foreign foreign [Music] all right this is the regular meeting of the now then city council November 10th 2022 7 o'clock P.M Mr administrators please call roll foreign here council member Elders here council member Blake here council member Greenberg here council member Rangel present Lieutenant Jacobson president city planner Stockman president assistant chief Lawrence president assistant chief schrod president Deputy Clerk Natalie Johnson sorry I was looking at something completed thank you first item is to uh approve the agenda you have a motion to approve mend or approve the agenda Mr Mayor councilman rainbow I would move the agendas as presented unless council members have changes my second motion the second to any other discussion seeing hearing not all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye opposed motion carries all right floor items if you haven't seen the floor items in your back there did anybody sign up for a floor item tonight okay here's her Liz could you bring that up with you when you come please one gentleman raised his hand thank you thank you we have Matt wesling wants to discuss funds at the bank please come up to the microphone with your name address then you have three minutes to share with the council great hey now it's green perfect thank you appreciate it mayor council members Matt wesling I live at 19441 Burns Parkway right here in this beautiful city and now then and I see you guys are discussing it later just reading through it earlier today the uh Economic Development Fund account at Pine River State Bank with a balance I was just wondering I saw there was a little bit of discussion as far as hey maybe where was it from and I was just wondering if that's going to be something you're going to discuss and just magical money that just kind of appeared and I just was asking those questions I know you're not going to answer them during this time but I you know I'm sure you're going to discuss that stuff coming up we will be discussing that so typically yes if it's on the agenda it will be will be discussed perfect I appreciate it thank you that's all I got thank you foreign consent agenda I'll take a motion to approve the consent agenda on the item for the consent agenda are item a approval of city council meeting minutes is a regular meeting on October 11 2022 and the work session meeting minutes for October 20th 2022. approval of claims from October 12 2022 through November 7th 2022 and the current Treasures report and for the council to accept the donation from the Elk River Youth Hockey Association I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented Mr Mayor Mr member make a motion that we approve the consent agenda is written motion do we have a second the second concussion is Greenberg all those in favor saying aye aye aye opposed motion carries sheriff's report lieutenant thank you Mr Mayor members of the council City staff citizens good to be here with you this evening I have a report for the month of October Sheriff's Office activity in the city of now then total of 122 calls for service two calls out to the bar none facility a medical call one animal complaint as well but Bar None calls were miscellaneous runaway calls pretty standard call that we've been responding to out there a couple noteworthy calls for service quite a few uh calls for service that were noteworthy towards the end of the month we did respond on the 22nd of October at just after 2 A.M now then in 188th on the disorderly conduct call this 911 call came from an Uber driver this is a call we do get from time to time of a passenger causing problems and the passenger had been swearing at the driver and generally causing a ruckus so deputies went out there and spoke with the male he agreed to leave the vehicle and we were able to resolve it that way no charges were filed on that the 26th at 5 50 PM we responded to a business in the 8 000 block of Viking Boulevard this was a trespassing report an employee reported that a male came in an older male he made a purchase left the store and then called back to the store asking for the female employee that had rung him out at the register the mail made some comments that were concerning he identified himself as a cowboy invited him over to her home correct that invited her over to his home for dinner some other just concerning some concerning comments from that from that caller he did call from his uh his own phone number so we were able to identify him pretty quickly and he was issued a trespass notice and asked not to return to the business so they'll call us if he does return on the 26th at 6 13 p.m we responded to a crash with injuries one nine eight hundred block of Saint Francis Boulevard this was a head-on crash two vehicles had collided this was an unsafe passing situation a 2015 Ford Taurus attempted an unsafe pass and collided head-on with a 2003 Chevrolet Tahoe we did site that was a crash with injuries we did cite the driver for an unsafe passing maneuver in that case the 20 uh 28th again in the afternoon at 5 4 5 14 p.m we had a deputy stop a vehicle for a brake light out and a lane violation in the area of now then in Burns Parkway Deputy spoke with that um driver and adult male determined that he had a canceled driver's license canceled uh medical to Public Safety that means that his license has been canceled for egregious driving conduct can be most likely it's a prior DUI's multiple prior DUIs good driver to get off the road he was arrested and charged with driving after cancellation that is a gross misdemeanor um and on the 28th we received a 911 call of a possible drunk driver in the area of Saint Francis Boulevard and Viking Boulevard one of our deputies responded and located the suspect vehicle it was a white SUV we did receive a 911 call but we also do follow those vehicles to observe any conduct we might note are they are they distracted are they possibly impaired you know what do we have going on here our Deputy did follow that vehicle immediately immediately observed it was swerving driving very slowly breaking erratically the deputy did activate his emergency lights to stop the vehicle the vehicle did a great job of pulling over uh pulled over onto the shoulder and then drove down into the ditch where the vehicle stopped the driver and adult male was arrested for DWI by the um by the neighboring Police Department by Saint Francis PD preliminary breath test showed the driver to be nearly five times the legal limit to drive one of the highest readings I've ever seen on an arrest report was this one [Music] um pretty pretty egregious and pretty concerning and frankly what is that like 0.42 uh or do the math 0.08 times 5.08 times five yeah it was it was it's like right up there yeah I think he was he was close to 0.40 um obviously extremely concerning given the fact that uh this call was in the uh when was the time age 34. yeah you know that that anytime someone is that intoxicated behind the wheel it's extremely concerning thankfully thankfully to whoever called we do encourage people to call 9-1-1 they see driving conduct like that will come out if it's not a big deal we'll stop them issue a warning make sure they're sober but in this case for that to resolve safely is a is is a really good thing because the driver at that level I'm not sure how even someone could walk or stand at that level but um extremely concerning um so um that person was arrested and booked at the Anoka County Jail that case will be pending a blood test I believe on that one the alcohol content I cited was from the preliminary test at the scene that's all I have uh any questions or comments anything else I can answer for you in this afternoon evening nope Council good we're content thank you so much thank you [Music] quick question do we have October numbers sorry to answer your question Mr Mayor we do have October response numbers do you have that available otherwise I have a copy for you another one we've got say we end in September so I'm sorry ours end in September [Applause] foreign yeah I do have the October summary here I can just provide you with a copy and submit it to the console via email does that work thank you sir thank you all right move on to the fire department mayor and Council for the month of October the fire department responded to 19 incidents that's uh four from the previous month with an average response time of 11 minutes and 26 seconds that's a nine second increase from September the average number of firefighters attending calls for service was 3.8 fire department reports zero dollar loss from Flyers during the month of October on October 30th the fire department responded to a reported grass fire on the 6 000 block of Merle's Lane arriving crew spawned a large grass fire and requested assistance from Ramsey and Saint Francis fire departments fire was put under control and in approximately two hours no damage to property is associated with the incident just a couple updates we are can I ask you a real quick so in that case somebody's fire got out of control and dangerous burning conditions is there anything cited on that or what happens there so if their mayor and Council if there is damage to somebody else's property caused by somebody performing you know something illegal or letting a burn get out of control that person performing that burn would be held liable in terms of a citation it kind of has to get egregious we try not to hit on people for accidents or things that they certainly weren't intentional but that doesn't mean that somebody couldn't receive a citation if they're not in accordance with the burn permit or anything that the dni or the state has put out for you know say like a non-burning day we experienced that just a couple weeks ago when we had the severe drought conditions and then high wind conditions so yeah those are things that we do factor in any citation written would be done by law enforcement at this time thank you uh just a couple other quick updates we still are waiting for the Lucas device and new AED uh talking with some of the Metro Fire Departments as they Implement those Technologies into their resuscitation efforts uh there's one suburb I believe it's Edina