-the-art training facility to sharpen their skills. Most of the work to start this project was done before I came to Eden Prairie, but I’m proud to be involved in bringing it to completion. It will serve us well.

In 2002 the City started a new program called the Business Appreciation and Retention Program. The objective of the program is simple: City representatives go out and tour local businesses, thanks local business leaders for their contributions to the local economy, and inquire about local businesses experience with City government. By all measures, the program, now known as our “Meet & Greet” program, has successfully acheived its objectives.

As of yesterday, we completed our 56th Meet & Greet tour. Mayor Tyra-Lukens has devoted a significant amount of time to this initiative. She has attended at least 50 of the tours. Our Economic Development Manager David Lindahl makes the whole thing work. He identifies the companies and gets us in. In almost ever case, we get to meet and tour the facility with the President or CEO of the company. It has been a great experience, and with over 2,000 businesses in Eden Prairie, we’ve got a loooong way to go.

Yesterday we did a Meet & Greet tour of Stratasys. This is an incredible company! They manufacture a 3-D printer. That’s right, a three dimensional printer. The 3-D printer “prints” a three dimensional object, like this wrench which the company gives out as a sample/souvenir:

The printer prints a liquified plastic material that hardens (somewhat) almost immediately after it comes out of the printer head. The printer prints CAD files of things designed by companies who are interested in seeing/touching/testing a prototype of a new or redesigned product. So who might be interested in rapid prototyping?McDonald’s, for example, might want to print a protoype of a new proposed Happy Meal toy, before giving a toy manufacturing company the go-ahead to actually manufacture a couple million of them for their U.S. stores, and the children of America. It’s a good, and relatively inexpensive, risk management practice.

We toured the company with the CEO, Mr. Scott Crump. He and his wife started this company in their basement, or maybe it was his garage. Either way, this is an American business success story. They have started an amazing company. The people at Stratasys are doing great things in Eden Prairie.

It looks like state legislative leaders have reached an agreement on the shape of the state’s 2004-2005 budget.

The highlights are described at: http://www.amm145.org/newsletter.htm

This bill impacts Eden Prairie. The new state budget decreases the amount of financial assistance that Eden Prairie receives from the State from just over $1,000,000/year to $0/year. Yes, that is zero dollars per year. Other comparable suburban communities are in the same boat as Eden Prairie. Plymouth, Minnetonka, Edina, Woodbury; they are all at zero as well.

Other cities around the state are also going to feel the pinch of this state budget. I’ve already heard a representative of Greater Minnesota Cities complain that those cities are sacrificing while suburban communities are not. I’m not sure what else we have to sacrafice. By the start of the upcoming budget year, we’ll be receiving no state financial assistance what so ever.

We’ve given all we have to give.

That’s what they’re calling it anyway…….

The Minnesota Personal Protection Act of 2003 becomes effective on Wednesday, May 28th. The MPPA, more commonly known as the “conceal & carry” bill, allows greater freedom to citizens to receive permits from County Sheriffs to carry handguns. Permit holders may choose to conceal their handguns while they are carrying them, but they don’t have to. That’s one of the intersting side-notes in this law, and it’s full of interesting side-notes. In fact, in today’s Star Tribune, Governor Pawlenty’s chief of staff, Mr. Charlie Weaver, suggested that some of the provisions in the law might be “unwise.” His words, not mine. Read the article and see what you think.

May 28th is the first day that Sheriffs are obliged to accept applications for handgun permits. Sheriffs have 30 days to review and decide on the application. If the Sheriff fails to make a determination within the 30 day period about whether to grant the permit or not, the permit is deemed to be granted. The default decision, according to the new law, ought to favor the citizen making the permit application. For more information on the actual law, check out this link for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.

There are many questions about this bill that we are wrestling with at the local government level:

1. The new law forbids cities from prohibiting permit holders from carrying their guns into public buildings, such as the Community Center, City Center, etc. But, can cities prohibit weapons from the areas of public buildings that are considered generally to be “nonpublic”, such as the police department, employee offices, etc.?

2. Can employees refuse to serve someone who is hostile and obviously armed?

3. What should employees do when they see a person with a handgun drawn?

4. Can employees ask a person if they are armed or not?

5. Should the City Council take a political position on this law?

These are just a few of the questions we are asking each other. I have appointed Police Chief Dan Carlson to be our point-man on this issue. Chief Carlson and representatives from our City Attorney’s office are attending training sessions about the law. In a couple of weeks we will forumulate a strategy of procedures that we will ask City employees to carry out concerning this law.

