Very nice. Anticipating. It should be five. Live here in like 30 seconds. Let's see. Okay. Three, four, five. I didn't know they were here. We're going to go ahead and get started, guys. All right. We'll call the meeting to order, please. So, today is May 8th. It's a uh the public forum. Um there'll be five minutes to speak. So, we'd like to start with roll call, please. Dia. Mayor Hibben here. Council member Brian here. Council member Glazer here. Council member Rainville present. Council member Swinson here. And administrative assistant Stokal is here and roll call is complete. All right. Thank you. For our public forum tonight, uh the intent is to get community feedback uh for the residents to provide input on uh how to make our city better. I would ask that everyone be respectful. Um if you're going to provide feedback, I would also request you provide uh a solution to go along with it. Um they have four things listed out. give productive feedback to the council. Uh you can ask questions but the answers will be given at a later date. Um but you can voice support for the city council, city staff or the city in general. Uh you can share thoughts or creative solutions on the budget. Uh I'll say constraints, road repair constraints or any other thoughts that would help now then improve. Uh the time limit will be five minutes. Um the council members will be listening uh to the comments but they won't be providing dialogue and decisions will be taking place at a later time. The city council will take notes on your comments and if a council member would like to address an issue or idea with the city council at a later date and RCA and resolution will be prepared by the said council member to be discussed at a later meeting. All right. So, if you do come up to speak, um, what I would ask is you please state your your name and your address. And I probably have to take this back. We've had some additional residents come in. Or did you have another sheet back there? An additional page. An additional page. All right. So if we can start out with Jeff Pon thank you. First, I want to thank the mayor and the council for taking this opportunity to listen for input uh from the residents of Now then. I'm I'm sorry. My name is Jeff Pon. My address is 18959 Now then Boulevard. Um thank you for taking this opportunity to listen to input from the residents. I believe it's important that you all hear directly from the taxpaying residents and business owners in our community. Otherwise, your input and feedback may be limited to that from non-resident contractors and staff who may have different focuses and vision for our city's future than that of the taxpaying property owners here in the an issue I would like to you to consider is transparency and open communication regarding the city's budget. Uh multiple times in the first four months of this year, the members of council and staff have referred to a budget shortfall or limitations and concerns due to our budget situation. If there is a concern or a concern in the first quarter of the year, I would expect that the council would take steps necessary to fix the problems. In most homes and businesses, that means controlling or even cutting expenses. Uh yet the council actions haven't always seemed consistent with those concerns. Um the budget shortfall was a primary issue with some of the council members not wanting to hold an election to fill the open council seat. Yet there have been numerous examples that would indicate uh that this is not a major concern for the council. My concern is the lack of supporting documentation when the council discusses issues that impact impact the budget. Uh after a 10% levy increase for this year's budget, we were told the city was $200,000 in the hole in the first months of the year. Uh that shortly thereafter became just $75,000 in the hole. And yet if there was an explanation or documentation, I missed it that somehow in the first quarter of the year we're $200,000 in the hole and yet we're we're expending money as if that's not a concern. And yet shortly thereafter it changed so quickly and I don't know how that happened. When I asked some of the council members how'd you go from $200,000 what caused that and now go to 75,000 there the explanation was our uh consulting financial person told us that and so that's what it is. Um while administrator Johnson's wage increase and backay are totally up to the council. My concern is there was little to no discussion about the actual cost to the city. No discussion about the total cost, how much overtime has been worked. Uh how much overtime is anticipated to be worked while she's still in this position. Um how long will it continue? There was just no discussion. There was a brief spreadsheet that was outdated as to what it might cost with some of the options because there really was no discussion on the budget impact. Um consultant Boils, uh there's been no discussion about how much he's been paid to date. There's a discussion about limiting his hours, but how much more is authorized? None of those numbers seem to factor into this. We're told it's all going to be covered because of previous administrator's salary. Well, if you hire an administrator, you're paying that higher salary than we used to pay for the rest of the year. That's going to eat up most of that salary. Um, what you're paying Mr. oils up to now and future and what you're paying uh Miss Johnson up till now in the future will probably eat up anything that you had left over from the administrator salary um with the new proposals that were discussed the other night to extend benefits uh to those working 30 to 32 hours prorrating benefits for part-time staff and changing overtime policy to allow employees to qualify for over overtime on a daily basis rather than after 40 hours worked as it currently is would potentially have a huge impact on the city's budget and taxes as well. All of this um before even considering the impact of numerous proposals for the capital expenditures you've been discussing as part of our future budget which will also potentially greatly increase city taxes. So, in the spirit of transparency, openness, and proactive communication with the folks who are