that is showing on shockable rhythms uh rescue or a return of spontaneous uh um pulse in the 70s some 70 plus percent range so uh those are incredible numbers we're going to try and mimic that once we start to get our hands on some of that equipment they're also finding on some of the non-shockable rhythms that they are getting pulses back on people who've had CPR for greater than 30 minutes and that is somewhat unheard of so as we start to implement that equipment start to work with that training our goal is to shoot for some of those numbers as well song and with that if you have any questions thank you do you have any idea when when we're anticipating Lucas to be here I believe when we place the order it was about eight or nine weeks out I'd have to double check on the actual date the order was placed but it's got to be getting really close and and what's the training schedule on something like that is it all training or so mayor and Council fortunately because Elina already utilizes this device it's just that we're waiting for it to arrive on scene a lot of our firefighters have actually already have the training to start utilizing it our only issue is is not having it on us especially when we look at the later ambulance response times that this is the sort of device that really gets the the CPR process going and also if we are running short so when you're working with a crew of two or three that Lucas device once it's placed takes over for somebody actually having a zip and do CPR it arguably performs better CPR and the product that we purchased will also create negative pressure inside the thoracic cavity which draws blood back to the core and with every pump generates better CPR than what we can do just manually by hand and something can be demonstrated on the uh at this dummy you have over there absolutely when it comes in you will be the first to see a presentation on it and I will say when I was voting that dummy was underneath the cloth walking out it was a little creepy and it's heavy I tried to move a little bit he's heavy um do other departments around us have Lucas Saint Francis utilizes one I assume some of the bigger Metro are suburbs uh it's I can't speak for them but in a lot of the smaller departments don't and really that's probably where it's needed the most because that's where you're going to see more elongated ambulance times and and even just to get the person from their home or wherever they're at to the hospital from an area like this is you know if if Mercy were your go-to that's probably a 20 30 minute drive so but I think it's an excellent investment so thank you for pursuing that all right then I'm assuming that uh Chief schrod gets the netcast [Music] the evening City Council foreign just put in the request for approval of purchasing votes right now uh the city in Alvin does not ever go with their closest city around us right now is Ramsey in the sheriff's office um so with not having the boat and being not a guaranteed response that's something that we would like to purchase we think this boat would be a great asset to the department we could use it for not only water rescues but also ice rescues in the winter we've used that when we were with Ramsey it came in really handy the boat's really light we can remove the motor and if there's not a launch access we can make that happen just simply by carrying the boat uh I think that's if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them so you said Ramsay has a boat like this Ramsey has a similar boat they have a zodiac and this is what we're looking to get uh the photos of 12 foot six we uh requested a 15 horse motor with the trailer we've searched around numerous vendors and everything was significantly more expensive and if they could if they did if they could get it to us they didn't have it in stock the company that we reached out to has everything currently in stock as of last week they had three boats left plenty of trailers and numerous Motors but the price is unbeatable compared to what we found around here to all Defenders to do quite a bit of searching and that includes the delivery it includes delivery it is coming from the East Coast from Connecticut's delivery was going to be 1775 dollars they would cover it it would have that cool blue wrap on there so nothing would be exposed on the way here all we need to do is have a forklift and load it could get from the city all right so let's let's go to the use of the boat we have an abring seat it has one the Assumption you mentioned Ramsey so I'm assuming Elk River Saint Francis and Oak Grove do not have correct uh Oak River does not have a boat Saint Francis does not um Elk Grove but does not have a boat just Ramsay and the Anoka County Sheriff's Department have the vote so those cities all have rivers and and Lake some small lakes and Lake George obviously over there and wetlands like you were saying this could be used in wetlands and looking at the information here the various Wetlands this could be carried into for boggy areas that corrupt you could still use it there what are they using and why would it be advantageous for us to have one when our neighboring communities don't time specifically time this you know it takes time for everybody to to bring it over for say let's say what are they using excuse me but what would Oak Grove and Saint Francis he was at this point who would they use it for a boat no what if they don't have a boat and they need one where do they get it the service department or neighboring Community I I'm not for sure if Sandy has a boat Mr Mayor Saint Francis really doesn't have any bodies of water other than the Rum River and it's pretty shallow where it comes through Saint Francis so most of what we rely on in Saint Francis is the suits and rope so we don't there's a lake kind of in between us and Bethel but it's part of a DNR Wildlife Area there's no houses around it there's not a ton of people that are going in there and accessing it I think even when we had a grass fire we couldn't even get rigs back to it so versus now then which you know you're talking 1.54 square miles of water and nobody really around you other than Ramsay that could deploy something like that and we can lean on Lieutenant Jacobson when Saint Francis went to work with the Anoka County Sheriffs about some sort of Auto Aid or or Mutual Aid with their boats the one thing that was a little bit of a hang up was the way the Sheriff's Office operates and please correct me if I'm wrong they may or may not have somebody on duty who is trained to deploy that equipment and then the second piece is that equipment would be getting deployed from Andover so if you have somebody who is in need of rescue or fell through the ice or drowning in the water even if they had somebody on staff who could deploy that stuff right away they'd be deploying that from Andover um same thing we can't Elk River isn't somebody that I think they utilize Wright County our neighbors to the north certainly don't have anything that's rapidly deployed and then to the South it's just a question of whether they have the Personnel ready to deploy that in a timely fashion so when we looked at this we were under budget a little bit with the bond spending we had already dedicated about five thousand dollars for kind of an ice water rescue within the bond so we kind of came to the conclusion that this is this allows now then to be independent and additionally offer some of that resources potentially to some of the neighbors around them because one of the things that the fire departments like to do is share so now then doesn't need to buy a 1.5 million dollar ladder truck because there is one directly to the cell however when it comes to water rescue we're just seeing that a lot of the cities around us really don't have that capability so we could rely on the neighbors for something like this but it's one of those areas where time is important when it comes to Drowning victims or somebody stuck out in the ice or something along those lines asking and the sheriff when the sheriff's come out here for festivals and things the vehicle they had is a boat do they have anything like this or they use that row boat yes sir we have uh approximately 10 boats that we can deploy we have everything from large sort of cabin boats that we use sort of as on the water command centers and we have we have row boats we do have a zodiac we have a number of specialty boats and we also have a fan boat that we can use to access some of these harder areas but as pointed out all of those specialty vehicles are dispatched and deployed from Andover so they're all stored at the main office in Andover and while we almost always do have a boat operator on staff that operator would have to respond from whatever Community they're serving would respond back and potentially have to go back to the Sheriff's Office to deploy the boat now we Auto Aid to almost all water rescues we are starting one of our boats to supplement a local response but to the assistant Chief's point a boat dispatched out of now then would reach potential victims far faster than one of our boats would and and people can speak to both assistant Chiefs here so he had said that the advantage there is also Mutual Aid and auto Aid to our neighboring communities so we would be a resource in addition to whatever Ramsey has they're much further away from parts of Elk River or northern areas so so Mr Mayor councilman Blake they uh they already had allocated five thousand dollars for water rescue in the budget that we'd already made up right so I want to clarify that you had said there was some was it Pursuits or what was the water rescue that you had in the bonds you had talked about some allocation for mayor and Council the money allocated was just kind of a generalized water ice rescue and the idea behind it was some sort of floatable device at the time we weren't sure if we were going to have the storage area in the fire station for a full boat since staff has taken over they've been able to shuffle things around and locate a pretty good spot we would probably correct me if I'm wrong eliminate the coaches they're kind of old anyway and that's that's where