The Blog from City Hall

I’m a Board Member of the Hennepin South Services Collaborative (HSSC). HSSC is a human services and research organization that is a joint venture of the cities and school districts of Eden Prairie, Richfield and Bloomington. At a recent Board meeting, the Board reviewed a report prepared by the HSSC staff that explored the demographic similarities and differences among the three cities that have occurred during the time period 1980 - 2000. For today’s blog I’m going to share selected demographic nuggets from that report.

Median Age in 1980: Bloomington = 29.9 Eden Prairie = 28.3 Richfield = 32.0

Median Age in 2000: Bloomington = 40.1 Eden Prairie = 34.2 Richfield = 37.1

Percentage of People of Color in the City population in 1980: Richfield = 2.9% Eden Prairie = 2.7% Bloomington = 3.3%

Percentage of People of Color in the City Population in (2000: Richfield = 21.2% Eden Prairie = 10.3% Bloomington = 13.1%

Average Family Size in 1980: Richfield = 3.0 persons/family Eden Prairie = 3.0 Bloomington = 2.8

Average Family Size in 2000: Richfield = 2.9 Eden Prairie = 2.7 Bloomington = 2.3

Percentage of K-12 students in the District enrolled in private schools in 1980: Eden Prairie = unknown Bloomington = 7.8% Richfield = 8.4%

Percentage of K-12 students in the District enrolled in private schools in 2000: Eden Prairie = 10.1% Bloomington = 11.7% Richfield = 13.8%

Median Household Income in 1980: Richfield = $47,108 Eden Prairie = $69,098 Bloomington = $60,160 *adjusted to 1999 dollars

Median Household Income in 2000: Richfield = $45,519 Eden Prairie = $78,328 Bloomington = $54,628 *adjusted to 1999 dollars

Percentage of population living below the poverty level in 1980: Bloomington = 3.0% Eden Prairie = 2.7% Richfield = 3.7%

Percentage of population living below the poverty level in 2000: Bloomington = 4.0% Eden Prairie = 3.5% Richfield = 6.3%

Percentage of the population that has attained at least a Bachelor’s degree in 2000: Eden Prairie = 57.1% Richfield = 27.3% Bloomington = 35.4%

Percentage of population that reports working in the City in which they live in 2000: Eden Prairie = 29.3% Bloomington = 33.8% Richfield = 13.1%

Percentage of population that were not US citizens at birth in 1980: Richfield = 3.3% Bloomington = 3.4% Eden Prairie = 2.7%

Percentage of population that were not US citizens at birth in 2000: Richfield = 11.4% Bloomington = 7.7% Eden Prairie = 8.9%

Our access and use of this data can be very helpful to us as we plan for future City and School District services for our residents. The information is out there. The challenge now is to analyze it, understand it and use it.

One of the things that we do here in our city government to stay in touch with our local business community is to go out and meet with them and talk with them about what they do and what we can do to help them, or sometimes, what we can do to stay out of their hair. When we started the initiative, we called the “Business Recognition and Retention Program”. Now, we just refer to it as our “Meet & Greet” program.

This is a photo I snapped at our most recent Meet & Greet at a new business in Eden Prairie called Art Partners Group. The Art Partners Group is (from L-R) are Kim Cameron, Brian Knudsvig and Connie Shields. On the right side of the photo is the City’s Economic Development Manager David Lindahl in the blue blazer and City Councilmember Phil Young in the tan blazer. Art Partners Group works with the commercial real estate industry, institutions and corporations to provide them with full service art consulting and installation. They help clients decide how much and what kinds of art to display in their facilities. Then they go out and find that art and get it installed.

It was a pretty typical Meet & Greet. We toured the building. We learned about their business. We learned about their client base. We learned that they have had only a small amount of official contact with the City, mostly with our Building Inspectors through their remodeling project. We learned that they chose Eden Prairie because it has great access to the Twin Cities urban core and the airport, while being close to their commercial real estate clients in the western suburbs. We learned that they like being in Eden Prairie and are happy with their decision to locate here for many reasons.

Since we started doing the Meet & Greets in 2002, we’ve done over 150 of them. We’ve toured some of the City’s biggest employers to some of the smaller restaurants. We’ve seen traditional manufacturing to some of the most high tech production equipment in the world. Eden Prairie’s economy is humming and Eden Prairie’s business community is largely satisfied with its city government. How do I know that? Because I’ve asked them and that’s what they’ve told me.

