The Blog from City Hall

Here they are: The City’s 2004 crop of high school students that have been appointed by the City Council to serve as ex officio members of our citizen advisory boards and commissions:

Cole Johnson, Apoorva Shah, and Roby Shrestha on our Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources Commission.

Jackie Beutell, Tara Degn, and Hojun Lee on our Human Rights and Diversity Commission.

Trevor Diddell, Katie Kunitz, and Benjamin Costello on our Heritage Preservation Commission.

Casey Carlson, Evan Estrine, and Carly Hofstedt on our Arts and Culture Commission.

The students will attend the regular monthly meetings of the boards and commissions. They will receive and read all the same prep materials that we provide to our regular board and commission members. We encourage them to participate in the discussion of the board or commission. We especially encourage them to lend us their insights and opinions. The only thing they don’t do is cast an official vote.

We organize a students on commission program each year because the City Council and City staff feel it is important to help educate the youth of Eden Prairie about the workings of democracy. We need to do our small part to teach citizenship. We may not see the payoff from our efforts right here in Eden Prairie, but someday these students will be citizens somewhere. And if we can play a role in creating engaged citizens for some future government, then that makes our efforts all worthwhile.

Here’s to citizenship!

Have a great year.

One of our 2004 summer road construction projects was to improve the safety and driving safety of Eden Prairie Road south of Pioneer Trail. I took a drive down it today. Here’s the view:

I think this might sound silly, but I really like the look of a brand new road. The powder white curbs. The jet black asphalt. The bright yellow center lines. The fresh green grass or sod in the boulevard. I just can’t help it. I like the way it looks. I think that Eden Prairie Road has an exceptionally attractive streetscape.

The project is done for this season. We’ll pick up the rest of the project next year. In this photo you can clearly see where old meets new.

Improving transportation safety and efficiency is one of the more important duties of City government. We have an exceptional Public Works Department staff, led by Public Works Director Gene Dietz, that takes this duty very seriously. They are good planners and good at executing the plan. Take a drive down Eden Prairie Road and you’ll see what I mean.

Thanks Gene. Great project.

Mr. Gene Dietz,
Director of Public Works

One of the important internal support functions of City government is the Facilities Division. As a citizen, you may not see or interact with the employees of our Facilities Division directly, but I can assure you benefit from their work on a daily basis. They clean the buildings; fix the toilets; weed the flower beds; heat the swimming pools; freeze the ice; hang the photos; move the furniture and all the other 1,000’s of little things it takes to make a modern multi-building organization function effectively.

The Facilities Division was reorganized in April 2004. Among the changes to our Facilities Division that can trace their lineage back to April 2004 are the arrival of our new Facilities Manager, Mr. Paul Sticha as Facilities Manager; the hiring of a private custodial contractor, Diverse Building Maintenance (DBM, to clean all City-owned facilities; the termination of the contract with United Properties (UP) as the property management vendor for City Center and the Den Road Liquor Store and moving those duties in-house; and the reorganization of the division staff to create a staff that included two Facilities Supervisors (Marc Thielman at the City Center and Michael Sheggeby at the Community Center), two Facilities Engineers (Roy Timm at the City Center and Jeff Elwell at the Community Center), two Facilities Technicians (Shaun Sullivan and Tim Peltier) and a Facilities Service Coordinator (Joan Karst).

We are currently working on an internal review of this reorganization. We are comparing the costs of the previous facilities functions with the reorganized functions. We are comparing employee head-counts before and after. We are also surveying City employees to collect their input about whether they’ve noticed the changes. And if they have noticed, we want to know if they think the reorganization was a good decision.

Safe and pleasant facilities are important to the employees who work in our buildings, but they are also important to the citizens who visit us. In the end, our facilities are public property. Maintaining public facilities properly and prudently is one of the City’s key stewardship commitments that we must keep for our citizens.

In the arena of economic development for a city, you win some and you lose some. By mid-November Eden Prairie is going to win one.

