The Blog from City Hall

The City is in the middle of a remodeling project of its City Center second floor office space. This area is visible to the public from the Planning Division counter. The goal of this project is to open up the space more and bring better light into the area. There will still be individual employee office cubes, but we think the new cube arrangement will provide better work space for our planners and the more “open” feeling of the space will make it easier for them to work together on projects and to keep watch on the counter for customer traffic.

While the overall goal of the remodeling project is to “open up” the office space, we are building two new private offices for people that were formerly in office cubes. One is for our payroll manager. This photo shows the new drywall of her office. We think a private office for her is important because of the private information she handles and private discussions that she must have on a daily basis with employees. This can be handled more discretely in an office than it can from a cube.

The other new private office space is for our economic development manager. The economic development manager also handles private information, much of it about private business proposals in Eden Prairie. I think it’s best if the information he has and the discussions he participates in are handled in a private office rather than a open office cube.

The remodeling project started last week. The contractor has made great progress and the disruption, according to the employees I’ve talked to anyway, has been minimal. We’re looking forward to it being completed before the end of August.

This is a poorly executed photograph of a fellow named Mr. Dylan Jeffrey. I snapped this photo of Dylan delivering the official welcome to the first-ever International Symposium on Local e-Democracy that was held this week right here in the Twin Cities.

Dylan is a Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (OPDM) in the United Kingdom. The OPDM was one of the key sponsors of the symposium. They held the symposium here in the Twin Cities because we are a “hot bed” of innovation in the field of e-democracy, and have been for a decade.

There was great attendance at the symposium from outside the United States. I’d say about half the people I met were from outside the US. This is a photo of Isobel Harding. Isobel is the Head of the Information Society Unit for the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Assemblies and also for North LincsNet in North Lincolnshire. She also was one of the leaders of the Local e-Democracy National Project in the United Kingdom.

Isobel gave a presentation on the status of the National e-Democracy Project in the UK. The National Project is an initiative of the UK national government to innovate and implement e-Democracy tools into local governments all over the country. I first met Isobel when I visited North Lincolnshire in February. She took a couple hours out of her time at the symposium to come with me to a Eden Prairie Council workshop on Tuesday night. She said she enjoyed that. I thought it was pretty good too.

The National Project in the UK has more than two dozen different elements to it. One of the youth-oriented elements is a program to develop e-Democracy games that can be played on phones, computers, and commonly used gaming systems. The idea is to get youth interested in democracy by making it fun and interesting to learn about it.

This is Sarah Welder, a 7th grade student in the UK. She is doing a live demonstration of a game that puts the player in the mode of a City Councilmember trying to please the public and create sound public policy at the same time. That’s a tough balancing act.

These three photos were taken on Day 1 of the symposium which was held at the HHH Center at the University of Minnesota. On Day 2 the symposium attendees jumped on a bus for a tour of the State Legislature’s technology centers at the Capitol and then went down to Northfield for a presentation on city and community weblogs. Northfield citizens (not the city government) have a vibrant community weblog “blogosphere.” Eden Prairie has official City blogs by City officials. Joining me on the panel representing Eden Prairie were two friendly faces:

Fire Chief George Esbensen and Police Chief Dan Carlson

I care about this e-Democracy thing because I am concerned about the current status of our democracy, not only in our state, but in our country as well. I don’t think that we are doing very well in discerning and deciding the public policy issues of the day. I think we can do better. We must do better. The alternatives to democracy are not very good.

But to do better, we need to think and talk; and then think and talk some more. That’s what this symposium was all about. I’m glad I went.

The August 2005 edition of Twin Cities Business Monthly gives out its annual awards for Entrepreneurs of the Year. Eden Prairie is well represented among this year’s winners.

2005 Entrepreneur of the Year (Manufacturing category)>> Mr. Scott Crump from Stratasys, Inc. Stratasys manufactures and sells machines that create three-dimensional plastic models from a process called fused deposition modeling. I think of it as “3-D printing”. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. The machines they make are nothing short of amazing.

2005 Entrepreneur of the Year (Breakthrough Technology category)>> Mr. Dale R. Olseth of SurModics, Inc. SurModics is a biomedical research company. They improve the way in which medical devices can be inserted into the body. For example, they have come with a coating that when placed on a cardiac stent can make the stent easier to put into exactly the right place.

2005 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist>> Ms. Lee Jones, Inlet Medical, Inc. Inlet Medical is a biomedical company that markets surgical procedure kits. Ms. Jones is the company’s president and CEO.

