The Blog from City Hall

This is an aerial view of Eden Prairie’s Golden Triangle Industrial Park. Your view of the Golden Triangle in this photo is looking north. The edges of the triangle are three major highways: 169 on the east side of the triangle; 212 on the west side of the triangle; and I-494 on the south side of the triangle. The Golden Triangle is a major source of jobs in our community. More than 20,000 people travel into and out of the Golden Triangle area to work every business day.

But one of the findings of our 2005 Business Satisfaction Survey is that 24% of Eden Prairie businesses operate out of private homes. Another fact is that 70% of our businesses employee 10 or fewer fulltime employees. Small business is the dominant business form in America, and Eden Prairie is no exception to that.

City staff presented the results of our 2005 Business Satisfaction Survey to the City Council at the Council’s December 13 Workshop meeting. The 2005 survey is a follow-up to our original baseline Business Satisfaction Survey from 2002. Eden Prairie is a business-focused community. We are not a mere bedroom community for the Twin Cities. There are as many jobs in Eden Prairie as there are people. That’s a significant statement about the community. It’s important that city government recognize that and pay attention to what’s happening in the business community here.

The 2005 survey was conducted by a company called MarketLine Research using a computer-aided telephone interviewing system. The survey team conducted 400 interviews. On average, it took 15 call attempts to complete each interview. The average interview lasted 14 minutes. To qualify for the interview the respondent had to be an owner, president, or manager of a business operating with the corporate limits of the City of Eden Prairie. The survey has a margin of error of 4.9%.

Over the next couple of days I am going to come back to this particular subject a few times and share the nuggets of wisdom that we’ve gained from this survey. Not only the new stuff, but also comparing our 2005 results to the baseline survey from 2002.

More soon……

A young man was killed in yesterday in Iraq. His name was Kyle Kaszynski. Kyle was a police officer for the St. Paul Police Department who was on leave from his job in St. Paul working for a private security contractor training new police officers and providing other security services in Iraq.

Yesterday, Kyle was traveling in a small convey from Baghdad to Baquba when his vehicle hit an improvised explosive device (IED) that destroyed his vehicle and killed Kyle and another occupant in his vehicle, Mr. Johannes Strauss, a South African employee of the same security contractor that Kyle also worked for.

We have our own connection to Kyle here in Eden Prairie. Kyle’s sister Beth is an Engineering Technician in the City’s Engineering Division. You can read more about Kyle in an article in today’s Star Tribune. There’s also an article in today’s St. Paul Pioneer Press about Kyle.

I think I can speak for many of Beth’s friends and co-workers here are at the City of Eden Prairie when I say that we have Beth and her family in our prayers right now. We grieve with her for her loss.

Yes, the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners recently voted 4-3 to relax elements of the indoor smoking ban they enacted last year. However, that doesn’t mean much - if any - change for us here in Eden Prairie. Ben Steverman wrote an article for the December 20, 2005 Star Tribune that sums up the probable impact of the new smoking ban in the western suburbs of Hennepin County.

The key factor in getting an exemption to the County’s smoking ban will be if your business sells more liquor than food. In other words, are you a restaurant or a bar? Bars can get exemptions. Restaurants cannot. The new County smoking ban ordinance takes effect on January 3, 2006. Exemptions will be valid until July 2007.

In Eden Prairie, we don’t have any conventional bars. Our local liquor ordinance requires businesses who hold liquor licenses to have more gross sales revenue from food than from liquor. If they don’t meet that criteria, we can revoke their liquor license. None of our restaurants would qualify for an exemption under the new County ordinance based on our own local liquor license ordinance.

The only possible businesses that might qualify for an exemption are the three private golf clubs in town: Olympic Hills, Bent Creek, and Bearpath. There is an exemption possibility for these three institutions because they might meet the definition of a “private club” under the new ordinance. I’m not sure about that, but it’s a possibility.

The Hennepin County smoking ban for bars and restaurants has been in effect now for almost a year. While I’ve heard bar and restaurants owners in other parts of the County complain about the impact of the ordinance on their business over the past year, I have not heard a peep about it in Eden Prairie. That’s not to say there hasn’t been an impact, but I’ve asked around quite a bit and all I hear from restaurant managers in Eden Prairie is that they’ve felt no negative impact.

In fact, most would not say it publicly, but now that the ban is in place, they like it. And most of their customers do too.

