The Blog from City Hall

Eden Prairie Commmunity Education Services, a division of the Eden Prairie School District, sponsors an event each year called the Annual Partnership Breakfast.  The purpose of the Annual Partnership Breakfast each year is bring together community leaders to discuss thought provoking topics that are relevant to the life of the community. 

This year's Annual Partnership Breakfast is scheduled for Thursday, April 20 from 7:30-9:30 am at St. Andrew's Lutheran Church here in Eden Prairie.  The topic of this year's discussion is:  A Courageous Conversation on Race.  The breakfast event is sponsored (i.e. - paid for) by Community Bank. 

The discussion will consider the growing level of diversity of Eden Prairie's residents.  What does it mean for a former rural farming community to grow more diverse?  What do we need to do to become a more welcoming community?  How do we all get along?  These are just a few of the questions we'll probably discuss at the breakfast.

The discussion will be led by a panel of Eden Prairie residents that includes: Nanette Missaghi, Harry Moran, Laurie Obiazor, Gail Toatley. Richard Liu, and Abdullahi Hassan.   

For more information about the event or to RSVP for it, you can e-mail:  dbrockopp@edenpr.org

Thanks to Pastor Rod Anderson for the venue and to Roy Terwilliger for the breakfast.  I'll be there.   

We recognize our employees twice each year.  Once in the fall and once in the spring.  In both ceremonies, we recognize employees who have achieved certain thresholds of service such as 5, 10, 15, 20, etc years as City employees. 

But in the spring we also recognize employees for achievements in customer service, teamwork, community service and for their demonstration of our "performance partnership" values: customer service, flexibility, initiative, results orientation, teamwork - which we call the City Manager Quality Awards. 

The photo shows our 2006 EPy award winners.  Front Row L-R:  Sgt. Carter Staff - Police Department, winner of the 2006 Dr. Jean L. Harris Award for Community Service in Eden Prairie; Ikram Ibrahim - Community Center Reception/Customer Service, winner of the 2006 Carl J. Jullie Award for Customer Service; and Kitty Port, City Clerk - winner of the 2006 James J. Clark Award for Teamwork. 

Back Row L-R:  Scott Heddle, IT Technician; winner of the 2006 Dr. Jean L. Harris Award for Community Service in an employee's home community (in this case, it's Richfield); Mark Vandenberghe, Fire Department, winner of one of the 2006 City Manager Quality Awards; and Steve Pitkanen, Water Plant, winner of a 2006 City Manager Quality award.  Not pictured:  Tom Tesch, Street Division Manager, winner of a 2006 City Manager Quality Award.  

These awards are given based on nominations from employees.  That's how youmake the list.  Once you make the list, the Department Directors and I make the final decisions.  It was exceptionally tough this year.  We had a number of very deserving nominations.  Our winners this year were some of our top performers.  It was a true pleasure to recognize them for their work.

Eden Prairie is a fabulous place.  We all know that.  But now it's in a book:  50 Fabulous Places To Raise Your Family. The book, written by Kathleen Shaputis, is in its third addition.  Eden Prairie was in the second addition too.  There are only two Minnesota cities included in the book:  Rochester and Eden Prairie.  Not bad. Not bad at all.

Here's what the book says are the best reasons to live in Eden Prairie:  "It's a beautiful lakefront city, with outstanding healthcare and great public schools.  Residents are committed to family recreation and the arts."

The only drawbacks listed about Eden Prairie: "Subzero weather can last from November to March, and summer humidity is no picnic either."  Please.  Subzero from November to March?  That's a bit extreme.  I know that our weather is a little edgey, but we all get along here OK, I think. 

Eden Prairians live in a safe community with abundant parks and high performing schools.  We have good access to regional transportation networks and low average communting times.  Volunteerism is important and common for community residents. 

We get a very good report card from this book.  I hope you'll check it out.

At approx. 10:45 am yesterday, Tuesday, March 14, Jeff Elwell, a Facilities Division employee at our Community Center, heard an odd noise coming from the refrigeration room at the Community Center.  When he entered the room to investigate he immediately recognized the noise as a Freon leak, and the leak was louder than the refrigerant alarm going off in the room. 