Congratulations to Inlet Medical, SurModics, and Stratasys for their success and for their presence in Eden Prairie. The jobs and investment these three companies have made in Eden Prairie helps make this a great community in which to live, work, play - and do business.

On a sunny July day, a group of researchers from the Three Rivers Park District and a guy that knows how to climb utility poles took a hike out to an osprey (Pandion haliaetus) nest that we have hosted in the Prairie Bluff Conservation Area here in Eden Prairie. The reason for the hike? Today is the day that two young osprey chicks who live in that nest at the top of that pole (you can sort of make it out in the far distance in this photo) will be banded by the researchers who will track them for the rest of their lives.

After making the hike, the researchers set up their work area on the ground while the pole climber started his trip up to the nest. When he gets to the top of the pole, he will carefully pick up the two osprey chicks in the nest; carefully place them in the PETCO box; and then carefully lower the box down to the researchers on the ground.

The two osprey chicks are handled with extreme care by everyone involved. The osprey is one of the most difficult raptors to maintain in captivity where it is often too nervous and unwilling to eat. The Three Rivers Park District and the University of Minnesota’s Raptor Center have been involved in an effort to reintroduce ospreys to the Twin Cities area since 1984, including this pair that lives in a nest on a platform on top of a 40 ft utility pole in one of our City parks.

After the chicks receive their new identification tracking bands, they have their blood drawn and are checked for general health. Then, they go carefully back into the PETCO box and get ready for their trip back up the pole to their nest. All this is happening in front of the chicks parents who occasionally swoop on the guy climbing the pole. Makes a dangerous job even more tricky for him.

Finally, the osprey chicks are placed back in their nest where they will continue to grow and mature until they can fly and fish for themselves - right here in Eden Prairie.

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I would like to thank City Forestry Technician Jeff Cordes for these photographs.

The City is currently involved in its 2005 street maintenance program. At the moment, we’ve got private contractors busy doing “chip seal” projects. Chip seal projects involve putting a sticky black tar on the streets, dumping small rock chips on the tar, and then rolling the mixture into the street with heavy equipment to permanently stick the rock chips to the street. The purpose of this process is to add a new surface to the street which will add to the long-term condition of the street surface. It’s a pretty standard street maintenance activity.

We have stockpiled the rock chips used for the chip seal projects at the Cedar Ridge Elementary School parking lot. This is a photo of the stockpile site. The piles of chipped rocks are loaded into dump trucks at this site by a front end loader and then trucked to the streets that are part of the project.

This is a photo of the Cedar Ridge stockpile site taken from Braxton Drive. The berm and the trees hide public view of most of the pile of rocks.

The orange colored vehicles are the heavy rollers that are used to roll the rock chips into the black tar material that is used to affix the rocks into the surface of the existing street.

This a photo of the completed street surface. It’s a light shade of gray.

We’ve had some concerns expressed by citizens who live in the neighborhood around Cedar Ridge Elementary School. They are hearing and watching the constant stream of dump trucks coming in and out of the parking lot. There is no doubt that this process adds an element of unpleasantness to an otherwise very nice neighborhood. However, the unpleasantness is short in duration; it’s necessary to complete an important street maintenance project; and the safety of it is being monitored daily by our Police Department and our Street Division employees.

Weather permitting, it’ll all be over by the end of next week.

This is an archived photo of the playground at Staring Lake Park. One of the most popular features at this park was the orange tube slide. You can see it in the center of this photograph. It was great fun for kids. It was enclosed, and boy was it ever a fast ride to the bottom. Lots of fun. And it had been lots of fun in Eden Prairie since 1983.

This is what is left of the slide after this past weekend.

Arsonists poured gas down the slide and ignited it. The ensuing fire melted the slide. This is all that’s left.

The City has experienced a slew of park arsons this past year. Over the past twelve months we’ve lost to arson this slide at Staring Lake Park, a warming house at Forest Hills School, and more than a dozen outdoor portable toilets.

The total financial loss due to the arson in our parks is way over $50,000. That’s felony territory. At this moment, my staff is preparing for a major press event in Staring Lake Park to seek our citizens’ assistance in bringing the arsonist(s) to justice. There will be a reward announced for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever is doing this to our parks. To your parks.

We’ve got to stop this. Otherwise, we risk all our parks ending up looking like this:

We can do better than that in Eden Prairie.