Some cities have already decided that they are going to defy the law and invite a lawsuit. We’re not going to do that in Eden Prairie. For better of worse, the law has been adopted. All three of Eden Prairie’s elected state officials (Rep. Paulsen, Rep. Adolphson, and Sen. Hann) voted in favor of the law. It’s my duty to enforce the laws of the state, and that’s what we’ll do. I think it’s an ill-advised law, but I also think its actual effects will be quite limited.

As for me, personally, I put stock in what the Brady Campaign has to say about Conceal & Carry gun laws.

I think a year from now we’ll know better. As they say, hindsight is always 20/20.

From Left to Right: Chris Shea (Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources Commission), Andy Krause (Heritage Preservation Commission), Ross Viland (Heritage Preservation Commission), Mackenzie Epping (Heritage Preservation Commission), David Westphal (Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources Commission), and Kian Missaghi (Human Rights and Diversity Commission).

This fine group of young people are six of the twelve Eden Prairie students that served as Student Board and Commission Members to four of the City’s citizen advisory baord. The students served on the Parks, Recreation, and Natural Resoruces Commission; Arts & Culture Commission; Historic Preservation Commission; and the Human Rights & Diversity Commission. The students, who all live in Eden Prairie, are high school students in Eden Prairie, Hopkins, and Holy Family high schools. Their terms of service are roughly from November to May.

One the sub-missions (if that’s a word) we have in city government is to educate the community’s young people on civics and government. Over my career, this has been one of the favorite parts of my job. I enjoy it because students often force me to refocus my own insights on government. Students often approach government with hopeful interest. That’s encouraging. Students also energize staff and the Board and Commission Members they serve with. While they do not get to vote on the Boards and Commissions, they are active in the other affairs of the Board and Commission, such as the debate, discussion, and investigative activities.

I snapped this photo of our students this week when we met with them in a debriefing session. We got them together to discuss their experience and how we could improve that experience. They gave us many good ideas, including the idea that we ought to start the recruitment process now for the Student Board and Commission Members that we want for this fall. I think that’s a great idea that we would not have come up with on our own. I think we’re going to do that.

We got some very good young men and women for this program. I am anxious to get it started for this fall.

Joint and Several liability reform is one of those “under the radar” issues that are very, very important to our daily lives as citizens in this country, but get precious little attention from the general media. Joint & Several is being discussed by state legislatures all over the country. I found this concise article about Joint & Several liability reform going on in the healthcare industry in Texas. It provides a quick summary of the issue.

Here’s a copy of the Senate Bill and the House Bill.

In Minnesota, Joint & Several liability reform has been an issue for cities for many years. This year, the legislature provided cities some measure of relief. Under current law, if a city were found to be 35% or more liable for an injury, the city could be ordered to pay up to 100% of the damages. This happened more than you’d think because, typically, cities had insurance coverage and its codefendents, typically, did not. This wasn’t always the case, but it happened frequently enough that it created a problem worthy of solving. What this ulitmately meant for you, the taxpaying public, is that you footed the cost for larger than necessary insurance costs for your cities because your cities were footing the bill for larger than necessary (or fair) damage awards in civil courts.

The new law, which was signed by the Governor on May 19, 2003, will push up the threshold from 35% to 50%. This may not sound like a big deal, but insurance and legal professionals are telling city officials that this change will make a significant change in the risk exposure that cities have in the civil courts. I hope so. When your city prevails in a situation like this, it’s good for you too. Costs incurred by your city are ultimately passed on to taxpayers. In this case, I think we may all get a win.

While the federal budget process seems to be winding up, the state’s budget process is winding down. The Star Tribune had a good article in today’s paper about where we might end up with the state’s budget over the next few days or few weeks.

So far, here’s what I see:

Profile of Learning: Out
Pledge of Allegience: In

State Employee Wage Freeze: Out
Outsourcing State Employee Jobs: In

Supper on Sundays for Prisoners: Out
Sunday Brunch for Prisoners: In

More State Supported Gambling: Out
Decreased Funding for ECFE: In

Tighter Gun Control: Out
Greater Freedom for Handgun Owners: In

.08: Out
More Liberal Liquor Laws: In

Looks like a Special Session is in the works to finish things up. There are several significant budget bills in conference right now. It could be quite an interesting run to the end of the session, special or otherwise.