As many people do, the first thing I do each day when I get into work is turn on my computer, log in, and run through my accumulated e-mail. When I did that on Monday morning this week I had the following e-comment from my blog waiting for me in my Inbox:

Comment: I am a doctoral student in information studies at the University of Maryland and currently enrolled in an eGovernment course. One of my final exam questions is to identify a blog being used by a public sector website and analyze its value. A brief reply as to what motivated your interest in this tool would be greatly appreciated. And besides, I’ll get extra credit. I don’t think I need it but you never know! You can post an acknowledgement in your blog since as of today, I subscribe. Thanks, Malissa Ruffner

I replied to Ms. Ruffner’s question. In turn, she sent me a copy of the final exam question in which she references my blog. For your holiday reading enjoyment, here’s Ms. Ruffner’s response (printed with her permission) to question #9 of her 2005 LBSC 708/709 E-Government final exam:

LBSC 708/709 E-Government
Final Exam
5 December 2005

9. New Technology: Wikis and Blogs have surfaced as the latest in collaborative tools on the Web. Identify a public sector web site making use of one or both of these technologies and provide your assessment as to its e-government value. For extra credit, contact an official connected with the website (e.g., the Webmaster) and ask about the genesis for this new technology.

I have discovered the town of Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Eden Prairie is a community of roughly 60,000, near Minneapolis and St. Paul. It is home to 2200 businesses including the Minnesota Vikings. According to a Census Data snapshot of the zip code (for the city offices), the area is primarily white, and has a much higher high school and college graduation rate within its population than the national population.

In Eden Prairie, the town manager, the police chief and the fire chief all maintain blogs. The mission and function of these particular blogs is clearly stated at http://edenprairieweblogs.org/index.html; insights are personal and professional, employees and other individuals are acknowledged, specific ordinances or government functions are discussed. I examined the blog of City Manager Scott Neal in particular.

Mr. Neal has posted nine times during the month of December (through December 16). They cover a wide range of topics:

December 16: a recent lawsuit about billboards which prevented an “outside predator” from putting up tri-vision billboards; an interesting behind-the-scenes look at the history of the plaintiff (very carefully worded).

December 15: Preparation of the annual budget; the process and the new priorities

December 13: Test of the backup electrical generator, complete with a drawing. He admits it is not an “exciting topic” but a necessary service to maintain.

December 12: Meeting with Vikings owner at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon; the city hopes to keep the team offices there when a new stadium is built in Anoka County. Eden Prairie had dropped out of the running for the new stadium when the price tag got too high.

December 9: Profile of park maintenance worker who save someone’s life

December 7-8: Attendance at the National League of Cities Conference in Charlotte North Carolina, where Mr. Neal is co-presenting at a session on (what else?) government blogs.

December 6: Honoring public employees ceremony

December 5: Truth in taxation hearing scheduled for that evening

Mr. Neal’s blog is a very effective mix on all levels. It is attractive, simply arranged, and illustrated nicely with photographs. However, the writing is the centerpiece. And he is a good writer. He is able to convey relatively complex matters in very clear and accessible terms. It comes across as a very authentic reflection of a man doing a job that he is good at and enjoys. There is no sense of a hidden agenda or self-aggrandizement. There does not appear to be a behind-the-scenes PR guy ghost-writing. Mr. Neal provides an avenue for accepting input, but he makes no unconditional promise of personal response. His December postings make no reference to specific input from citizens. The actual level of interactivity is unknown.

In the wrong hands, a blog such as this could be little more than a propaganda-producing, self-serving tool but at least from this very outside look, Mr. Neal has seemingly achieved a high level of transparency in government action. In these days of fewer smoke-filled back rooms, it is important to read of budget discussions because, as the budget goes, so goes the government. His on the spot accounting of the value of the conference sessions he attended is a very effective way to counter the occasional negative reaction to government employee travel. He was able to connect it to his work back at home. Similarly, the “hobnobbing” with the owners of the Vikings at the Chamber of Commerce is tied to his efforts to hold onto the corporate offices even as Eden Prairie has to accept what must be a very difficult loss, financially and emotionally. And the description of the generator test really rounded out that picture nicely; “yes, some days I have lunch with important people and other days, I do very mundane things.”

There’s enough information in the blog to encourage a citizen in Eden Prairie to become civically engaged, without being overwhelmed. Without a blog, Scott Neal can only make personal connections with a finite number of people; with a blog, he can connect with so many more. It almost provides a “town hall” feeling. The Eden Prairie approach provides a good model for other cities and municipalities. That in itself is not unusual; in e-government efforts, the small town often leads the large city. The blog’s strength in providing personal insight could also be its weakness. It’s very possible that the next City Manager will not have the same kind of writing/story-telling skills, making the continuation of publication at risk.

