pull the meeting to order. Today is May 13th, 6 PM. Uh we're going to start out with the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands nationy andice for all. Mr. Johnson, will you do roll call, please? Mayor here. Council member Brian here. Council member Glazer here. Council member Rainville present. Council member Simson here. I have Lieutenant Bangader here. I have engineer Nelson here. I have planner Nash here. All right. and the consultant Lori Jagger will be here about 6:30. Assistant Velia Stokle here and myself Natalie. Thank you very much. Um so next on the list is the code of conduct. It's code of conducts posted at the back of the room. We're not going to read it over tonight. Um so I'd like to move on to approving the agenda. Council member Rainbow. Go ahead. I passed three things earlier and they put copies in the back. Under 3F, the documents that were to accompany that um that that RCA were not in the packet. So that excuse me, I'm sorry. Um and then 3G um should be corrected to read approval of resolution 2025 establishing ad hoc committees. And then under new business, I would ask that we add um an RCA and resolution which I set handed out establishing an ad hoc committee for the purpose of the redesign of the Veterans Memorial in Park. So are you pulling G 3G out? No, the 3G is just establishing committee an ad hoc ad hoc committees as needed. The 14 is specific to the design. If somebody wants to pull it out and have a conversation, that's fine. I'm just wanted to clarify how it should be read on the back of the the policies that I wrote out are already in the packet. The guidelines, not policies, the guidelines. Okay. Uh one for I would like to pull out is um 3C. I would like to remove that one from tonight's packet all together. Um so we have time to discuss this with the council. um greater than that we're going to solve it tonight. I think that's when we shel till June. We've got an end date of June 30th. Now, I don't want to wait till June 30th to get it resolved, but I think there's discussion that needs to go into it. That was my thought. Okay, Mr. Mayor, go ahead. I have something to add to the um um administrator's update and it's a proposal from Minnesota metal exteriors for the um re re-roof or overlay of roofs at at the park for the uh four metal pavilions and I can I have one for each of the council members and I can provide one for the back of the room. That would be great. So that would become 14 I'm sorry 13E that somewhere else. Uh that is metal row. So be 13 A 13A a uh 13BA. Yeah. Right. Do you want to include that? That would be just fine. Brian, do you have anything to add or subtract? No, I can now. Council member Swson. [Music] All right, we'll give Council Member Glazer just a moment here. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, if there are no additional changes uh for additions, corrections, relations to the agenda, I move it um as amended. We have the motion to amend it. Uh per all the conversations, which is remove 3C. Let's see if we can quick do a summary of it. Uh we have a 13 BA addition by council member Glazer. We have an addition of 14G by Counciloman Rainville. I think that covers it all. So with that, I would um second your motion. We'll take it to vote. Um all in favor of approving the agenda as amended, say I. I. I. Oppos. Motion carries. All right, we will move into the public forum. We can grab the sheet, please. Please uh come up to the mic. Make sure the mic is on. Uh state your name and your address and then we have three minutes to uh send your message please. My name is Paul Johnson. I live at 1663 203rd Avenue Northwest and I'm here today to a ask some guidance and b a apologize a little bit to an So, my wife and I built our house 10 years ago on 9.89 acres over third and um with the idea that we're going to be able to build full bar and do all these other things that we want to do, you know, to relax. Well, unfortunately, our former city planner was no longer with us and it's on me. He had pointed out where I can build my only place from. I knew that I had a permit to build the pard to build the wall and the you know all that. So unbeknownst to me not knowing that I had built on an easement for uh utilities and an ement for drainage and also what the city states is wetlands. I built my wall uh waited for three years went through the pering process and started to do everything. come to find out that I built my wall on wetlands and that being said, I went to the DNR first where the city says the wetland in question is the state protected public water basin. I'm just going to leave it at that because that's what the city has said. According to the DNR, which I have a letter here, states the wetland setback requirement that you asked me about is a local government ordinance, not a state requirement. local governments need adopt more restrictive standards in the state. So I need clarification a not tonight obviously on whether really wetlands and why the city of the wetlands with the city that's not and then b also the fact that I'm on 3.89 89 acres and the DNR says my wetlands are literally 7 acres past where my property. So I would like to finish building my 2,000 square foot in the area that I have selected. I do not want to do a variance because a I already wrote a check for $2500 for the engineer doing the site survey that's $2500 that went to the city for ancode which I have no idea what. So all I ask is what would you guys take a look and say okay this utility easement the water the drainage ement doesn't need to be there it go out and utility all the utilities already so that's all I ask for the city to please I'm throwing myself on the earth I don't know what to do and city is great as far as guiding me and trying to be patient with me and I know my Thank you Paul. Next one up is Steve. Sorry Steve and I do apologize. I show be a little 10 tonight so I put this together last minute. So, it's uh not a little fine tuning. It might come broad a few things. I'll try to make it within three minutes. Um first of all, we do want to my wife and I s do want to acknowledge you guys all dealing with 4,500 residents wants and needs. So, we appreciate that. My wife and I have been moving out then retiring a small town atmosphere fixed income affordable. However, since January, it seems that council discussions are a lot about spending increasing payable costs actually drastically and raising taxes. Recently, I'm hearing talk about budget shortfall. I don't know you guys in terms of why it happened and how it is. I anticipate going soon. Just seems like there more and more spending. Staff situation city evolved to us see my wife and I own our business 38 years. Three years ago we had 35 employees busy and we got with a lot less staff. Obviously the city is a lot different but we think staff situation success. Council member Bville, we know she work in the office quite a bit. She obviously has a lot of expertise in things, but why is she needed in it? We've got confident people's very confident the staff's confident. Why is she still there? And I remember hearing something in the past council members occasion and I did hear that in the past uh former mayor mayor Pon used to go in there and at some point was asked to say or whatever which he did. Uh I think there just too much interaction there between council and staff. Back to payroll costs. Overtime is huge. Now you guys are talking about paying overtime after an 8 hour day if I heard correctly versus a 40hour week, 38 hour week. You don't pay overtime on a daily basis. That's absolutely ridiculous. Um and you don't pay overtime when you pay time off is involved. PTO people for not leaving the office working you don't pay overtime on that's way excessive also keep in mind with all the raises that you give to people I believe if I remember correctly they get a 5% cost of living increase every year automatically too also with increased cost particularly more in the maintenance department now staff I believe you guys are paying workers comp from the maintenance department is that correct workers comp. Oh yeah, except through office staff very but the boys in the back room there's count is quite a bit higher and that's based very often on paper. So can you wrap up in the next 30 seconds? Okay. Um we watch our support again for special election ASP and I've heard something recently somebody suggesting getting the league of Minnesota cities in more training education to generate new people think that's a really good idea please uh keep in mind that employees and I know you know things but please Please turn that microphone back on. Uh, next up is Paula Coffee. Paul Copy 18735 Clearary Road. Um, I want to speak about the employee handbook policy change page 458 of tonight's agenda packet. So, thank you all council members for what you do. That packet is huge. I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak. I want to be clear. I strongly oppose a proposed change to the city's overtime policy. Including paid time off, PTO and holiday hours in overtime calculations is costly and an unnecessary shift. One that this city simply cannot afford. This proposal is financially irresponsible for a city of our size and limited resources. Expanding overtime eligibility in this way would create a permanent and growing burden on our budget. It's not just a short-term expense. It's a long-term liability. Let's be honest, the Fair Labor Standard Act already provides a fair and clear standard. Overtime is earned when employees actually work over 40 hours in a week. Just because a city gives employees paid time off for holidays, vacation time, and sick time, those are not considered hours worked under the FLSA and do not need to be included in total hours worked for overtime purposes. That's the law. Our current policy aligns with this federal baseline and there's no compelling reason to go beyond it. Changing this policy to count unworked hours as worked for overtime purposes is not just physically wrecked. It's not legally required. This isn't about denying fair pay. It's about protecting our financial stability and making smart, targeted investments. If we want to talk about additional payroll dollars, they need to go where they'll make the greatest impact. Raising wages for our firefighters. That's where we face real recruitment and retent retention challenges. That's where we improve public safety. That's where the need is urgent. Spending more on inflated overtime calculations benefits few, costs much, and risks diverting funds away from higher priorities. We should not commit to a policy that puts our budget at greater risk and undermines our ability to deliver essential services. If the workload is consistently requiring overtime, perhaps the city should look at at outsourcing some of these duties. They would probably cost us less. I urge the council to hold the line, stick to the federal standards, protect our budget, focus our resources where they matter most. Thank you. Next up is Billwelling. Okay, thank you. Next one is Craig. Craig, can I just call you Craig because I can't read your last name. I later. Okay. I'm later. Okay. So, that is there any other uh open forum or public forum comments at all? Anybody else that wanted to speak that didn't get a chance to sign up or sign on the wrong chief? Okay. So, Mr. Mayor, may I address one of the comments that was directed towards me? Can we close the public form? So, first thing I'd like to do is I'd like to post the public forum. Yes. If it's appropriate, but typically we don't give feedback on the public forums. And so, I appreciate your you're allowing me to um comment about me in the office. I do volunteer in the office. It's free time for the city. Um I volunteer in there when they are short staffed. Last week I was there, Natalie was out. There were um times where only one of the administrative support persons were there. So I came in and answered phones. I did filing. I did copying. I did things that are menial but yet needed to be done. Um we could ask um we could delay that work. I guess that would be f that could happen. Um but there were things that needed to be done. And so I go in, I volunteer my time. There's nothing wrong with me volunteering my time. I do not have access to anything that anyone else on this council has access to. Um I do it out of the goodness of my heart. I do it to help staff and um I will continue to do it whether people agree with that or not. Thank you. Okay, we move on to the consent agenda and approving the consent agenda. Any discussion on consent agenda or are we still good for you to move? Mr. Mayor, Council Member Randle, I would move the consent agenda agenda as amended. Okay, I'll second. We got a second from Council Member Swinson. All right. So, any discussion on it? Hearing none, let's move the vote. All those in favor of approving the consent agenda, say I. I. I. I. Uh, oppose. None. Motion carries. All right. Right. So, we're going to move on to number four, which is uh the 2024 audit by Creative Planning. This will be led by Andy online. So, if we can turn it over to Andy. Great. Uh thank you for having me here tonight. I can. Can you hear me? Okay. Okay. Yes. Okay. Great. Here to present the audit results for the year ended December 31st uh 2024. Um I do have um two documents in the agenda packet tonight. One being uh the communications letter and the other being the city's financial statements. Um following um those documents um first starting with um our independent auditor's report that's included in the city's financial statements. Wanted to highlight what our role is as the city's auditor as well as the role of management. management does have ultimate responsibility to prepare the financial statements including the maintenance of internal control and it's our job as the city's auditors to come in uh perform an audit in accordance with audit standards which includes uh testing examining and looking at the underlying documentation to support the numbers and disclosures in in the financial statements and ultimately provide an opinion as to whether we believe the financial statements to present fairly in all material respects. happy to report that we're issuing a clean or an unmodified opinion which is the best that we can give as your auditor. Uh that document also includes our reporting on government auditing standards as well as Minnesota legal compliance. Uh there were no findings to report uh as it relates to Minnesota legal compliance here for 2024. And when it comes to our internal control findings for this year, uh there was one finding uh that is at a material weakness level. That's the most uh um severe level of internal control deficiency and that relates to a lack of segregation of accounting duties which means that there are certain individuals that have access to perform multiple accounting functions. Uh it's a condition that's not unusual for a city of your size. However, it is something to continue to be aware of as it does does pose a risk of a potential error in the financial statements. The other document that I wanted to highlight here tonight uh again in the agenda packet is the communications letter and really wanted to start with uh highlighting the financial analysis that starts on page 8. And here we start by taking uh excuse me, yeah, page eight. And it starts by taking a look at general fund revenues here. Over the past four years, there was a $45,000 increase in general fund revenues, an increase of about 2%. Uh there were various um changes across categories here. The most significant change occurred in intergovernmental revenue that decreased $109,000 here for 2024 and that related to a decrease in public safety aid uh specific uh news public safety aid was awarded to cities back in 2023 and not again here in 2024 and that was offset by increases in other categories. Licenses and permits increased 44,000 with an increase in permits issued. Uh investment income increased 25,000 with an increase in interest rates. And then miscellaneous income increased about $71,000 uh which includes donations. There was a donation for a ball ball field sprinkler system and also a conduit debt issuance fee uh that drove the variance here for 2024. Uh overall going on to page nine in the communications letter um the over uh the revenue sources by um source remain fairly consistent between the two years with the majority of general fund revenues coming from taxes uh which make up 74% of general fund revenues uh followed by licenses and permits at about 8% and intergovernmental revenues at approximately 7% of total general fund revenues. When we take a look at general fund expenditures, uh, comparing 2024 to 2023, there was an increase of about 11% or about $225,000. Uh, when we take a look at, uh, the specific categories, public safety increased about $73,000 with an increase in the sheriff's contract. Uh, public works uh, offset that. That decreased about $56,000 with less supply purchases. here in 2024. Uh capital outlay increased about 34,000 again with the donation for the uh baseball field sprinkler system and those related costs. And then also general government, the most uh significant component of general fund expenditures increased about 148,000 uh with filling vacant positions uh and increases in wages and as well as insurance costs. Uh those being the main variances here for 2024. Uh going on to page 11. Um this shows the allocation of general fund expenditures by function. General government continues to be the most significant component of general fund expenditures at 41% followed by public safety at 37% and public works at 17% which is uh fairly consistent with the prior year uh except for the changes in general government and public works as noted in the in the previous chart. Going on to page 12, this shows the budget to actual results for 2024. City Council adopted a budget that called for $2.2 million in revenue, $2.5 million in expenditures, and after uh transfers out and transfers in from other funds, anticipated a decrease in fund balance of about $253,000. Um actual actual results uh resulted in an increase in fund balance of about $12,000. That was mainly driven by the revenue variance as well as the expenditure variance. uh uh revenues came in over budget by about $97,000 and that was uh mainly due to that miscellaneous category uh coming in over budget by about $101,000 and again conservative budgeting there for interest earnings, donations and things uh and the again the conduit debt issuance fee. Uh and those were the items that mainly drove that variance here for 2024. expenditures came in $169,000. Uh less than anticipated. Uh about a 6.8% variance there. Uh did have variances across all functions due to conservative budgeting for increasing costs, seasonal and part-time employees. And again, that ultimately led to an increase in fund balance of about $12,000 for the year. The last chart in that document is on page 13 and that highlights unrestricted fund balance, which is a measure of financial health for the city and the general fund. uh that re represented uh or that amounted to uh $1,470,000 at the end of the year, which is about 63% of um operating expenditures based on 2024 levels uh at of about $2.3 million in expenditures. So, the the city is in compliance with its fund balance policy. Uh that highlights the financial analysis as well as our our audit results. Next, I'd just like to open it up for any questions. Sorry, I got one question. Uh, you had talked about um not being in compliance with the controls, meaning we have a limited number of people, admin people in the office. Are other cities doing something differently than us uh to be in I'll call it better compliance? Um, is there another option we should be looking at? I think when it's at a material weakness level, there is opportunity for improvement there. So I think um I think having Lori Joerger's involvement is is is definitely a help there but continue to having um additional controls whether it be at city council level or you know whether it be cons the consideration of hiring more individuals. Uh right now there's just a lot of access to perform multiple accounting functions and uh the expertise that goes along with staying up to speed with audit standards or excuse me accounting standards related uh specific to governmental entities uh does take a fair amount of training takes a fair amount of uh education that goes along with that. So continue to support that environment uh and the continued training can help to um uh improve internal control to help address that particular condition. Mr. Mayor Swanson, go ahead. Just follow question to that. You partially answered it, maybe totally answered it, but um I I don't know how in depth you got in actually looking at like our city government and how many staff people we have, so you might not know, but um do is this an issue of being understaffed or misutilizing staff and not having it structured properly? Like do you think with our current staffing level could we structure the finance part of it to to not be problematic as you say? Uh not not currently not with the current um staffing model that that's there in order for in order to have appropriate segregation of accounting duties. You need to have a separate individual that initiates and authorizes a a transaction. Another individual that records and processes that transaction. another individual that record or that has custody of the related assets and another individual that reconciles and reports that information that would give appropriate segregation of accounting duties. And right now there are certain individuals that are performing uh all four of those functions. So I think continuing to invest, you know, to to to see of ways to maybe limit access to perform some of those functions, additional reviews of any activity that occurs on a regular basis to be sure that any um errors are identified. Again, we're all we're all human, so errors just, you know, inherently can occur uh when there's just one individuals performing multiple functions there. So, it's something um you know that additional um you know, staffing could assist with. But I think you know right now there happens to be you know more outsourcing that can occur to bring that um that that additional expertise that's needed there to be sure that those controls that you do have are effective. A lot of times it really is based on, you know, having appropriate knowledge and experience in a certain area for those controls to be effective. So continuing to leverage those opportunities as well. And to what degree do cities of our size typically outsource some of that to comply with sort of what you just laid out there? Is it typical a city of our size has it all done? and and it really does vary and it really is kind of based on the level of risk a particular you know governmental entity is is willing to take. Some are um just fine having a material weakness on their uh report every year and it's not necessarily a compliance issue. It's just it's an internal control related matter to to to know that um you know those controls and and the condition that exists there could pose a risk of an error in your financial statement. So, it's really dependent on the level of risk um that the city chooses to to accept as it relates to that. Mr. Mayor, Council Rainbow, I'm wondering if um we could ask Natalie to respond to how um the accounting piece is handled within the city. She's made numerous changes. Um and so I'm wondering if we could ask Natalie to respond to that. Absolutely. Um, so Andy, we spoke with Joseph and uh the interns about this and the changes that we've made. Um, by adding a staff member who's full-time, um, she enters most of the invoices now, actually probably 99% of them. So what happens is if public works orders something, they bring an invoice. It gets signed off by the public works supervisor. Then it goes to Lexi to be entered into the Banyan system. Then it goes to me for approval. Then all the checks are cut. Mr. Mayor is contacted. He comes in. He goes through every invoice and each check and then signs off. So, I I do have one more question. Um, back to Andy. Um, so do you have a a one-page document or something to say what's the best way to break down these duties and responsibilities between these four people? Because then we can review our current system, what we're doing. I know we have checks and balances, but what he's identifying is we have some risk. So, what can we do different or better? So, Andy, do you have something like that? Um, we do not. So our our role and our the scope of the audit is to identify and understand what your current controls are and identify those deficiencies. Um you know identifying you know certain improvements and and you know how to best you know leverage those folks that you do have on hand. Um you know it is some additional work that could be performed and again it really you know boils down to not necessarily just the functions that are being performed but the access within the system to perform multiple accounting functions. So even though a separate individual may a you know um perform those functions e if Natalie or anyone else like a Lori you know has access to perform those even though that's not what they currently do that still poses that risk ultimately. All right we can evaluate that. Thank you Mr. Hey Council Member Glazers first. Is this your your last question? Is that something we could potentially direct with the lead cities as far as a resource? Absolutely. Want to put that out there. Thank you. That's good. Council Randall. So, Mr. Mayor, um, also as as far as review, we have our claims packet, claims register in our packet. The staff leaves all of the invoices out that checks are cut for. Um, and so we have the ability to go in and look. And I believe that we are all taking advantage of that. So we can go in and look at every check that is written and it has the backup documentation that Natalie spoke about as far as being signed off. Who are whoever purchased that item and and so that we have that employee signature says yes, this is a city related expenditure. Um, and so I, you know, given we do have a small staff, uh, we could outsource that and I bet you it cost us $75,000 to $100,000 to have somebody come in and do our finances. Um, but I I think that Natalie is very careful and um, I feel that even though we could have a specific person, we don't have that, that we do a good job of monitoring the expenditures and approvals. I would like to jump on that. If I look at the level of risk, I I look