Some time ago, before I came to know Minesota as my home, the State Legislature adopted the Minesota Pay Equity Act. The Pay Equity Act attempts to adjust the wages of local government employees around the state pursuant to the principles of the theory of “comparable worth”. For more information on comparable worth, see the Employment Policy Foundation or the League of MN Cities.

If you’re interested in seeing a detailed explanation of the Act and how to comply with it, check out the Dept of Employee Relations.

Minnesota cities must comply with the Pay Equity Act. To comply with the act, we must test our wage structure to statistically determine if our wage structure is male-biased, or OK. A wage structure can be biased in favor of males int he work force if jobs that are male dominated are paid more to female dominated jobs that are of “comparable value”.

So how does one go about determining what “comparable value” means? Cities retain consultants to test their jobs. We are employing such a consultant right now. Fox Lawson & Associates are evaluating our city jobs and assigning point values to all our jobs. The point values are then compared to each other to determine comparability. Jobs receive points for exposure to danger, working outside, supervising other employees, approving budgets, etc. There are many, many criteria that are evaluated to determine job points.

We are in compliance with the Pay Equity Act now, and I’m sure we will comply with the Act in the future, but it will take a lot of time (and money) to prove it. I’ll share more thoughts on this later.

We’ve all heard the old joke, right? Q: What are Minnesota’s two seasons? A: Winter and Road Construction season.

It’s funny (I guess) because there is an element of truth to it. The number of days that one can count on for road construction work in this state are limited by the severity of our seasons. You can’t deconstruct and reconstruct a road in this state from November through April. It’s too risky. It’s almost certainly too cold, too icy, or too snowy for people to work outside or for construction materials to function properly. So we cope with the situation we have here: We make plans in the winter and we excute plans in the non-winter.

Civil engineers, both those in public practice with cities, counties, or the state, and those in private practice in consulting firms, are a busy lot in the winter. Usually their technicians and survey teams have accumulated all the information they need to design a road. The winter time serves as the time to put design on paper or into the computer-aided design (CAD) system that will eventually spit out the plan sheets.

Late winter is for bidding the projects. This is where engineering transitions into construction. It’s where theory collides with practice. Engineers try to design projects that cannot fail to serve the need they were asked merely to meet. Contractors try to fulfill the need the project is trying to meet in a minimal fashion, while always staying within the limits of their contract, so they can preserve as much of the contract fee as possible. It’s not a game, but it’s close.

When the weather finally breaks for good in the spring, it’s time to do the projects. This summer you will see projects all over town. We are doing a full summer’s worth of road maintenance projects on City streets. We are going to see major projects (again) on east-bound 494 again this summer between Eden Prairie and Bloomington. Look for maps of our City street projects in the Eden Prairie News and Eden Prairie Sun Current newspaper.

Contractors are getting more sophisticated every year about working their projects. You see more night construction these days than ever before, for example. But the one thing that contractors have always needed from the driving public is the same thing they’ll need this summer - you attention. Please be careful while driving in construction zones. It’s a long summer and if you drive in Eden Prairie much, you’ll drive in construction a fair amount this summer.

Please be safe around construction zones.

When I moved to Minnesota in 1996 I was surprised to find that cities were in the retail liquor business. Not all cities, but some. I came in 1996 to become the new City Administrator in Northfield. We had municipal liquor. Eden Prairie has it as well.

The question is: Why?

There are many answers. Some cities are in it for the money. Cities that are in the retail liquor sales business exercise a legal monopoly on the sale of beer, liquor, and wine in their communities. Beer, liquor, and wine are desired commodities. They sell well. They have good profit margins. Municipal liquor stores generate revenue in excess of what it costs to run the operations of the store, well at least they’re supposed to. That money, which is usually called “profit” by the private sector, is returned back to the City’s General Fund where it performs two main functions, one on each side of the balance sheet. On the revenue side, this revenue displaces property taxes, so it is a form of property tax relief. On the expense side, it is spent as a General Fund revenue so it is spent on police protection, fire prevention, parks, libraries, recreation, planning, street maintenance, etc.

