05-22-2023 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING May 8, 2023 6:00 o’clock p.m. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Page 11 of 12 attended the Future Fire Services Planning Meeting. She explained this group was formed beginning in about 2021 and the mission was to find the best path forward for fire services in this area to create a Future Fire Service Plan. This is not a public meeting, she said. It's attended by elected officials, fire chiefs, city staff, and some paid on-call firefighters from 10 or 11 surrounding communities. Meeting notes are kept but they are not official minutes. These meeting notes can be shared with the public, according to the Medina City Administrator. Benson said she has been receiving the notes the last few years. Something that caught her eye in one of those first meetings was the statement that there are too many fire departments in the State of Minnesota. She said other districts were already in the process of merging back in 2021, and that trend is continuing today. Hamel and Loretto just merged to form the Western Suburban Fire District. According to Benson, in 2021 the Mayor of Orono decided Orono would not be participating. This is important, she said, because one of the first things that was identified as an obstacle in this group for efficient future-minded service was the participation of elected officials. She said Edwards has sometimes attended these meetings but Orono has been largely absent as a City from the table. She will continue to attend. Benson said the Chief in Hamel and Loretto recently gave a report on the 22-month process to combine this department and offered to come to the Orono City Council and share the process they went through. Benson said the Chief said the notion of giving up control is one of biggest failures with shared models. She said from her perspective it is vitally important that residents are kept up-to-date and that they have clear and complete information regarding fire service, because in the absence of light being shed in this process, it can become confusing and divisive. Seals said the devil is in the details and the citizens are owed the dollars figures. You need to see exactly what this is going to cost, she said. Nothing has been decided. She noted you’ve got the fire assessment and there will be a presentation in two weeks. We want to see total costs for all options and want you to see it too. She urged residents to come to the meeting and give feedback, saying she is willing to answer questions. She added it had already been shared tonight that some parts weren't clear to Councilmember Benson and herself, so they want to make sure we get a very thorough report that gets a lot of those questions answered. On another topic, she said she had been to meetings on Hackberry Park and another was scheduled the next day. The top two concerns are parking and water. She said the public does not seem to want the City to cut back on activities at the park but wants those two things fixed. Johnson said in regard to the fire discussion, providing questions in advance gives the Council and staff the best ability to answer questions. He said the public should submit questions and be part of the discussion. He added he is open to doing a mailing. Taking the amount of time planned will give people time to give feedback to make a quality decision, he said. Johnson added he has been part of this for a considerable time but has more to learn. It will be important to get a handle on what Orono needs, what Orono wants and what the City can afford. The level of coverage is not consistent right now with the size of our community and our response times and looking into the future, he said, he would like to see response times be better. He added he also wanted to extend special thanks to Chris Fischer, deputy police chief, who is retiring and will be missed. Walsh started with a quote from Barack Obama related to policing, stating ‘Our police officers put their lives on the line for us every single day. They've got a tough job to do to maintain public safety and hold accountable those who break the law.’ Walsh said the next Coffee with the Mayor will be at 9 am Wednesday for 30 to 40 minutes. From a funding perspective, Walsh mentioned the newly-appointed Parks Commissioner who was actually on the Parks Commission 10 years ago when there was no budget for the parks, and they didn't do anything at the parks. But like everything else, whether it's our infrastructure, or our roads, or our Police Department, we are the Council that has put together the funding for our parks to be self-sustaining and continue to do that going forward. He said this Council has