at this as a lower classification. Yes, we have some access and and functions maybe not perfect in the ideal situation, but we do have checks and balance in place. So, I I look at it as low risk. What I want to do is look at as an opportunity to say, can we do it different and better? And it could involve a council member having access and removing access. I mean, we have options. So, we can talk through that. So, we don't have to solve it tonight. We've identified we have an opportunity. Um, and then we'll take a look. We'll put it on our goals list, see if we can do it different, better. This has been a consistent finding year after year after year. So, and Mr. Mayor, Councilman Rando, and it is in any small city. Check. Okay. Any other questions for Andy or for number four? All right. Thank you, Andy, for presenting on that. Um, we're going to move on to the opio opioid prevention presentation and this is going to be led by Patty with no county. Well, thank you for allowing me to speak today. My name is Patty Constant. Okay. You got to get a mic. Okay. Is that better? Okay. So, my name is Patty Constant and I am the opioid prevention specialist with Anoka County. I started my role with Anoka County in October of 2023, so just almost two years ago. And my role is to address and deal with the Anoka County opioid settlement funding and to be able to take that funding and address and utilize that funding within our communities so that we are preventing opioid initiation, opioid misuse, opioid overdose, and opioid death. So, it's a pretty broad spectrum and I have this we have opioid settlement funding over the next 18 years. In this role, uh we have thus far established two initial priorities to address mis the misuse of opioids within our communities. The first is prevention and to that end we have just started uh an opioid RFP process. Our RFPs were just granted and awarded and that that funding should be going out in the next few weeks. So we have a lot of prevention efforts now beginning. One of the the second thing that we wanted to address is nlloxxone nlloxxone education and that's why I'm here today. So if you want to go to that second thank you so much I am not going to belabor and read these because they are in the packets I believe. Correct. Good. Thank you. Um but what I want to impress upon with the opioid data and statistics is there is opioid use and opioid overdose within ana county. What I would like to highlight from this slide is that there are approximately four motans that die every day from drug overdoses in general. Not necessarily specific to opioids but just drugs in general. But for every fatal opioid overdose, they estimate that there are at least 13 non-fatal overdoses. So that means for every one person that you hear that dies from an opioid overdose, there are at least 13 people who are lucky enough to survive that overdose. So that's pretty staggering. What I would also like to point out is the bottom three. In 2022, Anoka County had 64 opioid related overdose deaths. In 2023, we had 43. In 2024, we had 39. So, we went from being third in the state to fifth in the state. And unfortunately, our numbers aren't in yet to know where we rank in 2024, but we are improving. So, that's good. But those 39 people could be your sons, daughters, parents, neighbors, cousins, could be anybody. Opioids do not discriminate. can go on to the next slide. This one I talked a little bit about. I want people to understand that this opioid settlement funding is not taxpayer dollars. This is from the opioid settlement funding. So there was a large multi-state effort and each county was allotted settlement funding. So we have this funding set to spend over the next 18 years. So we're not quite two years into that. So we have a variety of efforts that will kind of come and go and we will eb and flow through because we can't focus on everything all at once. So as I said our initial focus areas are prevention and nlloxxone education and distribution. For those of you who may be lucky enough to not know what nlloxxone is, nlloxxone is the only medication that reverses an opioid overdose. Basically what it does is when those opioids attach onto an uh the opioid receptors, the nlloxxone is strong enough that that medication comes in and it knocks the opioids off. So it can save somebody's life within moments and it is a very important medication and the only thing sometimes that can save people. So our goal is to find ways to get more nlloxxone into the community. Now, ideally, we've got those prevention efforts, but we still need Nlloxxone available and accessible to people. So, our goal is to have Nlloxxone and Nlloxxone access point available within a 10-minute drive of anywhere in Anoka County. Currently, we're partnering with a group called Steve Rumler Hope Network. They are based out of St. Paul, but they do uh work throughout the state. Um, and I have the website up there so you can get more information. When you have a Nlloxxone access point, that is intended for anyone to come in and access Nlloxxone. So, if they have a child who they're worried about what their potential substance use might be, if they've got a brother or a sister who they know that is dabbling potentially misusing chemicals and substances and they want to be prepared so that they can potentially save a life. if they have a parent who maybe has Alzheimer's or dementia or who it is is taking a lot of pain medication and may not be always able to monitor how much pain medication they're taking, it's beneficial for them to have easy access to nlloxxone because time is of the essence in using nlloxxone to save a life. So these nlloxxone kits that are included at nlloxxone access point. So again, a lock zone access point is a place in the community that somebody can come in and I can say I have an issue with my I'm concerned about my children. I want to come in and I want access to nlloxxone. This is what those kits look like and they uh include there's three different kinds. There's intramuscular nlloxxone, nasal nlloxxone, and they have ones that are fentinyl test strips because we know right now that fentinyl is the largest issue in our community and uh between 90 and 95% of the cases of opioid overdose involve fentinel as well. So, it's a significant issue, but these bags are sealed. Um they have information and QR codes and um links to get more information. As you can see up here on the map, we recently undertook a uh project to increase the nlloxxone access points. So we currently now have nlloxxone access points. You can see where the little red nasal squirt things, whatever you call those are around the county. And again, what we're trying to do is find places within a 10-minute drive of anywhere in the county. You can see the Nadan Oak Grove area up there is really sparse and really blank. And what that means is if there's anybody in the county who is concerned, they've got to go for a lot longer drive to be able to access this. Um, right now most of those places that are on there, we got Nlloxxone access points within all of the Anoka County libraries now. So that library situation started approximately a month ago. And if you want, you can go on to the next slide. What the library has chosen to do is use one of these purple nlloxxone boxes that they have within eyesight of the front desk, but so that people can come in and access the nlloxxone without having risk of the stigma of oh my gosh, I'm embarrassed that I have to get this. I'm worried about my family member, but I want to be able to save their life. So, they didn't want people to have to come up to a desk and say, can I access this or I need this? Can you please help me? If someone were to buy this, it's anywhere from between$25 and $40 in stores or if they go to a pharmacy. So, it's expensive. So, cost can be a factor. So, at the libraries again, they've got the purple boxes. Other places have chose to set it up where they have it at a front desk or sitting on a counter so somebody just comes in and asks. Not only do we have it at the All Anoka County Libraries, we have it at the Rapids Police Department and the fire station. We are working to get Nlloxxone through some uh leave behind programs so that if if law enforcement first responders are going out and they know that substance use is an issue in the home that they can simply leave this. So we're trying multiple efforts to get Noloxone into the community. The one story that I want to share from the library is again the library started this project just about a month ago and there was a mom who was she says one of the first patrons in the library because she was very concerned about her teenage daughter not making great choices and she knew that her daughter had been using some opioids. And we received information approximately two weeks after she got that. She had ran into somebody who worked she knew that worked at the libraries at one of the PTO meetings and she said, "I needed to thank you for having Nlloxxone at the libraries because over the weekend my daughter overdosed and I had that Nlloxxone kit at home and based on where she lives and her proximity or lack thereof to emergency facilities, she goes, "I don't know that my daughter would have been saved if I wouldn't have had that Nlloxxone kit. And I don't know if she didn't think or if what her financial situation was that she didn't want to go spend 40 bucks to go get one, but it was because of the Nlloxxone that was available at the libraries. So to only have it in the libraries for one month and have that success story and to have that one child's life, I know that if that was my child, I would feel like that was a very worthwhile endeavor. So my ask of you today is to consider having an aloxxone access point within now. Then Natalie and I have explored um as well as with the mayor a few different options and I believe they're looking at potentially at the city hall and exploring some options. There's a few things I would want you to know about that. It is free the city there would be no cost to you. All that it would require is simply one person to maintain that. That would basically say we need more nlloxxone. this is how many we've gone through and do that simple reporting which would probably take looking at the amounts you know probably not even five minutes within a week so not a huge ask the other two things that I really want to point out is if someone were to use nlloxxone on somebody that was not having an overdose there is no harm is not a risky medication it is not something that causes harm if you know a kid were to get a hold of this and to be playing with it is uh it is a very safe medication to use. And the last thing is that so far the libraries have experienced no issues and in every study of places around um even with Steve Rumler where they currently have access points. It does not. Some places have said does it increase bad traffic? Does it increase you know negative people? Most of the time the people who are coming in and accessing those nlloxxone access points are people who are concerned about their friends and family members and who want to be available to have to make a difference. I personally always carry one in my car. I have my kids carry them in their car because they'll be going out to parties and they do different things that they're, you know, they probably shouldn't be doing, but I want them to be prepared so that if anything negative were to happen to one of their friends that they have the capacity to respond. Um I think that is yeah that's the last slide. So there is my information. There's a lot of efforts going forward to uh address the opioid situation in the county. We're headed in the right direction but right now our big ask is just how can we really make sure that we're getting the lockone into the hands of the people who really may need it to make a difference. And I don't know if anybody has any questions at this point or how you want me to proceed. I just know I was asked to kind of present why it might be helpful. Yeah, I have how do we u restock the packets? Let's say we have 10 of them. We go through them. How do we get them restocked? So that's through the partnership with Steve Rumler. So I help set you up. So if you were the main contact point, you basically end up getting an access through a through an online portal and you just say we need this many more and they'll ask occasionally like how many have you given out? And then so it's a pretty simple process. They mail them out to you. Mail them all. Thank you. And if you were to choose as an access to have one of the boxes, we would supply that. If you choose to just have it in a cardboard display on a counter, we would supply that. If you chose to have it behind the desk and then we would add your site or location to the map and that's how people would know to be able to come in there to access. Uh yeah, thank you. Uh, I was just curious, um, do you know, are most of these packs taken by family members or concerned people or or even users like as a preventative thing just to have on hand or are there a lot of people in like acute overdose or their friends running to grab this? There are if somebody was in an overdose situation, they would not be able to use it on themselves. So people who are going to actively be using what has been recommended and most of them know is that they are recommended that they never use alone. So what seems to be happening more and more is if there's a group of people who are getting together to use they will have one person who does not engage in that activity and they will have the access to the to the nlloxxone medication to save a life and that seems to be helping a lot. Again, we don't want our friends and family using. Nobody would say we do, but we also want to try and save any of those lives and make a difference where we can. Council member Glazer, are these uh packets are they do they have date sensitivity or temperature sensitivity? Great question. They do approximately have three to four year expiration dates. What we also know is that in an ideal situation and in an ideal world, they are in a temperature controlled setting. What the studies have shown is that even nlloxxone that has been through freeze thaw, freeze thaw, freeze thaw, heat, you know, all of those things, it still has an over 98% efficacy. So even if it and the Steve Rner Hope Network does a really great job of saying if you've got some that are expiring, send them back. We'll replace them. So they're really good at staying on top of that as well. But then even again, I tell people there, well, I wouldn't want to keep it in my car because it's exposed. But it's going to do better being in your car. If you were to drive into a quick trip and there's a slumper in the car, it's going to be better to have to like warm it up, you know, under your armpits or to to at least try and buy you a little bit of time while that emergency responders are getting there. So, yes and no. slumper. That must be a some a lot of times people will use in their car and then a slump over. Exactly. Any other questions for Pat? Right. Thank you very much, ma'am. Absolutely. Thank you. We're going to move on to item number six. Rover Consultants talking about septic compliance tracking. Good evening, Mayor. Can you guys grab the microphone and pull it out to the side there? Is that better? Yes, that'll be better so we can hear you. There you go. Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'm Andy Shrader with Rome River Consultants and this is Pragy works with us as well and appreciate the opportunity. want to talk a little bit about septic systems, on-site septic systems, and what the responsibilities, the differences are between the pollution control agency and then also what's governed here locally. So, I envision maybe 30 minutes or so of your time, and I know there's a lot going on this evening, but this is something we want to bring in front of you so that we can make informed decisions going forward as far as what the options are that you want to take care of here locally. So as far as the division of duties, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is the governing body from the state of Minnesota that puts out the subject rules. There's also another number of other agencies we deal with, Department of Labor and Industry, building code as well as Department of Health and in this case it's the Department of uh excuse me, the pollution control agency. So who has septic systems? All of us do. In bedroom communities such as this where there's not a centralized wastewater treatment facility, um all of our uh residents and businesses for that matter have what's called an on-site or a private wastewater treatment system. Now, a lot of people that move to our areas, bedroom communities, uh we serve a number of areas with on-site systems, and it's really not uncommon for people to not realize that they have a septic system when they move from Ramsey or Andover, other cities like that. So, it's not uncommon for us to have to educate people from the very beginning that yes, they have one, what is it, where is it, and how they react to it. And um I just also wanted to point out the importance of this because as much as we understand and appreciate private property rights and so on, that's true. However, our groundwater, our aquifers need to be uh adequately protected because it's not only your property that you're going to be affecting your own well, it's the neighbors, the neighbors neighbors, and so on on down the line. So, it's very critical that we get on top of this and we stay on top of it. So, the purpose and the intent um now we're going to stay at about 5,000 ft. We don't want to get down to the ground level, but we also don't want to be too aloof. We want to make sure that we're adequately addressing this. So, it's about at a 5,000 foot elevation. Trust us, we could spend hours and hours on this. And um our septic inspectors, we have four licensed septic inspectors. They spend several days each year maintaining those licenses. There's also licenses for us for as a company. Now, we don't expect anybody to be experts, but we do want to provide at least a level of understanding of not only uh who provides those rules, but also terminology and again what those local requirements are. Yes. So, as far as what's local and then what is is uh local and then versus uh state. And Carrie's going to be speaking as well on this slide. So, we're going to kind of tag team back and forth. So, by rule, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is the uh agency or the entity that publishes those rules. They trickle down to the county and then from the county down to the cities and then the townships as well. We're take a little bit of a deeper deeper dive into these next few slides. Um, but I do want to uh also say this is that septic rules are employer code rules are different than the building code. Minnesota state uh excuse me, Department of Labor and Industry issuing the department or the building codes. That's what's called a statewide standard. We don't have the ability to deviate from that. We cannot make those rules more strict or less strict for handrails, guard rails, and stairs and things of that nature. We don't have the ability to deviate from that. However, the Minnesota State Fire Code and Pollution Control Agency allows local jurisdictions to enforce rules that are more strict. You can never be less strict, but you can be more strict than the state uh standards as they're published. Some terminology and the state responsibilities here as well. Um the laws again are established by the MPCA that gives us the design standards. Um, so there's several layers of licenses and one of which the first of which is by the design. So the pollution control agency issues these laws and that is the first as far as who's allowed and who's licensed to actually do the design. There's also licenses required for installation and then also those for inspection. And I think this might come up later, but I want to mention it now just because it does come up a couple of times every year that a homeowner or in some cases a business owner wants to install their own septic system. Now that is allowed. That's an exemption from the licensing criteria. So technically a homeowner does have the ability to install their own septic system. However, that has to be done under a licensed design. So a homeowner cannot design their own system, but under the right parameters, they can actually install their own. And I would say that happens every couple of years where we have a homeowner that might have the equipment, might have the background. And to do that is really somewhat subjective, but we do provide even a little bit more oversight on that because we want to make sure that the systems are preserved not only for this homeowner, but for the next ones as well. Uh the other job from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is that they register products, you know, so the septic tanks themselves are tested annu annually as well as any distribution media. There's proprietary products out there uh for uh distrain fields and things of that nature. That's another job of the MPCA to test and also license those different uh products. So Minnesota state rules it's 70 80 81 82 and 83. 7080 is are the design standards again the required separation. So, your septic system has to be at least 3 feet above what's called modeled soil or groundwater just to make sure that the the effluent coming out of your septic system has enough vertical distance to be adequately treated by the naturally occurring bacteria in the soil before it hits groundwater because that's going to take a highway over to your to your well and your drinking water, surface waters and things like that. 7081 covers the midside sept septic systems from 5 to 10,000 gallons. 7082 uh are the parameters for local systems. Those are the rule that we need to follow as far as cities and townships. And then 7083 is the licensing and certification program for all of those different professionals. And again, I just bring those up so that you can realize when Minnesota rules 70 through 80 7083, it encompasses all of those different chapters. Um, additionally, um, we've been experiencing audits now from MPCA, and it's not near as painful as you might think to have an audit from the pollution control agency. I've been through two of these already, and they're actually I found them to be very helpful. What happens is somebody from the MPCA will come in and audit our program, look at our application for permits, look at our actual uh plan reviews, our inspection programs, and our documentation. And so far, we've had very good results. And again, that happens uh every couple of years. So as our footprint increases, I think that's going to increase as well. I went through one here and now then several years ago we did another one I think was through Oak. So that's something that you might see in the future as far as MPCA at least be knowledgeable of the fact that they do tap us on the shoulder every once in a while to make sure that we're adhering to the rules that they publish. So the state requirements again what I wanted to talk about here is um the management. So, every septic system that is designed and installed, whether it be a brand new system or a replacement system, needs to come what's called a management plan. That management plan is basically a document that tells you how to care for your system. When does it need to be assessed? We're going to talk about that in detail in just a few minutes. Um, and how to take care of it, making sure that you don't, of course, build an accessory building too close, that you don't drive on it, you don't park on it, things of that nature. So, that's a key word to remember is the management plan. I've been doing this for 20ome years now already and I can see over the last five to seven years that there's been an increased attention given to that management plan. That requirement's been in the rules 7080 for a number of years. However, it's just now that we're getting better at getting the designers to put that management plan out there. U so that's that shows that we're moving in the right direction. That educational piece is really helping. Um, I I wrote this in here just kind of uh to be a little bit silly, but nothing that nothing should go into your septic system that doesn't come out of you. So, when it comes to garbage disposals, flushable wipes, dental floss, and things of that nature, that's where that management plan, we want to talk again about that management piece and the maintenance piece coming up is just how important it is to care for that system because the drain field is the expensive part. the the septic tank itself is also very expensive. But when you start getting solids and materials uh that don't degrade out into your drain field and it clogs that distribution media, that's where the expense comes in and also the hazard for surfacing sewage and effluent because that's where the the people get sick and that's where the harm really comes from. This is a really good visual. I want I didn't go out a little pointer. This is a really good visual to talk about uh how the water gets out of the system. See, look at that. So coming out of the house, you have your septic tank. And I want to talk about that just for a minute because we had another issue with this today as far as the location. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and their rules say that septic tank has to be at least 10 feet away from any structure. Now what defines a structure is whatever is built. So that pertains in our uh estimation a deck, an accessory building, it doesn't matter. A setback is a setback to a structure. So that septic tank needs to be 10 ft away from even a deck. And the reason I brought that up today is we had a situation in another jurisdiction where the builder when they built the house, the septic tank was 10 feet away from the house. Well, what was right at that at that house was a deck ledger and a patio patio door and a deck ledger. Well, that didn't afford any size of a deck. So, we want to make sure that we're diligent. We work with Cindy Nash of course when we look at these septic plant when we look at these plants to make sure that everybody knows what's bound to happen because even though it's technically legal today that tank is 10 feet away it doesn't serve that homeowner very well when they come back to us for a deck permit uh uh sometime later and then we have to tell them. So we just want to make sure that we're planning ahead. So after that septic tank you can come out. Now this is a gravity system where the uh so when it comes from the house to the tank it's called sewage. From there it's called effluent. Just another terminology to remember. And as that water, that effluent comes out, it goes out into this distribution media and it goes through the soil. And again, it needs to have at least three feet of separation from groundwater or a limiting condition because that's where it's going to give a highway to the groundwater here. And once it hits that groundwater, it's going to your well, the neighbor's well, surface waters and things like that. Any questions so far? Thank you. Um, I also back up one slide. Uh, I also want to bring this as an opportunity. There's two ways a septic system can fail. It's called a lack of separation or an imminent health threat, which is surfacing raw sewage. A lack of separation just simply means that your drain field is too low. Now, that's an issue that we need to address uh through the ordinances as far as how much time you have to replace that system. But it's not near as bad as what's called an imminent health threat. An imminent health threat is either exposed electrical or surfacing raw sewage. So if that septic tape were plugged or filled up and the sewage went back into the house or it literally surfaces on the ground, that's called an imminent health threat. One of the things that the local jurisdiction has is the authority to determine how long that system has to be replaced. That doesn't mean you can have surfacing sewage for that long. It also says in Minnesota rules that we have to immediately abate that. We had one in Oak Grove not that long ago where we had to do just that. Circle and en and circle the entire area in snow fence and sprinkle uh line on the surface to neutralize the the raw sewage and make sure that people didn't go through that area. So that's really important to realize is that not only do you have two time frames uh to replace or repair that system, but the uh uh imminent health threat needs to be evaded immediately. So that's like a 911. We want to make sure that we contact the homeowners and that we stand by to make sure that there's no people coming in contact with the raw sewage. You want to talk a little about the definitions here, K? Yeah, absolutely. So, um, as Annie had talked about, not only are there the state requirements, but there's also, um, a local responsibility, um, as it pertains to, uh, septic systems. Um, we have ordinances. That's the adoption of your local requirements specific to um your jurisdiction that aligns with best practices and again allows for that local control. And we did um pass out section three of the um now then city code that is your local um ordinances that have been approved by the city of Nan. And um there's also the permits. So, administration of permits um it needs to be done by performing um a thorough plan review and site inspections of all new and uh replacement subject systems. So, again, if a new home comes in, um our staff reviews those plans um for the system along with the site plan to ensure that those setbacks that Andy had talked about um meet your local requirements. Uh we also have maintenance and that is to ensure property owners maintain their systems and uh we'll talk a little bit more about that along with compliance um that typically when properties are sold um they have to have that point of sale inspection that determines whether or not the system is compliant or non-compliant. And then the last component that's up there is um regarding reporting. every year um MPCA requires an annual report be filed with them every February. You know, it's also really important to note that there is flexibility within the state laws that allow for local jurisdiction as we talked about to be more restrictive than the state requirements. And an example would be um setbacks um along with several others. But like to touch base or back up a little bit to that reporting piece. So what the state is really looking for is the number of systems that are installed, the types of systems that they are, what what are the results of the compliance inspection. So there's a lot of local uh governance as far as when compliance inspections are performed. Um the state says you must do that when you add a bedroom. Uh when you do certain instances like adding a bedroom, that's a certificate of compliance is required at that point. also when you build a new system. Um here we have decided that the compliance inspections are also required at point of sale when you sell a property. So that's one piece out of others that you can look at as as a local discretionary piece. Um I just wanted to point that out as well. Yeah absolutely. So for each of these bullet points we are going to walk through a brief summary. Um and staff had invited us here tonight to present this to you all. um also asked us to review, you know, current practices, identify where improvements could be made um in order to adhere to state laws and best practices. So, this is where we really wanted to double click on this as far as what are the tape assessment? Um industry has called these pumping permits for what's always been called pumping permits. If locally you decided that you wanted to help people understand their systems and the management piece, you would issue what's called a pumping permit. Well, several years ago, the state wanted to get away from that a little bit because as we are realizing that when people take care of their systems, you don't necessarily need to physically pump it every three years. So, pumping is akin to cleaning. So, your septic tank according to the rules needs to be assessed or cleaned every three years. So, by default, a lot of people have been simply pumping their tank. And I'm not wanting I don't want to get real graphic here, but when you have your septic tank, the idea is to clean it. So, you do that one of two ways. You either draw all the liquid out and then pump it right back in because the sludge at the bottom and the scum on the top would then get agitated and then suspended in the liquid and then you draw it back out. Therefore, you have cleaned the tank. Another way to go about that is you take Don't look at me like that. You take a great big old egg beater. It's almost like an ice augur and you take that you put it into the tank and it turns really fast and you agitate the contents of the tank. Therefore, the sludge at the bottom and the scum at the top get suspended within the liquid and then you pull that out. The reason why we do that is to make sure that the scum and the sludge don't work their way out into the drain because again that's the expensive part and when that breaks then we're off all of our phones are ring. So, I just wanted to talk about that and I know that's a little graphic but that's what the the the tank pumping is. So now we've realized, the MPCA has realized that not everybody needs to physically empty their tank every 3 years. Um, a lot of times you can do what's called an assessment. That means that a licensed professional comes out, they measure the scum on the top, they measure the sludge on the bottom, and if it's Thank you for this slide. This is a great one. So if you turn your attention to the picture here, that's the scum on the top. That's the sludge on the bottom. Heavier stuff called sludge sinks down to the bottom. What we want to make sure is that sludge doesn't get so high that this is called a baffle. That it doesn't go so high that it moves into the next tank or out into the drain field. Much like the scum, we don't want that too close to the top because that's going to flow over and out into the drain field. So, you could go out conceivably if you're taking care of your septic system, you don't have a garbage disposal, you're not flushing wipes and things of that nature, your system can last longer than three years before you need to pump it and empty it. Uh there's a lot of people and there's actually people I know right in here that had a a five- bedroomedroom home and the kids have left. So now it's mom and dad that are left. You have two people in a five-bedroom home. So if you have two people taking care of that septic system and you uh measure the scum and sledge, you can take care of it. You don't necessarily need to pay a big pump truck to come empty that tank every three years. It's all based on education. making sure that the uh the maintainer is the professional there that they have a good relationship with the homeowner so they can tell them make sure you don't flush the dental flops. Hey, what's that garbage disposal? Get that out of there because that has a large large detrimental effect on the septic system. So that's what really the big subject for tonight is the maintenance in the in the pumping permits or the maintenance permits that are discretionary that we are advocating for. Fair enough. Yep. And I think we covered the tips for tank assessments just now as well. And we did provide um copies of our presentation to city council. And Natalie, I can get an email to you if there's anyone else that's interested as well. Go over some pump tanks. Yes. So the pump tank is um so there's two t uh tanks that you would have is a in this scenario is a septic tank. that's where the roster goes out to. And then the the pump tank. If you have a system where your effluent is getting pumped uphill or to a mound or something like that, a secondary tank is called your pump tank. Now, again, the scum and the sludge, you want to maintain that in the septic tank because if that goes over to your pump tank here, you can see on the bottom, there's where your pump is. There's a couple of of pucks or bases there to get that pump off off the floor. So if there is any uh sludge that goes in, it doesn't damage the impellers of the pump and therefore cause maintenance issues there. So this simply shows the septic tank and then the pump tank. When you get your sept septic system assessed or pumped, it's critical that the maintainer looks at both of those both of those tanks. It's called clear liquid, but it's not really clear. It's basically devoid of scum and slope. Another piece I want to point out, just more criminology. So, when to empty your clean? Um, right now it's every three years. That's what uh Minnesota Pollution Control Agency tells us that every three years you're supposed to have your system cleaned or assessed. Now, when you have a maintainer, um, they're going to be probably hesitant to do that too late in the year. Unless you're a big family and you use a lot of water, you don't want to pump that tank out too late in the year for fear of any freezing potential with that. Um, and then also on the slide, I did want to point out the fact that the inspection ports that you see coming up, those are not to be used as pump tank. You need to get down the manhole, get to the cover itself. So, if you uh if you're working with the maintainer and they come out and say, "Boy, your system is actually buried. Your tank is two or three feet down." They need to get out and actually dig up those manholes and then install a riser. So, those little ports, you can't just stick your your tube down in there to suck out the the contents. You need to access the manhole so you can have a better view of it. So you can actually make make sure that you're actually cleaning that tank. So as far as the ordinance lane, do you want to touch touch on this one or should I? Yeah, I can. Go ahead. Um, so the this goes back to that first bullet point um of the feud here regarding the local responsibility and um I'm not going to go through every single one of those bullet points, but basically um 782 highlights these items that the city must do. So again, we've talked about it being at least at at least as restrictive. It can be more. um you've got to require that um it's all of the items listed there are performed by appropriately certified um professionals and um again if there are non-compliant systems that point of sale that I talked about um that come back it's the city's responsibility to require the remediation of those non-compliant systems um again prohibiting surface discharge of the of the sewage and there's an abatement process for that. And um again, all changes to local ordinances do have to be reviewed and approved by the NPCA. And one of the things um when staff had asked us to look into this is we just did a brief um cursory review of the ordinance and we did find that there are um some inconsistencies and I'm not sure Natalie, do you know off hand when how long ago this was written or how when the last time it was reviewed? Okay. I think there's some conflicting language in nine and 10, right? It it talks about how much time you have to replace a failing system and then a little bit further down it says that you can maintain or you can still maintain and operate a failing system. So, we need to look at that language because that's conflicting. I also want to talk I was just going to say one of the services that we would provide would be to author um that ordinance based off of the model um that we have and then um provide that to staff for their review and then ultimately city council for yours to get that updated and and up to what is current best practices and that is part of our contract already and it's charged at an rate. So there's two things on here I want to talk about too is is when is a holding tank allowed? A holding tank is something that you need a an alarm on it so that you know when that system is full and it needs to be actually pumped out. There are some jurisdictions that don't want holding tanks and some that do. We work in the city of Baldwin up by Princeton and they really find a need for uh tanks around the lake uh at Little Elk Lake in particular because the lots are so dog on small there's really no place to put another system and if you did put a system in that small footprint it's going to have a lot of technologies and it's going to be really expensive. So some of those seasonal um residences like that, they have an ordinance that allows a holding tank. So that's one thing that is discretionary here that you can decide when holding tanks are appropriate and when they're not necessarily allowed. And then the next piece on that is um is an operating permit. So that's something I don't know if you're familiar with that, but an operating permit is required under 78. Pollution control agency said operating permits are to be administered locally. Uh currently and now then we're not. Um, for example, and this is the best way I can think of to explain it is when it has a lot of bells and whistles, when it has pre-treatment, like for example, a church with a commercial kitchen or you have a gas station or something like that, you have a lot of technologies or bells and whistles into that system and that's when an operating permit is supposed to be administered. Currently, right now, we're not doing that. Um, that's something that we can get on top of. So, when the next assessment comes along, we can tell the pollution control agency that we're on top of our game and we're administering those operating permits. Now, an operating permit, you might decide what would put that in conjunction with a holding tank as well. What that would do is make sure that the homeowner who has a holding tank has a relationship with a maintainer and that they assess it or that they pump it on a regular basis rather. And with that holding tank, again, it needs to have that alarm on there so it doesn't bubble up and then uh overflow into the lake or into the ditch or something like that. Another component um and this is a service that we actually currently provide um as the city of now's designated building official is your permit program and that is um local units of government we must have a permit program for all new and replacement um systems. Um most installations have the um many inspections that are performed which uh include soil verification which confirms an accurate measurement to the soil limiting layer um and uh tanks verifies that they're properly installed according to the design. There's a scarification um inspection which ensures the soil above ground soil of the above ground treatment systems are adequately roughed in prior to uh rock bed installation. the actual rock bed rock bed inspection which verifies the drainfield rock bed is constructed according to the design. Uh final inspection which ensures the grade is properly restored with vegetation established and also checks that the system is in compliance in a functional state. And then there's also um asbuilt which reviews that final um documentation submitted by the installer for accuracy and completeness. We're doing a little bit of a different approach with that asbuilt these days. Um because at the beginning of it, we have all the information. So, we're actually producing the drawing. Well, if anybody's ever seen an asbuilt as it was drawn on by an installer. Um installers are notorious good operators. They could reach out with a back and comb your hair, but sometimes their pictures leave a little bit to be desired. So, we're actually generating the asbuilts ahead of time for installers and then we're simply leaving the blanks for them to fill in. So, I think you're going to find a a great amount of satisfaction from the installers that they don't have to do all of the paperwork that is set. We're basically giving them a cross-section of the elevations. We're asking them to shoot those elevations and filling leverage. I think that's going to be really wellreceived. So, just look forward to that. Uh, notably on the certificate or excuse me, the certificate of compliance. Um whether this is interesting or not, it's the certificate of compliance as it's done at property transfer and things of that nature. Um that's on a standard form. Um however, the pollution control agency doesn't give us a standard form for new and replacement systems. So it's up to every jurisdiction to basically make their own. That's a free form comment. And um I just wanted to bring that up. I don't know if Cindy if that's really applicable to too many people. Uh but the certificate of compliance, you guys are going to see a different format. the state provides an an a form that everybody needs to use, but when it comes to new and replacement systems, it's up to us what that form actually looks like. So, we've developed our own. And again, here we talked about the the two types of systems or the two types of ways that system can fail. Again, which is a lack of separation, meaning the drain field is too low, and then an imminent health, which means there's raw sewage that we could come in contact with people. And I can go through kind of what um our our program that we provide and what we're doing for other jurisdictions. um as it relates to the compliance program is when a jurisdiction receives a report identifying um a non-compliant system, a formal letter um would need to be sent to the property owner. That letter outlines a requirement to repair or replace the system within a specified time frame. Typically, there's several months um from the date of the report. And again, if there's um an imminent health threat, abatement would need to be done immediately. Um and it's it's essential that these non-compliance um systems are actively tracked and followed up on. So our code compliance division within the community development department of Rome River Consultants handles those um our compliance program and um ongoing monitoring ensures that compliance um is within that time frame that is set um by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency along with local ordinances. And it also um the process helps safeguard the both the community health and environmental quality quality and we are able to provide training and support to staff to take over or to to perform this responsibility. Um otherwise alternatively we can continue or we can manage the um compliance reports directly and that does u maintain accuracy consistency and alignment with reg regulatory compliance. We would um perform that at our hourly service in our current contract. Just to point out the length of times that you have allotted to replace failing systems, it's six months for imminent health, which is pretty much in line with other jurisdictions around here and then 24 months for lack of separation. That's also well in line with other jurisdictions. So again, if it's an imminent health threat, we got to get out there and secure the area to make sure nobody gets hurt. But as far as the length of time to replace that system, what you have in the ordinance now is pretty much in line with other jurisdictions that I've seen around the area. I talked earlier about that annual reporting. Again, state law requires that every local unit of government um that has aptic and SSTS program submits that annual report. It says every January, it should be February. Um and it must include the number of compliant and non-compliant systems, the number of in systems that are installed and of each type. What tanks are being installed including the number of manufacturers and the number of systems serving non-residential buildings and seasonal dwellings. um this annual reporting again, you know, uh we have um technology that we uh are able to use to track and um provide that annual reporting and again um if that's a service that um staff would like Rum River staff and the council would like Rum River consultants to do, we would be happy to do that again at that hourly rate that's identified in their country. It's interesting to note that on the an annual inspe or the annual report rather that the um number of tanks installed and by who um and the reason for that is the pollution control agency actually sends a bill or an invoice to the installers on the number of tanks that they install. Um they have seen it in their wisdom to let that fall to the local unit of government us to count those tanks and to to report that back. So the MPCA will actually send an invoice, if you will, to EDS septic installation based on the numbers that are provided by each jurisdiction. So it's critical that those numbers are correct because of course there's money involved that the installers need to pay to the state. And what that money is there for is to test the tanks. So that's a pool of money that's used to go out to plays and Knife River, whoever actually makes the septic tanks to test them for water plants. Can you talk about Sure. So that maintenance program and um that's where it comes back to that management plan. Every septic system that's designed and installed has to have that management plan and that's where we wanted to really uh pause for a minute on the operating permits and also the um pumping permits or the maintenance permits. So jurisdictions around here do issue those permits for tracking that maintenance activity. So what would happen is at the outset of a program like this, we would take a good inventory of what systems are out there and where those when those systems have last been maintained or pumped. And it's really traditional that a lot of jurisdictions would send out a postcard and and in order to inform the homeowner that their system is due to be maintained or to be pumped. And that's done on an annual or on a a postcard. Again, that's maintained in a database. And those permits are basically uh issued anywhere from $10 to $20 a piece. And that's going to be done on a three-year cycle. Those operating permits are a separate animal. I'd like to deal uh work at that a little bit clo more closely to identify which performance systems are in the city, which ones need and I have that operating permit. That's going to be a little bit of a deeper dive to make sure that those are done in a compliant manner. Any questions on Mr. Mayor? Council member Glazer, go ahead. So are you currently providing the service for other municipalities, other cities that of similar size uh relative to the number of systems? Yes. That are currently out there. What is the cost of that service annually to the to the city or the residents who pays for it? The city. Well, the maintainer the service provider, the maintainer would be the one actually securing that permit. And it's generally around $20. That's every three years. Okay. So, just like so I I set it up in my phone every uh I reach out to to our maintainer every three years in March when he can start pumping things. Nice. So, by him pulling that permit and turning into the city, we're in compliance. Correct. And that's all there is to it. Correct. And if you happen to you sell or you you miss you miss that reminder, then the city uh through a program like this would get that reminder, too. So maybe this question for Natalie, do we have septic maintainers currently turning uh requesting permits and turning into our city? Right now we do. We take those in. We process them all. Um when people are selling their home, we get multiple calls saying they have all the records. Sometimes you have them and sometimes they haven't been done in a long time. Um, we have currently I know of three or four that have failed. One is well outside our 2year window. Um, this is one of the reasons I asked and one of the residents had mentioned subcontracting some of the stuff that we're not experts in that we can't you know we could probably do it with training and more staff but at this point we haven't we haven't been doing it. Um these again going to the educations that I have learning things that we have not been doing that we are supposed to be doing um and meeting safe guidelines and we recorded. So they were kind enough and they did report for us this year based upon what they had and what we had from Minsspec for January. I'm not sure exactly how much time that took, but again, I do know that I do have some systems that are out of compliance, have been out of compliance and have not done anything to move that forward. I'd like to go if I might just um kind of dubtail on on Natalie's as far as the time goes. Um the all of these different programs that I've highlighted from the ordinance all the way down to the last one of maintenance and everything in between. They're all intertwined. And with the program that we have in that annual report that's provided to the um MPCA again will be accurate as accurate as possible and it's done off of a a computer system and and um software. I don't know if you you we didn't talk about baseline. We didn't talk about baseline at all yet. No. Um but yes and so once we or if we have the program um and