The website of Eden Prairie had several other very interesting “transparencies”. Minnesota law requires that the top three salaries for municipal officials be published annually (for towns over 15,000). In Eden Prairie, they publish it on the bottom of the home page (http://www.edenprairie.org/v1/live/). There is also an employee directory linked from the home page, complete with telephone numbers and email access. A link to Council Agenda & Minutes is at the bottom of every page.

I used the “contact” option to submit an email to Scott Neal and captured the submission with two screen shots. Immediately afterwards, I received an auto-reply acknowledgement from “Lorene” who works in the City Manager’s office. She’ll be back in the office on Monday, December 19. If I hear back from anyone, I’ll pass it along.

Eden Prairie Superintendent of Schools Dr. Melissa Krull, Eden Prairie businessman Terry Bunge and I just had a very successful lunch meeting last Friday with Mr. Lili Pan, the Eden Prairie-based consultant working on behalf of the Chinese delegation from Loudi, Hunan, China that will be visiting Minnesota in February. Terry is a new member of the Habitat For Technology (HFT) Board and was a member of Governor Pawlenty�s recent trade mission to China.

The Chinese characters at the top of this post say, I think, “Hunan Province”. In the map immediately below the characters, the green area is Loudi (low-DEE). In the map of China below that, Hunan province is in south central China.

As part of their visit to our state, they are planning a two-day visit to Eden Prairie. It looks like we will have the opportunity to set up a business seminar luncheon on February 23, and a half-day school visit on the 24th. Melissa, Terry and I are working with the other members of the Habitat For Technology (HFT) board of directors to prepare for this visit. We have a special board meeting scheduled this week to bring the entire HFT board up to speed with where this partnership is heading. Our partnership with Loudi, China looks very promising and exciting.

There will be at least one, and perhaps more, formal opportunities for the elected and appointed leadership of our City to meet with the Mayor of Loudi, while he and his entourage are here in Eden Prairie. The schedule for their time here is a bit fluid right nowbut we believe we’ve got them in Eden Prairie for at least a day and a half.

We are anticipating signing some agreements with the government officials of Loudi which commit both parties to future exchanges and mutual understanding. We hope that we will be able to ease the process in Loudi for Eden Prairie businesses to expand their operations there. We hope this will increase the level of prosperity in both countries and be mutually beneficial for our respective citizens.

When I saw the report on KSTP.com that a “computer glitch” at the City’s general liability insurance carrier - the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust (LMCIT) - meant that the City of Eden Prairie owed the insurance trust an additional $207,241 in workers compensation insurance premium, I’ll have to admit that I was a wee bit upset. “How does this happen?”, I thought to myself. Is someone not minding the store at LMCIT, or worse yet, here at the City of Eden Prairie? I needed to know, so I asked around. Here’s what I know now.

You see the City of Eden Prairie buys its workers comp insurance with a “retro-rating” feature. This feature provides us a discount on current rates, but subjects us to some risk from older claims. The LMCIT employs a third-party administrator called Berkley Risk Administrator’s Company (BRAC) to run their workers compensation insurance program. The computer glitch actually occurred on BRAC’s computers.

The computer glitch involved the failure of the computerized claim processing system to recognize and properly assign current work comp insurance costs paid out to individuals whose injuries occurred in past years. This meant that not all of the work comp costs from old claims were being properly assigned to our account. We did not know these costs were being incurred because that’s not part of the reporting process that we see. In the end, Berkley figured this out and is now asking us to pay the claims that we are liable to pay under our insurance contract.

That’s really it in a nutshell. If you’re interested in more details about what happened and why, click on this link: LMICT Explains Error.

The bottom line is that the extra premium we’re going to have to pay LMCIT is premium that we were going to have to pay to them anyway. Instead of paying for our past claims when the costs were incurred, we’re paying for them a few years later.

The glitch is fixed. We’re working out a payment plan with LMCIT. It’ll work.

This is a trivision billboard. If you’ve driven an interstate highway in this country you must have seen one before. I suppose they can provide helpful commercial information to the traveling public, but they’re often distracting to drivers and an eyesore for our beautiful natural environment. You may not have realized it, but we came very close to having about 14 new billboards like these go up along I-494 and Highways 5 & 212.