paying the taxes, I just implore you to document and justify all potential added increases. Thank you for your consideration. All right, next up is Sue Schmidt. Please state your name and address, please. Hi, my name is Sue Schmidt and I live at 6232 191st Lane Northwest. Um, I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight. I would like to address two issues. First, the special election issue. When the council voted to appoint someone to fill the vacancy, it was only supposed to be a temporary appointment till the special election in August. This was on the application and put out to the residents this way. As soon as the appointment was made, some of the members of council, including the appointee, voted against having the special election in August and wanted to wait till the elections in November of 2026. There are multiple problems with this. This is not what was put out to the public. The appointee voted for himself and will serve until the election in November of 2026. at that time. I believe along with the regular election for mayor and two council positions, there will still be a special election at that time attached for a person to serve the two or so months until the newly elected council members take office in January of 2027. It seems wrong, confusing, and not what the residents thought was going to happen, nor the applicants. I think um as an applicant myself, more people would have been willing to apply and run for that candidacy or whatever, however you want to put it, if they'd thought that it was going to be for two years. I myself ran or put my name in there because I thought it was going to be a very short-term appointment. So, I think that that um seems wrong and confusing and I think the residents of now should have a vote and get to decide who represents them. Secondly, um, addressing Mr. Swinson, before you call people out on Facebook and accuse them of things and spread gossip, please make sure your information is accurate and factual. Point number one, you have no idea why Steve and I were at the meeting that got adjourned early or what we wanted to speak about, but you made very general statements. Point number two, your comment about us being former council candidates that ran for office is inaccurate. Steve withdrew from the race prior to the election due to family issues. It was posted on many different sites that he was not running and he never campaigned and I personally have never run for council. Point number three, Steve and I have nothing to do with your statement about dysfunction in the city, repeated resignations of staff, threatening lawsuits, or any newspaper articles. This was all before we even got here. Point number four, Steve and I are not upset about our own little issues. We have none. We love now then and care about the rights of the residents to have a say about what goes on and their right to elect their representatives. In closing, I think everyone needs to keep in mind that the staff works for the council and the council works for the residents. Thank you for your time. Thank you. All right. Next up is Don Phillips. Nope. Don's good. Uh, next one up is Jerry Strike. Mayor, city council. Good evening. My name is Jerry Strike. I reside at 1 19070 Lithium Street. I've lived in the community and owned multiple properties for over 22 years. I also run a business in the community. First of all, I want to thank all of you, every one of you, as long as you've been here. Takes a lot of work and time and rumination of people and little things when you become a council member and we have so much conflict. Um, and that's one of the discussions I want to talk about today. In my professional world, I travel the country and I work with local governments. Since 2020, I've worked with 37 communities across across our country, getting them out of situations that may not be so uh professional or kind. I don't have a lot of time to sit and search on Facebook or pay attention to all the matters of our community, but certainly when I do, I'm always uh uh I'm always sort of sad that I live in the community. We're constantly in a mindset of negativity and we're focused on all these little things that don't allow us to think about big things and related to the special election. I'm not for the special election. I want somebody to come in and start the work of the of the people and to focus on the needs of the people. My belief is a special election would drive the small amount of people that come to get a three to three to two vote that we've had for many years in by former uh former governance here. When you have a 32 vote, their mindset turns into group think and we start believing everything one person says, we get nothing done. The next kind. So I asked the council to start working to, you know, focus on less conflict. There's a lot of research that says when we continue to think about the little things, we can't think about the big things like roads and public safety. One of my passions, of course, I've been involved in the the fire service and emergency management and now then since 2008, helped initiate the first contract between Ramsey and so on. um is we have a major issue in this community related to emergency management. We have one tornado sign, but five years ago we were given $348,000 from the government to fix emergency issues and we spent it on other things. We're we should have a well for the fire department. I have all the paperwork right here. I have all the emails, lots of emails. The city hired me to come in and help them improve the community. Where's the well? I went to the station one month ago. It's a 4-in pipe. Unacceptable. That has nothing to do with the new council members here. That's related to the people who've been here and sat in the seat for years. They made decisions that didn't focus on what local government's about. And that's emergency management, our roads, our streets. It's supposed to be a team. You're supposed to come here and think what's best for the community, not what's best for me. But where is the well? Do you need some extra money? Give me a call. I'll help you out. I'm willing to pay more to make sure you can save part of my house than watch it burn to the