administer your SSTS program then again that would things would go a lot quicker because we maintain the data as well. So going back to council member Glazer's question is the cost to implement. So, if you were to come in here, um, let's just say at the 1 of January, what would be the overall cost to the city for you guys to to bring us up to par following the state law um, over the course of one year? Well, the the operating permits would be a permit through baseline and we our uh contract identifies a percentage of that. So, there would be no cost to the city for that. Got that. The maintenance permits would be uh $20 every three years. So, there's no cost to the city for that directly. that goes through the maintainer and the property owner itself. The actual reporting, the annual reporting for the MPCA, um I'm guessing 10 to 12 hours annually to make sure that the uh reports are generated to MPC. So overall, very low cost back to the city. Correct. Yeah. Updating the ordinance. That's good. You know, again, that you know that that's the lane that I'll swim that I swim in and probably 10 to 20 hours at most. And that would be a one-time deal to go through the ordinances. Mr. Mayor, we just keep an eye on that and we follow the legislation. So when they come through once it's updated, then we stay on top of that for you and then we would just pass along any updates and then staff would be able to do it. But getting it up to where it needs to be would take a definitely take some time. Council member Glazer, go ahead. So for reference, what is the hourly rate that that's worth that? There's 10 to 12 hours per contract. It's under $100 an hour. Yeah, it's under 100, but I don't know. 90 or $95 per hour. Thank you. Go ahead. Go ahead. On boarding would possibly not cost as much. um is we do currently have all the properties by Julia has been maintaining most of them and making them all that she could enter where we are in the last couple of years for the ones that we have had so that baseline we know what was done in 22 what was done in 23 and what's been done in 24 and then after that it would be up to river because they'll be getting the permit directly through baseline and we won't be touching And that's self- sustainable. That that component of your SSTS program is self sustainable because it's great. Correct. Thank you for bringing that up because so that part would be a joint effort. So next step for us is updating the ordinance is what it sounds like. Correct. And do we have that currently on uh on an agenda plan for future months at this point? Council said it will be. I have not talked about it. Thank you for the time this evening. This is really what we wanted to do. Get in front of you and pass out this information, make you a little bit more familiar with the terminology and things of that nature. And always remember if you ever have a question, please think about it because we live this up. Thank you for doing that every day. So, any other questions um for Run River Consultants? Hope that wasn't too bad. Mr. Council member Brian, I do want to make a just to make a comment in general that just this is a friendly reminder to everybody that if you didn't know and if you don't know when the last time you bumped your septic tank, you might want to take advantage of that opportunity this summer. Um, we have had a postcard program in the past and it has you know I don't that was a long time ago but I don't know where all that was in the process and then that did stop for whatever reason. So, we have had it, but yeah, I mean, it hasn't been been updated or done recently. So, I'm going to say sounds like an opportunity. Sounds like we can do better. All right. Thank you guys. Turn off. No. Okay. Thanks. All right. We'll move to our next uh agenda item, which is an Oakland County Highway Department to discuss Bos Street project. Mr. May here, members of the council, thanks for having us tonight. My name is Nick Da. I'm a design engineer manager at Dino Noka County. And with me tonight is a senior technician for Enoka County. His name is Jeff Foster, and he is managing the project. So, as you know, we are uh proposing a reconstruction of B Street between 181st and Viking Boulevard next year. And we had a open house, I think September of last year, and the last time we were council was probably in September of last year. So, I know there's been a number of uh new members to the council here. So, we thought it'd be an appropriate time to come here tonight and give you an update on the status of this project. Again, tonight we're not asking for any decision. We're just giving you an update. So, we anticipate a a quick discussion here and we'll get into the GPA discussion and of the joint pile agreement. So, we're going to throw some preliminary numbers out there just to have a discussion on it and answer any questions that you may have. And with that, um, if you have any questions that come up during our presentation, just interrupt us and we'll answer them as they come up. So, with that, I'm going to introduce Jeff and he's going to give you a background on the schedule and any relevant design updates. Thank you, uh, just a quick update to our geometrics that uh, has transpired since our last meeting is September 11th of 2024. Um originally we presented this roadway with a preliminary uh assessment that we were going to uh do a concrete reconstruction project from County Road 64 up to County Road 65 which is better known as Bow Street. Uh it was identified as uh needing shoulders. It's a safety project. We're looking at adding shoulders and adding turn lanes. Uh through the plaring process, we went through and evaluated all the intersections, the city street to county road intersections and uh assessed where the uh appropriate guideline spacing for each intersection should be. Um it was identified that three intersections uh would meet those requirements for full intersections and at those intersections we would also add left turn lanes. So, the whole point of the project was safety. Adding the shoulders, it's got very steep shoulders on it today. We knew if we constructed any more up, we were going to have to go out anyway because the slopes are getting too steep. Um, about 5 years ago, we we put a band-aid on this road uh to hopefully hold it through until we had some funding in place and actually had a design in mind. uh we know that it won't take too much longer and that those clay soils are going to start to work their way back through that black patch that we put on top of it that you see today. Um currently there are no uh shoulders on that roadway at all. So pedestrian traffic is very dangerous. Um and turning traffic has no way to get out of the throughput of the the roadway at many of the intersections. There's a couple that have existing uh right turn lanes today that were put in with uh developments, but other than that, they don't. So, we are planning on adding those full pave shoulders and uh right turn lanes at all city to county intersections as well as left turn lanes at three intersections. Um originally it was supposed to be concrete. We looked at that, evaluated that. We had a lot of feedback at our uh the first open house where uh citizens were concerned about noise. They thought that the concrete road was going to be noisy. Um it was just going to take away from the farm field and all of that. U so we we took a step back. We looked at what the impacts would be of that. And mainly when doing a concrete roadway, you end up creating a very large footprint. uh meaning you take a lot of rightway. Um and this corridor has a lot of uh prescriptive rightaway in it. Not all of it has been platted. So uh we knew that there was going to be some very large impacts if we did that. So, originally we had looked at a 60-foot corridor, which is consistent with what the county does when we add uh shoulders to a roadway and uh to get enough room for all your infrastructure and get everything in place. Um by going through that process, we found out that the impacts were just going to be a little bit too high uh both to the environmental and to rightaway impacts. So we scaled it back to a batuminous roadway. So it is going to be a batuminous roadway and that alleviates some of that noise that a lot of citizens were concerned about. Um also we scaled back from the full 60 foot of rightway through the whole corridor to just what we need. So that it's not going to be a corridor of 60 feet of rightway. It's still going to kind of go in and out as you as it is today, but it's just going to be what we need to to fit in our roadway footprint and our drainage infrastructure. It is a will be rural is not curbon gutter except for one turn lane where we are installing about 500 ft of curbon gutter very small portion of it. Uh but being that it is rural and as most rural roadways you see the drainage just runs off into the ditch and it's allowed to do that. But with the additional uh imperous surface that we're adding to the roadway, adding the shoulders, uh we're required to treat that water. We can no longer just let it run off into the ditches unless there is no feasibility to actually get some of that sediment off the out of the roadway water before it gets back into a wet land or to an outflow. So, uh with this project, uh we're proposing to have ditches uh that convey that water to three localized ponding areas um where that water will be treated. So, it's not storm sewer per se uh as far as piping it to a location. It's ditching it to a location where it can be treated, settled out, and then released back into a wetland or an outfall. Uh there's three ponds that we're proposing uh below the hill there. We do have a lot of grade on that road. It it comes down pretty hard from the north to the south. U there's no issue with getting water to where we want it to go. uh will be required to install two wet ponds and we're looking at one the very first the south pond down at uh County Road 163 that would have uh the ability to infiltrate. Right now we're in the geotechnical phase of seeing if that's actually possible or not. There are a lot of clay soils here and now then. So, uh we're working our way through the geotechnical information both for the roadway and for our drainage uh requirements. So, with that, I can just give you a quick update. Uh we're basically at 60% plans right now or last month. Uh we'll be progressing through our environmental documentation and all our wetland permitting and getting all our ducks in a row there. Um we'll be moving to a 90% plan and another open house to be held here very possibly in October to update the uh residents of now then uh just to give them an update on the project and also we'll have a very good idea of how we're going to stage our traffic control and how we'll manage traffic during the construction of the roadway project. Um right now we believe it will be detourred. Um it'll be open to to local traffic but through traffic will be detourred. Uh we reached out to Sherburn County as we generally stay on county roads uh for assigned detour and the closest route would be to go to the east and Sherburn County has allowed us to use their roads to get our detour around. It's the shortest route. So uh they're gracious enough to allow us to do that for this project. Um, so I say we'll have another open house to update the public at that time in in October. We'll have a very good understanding of of how we're going to do all of the staging. Right now, it looks like it'll be broke up into four pieces. Um, starting at the south and working its way north. Uh the project itself starts right there at County Road 64 and it works all the way to about 500 feet south of County Road 65 on the north end. And we're leaving that little segment out uh in case we we're identifying maybe an intersection project at a future date um for that four-way stop on the top of the hill. there's a lot of issues involved with that um and a lot of preliminary work that has to be done in order to make that a state aid intersection. So, we're stopping just short of that intersection so we don't have of a good portion of our work being torn back up to produce another project there at that intersection in the future. So, um with that, like I said, the rightway agents have been involved uh already. They're they've reached out to several of these homeowners uh the ones that we need to acquire property from and also the ponding locations. We've had meetings with uh the owners of that property as well. Um that will continue all the way through into probably November, December. Uh at that time, our final plans will be done and we'll be looking to advertise this project in January. So, uh, construction will begin, uh, May of 2026 and we expected to be completed probably by the 1st of November of 2026 at one season. Any questions? Quick one. I'll start off with questions. So, initial um concept of cost was 6.5 million to the county. uh now portion of 75,000 switching from concrete to batuminous is that going to reduce our cost that's question one and then you state made a comment about right away you said we just take what we need what does that mean is that going from 60 feet to 30 feet what does that look like okay so can you be more clear the first question is the the cost component that we sent out the 6.5 that is the batuminous roadway not concrete so the concrete estimates were up in the range of about 9 million total for the two miles to the county cost to 75. Yeah. With under the batuminous roadway how it's designed today. Um as far as the second question there lost track right away there your right away if we're taking that whole corridor. So what that meant was in some areas where we are able to shift the roadway, we are doing so. So today B Street is perfectly straight. Um but the corridor right away does this. It it it meanders. So it's not a consistent with it bounces in and out where we have where there's been developments and there's been platted property. We had the ability to uh push out the roadway in one direction, east or west, to allow to move away from homeowners, farms, things that are very close to the roadway that if we just made it straight, we were going to have uh big impacts to those homes. So rather than do that, uh we implemented two very large curves to the west where we push the the center line of the roadway to the west to pull away from the east side um just to reduce impacts. Is that is there a picture included? I haven't seen I sent one and then I do have a layout a full layout a paper layout here as well. There it is. That's basically the layout. Yep. Yes. Send in a separate email. A separate email. Yeah. So, next week we plan to take the layout that was provided here and that'll be put up on our website as our new as we reach the 60% and put it back out to the to the public. Um that'd be very helpful. So, yep. So, it's there and then like I said, I have a paper one here you guys can have and look through it at your leisure as well. Um that's one of the areas where there's a a bow to move away from that farm where we have additional rightaway on the west side but we don't have any on the east. So we took advantage of the county's right away that we already own and moved it away to to reduce the impact to that farm. And we did that in two locations where we could um actually push it out and and try to fit it in that right away a little better than just going straight down the road as the road was straight today to reduce impacts. Um, so the rightway could be anywhere from at a minimum it would be 42 feet basically needed from from the fog line or the edge of mat of the paved roadway, the actual travel lane. You need 30 feet of clearance to any obstruction. So that means there's overhead power out there. Overhead power poles right now only like 16 feet from the road. That does not meet state aid requirements. we need to move them out to to uh 30 feet to the face of those poles from the edge of that roadway to meet that uh requirement, get it out of the clear zone. So, the minimum right away would be 42 feet basically to get that out there. Um and it could be as much as 60 in some areas depending on where it's at, but it's going to vary. It's going to vary how much we need based on our construction limits. some areas where the the the homes or the property maybe are very flush to the existing roadway. We don't we don't plan on changing the vertical profile a lot of the roadway. We may try to pull it down if anything just because of the steep shoulders that are in place today. It's just going to help us flatten things out and make it safer if you were to leave the roadway. So some of those areas where it's very level to where the construction is, our construction limits will basically and the and the ditching will come in. So less rightaway would be needed in those locations. So basically how how I referenced that is as what we need is what is needed for the construction and the construction. Thank you sir. There any other questions for Jeff? Mr. the mayor. Councilman Rebo, go ahead. I do have a couple. Um, the big one is the $75,000. I mean, um, this is a county road. Um, it's not a city road. So, we're asking us to spend $75,000 plus coordinating um getting permits from the upper Rum River WHED. So are those permit costs included in that permitting is basically well through the city when when it's the Roma up here. Um our cost for those permits would be included in that can explain all the basic costs that are involved in this. A normal JPA just covers what we're going to cost share in. In most cases on a on a large project like this, it gets not not a huge amount to the city, but they get a big city benefit to it. He can speak to the Mr. Mayor. I I would I guess I I think $75,000 is a lot of money to the city. Um, it's a county it's a county project. Um, you're not only asking us to to spend $76,000. Um, that looks like there's other costs associated in here. And then we have long-term maintenance um in relationship to a county road. Um, I know that the county is trying to reduce their costs. Um, but I don't feel as a city we should be the one to have to pay for the reduction in your your cost. Um, these are these are great questions, council member, and I I was going to have Jeff go over the geometrics, then I was going to transition a little deep. So, if you would let me do that, I maybe answer some of your questions. I hear your concerns. Um, first I want to me I want to elaborate more on on what Jeff meant by what we meant by the taking of the rightway. So the original thinking was a 60 foot corridor and that's independent of what we need. So Jeff identified a few needs for clear zone. We need we need clear zone. We need to own the clear zone to keep it as an obstacle free zone. We need the back slopes of ditches to convey water. So with this project and a couple other projects in the county, we've taken on the the idea that we're our rightway is not going to be a straight 60oot corridor whether we need it or not. We're going to be more flexible and context sensitive and that rightway line's going to jog in and out and it's going to be taking what we need in the form of clear zone or conveyance of water or infrastructure ponds it might follow out. So that's that's been a change of thinking since the last time we were at this council and it's based on feedback from residents of this project and other projects as well and relating to costs with the pond and maintenance which are great points that I specifically brought a couple of points to discuss here. I want to get into again who was who was here last time I talked but I remember some faces here as an engineer I tend to elaborate so I got my short version and if you have any follow-up questions I'll I'll answer them. Thank you for the short version. So I want to get into um first of all I've been here almost 20 years I've had a couple of projects in now then I've never had to pond usually in now then. So having a pond associated with an Anopa County project is for me a first. Uh, and with those ponds there are responsibilities and further south cities and counties, we have ponds almost on every single project. So these GPA deal with maintenance and costs and everybody down there is comfortable with them. So I understand up here this is the first time you're seeing this. So it's a lot to take in. So I'm going to kind of speak to why we're required these these and where these numbers are coming from. So the question might come up why do we need the pond? Short version. As a municipal separate storm water agency, in Oak County is regulated by the MPCA regarding maintaining and improving total maximum daily load requirements for storm water runoff. Contaminants we are required to mitigate for include dirt and dissolved solids, for example, particulate and dissolved solids, phosphorus, dirt, you know, things that come up with the runoff water. We're required to treat that before we release it into the environment. Um so again we are required by the MPCA to meet these water quality standards for certain reconstruction projects that exceed a threshold of impact which is more than one acre of new impervious or reconstructed. This project exceeds both of those. So we're required by the MPCA to investigate water treatment. The most common and cost effective meth method is implementation of storm water ponds and of this project you know notice there's three of them. So normally and now then we're doing a lot of reconditioning projects where the reconstruction standards don't trip. We're not adding a lot of impervious. We're not adding shoulders for long lengths of road. And even if we are doing all that a lot of times now then's very flat. We've never been able to convey any water. We don't want to we don't want to introduce grade and curb and gutter to force water. It only flows downhill. So this is the first project B street as Jeff alluded to has a grade to it. The water's naturally flowing roadside ditches through a few localized low points. And if you notice the existing drainage patterns, that's where our ponds are. So this is unique that this is the first time we're able to convey water through a ditch system to ponds to actually meet all the NPCA standards. So with that, we are required to pond. We've engineered ponds that are going to meet all those standards. Again, that's the short version. Any questions on that? Council member Glacers got a question. Who who owns the land where the ponds are going to be located? Uh I don't know their names, but they're private property owners. Okay. And so the the county basically does does the county pay those property property owners for there's a rightway process. So in addition to the rightway core, there's a little bit more engagement with these property owners that have ponds on site. We've already been engaging with them. One site I think is owned by county property. It's already a county own. I think there's two two. Yeah. So, we've already we've already met one-on-one with the one property owner and the second property owner is we're setting up a meeting in the near future. So, we're going to engage with them. The county covers the cost for all the rightway for these ponds. So, there's there's these cutouts of rightway and there's a whole rightway process. I didn't bring rightaway agents with me. I just want to learn more about that. Certainly, we can have a conversation, but we uh compensate them fairly, I would say. Thank you. Um so with that um why are the ponds where they are? I kind of spoke to that. Um they go ponds are in math low point. So that's where the ponds end up. So with that that's why we have to pond. You have an understanding of the project. So let's talk about this joint powers agreement right. Um so joint powers agreements on the short version. Joint powers agreement formal legal contract between two or more public agencies. I think you all know this but the key features of the joint powers agreement as you alluded to defines project purpose project scope. Who is responsible for delivering what plans permits right away and most importantly project costs. Who is paying for what? Miss GPA facilitates cooperation for tasks such as loop to maintenance. So JPA reflects the no county cost sharing policy with respect to project specific costs. So I'd like to do is I'd like to very again very quickly high level walk through this GP and tonight we're not asking you to sign anything these these joint powers agreements are subject to negotiation. We'll work with the chain here as the city engineer who work with your council work with the county engineer to work out the details. Um we would like a joint powers agreement signed by the time we advertise the project. So we have basically the rest of this year to figure this out. I just want to throw these numbers out to you so you start to think about them and plan for budgeting purposes. the number we throw out there 75,000 does does cover a number of things and I'd like to touch on that a little bit without taking too much more time and in fact I'm going to skip most of this because I know you have a very long agenda. Let's just jump right to the the important things which is cost you alluded to. So we are at $75,000 and the majority of that cost is related to drainage cost sharing. There are a number of other items including curbon gutter. very little curb and gutter but no county's cost agreement for outer curb and gutter is 50% city 50% county and this is not an urbanizing project there's a very small number of curb um there's other pro-rated items such as mobilization so you're cost I think you're cost sharing in about a $7 million project $75,000 is about 1% so you'd pay for 1% of the mobilization 1% of the traffic control urban gutter and then drainage I think are the major cost sharing items in this And the vast majority of that is drainage structures. So the way the county cost share agreement works out is it's based on contributing area. In this case when we talk about contributing area what water on the project site is flowing to the pond. A portion of it is from the road from the county rightway and some portion is from off rightway cities farm adjacent farm fields. It all flows to these points. So the amount of water that we have to treat comes from both city and county sources. So it's broken down by percentage. In this case, I think it's something about 40% of the water going to these ponds comes from city farm fields or adjacent city owned right away houses, front yards and stuff like that. 60% is county. So the cost shine works out the drainage infrastructure for the control