2006-11-22 Friday News The Friday News
November 22, 2006
PILOT KNOB – ACACIA CEMETERY
The City Council recently met with Gail Lewellan, Pilot Knob Preservation and agreed to work with her to
attempt to add more property to the Pilot Knob site. The Council had already worked with Gail to acquire the
8-plus acres of Pilot Knob that were purchased in December 2004. Now, Acacia Cemetery who owns the
adjacent 15 acres of land, has expressed an interest in selling their land for preservation. The City Council also
agreed to use Mr. Bob McGillvery, Trust for Public Land, who led the successful effort to acquire the
Allen/Buttenhoff site, to help in acquiring the Acacia Property. The first phase of this acquisition is to
determine the price of the land and acquire the funding sources to make the purchase. Councilmember
Krebsbach, Jake Sedlacek, Gail Lewellan, Bob McGillvary and I met on the site Monday of this week with
members of Dakota County’s Farmland and Natural Area Program to show them the site and discuss the
possibilit y for receiving a second grant to use in this purchase. The County Staff was impressed with the site
and the idea, but warned us that their program funds are dwindling, and there are now many more applications.
They told us that a second phase application might not be looked at as favorably as the first. We discussed
tactics with them on how we might improve upon our application which is due the end of December.
AMBULANCE SERVICE
Police Chief Aschenbrener and I met this Monday with Marty Forseth, Health East Ambulance Director and
members of his staff to discuss upcoming changes to the City’s ambulance service. A recent change to
Medicare Coverage is forcing Health East to change the way they operate. In general 50% of their income is
from Medicare with the rest being from private insurance carriers. One of the Health East ambulances has been
located at our fire station, and that has meant that the residents of Mendota Heights have always received
superior ambulance response time (about 7 minutes). With their new operation, the ambulances will not just sit
at the stations and wait for calls, they will analyze where the bulk of their calls are coming from and position
themselves closer to those areas to try and further improve their response time. This means that beginning
January 1 st you might see ambulances parked in Super America parking lots, or other locations closer to the
center of the bulk of their calls, and not at our Fire Station.
2007 BLUE RIBBON SCHOOL
At this week’s City Council meeting, the City Council recognized Mendota Elementary School for having been
named as a 2007 No Child Left Behind – Blue Ribbon School. The Council asked me to invite the principal in
to receive recognition from the City for this achievement. Mendota Elementary was one of only 200 schools
nationally and 8 schools in the State to receive this honor.
CITY HALL CLOSED FOR THANKSGIVING
Just a reminder that City Hall will be closed this Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving.
Respectfully submitted,
Jim Danielson
City Administrator
Attachments: Just the Facts, South-West Review article “New office, retail building at ‘The Village’”, article
“Mendota Bridge starred in a 1920’s toe-tapper” and article “Mendota Named 2007 Blue Ribbon School”.