Earlier this year Governor Pawlenty announced a broad new initiative to address an issue near and dear to the hearts of many Minnesotans: the water quality of our lakes, rivers, and streams. The initiative is called The Clean Water Legacy Act, more mundanely known in the Minnesota House of Representatives as House File [...]
Monthly Archives: March 2005
Oak Point Pool
March 30, 2005 – 2:05 pm
This is Oak Point Pool.
The Oak Point Pool is located, not surprisingly, at Oak Point Intermediate School. If you’re not familiar with Oak Point Intermediate School, it is located on Anderson Lakes Parkway, just west of its intersection with Flying Cloud Drive.
The pool is owned by the Eden Prairie School District, but [...]
Salt & Sand; Spreading & Collecting
March 24, 2005 – 12:20 pm
This is a street sweeper. The street sweeper is used to clean debris from streets. We employ a hybrid public-private model for our street sweeping operations. We own two street sweepers and we employ 4-5 more sweepers through private contractors. This allows us to start sweeping earlier, whenever we feel it’s [...]
Variety
March 23, 2005 – 12:25 pm
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 [...]
Fountain Place
March 22, 2005 – 12:54 pm
Fountain Place is the name of a new retail development on Flying Cloud Drive. It is on the west side of Flying Cloud Drive, roughly between Anderson Lakes Parkway on the south and Prairie Center Drive on the north. It is visibly under construction right now. I have some photos to share [...]
Recreational Renaissance
March 21, 2005 – 2:42 pm
We are experiencing a bit of a recreational renaissance at the Community Center. During the past year we made a number of small improvements in the overall condition of the Community Center building. For example, I think it is cleaner than it’s ever been. We introduced a new cleaning contractor into the [...]
Anonymity
March 19, 2005 – 4:41 pm
Anonymity is a dicey subject to address when you work for the government. Citizens are entitled to access most of our services, regardless of their willingness to share their names with us. There are some exceptions to that rule, but you can live a fair share of your life in this country without [...]
Even More Innovation on the Front Lines
March 17, 2005 – 7:25 am
I’ve got more employee-initiated innovations to share with you today. Two of our Street Maintenance employees, Rick Williamson and Ray Olsen, designed and manufactured these innovations in our Street Maintenance Shop.
This is a ramp. This kind of ramp is attached to a trailer to enable an operator to drive motorized equipment, such as mowers and [...]
Leaders to Leaders
March 16, 2005 – 12:28 pm
The City Council met in joint session with our state legislative delegation last night to discuss matters of mutual concern in St. Paul. It’s a good opportunity for local and state leaders to talk about how legislators can best represent the City’s interests in the State Legislature and how City Councilmembers can best assist [...]
More Innovation on the Front Lines
March 14, 2005 – 3:52 pm
Here’s another installment of innovation on the front lines. This is an all-purpose outside utilities construction trailer:
This apparatus is designed to be connected to a truck and then hauled into the field by the employees who work in our Outside Utilities Division. These are the guys that fix water mains, sewer lines, and [...]
Innovation on the Front Line
March 10, 2005 – 3:42 pm
One of the things that I like best about my job is that I get to tour pretty much any City facility that I want to tour. I like to do this because it is interesting to see the work that our employees are doing, and because it is always impressive to me the [...]
Flying the Flag
March 9, 2005 – 7:28 am
There was a short confrontation at our March 1 pre-Council meeting Open Forum with a citizen who was upset that the City did not lower its state and national flags out of respect for the three Minnesota National Guardsmen who were killed in Iraq in early February. In response to the confrontation, I prepared [...]
Testifying for Liquor
March 7, 2005 – 7:13 am
Actually, it’s for a license to dispense liquor, but it’s a good attention-grabbing headline.
I will be testifying today before a committee in the Minnesota Senate seeking a small piece of legislation to enable the new food vendor in the City Center’s Garden Room, Taher Business Dining, to dispense liquor in the Garden Room.
The [...]
Local 49
March 4, 2005 – 7:39 am
The City of Eden Prairie has approximately 270 fulltime regular authorized budgeted employee positions. At any one time we could have a few more than that, or more likely, a few less, but that’s a solid estimate of our average number. Of that total, about 60 of them are reresented by a single union. [...]
The MCA
March 2, 2005 – 7:52 am
This is a planning map of the City’s Market Center Area. Sometimes we refer to it as the Major Center Area. We really ought to pick one name and use it consistently. [Note to self] Actually, we refer to it more commonly as the “MCA”, so I guess we cover both [...]