structure to control rate any piping that's needed to pipe the water to the final outlet source culverts things like that are you know 40% count 40% city and 60% county by contributing area that's where the majority of your cost comes from and that's worked out in our standard cost share unit so JPA are subject to negotiations we can work with Shane to refine that number if you're have a problem with it we don't have to talk about tonight. But again, for the purposes of this uh discussion, for the first preliminary numbers, there's a contingency built in there where it's 60% estimate. These are all subject to change, but we wanted to throw that $75,000 number just to get you thinking about it and facilitate discussions moving forward. So if you have any specific questions, we can start to talk about tonight or we can, you know, we'll obviously have future meetings to specifically discuss this issue or, you know, separate meetings with the engineer and any council members that want to address this separately. But does that kind of answer some of your questions you might have had? Mr. Mayor, one other thing that I wanted to mention, you did allude to and catch on. It's a good catch uh is the uh maintenance portion. So per class sharing first Anoke County state policy uh you picked up on the city has to maintain these ponds, right? So what does that mean? There's a couple of components to maintenance. There's general day-to-day maintenance. If the outlet gets clogged or the grass is cut or something like that, the city will have to do that. if if and there's additional stipulations such as sediment monitoring which you might have to over a certain period of time you know survey the pond to make sure the sediments aren't building up too much and if it does I don't see any reason that there would be any reason to in fact in any of our ponds in our county that we've built that I built I don't think anyone has had to dredge or anything like that that I'm aware of but if that would need to be happen somewhere down the road we'd be responsible for that and that's I think Shane's gonna talk at some point maybe in the next bullet point or your next agenda item with private utilities. This is not something that's new. You've done it's new because you're doing it for a county owned pond, but I think the city might own development ponds where it's you have the the uh the process in place to deal with maintenance of ponds, but this is the first in Oakland County pond where you're going to have to maintain it. And that's all discussed in that JPA. So, I'd encourage read that language. If you have any questions, reach out to us. All right, Councilman Ray. Well, again, I to me this is a county job. You're doing it. I I don't feel that there should be a burden placed on our residents to cover the cost. You the parties agree that it isn't in their best interest. Well, this is your GPA. So, you're you know, you're assuming this is in our best interest. Um, again, I just I would ask that in when Shane has conversations with you that we have the smallest um impact financially that we can possibly have. Um, $75,000 is a lot of money to us. What number do you feel would be more appropriate? Just so I would start at zero. That would be my general. Yeah. I don't know how I mean I'm only one of the pre people on the council but I think you could resonate that amongst all our goal would be to remove or eliminate the cost all together. So zero is a great starting point and if we go to $2 I mean we could probably talk I love to negotiate Shane you said you're going to be part of this negotiation. Well Mr. Mr. Mayor normally what uh engineering staff does is we take a look at the technical data. So, we look at the drainage areas and and if I don't agree with a particular drainage area, I might bring that up uh to county staff. Um but but I think the the the bigger issue here is there's a county policy in place. They have a they've adopted a cost share policy and it doesn't matter how much I negotiate, I'm not going to be able to change it or you know, just staff's not going to be able to change it. Um and so if there is a um if there's a desire by the city to see this project advance and be completed uh you know the the easiest path forward even even though it costs money is to agree to the JPA. Um if that if that the money that's involved in the long-term maintenance responsibilities is just too uh too expensive uh at this time then you know maybe the talks would be uh delaying payments for a certain number of years. I've seen that in other with other counties. Uh maybe delaying the project. Um, you know, those are really some of the options or uh go knock on some county commissioner doors and uh try to, you know, convince uh them to adopt a special policy. We can certainly invite them to our meeting and have a have an open discussion. Sure. Sure. Mayor. Yes. Council member Swanson. Yeah. Thank you. I would just like to agree with uh Councilwoman Rainville. I think um you know just thinking about this I understand what you're saying about how those drainage ponds are going to be filled at 30% from runoff from city property but those properties already exist that runoff is already going some there's no drainage if a drainage pond is needed it's because of the sideway right I mean is there already flooding in those areas no Mr. Mr. Mayor, if I may. Go ahead. The MPCA regulates the MPCA's philosophy is to leave the situation better condition than it was. So, being that we're opening up the roadway, we're going through the trouble of reconstructing the roadway, all aspects of the roadway, including drainage, are looked at to make the after product complying with current standards. So, you have a lot of fields and a lot of runoff now that are going straight into the adjacent wetlands. While we're captain, we have the opportunity to improve the situation. That's kind of how the MPCA writes their their policy. So, we're required, you're correct, it does go there today, but it's not treated today because we're we're routing it through a potential area that we can make the situation better. We're required to do so. Go ahead. Followup question. Those uh and I you may have said this and I just missed it, but the where the drainage ponds are going, are you are you purchasing that from the current land owners? the county is we're purchasing the land rights to put the pond in there. And if you want to learn the high level of that process is we have a rightaway staff who hires independent appraisers to take our our construction limits, our footprint. We're going to take we we send it to the independent appraiser that doesn't work for Oak County. They appraise the land and they make there's a negotiation to make a fair offer for damages for for each property. If the homeowner doesn't like that, they can hire their own independent appraiser. They give their own appraiser and somewhere in the negotiations they arrive with compensation. So we work with the property owner. At the end of the day we will get what we want. It's just there the process to establish what is just and fair is long and drawn out and that's why we're you know we're in June here and we're not advertising till December. That that can be up to a year process. We don't anticipate that but we plan for it if it drags out and I guess this is a question for us. I I don't know the answer to this. If the county purchases land from us, is that eliminated from our tax base? They don't pay property tax on it either. They're not purchasing it from us. It's from the homeowners. Well, no, I know. But then the homeowner is no longer paying us property tax on that portion of the property and the county, do they pay us property tax? No. So, we're losing the tax base and incurring cost for those drainage funds. Council member Glazer, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So this this project is as you stated earlier is um one of the primary reasons for this is safety issues. Y are there are there incidents that have occurred in the last several years that could have been mitigated. I don't have the crash history in in my head. I do know that this stretch of road does not meet current county state aid standards for this classification of roadway. There are no shoulders out there that the inslopes do not meet. If a car does veer off the road, it's going to get sucked down into the ditch. So, at the very minimum, we're being proactive in bringing this road up to standards. We're adding the the necessary 8 foot puma shoulders for crash avoidance and things of that nature. We're flattening the insul. So, if you do veer off that 8ft shoulder, you can recover from them. So, we are bringing it up to current standards. Jeff alluded to historically we overlay these these roads and every year every time we overlay, it's a little bit higher so those insul get a little bit steeper. We never address the root cause. And this this corridor here has been identified along with a couple other corridors and and a couple other cities. We've we finally in the last budgeting couple of cycles here have been able to allocate money to start addressing the root instead of just putting a band-aid and dealing with the cracks, you know, going in and doing the right thing and bring it up to current standards. So being that uh this is a is a is a minor arterial with the number of ADT, we're just bringing it up to safety stand. So we're being very proactive. I'm sure there are crashes. I just it's not it's not to the point where it's really a reactive. It's more being proactive. And I imagine there's been traffic studies that have been done to show the the increased volume over Yep. X period of time. Correct. And it's increased dramatically. Uh it's going to be based Well, I don't know. I don't think that it's increased dramatically. There's anything other any increase additional to the standard background rate. I think it's I don't want to even say the number but it's I would say that we we're working with Shane um in in the previous city administrator understanding what development is likely to happen in the next 10 to 15 years and that has entered the discussion on where do we have these full access intersections where are we putting in lefts we're going to coordinate with the development of this area and I would say there's a lot of land up here that's right for developing so I know the property owner that has the the pond we've already met with alluded to wanting to developed imminently. So I would say that uh because there hasn't been much development or that number hasn't spiked but I would anticipate it to spike in the future based just based on the availability of land or development potential out here. Mr. Mayor Swenson, go ahead. Um just one last question for me. Um it it sounds like you're saying traffic hasn't noticably increase at any point or unusually and I guess my question is specifically as it relates to the 169 project. Did traffic really not increase on BA during the 169 project? I don't want to I wasn't involved with the traffic. I can get those numbers for you. I would just have this contact and get you studies of the results of the 169 project. I would anticipate that it did spike because I believe with with the work that over there a lot of more people were taking off. So, you're right, it probably did spike due to that work, but that's kind of a an oddity that's not a normal increase. It's directly related to some construction. It's temporary and now that it's done, it's going to go back down to normal. So, I would I would have said if we would have if we would have accounted that spike and generated a project based off that spike, that would have been ill advised because it's temporary blip that should Well, and where I was going with it, I guess, is I'm just wondering if the increased traffic potentially accelerated the need for this project. Is that measurable or is that just not It could possible. Yes. Again, I could be totally misspeaking and there is a spike that I'm not aware of, but certainly if there is has been development in this area, uh the number is, again, I I shouldn't speak to a specific number because I don't know that off the top of my head, but I would say that the primary driver of this project is the pavement's failing. You know, a few years back, we took a look at do we want to just put another band-aid on it or do we have the funds as a county to do the right thing and bring this thing up to standards? I think the decision at the time was rather than throw another band-aid on it, let's do the right thing. Let's let's bring it up to safety standards, we have the money to do it. And that's kind of the genesis of the project. And I guess to wrap up my thought, my my thought is or thinking is, and I have no idea if it's feasible or not, but if it did accelerate the need or the wear and tear, I'm wondering if there's any money to be got from that project, cover some of our costs for that. That's a that's a great point. And I know some bigger projects that push traffic away from a corridor while it's under constructed to mitigate for increased traffic is isn't is something that has been done in the past. Seeing that that project is done and the traffic number should be coming down. We wouldn't have the ability to recoup that money, I don't think. But that's a great question. You know what? I will follow up. I will look into that. But I I don't believe there is any money that would be available for that. Let's see. Okay. Is there any other questions? Just a reminder, we're over two hours in and we are not even halfway yet. So, any other questions for us, gentlemen? I I apologize for taking up so much time, but like I said, um this is just more of an information. We're always available. Just, you know, contact us through Shannon, contact us directly through the website. There'll be another public engagement meeting in October. If any questions come up, if any of your constituents have questions, you can refer them directly to us. anything at all just we're we're happy to be available for you. Thank you very much for coming and presenting tonight. Definitely more clear. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Next agenda item is number eight memo by uh tools for business regarding uh 2026 budgeting needs for it. Hello. Hello sir. Can you state your name please? Yes. I'm Craig Stooly and I do the computer work for the city. Thank you. So, I'm here because um Natalie would bring some of the information that I would give her to the council and then the council would ask her some questions and then she would come to me with the questions and then she would come back to the meeting and get new back and forth and I thought it might be helpful to answer your questions directly. So, if there's just some questions you want to ask um I think it would be along the lines of why do we need MiFi? Uh there was one about of the new server potential for a new server next year. Um and then I had an idea to save the city a few bucks. But if you want to start with me answering any of your questions, I'd be happy to. I think maybe you just start with the server and tell us what our best option is and what we should budget. Uh in my experience with servers, they usually run uh at about the fiveyear mark. you want to start uh the replacement process. And I'm not real familiar with cities and budgets, but it was my thought that since the server hits its 5-year life and ends its uh service contract, its warranty period next May, that maybe it had to get into some budget long before that to get replaced next year. So, uh we did not install the server, we inherited the server. We've been doing the city's work since September, so it's been in production long before we were around, but it's nearing the end of its life. Uh, it goes out of warranty, as I said, next May. So, if a server was to be replaced, um, a server of that size, we usually use Dell, that one's a Lenovo server, uh, you know, would be around 8,000 bucks for the hardware and then, you know, take some time to piece it all together and migrate from old to new. But, um, you could also rebuild a server. We're again more familiar with Dells. Uh but normally we can rebuild a Dell for a third or even a quarter of the cost of new and usually extend the life by three years. So you could do that as well and that'd be maybe $2 to $3,000. Or the city might consider uh migrating to the cloud. That's not always a good option because of legacy software like the budget or the accounting software. It might not work on a cloud server, but it's something we could evaluate and if we wanted to move to like the Microsoft Azure cloud services, we could look at the cost of that. That becomes more of a monthly cost. I think I put in my little notes that you might have got that it's kind of a pay me now or pay me later thing. You don't have a lot of upfront costs when you move to the cloud, but then your monthly costs to Microsoft go up dramatically. So, um, would we possibly be able to purchase server do a rebuild server that'd be good for three years for around $2,000? Two to 3,000 depending on what you do with drives. Mostly on a rebuild it's drive. Sometimes fans, sometimes you add more RAM, you update the operating system. So, you'd go from uh I think it's on Windows 2019 standard. You'd go to Windows 2025 standard. Um, so that cost, I believe at this time it's $1,265 from Microsoft. And then on top of that, you would just evaluate what drives were best at the time and set out the price. Uh, the cost to us, you know, maybe a half a day to do it. Half day of labor. It's not a huge deal. It's usually something you do over a weekend and you don't have to sit and babysit it. You know, you press a few buttons, go away for half a day, come back, press a few more. But yeah, I I would say, you know, let's say 2500 to $3,500, but there'd be some wiggle room in there depending on what kind of drives. Mr. Counc, um would there be any uh other savings if we went with the cloud-based like through Microsoft? I know they have a lot of services that can assist you in automating processes. And I I mean I don't know what we would automate, but typically if if we switch to an Azour cloud type thing, I I assume it would streamline or automate at least a couple things. Do you in your experience does it save staff time? So we're only a company of three and our uh Microsoft guy Dan would be way better at answering that question. Um my understanding of it um there's like two aspects of it. the actual server part, the hosted server part, you really don't gain anything as what you're saying. It's more of just forklifting your server to the cloud. Now, it's hosted by somebody else and um you pay a fee to have them host it. the other part, the SharePoint part where you're you're trying to maybe just leverage your Teams like storage, there might be some advantages to using other products in the Microsoft suite to automate things or secure things. Well, and that was sort of my question. If we're paying Azour, I'm wondering if there are any other benefits from that subscription aside from just the cloud store. Do we get access to, you know, other fancy software that I have no idea how to use that would help us streamline things? I'm gonna have to flaunt my ignorance here and say I'm not sure. There's about 40 different um licensed apps that go with like the standard license that you already have. And when you add on the premium licenses and the E3 and then the E5 and ratchet it up to put more online, you just get that many more Microsoft products. I'm sure there's benefits to some of them. I wouldn't know where to start to how to measure if those benefits outweigh the costs. You're paying like$1250 a month for a premium license right now for each user and that gives you your teams and your mailboxes and whatnot. Again, I didn't set that up. I inherited it. It's fine. It's good product for what the city needs. But if you start ratcheting it up, like a premium license goes to 20 bucks per user per month. And then if you go to E3, I think it's 22. And then, you know, the city's paying Microsoft directly. We're not um we're not a digital locker for your Microsoft licenses. The city just pays Microsoft direct. So the costs Yeah. So it sounds like anything else with Microsoft would just be a separate deal. It's nothing to do with the server. I mean, we would just be paying for the server. That's the analysis is how it compares to a hard server versus cloud server. Right. Right. Yeah. And it's definitely a payment now, pay me later. Microsoft is really good at hooking you and then driving up the cost. You know, they'll herd you to the cloud and then they want their monthly fee. So over time, you'll pay usually. All right. In the past, in my assessments, there was about a 60-month period before it reached equity for what you saved versus what you paid, you know, but now it seems like it's more half that. Like if you buy your own in 30 months, you'd be ahead of the game on price. So, uh, that's the server thing. And then I um I think somebody had a question on MiFi if that's still a question about the security. If not, you can Yeah. Okay. Customer. Yeah, that was me. I just brought up, you know, basically we're using a MiFi as I understand it just to get some sort of remote access. That's correct. And if we if we enable the VPN that that that remote access wouldn't be necessary in a separate device. And I know we're paying like $40 a month, I think, for the MiFi. So, basically, if we enable the VPN, then any place where anyone had access to internet from Caribou to hotel or wherever it is, you literally it'd be click on the VPN, put in a password, and now your your laptop is on a secure network. That that is really I and that's that's right almost like how it could work. the security breach is in using somebody else's uh network versus your own. Uh we didn't sell the Wi-Fi. We have no benefit from the MiFi, so I'm not trying to defend it here. But if you go to a hotel and you use their Wi-Fi, you're now on their network first before you establish your VPN connection, which you are correct, it is secure. Just being on their network exposes you to sniffers and hackers. you would have to be aware of, you know, anytime you're connecting on a to a public network that doesn't have a password, obviously, but most, you know, is if there's places where you as you check in, you get a password, here's on my network, and that definitely helps have a VPN that you have access that way. So, that'd be potentially um is there how how you know I know you listed it on the list of things. How much is how much does it take to set up the VPN? We already have it. It's already part of your Sonic Wall. It's you own the licenses there. There's no monthly fee for it. It's you already have it, right? Then my other question was regarding the server. Basically, as I understand it, we're mainly just using a server for um file storage and uh one app. Yeah. Okay. So, it's an application. So, an app. So, what was the last? It's a financial software. Yeah. It's software. It's called an app. In that use it's called an app server but it's one program. It's a program that's that's server based. In other words, it is secured file storage. So it's a print server, right? So the other advantage of keeping the server local is that is a ginormous uh uh value to the city that we wouldn't necessarily want to that there there could certainly be risks of using clouds as clouds could theoretically be breached. um and and having it locally we know where it is where versus if the cloud went down we have no way of accessing the software now until the cloud came back up. So that would be another advantage of sticking to the server and having that locally as I understand it. Would that be correct? That's correct. Yeah. One of the class was the recommended in that server. Why the recommendation against us? chips and we do sometimes or you know if anybody can get into our system then they can get into baseline then credit stuff there we don't really but that was a recommendation in the class currently we're for our internet access we're being served through ARVIC correct through our contracts is is there will we at some point with the new fiber project be served by Comcast and if so is there any change in that cost of service? Well, we uh as a um we inherited do anything so I have to check this area. However, Ar is a good product and they're competitive with Comcast. Uh good service, good good product. I have an idea to save you some money on that, too. We can get to that next. Mr. Mayor, Council Member Swson, go ahead. This sort of a wacky idea, but would an ISP ever help you purchase a server so that you're not using more bandwidth accessing the cloud? Is that even a thing? just seems like they might have an interest in not not going on the plug. It's an increased amount. That's an interesting thought. I haven't seen that out there. It seems interesting idea like if there was an incentive to keep you away from it or to it heard you one way or the other. I'm not sure. Good thought though, Mr. Mayor. Counc on the on the list, but if we're talking about new workstations, knowing Yeah. Knowing full well that Windows 10 is going end of life in October, is it that these workstations are that old where they're not able to be upgraded to Windows 11 or they're just on Windows 10 now? That's right. There's three in the environment that can't be upgraded, but they're not critical, mission critical. There's some things with backups. I don't want to get into the weeds. I too am aware of the time that this takes, but I could give you an assessment, email it out on backups and what would be better. Um, but one of them, I'm sorry, two of the old systems we just redeployed as backups and then one was in this building just downstairs acting as sort of a monitor for the wireless and it was a freebie. So, we gave it to you and it was old and we knew it wasn't going to last past October. So, and obviously Windows 10 will run after October. It will run, right? Yeah. It's just a matter of what updates that Microsoft is pushing. That's right. and we and we can still protect it uh with one protection, you know, EDI protection after October. A lot of places I I'm new to government work and I always said that governments wanted to be ultra compliant. We go out of compliance, security compliance after October 14th, but it doesn't mean they stop working. I still run controllers with Windows XP. I mean, they still work. They're just not very secure. Right. So, we'd look forward to your email uh with your recommendations. I think that'd be a great addition. Be happy to. Is there any other questions for uh I I have one thing I'd like to you to bring to bring that up. Here. So, this building has a arid connection. The fire department has an RV connection and this city hall has a fire ar connection. 