The Blog from City Hall

It’s dry. It’s hot. And the City’s ability to keep up with the demand for water has almost reached a breaking point.

Over the weekend, the City had to issue a press release asking for an increased level of compliance from Eden Prairie citizens with our current outdoor watering restrictions. These restrictions include no watering between Noon and 5 p.m. any day, and an Even/Odd watering plan the rest of the time. If we can’t get a high enough level of voluntary compliance, sometime this week we are projecting we will need to implement a complete outdoor watering ban.

There are two primary functions of the City’s public water system. One is to provide safe, reliable drinking water to residents and businesses. The second is to provide water for fire fighting. Insuring a sufficient supply of water for keeping our yards nice and green during a drought is not a primary function of our water system. And right now, outdoor lawn watering is beginning to compromise the City’s ability to provide sufficient water for fire fighting. That’s a problem that we cannot ignore.

Our water system is generally able to replenish its water supply overnight, but over the past couple days the City has seen a substantial increase in water use in the early morning hours. This has meant the City has not been able to fully replenish its water supply. We think part of the problem is an increase in the use of computer guided automatic outdoor irrigation systems that are timed to function during the middle of the night. Here’s a heads-up to my loyal blog readers: We are going to increase our enforcement of the outdoor water regulations during the middle of the night to try to reduce this kind of water use infraction. Get ready.

At this time (Monday, July 31) the City does not need to impose a full watering ban, but we are getting very close to making that decision. We will need to impose the full watering ban if we cannot drive water consumption down through a combination of asking politely and issuing more outdoor watering violation tickets. We prefer to do the former to the latter. Let’s hope it works.

Something happened (the e-dog chewed it up?) to last Friday’s blog entry titled Podcast #8: A tour of three suburban downtowns, as only a few photos were included.

They’re all there now. Apologies for my goof.

I did a presentation today at the Senior Center for an audience of about 20 people about the results of the City’s “Senior Readiness Survey.” The Senior Readiness Survey was developed in 2001 by the Minnesota Board of Aging. The survey was developed for communities to use as an assessment tool to see how “ready” they were to accommodate the needs of a growing senior citizen population. The survey asks seniors to rate the transportation, housing and senior-oriented services of their community. Seniors also rate the community for its ease of navigation and the availability of support for people that care for seniors.

Eden Prairie’s seniors gave the City fairly good marks in most areas. The City could be easier to navigate. We hear that from everyone, not just seniors. They felt that there were good housing options for seniors. Most of the respondents are pretty sure that there are adequate services available for seniors, but they’re not exactly sure because they’ve never used them themselves. We also heard that people were pretty sure that transportation services were available, but they’ve never used it personally because they still drive.

There were two commons themes in the results of the survey for me. First, the senior population we have right now is still rather independent. They want services to be available for their fellow seniors who need them, but they don’t think they’ll use them themselves. Second, they aren’t sure what services are and are not available.

My initial conclusion is that we need to think about how we market the availability of the City’s senior services. Not just the ones provided by city government, but services targeted to seniors in general. There’s a lot going on out there, but the message is just not getting out. We can do a lot better in this area.

Eden Prairie, Minnesota, has a theme song. If you haven’t heard it yet, check it out at the City’s website: City of Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

And what makes this theme song even better is that it was written by our own Economic Development Manager David Lindahl. It is performed by David and an old friend, David Keiski. There’s a good article about this story in today’s Eden Prairie News. Lindahl and Keiski are old-time Eden Prairie guys. They’ve lived here since the 1960’s when Eden Prairie had a couple of thousand residents and was just beginning to sprout as a City.

The theme song is based on our City motto: “Live. Work. Dream.” David wrote the song to accompany a short promotional video about the city. It’s about three minutes long. You can watch it right on our website. It’s catchy. It’s very well done.

Thank you David and David. Excellent work!

I have been appointed by the League of Minnesota Cities to represent the organization on a state-wide intergovernmental task force that is studying the issues related to state and local governments accepting credit and debit card payments for services. The task force was established by the State Legislature during the 2006 legislative session to study the issue. There are representatives on the task force from many different state departments, the Attorney General’s Office, and County governments. As the representative on the task force from the League of Minnesota Cities, it’s my duty to represent the interests of cities - big & small, rural, suburban, urban, metro & non-metro, etc.

The mission of the task force is to study the issue and submit a report to the State Legislature by January 1, 2007. The task force met for the first time today. We met in St. Paul at the Bremer Bank Building. There are about a dozen people on the task force and we think we’ll be able to wrap up our work in 3-4 meetings.