We held our first ever, and possibly first annual, all-employee Liquor Store meeting yesterday (Sunday) in the pavilion at the Purgatory Creek Recreation Area. That’s the City’s CFO, Sue Kotchevar, in the background. Sue is is responsible for the City’s liquor store operations. Mitch Dean is the City’s Manager of Liquor Operations. Sue, Mitch and I facilitated a presentation to our liquor store employees about a major renovation of our Den Road liquor store; our new store interior design standards; new clothing and uniform requirements; the financial operations of our stores; and some recent success stories in the area of liquor law compliance tests.

Liquor store employees work Monday through Saturday, so our best option to get all of them together at one location, date and time was to do it on a Sunday. Sue, Mitch and I thought about communicating with the employees through letter or email, but the scale of the changes we are about to make in our liquor operations are large enough that we decided a face-to-face meeting was best to explain what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

What we’re doing is taking our liquor stores up-scale. We have worked with an interior design firm on a new marketing and interior design for our stores which we believe will be more attractive and appealing to our local customer base. We’re also setting new in-house rules about the kinds of promotional stuff we’ll accept and display in the stores from our liquor, wine and beer distributors. There’s no industry with more give-away promotional marketing stuff than the liquor industry. We’ve decided that if we’re going to go up-scale and establish our own unique design, we want to keep it looking nice. We’re also setting standards for the apparel of our store employees. Nice pants. Logo shirts. No hats.

It was a good meeting and a beautiful day in the park.

Something else………..

While I was at work last Thursday, my home and cars were getting bombarded by baseball-size hail. Before Thursday, I did not believe that baseball-sized hail really existed. I’ve heard of it before, but I always thought it was just weather hype. It’s real. That’s a baseball in my son’s right hand and a chunk of hail that bounced off the hood of my wife’s car in the other. Wow! We had lots of damage, but nobody got hurt.

How many of you work in a job where the accuracy of your work is checked everyday by not only your supervisor, but also an outside third party? And, what if the information about your accuracy was shared not only within your company, but it also became a matter of public record?

In City government, the employees in the Records Unit in our Police Department works in this atmosphere. Police records technicians code the data in police reports and do data entry of a great deal of information, including offenses, clearances, stolen and recovered property, and arrests, into the City’s records management system. That data is then transferred electronically to the Minnesota’s state Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program which in turn submits information to the FBI’s national UCR Program. You can see why it’s so important that the information is entered correctly.

In July this group had a total of 716 transactions with no errors. That’s zero errors. The group usually ranks in the 98th or 99th percentile for accuracy, but 100 percent is outstanding and reflects the teamwork, dedication, and hard work of this group.

Congratulations to the Police Department’s records unit– records technicians Stacy Boyer, Julie Bergstrom, Sandy Kelly, Jenna Scadden, Pat Sullivan, and Tina Zucchi, and customer service representative Carri Haberle. It’s their hard work that moves critical information from the law enforcement system into the legal system so that we can all, eventually, see justice served.

Our Records Unit does outstanding work. Thanks for a job well done.

The Habitat For Technology (HFT) was formed five or so years ago by local business, education and government officials who shared a vision of creating a “Silicon Prairie” economy in Eden Prairie. The HFT did not achieve that goal, but actually turned out to be a valuable venue for the same representatives from Eden Prairie’s education, business and local government institutions to come together and work on matters of mutual concern.

Recently, the group has turned its attention away from continuing its work in the world of high tech economic development and towards a new goal: developing and sustaining business, educational and governmental relations with China. I represent the City on the HFT Board of Directors. The Board met last night and agreed to change the group’s mission and vision to be consistent with this new goal.

What will the mission and vision of HFT mean? What will the HFT do to carry out this new mission and vision?

The HFT will work with the School District to support the establishment of a relationship between Eden Prairie Schools and schools in Loudi, China. HFT has agreed to financially support the travel costs to send two representatives from the School District to Loudi late this year in order to meet their counterparts and talk about how this relationship will be set up. The HFT will also financially sponsor other exchange trips between the two school systems, including some student exchanges.