Really close, in fact, until this week when U.S. District Court Judge David Doty dismissed a lawsuit brought against the City of Eden Prairie by a media company called Advantage Media. Here’s a link to a story in yesterday’s Star Tribune that explains the lawsuit quite well.

Advantage Media hasn�t erected a single billboard, and has no office. Its address is a house in another Minnesota suburb. It�s one of several very small �companies� around the country represented by an attorney named Adam Webb from Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Webb has developed a practice of representing such companies, which submit applications for sign permits (typically large billboard signs) that he is pretty sure will be rejected by the city based on its sign ordinance, and then sues the city based on a variety of legal theories in which he claims that he has suffered a financial loss because his sign permits were not granted. Then he aggressively pressing for settlement.

Sometimes he gets the city to settle by granting him a portion of the sign permits he has requested, which his clients often sell to larger media companies who actually manage the billboards that Mr. Webb got the permits for. Sometimes the cities’ sign ordinance are not clearly written and the Courts order the city to issue Mr. Webb a permit or two. All bad outcomes for the city being sued.

Our sign ordinance in Eden Prairie does not allow for the construction of new billboards along highways through our cities. There are three old billboards left along Highway 212 in the Minnesota River Valley, but those will be gone someday too. Mr. Webb sought over a dozen permits specifically from Eden Prairie. His permit requests were rejected. He sued. After months of effort, his case was dismissed. End of story for us, hopefully. If Mr. Webb stays true to form, he’ll pack up his show and go on to another city and try the whole thing again. He’ll win some. He’ll lose some. But it’s doubtful that this gig ends anytime soon for him.

Our legal defense in this case was in the very capable hands of Mr. John Baker of the Greene Espel law firm. John is also an Eden Prairie resident. Our City Attorney Ric Rosow was also instrumental in working with Mr. Baker and city staff in presenting a compelling case for the City. There are two City staff members that I would like to publicly recognize for their extra effort in this case: Steve Durham in our Planning Division and Jean Johnson in our Police Department. They went way above the call of duty to assist the attorneys with historical information that supported our case.

Judge Doty’s decision is an important decision because it strengthens the position of carefully constructed for municipal sign ordinances across our state and nation. It’s a good decision for our city and for our citizens.

Or, instead of “done,” I could say the budget is ready. The 2006 City Budget is ready for 2006 to arrive. The City Council took final action on the 2006 budget at its December 13 meeting.

Among many things, the 2006 budget includes funding for two new initiatives for 2006. One is the Fire Station #4 project. The budget includes new funding for the staffing and new equipment the City will need to make the yet-to-be-built Fire Station fully operational. The building contract for Fire Station #4 will be put out to public bid in January 2006. The award of the contract is scheduled for March. We hope to be moving into the station sometime late 2006 or early 2007. We are spending money on staffing and equipping the new station before it is slated to open because we want the new station to be fully operational (or close to it) when the new doors are ready to open.

The other new initiative in the 2006 budget this year concerns the way in which the City maintains its 26+ buildings and park shelters. Earlier this year the City engaged a consultant to study each of our buildings and to develop a maintenance plan for each facility. The 2006 budget allocates money toward implementing those individual maintenance plans for each facility. This covers building elements such as window replacements, roof replacements, painting, HVAC equipment repair, etc. If we can’t take care of the stuff we have, why should citizens support giving the City more tax money for new stuff? We want to be good stewards of the physical assets that citizens have paid for. This is not a very sexy way to spend money, but it’s very necessary. And, it’s the right thing to do.

General Fund spending in 2006 is budgeted to increase 5.8% for operations and an additional 3.2% for new debt payments we’ll start making for the 2005 park bonds that citizens approved this past election day. Our tax levy, the mesaure of what the City will do to tax rates in Eden Prairie, will increase 4.1% for our operations and an additional 4.2% for the new park bonds. Spending and levy increases rarely match percentage point for percentage point. They are both important measures of the City’s financial soundness.

We’ve (the City Council and City staff) worked extra hours on the preparation of the this year’s budget. The spending and levy increases are higher than what the City has done in the past three years, so there was a strong desire on the Council to keep pushing staff for ideas on how to lower both numbers. It took some extra time, but now the budget is done…and ready for 2006.

This is a sketch of how a backup electrical generator works. A much larger version of this kind of generator supplies backup electricity to City Center. Backup electrical power is essential to our operations. In the event of a failure of our electrical power system, the City must be able to keep its essential operations up and running. We can’t turn off our 911, Police or Fire operations. Not even for a minute.

