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ARDEN HILLS CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION — MAY 26, 2026 3 have to balance a little bit. We don't want to go too early so we're interfering with people coming to the Council meeting. We don't want to stay too late where people are unable to stay and attend the meetings. She would like to do the 5:00 going forward. She likes 7:00 for the Council meeting. Councilmember Holden said 5:00 forever. Councilmember Rousseau said yes. She is fine with that. Councilmember Holden said she can't make it at 5:00. She was elected. People want to hear what she's going to say. One of the things that happened when her husband was hurt was a sense of community and how people all pulled together and helped them. She thinks by changing this so she can't be here during a meeting, deliberately, is really breaking a sense of community for her and a lot of people. Why don't we start at 4:30 in the summer if it's so important? Why don't we have three meetings a week? City Administrator Jagoe said one of the comments she has heard, the number of work session items that we have checked through on the Agenda Planning list or other items that needed to be brought forward. One discussion that Council could consider is to move forward with the temporary work session start time of 5:00 pm, as we've done the past two years. We've done that through August. That would afford us five meetings where we could do the earlier start time. Staff will get as many items scheduled to keep working through the agenda planning list. As was mentioned, we have budgets coming up. We don't have any other topics for June so she can work with directors to see what can fill in to start to bring forward those items. Then we can revisit it at the end of August and see how many of the items we have gotten through. If there is a need we could continue on with that half hour earlier start time, after that. That would be temporary and moves this discussion to a later date but allows Staff the time to keep making progress through some of these items. Mayor Grant said he heard from one Councilmember who's not able to make a 5:00 start time. He has always been of the mindset that Council is a five member Council and that everyone should be present. Everyone is heard. Because everyone is elected. If we want to have another work session, we can talk about that. But switching the time when a Councilmember can't attend, he doesn't care which Councilmember, that's an issue for him. Councilmember Rousseau said just to be clear, if we have a Councilmember who can't be here until 11:00 or midnight, that's appropriate. For us to have a council meeting that starts at 5:00 is not appropriate. Mayor Grant said we're talking about start times. Councilmember Rousseau said okay, but at the other end of it when you have other people who have other things that they have to do in the evenings and they have things to do bright and early in the morning, that's not acceptable. Mayor Grant said to change it specifically for a councilmember not to be present, that he has an issue with. He would prefer to have a five member council during council meetings. He really would. Do things come up? Are there necessities or whatever? Eh. But you don't plan for it. And hopefully it's not a consistent thing. During our council meetings you need to use a little bit of discretion. Do you need to talk about everything? But no. Let's not plan to exclude someone.