ground. The well can go right across the street. It's already determined. We, some of you know, I requested $7,500 to have the well tested. They drill a 4-inch casing to see how much water is there, where it is in the aquifer, and then they tell us how much water that can deliver us. It's going to be a lot more than 30 gallons a minute that we have right now, if we can even get that. And remember, we have no fire hydrants in this community. When the fire truck leaves here, the firefighter is one of us. And I encourage all of you to get involved in your local fire department. They leave from their house, Lithium Street and and 47, drive here, get on a truck, and then may go all the way back to Lithium Street and 47. And that's that's a long time. Someone's trapped on on Lithium and uh or on Clearary and uh 22 common area. There's often times when I'm out there by myself helping the because it takes so long for our people to get there. When are we going to focus on community service related to emergency management? The EOP, I watched the video before I came to this meeting. We're talking about the EOP that just got approved. You all hired me to do the EO EOP five years ago. We conducted staff training. EOP's done. The policies, that's my specialty, city policies. I'll do them for free. I can have them done in half a day. Guarantee it. Why is it taking this long? and cost them $30,000 to get our community policies done. It's ridiculous. And some of the stuff that has already been said about Thank you. Thanks for your time. Next one is John uh Calwell. Sorry if I'm mispronouncing that. Good afternoon. Good evening. John Calwell, 6263 185th Avenue. Uh first I want to say thank you for your service. Uh I don't have a prepared speech but want to have some bullet points of of questions or ideas or thoughts uh to think about. Um first question is are we a member of the League of Minnesota Cities? If we are, have we reached out to them as a city for assistance to help guide our members through the processes and to assist to work through the animosity that you guys are experiencing with in inside city council and within the community. uh great resource and I highly suggest and and encourage you all to think about it and please try to uh look at at using that as a resource. Another question I had is looking at the past uh city council uh minutes or the uh uh the the forum. Uh uh you guys always have a public forum or had a public forum up until April 8th. We've always had open uh communication for the public to be able to come uh to have the two minutes of time to either support or ask for support or to uh ask to be heard at least for uh whatever is going on in the community and then all of a sudden see seems to have ceased. Now, I know it's not required to have, but I think it's huge to have the open communication and to allow the citizens who are paying the taxes, who voted for the majority of you that to have their voices be heard. So, please consider continuing uh to put the public forum back on going forward. Uh, also, uh, on that, uh, back on 227, it was an agenda item on your schedule to have a town meeting to hear questions and to clear misconceptions. It took us until today to have that. Not sure why it took so long. So, something to think about of why why it took us so long to get here. Mayor Hibbons, you uh from your from day one, you said straightforward on your mission. You're going to lead the city by making decisions and setting policies to position now then to be successful now and in the next 10 years. I hope to see that. Thank you. You all right, next up is Jason Den. Okay. So, is there anybody else? Um, this is the signup sheets are concluded at this point. Is there anybody else that would like to speak that didn't get an opportunity? You want to come up and speak, sir? If you can state your your your name and uh name and your address, please. Uh Jethro Carpenter, 5500 Verie Valley Road. Um now of course um fairly simple. I uh so for a living I'm a construction guy and I develop land and do um worked a lot of municipalities. I guess I would say there's a couple things fairly simple, right? The citizens want services. So that in order to provide that for the fire department and for gas and highspeed internet, all this stuff, you have to have a larger tax base. I don't I'm not interested in developing land. I'm not interested in that. But I would just encourage you guys to um pick a direction. Fairly simple. like you want to be rural and keep it to keep everything big lots and every thing which I'm for but you have city advisors whether it be your engineer or your attorney that aren't from now then that don't that help write policy or write the policy for how your guys' city ordinance are written that is just not in line with the direction of the city is what I would say. I I read about Ryden's situation and unfortunately that's a norm. I mean cities in general are get money extorted the specifically the constituents by outside organizations that are hired by the city to review the stuff. It's a common practice similar to what the mob is in my opinion. Um, and just it's just there's room for improvement. I um previously worked with Liz, which doesn't is not there anymore, which was a um undesirable experience to say the least. Um can't remember what the new lady's name is. She seems a little bit better, of course, but um just still not a terribly great experience, right? Um that's kind of it. I would just encourage you guys to review your resources, who you guys are hiring to do this stuff because it is not um it's not a good situation. It could use a ton of improvement because um it's not a good situation for the city. The city doesn't make money off of those deals, but they can I mean their citizens have to pay the bills and it's just how that works. Friend of mine, Larry Scoas developed land here, right? And the only reason that he could afford to do it was because he bought the land 30 years ago. You will not find a developer buying land and know them to put lots up with the current situation. An example is is they require concrete color pipes which probably I don't know what you guys do but you're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars