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ARDEN HILLS CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION – FEBRUARY 10, 2025 7 can help drum up support from businesses and organizations and other sources of income to help pay for the improvements. Mayor Grant said there are a couple of trails we want to put in. They are rather pricy. We may have to take a look at opportunities for various grants so some of this can be funded by outside sources. It doesn’t make sense to design a plan that can’t be implemented. Casey Byers said they want to set the City up for success. Some communities face challenges by not having a plan like this in place. Mayor Grant said Mounds View was shell-shocked over the cost of their Master Plan. They have a nice community center and a splash pad and it was still $20 million. Councilmember Monson said she is really excited to have a Park Master Plan. One of her first frustrations of being a councilmember was when having discussions regarding parks. She said improving one park is just a piece of the bigger puzzle. She struggled because she wanted to have a comprehensive view of what existed, if that was what we want and if the changes we are going to make meet the goals. It’s exciting to have such a comprehensive view of our Parks Program. She reiterated the need to figure out needs vs. wants. She liked the example Casey Byers shared about raising the baseline, then you can talk about something else. It shows the ability to split that out so Council can make those policy decisions. She wondered if TCAAP was part of the scope. Bryce Shearan said he told Public Works Director/City Engineer Swearingen that it needs to be addressed in the Plan. Other than that, there won’t be too much focus on TCAAP. Councilmember Monson said it will be important to marry the two together to create that comprehensive system. She is in favor of the PTRC participating. She is interested in seeing how they will loop in the Lake Johannah and the Old Highway 10 trails. We hear a lot about natural resources and she hopes this plan will help us understand how to hold those natural assets. Councilmember Weber thought the presentation was good. He supports the PTRC being involved. He thinks it would be ideal for the new Parks and Recreation Manager to be involved in this process, especially the inventory process because that is a great opportunity to get to know the parks. Councilmember Holden shared that Public Works Director/City Engineer Swearingen has stated that people get upset when his staff plant a certain tree or make a decision on what natural landscaping to use. She wondered how that will be addressed in the Master Park Plan. Public Works Director/City Engineer Swearingen said that will be addressed through asset inventory. Those open spaces will be identified where those natural resources programs will be functioning. That will tell us what types of natural resources can go in that space. Councilmember Holden asked if Bolton & Menk would determine what kinds of natural resources can go in a certain space. Casey Byers said they won’t really get into that. A natural resource plan for a park system can get really intense. They will cover those topics at a high level. When they do park inventories, they are looking at physical amenities but they also note things like significant tree damage, or maybe