Some cities get into the municipal liquor business because they want to have greater control over the sale of beer, liquor, and wine in the community. Private liquor stores, driven by a desire for profit, presumably have more motivation to expand their sales than their municipal counterparts. This can make the private stores more apt to sell their products to underage customers. Most municipal liquor stores, on the other hand, have close associations with their police departments to make sure they do not sell liquor to underage customers. Most private liquor stores do not have such positive relationships with their local police departments.

The City of Eden Prairie has three municipal liquor stores. Together, they have generated an annual “profit” for the past three years of about $800,000/year. That money has funded the City’s Capital Iprovement Program (CIP), which provides funding for park development, trails, sidewalks, streets, street lighting, etc. Many good things for our community.

But there are those nagging moral questions. Should the City be involved in the sale of alcoholic beverages? Should the City give way to private liquor stores?

Almost every year the private liquor industry attempts to sway the State Legislature to adopt legislation to kick cities out of the municipal liquor business. So far, the effort has not paid off. But every year the effort gets a little more steam. The effort has a close ally in our own Rep. Erik Paulsen. Rep. Paulsen has supported the legislation in the past session (or two).

We are contemplating the future of municipal liquor. We ought to contemplate it as a community. As a community, we receive substantial benefit from the revenues generated at our municipal liquor stores. If we are going to move away from this revenue, we need to be more creative about generating replacement revenue, or lower our standards about the level of public improvements we will accomplish every year.

It’s a tough choice.

Our Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources Commission recently heard testimony on the issue of a establishing an Off-Leash Dog Park, or a simply a “Dog Park” for short. The Eden Prairie News carried a short article about this week’s Dog Park meeting.

The purpose of a Dog Park is to provide an opportunity for people to let their dogs run free. Well, relatively free. Dog Parks have fences and rules. Dog owners must still clean up after their animals, prevent them from fighting with other animals, or hurting other dog owners. THey are typically a couple of acres and located away from residential areas.

Dog Parks are hot in the area of Parks & Recreation around the country. Park & Rec Director Bob Lambert and I both believe that Dog Parks will be very common in twenty years. If we can proceed with the Dog Park proposal endorsed by the Parks, Recreation, and Natural Resources Commission this week, Eden Prairie will have a Dog Park system second to none in the Twin Cities.

Next stop for this issue: The City Council. No date for that meeting yet. Probably June 2003.

One of the concepts moving through the halls of the state legislature this year is Reverse Referendum. I’m not sure of the origin of the “reverse” term within the “Reverse Referendum”, but it works something like this: City Councils would adopt a proposed tax levy for the upcoming budget year, publish it, and then wait. During the waiting period, citizens would have the opportunity to generate a petition with a minimum threshhold of signatures, perhaps 5% or 10% of the number of people that voted in the most recent City-wide election. If the minimum threshhold of signatures is achieved, the citizens of the City would be asked to vote on the final approval of the City Council’s proposed tax levy. If a majority of the citizens voting in the referendum vote against the proposed tax levy, it would not be implemented. If it passed, it would be implemented.

Now, there are lots of details to work out, but that’s the general concept. The legislators in favor of this concept favor it because they believe it provides citizens a means to cool off a Council that is out of control with its spending. That’s what I’ve heard them say. Legislators who do not favor Reverse Referendum generally do not favor it because they believe that local government officials ought to sink or swim by their own actions. In other words, if a City Council is out of control with its spending, its citizens are free to vote the members of that Council out of office. In this mindset, Reverse Referendum is not necessary because the natural course of elections allows citizens to reward and punish their locally elected officials every two or four years.

One of the more interesting moves on this subject came on the floor of the State House of Representatives today came from Bloomington DFL Representative Ann Lenczewski.

Rep. Lenczewski proposed an amendment to the House Tax Bill that would have applied the concept of Reverse Referendum to the State Government, if it was also applied to cities and counties. The bill was written with the inclusion of Reverse Referendum for cities and counties, so it was an interesting character study to see how individual legislators acted on her amendment.

I am sad to report that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander, at least according to the Minnesota House of Representatives. The House voted to approve the bill including the Reverse Referendum provisions for local governments, but voted against applying it to themselves.

I felt like I was watching a replay of the concealed carry debate where state legislators banned the carrying of concealed handguns in the chambers of state government, but specifically allowed guns to be carried into city halls and county courthouses. In fact, that legislation specifically denies cities and counties the opportunity to ban concealed weapons from their buildings.