That’s right Dick Enrico’s 2nd Wind Excercise Equipment is moving its corporate headquarters from St. Louis Park to Eden Prairie. 2nd Wind recently completed the purchase of the building located at 7585 Equitable Drive. The new HQ will include not only the corporate offices but also a distribution center and showroom.

There is a good story and more information about the move in the September 24, 2004 edition of The Twin Cities Business Journal.

It’s very nice for Eden Prairie to have a new high profile business headquarters locate here. 2nd Wind is really primed for growth. This link is to their store locater on the their website. If there’s not one near you right now, hang on. It’ll be there soon.

Office of the City Manager
Memorandum #2004-060

DATE: September 24, 2004

TO: Mayor and City Councilmembers

FROM: Scott H. Neal, City Manager

RE: Friday Report for September 24, 2004

1. ERU Training � Our Police Department�s Emergency Response Unit (ERU) team participated in the annual ERU training and competition this past week at Camp Ripley. Our team received the Top Team award. Officer Chris Wood received the Top Gun Sniper award. Officer Tom Lowery received the Top Gun Pistol award.

2. Boy Scout Spaghetti Supper � The spaghetti supper fundraising message will run on our electronic message board at the Purgatory Creek Recreation Area starting today and until October 8th, which is the date of the fundraiser; 5-8 p.m. at the high school.

3. STAR Mentors � City employees will be participating again this year in the STAR Mentor program with Central Middle School. This is our third consecutive year with the program. We have usually fielded 5-10 employees to serve in the program.

4. Meet & Greets � This week: Cub Foods and Suburban Pediatrics. Next week: Gold Galaxy and EPIC restaurant.

5. Students on Commission � We will be training our new student commissioners next week. They will start their assignments soon after that.

6. United Properties � Staff met this week with a representative of United Properties concerning their interest in developing the office/commercial parcels of Hennepin Village. They are very interested in the land. I believe we can make this work.

7. Utility Finance � Sue Kotchevar, Ed Sorenson, Gene Dietz and I met this week to review the financial position of our utility funds. Sue has prepared an analysis of the funds that supports the a small increase in our utility rates. We are examining the impacts of a 1% - 2% increase in water rates for next year. We will discuss this matter with the Council later this fall.

Here are a couple of good stories from the Star Tribune that I found of interest yesterday:

Eden Prairie’s proposed property tax increase for 2005 appears on the modest side when compared to other West Metro cities:
Tax collections to jump in west-metro cities
Ben Steverman, Star Tribune

Also a front page article on weblogs:
From geek to chic: Blogs gain influence
Bob Von Sternberg, Star Tribune

I attended the Eden Prairie Chamber of Commerce’s “Education Funding: It’s Your Business” presentation at the Bloomington Sheraton yesterday. It was an educational meeting facilitated by the Chamber and sponsored by ADC Telecommunications and by Endurant Business Solutions.

It was a panel presentation and discussion about the future of K-12 education funding in Minnesota. The panel consisted of Ric Dressen, Superintendent of Alexandria Public Schools; Melissa Krull, Superintendent of Eden Prairie Schools; Patricia Harvey, Superintendent of St. Paul Schools; Dr. Tom Melcher, Manager of Public Finance for the Minnesota Department of Education; Arthur Rolnick, senior vice-president of the Federal Reserve bank of Minneapolis; Alice Seagren, Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Education; and John Gunyou, City Manager for Minnetonka.

The panel was great. It covered a variety of perspectives. The message was tough. School funding from the State is going to decrease, according to the adopted state budget, each year for the next three years. Commissioner Seagren said yesterday that the Governor would seek to add an inflation factor to school funding, but there is no assurance that this will happen. The state’s budget looks very red two years out. The 2005 legislature will wrestle with that.

See this sign? It doesn’t look like this today. This is what it looked like back in February of this year. It stands at the intersection of Prairie Center Drive and Technology Drive. If you drove by it today, you’d see a bright orange colored electronic display sign with messages about what’s going on in the community.