Jeff knew this was an emergency.  Freon is a poisonous gas.  It is not to be messed with.  He quickly shut off several valves and left the room proceeded to organize a quick, but orderly evacuation of the building.  Other Community Center staffmembers quickly moved throughout the building evacuating customers and staff, and securing perimeter doors so no one could enter the building.  Jeff shut off the boilers, water heaters and anything with an open flame, and grabbed floor plans and MSDS sheets as he headed out of the building himself. 

As they were evacuating the building, our staff called 911 Dispatch, which is standard protocol for a Freon leak. They also called a professional refrigeration contractor to seek assistance with fixing the problem. 

Fire and Police responded and secured the perimeter of the building.  With the help of refrigeration contractor’s staff, and wearing self contained breathing apparatus and masks, Fire Department staff closed additional valves on the refrigeration system to stop all Freon from leaking.  They began opening exterior doors to ventilate the building and changed the building’s ventilation systems to a “pressurize and exhaust” mode, in order to ventilate the building more quickly.  By about 12:15 pm, the contractor and our Facilities Division staff were able to enter the refrigeration room and evaluate the cause of the leak. 

The problem: A valve stem in a solenoid valve on the low pressure side of the refrigeration system had shattered, allowing the Freon to leak out.  The refrigeration contractor made the repair, and will replace all similar valves.  We routinely replace these valves every two years, as the constant movement of the valve tends to wear it out quickly.  We are considering replacing them annually, from this point forward. 

Post-incident: Our staff called the EPA to report the leak and prepared an incident report for later review by our Safety Committee.  We recalled our Community Center staff from City Hall, and the building reopened yesterday around 1:00 pm.

Our Fire Marshall, Mr. Allen Nelson, was very complimentary about the way the staff handled the situation.  He said they evacuated the building quickly and seemed to do everything right.  He said it is rare that building staff meets Fire Fighters in front of their building with 8 ½ X 11 laminated floor plans of the building and MSDS sheets.

I’m proud of the way our Community Center staff handled this situation yesterday.  They recognized a dangerous situation and responded appropriately, just as they are trained to do.  They reacted quickly and prevented harm to any of our customers, and to fellow employees.  They quickly diagnosed the situation and followed-up with the right authorities as quickly as possible. 

It’s good to have good staff. 

This is my last day in Washington DC at the 2006 NLC Congressional Cities Conference. The day started with a rousing address from Illinois Senator Barak Obama. His address was short, but it was thought provoking and inspiring. The Senator is a great speaker. If you have the chance to see him in person or on TV, don’t miss it. He might be our President someday.

As soon as Senator Obama was done speaking, I was out the door to catch a taxi to the Cannon House Office Building which is the home of our Member of Congress from the 3rd District of Minnesota - The Honorable Jim Ramstad. I did not get to meet with Congressman Ramstad personally because he was back in Minnesota today in meetings. I’m heading back there today, while he’s on his way here. Mayor Tyra-Lukens will be meeting with him personally tomorrow.

I did, however, meet with a member of Congressman Ramstad’s staff. His name is Adam Peterman. Adam is pretty well known by those of us that deal with Congressman Ramstad’s office on a frequent basis. He is a very good guy and a good problem solver. I spoke with Adam about a trail project the City wants to build into the Minnesota Valley Wildlife Refuge; the WAFTA issue; getting more federal highway dollars for a major improvement project to the intersection of 494 & 169; and our efforts to get the FAA off the dime to make a decision about Northwest Airline’s challenge to the City’s parkland lease(s) of Flying Cloud Airport land with the Metropolitan Airports Commission. Adam gave me a copy of a letter that Congressman Ramstad wrote to the FAA on our behalf. I will be sharing that with the City Council next week.

Following this meeting I walked over to the Senate Hart Office Building to meet with the staff in Senator Coleman’s office. I got the insider tour of the office from none other than office intern Anne Aho, daughter of City Councilmember Brad Aho. I could tell that Anne really loved what she was doing there. And she knew here stuff too. She was helpful in connecting me with another staffer - Tony Eberhard - with whom I could share my issues about the wildlife refuge trail and the FAA. Anne even let me sit in Senator Coleman’s office chair. It was mighty comfy.

As I write this I am just killing some time before heading out to the airport and heading home. That’s about all the time I’ve had to kill here. Washington DC is a busy place. I like it here, but I’m looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow to my own comfy chair.

Today marked the second day of the National League of Cities conference. It started with an address this morning by a former congressman from Ohio named John Kasich. He was fantastic. He was inspiring. He was the best speaker I’ve heard in a long time.

