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ARDEN HILLS CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL WORK SESSION – JUNE 7, 2021 4 - City meetings in-person: As part of the COVID-19 state of emergency, meetings have been held remotely. When City Hall re-opens to the public, it would be prudent to have public meetings in-person again. The other complicating factor is whether or not the Governor repeals his emergency declaration, which is slated to run through June 14th unless extended another thirty days. City Administrator Perrault explained should the Governor extend his emergency declaration another thirty days, the City can continue with its current plan of June 14th having Staff back in the office, and July 1st for re-opening to the public and in-person meetings. If the Governor does not extend his emergency declaration, does the City want to follow suit? This would mean that on June 14th Council would have an item rescinding its emergency order and starting June 15th City Hall would re-open to the public and in-person meetings would resume (the June 14th meeting would still be held remotely regardless of the Governor’s actions). We may not know if the Governor is planning to extend his emergency declaration until later in the week, and the appropriate item for Council will be drafted at that time. - Other COVID-19 mitigation measures: Staff is planning a lift on other COVID-19 mitigation measures, such as, the mask mandate on June 14th (City employees have continued to wear masks while indoors). We are also planning on events that would normally take place later in the summer, such as, Bark and Rec Day, the Penny Carnival (late July), and the required annual stormwater protection public meeting. Another item recently discussed by Staff is the Committee/Commission picnic; this would be a good “back to normal” event to hold in early August. Unless Council needs to discuss further, Staff can be begin planning for that event, too. Lastly, as a heads up to Council, we did grant some flexibility last year to businesses to expand outdoor operations (seating, serving of alcohol, etc.), the resolution specifically noted that this flexibility would end when businesses can resume normal operations. We believe restaurants currently can operate normally, and this would trigger the end of any expanded outdoor operations. We only received three requests last year for this, and to the best of our knowledge none of the three businesses are continuing the expanded outdoor operations, but we can formally reach out and inform them the flexibility is no longer applicable (unless Council wanted to consider allowing it on a temporary basis). - Summer Hours: As previously noted to Council, the Public Works crew is operating on summer hours; however, City Hall is still on its normal 8:00 am to 4:30 pm schedule. An item will be brought forward to Council for official approval at an upcoming meeting that would set City Hall’s schedule on summer hours starting July 6th. Mayor Grant supported City Hall reopening on July 1st. Councilmember Scott concurred with this recommendation. Councilmember Holden stated some cities have reopened and some have not. She reminded the public that Arden Hills has a very small number of staff members and she did not want to lose any staff members to COVID. She supported the Mayor and City Administrator making a decision on when to reopen City Hall. She questioned how much business the City was doing with the public on Friday afternoons.