the boat would be parked so it could easily just tongue flipped over hooked onto one of the trucks and out the door it would go so the sheriff isn't getting booted from parking outside tonight there's still plenty of room for the for the sheriff's vehicle inside all right so but and you also in addition is you have the inflatable suits yeah we have two Mustang suits for a water rescue and that's what we've been using uh prior Um Mustang seats this allow you to float and keep you dry and with those you're always tied off so that would give us about a hundred feet of workable um rescue with the suits on and the mustang mustang suits are reasonable for ice yeah yeah they're nice yep reasonable price they keep you afloat uh keep you dry we've used them in the past and on Ice rescues in the past and they've worked really well in Mississippi an asset to the boat right so the the five thousands you had targeted for water rescue this takes care of what you hit put a placeholder in there for is that answer your question yeah I guess or that can go toward this yeah that's what I wanted to know and and as you said we have a certain amount of money left in the bond where we had in addition to the truck we had supplies that we were intending to buy correct of that as long as it qualifies for the bond of money it's a capital purchase this would qualify for use Mr Mayor councilmember Alders if we choose to not buy the boat um what happens to the bond money we don't spend it we don't spend it correct the uh that is correct we have a certain amount of time to engage that Bond of money and in the last 15 years have we needed a boat and now then we've done a few water rescues in the past we've before we split with Ramsey we had a dog go out in a thin ice quite quite a ways out we were just able to reach home one of the neighboring Lakes we had some duck Hunters with a boat tip over we've had a few on Twin Lakes where ice houses had thought to been falling through the ice and we've been deployed hello and we've had also in the summertime as well a few instances over there were tubes have come loose from the boats and kids have been stuck out there so it would be an asset um hopefully we don't have to use it that much if we do get it but it definitely would be a dual purpose uh tool in our inventory if we were able to purchase it I will say too that one of the things we have is people move out here from the city and they don't always understand thin ice and they a lot of them have ponds in their backyards and we have had some tragedies where young kids have gotten out to uh yeah to rescue them because they didn't understand it it may be a pond but it was I realized at that time we didn't have any rescue equipment but we also know that the average response time is about 12 minutes so if someone's in the ice and under the water whether we have a boat or not 12 minutes is a long time yeah and and I will say every response time is is just about 12 minutes um without a boat it will be waiting for the Andover delivery or Ramsey too so it is uh it's one of the problems with Public Safety you you we train we purchase the equipment all with the hope we don't have to use it the day we do you're really glad you did the training are you really glad to have the equipment so that is one of the things we have to determine is this a reasonable purchase for reasonable use other questions from the council Mr Mayor councilman Randall um and my comment isn't for lack of support for our fire department believe me but I have a question based on so we have some left money left in the bond if is this the most priority priority item you know was it in the capital Improvement plan um is there something else not that I don't support that the need for it um but if we have limited numbers a limited amount of money in that Bond left is this the item that our Management in our fire department believes is the best purchase best item to purchase I believe it is um especially being able to use it for Dual Purpose um summer and winter ice rescue in my mind is something that we're missing here as a department and I feel that this piece of equipment would complete a big piece of the pie that we're kind of missing as an apartment and really complement our what we have the uh the additional money for the bond I'm you know obviously we always want to be working off a capital plan what else what other big ticket items or important items piggy you know piggybacking on councilman rainbow here what other items do we need um because it would be typical in a capital plan but what else are you anticipating coming our way and and what any of the requests that you have not be able to be fulfilled if we spend ten thousand dollars on this boat mayor and Council the initial Bond spending was to try and get the Department quickly up to you know where they should be at to have an independent fire department the only other outlier right now is fire hose you've got a little bit of time and I'm kind of waiting also with Saint Francis to try and do a group purchase to try and save some money on that purchase rather than just buy it independently and pay regular prices we also most of that hose will go on the new fire truck which we don't anticipate receiving at minimum until January of 23. outside of the fire hose we're starting to feel very comfortable with what we have for equipment there will always be needs things will always break we things will go on replacement schedules but that's where we'll start to depend on the capital Improvement plan and our operating budget versus coming to council every single month asking for something new when we talk about the boat there's always other options this was a great option and just so you're aware this is the boat the trailer and the motor so for ten five I was at with delivery I was kind of shocked that they were able to find that what size motor originally it was a 20 horse we didn't need a 20 horse we we opted for 15 which brought the price down quite a bit some of the other boats that we did look around in other vendors of the boat alone affordable darn near The Identical boat was 13 000 and this comes with The Five-Year warranty just as long as the other boats it's just considerably less less price and all the other vendors we did look at we would have to piece everything together we couldn't get the boat motor trailer so it was a lot of searching excuse me so when you say 13 000 that's the boat without the trailer motor and delivery uh another vendor we had we had shop for uh quotas at 13 000 for the boats alone including motor delivery trailer any of that that was specifically just for that a nice Pro wrap and then I just blew around but yeah we did uh we did some searching and this was ultimately the lowest price we could find with a great warranty delivery everything we wanted at a much lower cost um so when I originally was looking through the packet and I saw the fire department wanted a boat my initial reaction was that seems describing extravagant however when I saw the boat I think it more reflects the size of the meat and now then so then I was more comfortable with it and hearing them talk about um you know how much is in the boat and they get the trailer Delivery and it sounds like it's ready to go I think this is a reasonable purchase so I'll I'm in favor of this and other comments from the council members questions my other question I had but you you had already answered is where are we going to put it I mean we were there in the elections and everything is pretty tight but yes we uh we made sure we got the dimensions from it and it's going to fit real snug behind the rescue in uh next to the stairwell where those fine couches are currently sitting those are precious be careful get big money for them when you sell them Brothers my father just feels like do we really need to spend Tang around in a boat it's like we have several boats from the sheriff's department that can be deployed timing may be an issue but it doesn't feel like there's a year-over-year need for a boat like this and we are trying to bring this place up to speed and for the last 10 months we've never talked about a boat and at the end of the year all of a sudden we need a boat called Chief Lawrence sure um well I'll admit the boat wasn't um I'd water rescue was something that we were low on and um uh let's see the water rescue was something we were low on and uh with the funds that were available and the size of this boat we thought this would be like as I stated or the agreed asset so we could use it for winter ice rescue and water rescue um getting it deployed would be much quicker than what we would get from the sheriff's department along with a lot of the water that we have is shallow so we would have to re request a specific boat I would assume from the sheriff's department whether it be the Airboat or the Zodiac not sure where they're if they were all available and I guess yeah I don't disagree that it's nice to have I'm struggling with it is it a nice to have or a need to have and I think that's the question rainbow um when I first looked at it too and don't and again don't take this that I'm not supporting our fire department um I I had questions on it too um and and the questions that I had written down have all been answered and um I feel comfortable with the purchase of this it appears that they did a very good job researching it getting us the best deal that we could have the money is in the bond so that bond is already budgeted and it's like an insurance policy you know you may not use it but it's there when you do and we are remote I understand the limitations from the Anoka County Sheriff's Office I remember in Minneapolis having to wait for Anoka County to respond to our water issues and minutes are precious and so I I've come full circle on it so I would move that we um approve the resolution 2022 to allow the purchase of the defender 380 PVC with the Mercury 15 horsepower boat and trailer from Defender Marine Outfitter to assist the northern fire department with ice and water rescue I'd second that motion I have an emotion a second any other discussion I'd still want to make clear that we have got five