State, county and city governments already accept credit and debit card payments for many services. The issue is not whether government should or should not accept credit and debit card payments. The issues revolve more around the convenience fee charged by the credit card companies for the ability to pay government bills with their cards. You may not know that you pay this fee to the credit car company for using your card, but when you make an on line purchase you pay a 2%-4% convenience fee. If you drive to the store and buy the same exact item in person, the vendor pays the 2%-4% convenience fee.

The rules regarding who pays the convenience fee are set not by the government, but by the credit card companies: VISA, MasterCard, Discover and American Express. Of these four, VISA is by far the market leader, and the leader in enforcing its rules. While vendors that accept VISA payments would like to shift the burden of paying the convenience fee back to their customers, VISA will never allow their credit card to be disadvantaged to check or cash payments. That’s why they insist that the convenience fee be invisible to the consumer at the counter making an actual in-person purchase. I don’t suspect this practice will change anytime soon.

This rule about who pays the convenience fee makes paying some government fees problematic. For example, when you pay your property taxes to the County, the County accepts your payment and then distributes your lump sum payment back to the other local governments, such as cities and schools. We do it this way so that it is easier for the taxpayer to pay his or her taxes. One stop shop. That sort of thing. If you were to pay your property taxes on line with a credit card, which you cannot do in most counties in Minnesota, you would pay the convenience fee for the ability to pay on line. If, however, you were to pay your taxes in person at the counter in the courthouse, the County would have to pay the convenience fee and then figure out how to distribute the lump sum to the other taxing bodies.

Should the County “eat” the loss created by paying the convenience fee or should each governmental taxing body incur a pro rata share of the convenience fee? What happens to cities, counties, and schools if their property tax collections are short the 2%-4% they have to give up to allow people to pay with credit cards? Is there a way that we could get the credit card companies to make a different deal with state and local governments on the payment protocol for convenience fees? These are all the questions that our task force is going to wrangle with over the next few months.

It’s an interesting issue. I’m not doing it full justice here with this brief explanation. I’ll keep you updated on our progress.

I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again someday, but producing and distributing safe drinking water to Eden Prairie homes and businesses is one of the most important functions of the City. 60,000 people could not live together in 36 square miles without safe water and dependable sewer services. Without either one, the public health challenges of this kind of population density would make this a tough place to live.

We get occasional questions about our water supply throughout the year. During the summer, the most common question has to do with water supply, as in “Why can’t you just make more water?”. The residents asking that questions don’t usually like our answer because their lawn is getting crunchy and they want to put more water on it. The answer has to do with our access to water in the aquifer, the daily treatment capacity of our Water Treatment Plant; and our concern that water towers remain sufficiently filled just in case there is a fire and we need it for that.

A couple of weeks ago our new Utilities Manager, Rick Wahlen, fielded a question about the sodium levels in our water. We are one of the few cities in the Twin Cities metro area that softens our public water supply. It’s a fair question. It’s a question I had not heard the answer to so I thought I’d share Rick’s answer with you:

Our typical sodium content based upon our routine Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) metals assay is between 6 and 8 parts per million.

Assuming a person drinks 10 glasses of water per day at 8 ounces per glass, he would consume less than 0.001 oz. of sodium each day.

According to the below website:

http://www.mindfully.org/Water/2004/Glass-Of-Water17feb04.htm

The average man takes in 7.8 grams to 11.8 grams of salt each day, and the average woman consumes 5.8 to 7.8 grams, which are not very accurate numbers because these estimates are based on salt contained within an average comparison of the typical daily food intake, and do not include salt added at the table.

How much salt should people eat? For healthy adults 19 to 50, the desirable level is 3.8 grams of salt (about two-thirds of a teaspoon, or 1,500 milligrams of sodium) daily, the amount needed to replace what is lost in sweat.

For an upper limit, the panel set 5.8 grams of salt a day (a little more than one teaspoon), but noted that this was not a desirable amount. The panel said that more than 95 percent of American men and 75 percent of American women ages 31 to 50 regularly consumed salt in excess of the upper limit established by the group.

Doing some units conversions, the 1500 mg of sodium equates to approximately 0.134 oz. of sodium, which is about 1,000 times the quantity contained in the 10 glasses of tap water we should drink each day.

Drinking water flushes sodium out of the body and actually keeps a person’s sodium content from getting too high. Ten 8 oz. glasses of water contain about 1/1000^th the recommended daily allowance of sodium and would help the body eliminate excess sodium consumed in food, especially for those processed food consumers who like chips and fries.

Drink it up. Our water is good for you. And you can still buy about 1,000 gallons from us for about a $1.00. What a deal!

I took these photos on a tour we took this week of three downtown/town center projects in the Twin Cities. My podcast describes the tour and aspects of each development.

Click play to listen (8 min, 22 sec).