difference for no gain but that is written by your guys's engineer is who requires that and you guys take his expertise in it right and not I'm not blaming you guys not to know but that's something that gets done down in Madina right where they have it's easy to develop land and it's can be split up over a larger amount of lots and the land's more valuable, right? I mean, you guys have one road going into 47. It's now then it's never going to be highly densely populated. It just won't happen in the next I mean it'll be 50 years specifically with the ordinances written. And I'm not saying that you should change it. I I I'll let you guys decide that. I just would highly encourage you to align your values of what your engineer and what your guys's envision of the city is because I don't think that it makes sense whatsoever right now. So anyways, that's all I got for you. I appreciate you guys time. I'm not on the other side of that. I talk all the time from these deals harassing guys like you or whatever. not normally in my hometown, but uh I appreciate it nonetheless. Take care. Thank you. Jason Jason, you're up. Uh Jason Dryden, 6700 Viking Boulevard. Um I caught a little bit of what Jeff said. Um I just think it's I just think it's irresponsible of the city. um staff and I I think it's really irresponsible of the city council to vote in favor of subcontractors who basically have an open checkbook for taxpayers. Anybody who's moving in the city, people who have already been in the city, trying to do something simple like build one house takes four years and $18,000 worth of permits is just unreal. And I say the council because you know we had a we had a developers agreement. We had it signed. We had it recorded. We had it documented. Everything was done. The project was done as far as the development is concerned. And it wasn't even a project. It was changing lot lines. And after it was all done and recorded, we get another 18 hours worth of a city planner talking to an attorney for nothing. Nothing changed. This is all, mind you, there was a council meeting in 2024 that said we had to pay up to 2023 as so that's when it was done. That's when it was recorded. Everything past that is just Oh, it's it's not part of the it's not part of the deal. It's above and beyond the contract. We had a contract and then Cindy's trying to add a whole bunch of different things to it and talking to an attorney and then charging us for us the whole time and it's delaying the project, costing more on the back end in the building with they had to buy logs and then they had to wait and sell them and buy different ones when there just a whole bunch of screwing around, a whole bunch of delays for nothing. for no reason. Nothing got changed. It went back to the original developers agreement which was signed like five different times for some reason because everything kept changing. And I just think it's irresponsible of you guys to vote against us and charge us by assessing taxes. I know the city already paid the subcontractors, but somebody needs to stop somebody needs to stop that from happening. There's no reason that the that a person can call the city attorney and talk to them and it charges to us still to this day from what I hear it's still happening like when does it end? How does that work? So it just so another council member wants to talk to the attorney about our project and it just gets build to us forever. We have no control over that. How do you stop it? And why do we need to why isn't it when it's recorded that project's done? Everything past that is a different situation and I just want to know how you guys are going to make it right. That's what I want to know. That's all I have to say. Thanks. Okay. Is there anybody else that would like to speak for the open open forum? I will got one nine 350 Jasper Street. I didn't come here to talk at all, but know just listening to Jason. Um, this on a lot smaller scale, but I had a problem with Liz and you know, I talked to people that were having trouble and Liz was talking about how experienced she is and I'm assuming the new person is too. And, you know, kept on saying, "You had to do this, you know, because of my background or my knowledge, my 30 years worth of knowledge." And I go, Well, if you have 30 years worth of knowledge, you should know what all these different situations take. And I said, where you can make I said, okay, looking at the people that are having problem, would you pay another $500 to not have problems? Yeah. I said, so why don't you get flat rate on everything because you're so experienced and know everything and then people come in to get a permits or whatever it might be. every everybody they don't have a problem paying a little bit more if they're no their project project isn't going to get held up they can have new things pop up for no reason they don't have to pay more interest on their construction loan and everything else so it was put in place with Liz and she started sending me things and showing me some flat rates and stuff and it was getting resolved Now Liz is gone. We got a new person in here and poor Jason's dealing with it all over again, you know. So a flat rate, you know, everybody's, "Oh, you can't do flat rate." Well, I hear that in my industry 20 years ago and uh now everybody's got flat rate because they found out it works because you actually tried it and actually people are making more money in the city and the person that you hire can make more money at flat rate if they know what they're doing because they have the experience. They know what they're going to pay. They put that in there plus more and it's done. And the majority of them you make more money to you might lose, but overall you make out better. And you're not messing with uh the people of Melvin. They know what they're dealing with. Build their home, do their project, whatever it might be. Done. And you don't have to listen to people angry. That's that's what I heard. Anyhow, it's starting all over again. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else? Last call. Anybody else? All right, that'll conclude our open forum. Thank you guys very much for coming tonight. Meetings adjourned.