This sign provided my staff and me a great learning opportunity last night at our City Council meeting. Allow me to explain.

The original purpose of this message board sign was to provide the City a means of passive and inexpensive communications with Eden Prairie citizens about City plans, programs, and announcements. We built it and funded it with that in mind.

After the sign was up and functional we began to receive a number of requests from community groups who wanted to use the sign to announce their plans, programs, and announcements. We did not anticipate that, so we prepared a policy to use to sort out what announcements we would accommodate and which ones we would not. Our policy accommodated our own needs first, and then allowed School District announcements next, and then local service clubs like the Rotary Club, Lion’s Club, etc.

Our policy did not accommodate a request from the local Boy Scout troop (#597, I believe) who asked us to advertise their upcoming spaghetti dinner fundraiser. Our policy did not accommodate them because there was no apparent connection between the event and the City, and because we did not want to post fundraising advertisements for every club and organization in town. Doing that, we feared, would consume all the reasonable time available on the sign and then nobody’s message would get any attention - including the City’s announcements.

Well, the Boy Scouts came out in force last night to our City Council meeting and explained their case. The City Council redefined for City staff what the meaning of “our” ought to mean as it relates to “our” sign. The Council told us that “our”, as it relates to the ownership of this sign, means “community”, not just city government. The Council wants to see the sign used to promote community events, not just events the City staff plans for the community, but also events that community members plan for each other.

It was a good decision. We, City staff I mean, were looking at this sign very narrowly. And while our narrow look at the issue had at its core some reasonable hopes and concerns about the use of this new public asset, the big picture escaped us. In this case, it’s not about efficient use of a public asset. It’s about community use of a community asset.

We learned a valuable civics lesson from the Boys Scouts last night. One I will not forget.

Good article in yesterday’s Sunday Star Tribune by our own Nick Eian. Nick is CEO of Endurant Business Solutions and an Eden Prairie resident. I serve with Nick on the Board of Habitat For Technology. He has held executive positions with several Fortune 500 companies in the Twin Cities. Nick’s first Business Forum, which appeared June 7, was recognized this month as one of the best business commentaries of the year by Twin Cities Business Monthly. You can reach Nick at: nick.eian@endurant.com.

The article addresses the current trend of “offshoring” jobs and business functions. Nick believes it’s not always a good thing to do. I agree. While there may be a world-wide market rate for “tightening a nut”, as Governor Pawlenty frequently says (and I think he’s right about that), there must be a point at which it actually costs more to do it in China than it does in Minnesota. Whatever “it” happens to be.

There was another article in yesterday’s Star Tribune that we ought to pay attention to in Eden Prairie. This one deals with the fiscal situation in Carver County and how it might impact the County road projects associated with the coming construction of the new Highway 212.

The money is coming for the Hwy. 212 project. It’s on the way. We are getting ready for it. We haven’t yet determined exact size of our local costs, but we have determined they are within our means and that we are ready to go. It’s important to us that Carver County do the same. In the end, this road project is more for them than it is for us.

Here is my Friday Report for the City Council for today, Friday, September 18, 2004:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Office of the City Manager
Memorandum #2004-058

DATE: September 17, 2004

TO: Mayor and City Councilmembers

FROM: Scott H. Neal, City Manager

RE: Friday Report for September 17, 2004

1. Employee News � We are welcoming the addition of Mary Zilka to our staff. Mary is the new Administrative Assistant to Community Development Director Janet Jeremiah. Congratulations to Andy Allman on his promotion in the Outside Utilities division taking over Kevin Cassady�s old job. Tanya Whitsitt has moved. Tanya is now the Administrative Assistant for the Communications Division.

2. Purgatory Creek Recreation Area � The dedication event for the new park and recreation area is tomorrow (Saturday, September 18th) starting at 1:00 p.m. Just a reminder that the Jean Harris Gathering Bridge dedication event will be held in October. More on that later.

3. Free Woodchips � The City will distribute free woodchips this year on two upcoming Saturday mornings: September 25th and October 2nd. The gates open at 8:00 a.m. and close at noon both days. The location is on Spring Road just east of Grace Church�s Spring Road entry drive.