The HFT will support the establishment of a relationship between the two city governments. One of the potential goals for the HFT in that regard is to facilitate a joint electronic meeting of city officials from the two cities. HFT would also financially support travel costs for sending city officials from here to Loudi in order to assist in the develop of business relations between businesses in the two cities.

State Representative Erik Paulsen (R-Eden Prairie) wrote an opinion piece in yesterday’s Star Tribune that is right on point with what the HFT wants to do. The Governor and the state government have the lead role in this venture. However, I don’t think that you can underestimate the importance of encouraging local government officials to be involved too. More connections with Chinese officials at the local government level just has to be better than a single connection at the top of our respective State-Provincial governments. The HFT is going to do our part to facilitate a relationship with China this year. Keep watching.

On the left, that’s me with Percy. It’s part of my ever expanding corporate mascot photography catalog. Percy is the mascot of the Primrose School. Eden Prairie doesn’t currently have a Primrose School, but we will have one, with luck and good weather, in early January 2007. The Primrose School is a new nursery school/childcare center being developed by Ben and Lisa Adams.

That’s Ben with the giant novelty check in the photo on the right. Behind Ben is the construction site that will soon be the Primrose School. It’s near the intersection of Highway 5 and County Road 4, right behind the Super America. At the podium is Ben’s mother, Betsy Adams. In addition to being chair of the City’s Heritage Preservation Commission, Betsy is also leading the charge of those concerned with saving the Anderson School. The Anderson School is one of the one room schoolhouses that served Eden Prairie kids 100 years ago. There is a community initiative right now to restore the Anderson School and then give it to the Eden Prairie School District to serve as an educational facility to acquaint the kids of the future with how education has evolved in this community. Betsy is shown behind the podium in this photo because she is accepting a check (of the large novelty variety) for $2,000 contribution from her son for the Anderson School Fund. A very nice gesture for a son to make for his mom.

Betsy is working very hard on this quest to restore the Anderson School. She and her fellow committee members are going to raise almost $200,000 for this project. She has also been working hard at navigating the City and the School District organizations to help make sure that once restored the school could be used for the intended purpose. It’s a noble effort. I think that it will be a success.

That’s our brand new Outdoor Center sign on the left. That’s our old Outdoor Center sign on the right. The old park signs were designed by Steve Sullivan, a former park planner for the City in the early 1980’s. He designed the signs and our park maintenance crew built and installed them. The signs were based on the old City logo and the colors were picked to blend in with the natural environment.

The new park signs are being installed by Sign Source, Inc of Eden Prairie. There are a total of 50 signs being installed and there are 4 sizes of signs. There are two 8 foot by 6 foot specialty signs for the Community Center and Senior Center that will have changeable letter message panel where upcoming activities and events can be highlighted.

Community Parks will have 8 foot by 4 foot size signs. There are a total of six of these signs for Round Lake, Staring Lake, Riley Lake, Miller Park(2) and RTA Conservation Area. The medium size signs are 6 feet by 3 feet in size and are for neighborhood parks, special use sites (Outdoor Center), community play fields (Flying Cloud) and some conservation areas.

A total of 29 medium size signs will be installed. The last size signs are 5 feet by 3 feet and there are 13 signs of this type. These signs will installed at mini-parks, boat ramps, Miller Spring, and two conservation areas. The total bid for the manufacture and installation of the 50 signs was $152,000 or nearly $100,000 below our estimated cost of $250,000 for the signage program. We will be changing signs at our Water Plant, Street Maintenance Facility, City Center, Fire Stations and other City facilities next year.

This is Danny Ziebol (left photo). Danny is a student at Eden Prairie High School. Danny is getting ready to leave for a year long student Rotary Club exchange experience in Japan. He contacted me because he was looking for information about Eden Prairie that he could take with him on his trip. As a Rotary ex chance student, he is likely to have many opportunities to speak to Rotary Clubs in Japan about his home country and, especially, his hometown. I gave him some official City lapel pins, logo pens, and some copies of DVDs that the City has produced focusing on our park system, our business community, and our local history. I also gave him a DVD copy of our 3 minute feature video segment, which includes our official theme song. You can check out this short feature video at our website.

