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ARDEN HILLS SPECIAL CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION — AUGUST 11, 2025 28 Councilmember Holden said we need to discuss the January through March meetings. That was done for employee retention and safety because Staff has to drive dark and icy roads. That came from the Personnel Committee. Personnel should talk about that before it comes to Council. She thinks a lot of them can be drafted by Staff and Council can act on them. Councilmember Rousseau asked if it would be easier for Staff if Council prioritize the list and send it to her. City Administrator Jagoe said she will remove the topics that were identified and reformat the table and send it out. Council can rank the items and she will leave space for Council to comment if they want discussion or just have Staff recommendation. Councilmember Rousseau would like to keep the Buy Nothing cleanup day in our minds. The thought is to do a Buy Nothing day and a cleanup day the next day. Councilmember Monson said there are four months left. She wondered if we should pick one really meaty topic and hammer through it. Maybe it's ADUs. That will be the only extra thing we do for the next four months. We could choose two less time consuming topics and try to get through them. The other option is to pick off all of the lighter ones. We can strategically narrow how we want to handle the next four months and if there is extra time we can readjust. Councilmember Weber supports focusing on cannabis. He wants to understand the State's change in the funding for Cities. He wants to revisit the idea of forming smaller committees for some of these smaller items. He does support hammering through these topics. If it comes to it, we can have a second meeting over the winter, recognizing the imposition that places on Staff. He would like to discuss committees so we can get through some of these topics and not have to resort to a second meeting in the winter months. Councilmember Monson supports that. Mayor Grant supports that, too. He said other cities have policies on these topics. There's no need to recreate the wheel. He noted some dates that could be used in October and November. Council recessed the work session at 6: 57 pm. Council reconvened the work session at 8: 05 pm. Mayor Grant said there are additional Mondays in September and October that could be used for special work sessions. Councilmember Holden said we were talking about September 29. Mayor Grant asked if that works for everyone. Councilmember Monson would prefer if we have a better strategy around what will be discussed during that time before committing to additional special work sessions. Her opinion is to discuss ADUs through the end of the year. Councilmember Rousseau thought we were going to talk about affordable housing.