Subscribe to the podcast.

Subscribe with iTunes.

Woodbury’ Woodbury Lakes

Burnsville’ Heart of the City

St. Louis Park’ Excelsior and Grand

The Metropolitan Council released a report this week (click here to see it) which shared its findings about Twin Cities regional population growth. The report shows that the Twin Cities metro area continues to add population. Blaine is the fastest growing city in the metro area during the 2000-2005 study period with a growth of 9,006 people. Eden Prairie made the Top Ten (another Top Ten list for us) list of fastest growing cities for the 2000-2005 time period at #6 with a population growth of 6,054. We were right behind Woodbury and right ahead of Farmington. The Star Tribune wrote about the study in their July 19 edition.

The results speak for themselves. Eden Prairie is a desirable place in which to live and people still want to get into our town. That’s a good place to be, but it also tells me that the bar is set high and that we’ve got to work hard to keep up our community reputation and quality of life.

Speaking on behalf of city government, we’ll do our best to do just that.

The City dedicated its new Staring Lake Park Off-Leash Dog Park yesterday. The new off-leash dog park at Staring Lake Park is located just east of the new archery range and north of the Cummins-Grill Historic Homestead. There is a small parking lot there that offers ample parking and short trail down to the dog park.

Dog park advocates Cheryl Luse and Libby Hargroves (L) assisted Mayor Tyra-Lukens and Councilmember Ron Case (R) cut the grand opening ribbon on the City’s 4th off-leash dog park.

Then it was time for the dogs (and their owners) to play. It was a small event in terms of numbers of people that attended, but those that were there were very appreciative of the City’s efforts to address this important issue to Eden Prairie pet owners. Off-leash dog parks are becoming more common in the United States, but I’d have to say, with four City dog parks of our own and the possibility of adding a couple more in area County parks, our dog owners (and their dogs) are well-served with off-leash parks.

Yesterday morning, Money magazine made its annual announcement of its “Best Places to Live”. As you might imagine, this is a list that every city wants to make. Eden Prairie made the list! In fact, Eden Prairie made the Money’s Top Ten. Money magazine ranked Eden Prairie as the 10th Best Place To Live in the United States. Not 10th Best in the Midwest. Not 10th Best City under 100,000. They ranked us as the10th Best Place to Live in the whole country.

Money evaluated more than 1,000 American cities based on their overall quality of life in order to rank the Top 100 cities. They looked at such factors as parks, unemployment, per capita incomes, housing costs, quality of schools, access to health care, arts, higher education opportunities, taxes, climate and crime. They scored cities based on their individual characteristics and then ranked the scores. Ft. Collins, Colorado was ranked #1. Naperville, Illinois was #2, the same position they held in last year’s rankings. Eden Prairie was #10. Other Minnesota cities that made the Top 100 included Eagan at #12, Blaine at #54 and Rochester at #67.

There are so many reasons why Eden Prairie is a Top Ten City. We have great parks. We have a vibrant business community. We are close to metropolitan amenities. We have low crime and solid housing values. Nobody likes taxes, but if you compare our taxes to other cities in the Top Ten list, we look pretty good there too.

The biggest reason that Eden Prairie is a Top Ten City is because the residents of this community have cared enough about Eden Prairie over the years to get us there today. Eden Prairie did not become a Top Ten City by accident. We also did not become a Top Ten City overnight. Many people played small parts in enabling the City to achieve this recognition.

So to all those former (and current) City Councilmembers, Planning Commission Members, School Board Members, Lion’s Club members, Chamber of Commerce members, Rotary Club members, youth sports association board members, church members, etc. - Congratulations! Thank you for your contributions. Eden Prairie is a Top Ten City because of you.

That’s me on the right and Jim Bergstrom on the left. Jim was, as of last Friday, July 14, an officer in our Police Department. Last Friday was Jim’s last day of work for the City of Eden Prairie. Jim’s lovely wife Julie snapped this photo of Jim and me just before we sat down for his exit interview.

I do exit interviews for all of our full-time employees when they leave employment. When Jim and I sat down for his, the first thing he told me was that he enjoyed his time working for the City, but he didn’t really know if he had much to say in an exit interview. Bergie has had an interesting career in law enforcement. Plus, he’s a colorful individual. I knew he had something to say. After a little coaxing, we talked about his career and the history of the Police Department for an hour.

Conducting exit interviews is one of the more interesting things I do in my job. I almost always learn something unexpected in my exit interviews. They are free flowing. I don’t work from a list of questions. I ask people what they liked about working here? Do they have any suggestions for how to improve our operations here? Is there anything we should have done that we didn’t, or did do that we should not have? Usually these questions are enough to carry a conversation at least thirty minutes, sometimes longer.