If you don’t remember John Kasich, it’s OK. He was a Republican congressman from Ohio for 18 years. He was a budget hawk’s budget hawk, which often put him at odds with members of both parties whose purpose in Washington DC is merely to bring federal dollars back to their home districts. Kasich didn’t go for that then. He still decries it today.

He lamented the poisonous partisanship in today’s DC political environment. He also lamented that this environment is starting to leak down to the state and local levels, and that, in Kasich’s opinion, is not something we ought to look forward to. He reminded everyone the the fundamental values of honesty, integrity, faith and character do not slow us down in our rush to accomplish our goals in life - they are what make our progress possible in the first place.

I also had my first congressional meeting today. I met with a legislative assistant to Minnesota 2nd District Congressman John Kline named Ben Lange. I met with Mr. Lange today to talk about WAFTA. WAFTA (Western Area Fire Training Association) is an organization of eleven cities in Hennepin and Carver counties that own a site in Carver County just north of St. Bonafacious that is home to a former fire department training center. Eden Prairie is a member of WAFTA. The site is no longer used for fire training, but it is polluted and needs to be cleaned up so that it can be turned back into a productive piece of land.

There are several parties that share culpability for the pollution at the site. The WAFTA cities have some culpability. So do a couple of major Minnesota private utilities that trained there. The Defense Department, which developed the site as a NIKE missle site, also has culpability for a unique pollution signature that it left at the site before it became WAFTA.

It’s important to bring the federal government into this clean-up effort because if we don’t, it’s very possible that the cities could be left holding the bag on over $1,000,000 in clean-up costs. I’d like to avoid Eden Prairie’s 1/11th of that cost, if I can.

That’s it for today. There a busy day tomorrow that starts with an early morning address from Illinios Senator Barrack Obama.

Today is Sunday. It’s my first day of the 2006 National League of Cities (NLC)Congressional Cities Conference. The conference actually started yesterday with pre-conference meetings and seminars all day. Councilmember Sherry Butcher was here for that. I came in last night. I flew into Dulles Airport while my bags flew into Reagan National Airport. We eventually met up late last night, so it ended well.

I attended my first meeting of the day this afternoon. It was a presentation and discussion about the census. The speakers were Mr. Charles Kincannon, Director, U.S. Census Bureau and Dr. Edward Hudgins, Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute.

Mr. Kincannon told us about the upcoming American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS will replace the Census Bureau’s traditional “long form” in which it asks respondants questions about such things as commuting times, how much you spend on electricity in a year, and how many toilets you have in your home. The ACS marks the Census Bureau’s first major step into national “sampling”. That is, establishing a statisitically reliable sample of the population to survey instead of surveying the entire population as is done each decade. The ACS data will be shared with local communities each year. It will start being shared with communities over 65,000 in population in August 2006. Communities over 20,000 will start getting the ACS data in 2008. All census tracts - the fundamental building block of the census - will get the data every year starting 2010.

Dr. Hudgins (that’s him to the left) was, in his own words, brought into the presentation to provide an alternative view of the census, in general, and of the ACS, in particular. His view is that the ACS is a unnecessary and a giant waste of taxpayer dollars. He believes the data is unreliable because respondants - like him - make up answers and lie on the survey. He also believes the data ages so quickly that it is generally not reliable enough to use as a basis for public policy decisions. He believes the decennial census should be used to apportion the country for political representation in the United States House of Representatives, and not much else.

That’s a highly condensed summary of the meeting. We also discussed the core issues that NLC would like us to work on this week. I’ll talk about those tomorrow.

On July 16, 2005 vandals destroyed this tube slide in Staring Lake Park.  Sometime during that night, they poured gasoline, or some kind of flamable liquid, down the slide and then lit it on fire.  The slide, which had been one of our most popular playground attractions in Eden Prairie since 1985, burned and melted away.

That's the before picture up above and to the left is the after picture.  I understand that it was only a big plastic tube, but it was a source of joy and fun to the kids of this town for many years.  It was a shame to have it destroyed by vandals.

But then a young Eden Prairie lad named Tucker Zangs stood up and decided to go do something about the loss of his favorite slide.  He started a fund raising campaign to buy a new slide for the park.  That's him with the big novelty check in the photo to the left surrounded by (L-R) me, Mayor Tyra-Lukens and Parks & Recreation Director Bob Lmabert.  Tucker presented us with a check for over $1,500 at our Council meeting this week to help fund a replacement slide.