This is Danny’s dad, Fred (right photo). I snapped the photo of Fred in his unnatural environment. Fred’s natural environment is outside. Fred is a Senior Construction Inspection Technician with the City. He’s worked here for over 26 years. Fred is the guy who works with private construction companies on the job site (i.e. - outside) to make sure that they build streets, water lines, sewer lines, sidewalks, trails, retaining walls and other kinds of public improvements according to City specifications. Fred’s job is important. The City depends on Fred to make sure that construction contractors toe the line and build what they’re supposed to build the way they’re supposed to build it. Fred has a good way about him. He works cooperatively with construction companies and gets what the City wants without creating undue conflict and hard feelings. That can be a tall order in the construction industry sometimes. We’re luck to have Fred around.

Fred and his wife Colleen have lived in Eden Prairie since 1980. They’ve raised their three sons, ages 24, 22 and 17 here. Fred has also been a fire fighter for the Eden Prairie Fire Department for the past 7 years. Interestingly, the fact that I mentioned Fred’s Fire Department connection in this blog entry means that he must now, according to official unofficial Fire Department custom, buy enough pie to treat his fellow fire fighters in his station. I’m glad I remembered that.

Danny leaves on for his exchange trip on Sunday. He flies to Detroit first, and then a non-stop 15-16 hour flight to Japan. I made a deal with Danny. When he returns I have asked him to narrate a Japanese language version of our short feature video. He’s looking forward to that, and so am I.

Good luck Danny. We’ll see you back home next year.

The City Council, pictured to the left, had a longer than average meeting last night and took action on a large number of different items. Here’s a summary:

• Endorsed, with some caveats, a new off leash dog park proposed for Bryant Lake Regional Park by the Three Rivers Park District

• Approved a plan for the inclusion of a new Veteran’s Memorial in the Purgatory Creek Recreational Area Park

• Approved a plan for the construction of a new bike trail on County Road 4 from where the trails currently end all the way up to the Crosstown Highway

• Approved a plan for the construction of a new boardwalk into the Purgatory Creek Recreation Area wetland

• Approved a plan to install more faucets in the Pioneer Park garden plots to allow the renters of garden plots to water their gardens easier and to finance the improvements by increasing the rental cost of the plots

• Adopted a resolution recognizing the 50th anniversary of the incorporation of the City of Minnetonka

• Set the time and date to make a ruling on an appeal a resident filed of a staff order to cut some tall grass and weeds from his property

• Approved a change in the City’s Comprehensive Land Use Guide Plan to define and site a “Town Center” in Eden Prairie

• Approved a plan for the expansion of the existing South West Metro Transit bus maintenance garage

• Purchased a fire truck from the MSP Airport Fire Department for $1.00 (no kidding, $1.00)

• Directed staff to proceed with the acquisition of some land that we refer to as the Picha Farm, which is adjacent to the Birch Island Woods natural area

• Approved a menu of naming rights options that we plan to sell to help finance the major renovations we are doing at the Community Center.

That’s actually about half of the items the Council took action on last night. It was a busy night.

I received a letter last week from Nancy Holden, Executive Director of PROP. PROP is a local private non-profit human services organization that has been operating in Eden Prairie since 1971. The acronym stands for “People Reaching Out to other People“. Among their many activities, PROP runs a food bank. For the past three years during the City’s National Night Out event, we have also organized a food donation drive for PROP’s food bank. In her letter to me from last week, Nancy Holden reported that the National Night Out food drive netted 3,859 pounds of food this year. Given the wet weather during this year’s NNO event, I’d say that total is pretty good.

The summer months are tough months in the food banking business. Donations are typically down with people on vacation or managing changes in their personal schedules with kids out of school. Consumption from food banks in the summer, however, usually moves up since kids in needy families are getting fed at school for one or two meals each day. Nancy says that in July 2006, the PROP food bank distributed over 22,000 pounds of food.

3,859 pounds of food donated to PROP from National Night Out is good. But you can see that the demand is high. Anything you can do for PROP, such as giving them money or food, is a good thing for PROP, and a good thing for Eden Prairie too.

The City Council will be considering the approval of a consulting contract at their August 15 meeting that might make your drive through Eden Prairie just a little bit easier. The Council will consider a contract from a consult to synchronize the traffic signals on T.H. 212 (Flying Cloud Drive) from 494 south to Pioneer Trail. The study includes the synchronization of 29 individual traffic signals in this busy stretch of highway. The cost of the contract is $78,410, but the City and Hennepin County will split the cost. Our share is $32,148. The County will pick up the rest.