The exit interview is also important to the employee. It is their last chance to say something to the boss they’ve always wanted to say, but repressed it for some reason. It’s a safe opportunity as you’re going out the door to get something off your chest.

I’ve been doing a few exit interviews recently for long time employees. Jim Bergstrom is among those. He started working here on January 1, 1980. I did an exit interview for Engineering Technician David Olson two weeks ago. He started working here January 21, 1974. I have an exit interview scheduled for Building Inspections Administrative Assistant Barb Bach next week. She started here on October 10, 1974.

Among them, these three employees have just over 90 years of collective experience working for the City of Eden Prairie, which reminds me of the most the important function of the exit interview: saying “Thank You” to a person for dedicating the best years of their life to public service to the citizens of Eden Prairie.

I recorded Eden Prairie police officer Bob Barli’s presentation on child internet safety at the Eden Prairie Rotary last week.

There is an interesting article in today’s Star Tribune concerning the increase in housing density in Twin Cities suburbs. The increase in housing density is attributed to the increase in condo and townhouse developments. Accompanying the article in the newspaper (but, unfortunately, not in the online version of the article) is a graphic that shows selected Twin Cities suburbs and their respective housing units built per acre for the time period 2000-2004. Among these suburbs Eden Prairie was tied with Inver Grove Heights for the most units per acre at 6.0/acre. Chanhassen was at 5.1/acre. Shakopee at 4.1/acre. Woodbury 3.8/acre. And last on this list was Victoria at 2.9/acre. The data was supplied to the Star Tribune by the Metropolitan Council.

I think many people will be surprised to see Eden Prairie’s spot on that list. The community’s reputation among most people in the metro is probably quite the opposite.

But Eden Prairie did not get on to this list by accident. During this time period, our City Council has expressed a consistent desire to see more affordable housing in the city. More affordable housing translated into more attached multifamily housing, which translates into condos, town homes and apartments. The Council has supported this policy because they want Eden Prairie to be a place where people who work here can live here too. That’s been an important driving influence for this policy preference, and it’s been supported by the community as well.

Has increased residential density been good or bad for the city? I see no evidence of it being bad for the city. It has not been detrimental to property values or for the community’s image in the metro area. We’ve not seen any significant uptick in crime related to increased housing densities. I think it’s been good for local employers and good for working families who’ve been able to join the community and enjoy its relatively high standard of living.

The entry road that connects Eden Prairie City Center to Mitchell Road was closed today to allow for a substantial maintenance project. If you need to access our building, you will need to use the Scenic Heights Road entrance. The asphalt will be milled off of the existing road bed and removed. Any bad sections of gutter or curb will be replaced. We’ll fix any drainage problems while we’re at it. Then we’ll put a shiny new coat (more like 2 or 3 coats) of asphalt on the road. Finally, it will need to sit for a week without traffic in order to firm up to be ready for traffic.

The City is employing a private construction contractor to accomplish this project. The same contractor just completed a complete rehabilitation of the City employee parking lot that surrounds City Center. They did a nice job with that project too.

There’s a lot of planning that goes into something that looks as simple as putting new asphalt down in a parking lot. We had to plan for alternate parking for employees. During the construction City employees parked on the far north end of the west parking lot, which is typically full of School District employees - except in the summertime. We also had to make alternate plans for deliveries and for citizen parking. We had to make sure that C.H. Robinson and the Eden Prairie School District, which both have major operations in City Center, were apprised of the project time line every day. Oh ya, and we also needed to make sure the construction contractor did everything we contracted with him to do.

For all the little things that could have gone wrong, we actually had a relatively pain-free project. There was a lot of inconvenience caused for a lot of people, but they absorbed it patiently and were pretty good sports about the whole thing. Paul Sticha, our Facilities Manager, managed this project. It’s not over yet, so I hope that I haven’t jinxed him. But so far, so good.

Today was the first day of Safety Camp. Safety Camp is one of the most popular youth programs offered by the City. The Safety Camp concept was originated right here in Eden Prairie. Kids have the opportunity to meet Police Officers, Firefighters, 911 dispatchers, and other public safety officials close-up and in an environment that emphasizes the role these people in play in creating a safe community. Kids also have a chance to see these public safety officials outside of their uniforms. Shorts and t-shirts are the fashion of the day for kids and Police alike.

Another benefit generated by Safety Camp is that it is a true interdepartmental effort among our Police, Fire and Parks & Rec Departments. Each department has a role in making Safety Camp a success every year. And I don’t think Safety Camp would be as successful as it is without any one of these departments carrying their fair share of the load. I guess that’s the definition of true collaboration.

Kids have fun. They love Safety Camp, even in the rain.