4. New Cameras � The new video cameras for the Council Chamber will be installed November 2-5. The Chambers will not be available for outside use while the installation is in progress.

5. EPTV � One of our Communications Division�s key goals for 2005 is the launch of Eden Prairie TV (EPTV) � Channel 16. We want to greatly expand the City�s use of Channel 16, including the production of more original programming.

6. NAIOP 2004 City Study � The Minnesota Chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties conducted a broad study of 78 Minnesota cities to compare their individual development costs and timelines to a hypothetical office building construction project. The study will be released to the media next week. We have obtained an advance copy of the study�s results. We are reviewing the result to enable us to characterize Eden Prairie�s development costs for you if you receive questions on this topic from the media.

7. Students on Commissions � Each spring when our students complete their board and commission assignments we host a dinner debriefing with them gather information about their experience and to seek their input on how we could make the experience more valuable to future students. In 2002 the students told us that we should make students aware of the opportunity to serve on our boards and commissions in the spring for the following fall. Previously, we did a concentrated recruiting effort in the fall only. It was good advice. We did a spring recruitment earlier this year and a short concentrated recruitment after school started this fall. We had 33 applicants for our 12 positions. That isthe highest number of applicants we�ve ever had. The Council is scheduled to appoint the student commissioners at the September 21st Council meeting.

8. 2005 MLC Regional Breakfasts � Just a reminder to put this date on your calendar: our 2005 MLC regional legislative breakfast will be Friday, January 21, 2005, at the Radisson Hotel in Plymouth from 7:30-9:00 a.m.

9. Riley-Jacques Farmstead Dedication � The event is planned for Sunday, September 26th, from 1:00-4:00 p.m. We had been trying to get Governor Pawlenty to attend this event, but his schedule could not accommodate it. Sandy Werts has a great afternoon of activities planned. It will be a lot of fun.

10. Education: It�s Your Business � Is the title of an upcoming event being sponsored by the Eden Prairie Chamber of Commerce. The event will present a panel of speakers discussing Minnesota�s school finance system. The City has reserved a table of ten for the event. Please check in with Lorene (at your earliest convenience) if you desire to attend. The event is Wednesday, September 22nd, from 7:30-9:30 a.m. Registration starts at 7:00 a.m. at the Bloomington Sheraton.

11. Paperless Packet � In addition to the benefits of providing you a paperless Council Packet, the public is benefiting from this innovation as well. We now post our entire Council Packet online at our website. It is totally accessible for anyone who wants it at their convenience and at no expense.

12. Rink #1 Progress Report � We met with the construction contractor last week to discuss options for speeding up the completion date for the project. The contractor had an additional crew available if we were willing to pay for them. We agreed to pay the contractor an additional $1,500/day to bring an additional crew to the project. This should get the completed the project completed at least one week ahead of our most recent scheduled due date. We now believe the project can be completed before the end of October. This will allow the City to begin selling ice earlier than previously planned, which creates additional revenue to justify the extra expense. This is good news.

-end-

The worker in this picture is welding pipes that will become part of the floor freezing system for rink 1 at the Community Center. The white material on the floor covers a layer of yellow foam board insulation that covers a layer of sand. Within that layer of sand is a network of pipes that carry an insulating liquid, like anti-freeze, that keeps the ground beneath the ice rink from freezing and thawing. This is important because the annual freeze-thaw cycle, if it were allowed to run its natural course, would destroy the integrity of the floor and the rink.

The network of freezing pipes, once they are all welded together and connected across the entire rink floor will be buried by another layer of sand. The freezing pipes will carry a type of freon that, when activated, will freeze the sand in which they are encased. Then our staff will spray water on the frozen sand. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. And presto: Ice.

We are moving into the start of indoor ice season very quickly. The rink 1 project is not done, but we are working closely with the contractor to search for ways we can get the job done quicker, yet preserve the quality we are looking for. Right now, we think we can get the rink opened up by the first of November. We’d like to shoot for an October opening date if we can.