thousand of a ten thousand of the bond correct and if we don't use that 5000 we lose it no those facts are the citizens oh so what happens to them no it the bond is there to be used within a certain year period and if we don't use all the money of the bond it we don't spend it we don't spend it then what happens to that money that's been given in the Bible helped me understand the five thousand that we don't spend we took out a certain dollar amount of the bond that money is included in that Bond I don't believe we can go back and renegotiate the price of that Bond so that money is in our account now we've already budgeted for it if we don't spend it on this it just sits there for how long well you'll end up using it on something yeah we'll end up using it on something it's just we would pay on that dollar amount for the life of the bond okay but that could be used for something else other than the fire department if we chose no no okay but it has to be used for something for the fire pattern but it doesn't have to be used for the boat correct Capital item yeah be something that lasts at least two years and what doesn't I still don't understand when this Bond expires that they can't use it anymore 20 years I think it's 10 years 10-year box it's a 10-year box okay so for 10 years they'll have that 5 000. to use if something pressing comes up like a need for something that breaks down no it has to be the whole that has to be a capital item it has to be something that lasts at least 10 years okay and Mr Mayor and it's a council member uh Blake's concern we're working we have a capital Improvement plan so everything that should be needed in the future is in that plan and we are uh putting a money away for those things um so there's the five thousand dollars but do you hold on to it for eight years before the 10-year bond ends and then spend it or do you use it now so where were the other 55 000 come from there's about 20 22 000 left in that Bond okay yeah I mean the only issue is it's like do you not spend money on the boat and do you buy aeds for each office I mean it's like what is the if you say yes to this what's the less and my only point is Anoka County Sheriff has several votes a city five times the size of our city that's right next to us that has just as many or more Lakes has zero rescue boats and they rely on Wright County Sheriff's department and we suddenly decide we have to have a boat because we have a fire department that we have some bonding money for so I'm not saying it's not a good idea it's a I think it's a want versus a need Chiefs neither you want to respond to that was my question what else would you want that this could be bumping they don't need to answer me that's my opinion is I think it looks more like a want than a need based on how often we potentially are going to use it versus like our rescue vehicles or our grass service vehicles that seem like pretty clear and we have constant use on them this feels like it's going to be perked from the corner until the one time you might need it and you assume that Anoka County wasn't going to get there as quick you know and if it's at one time it's needed and no Katana doesn't get there quick yeah if you're on the other end of that that's that's critical time yeah I would say there's probably a lot of the equipment sitting in that building whether it's a grass rig you know most of the year I'm guessing the grass rig doesn't go out this time of year before we got the rains we finished the last one we used it last month yep but I'm saying that throughout the year Grassroots probably doesn't go out a whole lot no we used it uh once once or twice earlier this spring and then just recently um on October 30th generally you need it there's no other vehicle if you can go in and do it the Grassroots well my question Mr Mayor councilmember Blake how often will we use the boat I mean if it's once or twice a year it's one thing but if it's once twice in five or ten years then it's another thing and if you can tell me who's going to fall through the ice or who's whose dog's on the ice which you got kind of is going to flip his boat if we knew that we'd plan we'd schedule it with the Sheriff's Department I'll have to figure that out before it retires you got a moment that's got one month I'll be working diligently Mr Mayor Chief Lawrence one of the things that you know I don't ever want to come to council and say we need this doomsday something bad is going to happen that's that's not how I like to operate one of the things though that we do factor in is when you don't have anything and you have these bodies of water and then we do get called to them if we set aside response times and everything else I know what's going to happen with the firefighters and law enforcement to that degree too because they're more than welcome to get in the boat and go out to some of these events with us there may be an opportunity to also do some cross training where they may be the ones that help us deploy the uh the boat I do think you need something I I wouldn't just not have anything especially when we look at the delays that we have around the area and just because one Department may not have that piece of equipment that might be more reason for us to invest in something like that I want the dollar amount to be the right dollar amount if that's something you're not comfortable with I can't argue with that but I also just want to make sure that our people are equipped so that they don't make the determination that they're just going to separate from the rope and go swimming out to the middle of Twin Lake to try and make some a save or something like that so making sure that they have some sort of device that can get them out to it whether it's the boat whether it's you know something else that's what's important the boat definitely was not at the top of the list when we started to do some of this planning but as we started to make purchases and see where we're at and you know cut Corners in different areas we realized that there was money this did fall under a capital Improvement purchase within the bond and that it just kind of seemed to make sense it's also something that the firefighters were really strongly in support of to the degree where when I asked the question where are you going to put this thing they said let's sacrifice the coaches and they immediately came up with the ideas to make it work they found it at a price that I thought was incredible for what I've seen in price increases it's a degree where I even said are you sure this is legitimate they did all their homework and all that stuff so that's kind of where at least Chief Schmidt and I were at when we saw the purchase it wasn't it I don't want to say outrageous it's not coming out of my pocket it definitely is an expense they do need something and that's where we just kind of came to the determination that this probably is a good idea so so you verified the price is good even though it's extraordinarily lower Chris it's package deal better than the boat alone that's available you said they were free as of last week week Mr Mayor they had three boats on hand um multiple trailers and multiple motors to pick from the boats were just uh at that time was were just three on hand and did I understand you to say the more expensive boat was not necessarily readily available uh the more expensive boat was um if I remember correctly would be I believe six months out if we were to order it and it was considerably more expensive it was one of almost 13 000 just for the boats alone another was I believe 8 500 and um that include anything a trailer shipping motor so and my understanding is the motor of multiple thousands correct uh when we shopped around here for a 20 horse motor from multiple vendors we are looking at around 5000 if not a little more just depending on which brand they had um which brand they were able to get but again all those Motors you say at 20 or 15. um for a 20 horse it was uh five thousand dollars and depending on which brand you had and again availability was the biggest hole up there they could get us for they could get us the motor it just didn't they didn't know when so that's when we found this company uh out east and they had the package rescue setup and it shopped around and it was our best deal that we could come up with nobody came close to it and it had everything we needed so we kind of got a little excited when we when we found that price all right any other questions I'll be hearing none I have a motion in a second all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye aye opposed all right motion carries please uh please keep us informed delivery and we'd love to know we can take a look at it and and hopefully uh we can keep it to training and but if we need it it's a good thing to have all right we have presentations from assessors here and so uh I'd like to ask Alex from Anoka County to come up first and for Council you've gotten your packet we have contracts coming up currently contract Eric and Mary what's your what's your company name Eric's helpless and Mary Wells all right so they've been our Assessors for the last five years prior to that we have Anoka County obviously you guys work closely together with Anoka County but we have a decision tonight do we want to proceed uh Contracting future assessment I think these are Anoka County again or with Eric and Mary again so each one's going to make their presentation and at the end of the evening we will make a decision so they know how to make their plans for the coming year all right Alex thank you Mr Mayor College members and City staff thank you my name is Alex guggenberger the county assessor um obviously it was today you have our proposal in your packet so I'm not going to go Page by Page or anything like that I know you guys can read that I'm going to talk about some of the differences from today versus five years ago when we were here having the same the same discussions and when we lost that contract originally there was some you know talking points and things that I brought back hang on a second Alex just so you guys all know if you don't see it it's at the back of the packet there for