So, if electrical power is essential to our operations, how do we insure the generator will work when we need it?

This past Saturday, December 10, the City’s Facilities Division performed a full load test on the emergency generator that feeds electrical power to the east side of the City Center building. This is the first “full load” test done on this equipment since 1993. “Full load” testing means that we disconnect our regular power system and use only the power from the generator. It’s the truest test of the equipment. We have been “no load” testing for the past four months and have survived several power outages without incident, but it is the “full load” test that will tell us what we need to know about the reliability of our generator.

The test results came in better than we expected. We experienced no problems in our Police and 911 areas. We encountered some problems with our emergency lighting in the hallway leading to the Garden Room. We also had some problems with door security systems in a couple of areas.

We learned a great deal from performing this exercise. Some good. Some not so good. We will analyze all the data and call affected parties together and come up with solutions to the issues we discovered. We plan to participate in a similar testing event scheduled this Saturday for the west side of our building, which is occupied by C.H. Robinson Worldwide and the Eden Prairie School District. Their half of the building is served by a separate backup generator. We plan to perform this test twice a year starting in 2006, and each time we hope to be able to correct any and all issues.

Backup electrical generation is not an exciting topic, but it’s one of those services that must function when it’s needed most.

I had the great fortune today of having lunch with the owner of the Minnesota Vikings professional football club, Mr. Zygi Wilf. Mr. Wilf was the guest of the Eden Prairie Chamber of Commerce today. He spoke at the Chamber’s monthly membership luncheon. I sat with him at one of the head tables today.

That’s Councilmember Brad Aho on the left, Councilmember Phil Young in the middle, and Wilf family member Lenny Wilf on the right. Lenny is Zygi’s cousin. He is also involved in the Vikings’ ownership group.

The only Mr. Wilf I did not get a photo of was Mark Wilf. Mark is Zygi’s younger brother. Mark is the President of the Vikings. Here’s a shot of the City’s Economic Development Manager David Lindahl and I planting a few seeds with Zygi for what might replace the Vikings’ corporate offices here in Eden Prairie if (and when) the Vikings move those offices to the site of a new stadium in Anoka County someday.

I am glad that we were finally able to meet Mr. Wilf. We’ve been trying to get a meeting with him and his family since his purchase of the team was approved by the NFL earlier this year. The Vikings call Eden Prairie home and I thought it was important that we get to know the owner of one of our community’s more high profile businesses. We got to accomplish that today, so that’s good.

We are aware that the Vikings are pursuing a new stadium in Anoka County. Anoka County has generously pledged $280,000,000 in public dollars toward the construction of the stadium. Mr. Wilf is planning to match that. We started to play the stadium game in 2004, but decided to drop out when the price to play got too high. I’m OK with that now. I will hate to lose the Vikings from Eden Prairie, but I would hate even more to take tax dollars from Eden Prairie citizens and put them into a professional football stadium project in Eden Prairie. I think we made the right choice in that regard.

This is Jody Carlin at work. Jody is a Park Maintenance Worker in our Parks & Recreation Department. Jody works outside all year long. Here she is in action during a tree trimming project. She is shown here working with our wood chipper. During the winter months Jody also works on care and maintenance of our outdoor ice rinks and moves snow off trails.

Last Sunday Jody was moving snow from trails around Staring Lake when she heard a dog barking in an unusually persistent manner. She followed the sound of the dog barking to discover a man laying face down in the snow. His legs were frozen. He had fallen through the ice, but was able to free himself and walk away. But before he could get to his vehicle or to his home, his wet legs froze and he was quickly falling victim to hypothermia. He could have died, but Jody recognized the emergency and called 911 for emergency assistance. The man is alive today thanks to her quick thinking and action. The City Council will recognize Jody for her valor at the December 13 Council meeting.

I’ll recognize her now: Thank you Jody. Well done.

Day One was yesterday. My flight into Charlotte was smooth. The plane was full of Minnesota city officials on their way to this conference. Councilmember Sherry Butcher and I were on the same flight. We picked up our conference credentials, walked the exhibitor floor, and then finished the evening with dinner with Councilmember Ron Case and his wife.

On Day Two, Councilmembers Brad Aho and Phil Young joined Councilmembers Case and Butcher and me for the opening general session. The lead speaker for the session was NLC President Anthony Williams, Mayor of Washington, DC. This will be Mayor Williams’ final week as the NLC President, as his term is coming to an end. He has also announced that he will not be running for a third term as DC’s mayor. The keynote speaker for the session was former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. He talked about his views of the economy and what he thinks we need to do as a nation to compete in the world economy.