Mark Vandenberghe�s job is truly mission critical to the City and its residents � he�s the Electronic Communications Technician and is responsible for the two way radio system networks used throughout the City. The radios are used by 911 Dispatch, Police, Fire, Public Works, and the Water Department. But that�s not all; the City�s radio system is also utilized by Eden Prairie Public Schools and SouthWest Metro Transit. It’s one of the innovations in local government that make Eden Prairie a leader in intergovernmental cooperation.

In addition to his responsibilities with the radio system, Mark�s job also includes supporting the City�s facilities security system, its card readers, microwave radio and paging systems and its pagers. This variety suits Mark just fine; �I like the fact that I am not always tied to my desk. I�m out in the field trouble shooting and finding out what the problems are and then fixing them.� Mark is a graduate of Wadena Technical College�s Electronic Technology program and is originally from Perham, Minnesota.

Mark has been an employee of the City for more than five and a half years, most of that time in the Police Department. Mark knows the City’s public safety system from both the Police and Fire sides of the business as he has also been a volunteer member of the City’s Fire Department for 17 years.

One accomplishment Mark is particularly proud of his role in the construction of the radio tower and radio system that was installed at the City’s Street Maintenance Facility a few years ago. While others pushed for the City to do it, when it came time to put it up, Mark was the project manager coordinating multiple construction and technical contractors. �This really helped improve our radio reception throughout the City. I was very happy to be a part of this.�

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This is the last installment in the Excellence Behind The Scenes series. I would like to thank Pat Brink and Heidi Seyer from my Communications Division staff for their assistance in getting photos and facts for me. They were a big help.

There’s a lot of excellence behind the scenes with the City of Eden Prairie. I could extend this series for weeks with all the examples available to me. I hope you enjoyed the series. I’ll do it again someday.

In city government, the need for maps is nearly insatiable. They�re used by the Police and Fire departments and their dispatchers. Public works uses maps to show plow drivers which streets they are responsible to clear. In the spring and summer, the maps are used to show which streets will have seal coating or overlay done. At election time, the maps are used to show precincts and voting places. And we share our maps with the Chamber of Commerce, local realtors, and the occasional pizza delivery guy.

So where do all these maps come from? From the computer and brain of Beth Kaszynski in the City�s Engineering Division. Beth will be the first person to tell you that she is NOT a cartographer (map maker). Instead, she describes herself as a drafter. �I don�t actually create the maps. I make the maps created by others serve particular needs, but I�m not a map maker.�

A Minneapolis Washburn and Purdue University graduate, Beth has been employed with the City for nearly seven years. Her qualifications for this position include the B.S. Degree she received in �Housing with a Residential Interiors Option.� Beth says, �I really fell into drafting. It was a part of my studies, and in my past jobs drafting just kept growing and now at the city, drafting is the main focus of my work.�

Beth says the best part of her job is when she sees her work coming off the oversized printer in her cube, and it looks even better than she�d imagined. �I love my job. It�s never boring. I work with all the departments in the City, and the technology is always changing and improving.�

Eden Prairie, I’m told, can be a challenging place to find your way around. Beth’s work in putting together our maps makes this important task in life just a little bit easier for all of us.

Thanks Beth.

He�s one of the people that is working to make this prairie an �Eden.� Bill Sawyer is the Park Keeper for the City of Eden Prairie, but a more descriptive title that he could be given is the City�s Horticulture specialist.

His job duties include a number of things including ordering flowers, designing the landscaping layout, planting, and general park upkeep such as mowing and watering. Though Bill works primarily at the Purgatory Creek Recreation Area and the downtown area, his 4 staff members are working to beautify all of the parks in Eden Prairie through planting, mowing, weeding, trimming and a number of other �behind the scenes� tasks.

Bill has a degree in Landscape Architecture. He has been working at the City of Eden Prairie for three years and did similar work at the City of Eagan for two years prior to that. For many years, he worked on his own doing landscaping projects with businesses and homeowners.

�Basically, I just like growing things. I don�t necessarily have a green thumb, but I do enjoy seeing the results,� said Bill Sawyer.

And we enjoy seeing the results too. Bill Sawyer is yet another person at the City of Eden Prairie who is working to hard behind the scenes to make this a wonderful place to live, work and dream.

