CC_Minutes_2023_0417 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Regular City Council Meeting Monday,April 17,2023 Page 5 could bring something back at a future date showing where this is at for further conversations. Councilmember Groff agreed and indicated he does a different kind of comparable in his job every day. But with the comparable in his job, they look for data points, different criteria, but usually he will drop the outliers because there is a reason that happens. He is very curious to see how the information comes out but the process makes total sense to him. Ms. Davis indicated she agreed, if the Council is directing Abdo to expand the criteria a little bit then her recommendation would be typically to use a funnel method. She started with a pretty narrow comparable, the 25,000 to 45,000 population, so her question would be if the City wanted to expand that a little bit. She can come in objectively to determine who fits in there and apply the criteria. She asked what is a population range in the Council's mind that would seem reasonable to take that up to. Mayor Roe indicated there are probably ten to fifteen metro area cities on the list that are between 45,000 and 90,000 that are not Bloomington so that would add ten to fifteen. He noted the only reason he is excluding Bloomington is that the city has the Mall of America. He thought Bloomington was a notch above the other cities that would be considered comparable. Ms. Olson offered that the range is big but some of the cities that might be competitors and have some overlap would be up to the 75,000 population. Staff has seen that a little bit when doing their annual Minnesota League study to look at different positions. That is not a set number and she would throw out up to 75,000 could be potentially some of the City's competitors. Ms. Davis stated that felt realistic to her. Councilmember Groff thought going with a smaller population gets a little tricky as well. Ms. Davis agreed and indicated she would not go lower than the 25,000. Councilmember Etten indicated if the criteria is going to go up as high as 75,000, then he would want to make sure it is being tied back to some of these other pieces, the first tier or the population age percentages. He noted another thing that would drive this is the fire departments and providing health services. The Council discussed with Abdo possible criteria for comparison between cities.