For the rest of the day, our Eden Prairie group split up and covered many individual conference sessions. I attended a session sponsored by Microsoft on a new product called MS Business Scorecard Manager 2005. It is a product that enables managers to use data to better manage their operations. We’ve been interested in something just like this, so it was a good session. Following this session I attended a session on citizen engagement using e-government tools. Another good session.

In addition to the conference sessions, we had the opportunity to meet with the City Administrator and a Councilmember from Eagan, Minnesota, about a golf course development that occured recently in their City that has some similarities to the anticipated development proposal we think we’re going to receive soon for the Bent Creek Golf Course. It gave us some good perspective of what might be coming our way soon.

Tomorrow, there’s more to come.

This is the table poster from a roundtable training session I led at last week’s annual conference of the League of Minnesota Cities in Rochester. I spoke to two sessions of about twelve people each session about using weblogs as a communications tool for city government officials. I’m traveling today to Charlotte, North Carolina, for the annual conference of the National League of Cities. On Friday I will be co-presenting a conference session on (what else) using weblogs as a communications tool for city government officials. I’m honored to have a co-presenter at this conference. My co-presenter is Mayor Bill Gentes of Round Lake, Illinois. Check out his blog. He’s pretty good.

The National League of Cities always presents an excellent conference. It is geared toward elected officials more than appointed officials, but that’s precisely why I like to attend this conference. It provides valuable perspective to me to hear what issues are of concern to elected officials, how are they processing those issues, and how they wish to resolve them. Knowing this persepctive helps me work with my elected officials better because I have gained a more complete understanding of how they approach issues in the community.

I’m off to sunny North Carolina. Next post will be from Charlotte.

This is a photo of Eden Prairie city employees assembled in the Council Chambers last week for our 2005 Fall Employee Recognition. We gather city employees together twice each year to recognize new employees and employees based on their years of service. We recognize employees at their 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 years of service anniversaries.

That’s me behind the podium. I had the honor of introducing each employee that received a service award. Mayor Tyra-Lukens, to my right, was our guest speaker this year. She told employees how proud she was to represent the City in our community and how many compliments she receives directly from citizens about city employee service. The Mayor is seen here giving one of our Engineering Division employees, Ms. Mary Krause, her gift for 15 years of service to the citizens of Eden Prairie.

Each employee that has earned a service award selects a small gift from the City’s recognition program brochure. The employee receives that gift at the recognition ceremony. Following the ceremony, Mayor Tyra-Lukens, Councilmember Phil Young, and I hosted a luncheon for the honored employees. It’s a nice thing the City can do to recognize the hard work and dedication of its employees. It’s especially nice to have two of our elected officials involved in the event. That’s important to employees.

This event could not have happened without the hard work of Sandy Werts from our Parks & Recreation Department. She put it all together. Thanks for your hard work Sandy.

The State of Minnesota requires local units of government to conduct public hearings each year near the end of our budget approval process called “Truth-In-Taxation” hearings. The Truth-In-Taxation hearing (we call them TNT hearings) is an opportunity for citizens to publicly provide their opinions, views, and input to their City Councils, School Boards, and County Boards of Commissioners. There are many opportunities to provide budget ideas to elected officials throughout the budget process, but the TNT hearing is the most visible focal point for public input.

Each local unit of government has its own TNT hearing. Tonight is the state-mandated night for cities across the state of Minnesota to host their TNT hearings. The City Council is holding our TNT hearing this evening starting at 7:30 p.m. We moved our regularly scheduled City Council meeting from tomorrow night to tonight to enable the Council to conduct the TNT hearing during a regular meeting night. In addition to saving the Council a meeting night (which is especially valuable to them during this time of the year) the change of meeting night also allows for the TNT hearing to be telecast live on EPTV-16. In previous years we had not telecast, or even recorded, our TNT hearings.

The State Legislature adopted the TNT hearing requirement because they wanted local City Councils, School Boards, and County Commissions to be accountable to their voters for taxing and spending decisions. Historically, the TNT hearings have not been very well attended in most places in Minnesota. In Eden Prairie tonight, we’re looking for higher than average number of citizens to attend our TNT hearing.

We’ll listen to what the hearing participants have to say and seriously consider the public input we receive. The City Council is scheduled to make its final decision on the 2006 budget on December 13.