200 bucks about for this one fire department and city hall uh is $400. So, we could tunnel right to that building there. You don't have to go deep because it's low volt. We could do a little tunnel into there. Somebody wanted to put a computer in there anyways. We could put a that computer and put a network switch and that would extend the network to the fire department and we could get rid of one of these um arbit connections when the time came, you know, and we could also get rid of the wireless bridge and have a little bit more stability with the cameras. Um, Casey did a great job of creating the wireless bridge and getting the cameras to work, but wired is just way more robust than wireless for that type of ongoing feed. So, it would cost, you know, five or six hundred bucks to throw that together, but after a few months, it would pay itself back if we could drop one of the RV things. And I think I have enough leverage with ARVIG where I might be able to get them in a figure four headlock and get them out of the contract. So, I'm going to try anyways. But then there's another thing that might cost more but it might save even more money. So Zo came through how many years ago and they ran a bunch of fiber and there's some fiber connections that are running around here that I can't trace and I don't I don't do I don't have fiber tracing equipment. you know, Ethernet, BNC, coax, no problem. Fiber, I don't have the equipment. But I think there might be some lines that are already run from the city hall to here and the fire department, which means we could get rid of both the extra arbit connections, just have the one at the city hall and extend the network over fiber with a couple of switches. So, in other words, you could put a few bucks into this thing maybe and eliminate two monthly costs, which would be pretty close to $400 a month savings. So, I was kind of just looking for permission to spend some of your money to try to save money down the road if you thought that was a good idea, too. What does it cost to ping the uh the fiber? How how much does it cost to pay the fiber to see if you see I just need to find somebody and hire them who's got the equipment to to try to uh tone out the fiber and then see you know so can you get a get a quote and send it in and absolutely yeah just wanted to make sure it was something that you guys are interested in before what I don't want to do is give permission to say hey just go forward but we we need a quote okay Mr. Council member R. Yeah. Natalie and I talked about all I don't know it was a good year year and a half ago about doing some consolidation after things kind of after we when we were in a position and now that we have fiber in place to reduce the cost that there's theoretically could be some consolidating done. Um the one thing to keep in mind is the fire department needs some sort of backup whatever that is. Okay. Just whatever whatever they have. I believe that that was part of the reason that um they we at the time we they were either using Zo for the backup or they actually we still had a and I don't know if we still are now paying um just Central Link because that was the for the for the fire department. Good thought. But yeah, I'm all for it. I mean that should be we should we should be able to see theoretically see considerable savings by eliminating a couple you know $400 either two or $400 a month over time. All right. Mr. Mayor, sorry. Um, the recycling center was mentioned. So, anything that we do that um allows us to um uh use the recycle center, we can use grant money towards that. So, anything doing so if we are going to try to upgrade the system so that our cameras are working better, that we can use our grant money for. Oh, that's excellent. And if we if we do to buy equipment, whatever. That's part of either way that we would go with either the fiber or just running Ethernet through there, we would still need the Ethernet from here to there. I think a couple hundred bucks a week, no problem. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Thank you very much, Craig. All right. We're moving on to item number nine, which is engineering. So, Shane, I think you're up. Uh, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I believe the first item is the part one uh MS4 application and that's just a a really simple application form that is required to be sent in to the MPCA uh I think it was May 20th uh is the deadline. Uh we already have an MS4 permit and so this would just be continuing of that permit coverage. Uh this is again this is a really easy application form. A $400 application fee goes with it. Uh but I do anticipate that later this year we'll have a much more involved application form. Uh usually several hundred p several hundred questions. So so this one just quick clarification this one gets us uh the application is good for five years with this particular one. Yes. Uh Mr. Mayor that's correct but there is the application is broken into two parts. This is part one and part two. I don't know. I can't say exactly when it's going to come out, but it's anticipated to come out later this year. Okay. So, I think we have to wait because we do have to wait. Yeah, that's what I was just looking at because we started staring at a resolution right now. But if we want to talk about the bids and plans, I don't know if that's something that engineer wants to get start or wait. Are you going to be referring to these maps or these are you just give it to us for our study? Oh, Mr. Mayor, Councy, make a motion to approve the part one application for the MS4 general permit. I'll second. Okay. So, we've got our uh we got our motion, we got our second, we got all of our council members, all those in favor of the part one application, uh say I I oppose. Motion carries. respect before next. Any concern with council on that? I I don't know if that it needs a vote. I think we can move forward with it. Thank you. Unless council member Ryan, you tell me something different, but I'm not aware of. Okay. So, we should be able to move forward. Back to you, sir. Uh so, Mr. Mayor, the other item on the agenda is your 2025 overlay project. Uh so at the uh last meeting uh that you consider this project, you ordered the plans and spec and specifications. Those plans with specifications have now been prepared. Uh and so now you have a couple of resolutions to continue to advance with that project. Uh the first resolution would be a resolution approving the plans and specs and ordering the after bids. Uh just a couple of uh couple of items on the plan and specs. So, uh, the bids are scheduled to be opened on June 10th at 2 p.m. Uh, these specifications call for a substantial completion on September 12th, 2025 and then final completion November 1st, 2025. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that the contractor is going to wait until then to complete this project, but generally what we find is when we give a a fairly large window, uh, we get the best prices. And because we're a little bit late getting these bids out to market on this project, we thought September 12th was a good date. With that, uh we've uh done a uh kind of a final engineered estimate based on the final construction plans. We're still right at that 43,000 uh that was included in the feasibility study. So no change there. Uh so the you have one resolution that that first resolution again would be approving plans and specs and order and ad for bids. Maybe I'll stop there if you have any questions. Yeah, good. Any questions for for for Shane on this one? If not, Council Member Ryan, you want to go ahead? I think you can go ahead and consider the resolution separately. All right. So, Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion to um approve the plans and specs and and ordering the bids. I'll second. Council member Glazer, a second. Perfect. We'll go go forward with our vote. All those in favor say I. I. I. Oppose. Motion carries. Back to you, Shane. So, Mr. Mayor, this next resolution is setting the amount that will be assessed to the benefiting properties and also calling for the assessment hearing. Uh, calling for the assessment hearing will require us to pick a date. Uh, because right now the date is blank in in the resolution. Uh, as I just mentioned, the bid the bid opening is scheduled for June 10th. Uh, so we probably want to target something a little bit later in June. I don't know if the city's plan on having a second meeting in June, but maybe that second meeting date would be a good uh time to have that assessment hearing. I'm not tracking a second meeting in June at all. Anybody else? Okay. So, could it wait till the 8th of July or do we need to call or is your recommendation to call another meeting in the end of June? Uh, Mr. Mayor, it could it could wait till July 8th. Uh, bids are good for 60 days. Uh, it just if if we wait so uh maybe backing up a step, there are several different ways to uh structure assessment projects. What the city of now then has done for at least the past uh five or ten years is we have held the assessment hearing prior to awarding the the contract and that way if there are any objections to the amount of the assessments the city council is aware of those or knows those uh before you award the contract. Uh with that you als you also accepting a little bit of risk because uh you're calling or you're setting the amount of the assessments before you actually have the bids back. Uh some cities choose to have their assessment hearing after the project is complete and that way they know all their project costs. The challenge with that is if they have properties that challenge the assessment uh they don't know that until after the project is done. You've already come to I prefer not to go that route, right? I don't think that's the best option for our residents. So asking the council does it I think it makes sense then. So if bids are complete by what date in June you said June 10th. So what if we targeted that following week like the 17th? It's because we already got a council meeting on the 10th. Can we just move that council meeting? We could, but they're already set in every So I would not recommend moving it. Now, if we would we have all the bids in time for the council meeting on the 10th? We already have one on June 10th. Yeah, Mr. Mayor. Uh June 10th is uh that date is based on advertising statutes because we're required to advertise for uh a certain number of or a certain amount of time before we can open bids. So, we cannot make the your your deadline for your council packet for the June 10th meeting. Thank you. Uh so with that in mind, I mean July 8th is not a bad option. It just uh means that you can't award it until July 8th, which you you know really I don't see as the end of the world. Uh there's still uh several weeks in July left and all of August and the first part of September uh to construct this project. So uh again, it's just uh you know, with these road projects and with there's so many steps being involved, it is better to get started earlier. Uh so keep that in mind for 2026 if we want to do a real project. But since we started later, here's gonna be my recommendation. We try to meet uh one more time in June. I know that not everybody's going to be excited, but would would you guys be available on June 17th? And even if we kept it as a shorter meeting, then we could get it approved because we are starting later than what was recommended in the beginning. So open up to the council for discussion and uh to see if the 17th would work. I was going to throw that out. So think that would work for you? Yes, I'm good. I'll tell you sadly I'm missing our work too. Yeah, you check busy. That um so everybody said yes. So um Miss Johnson, will you put a council meeting on for the 17th? Yeah. Uh and then we can take care of the review the bid process and understand it. Would that be at six o'clock? Check. Mr. Mayor, is that just the hearing that night? I'm just uh if we're if we're planning on a regular council meeting, we have no idea how long the hearing is going to take. If so, let's just do the hearing. Would that be the recommendation? what I'm what I'm I would love to have like a set amount of time and not be here for four hours. So I think that would be a great then our project can move forward because we can get through it. So if we just kept at that that's your recommendation also. I think that would be better because if we're trying to do business and coordinating other schedules, we'd have no idea what time the rest of the meeting would start. So I'd stick to just the hearing. The council members good with that. Yeah. Yes. I think it makes sense. Customer I mean typically our assessment hearings are not long and it's they're quick. That's correct. Yeah. Generally the residents have the most questions at the first hearing, the public improvement hearing. Uh we and there's fewer uh residents that attend at the assessment hearing, especially for uh an assessment of this amount. We might get a little bit higher attendance. You know, we're in the eight or $10,000 range, but these are uh in a $3,000 range. Yeah. Just getting this punched in my calendar so I didn't listen to this. I would just ask that we we leave it open for the ability if something else does come up that we have that time scheduled and we we could use it if we not make a full council meeting but leave it option open if something else has to get done. Yeah. Would that work for you, Council R? Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Because I I mean I I'm thinking an hour for an assessment here. Yes, please. That's No, I mean that's typically for an assessment hearing is an hour. So, back to you, Shane. Anything else? Uh, no, Mr. Mayor. If there's no questions regarding that, then uh uh uh you could call for a motion for the resolution resolution uh calling for the assessment hearing. Mr. Mayor Council member Rainbow. I would move uh the resolution declaring the cost to be assessed and ordering a preparation of proposed assessment and notice of an assessment hearing for June 17th, 2025 at 6 p.m. Perfect. Anybody second? Perfect. We got a second. Let's move it to vote. All those in favor say I. I oppose. Motion carries. Official. Does that complete uh everything you have to cover, sir? All right. Right. So number nine is complete. We are moving on to number 10, planning and zoning. Cindy, you get start with monthly report. We go to Natalie and then back to Cindy. So I'll just scan for any questions on the five months of report. Hey Natalie, uh you're going to cover the RCA request and direction to lower the general planning invoices. Okay. Yeah, we had talked about trying to figure out how to lower the general planning invoices. So Cindy and I met, we kind of came up with a plan. She kind of went back and was going back and forth and dealing with some of the different residents and some of the issues that we have. I, you know, in the re in the RCA, there is kind of a summary of what the issues are and why it takes so long in our city. Um, and I'm going to go ahead and throw it the ball back to Miss Nash and let her explain some of it. And she can use a couple of um, current applications, I guess, to kind of explain why this on page 329. Is that what we're referring to? Okay, Miss Nash. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, um, definitely appreciate the need and the desire to try to come up with ways to reduce the planning expenses in the city. Um, and believe me, a lot of this is not things that I would prefer to be doing on a daily basis. So, I genuinely would like to find a way to reduce some of these as well. Um, ultimately though, the reason after being here for a year, the reason I think that it's really difficult to do that is there there's multiple aspects to it. So, one, your ordinances are unnecessarily complicated. Um, in some cases, they're outdated. They're conflicting with each other in different parts. Um, and it's a very difficult thing to walk people through. Um, just as an example, something as simple as calculating lot area. That seems like it should be simple, right? Just what's the perimeter of the lot? Figure out the area. Well, no. It depends on the year that the property came into being. So, we have to go back and figure out go into literal county records and figure out how long that legal description has been on that parcel to figure out which method of calculating it applies. Then even worse, once even once we know that for this given property, how we use lot area is still a little different depending on whether we're calculating it for an accessory structure or how many animals you can have on it. And there's still multiple calculations for even any given property. So, it would be nice to be able to go in and streamline your ordinances, take out all of those um situations that are in there that are causing it to be a situation where a resident can't just look at one place and figure out what the answer to that question, whatever it is might be. How much accessory square footage can I have? Um, is this lot buildable? That's one that you had at your last meeting and you have on tonight's agenda as well. recognizing a parcel that's a meets and bounds parcel for buildability and that's based upon some statements that are in your subreg. Um it's necessary to figure out if they're buildable. They should have two septic systems available to them etc. Um but there's different ways of doing that that are more timeefficient than the way we're having to do this right now. So, um, using as an example the one that was on your last agenda, that was actually a situation where I think everybody meant well, right? Um, a property owner had come in about four years ago wanting to split up some properties. They had a large parcel. They wanted to create it into three, but they didn't want to pay all the park dedication at that time. They didn't want to test for septics. So, one of them was determined to be agriculture and kind of set to the side. So that's the parcel you looked at at last the previous meeting to this one. Um that resulted then in that person buying a parcel that wasn't buildable at that point in time which is kind of an expectation of people that mostly if there if something's been recently subdivided they think they should be able to build upon it. So then we had to go through that process of figuring out where the septics are. Um, as part of that process, we discovered that um, some information, some different handling had occurred regarding the park dedication fees. So, the city lost some park dedication fees on that one. Um, so it kind of compounds mistakes. And so, it's it's nice when you can get to a point where you treat everything basically the same. Everything happens at the same time. there is nobody um paying park dedication fees later than another person etc. just so that we can reduce the amount of time I'm spending but also the amount of time that staff has to spend in looking up information and not knowing that um some of these things are um that there might be different exceptions for different properties. We don't have to spend that time searching for those exceptions. Um, and I think I kind of covered all four of my recommendations in one fell swoop, but a big part of this is trying to get your ordinances into a situation where all those carveouts don't exist to begin with and then streamlining the processes to go along with that. Council member Johnson, I'm just curious, you know, I've heard a lot of sort of generalized talk about, you know, fixing the ordinances and I think that sounds like a great idea. I'm just wondering, I mean, how do we how do we do it? like who who does it? How quickly can we do it? I mean, how do we get this started? It seems like a no-brainer. So, there's multiple ways you can do it. Um, I do this all the time. And my suggestion here is to not use your existing ordinance and update from it. I would start from somebody else's that I have that's clean and then I would add in your things. So, your setbacks, your um different uses in different districts. So I' use their structure and their definitions and formatting and then add your stuff into it to make it yours. And would this be like a you project or a Bob Rupy project or both of you? Like I guess I would do most of it. You would do most of it. I think it sounds like an excellent idea to move that forward. I mean we would lose some things that you have. Again, there wouldn't by doing this, the intent would be to eliminate the dozen ways of calculating lot area as an example. I think the key thing is putting it back into the city staff's court where they can actually answer a question instead of every question having to come to you. So, I think a standardization, that's the term I'm going to use. It's a complete standardization of the city ordinances, keeping what is good for now then in now then's ordinances, but cleaning up the verbiage that have been written and rewritten. And so so but do we have a quote to do that? That's that's the key question. No, I have a I would propose to use my hourly rate to do that. Um it's very risky to um try to give a quote for me because I would give you a really high quote because I don't know how many public hearings you're going to want to go through, etc., etc. I think we can keep the cost lower by just using the hourly rate. I would prefer not to go that route. So, is there another option where somebody could come in and give us a quote and then you could provide a quote and we do the bidding process just like anything else instead of I I don't want to use an hourly rate. I want So, when you do projects, projects are done on a bid process. This is this would be considered a project. Um I would prefer not to go the hourly rate way. Uh two years ago when this was brought up about all the ordinances needing to be updated, I did speak with a company um at the league or at one of our conferences. Um and the quote was, you know, $30,000, $40,000 um where they would come in, start over, but then they don't know what now then is and what we want. Um I think it's called American Legal. Oh, do you remember Mr. Mayor? Go ahead. So, that's a codification company. They don't actually draft new ordinances for you. They take the ones you have that are in many pieces and they put them into a um online codification system. They do some amount of updating as part of that to address things that might be something that isn't completely compliant with a state statute or something. Um, but they're not doing No, they're not. They're taking what now then has and just updating it to state statute. And they told me it would take over a year. What do you estimate the time to be? I'll be honest, my hesitation is that I don't know once we get into that if we would spend three years in meetings trying to talk about it. Um, and there's no incentive for the cost to be for that time to be shortened up if it's if it's a flat fee. I'm just being honest. Mr. Mayor, I know hourly is risky. Um, but we also or at least I would not expect a contractor to give an estimate and then and I'm just going to throw in numbers. Let's say I have an estimate of $10,000 and it because they're so screwed up and there's so many different things. Um, it costs 20,000 and then that contractors has to eat that 20,000. So, um, hourly is risky for us. Um, a flat fee is risky for the contractor. Um, I'm comfortable with going with an hourly. Um, we need to get it done. These our ordinances, unless you look at an ordinance and it tells a a revised date, they're from township date. So, they they are they are old. They have not been kept current. And one of the many reasons we haven't is because of the expense to do it. And um you know that's bad on council that we haven't moved that forward over the years. Um I think it's something we need to look at you know whether we have money in we find we have money in the budget this year to start something. Um, if we start with if city could give us a priority list of our ordinances, whether we tackle the easy ones first or the more more difficult or the ones that give you the more tr most trouble, we can kind of piece part it and maybe then in the 26 budget, we can look at um authorizing additional monies to get that accomplished. Miss Nash, did you work on the planning and zoning one? You've done some work on that one already, haven't I? I've made some notes on it. I haven't started doing any work on it, Mr. Mayor. Council member Spencer, I'm in agreement with Councilwoman Rainville. I I don't really have a problem with an hourly rate. My concern would be the same as Cindy's in that, you know, it it could drag on and on and on, multiple meetings, you know, debating, you know, whatever subsection of an ordinance. And so, um, you know, I mean, there's that concern, you know, hourly or a bid. And I, you know, I I wouldn't be opposed to a starting point of just having Cindy, you know, create us an outline. You know, it not like an official estimate, but pay her a couple hours to take a look at it and come up with like a reasonable timeline and a plan and an estimate of what she thinks the cost will be. you know, as long as there weren't, you know, double the amount of meetings that we anticipated or something. Um, no, I mean, Cindy, you know, she is familiar with now then and what specifically in our ordinances are terrible and so I I would think she's in the best position to maybe revise them, but I'm the new so this ties back into the resident. So as they go through an application process, what they're stating is it's too much to do this, too much to do this. So there's a a cost to our city, but what it does is it saves the residents money as they want to go. So it's definitely the right thing to do. The question is how do we do it? So the great thing is we live in the great state of or great United States. There's 50 states out there. There's got to be somebody out there that does this. And I I would like to go and get some coach. That's what I would like to do. I I really I know Cindy can do it. Miss Nash can do it. There's no doubt. But let's get some competitive codes out there. Let's figure out some options. Well, and 30 or $40,000 does not seem super unreasonable to me considering how much our residents are paying and, you know, how it's potentially impacting development in our city. So, but it's something