our new business item number two doesn't make sure they're on the same page as you're talking okay just let me know when you're ready okay um so some of the things that we learned five years ago when we were here was our contracts were not all that flexible at that point in time we were really only doing five-year contracts as well as our rates were significantly higher than that of some of the other individuals that we were Contracting against so I took that back to the County Commissioners we had some discussion about rates what we can charge what we can't charge for as well as a contract length I mean that you know with their support we were able to adjust those rates that we charge that doesn't necessarily mean we lowered our costs overall or the quality of the services that just means the county is bearing more of that cost allowing us to charge a little bit less a lot of that had to do with the reallocation of what happens if we had zero contracts there's still certain statutory positions that we would have to fill mine being one as well as certain other duties that are County responsibility so with that you'll see our rates are significantly less than the last time and then our contract we do offer contracts anywhere from two to five years you'll see in The Proposal I proposed a 40-month contract deal and I'll explain why some of that differences in there and then like I said a lot of our none of our services have been diminished because of those cost changes we still offer standard office hours at the government center from 8 to 4 30. we offer flexible appointment windows from seven to five or seven to five thirty PM our staff work flexible schedules that's to help accommodate property owners that sometimes can't meet that eight to four Thirty window and there are occasions throughout the year where certain Property Owners can't meet us till six where we you know it's more of a onesie Tuesday type thing where we will allow staff to shift their schedule to to be there at six o'clock or something like that but we usually don't have to do that by offering the setting involve through the options um some of the more business type changes that we've had since since our last contract five years ago relates to quintile our quintiles the number of times we have to view Parcels over a certain period of time that's 20 of homes every single year um what we had done previously is we had assigned one staff person to each one of our contract cities or multiple staff people to each contract City and they were that individual person or group saw those 20 of homes and then they would do all the new construction or permits and then they would do the sales what we're seeing over time is some staff that were newly hired and started in Columbia Heights for example only ever got to see Columbia Heights so their opinion of what an average home once was based solely on those homes in Columbia Heights whereas our system deals with properties across the entire County that was leading to some disequalization what was average in Columbia Heights was not necessarily average through the rest of the county I would also didn't give that staff person the ability to cross-train and learn more about the agricultural side of things or even some of our rural communities Lakeshore that type of thing so we several years ago we changed to a methodology where all of our staff go to one specific City for quintile they finished that quintile they go to the next contract City they finish all those parcels and we've seen a lot of benefits to that one of the big ones is safety well for our staff and for residents we send out notice which I believe is on page 77 or 78 in your packet that notice goes out to Property Owners two to three weeks before our staff's arrival that notice goes through some major timelines and key dates for which property which are important assessment perspective it also covers some frequently asked questions that we get while our staff go out in the field it also talks about what our staff look like when we're on the field we have County vehicles it kind of gives an example of what that looks like all of our staff have I have County logo and apparel with name tags and badges it lets Property Owners know that when someone comes knocking on their door they work for Anoka County they were made aware that that we were coming ahead of time it also talks about what an inspection looks like what our door tags look like so if they see that little yellow tag they know who is there it also provides notice ahead of time and an opportunity for them to deny SX property because that is a right as a proper room to deny the assessor access it allows us to track those denials um ahead of time and then pull those Parcels from our quintile so we're not showing up at someone's door and having them tell us did not that they don't want us there they can tell us two weeks beforehand we're not having to waste time sending staff to this to those cities excuse me what happens if everybody says I don't want you here well so we haven't run to that individual case yet um yeah we have a lot of other rural communities in Linwood and Columbus and things like that too so um and we do you know I was a little surprised I thought we were going to get more than we have in the past I would imagine the most most of the denials actually came from the cities of Blaine in terms of you know relation percentages related to parcel counts a lot of the rural communities we only had two or three or you know maybe ten denials in Columbus this year um but it really wasn't as many as you would expect I mean those if they deny what what happens to the assessment so we have to use the data that we have on hand or the best available information so we do have other tools like fictometry or near map which is aerial for aerial imagery that we fly um in that we fly boat that we that we contract with to pay for we have the existing data record that we have and then we have to assume what's Market it's not a penalty to deny us access to the property we just have to assume what would be typical for that type and quality of home for you know to be there and then we do note that Denial in our system your guys in your particular case you're an open book community so they have the ability to go directly to appeal to the county level if you're a local Board of appeal and Equalization still if that property I wanted to appeal they would have to let us in the property or at least come out to view the property before being able to be heard at the local level same goes for the county level before they can appeal to the county level they need to at least allow us access to the property to look at and update the records in order to appeal their value so that that's really what happens when they deny access to us but overall those notices have been very very well received from Property Owners City staff our staff as well as have really appreciated these notices in advance and in general that's that's really shrunk our timeline as we've picked up and we picked up Columbus two years ago we're still picking up more Parcels but getting a lot of that done in a greater amount of you know less much less amount of time we were ahead of schedule this year is From a quintile perspective we're now ahead of the game on permits where we'll be done well in advance of the first of the year so those changes have really allowed us to be way more efficient making sure that we can spend our time making sure the values are equalized between the different cities that we serve um I kind of go over a little bit of the contract as it's proposed right now um like I said we do offer anywhere between two and five year contracts so if you guys would choose to have us you know be your contracted assessor but you don't want the 40-month proposal um we can certainly talk about what a two-year contract looks like but in this particular case I proposed a 40-month contract that goes from the first of this year and it would be through April 30th of 2026. the reason I chose April 30th is that allows us to answer the questions for property owners for the work that we did what happens when you end that contract at the beginning of the year I'm just going to use this here as an example if we were to pick up the contract we're going to answer a lot of the questions on the values for work that our staff didn't do not the end of the world it's you know we can do that we have access to the data but it does make it a lot easier if the person answering the questions the property owner about why they're home and what you know why there's new construction or why the property record changed if that person answering that question is person that did the work it lends a little bit more credibility to it so that's why I offered right I moved that termination date from the first of the year to April 30th The Proposal also statute requires a minimum once every five years to view those Parcels in cases where we're taking over a contract new my goal is to always get as many Parcels of you as pie as quickly as possible to ensure that Equalization is at a maximum what happens if you do it once every five years is one set of neighbors might be viewed this year next year's you know but the neighbors aren't viewed until next year or two years from now if you're changing your appraisal methodology in those five years you might end up with one set of Neighbors being valued one way the other set of Neighbors being guided a different way and when the value notices go out it's really difficult to explain that the property owners and say well I viewed their house last year and we were doing it one way I'm not going to see yours for another two years or three years or four years but by the time I get there I'll fix yours so my goal is to get you know in the presentation we would view all Parcels within the city of now then within those 40 months it essentially deals with three assessments so it would be the next the next three assessments so in a case where property values are going haywire like they have this year so you you assess somebody this year and two years from now we don't know what it's going to be or let's say you did