For people who are interested in getting a regular update on the status of the project, the City has posted regular updates about the rink 1 project at its website: www.edenprairie.org.

On another completely unrelated note:

Music fans everywhere (OK, maybe not everywhere) should mourn the passing of a legend from my childhood: Johnny Ramone, dead at the age of 55. We’ll miss you, Johnny.

There was a good article in this morning’s West Edition of the Star Tribune about Flying Cloud Airport called “Not Everyone On Board For Flying Cloud Expansion”. The article was written by Ben Steverman. Ben writes the bulk of the material in the Star Trib’s West Edition. He does a pretty good job. I won’t call him “fair and balanced” because that terminology doesn’t mean now what it used to. But I’d say that he does his research and covers the various perspectives of his subjects.

The main point of the story is that some Eden Prairie citizens oppose the expansion of the Flying Cloud Airport and some support it.

The City, which has had a history of actively opposing the expansion of the airport, settled its issues with the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC), which owns and operates the airport, in December of 2002. The City and the MAC agreed on the scope and magnitude of the future expansion of the airport. Specifically, the MAC agreed not to do some things, like allowing the start of full-scale public passenger services, and the City agreed to withdraw its active opposition of the expansion.

The MAC looks at Flying Cloud as a key facility in its Reliever Airport system. The Reliever Airports do just what you think they’re supposed to do: they are supposed to relieve the international airport - MSP - from small general aviation air traffic. The idea is to keep the little guys off the big field, I’m told. By doing that the big guys have more flexible use over the big field and the little guys have more flexible use of the little field.

I don’t know enough about aviation to know if this system works, or not. What I do know is that Northwest Airlines has significant corporate concerns about the expansion of Flying Cloud Airport. If the reliever system worked the way it is supposed to, I would think that NWA would want Flying Cloud expanded. But they don’t.

At the moment, the ball is in the MAC’s court. They are engaged in a formal complaint process with NWA about the Flying Cloud expansion. The City has agreed not to resist the expansion, although we will monitor it to make sure we are getting what MAC said they were planning to do. The airline industry is not flush right now, so all this discussion of expansion may just be for naught.

This is the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD)is prepared and updated by the Federal Highway Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation. It is the primary source for questions about traffic control devices. Warning: This is a book written by engineers for engineers. That doesn’t mean that civilians can’t read and understand it, but you should be prepared for detail.

Lots and lots of detail.

We use the MUTCD to help us evaluate requests for signs and signals on City streets. We gets requests every month for a new stop sign here or a new signal there. Citizens are often surprised that we don’t install the sign or signal simply at their request. Aside from the costs (signs are in the hundreds of dollars; signals are in the he hundreds of thousands of dollars), there are many reasons why we study and evaluate these requests.

It may not seem like it sometimes, but most drivers respect most traffic control devices. Because drivers are willing to modify their behavior when we ask them to, we need to make sure that we are asking them to modify their behavior for a good reason. Stop signs, for example, are often requested by citizens who want traffic slowed in their neighborhoods. But stop signs are not good tools to slow traffic. They sometimes even divert that traffic to other neighborhood streets, and speed it up as well.

This may be counter-intuitive, but traffic studies and statistics will bear it out. And I can assure you that, with the possible exceptions of the weather and major league baseball, no subject is studied more or generated more raw statistical data than traffic. If you want to know the answer to a traffic question, rest assured, it has been studied and answered. It’s out there somewhere.

So the most important issue we consider when deciding to place a new traffic sign is its possible effectiveness. Will it make traffic behave in a way that we want it to behave? The second is probably the cost, both installation and future maintenance. Finally, we also consider the aesthetics issue. The more signs we place in the environment, the more we dilute each sign’s individual ability to grab your attention. More and more signs also add to the everyday visual clutter of the public space that we must share together.