Just to give you an idea of what all goes into Bill�s job, here are some statistics regarding this year�s flower planting project. At the Purgatory Creek Recreation Area alone, 207 flats of flowers were planted. That equals out to 9,936 plants. And, with the other parks and various city-owned facilities, another 206 flats of plants were planted, equaling a total of 19,824 plants overall. That�s a lot of plants! This feat was completed just one week ago.

Bill keeps the place looking good, and that’s something that our citizens place a high value on.

She has a behind the scenes job in a behind the scenes operation of the City of Eden Prairie. Her name is Holly Smith, and she is the liquor store manager at the Eden Prairie Liquor Store near Cub Foods. She has been working with the City of Eden Prairie for almost four years.

Not many people realize that the three liquor stores in Eden Prairie are city-owned. This municipal operation contributed $743,000 to the City�s bottom line last year, which means lower taxes for citizens. All “profits” from the City-owned liquor stores go back into the City�s General Fund.

�The profit from our store is keeping taxes low while helping to maintain our City�s roads and parks. That�s something I’m glad to be a part of,� said Holly.

Stocking the store, designing and building displays, managing employees, and working on administrative paperwork � it�s all in a day�s work for Holly. She has two assistant managers working with her and ten part-time employees.

�I like the laid-back atmosphere of my job,� said Holly. �I�ve learned a lot about this industry through my job, and I like that I can be creative in how we set up our displays.�

Holly is also proud of the service that the liquor store provides to the community.

�We have quality products, good prices and great customer service,� said Holly.
And those are just some of the things that keep customers coming back to the Eden Prairie liquor stores. So if you’re over 21 and interested in beer, liquor or wine, stop by the City’s liquor store on Den Road across from Cub Foods and ask for Holly.

I’m going to do a series in my blog this week that I am calling Excellence Behind The Scenes. This series will give you an inside view of some of the City employees here who do excellent work, but because of their positions, don’t get much public exposure. Check out today’s profile of Wayne Estenson and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Enjoy!

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Wayne Estenson

Service with a smile. Okay, so maybe it sounds a little clich�, but it�s a principle being put into practice every day by Wayne Estenson. Wayne is a perfect example of Excellence Behind the Scenes.

Wayne�s official title here at the City of Eden Prairie is �Manager of Customer Relations/Risk Management.� As you can probably imagine from this job title, his responsibilities are diverse to say the least. As far as the �Risk Management� component of his job, he works with City employees on internal matters such as workman�s compensation, DOT regulations, OSHA, EPA and ergonomics. As you see in the picture, he also teaches people how they can help prevent workplace injury through taking the proper safety precautions. Then, he�s also dealing with external matters including property/casualty insurance, vehicle insurance, and medical claims. But that�s just half of his job.

The �Support Services� component entails everything from running the copy center, providing float coverage, and providing people who come into the City Center with their first-impression of the facility through the information desk. Wayne is a team-player who enjoys the people he works with here at the City. �The people I work with are my greatest asset,� says Wayne. �I truly enjoy working with them.�

The five employees that work under Wayne think the same of him. Carol Bowen, pictured with Wayne at the Information Desk, says, �Working with Wayne is fun because he is a great role model. We laugh hard and work hard, and it’s very rewarding to work with him.�

Wayne has been working for the City of Eden Prairie for almost 25 years and has held diverse roles such as park maintenance, safety manager, facilities manager, phone technology coordinator and customer services. When asked what has kept him here for so long, he replies without hesitation, �It�s the constant new challenges which are thrown my way. My job has grown as the City has grown.�

Wayne�s just one of those people who goes the extra mile to make sure the job gets done well, yet he�s generally not in the public spotlight. It takes a lot of work behind the scenes to keep the City of Eden Prairie running in a way that we all can be proud of.

This is beautiful Red Rock Lake in beautiful Eden Prairie, Minnesota. A few weeks ago I got a call from the Mayor that she had received calls from citizens who live around the lake that the lake was being silted up by silt and dirt coming into the lake from City storm sewers that drain into the lake in several spots. So, the Mayor and I decided a personal tour of the lake was in order to see the situation for ourselves.

Here we are getting the boat ready to put in. We used a boat from the Fire Department which is normally used for water rescues. And in case you’re wondering, if there was an actual emergency during our trip, the Fire Department has another boat.

This is Scott Taylor. He was captain of the boat. He is a Fire Inspector for the City and a long-time fire fighter for our Fire Department.