it two years ago value is worth significantly different than this year and so the people in this part of town got a two-year-old values and now the people in this part of town are getting the inflated values I'm assuming the assessment is going to take into account the market yep so we statute requires we revalue every parcel once every five years we physically see every parcel's at a minimum once every five so each year your parcel is being revalued with the data that we have on file by seeing by us taking you know we would be taking the contract over in this particular example if we wait five years to do things the way we might do them and they might be slightly different than what the current individuals are doing it that's a longer time where more Parcels are each year 20 that's done our way and you know 80 is done a different way if we can speed that process up you're gaining Equalization where more all the property owners are going to be treated one particular way that doesn't mean your parcel is not getting revalued that just means the data will be more consistent which should ultimately lead to more consistent values so even if you don't see it the value is going to go up as long as as all properties are going up equally value it should have minimum tax impact on those properties yep unless you change your appraisal methodology if you change your methodology drastically like how you're valuing your 10 acre your house in 10 acres if you're changing that methodology some of your homes in one particular side of the city might be valued though you know one way and the others might be valued a different way that change in your methodology methodology could lead to slight differences it might not be a lot but when property owners are looking at their value sometimes they're not comparing to Neighborhood you know sales that have taken place they're taking place they're like saying well I own a house on two acres but this house this neighborhood that's right across the street from me which might be to sit in a different 20 viewing area that's not going to be seen for another how come it's the same house but one's that you know both values went up 15 and 18 but why is mine 18 versus 15. that's a question we receive a lot of times is what you know what's happening with my neighbor I mean if we can see more of those houses in a quicker amount of time there will be a less less chance of that happening that's kind of why I presented the like I said the 40-month contract and extending that date from January to April just gives us the ability to answer the phone calls when value notices go out in in March we can answer those phone calls before Property Owners haven't you know before a new a potential new contract holder would take over here rainbow um I have a question so if I look at and Eric and Mary haven't done their presentation but if I look at their pin counts and I look at your PIN counts they're different and then when I look at your property type parcel Count versus the 10 counts you provided those are different also so when I look at what your your offer is 22 306. the other company is twenty three thousand nine hundred and fourteen but the PIN counts don't match so I'm just wondering and I'm I'm sure it's very difficult to get a an exact I I get that but it looks like you're it's the same dollar amount it's probably depending up dependent upon the query and the data in which you're going out for pulling that data so depending on how or when they pull that data it could be subjective differences the rate that's in the contract though you know our contract is going to be consistent there okay um that number is an example based on parcel counts when I when I created the number so each year that number changes based on the parcel mix that you have in general you're not seeing you know I want to say it's less than a percent in any given year for all of our contracts it's less than a percent change based on the parcel going from vacant egg to improved res or something you're in total you're seeing less than a percent or percent of change right um I do see a difference in the billing rate for the improved residential and agricultural between the two the other question I have is in one contract it offers there's a two percent increase per year um there would there's a from that our RCA from our administrator and maybe this will be directed to you Scott is that the county offers to assess the period of two to five years for the dollar amount and would anticipate increases of zero annually do we have that in writing that the county is not going to increase their pricing so yeah I don't see that in the contract right and and so there there was a page in this so when I scanned the PDF document that I signed there's a page missing and it should be page six um I did send you a copy of that uh today Scott but I can kind of explain some of how that works okay um our parcel per parcel fee won't change okay um there is a line in that contract that says for staff costs or you know you know salary range increases um over my time at Anoka County we've never raised we've never raised because of uh Merit increase at the county or anything like that our per parcel rate has stayed exactly the same and that would be my intent this year too is if if staff were to get an increase or something that's that's not something we change the contract and rate for that's something that's a county Choice County decision the county Bears the cost of those increases just I just I just know that the county is you know they just passed a zero Levy increase and um whenever they're not going to pay for cities are and so I I worry about that that I don't see that anywhere that we're not going to see me yeah and we can certainly we could like I said that's just a sample contract that's not about you know so if that's something that you guys would want to talk about Cloud means that's something we could talk about right like I said it hasn't happened in the 10 years I've been there and as far as I know the last five the five years before that that never that it never changed so I would have no problem taking that that it's all adding that line if that's something you'd like to see all right thank you are there any other questions so Mr mayor council member Alders just so I can understand that so the county has a an auditing function that I'm assuming that all of Anoka County is subsidizing but yet we're asking you're at also charging cities for the function as well so it feels ironic to me that we're subsidizing this through taxpayer dollars but yet we're still getting charged a fee for each City versus going to the private sector so we're paying for you anyway but then we still have to go or we're still bidding against the private sector yep so each count is very different there are certain counties are what I'm going to call full County Ramsey County for example they voted their County Board is voted to go full County so there are no local assessing offices the county the assessment takes place in that particular County all the assessments are done by the county there's no option the cities don't have the option to go with a local assessor okay um our County Board has chosen not to do that there are certain statutory functions that are that are if we had zero contracts we lost every contract there are statutory functions the county would have to have my position we'd have to have likely we'd have to have the camera system in some of the auditing we still have General oversight responsibilities from the assessment so even in this particular case we have we have oversight responsibilities to make sure that a local assessor is meeting all their statutory responsibilities so there are certain fixed costs that the county has automatically the amount we're billing for is really a subset of whether it's actually costing us to do to do the added work of the of the daily quintile that type of thing okay so it's um that if that answers your question yeah yeah Mr Mayor the second concern I've got is how long has the current contract been in place five years so so we have like 40-year high inflation and pricing on homes has gone like crazy my concern is if we potentially bring somebody else in with a different set of eyes does the Baseline get magically changed and it could be for the positive which would be great because everyone would get assessed less or it could be the other way and people are going to be super frustrated because their housing values have went up 10 12 just of marketing editions and then we make the call that we change the Baseline and there's a different set of eyes on it and he views building XYZ as a different value that the previous company did the previous five years and that um that's outlined a little bit in the in the proposal I think it's on page three so there are certain duties that are County Assessor related and some that are local assessor related at the end of the day the county office is working with local assessors and in our contract situation we're working with ourselves the the rates are not unique to to now then um we all have stat the same state statutory responsibilities to meet as far as sales ratios are concerned so it's not a situation where if you had a local assessor you could be 10 percent less than the county that's where we have General oversight responsibilities and it's our job to make sure that everyone's is is is essentially being assessed explain about the same the same rules exactly um so from that perspective you're not you're not going to see a difference between how they're using the same camera system we are they're using the same set of rates we are that type of information won't change from contract to contract okay because that the sales ratio analysis structure adjustments yes so we and how that process works is we're in that process right now we're in the middle of finalizing our sales ratio analysis or starting that process I should say all the sales as of today um had to be submitted to the state of Minnesota we're now going to take those sales and we'll start adjusting land values first I mean we're very involved regardless of contract decision we're very involved