Well, Tucker, that's just what we're going to do.  We're going to buy a new slide for Staring Lake Park.  It's going to be big and fast, just like the old one.  It won't be orange like the old one, but it's going to be a lot of fun.  And best of all, Tucker is going to get the first official slide down the new slide in recognition of his community spirit at the slide dedication ceremony this summer.

Thanks Tucker. 

I was a guest speaker earlier today at the March luncheon meeting of the Minnesota Association of Government Communicators (MAGC) in Eagan.  The other guest speaker was a Rhetoric professor from the University of Minnesota named Dr. John Logie.  We spoke under the subject title of "To Blog, or Not To Blog".  Dr. Logie gave an interesting brief history on the origins and current status of weblogs.  I followed him with my standard discussion of how I use my blog as a communications tool.

I've given this lecture before, but never with an academic, so that was an interesting twist.  Dr. Logie stressed the importance of blogger allowing open comments on their blogs.  I don't do that with this blog.  Never had.  I'm not saying I never will, but there are some issues with allowing anyone the ability to say anything in response to one of my blog posts - and then giving them the ability to post it right on to this sight.  That sort of communications environment takes much more time to moderate than I have available, so that's one of the reasons I don't do it like that.  If you want to hear more of my thoughts on this subject, check out this link from fellow MAGC event attender Griff Wigley.

This was the first time that I've spoke to a group of communications experts about my blog.  I wasn't quite sure what to expect.  Professional communications people haven't been very quick to adopt the blog as an institutional communications tool.  I think its fair to say that as a profession, institutional communications professionals, are a little suspicious of bloggers outside their organizations and a little fearful that bloggers inside their organizations (like me) might say something bad, wrong or inappropriate in a blog that gets everybody in trouble.   

Now I'm not saying that can't happen.  It just hasn't happened to me yet.  But the same thing could happen in with any communications tool.  The blog, as a communications tool, connects with people at a personal level so while it carrys a high risk to offend, it also carries a high return if I can "connect" with a reader.

It was an interesting speaking gig. I'd do it again if they asked me.

Anyone who has lived in Minnesota for one full year or more knows that we are now entering the season of Dirty Snow.  Fortunately, Dirty Snow season usually lasts only 4-6 weeks. It starts on March 1 and is almost always over by mid April.  It's sandwiched between winter and spring.  If it weren't for St. Patrick's Day being squarely in the middle of Dirty Snow season, it would be a total drag. 

But, as I write this at 9:30 am on Tuesday morning, temporary relief for Dirty Snow season is on the way.  If WCCO weatherman (and Eden Prairie resident) Paul Douglas is right, we're going to have some rain today.  It might be a lot of rain today.  Rain is especially refreshing during Dirty Snow season because it helps clean our streets and parking lots of the thousands of tons of sand and salt that we spread on them during the winter months. 

I know it's only March and the rain is only temporary relief - at best - but it's on the way.  I'll enjoy it…..just today.

Saturday night was a big night for Eden Prairie. It was the night of the 25th annual Eden Prairie Foundation Ball. And it was beautiful. I snapped this photo with a camera phone. Sorry about the quality, but even at 1.3 megapixels, you can tell this was a bash to remember.

The Eden Prairie Foundation is a comunity charitable foundation. It raises money throughout the year and then makes grants to projects and programs that benefit the Eden Prairie community. The City receives grants funds from the Foundation almost every year for such things as a thermo-imaging camera for our Fire Department, the fountain in the Purgatory Creek Recreation Area, and equipment for the City's new archery range.

These are just examples, and these examples just scratch the surface. The Foundation makes grants to the School District and to a wide array of community non-profits too.  I sat next to City Councilmember Sherry Butcher at my table. That's her to the left. Councilmembers Brad Aho and Ron Case were also there, as was Mayor Tyra-Lukens. Councilmember Phil Young is a member of the Foundation Board of Directors. He was there too. The Foundation Ball is an important community event to attend because it gathers many community leaders at the same venue at the same time. These are busy people, and getting 400-500 of them together for the evening doesn't happen very often. It's important to be there.