Leslie Stovring (on the left in the yellow shirt with her back towards the camera) is the City’s Environmental Coordinator. She handles pollution control and mitigation issues for the City. She works out of the Public Works Department’s Engineering Division. She was our tour guide for the trip. She is showing Scott Taylor a map of the storm sewer inlet locations on the lake.

This is John Carlon. John is a supervisor in our Utilities Division. John manages the City’s “Outside Utilities” which covers pretty much everything having to do with water, sanitary sewer, and storm sewer pipes that are outside the Water Treatment Plant. John came along to tell us how the storm sewer system around the lake functioned and what the City’s options might be to help decrease storm sewer flow into the lake.

This is the Mayor. The Honorable Nancy Tyra-Lukens. She came along because she wanted to personally assure the citizens who spoke to her that she thought their concerns about the lake were important and that the City would make every effort to study and remedy the problems.

This is an example of a storm sewer pipe that is attached to a storm water intake somewhere on a street near Red Rock Lake. Rain water and melting snow flow into the storm water intake, through the pipe, and into the lake. The storm water can include pollution and fine silt that then builds up on the floor of the lake decreasing its depth and water quality.

Red Rock Lake is one of 16 lakes in Eden Prairie. They are jewels. The City wants them to be jewels in the future. City staff will be studying this situation at Red Rock Lake, defining the problem, and designing a solution for the problem. Those are our next steps.

This is Councillor Mary Reid. She is a Member of the Council for the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames, a suburban city on the south side of the Greater London metropolitan area that has many qualities similar to Eden Prairie. I met Councillor Reid during my travels in the United Kingdom in February. She is an active blogger. One of the best local government bloggers in the UK, in my opinion. I’ve linked to her blog post from this morning [Thursday, July 7, 2005] to give my readers a chance to read comments from someone directly impacted by today’s terrorist bombings in London. I’m hoping to see Councillor Reid later this month at an International e-Democracy Symposium in Minneapolis. Fire Chief George Esbensen, Police Chief Dan Carlson, and I will be leading a panel discussion at the symposium on local government weblogs.

I’m happy to hear that Mary and her family are safe.

The City Council gave its approval last night to two important matters. First, the Council blessed a fall referendum for Eden Prairie citizens to decide the fate of a package of proposed improvements to our City’s parks, trails, and recreational facilities. Second, the Council approved the composition of the referendum package.

What do I mean by “composition of the referendum package”? I mean to say that the Council approved a four question ballot. The City ran a similar referendum in May 2004 which, in a single-question format, proposed a variety of improvements with a price-tag of about $22,000,000. Citizens did not approve that referendum. Following the referendum’s defeat, the City polled voters and found a strong desire for a multiple question ballot.

So that’s what citizens will get this time instead of one big question with one big price tag. Citizens will have the opportunity to vote on the following subjects:

1. Improvements for the Community Center.
2. A new indoor warm water teaching and aerobics swimming pool.
3. Improvements to our existing parks and acquisition of some new park land.
4. Improvements to our trail system.

Staff members are drafting the exact language for the ballot and will present it to the Council for final approval at the Council’s July 19 meeting, but there should not be any changes to the structure of the referendum considered at that meeting. We will also insert the exact dollar amounts of the proposed improvements too.

There is a lot to do to get the word out to our citizens about this referendum. That all starts now.

If you’ve been observing Eden Prairie city government, or reading this blog, you’ll no doubt know about the City’s change of design for its official logo. We worked out most of the logo issues in 2004 and planned to use 2005 as the year when we implemented the new logo throughout our organization. We decided to do the implementation over a year because it would allow us to make changes when it came time to make changes naturally, such as when we ran out of business cards, instead of paying extra to make a splash with an instant logo change which might happen in private industry. We’re a long-term organization, and we can afford to make image changes in a long-term fashion.

So, one last time, here’s The Old:

Now, here’s The New:

And here’s what The Old looked like next to The New at shift change on June 30/July 1 when the Police Department converted their official uniform patch from The Old to The New:

Changing the “brand” of an organization is no small feat and must be handled delicately and even-handedly. We’re through the bulk of the sensitive policy and design decisions now, and I’m happy about that. We’ve now moved on to making the normal everyday decisions that come with any organizational logo: Can the colors be changed a smidge? Can we use a different font? Can we let private individuals use it for their own purposes? We’ll still have to answer these sorts of questions, but I’m happy to say that I think we’ve got a firm footing for our responses to these and other similar questions.

That response is: “No, but thanks for asking.”