with with you know these folks back here too about making sure we're making those land rate changes those land rate changes and as it currently sits they will come up with their land rate changes they submit them to us we make those changes in the system um it's just in when it's a county situation it's our staff coming up with those land rate changes and then administrative staff making those changes then we get to the rates the rate structure and that's really where now then doesn't have a specific rate structure for their for just their homes um in all reality this it's going to cost the same amount whether you build a two-story in now then versus a two-story in Oak Grove right across the street from each other so those those rates themselves of course so that's where land value can change and in some cases the sales ratio analysis you might have stronger sales and now then or stronger sales in Oak Grove um so there can be some differences but the Baseline rates themselves are the same because it's at the end of the day it's like it's a cost-based system that works out depreciation but it um it that really that whole process is very all that just doesn't take place at the county level it doesn't take place in a vacuum in terms of in when you have a local assessor that's a very much a back and forth situation between between all parties so how many um how many contract cities do you currently have this uh we have 11 contract cities at this point in time and and so you've got eight staff we have nine residential appraisers and three senior appraisers all of them work the field yes um so with the the 12 appraisers or assessors um and your 11 cities do you have any idea how many Parcels per yep so the state average is around 7 500 Parcels per appraiser that's a Statewide average that the state puts out in general each year we're right around that 7 500 or just under that number as well so actually I think in Prior years we were just over that number but now I think we're right in line with with that state average at about 7 500 parcels right so when you were saying that uh you know in a 40-month contract you were going to put all staff per quintiles so that you could make sure there's consistency is that basically 12 people nope so the the commercial the senior appraisers though they work on you know just the commercial industrial apartment properties some of the exempt type buildings so the first year the way it's laid out in the proposal we would see all agricultural Parcels all commercial industrial apartment and exempt um exempt technically is once every six years but we try to fit that in our normal five-year period just because it's more efficient for us who's exam uh this building um city city school district county um certain nonprofits um if they perform churches churches no yeah certain most Church properties exempt um so that type of thing we would look at we still have to look at in value and that's really important to fire it as well so if you you're not looking at exempt values that those that value goes into the calculation of State Fire Aid so some of that stuff is important that you look at it even though you're not necessarily collecting tax dollars on it it isn't you know important from an aid perspective um then you know but the nine staff the residential staff that we have we split the like I said they all come to they would all come to now then and view those parcels oftentimes in a city the size they're only here for a week and a half or two weeks and then they're out and they're out of the out of the hair of the residents um and in those in this particular case I think it's like 800 some parcels um each year that the residential appraisers would be seen so they're looking at adding 100 Parcels to their overall quintile loan for you know for that that you know that's maybe a week and a half's worth of work for each staff that we're adding by picking up this contract and with some of the quintile changes that we have we have that that bandwidth in order to absorb this contract with the staff that we have so the the 11 you currently have how long have you had those so we've had nine staff members for a significant that well we have nine residential appraisers and three so it's it'd be 12. yeah but I'm saying you have nine residential and eleven cities yes so how long have you had those 11 cities we've had those the 11 cities we've had 10 of those we've had for a very long time we picked up Columbus I want to say two years ago it was um and then before that you know it was the last five year cycle where we where we had Saint Francis now then Ham Lake Bethel and then Centerville is one that um that they do as well so and you had those priorities we did not have Centerville Centerville was a different local assessor at that point in time and you said you've been there 10 years yes and how about the uh let's talk about the nine and the three how what's the continuity of that stuff sure so our chief deputy assessor she's been there for she's been an assessor within Anoka County for 40 3 or 44 plus years so she's been there done that most of the property she's seen in the county as far as the rest of the staff we've got kind of like three sets of of those staff we've got a large handful of the you know price seven or eight of them that are within that are around the five-year plus Mark we have another set that are around three years and then we have a handful you know two or three of them that are that are within a year and a half here or so or two years um Staffing turnover was a challenge that the county was was facing the County Board recognized that and that was something that we addressed earlier this year specifically with regards to the appraisal staff what we were seeing is we were getting a lot of new staff in turning them up and they were leaving to go to Maple Grove now then or not not Maple Grove Brooklyn Park some of those types of things um because of that we were constantly spending our time training so we actually saw Staffing increases already this year so with kind of your question with regards to what's going to happen with some of that we made that change earlier this year so those rates are you know are reflecting that increase we made in in hopes of retaining those staff there any other questions any questions anything else we should know I don't think so I thank you for for your consideration thank you next Eric and Mary show thank you the bathroom just to clarify so if if the PIN numbers the the parcel counts are the same these numbers are based on a rate so if the numbers are actually the same these contracts aren't that much different correct Mr May right and I haven't seen exact numbers on them but I'm assuming it's similar to what you probably had for Columbus maybe or one of the more recent yeah okay um the Unbound is between the improved residential cultural Anoka County's proposals ten dollars and forty cents each the if Marion Eric is ten and a quarter each yeah well thank you Mr mayor council my name is Eric skolquist I'm your your current assessor here as well as Mary Wells and Chris Larson is also worked with us um we've been your assessors here for five years we started uh took over January of 2018 and the contract runs through US Alex had said through the end of the calendar year here so just kind of a little bit of you know background um personally I've been I've known this area I grew up kind of in a note between now and then and Anoka my whole life so I know a lot of people around here I'm sure you've heard the name skokust before in the city but one of the things that I really draws me here I'm a contract assessor and that's what I've done but knowing the area knowing the people I think is really important and you can't can't do them all but that's one thing I've really enjoyed over the five years that I've been here I'm sure to the consternation of Mary and Chris I probably spend more time than now than than most places because I get to find out well my parents were like 40 years ago when they were you know younger and who was my you know whatever somebody's Godfather you know all that all those fun stories I spent an hour at my old family Farmstead the last uh this summer which was kind of great to do and visit with some of the Johnsons on on the road there so it was just kind of interesting to do that so I really enjoy that but one of the one of the great aspects of that is I can be very versatile with folks you know the assessor driving down here driver and knocking on your door isn't everybody's favorite person to see ever but just making those connections with people um it to me is really important and it always has been and so that's something I strive to do it helps me I think do my job better I learn specifics about areas what's been going on maybe uh parts of the land that are having issues there used to be drain that maybe is not buildable all those little weird things you find out when you're when you're interacting with people I kind of categorize those and I make usually really good notes and I and I try to just remember that as well so that's something I've appreciated over the last five years and because we've had a five-year contract and Alex had mentioned we've learned in a quintile every five years you have to view properties now we've gone through the entire city of now then so we kind of look at it with the same same eyes one thing I've I've done as I've gone through is spending more time is just making sure I have good better detail on outbuildings and ages of things and descriptions of some of that stuff just so that it's easier for me if for anyone way else going forward kind of knows what you're looking at so you don't have to spend as much time figuring out which building is which when there's 10 buildings on the property that type of thing so but getting to the thing here the benefits of the service that we've provided here we really try to do things timely professionally meeting all the recessing requirements that are there we do that you know Alex's staff does that as well but that includes reviewing all sales that come in uh just as we he just stated we finished looking at and verifying sales