Moving traffic through a series of signalized road intersections is complex. These signals need to be synchronized. It will create more efficient movement for drivers because it will reduce their driving time and their frustration level. Reducing both of these factors will also make the road safer to drive on as well.

I am willing to bet that nobody reading this blog has one of these devices at home. Do you know what it is? Anyone care to guess?

This device is used by Police and military security officers to examine the underside of vehicles for bombs. It has an extremely low profile. It is just a couple of inches tall. The round clear globe on the top of the device contains high performance camera and lighting equipment that can pan, tilt and zoom to view the most obscure locations under a vehicle. The device moves by way of the four tracks. At the juncture of the two smaller tracks with the two larger tracks there is a pivot joint that allows the device to stand up a few inches higher to improve the view.

We see terrorism everyday on television. We see it in Afghanistan, Iraq and, more recently, Lebanon & Israel. But we also know that terrorism can strike here too. Even if we don’t see terrorism everyday in our own communities, we want to be prepared to face it if it rears its ugly head. Being prepared means having equipment like this around and knowing how to use it.

In Eden Prairie we are fortunate (not lucky) to have an outstanding team of men and women in our Police Department that train and think about keeping our residents safe everyday. It’s important that we equip them with the tools they need, even if we hope they never have to use them.

An Eden Prairie quasi-landmark bit the dust last week with the demolition of Birdies mini-golf and recreation area. If you click on the thumbnail photo you can see a backhoe in the trees doing the final demo on the former youth recreating spot. It is going to be replaced by a spanking new Office Max. Look for it open later this year.

Is this progress? You be the judge.

We had another successful National Night Out this year in Eden Prairie, albeit a soggy one. We had 95 neighborhood parties this year - which is a new record. But attendance was surely down a little this year because of the rain. It was a steady light rain with shorts bursts of downpour throughout the evening. Given the heat and drought we’ve having in Minnesota this year, we needed the rain badly. I did not hear a single complain about it all night. I heard some wishes for a few hours of dry weather, but no complaints about the rain.

I went out to National Night Out parties this year with Officer Erica Halvorson (far L) and our trusty Police Explorer Adam (in the blue shirt). We were joined at a party on Cottonwood Lane by McGruff the Crime Dog and his trusty assistant, whose name I did not get. We posed for this picture in the rain with Officer Halvorson’s new Dodge Charger police cruiser. Officer Halvorson and Officer John Wilson are trying out this new car. It’s an experiment. We will test it against our current fleet of traditional Ford Crown Victorias. Changing police cruiser makes and models is a big decision, so we want to thoroughly consider our options before making a big change.

If you see it in the community, you’ll notice it right away. I’m not really a “car guy”, but I really like the look of this one - especially in the black & white police package.

Flat & black. That’s how a street with a brand new coat of asphalt ought to look. This is view of Gerard Drive looking east toward I-494. Its new surface of asphalt is only a few days old. And did it ever look nice with a little bit of rain on it from this morning’s sprinkle. Of course the street is flat, but it’s certainly not level. Every street must drain properly so that it remains safe to drive on during the rain. This where the civil engineers enter the picture. They design our roads to look flat, yet drain properly. We have several civil engineers on staff with the City. They do great work in designing public improvements that look good, but function safely.

The City completed Gerard Drive this past week along with several other streets in Topview Neighborhood: Roberts Drive, Ann Court, Gordon Drive, and Interlachen Court. The project included reconstruction of curbs and gutters, repairing storm sewer catch basins, and repairing manholes. We try to fix everything with the street before we do an asphalt resurfacing project so that we don’t have to come back and ruin the new asphalt by digging into it for some reason.

Repair projects like these can be a real pain in the butt for the neighborhood. There’s noise. It’s dirty. It’s inconvenient in many ways. But, maintaining our streets and other public improvements is something the City must do. We try to minimize the inconvenience, but we’ll never get it to zero. We appreciate the patience and support we get from neighborhoods for these projects. In the end, after the construction is completed and the everything has calmed down, I think most people feel it’s all worth it.