I know what to call it, but I’m trying to find a more polite word for it………

The Office of the State Auditor released a report today that analyzed the lobbying costs of local governments. The report was critical of the amount of money spent by Minnesota local governments on lobbying the State Legislature. A full copy of the report which details the lobbying expenditures can be found at State Auditor Awada’s website.

This press release by the State Auditor is the culmination of an annual reporting process that Minnesota local governments have been doing for several years. The State Auditor requires local governments to report their expenses on lobbying activities of state government officials. The local governments report their expenses, and then the State Auditor (regardless of the office’s occupant at the time) publicly decries the level of expenses - whatever they are.

It is a fair question, however, to ask: Why do local governments lobby the state government? Another good question, more aptly posed by local government officials, is: Why is it necessary for local governments to lobby the state government? As a taxpayer, the question I’ve always wanted to ask is: Why don’t cities, counties, school districts, and state government all work together to better coordinate the level of public services provided to Minnesota citizens?

The reason that cities, counties, and school districts feel they must lobby their state legislators is because they feel the concerns of their respective organizations are not taken into consideration sufficiently by the state legislature. They feel that if they do not speak on their own behalf, or pay others to do so, the state legislature will not care for their interests and will adopt legislation that makes governing at the local level more difficult.

The private sector is active in lobbying state legislators. They are often effective. Local governments have observed this and decided years ago that if local governments are to be considered as just another “interst group” by state legislators, that local governments might as well then behave like another interest group, at least when it comes to lobbying.

In a more perfect world, it would not be necessary for cities, counties, and school to lobby state legislators. In a more perfect world, the elected representatives of the people would gather together and divvy up the various aspects of providing services to public, and then we’d go out and perform. In my experience, we’re not making much progress towards that perfect world. Until we get there that’s alot more lobbying in our future.

Light rail transit is coming to Minnesota. The construction aspects of the Hiawatha LRT is over the hump. The rail cars are on order. One even visited Minneapolis last year.

The newest struggle for the LRT is determining who must subsidize its annual operations. The Star Tribune had a good pice on this issue in today’s paper.

When the State sought federal financial assistance to build the Hiawatha LRT, it pledged to provide sufficient funds each year to operate the LRT. The State officials making this request knew that LRT would require subsidy in order to operate from year to year. There was never any expectation that LRT would generate sufficient annual revenues to support its own expenses. The feds accepted the state’s commitment. The feds gave the state the money to assist with the construction of the LRT. The rest, as they say, is history.

Enter Governor Pawlenty.

When the Pawlenty administration began to confront the size of the projected state budget deficit, it quickly jumped on the project LRT subsidy. As House Majoriy Leader, Gov. Pawlenty was no fan of the LRT project. He did not support it and did not see it accomplishing much in the line of traffic congestion relief. And he was right. This LRT line will be a nice thing, but it is not being built in a location that will reduce traffic congestion. It is not likely to dispalce one car from 35W or 494. Maybe Highway 77, but not likely.

In order to save state budget dollars, the Governor proposed to have Hennepin County, Minneapolis, and Bloomington subsidize the LRT. I believe that Bloomington has successfully excised itself out of the current proposal, but Minneapolis and Hennepin County are still in the mix, as I understand it.

If you’re an Eden Prairie taxpayer, you will help to subsidize the LRT, unless the current proposal is changed. The County generates its funds by taxing all properties in Hennepin County - including us. We are continuing to monitor this proposal, and oppose it wherever possible.

The State should keep its original commitment to fund the annual operating costs of LRT.

I spent time today considering what to do about an anonymously published flyer that was put up around town that slandered a member of the City Council.

The flyer started to turn up this morning. Our street and parks maintenance staff found a few of them around town. By the end of the day, City staffmembers had accumulated about ten of the flyers - all removed from public property. Removing the flyers is a standard practice. We have to do this periodically with other privately posted flyers from time to time. It is a violation of our sign ordinance.

What makes this kind of thing so rotten is that it hurts a lot of innocent people. I’ve had it done to me. It hurt my wife and kids very much. I pray that the Councilmember’s family will be saved from major hurt from this incident. It’s a rotten thing to happen to them. They are nice people, and they don’t deserve this.

Maybe the person responsible for the flyer will step forward and engage the Councilmember in an open and honorable discussion about the issue in question.