Minutes - Council Work Session - 02/15/2022 - Special

Home

Councilmember Howell commented that she liked it when Governor Dayton had everyone send in archaic laws, she loved it. She stated she used to work in food back in Indiana and there were laws on the books that wouldn’t allow even cooked alcohol in confectionaries, stuff left over from prohibition. She stated that she had spoken with the Chief who had indicated some of the code was from the 1970’s, that some of the code is that old. Police Chief Katers replied he believed that a lot of it was 1978, borrowed from another city. He stated he believed that is the history of it, that it is full of things that are no longer relevant to this century. Councilmember Woestehoff agreed and added that one of the reasons to do it is to increase transparency and understandability because he thought that often times it gets missed by officers as well as residents. He stated that perhaps it is a change in improved city’s communication or there is something with that in terms of transparency or ease of regulation. He thought there should be a strategy around all of those things together. City Administrator Ulrich suggested breaking the top strategy into two parts and then capture what he is talking about in the last phrase “increasing accountability and transparency through decreasing regulations.” Councilmember Woestehoff offered “optimizing regulations.” He thought that the first one had a lot going on in it and seemed to be mostly around internal operations. He stated that he agreed with it on its premise but it is a long sentence and could use an extra comma. City Administrator Ulrich stated they have “increase transparency and improve accountability by optimizing city regulations.” Councilmember Howell added “and reducing city code.” Councilmember Woestehoff agreed but said they are basically the same thing because you can’t optimize without reducing but he understood her point. Councilmember Heineman commented that optimizing is what the word used to make both parties happy versus deregulating or additional regulation. He liked the word optimizing because it makes everyone happy, there are certain people who would not be happy with deregulation. City Administrator Ulrich suggested the word streamlining or simplifying. Finance Director Lund commented that a word that keeps coming to her mind is common sense. City Administrator Ulrich asked how that would be used. Finance Director Lund replied “a common sense approach.” Councilmember Riley asked if the word modernize belonged in that sentence if it goes back to 1978. City Council Special Work Session / February 15, 2022 Page 13 of 31