And there's nothing quite like a "Susie Bar" to finish a beautiful evening. For the less fortunate among you (i.e. - those of you that did not get to eat one), the original Susie Bar comes from the kitchen of Susie Springer. It's a delicious mix of chocolate, butterscotch, Special K cereal, and other secret ingrediants. She sent a tupperware container of them to the Ball with her husband Kip Springer. Kip is a fire fighter for our Fire Department. EPFD fire fighters are the tradition providers of valet parking services at the Foundation Ball. While they're waiting around from the beginning of the ball (at 5:30 pm) to the end (around midnight), they do two of the most popular fire fighter activities in the world: swapping stories and eating. (C'mon guys, you know it's true ) So that tupperware container was full at the start of the night. I grabbed two of the last three, at their urging of course.

A delicious end to a delicious evening.

I attended the Eden Prairie Chamber of Commerce's annual legislative kick-off breakfast this morning. All three legislators who represent Eden Prairie in the State Legislature - Rep. Erik Paulsen, Rep. Maria Ruud, and Sen. David Hann - were in present at the breakfast. They each gave a brief description of what they expected to see in the 2006 session and then stood for questions. Councilmember Brad Aho, Community Development Director Janet Jeremiah, and Economic Development Manager David Lindahl also attended the meeting on behalf of the city.

The audience was lighter than normal years because the event was competing with the annual Eden Prairie Prayer Breakfast. But the advantage of a smaller than usual audience is that we were able to go around the room and allow everyone in the audience to introduce themselves and say a few issues they were concerned about. The most common issue mentioned was healthcare.

The legislators all recognized that healthcare is going to be a major driving issue in the legislature, but a solution to the spiraling costs of healthcare is no where on the horizon. We can talk about adding more market pressure to healthcare providers or statutory reductions in the scope of government employee healthcare insurance plans, but neither of these ideas are the "silver bullet" needed to avert a healthcare finance crisis in the future.

Other topics we discussed included the upcoming referendum this fall to dedicate 100% of the sales tax revenues generated from the sale of vehicles to the Stat's transportation improvement fund; education finance; anticipated restrictions on the use of eminent domain by cities; and the larger role played by geography on party politics in Minnesota. The legislative session has started. I watch the direct coverage of the legislative almost everyday. It's interesting and impactful on city government operations.

I spent my afternoon today at Eden Prairie High School as a guest speaker for Mr. Mark Anderson's "career explorations" class. I spoke to six consectutive groups of 10-12 students for about 22-25 minutes on the joys and pains of being a city manager.  There are many more joys than there are pains for me, so I don't mind at all talking about what I do.    

And the students are great.  They were interested in my job, but they were really interested in what's going on in the community.  Among the many thingswe discussed during my short stint there today, the students and I talked about the proposed development of the Bent Creek Golf Course; the use of surveillance cameras for traffic enforcement; development of a new indoor swimming pool project; new stores they'd like to see at Eden Prairie Center; the recent percevied "crackdown" on underage drinking; and traffic signal synchronization (yes, really).

I brought prizes.  Well, I brought DVD copies of the City's television show "Life In The Prairie", if you can call that a prize.  I gave DVD to the first person in each group that could tell me the name of Eden Prairie's Mayor.  And you know what?  There was a student in every group I spoke to today that knew the answer to that question was The Honorable Nancy Tyra-Lukens.  I was impressed by that.  

As a group, they were smart and engaged.  I feel better about our future (as a country and as a planet) after meeting these students today. 

This is a photo of the new C.H. Robinson building that is under construction in a new office/industrial area south of Flying Cloud Airport.  The ares is part of the larger Hennepin Village development that also includes multi-family and single family residential development as well.  This new building, which is located at the intersection of a new road called Charlson Road and Flying Cloud Drive (also known as T.H. 212), will host some of the C.H. Robinson operations that are currently in our City Center building and perhaps some employees who currently work at the C.H. Robinson building that is at the intersection of Anderson Lakes Parkway & Flying Cloud Drive. The building is built on a ridge line with a beautiful southerly view of the Minnesota River Valley. 

Across the street from the new C.H. Robinson building is a new trail corridor that will someday link the trail in the Hennepin Village area to new trails in the Minnesota River Valley through a tunnel under T.H. 212.  You can see the tunnel in the photo to the left.  Actually, it's not really a tunnel.  It is high enough that bicycle riders will feel comfortable riding their bikes through it with no problem.  We built this feature into the road renovations in the area that we completed last year.  At this point, there's no trail coming out of the other end of this tunnel, but we're working on that project for the future.