It can be very frustrating to citizens to not get the Yield or Stop or Children At Play sign they requested. I mean really, what’s the harm in the City just giving them what they have requested? So here’s what I’d say to that. If we don’t have to have another sign out there, and it’s not going to be effective anyway, then why spend the money on it and why add it to environment? Installing traffic control devices to quiet down an angry citizen might be good politics, but it is bad for traffic control in our City.

I started my career in city management in a town of about 2,000 people with 24 employees. I knew them all by name and face. That was Norris, Tennessee in 1988. Today, I have, depending on the day, 295-300 co-workers working three shifts. 24-7, as the police and fire services like to say. It’s a challenge to know all of them by name and face, but I give it my best effort.

I have been getting out of my office over the past couple of weeks to visit department and division staff meetings. I meet them. They meet me. We talk about what’s going on in their workplaces. I tell them about the budget for 2005; the upcoming elections; discuss City construction projects; and talk about our new City Work Plan and the new Operational Reviews we’ve been doing.

I met with Building Inspectors last week. I met with Street and Fleet maintenance workers this morning. I’ll meet with all three shifts of police officers at their pre-shift briefing. I’ll meet with engineers, facilities, parks workers, assessors, etc. down the line. We have a diverse work force. It’s interesting to meet with them and hear about the projects they are working on.

It’s simple stuff. Talking to people, especially co-workers, is an important, and often over-looked, skill in the workplace. Listening to co-workers is the only thing that might be more important. You can only do so much communication through e-mail and memo. You just can’t substitute that good old face to face discussion.

Mayor Nancy Tyra-Lukens (left) and Eden Prairie Director of Parks & Recreation Bob Lambert (right) both said a few words at the dedication ceremony for the Richard T. Anderson Conservation Area.

Mr. Richard T. Anderson was a former longtime Member of the City Council and Parks Commission in Eden Prairie in the 1980’s and 1990’s. About 70 people gathered together this week at the new conservation area that bears his name to dedicate the Richard T. Anderson Conservation Area. Mr. Anderson died in 1994.

Those who knew him and his work gathered to dedicate a conservation area in the name of the man who a “leading voice in the preservation of Eden Prairie’s parks and open spaces.” He was a teacher, parent and community leader who provided dedicated service for preserving land in Eden Prairie.

The RTACA is 100+ acres of preserved bluff and forest land on the southwest corner of Eden Prairie. You can get their by taking Hwy. 212 south on your way to Shakopee or Chanhassen. If you are southbound, there is a small parking area to you left. There are picnic tables, trails, and refreshing spring water to drink.

Bob Lambert has worked tirelessly over the past decade to accumulate this land through purchases and gifts so that the people of Eden Prairie could enjoy this beautiful natural area for the future.

Good work Bob. Thank you Anderson family.

(L to R) The Anderson Family: Reid Anderson, Todd Anderson, Sonja Anderson (Richard’s wife), and Robb Anderson.

I got a call on Saturday afternoon this weekend from George Esbensen. George is our Fire Chief. George told me of a call me received from an official from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) looking for volunteers to go to Florida to assist with the recovery efforts from Hurricane Frances. Specifically, FEMA was looking for people that had been through their Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program. We have an active CERT program here in Eden Prairie. FEMA knew that. Hence, the call to our Fire Chief.

So, a flurry of call were made; schedules were changed; lives were temporarily put on hold; and 14 Eden Prairie citizens got on an airplane bound first for Atlanta, Georgia for a crash course in hurricane recovery, and then on to Florida for two weeks of hard, rewarding work. They each had about an hour or so to make the decision, and then less than 24 hours to be ready and on that airplane.

How about that.

This is a shot of our crew unloading their stuff at the airport getting ready for departure.

That’s Sheri Lundeen on the right in the front. That’s Jeff Carrane on the left in front. Rick Thompson is back near the door of the bus. You can just see the top of Becki White’s head behind Jeff.

This group of Eden Prairie citizens was willing to drop what they were doing to help their fellow citizens in Florida. Hats off to them! I’ll be following their trip and giving you updates along the way. This is a great story.