2025 State of the City Comments

My name is Kristy Janigo, and this is the beginning of my third year on city council. My husband and I purchased our town home here near Rice Lake in 2016. It’s hard to believe that much time has passed. My past experience on city commissions, community groups, and being a part of my church leadership made it possible for me to get to know many of our residents and understand the needs of the community and its history before stepping into this role. Because at the end of the day, it’s about our residents. It’s about you.

I’m proud to call this community home. A lot happened in 2024. This year brought many new challenges. Also, things that had been underway for years are finally coming to fruition, like the 610 completion project. Construction is well underway.

I think as a city, we perform best in our partnerships. There were many joint council and park board meetings and staff collaborations to plan and construct Phase I of the community center project throughout the last year. It is quite visible what is happening there. The crane installed the pre-cast stadium seating for the new rink. In the coming weeks, the work will focus on installing the roof trusses for the third sheet of ice. And Phase 2 planning will resume including public engagement where we hope to hear your thoughts on various concepts.

We see a ton of collaboration among departments for our city events, which our residents have come to appreciate, from Chalkfest to Maple Grove Days, to our award-winning National Night Out, Oktoberfest, the coronation of our Ambassadors, the Maria’s Voice Tribute to Domestic Violence victims, the annual Friends of the Angel candlelight memorial, and multiple Santa events around the holidays. These events helps our city be a close-knit community, although we are the 11th largest city in Minnesota.

Last year, in my state of the city remarks, I shared that Garland Commons, a 55+ Affordable Senior Community, would open in spring 2024. It did open on schedule, and just last week, a lease was signed for the last available unit. I know this, because in my day job, some of my duties are helping homeless veterans pursue permanent housing. It was such a blessing to accompany this veteran to view his beautiful new home for the first time. We have a profound need in this community for senior housing, across all markets and price points, and planning is underway for us to address these needs.

Throughout this past year, we worked on hiring and retaining a best in class workforce, facing widespread challenges of labor shortages, especially in certain areas like police. All the while keeping the costs of public services to our residents as low as possible.

We take our fiduciary duties to our residents very seriously, and this council conducts its business to live out the values of fiscal responsibility.

Maple Grove has experienced an unbelievable amount of growth the past year in both the commercial and industrial and the residential areas of our city. It’s impossible to miss how much the gravel mining area and the northwest part of the city have changed as development is underway. Where there used to be a rundown service road and barren mined land adjacent to 694, there are now three brand new buildings facing the interstate, with a fourth one being approved on our consent agenda tonight. These will bring in hundreds of new jobs into our community.

Our business community is also thriving. Our retail crime initiative focuses additional law enforcement resources during peak seasons. And we’re working on ways to keep the occupancy of Arbor Lakes and other retail districts constant.

We leaned into resident engagement for many areas of city work, from listening sessions on our roadway reconstruction projects, to police touchpoints with the local faith communities, to story time at our fire stations and smoke alarm blitzes, to resident engagement on development proposals, to surveys on parks facilities, to hearing a litany of complaints on organics recycling fees and coming up with a solution. We are listening to our residents more often and more effectively.  

We’ve taken steps to address environmental issues, recognizing that natural resources are infrastructure as much as roadways, bridges, and buildings. Our city forester has been very busy with tree plantings, EAB management, and buckthorn pulls, supported by many volunteers from community groups. He reviews the landscaping plans of new developments carefully to ensure compliance with city ordinance. Our water resource engineers have completed stream restoration projects, with new ones on the way, and water quality projects like stormwater pond dredging scheduled every year. There was an alum treatment completed on Eagle Lake this year, and there will be a study of the internal loading in Rice Lake, a body of water we hear about often at the city.

Lastly, I want to take this chance to thank Judy Hanson and Kristy Barnett for their service to the city. They will both be missed. Their contributions will be felt and a benefit to our residents for years to come. I also would like to welcome Mike Ostaffe and Jon McCullough to council. I hope you have as much fun as I have had these past two years.

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