we'll probably have to budget for 2026. We we do not have funding right now to tackle it. So, I think we've got a little bit of time and then we make sure we we budget it or something to that effect and we'll figure out the best process. Yes. No sir. Mr. Mayor, council member Ryan. Um I just noticed that you know there was at least there was a resident um at the uh public forum that we had last week who was who was talking about something about uh implementing some sort of flat fee base for for certain services. And I have no idea if if that should be something that we f factor into anything like this. I don't even know how exactly how that whole process would work or how that would lay out. But um you know I think that if we're looking at revising fees fees and and or um that certainly to me would fall under a strategy to reduce consultant expenses. It's definitely what the residents are asking for. There's no doubt about it. Um I asked this question to Miss Johnson quite some time ago, a couple months ago and saying what are our other sister cities doing? And right now the flat fee is by far the I'm going to say the best concept because they know exactly what they're going to pay and there's no doubt about it. But most of them weren't doing that at this point. No, they're not. There wasn't anybody doing it at this point. No, I couldn't find anybody that was doing the flat fee. And I can't imagine that a consultant is going to do anything at a flat fee. Um, especially because every city has its own specialties. Every city has its own issues. Um, we're not the only one in this situation. Um, another city that I spoke with again last last week, um, they're in the same kind of a process. They inherited a bunch of ordinances that contradict each other and they're trying to go through and their council wanted in staff to do it. She was in tears twice when I was talking to her because she said, "I can't do this." And it's kind of like what I said at the beginning of the year that I was going to depend upon our consultants because that's what they do for a living. Um, it's we could certainly go out for some quotes, but again, it's going to have to take time for somebody to get to know the city and then know exactly what it is. And the council is actually going to have to come up with a real direction is where do we want to go? Where what do you want to look like in five years? What do we want to look like in 10 years and 20 years? Because as far as I'm concerned, I have not yet seen any real plans of where do you want to have any kind of additional commercial? Where are we going to get the money to improve the roads? I mean, Shane, you sent an email um a couple of weeks ago. What was it if we didn't spend a million? Could you rephrase that? I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was we had to pay a a a large amount every year just to get caught up and to maintain what we have. Is that correct? Uh yeah, Mr. Mr. Mayor. Uh, Administrator Johnson. Uh, yes. I mean, we in the future if the city of NA wants to maintain its paved roads, uh, my advice would be that we have to raise the amount of funding that's that goes to them. Otherwise, we're just going to, you know, the the size of balloon is going to get larger. Um, and it basically just comes down to is we haven't maintained when we needed to and we haven't replaced when we needed to. Yeah, I think I I really think what the the root of the problem is is yes, we are on the wrong topic. Let's roll that back in. We were talking specifically about updating orders. I appreciate your comments, but you are correct, sir. And that's kind of where it was going anyway is that we just need to update. Can we go to send it out for for bid? Can we do that? Absolutely. find somebody that can do it and hopefully we can find three people and Miss Nash can do it also and let's see what that cost is and bring that back to the council. Is there any more discussion that needs to happen on this one tonight? We don't have to vote on or anything. I guess we got a request for council action on it. Which is I would like a motion to direct please. Okay. I'll make a motion to direct the city staff to uh find some or to go get some bids for revising our ordinances. I'll second that. We move it to vote. All those in favor say I. I. I. Those opposed. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you, ma'am. You're back. Thank you. Please get a poll from Miss Nash also. Absolutely. Um, next item on the agenda is approval of a resolution accepting a parcel for residential development for the Parsons. Um, so they are purchasing a parcel off of Pineker Road that is not platted. Um, has is a vacant parcel. Um, and this is taking it through that process to recognize it as a parcel. They would owe a park dedication fee. And um Pinecker is a byuse road. So we would also ask them to um grant an easement to the city for the rightway on Pineker. Mr. Mayor, a rightaway on what? Off the road. Um so some roads we have the rightway for because it was deed. In some cases we might have easements for right away. And in other cases we the roads just always been there. So it's by use. So this would be formalizing the easement over it. So that if you ever had a road reconstruction, Mr. Mayor, make a motion to accept the parcel for residential development for the par. Second. Second confirm. Council member Ray moving it to vote. All those in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Next one. Um I'd like to cover the next three in one presentation. Yes, please. So, we have A and B addition. Um, it's a it's a five lot subdivision with a new road going into it. On your agenda is three things. The final plat. You've previously seen the preliminary plat earlier this year. Um, a grading agreement and a development agreement and deed restriction for this parcel um or for this project. The grading agreement may or may not be needed. Um, we left some flexibility in. So the all Wellings can either choose to um go straight into construction of the whole project this year and record the plat and the development agreement or buy them some time if they would like to do grading this year and then next year do or even later this summer enter into the development agreement and record the plat. Any concerns at all from you? I read through this and I didn't have any concerns at all. None for me. Is there any council council members that have had questions on this? Mr. Mayor, go ahead, Mr. Mayor. There are no questions. I would move that we um accept the grading agreement and permit for the A&B addition and the final three separate res. Yep. Sorry. Okay. All right. I'll second your motion. The right page. All right. All those in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. There's one. You got two more yet. Stand by. Mr. Mayor, council member a motion to accept the uh final plat for the AMD edition. Second. Final plat page 347. Let's uh all those in favor say I. I opposed. Motion carries. Council member Ryan also make a motion to approve the development agreement for the A&B addition. What page up from that one? Go ahead, Mash. Council member Rainville, there are some blanks in the development agreement. And that is because depending on what year they would do this or if the grading's already been done, the um amount of the letter of credit might need to be changed and then um city engineer Nelson would figure that out on time before. So they're not dates we would. No, that was I would uh Mr. Mayor Council Rabel, I would move that we um approve the uh development agreement for A&B addition. Did you do that already? Oh, I'm sorry. Would you like to second? Second it. I second it. All right. Perfect. Let's move it to vote. All those in favor say I. I. Oppose. Motion carries. Sir, you are done now. Yes. All right. Does that complete everything for you, Miss Nash? Yes, it does. 10 is complete. We're moving on to number 11, the sheriff's monthly report. Sir, thank you for being patient. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll talk real fast so everyone can go to bed. The following is a report for the month of April 2025. We responded to 132 calls for service or a bar none, five alarms, 14 medicals, and nine animal calls. Starting with bar none calls on the 14th, we responded to an assault between two juveniles. Deputies mediated the situation. Two juveniles were transported to the hospital for evaluation and two were cited for assault and remain at the facility. On the 18th, a deputy responded for an assault report. Two juveniles were arrested and charged with fifth degree assault for their actions against staff. Both juveniles were transported to RJC, the juvenile facility. On the 22nd, deputy responded for a juvenile having a mental health crisis. That juvenile was transported to the hospital by ambulance. On the 28th, deputy responded to assist with a juvenile having a mental health crisis. That juvenile was also transported to the hospital by ambulance. Moving on to the rest of our calls for service. On the 2nd, in the 19300 block of Rhinestone Street, deputies arrested a male on a felony out ofount warrant and transported him to jail. On the 14th, at Viking and Jasper, deputies responded for a two vehicle crash with injuries. Both drivers were transported to the hospital by ambulance for suspected minor injuries. Both vehicles were towed and one driver was cited for failure to yield. On the 16th in the 19300 block of Ryan Stone Street, a male was arrested for a warrant at a residence without incidents and transported to jail. On the 16th in the 8,000 block of Viking deputy responded to a personal personal injury crash at a business. The driver mistakenly hit the gas pedal instead of the brake and ran into a barrier pole in the parking lot. Both vehicle occupants were transported to the hospital with minor injuries. On the 21st in the 19700 block of Street, deputy responded for a burglary at the business. There had been an alarm call there earlier, but when deputies checked, they found that the business was secure at that time. Uh when business owners arrived later, they discovered that a safe had been taken during the burglary, but nothing else of value and that there was nothing of value inside the safe either. Uh the safe was later recovered several miles away in a ditch. Uh it's currently being processed for DNA, so this case will remain under investigation. For property crimes, time on DNA right now is about a year plus. So that one will sit out in the wind for a while. Uh at that at this time, there's no current suspects. On the 24th in the 181 100 block of Uranium Street, a deputy responded to a check to welfare of an 87 year old female. She was found deceased in the home uh suspected of natural causes. RCID division was contacted to investigate but nothing suspicious at this time. Only other miscellaneous note, Deputy Huffs had a baby girl this morning, so congratulations to them and he'll be on leave for about 10 weeks, I believe. So, Deputy Benner Baniac will be filling in the contract during that time. Thank you for letting us know. Tell them congratulations, please. Absolutely. Any questions. Um, Mr. CL, go ahead. Lieutenant Bangard. So, on the uh statistics here on this couple couple categories I have a questions on. Assaults up dramatically over 2024. Is that primarily bar none? Almost exclusively. um misdemeanor arrests uh six for the same period in 2024 34 in 2025 also majority bar none so misdemeanor arrests would include the fifth degree assaults okay that are getting charged with bar none and then traffic arrests up significantly uh 17 previous year 47 this year yes uh you can I would say for the most part thank Jacobson likes to work a lot of traffic um so It's kind of just what the deputies like to do in their free time. Um, how much they like to run traffic and ask they like to write tickets. He works your uh your Wednesday, Thursday shift and then every other weekend. So for sure on Wednesdays and Thursdays I would drive drive a little more carefully maybe. Drive carefully. But these are these are like arrests. So they've done something more than just so arrest on our category means it includes citations. So a traffic arrest would be getting a ticket. Okay. Thank you for the clarification. And the majority of those tickets are going to be misdemeanor violations. There aren't too many petty misdemeanor traffic tickets out there anymore. Almost everything is misdemeanor these days. Thank you for the clarification on that. That's a lot of arrests. They're not arrests. They're tickets. Thank you. Yeah. Any other questions? And no sir, any other questions for No, thank you. Thank you for being here. And if you want to excuse yourself, you certainly are welcome. You do not. Oh, that's right. You got that coming up. Um I've requested that uh Dia read over the fire department muscle report. So take it over, Dia. Mr. Mayor. All right. Um monthly calls for April, 31 total calls. Um, five, fire, mutual aid, and grass, 13 medicals, 13 calls for service. Um, examples are standby, canceled in, and route, and questions from citizens. This month was a busy month and started out with the grass fire on April 5th. The department responded to a grass fire that was threatening structures in the 225th block at of Bow Street. The wind had driven a fire across several acres where the department was able to make a stand where was able to make a stand and allow the fire to move past the buildings into an open field thus saving a barn full of hay and a storage building full of boats and trailers. We were assisted by St. Francis, Oakrove, Elk River, and Ramsey fire departments. This is an example of the strong relationships that we have with our neighboring departments. Captain Cody Oson and family welcomed a baby girl into our department family in the month of April. We wish the captain and his family much joy and hopefully long restful nights of sleep with their new bundle of joy. Lastly, on April 12th, firefighter uh Deetsz participated in a charity boxing event in Maplewood. This event pitted police against fire in a charity boxing match. Firefighter Deetsz fared well in the event and St. Francis fire crews covered the city of now then for calls for service from 5:00 pm to midnight on that night which allowed our members and their families to support firefighter deets at this event. Thank you. Did it say how well he did? Yeah, he fared well. He fared well. Exactly know what that means, but all right. Well, okay. Thank you for reading that. Let's move to number third. Mr. Mayor, before we go, I was just thinking, Ruin, when we talk about mutual aid, um would it be possible that we could talk to Chief Miller about adding um the calls where other cities are coming to help us as well as the calls where we're going to help them? I think we can certainly request that with him. Miss Johnson, will you take note and talk to him? He's he's been very willing to Yeah. No, I'm just that would just be interesting to find out that information. So, especially because it it's it's at least been mentioned in the report. That's a perfect delay. So, Council Member Glazer is back. If we can move on to number 13, administrator update, please. What kind of should be, what kind of calls should be. Um, we also talked about them contacting a line directly for some of their medical rather than going through the 91 system and logging down. Um, after meeting with all of their staff, we sent out leadership. Um, and we talked about and that there's nothing currently on record that they are actually operating in. Since then, we've done a little bit more digging. Um they are continuing to look for something that started the whole process back in the probably 70s I believe because what they were thinking um but again nothing is preferred we haven't anything um I think the lieutenant and I were in agreement that was really good you can tell by the number of calls this month for the last one I think it was great I also believe that uh I spoke with Deborah again today who's one of the leadership people there. Um, and she was asking me if it was just a cup for the school or a cup for the whole thing. My opinion was it needed to be for the whole thing to be working. Um, because we currently don't have anything. And then, Lieutenant, do you have anything you'd like to add about else? Yeah, just it was productive. We'll be having quarterly meetings this whole leadership group that met going forward so we can kind of all stay in touch to make sure things are still. Thank you guys for going out there and just like you said the call volume drop has already been substantial just by being proactive and going out meeting. So thank you for doing that. The next item were the action items. I provided the quotes. I wasn't at that meeting um but the action items that were given to me was to provide quotes for these things. Um, I did give that to everybody in the packet. Um, the road study was a map that came to you separately um today because it was just too large to to send. Um, it was a rolled up Yep, those are the rolled up ones there. Um, and I just need direction. What does council want to do with the rest of those things? Because I wasn't a part of that meeting, I'm not sure what the direction was except to provide numbers. Perfect. Can we talk take let uh council member Glazer talk about the estimate you're bringing into this because that's the next thing that's on here is uh the metal roof and that's what you brought in as for well if you'll notice at the back of that portion of the packet there's an email from Mr. lays dated May 7th um to Miss Stoko in regards to this and um one of the owners of Minnesota Metal Exteriors had sent an estimate back in 2024 um Mr. Anderson, her partner, and I believe he's the actual one that came up with the spec that got up on the roof and determined that this is this is an overlay application. Um, and so when I saw that saw that the estimate wasn't in here, I I acquired this, you know, the official estimate stays their price stayed the same from October till now. That is the official estimate that's missing. Yes. Okay. Thank you. I didn't didn't know that. So 17,400 was your that is what they saved with for an estimate, right? Okay. Thank you. So, wasn't there an additional estimate from what? Wild construction. No, it was just the two for the roofing wild construction. You're looking at that. Yes, you're looking at that right now. Is the first estimate is wild construction. So, which is [Music] $17,760. This other one $17,400. That was 17,000 760 and 17,400. That's the two estimates we got. Correct. Um and council, if you have any questions about what needs to be done on the roof, Mr. Trader from Rum River did say because he did go out and help decide what needed to be done. And a re- roof would be adequate in your opinion. And that's the same thing you told me. Correct. Not a tear off because of this the the And Andy can attest to this that the the steel that's on the roof now is actually providing some structural strength that's that we would want to maintain and just overlay. Are both these bids from people in Melvin? Uh one company is in Anoka and one company um is Minnesota Metal Exteriors is in Old Black. Mr. Mayor um Dana Dana Henjam is um with Wild Construction. Say that one more time. Dana at the back is with Wild Construction. Okay. That's on Breaking Boulevard also. No, no, it's in Anoka in the city of Anoka proper. Perfect. Mr. Mayor, that's Rainbow. Go ahead. metal has also done work for us before. They did the pavilion in Nan Park, I believe it was, and the garage in the baseball le good quality work. I've not heard that there was any issues from a few years back. There you go. That's Hey, any other points of discussion that need to take place? Do we have a resolution on this? Yeah. So, so Mr. Mayor, council, this was part of our capital improvement uh uh discussion um so we didn't have we just asked for direction for bids. Um which uh staff has provided um I think we would need a resol an RC and a resolution to move forward with it. And we were looking at um for capital improvement was the 26 budget. Um if we find I mean we we have capital park we have capital improvement money within the park funds. We have park fund money. So we in that yes so if we choose to go forward this year we can do that. So we bring it up next month when we have an we have an RCA to go with it resolution. We've got two bids. Do we need a third bid if it's under this dollar amount? So we're okay. But any other conversation on that? Natalie, I think we're coming back to view or Miss Johnson, will you talk about the next one? Um, you had asked for estimates for right the basketball court and a pickle ball court. Um, so I believe Mr. Glaze went out for quotes on that and we do also have that. So just looking for direction on that. Um, I believe we would have to use parks maintenance for that because that's not really a capital improvement. So, same thing on that. We're going to need an RCA to move forward with it, right? I was just looking for direction, though. It's based on these numbers. Did council want This is the $1,920. Yeah. I just wanted direction. That certainly doesn't seem excessive to me. Um, it's always nice if we have two bids, but member Brian, anything on that? I think it's just a matter of where does if as long as if it if it fits in the existing budget either in 25 or 26 then it could theoretically be investigated further because we know the residents have been asking for that. So couldn't it go just into park funds because it's part of the park? No, Mr. Mayo, this would be a maintenance item um in your regular park maintenance budget and there is maintenance money available. So we'll bring back an RCA for this is what what I understand. Okay. Excellent. The other was ask for a copy of that. Did anything get published with it or is it just the map? This is all we get for from for the amount of money we spent on it. Yeah, there's not a lot. Um Mr. Nelson, I sent you the um agreement or quote or the the scope of it and he was going to talk with me, but unfortunately because I was gone last week, I didn't get it to him until today. So, um I am providing that to you and hopefully next month I'll be giving more of an update of what we need and what it means. So, this wasn't your agency. This was somebody else doing this. Yeah. All right. So I recommend we do not go with this organization group. It's great. We've got a map. It's a good start. But um and then the it was already presented. Um and then the budget update was something that was prepared that you guys were looking for. Um Lexi was able to put it all together while I was gone. She pulled all of the reports. Um, we can go to it is basically page 424. Is that what you're referring to? It is page 424. Um, as of the last payroll, we've used 16.7.8 I'm sorry, 16.78% of the budget uh for full-time wages. Uh, the overtime $6,700. The administrative professional services is up because of Mr. Boils. Um, and public works has used $6,300. 6382. Um the overtime comes through from the full-time wages and if you look we're, you know, a quarter of the year past and we haven't used that yet. So Lori will be here to speak to a little bit of this as well. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, uh last year when we budgeted for um staff, we budgeted for three full-time staff and two part- timerrs at 30 hours each a week. and you have not maintained that and so the work needs to be done and the only staff you have to do it are the ones that are here. So that's where the overtime's coming in. We did not budget for overtime assuming that you'd be fully staffed. So that's why makes sense. Yeah. Mr. Council member is the the overtime here does that include um the adjustment for um Miss Johnson's new rate of pay? It does not. And then as far as Mr. Boil's concerned, I was taking a look at that at $17,000. He looks like he's only been averaging maybe 10 hours a week since January 15. It might be the average of that, but it's I mean he hasn't been working a lot. I his last bill is in the claims. I don't remember. I want to say 7,000. 