The Blog from City Hall

I’ve said it here before, and I’ll probably say it here again someday, but being a police officer is not any easy job. I think a lot of us can be lulled into a comfortable sense of security and complacency by the relatively safe environment afforded to us in Eden Prairie by our police.

There was a hiccup in that security last week when an Eden Prairie resident went on a high speed chase through Eden Prairie, into Chanhassen, Chaska, and then back into Eden Prairie. Near the border between Eden Prairie and Chan, the driver hit another vehicle and spun off into the ditch. The photo below (which is from the Eden Prairie News) shows the driver’s car.

When the driver emerged from the car, he told the officer he had a gun and that he was going to shoot him. When he made a quick move into his coat, our officer shot him, wounding him in the leg. An ambulance took him to the hospital. He is recuperating.

Despite what you see on TV, it is not easy for a police officer to shoot a person - even when that person may pose a threat to the officer. Police officers are trained to exhaust all other options before shooting an assailant.

The man driving this car on a high speed chase endangered the lives of hundreds of our residents in a short amount of time. If he could have got another car, there is no telling what might have happened. He may have killed innocent people. Our officer’s quick thinking and good judgment saved lives that day.

Maybe your’s.

This sign shows how much it costs to replace commonly vandalized items from our City parks and recreation facilities. In 2002, the City had over $6,500 worth of goods and equipment stolen from City parks. We lost just over $10,000 to vandals in 2002.

Here’s a couple of photos of actual Eden Prairie park vandalism from 2003:

We can build our fences higher and make access more difficult, but that seems like punishing the average citizen, instead of the vandals. I’m not sure we can ever completely vandal-proof our parks. Frankly, it’s not a goal because the only way to really vandal-proof a park would be to keep the public out of it, and that defeats the purpose of the park in the first place.

We monitor our parks with City employees, but we can always use the help of the public to monitor our parks too. We all pay a price for vandalism. We can all help to keep that price as low as possible.

This is the sunrise over EP this morning from the top of the SW Metro parking ramp. It was cold, but it was beautiful. I was up on the top of the ramp today taking some photos of the progress on the new Purgatory Creek Recretation Area (PRCA) Park. The park project has made great progress this fall. It’s a combinationof a good contractor and good weather. Here’s what it looks like today:

In this photo you can see the road system and internal parking areas that will serve the park. The structure you see on the right hand side of the photo will cover some of the main walkway that starts at the corner of Technology Drive and proceeds straight to the wetland area.

This photo shows the corner of Technology Drive and Praire Center Drive. Near this corner are two new electric scrolling message board signs that the City will use for a variety of public information and public relations purposes. You can sort of make out that new trees have been planted. This park will have a lot of new trees in it.

This photo shows the middle of the park. The building you see in the center of the photo is a new public restroom for the park. It will be block and brick construction and be an attractive public building.

We expect the park to be completed bby the middle of 2004.

Over the past twelve months City staff have been working on the development of a new Vision Statement, Mission, Statement, and Strategic Plan for the City. We developed and the Council approved a new Vision Statement and a new Mission Statement. As staff began working on the Strategic Plan we began to understand that we needed to have some common understanding and common language & culture in order to develop the plan.

I brought this observation to the City’s Human Resources Manager. She worked with Augsburg College and developed a personalized management development curriculum for our management staff. The curriculum consists of a series of five four hour classes. We have divided our management staff into three different groups for these classes. The classes are taught at the City’s Outdoor Center on Staring Lake. The photograph above is of one of the instructors, Ms. Clare O’Connell.

We are slowly getting a common base of understanding of how to write goal and objective statements, how to evaluate employmee perfroamnce, how to coach employees to better performance, and so on. We have one more class period left. Four hours is a long time, but it’s been worth it.

Yes, the City of Eden Prairie has a CIA Task Force, but it’s not as intriguing as it sounds. Our CIA Task Force is really our Clean Indoor Air Task Force. The task force was appointed by the City Council earlier this year as part of last year’s ultimate resolution of the City’s consideration of a new ordinance that would have substantially restricted smoking in most of Eden Prairie’s businesses, especially those serving food.

The City’s consideration of what was called a “smoking ban” ordinance was politically heated. It drew attention from media across the Twin Cities and interest from interest groups around the country. Ultimately, the City Council declined to adopt the ordinance but pledged to study ways to encourage cleaner indoor air in Eden Prairie buildings through a citizen task force.

The task force was appointed in January 2003 and met monthly through out the year. They completed their initial mission and delivered their draft final recommendations to the City Council last night, November 18, 2003. The photo below is of task force spokesperson Deborah Plumb describing the final recommendations to the Council. City staff member Molly Koivumaki, Manager of Housing and Human Services, stood with Ms. Plumb. Ms. Koivumaki was the staff liaison to the task force.

The task force recommended the City establish a voluntary program that would recognize businesses that participate in the program with a “star decal” that could be placed in the window. The recognition is being designed primarily for businesses that serve food. There would be varying levels of positive recognition, depending on the level of non-smoking in the business. The highest level of recognition is for businesses that would go non-smoking 100% of the time.

The root values of the program came from direction from the City Council at the start of the task force’s deliberations. The Council wanted the program to be voluntary; to reward participation with positive recognition; to not recognize or bring attention to non-participants; to be consumer-choice driven; to be inexpensive to implement; and to be inexpensive to sustain.

The Council gave its support to the “Star Quality” program. The program will kick-off in early 2004.

I was listening to a radio report yesterday of the projected weather for the week of Thanksgiving. It sounds like we’ve got a lot of snow on the way. The weather reporter said we will see 10-12 inches in northern and central Minnesota, and lesser accumulations in the Twin Cities metro area.

Nonetheless, the Eden Prairie Street Division is prepared. The Street Division employees are getting their trucks in top working order, their blades sharpened, and their plowing wits about them.

Snow plowing is not easy. I have had the opportunity during my career to ride with several snow plow drivers. It is a skill you can learn, but for the best of them - it’s an art. They know when to speed up and when to slow down. They know when to push a load of snow through an intersection and when to dump it before it “leaks” past the plow. They remember where the high manhole covers are and where the weka mailboxes are that will wilt when hit with that first load of snow.

We have a highly trained and highly skilled crew of snow removal employees in the Eden Prairie Street Division. I think you’ll be meeting them soon.

Yesterday was opening day at the new South Metro Public Safety Training Facility. This is a photo of a color guard representing the four member organizations (the cities of Edina, Eden Prairie, Bloomington, and the Metropolitan Airport Police) raising the flag for the first time over the new facility.

The facility is the result of a successful partnership between the four partner organizations. It has been almost a decade in the making. With this facility, we believe we will have the best trained police and fire employees in our state. The facility includes two shooting ranges, a training room for police defensive tactics, offices and classrooms, and an extensive outdoor training area for firefighters to work on “live burns”.

As part of the opening day festivities, some of the civilian guests had the oppotunity to shoot in the new shooting range. Above is a picture of me shooting an MP5. Below is a pciture of me shooting an M-16.

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Do I look a little uncomfortable with a weapon? Yes, I was. I don’t have much experience with guns.

But I’d do it again