7,000 something. We looked at it. Yeah. Any other key takeaways or points of discussion on this one? Does that complete your portion? Oh, yes. I'm so sorry. I was just waiting for a response. So, it sounds like no questions. You're complete. Moving on to new business. Say again, ma'am. Move on. All right. Moving on. 14 or number 14, new business. So, we're looking at approving resolution. Oh, there was one more point before we move off of yours. You had uh something you learned in your conference that I asked you to share that I just learned about today. Can you please bring that up? I did. Um, and it's a little uncomfortable to say, but as as I was going through the conference, at one point I asked the uh presenter to have any other cities that were like us with no services stand up and introduce themselves so that I could speak with them. Can you explain no services real quick? What is those services are? No liquor store, no police department, no library, no pool, um no water, no sewer, no sewer, no storm water. Um no electric company, no electric. So we're not billing the residents for really much of anything at all. um those cities that I spoke with, I actually had two administrators who were also part of this class come up to me and they were thinking about applying for the job and they asked, "Well, what do you have to do?" And so I said, "Well, we have the fire department and staff." And both of them kind of chuckled at me and said, "Well, what does the administrator do then?" Um, so I did talk with the other cities that are more like us that we don't have all of that billing and stuff and they are just with a clerk treasurer. Yes. Position. Um, I don't know what the decision was and maybe council member Brian or Rainville could enlighten us as to why we went to an administrator in the first place. Um, I am Mr. Mayor. Council member Brian. Go ahead, please. Well, we started out we didn't start out directly with an administrator. that was done after I was gone. We started out with a with a kind of at least some sort of um person that could be in charge of the a person that could be in charge of staff as well as handle the clerk the clerk duties because because of the the way the statutory city is set up we we would still have you know we're required to have a city clerk. So the original position wasn't directly an administrator, but it was like an administrative clerk or administrative clerk treasur. I believe that was where we started. Yeah. This ties directly uh in with what council council member Glazer talked about in bringing this up. And so I was a little bit shocked last because we had talked about bringing a city administrator. This is the information that she told me this today. I'm like, well, that ties exactly into what you had stated is like, do we need a city administrator? But if we don't have any of the services, the question coming back to the council is, do we really need an administrator? And I've like fully changed position on that that I don't think we need one anymore. But so I I had done a 180, but knowing that that that's like an aha moment is when you get it from the League of Minnesota cities and you're talking to others in the similar situation, they don't have they didn't. And like I said, the two that were interested in it asked what they would be administering. And I said, you know, Scott took a lot of the the complaint calls. He took a lot, you know, he negotiated a lot of the contracts. I mean, he did do a lot and took a lot of phone calls and was able to deal with some of the residents and that sort of stuff. But as far as administering a police force or a library or the pool or, you know, those kinds of things, we don't do that. Most of the cities, a lot of the cities actually have electric companies that are coming from the rivers and then they're billing for their electric. You know, they have city sewer and water. I out of all the people that were there in just my class alone there was 88 I believe cities representatives or you know represented and very few don't have city sewer water everybody else pretty much does even these tiny little towns have it but um that wasn't anything that was ever in now then's plan so those are things that you need extra staff for and doing and administered. Mr. Mayor, I want to tell you I appreciate you giving props to Mr. Ler, but I I do want to tell you that I think you work a hell of a lot harder than he ever did for the city. And now that Mr. Mayor C, I think that Yep. I'm very uncomfortable with comments being made about a previous employees performance by somebody that was not on the council at the time. And I just think that's very unfair. Um, you can have your beliefs. You can listen to whoever you want to listen to and they can tell you whatever they want to tell you. Um but you were not on the council at the time. Um if there were any default, if there were any deficiencies, it's it was on the previous council in that we if we didn't feel that he wasn't performing. We never did the performance evaluation. It was put on the agenda numerous times. It was removed from the agenda by and I'm not going to tarnish that person, but it was removed by an elected official. And so Mr. Laner never had the opportunity to have a discussion with council to to hear that we thought he was faulted. And so I think it's very unfair that a person who was not on that council is criticizing that previous employee. Mr. Leer worked really hard and please wrap it up. Um I I just think Mr. Ler worked really hard. He was in it was a hard position for him based on um direction or lack thereof provided to him. Mr. Go ahead, Council Member Rainbow. While while you may be uncomfortable with my position and my opinion on that, my expressing that isn't any different than you defending Mr. Swinson for for the comments that he's made on Facebook about people that he had no contact with prior to being on the council. We're getting so off topic, but you know, let's just drop some of that stuff, please. Let's not get off topic, guys. We had a very constructive conversation going here, and I would like to rejuvenate that. Um, I think this is critical information that she brought back. And what I would ask is, um, if we're comfortable doing a motion tonight, I know you had brought it up about, council member Glazer about potentially cancelling this, but I would like to make I'll just make a motion. I would like to cancel our search for the city administrator. Um, I don't think we need it and I think it ties into the next thing on the agenda is we we have the potential to retain Dia as a full-time member. But Mr. Mayor, so go ahead. You know, to to what you were just saying if where I had some questions about moving Miss Stokel from part-time to full-time because, you know, conditions were stipulated back in what I think u Julia and Shelley were hired in November. They were hired to work 25 to 30 hours a week, 30 hours waited on on the front end because of training. And so I had some hesitation to this because we were going to move from, you know, 50 to 60 hours part-time to now a full-time person in FTE um with no indication of what the benefits are going to cost starting um January 1, 2026. I would I would like to have known that. um and adding and then a part-time employee. If you're serious about moving to um eliminate the the city administrator's position, um a very serious s then I I think that's this is something that that I would get on board with. Any other discussion on cancelelling the city administrator? I did make a motion on if anybody would like to second that motion. Um or if you want You got a second. All right. Any other discussion before we vote on it? Can I ask for clarification? Are you proposing not hiring a city administrator or just cancing the search right now and sort of reassessing figuring it out? It would be cancel the search. It would be not hiring a city administrator and then it would be moving um Miss Johnson to a salary position because if she if we take the city administrator out, she needs to become salary. Mr. the mayor, members of the council. Um, previously the, uh, city clerk treasurer was not a salary position. It was an hourly base. Um, and it was, um, very busy position and there was a lot of difficulty during that that time frame and they went through a lot of angst. Um, now there is more people to support that position. So, it's good. I don't know that it would be uh behoove us to to move it to a salaried position. I don't know if Natalie has agreed to that. You think we have to if we're going to cancel the city administrator position is Yeah. Again, we don't have to vote on this tonight, right? Go ahead. I was just going to say I I guess I I don't disagree with your line of thought, but I I have not had a chance to really think this through and this is sort of a I think a big thing for the city. So, I I guess my preference would be not to make a vote on this tonight, but Mr. Mayor, go ahead. So, just to to clarify, council member Spencer, are you saying vote um not to vote on what? Going back to a city clerk, treasurer, or cancelling the search process or Sure. Um and and the reason I ask is that the applications are open until like May 23rd. So at this point, South Central has done not the heavy lifting of the process. So if we cancel them before the 23rd, we then save the majority. I would assuming because I don't know. Yeah. Let me clarify. I'm okaying that. I think that's great and I might agree with you guys ultimately. I just I feel like I need to give it a little more thought as to who's running our city, you know, rather than having three minutes to think about it to vote and and saying you need time to think is okay. We've never questioned that and coming back. So, let me clarify my motion. My motion would be to cancel the search uh with SCSC. Um that's my motion. I'll second that. Okay. Any other discussion on No. No. All right. We move it to a vote. All those in favor say I. I. I. Oppose. Motion carries. So the direct Mr. Mayor. Yes ma'am. Direction to staff would be to notify SC tomorrow. Yes ma'am. And find out what our prorated bill will be. And then I think it comes back we can at the next council meeting. Uh, one, we can discuss wages for Natalie if that needs to be talked about. Moving into a salary position. I I think we're I don't know. I'll just leave it at that for now. I would like to, Mr. Mayor. Yes, ma'am. I I would like to know if it if by FSLA it needs to be um salaried versus not. So, that should be part of our discussion. Whatever discussion we have, it has to be. It has to be part of I believe the org even our attorney said it's fine on an interimm basis but if we eliminate the city administrator has to be become a salary position because yeah and I I don't that's not clear in my head it's a function of roles and responsibilities um leadership supervising um yes historically um clerks um have remained um non-exempt um but that's um Not to say that that should be the case. So, and Mr. Mayor, yes, ma'am. Since we had talked about this, you know, in council, previous councils, FSLA rules and regulations have changed too. So let's find out from our attorney if if we are cancelling this and this that what is the what are what's the legal requirement that we are under as far as that type of a position. Absolutely. We need to know and Mr. Mayor Council Bri, I believe when we did have, and council member Ramo can correct me if I'm wrong, but when we did have an actual city clerk treasurer, we did not have a reporting structure where that person basically everyone on staff reported directly to council at the time. There was really no no reporting um uh structure in place. So that that wouldn't necessarily have uh uh required that person going exempt as well as at the time we didn't necessarily even know that that person was supposed to be exempt if they if they were if so to get clarification is what rules change. Okay. You have the next one. All right. Can we move on to 14A with the M Johnson? You want to talk on this one, please? I do. I would like to um first of all state that both Lexi and Helia are doing a great job. They're catching on quickly. Every day they're taking a little bit more um off of my plate. Um Lori could probably attest to that because she's working primarily with Lexi now as she's doing most of the data entry um for everything and running the reports. Dileia has kind of become um my extra help and she's been able to help prep the packets. As you can see, this was a very large packet and I would say she did 90% of the work on that um last week with very little direction because I couldn't get to her while I was in class. Um she did a great job. I don't want to lose somebody who is this valuable because at some point she's going to need all those benefits. I have had Lori run those numbers um for 2026 as far as health benefits. Um we have not seen any numbers yet. Last year we were anticipating a 10% increase and we ended up getting actually a decrease. It wasn't a huge amount um because our rating is not that high. Um so we'll just have to wait and see. And I unfortunately you don't find out on health insurance um Mr. glazer until after our budget has been approved. We won't get our numbers until October is typically when it happens. In August, sometimes they'll give me an idea what the trend is. Um because the school districts go first. Um so, as far as knowing what that cost is, I just truly believe that between Lexi and Dileia, they've been able to help a lot. Um they're taking a lot off of my plate. Again, I do state that and every day they're learning more and more. If we can get our ordinances up to date and give more standard um handouts for if you want to build a building, this is the answer for all lots, not just it depends. Cindy knows I hate that. Um and so does Dia. She hates that. She's done a really good job with um doing all the paint by numbers and getting things up to date um as far as that and helping me with anything that I ask. Um it is staff's recommendation to move her to full-time um and open up that 20our a week position to help fill in um just for days when as it was last week when I wasn't there, Mary was able to step in and help answer some calls. I don't want to have to depend upon a council member for the office to be able to stay open. And with that said, I do have one date already set up um the 12th of June. um the office or the 13th will have to be closed um because I don't have any staff available that day and Miss Rainville's not around either. But um anyhow, that is staff's recommendation is to please move forward with making DIY full-time. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, um I'm estimating about 17,000 in benefits including whatever her salary is. So that includes PAR, FICA, Medicare, um, health insurance, life insurance, and any any any other insurancees that are covered there and leave things like that. So about 17,000 for 2024 and she has declined to take it for 2025 for the remainder. Any other questions for Miss Johnson or coming? Obviously full-time does become benefit. there does uh does earn benefits that aren't necessarily health insurance related, right? Um what what would the that cost be for the rest for the remainder of the year? Is that the 17 or you were saying that the 17 is for next year? The 17 is for next year, but this year it would just be the additional 10 hours a week that she'd be working and you you'd apply it you'd apply the Farah and the FICA and the Medicare raise. I don't know what that is off the top of my head. So going to be a lot less in the city. Yes. Yes. Mr. Mayor Johnson, that 17,000 is that increase as compared to her saying 30 hours a week or is that um that's 40 hours a week. That's full time. That's just everything. So the real increase from the 30 hours a week with the addition of the benefits is something less than 17. Yep. It's 75 7600. I mean, I would a little bit more than that, but yeah, I would make a motion to uh approve her going full-time and start collecting benefits January 1st, 2026. I'll second the motion. So, Mr. Mayor with the Stephan Go ahead. Well, I just you had said be I guess I unless I heard it wrong. You're saying she starts January 1, 2026, but it's the benefits that start January 1, 2026. Correct. The health benefit. Yeah. I don't want her to go away till January. Yeah. Will you Will you say your motion again, please? Sure. I'm going to make a motion to immediately move DIA to fulltime and start benefits on January 1st, 2026. I'll second the motion for the second time. Just I was just look going back through here again and I don't see is the hourly rate changing or is it staying where it is? It would stay where it is right now. Any other discussion? Is it is part of this motion then also to hire start the hiring process for SS R that's a separate resolution never mind discussion I can move the vote. All right. All those in favor say I. I. I. Oppose. Motion carries. Congratulations. Yes. Go get your hopes up. No, you got your um Mr. Mayor, ma'am, go ahead. I would move the resolution um 2020 2025 um approving a posting of a receptionist administrative assistant division not to exceed 20 hours per week with a pay rate of 20 to 23 an hour. Page 428. 428. I'll second. M we have some Mr. May we can have some discussion. Yes. Yes. So if Hypothetically, if we're moving away from a an administrator and moving to an administrative treasurer, we now we now have only three full-time, three FTEEs, um where we had previously had three FTEEs and two part-time people at 25 to 30 hours a week. That's correct. um based on you know um I'm assuming that by eliminating the search with South Central Service Cooperative that Mr. Bole's contract would also be um terminated. So my question is um and though I typically tend to air on on the more conservative side is 20 hours a week for a receptionist when we only when now we're down to three staff. Is 20 hours going to be enough and therefore limiting the the number of candidates that we're going to be able to get to fill that position? Mr. I think we need to I think we need to evaluate that that time um component. Mr. Mayor. Yes. Go ahead. I would I would agree with council member Glazer. Um because there are times when everybody's busy and you just can't get to the phone. Uh I know right now if we can't get to the phone I we just let it ring. Um if everybody is busy with doing something. Um it is very difficult sometimes when you're in the middle of a financial uh no just like balancing and going working on the journal entries um which is a lot of the stuff that I do and Lexi does and if Dia's working on the packet we just kind of let it go. Now, Miss Riley um has stated, you know, she kind of took her leave and now she's back and as she can uh she does want to be done before the summer starts. Um she'll stay on the 10 hours or whenever she can come in uh for now, but she does want to be done and I don't want to be down to just uh three FTE because that'll be very difficult. So, going out Mr. Mr. employers's comment with the recommendation move it from 20 hours to 30 hours and would that be your recommendation because you're going to be down to one part-time person at this point. Yes. Okay. I think that and hopefully that would bring um in some good candidates still that would want 30 hours a week. Great points. Thank you. We already had a motion. We already had a second. I would uh amend my motion to um have it be up to 30 hours and I'll amend my second to her amendment. Perfect. Any other discussion for the vote? All right. All those in favor say I. I. I. Oppos. Motion carries. Updated to 30 hours. Okay. Next one. Miss Johnson. Um, I was asked by the seniors um through a council member to find out what the cost would be for a handicap button door. Was able to get two quotes. Um, one is significantly higher than the other because they're seem to be using all new materials and not necessarily reusing what is here. Um, the other company did come out take a look at it not only with the photos. I believe they provided photos of what they can still use. Um and it is significantly less. Um again that would have to come out of general government building um maintenance because it basically it's kind of maintenance. It's not really an equity or an asset because it's really not over $5,000 if we choose to go through. Um I don't know if more than one council member has been contacted by the seniors to do this or not. I sat down with the residents, the seniors, and it was brought up during that. I think it was actually email I got before and I would I just followed up on that. So that's that's where the request came from from the seniors using this and we have one that uh really struggles with get the door open. So that's where it came from. Right. Side benefit of uh eliminating someone needing to unlock the door for the seniors. Like does it have a locking mechanism? You know what I mean? still come. Is it like a magnet on door? It will still be lockable, but they will still need some sort of access to it. Yes. Share. Um well well I think the um the ability to do this um may be beneficial. I I think I think we need to look at the that side entrance a little bit more um in depth. it. So, you know, you've got a very small platform outside there and it it's kind of a blind entrance with not having any window lights. So, and and now we're talking about adding a a powered door component um involving senior citizens that are already struggling on their feet. And if somebody pushes that button from the inside, for instance, and somebody's standing right outside of that door and because the person inside couldn't see that person standing outside, then we might have, you know, unfortunately knocked somebody off their feet. So I I think while it's probably necessary, I think we need to look at the bigger picture of it. Do we need a new door? I think we should shout at them. I I agree and and look at it in in in more depth and and from a a greater um element of safety. The good news is we already got some quotes. We got something rolling here which which feels really good for the residents. But I agree with ideas. We don't want to make it worse than Can we just shove that one and take it off? Or do we want to make Mr. Mayor, do we want to make a change and to to get a updated quote for what we're looking at? Yeah, that's probably a better way of looking at it because I also know that one thought of if this was done is the door will actually close, which it doesn't now, which would be fantastic. Okay. So, make a motion to get an updated quote for the door uh tying in with this quote and get a total cost. That would be the That sounds like a great motion that you just made. I'll second it. All right, perfect. We got a second. Any other discussion? All right, let's do a vote. All those in favor say I. I. Oppos. Thank you for bringing that up. That's perfect. Mr. Mayor, council members, go ahead. I would like to make a motion declaring that fire chief Miller who is eligible for PAR and this notice shall be provided as per required by it by parish. Perfect. I'll second it. Is there any other discussion? All right, let's move to vote. All those in favor say I. I. I. Those opposed? None. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. I don't know that we want to talk about goals tonight. I was just going to say what the mayor is 10 minutes to 10. I don't know how much farther I'm going to be able to how much more we want to go if can we table goals for tonight and bring it back up at the next meeting. Everybody good table? All right. Good. Moving on to the next one. All right. Mr. Mayor, council members, are we moving on to old business or something that was uh moved from the consent agenda? Yeah, we still got uh What am I missing? We're on Facebook. Facebook one, Mr. Mayor. You go ahead. May I make a suggestion? Yeah. Yes, ma'am. Um, Miss Jagger and I have talked a couple of times about having the council being so new and I sent you all an email this afternoon. Um, is to having a meeting on the June 2nd or June 5th to talk about the budget, the budget process, how it works, where the money comes from, where it goes, so that Lori can help explain to the council. Um, would it if one of those days works, is it possible we could table all of this and just take it up that day as well? Table the remainder of the agenda. Yes. Oh, no. The CIP I'd like to get adopted. Okay. Oh, sorry. Yes, ma'am. All right. So, the question is if everybody could look at your calendars and see you said June, what what second about a state or fifth? Fifth. I'm back. I'm good. And hopefully we could make it a little bit shorter meeting. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. And that would be fine, you know, make it work. June 5th. Okay, you're here as long as you're here. All right, so June 5th, table the rest of it minus CI. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, the um your meeting on the 17th, maybe we can just vote or is that too too long for that, right? Mr. Mayor, could I make a proposition? Go ahead. The Facebook comments and the personnel policy can be postponed to June 10th and then the CIP could be covered now and the goals could also be moved to June 10th, which is the regular wouldn't have to do an additional meeting on the 5th is what you're saying. Oh, no. No. That that would be a separate budget meeting that includes nothing from this packet. All right. Would everybody be okay with that? With the fifth? Yeah. Just talk about the budget budget meeting on the 5th. Put me in right now. A short budget meeting. Yeah, that sounds love meetings. So, Mr. Mayor, council member, go ahead. Are we also going to then defer the Veterans Memorial ad hoc committee if we could? Okay. Yes, ma'am. I would request that we do. So, so Mr. Mayor. Yes, ma'am. I I would just ask um because this is new to us ad hoc committees um that you look at the RCA and if you have any suggestions, one of the things I wanted to do on this is that we include our veterans. And so if you have any existing veteran, any veteran that lives in the city or they have children that are in the military, I just want a veteran's point of view on it. So if you have somebody and you could reach out to them, I'm assuming this will pass and um if you could reach out to them to see reach out to me. Yeah, if you would. All right, we're gonna cover contact them and see if it' be something they'd be interested in. maybe already have some names for the next meeting rather than started scratch looking for names at the next bunch of their daughter was killed in during service and he's still he and his wife still will hear about their daughter I would like to move to Lori to uh talk about CIP please. Okay, Mr. Mayor, members of the council uh we had already met and discussed this on April 223rd. Um, included in here was uh $40,000 for park improvements. Um, 61,000 is still in the building capital for council chamber improvement. And then the road improvements are at 490,000 and it's going to go up a little because there's an additional road. I think it's uh 218 and and it's going to be 560,000. But all of that stuff will be discussed during the budget process. This is a planning document and I would just recommend approval of this. Can I just bring it up? So to reiterate what um Lori is saying as a financial consult, this is a plan that says, "Hey, we are going to spend some money." What it's not doing is determining the amount. We have the full ability to adjust everything here when we go into budgeting. So it's really just approving a plan. It's more of a formality than anything else. Gives us a direction as what we're going into the future. Check. because I know the police chief wanted like a lot of money and I don't want to give him that much money but conceptually yes but that's it. Okay. So you're you're looking for a motion. Who's going to who's got enough energy to give the motion? I think Mr. Mayor make a motion to approve the um to adopt the 2026 capital improvement plan and equipment replacement plan. Second. Okay. We'll move it for vote. Any other discussion? No discussion. Move to vote. All those in favor say I. I. opposed. So, Mr. Mayor, just so that we're motion carries. Go ahead. Okay, we're clear. So, we are there's a motion. I will make a motion to table 14 D and G and 15A to the June what date meeting. June 10th. Okay. Thank you. And that also includes item number 15 for the personnel policy. Correct. 158. Yep. Okay. I must have missed that. All right. Council member Ryan. Mr. Mayor. Oh, we got before we get a motion to adjourn, I I I am I would like to apologize for the comment that I made, though I am going to hold on to my opinion. This was the uh the wrong place to make the comment that I made earlier about Mr. Ler. Thank you. Thank you for doing that, sir. All right, Mr. Brian, Council Ryan, do we need a vote on the table? There is a vote on the table. What's the What's the table? Okay. So, we got a motion. Do we get a second on it? We already second it. Okay. All those in favor of table it say I. I. Mr. Mayor. Motion.