data that comes in sometimes that inspires making phone calls finding out you know what happened here and why and understanding that because that helps us set our values better move you in classifications this is another thing I've tried to spend a lot of time on there's a lot of split classified properties and now then that I've noticed so what that means is you know somebody might have an extra building on their property that they run their business out of for example that is a commercial classification so trying to be fair and Equitable is huge to us if you if you're running a landscape business out of a pole shed at your house with employees that should be at least classified the same as somebody if they're in the industrial park to me that's important it's fair and we make sure I kind of work with Liz as well on making sure we have you know whatever the conditional use permits or interim use permits exist trying to cross-reference that so everybody's playing playing by the same rules so to me that's important I don't go out and hunt for those types of things but when I'm there I make sure that that's that's accurate and correct so I've picked up a lot of that over over the last five years as well um and also another thing that I think is really important to the local service and City representation some of these people probably don't interact with the city of Malibu very often but when you're coming under their door we act as we're representatives of the city even though we're contract we tell people that but what that means is they sometimes have questions about zoning and can I do this and how do I deal with this dispute of a property owner and the tree's getting cut down and not that I give out answers to most of that stuff because most of them I don't know but being able to connect them with the right people and and give them experiences that I've seen and whatnot I think is important I take that as an aspect of my job too so that I can represent the city well and then they can get the answers they need so they don't end up kind of going into that government black hole sometimes that people into when they're trying to figure something out we also do have flexible hours most of the time things can get handled you know during the day if somebody's available on a Friday or whatever but there's been plenty of times I've come out or been out early or been out late or even the rare occasion I'm you know Saturday I can figure it out because I'm driving up to some other other place or somebody I know so I try to be flexible and work that out with folks and most people are really good you know really honestly when we as assessors deal with folks you think it might be rough but most people are are really pretty good in understanding and if we just take the time to educate and explain a little bit um it goes goes a long way um one other thing and maybe maybe Mary I'll let you touch on this last Point under the the providing local updates before she cuts in uh because she's she's been very good at this aspect as well so sure thank you good evening Amy Wells so I'm going to touch a little bit on kind of the next slide really I'll jump to that next one about our core values um this is the fun stuff like how do we actually interact with property owners we take this really seriously as Eric mentioned um just being maybe the only face of government folks see in years or ever and we're right there at their door you know so like I said we take it seriously you know we really pride ourselves in um being friendly and being able to explain our process oftentimes will come up and people are you know they don't they don't want us there we're the assessor who wants to deduct you're raising our taxes you're doing all this right well you know we just love um turning it around so that we might be at the door for 15 minutes or whatever and by the end of it they're Thanking us for educating them on how the process works you know why we have to be in their property you know that kind of thing so we really pride ourselves on customer service I just wanted to touch on that um the education piece again at the door whether we're at the door whether we're on the phone or writing articles for newsletters you know we're happy to reach out in whatever way the city wants us to in terms of connecting with property owners so a couple articles a year that we'll write for the newsletter and one of them is a map of the area that we will be working in that year you've heard the term quintile many times tonight but basically where will we be working and it's a visual it's a map and we put it in the newsletter um also you know another article later in the year oh also what to expect when the assessor comes to your door just kind of step by step what to expect that sort of thing how we look you know we wear our badges we'll Carry business cards um and then also another article later in the year in the fall newsletter typically that you know look for your statements to be coming out your tax statements you know if they have questions or whatever you know who to call other resources such as Department of Revenue website or ourselves or the county that kind of thing um and then I just wanted to touch back on consistency and standards Eric did talk a little bit about this but um Eric trained me so I've been an assessor for 10 years I worked at the city of Rapids for about five and then I went off as an independent contractor working with Eric and he trained me at Rapids so um one of the things that he really um worked a lot on is consistency you hear this whole idea of Equalization as you mentioned you know we want to make sure houses are done equally like you know whatever the the aspects of each valuation is if they're similar houses you know we should be valuing fairly similarly if there's similar types of acreage that kind of thing we want to make sure that we have consistency and Equalization well Eric was always he's a documenter so he has taught Chris and I both you know like we need to have our tables and our charts and like oh calling each other how do you guys handle this or this or that you know because we work in several cities so again the standards and the consistency is super important in this job and the way we do it is by documenting it we have a shared drive that the three of us use and we share information that way or you know by calling or emailing or however we communicate so that's the core value page and then we'll touch on the little bit about the rates I think that last part we've kind of covered but basically the rates the rates are based on parcel counts so as that changes um your whether it's in Elka County or us your your amount that you pay changes and the reasoning uh basically for that is as you grow you know you build a new subdivision goes in and there's been a few of those that have happened we convert that from either a farm field and now we've put more help you know there's more taxable value but there's also more work that's required so um what we have is we have a proposed our rates is roughly about a two percent net increase but that is a flat increase and that was that would change the first year and then it stays flat for five years it does not go up during that time that that whole period the only increase you would get year to year is if there's that growth or subdivisions or divisions or things like that that happen so that's the way we've operated uh we operated over the last five years so our contract is basically the same as we had it before it's just those those rates and then the the years changed to be into current five-year period going forward sure I did want to mention Ed so Alex has and we have I would have pulled these parcel Counts from the prism reporting Alex it's a Statewide reporting system and it would have been at the end of last year and that's what we bill for for this entire year and then now in December we do a Reconciliation so as Eric mentioned if there's new developments that went in the parcel counts change for those reasons or something switches from residential to commercial or vice versa or whatever then we do a reconciliation with our December billing so our parcel pumps will look different on the December invoice as well but they originally came from the prism Statewide system I don't want to build labor anymore but I'll just point out just on a few other things so we go around every five years and I think that that's important one thing I like to like to do is that make sure I'm in your city every year I'm not doing it and then you know going somewhere else for two two years I'm going through even the areas that are in my quote quintile areas usually you know we're looking at new construction and driving around you guys are pretty good with permitting so we really work well with you as well to you know anything that's a permanent look at it okay what what was done to the place but it's nice to be able to go out and just kind of see what's happening throughout throughout every year um the other thing is here we as far as our rates go um you know we've really take pride in the fact that we we bill for what we feel like we we need to when we came in uh you know we helped kind of Drive these costs down and we're trying to keep them down because as independent contractors that's one of the advantages that we have we we don't have a lot of the overhead into various things that that occur when you're you know maybe you're not using your car a couple months a year because you're not visiting places so that's something that I think is really important because we understand that um you know you only you only want to pay for the taxable assessments that you need to and nothing nothing more than that so um we don't want to do that no and you don't even want to do that you're right nobody wants to do that it's uh but it's one of those core Services of of government that isn't it's important um and so that's kind of just gets back to our core values it's not just about being assessors but it's also about being representatives of the city and just really working with folks that are out there there to make them make them feel like even though maybe their values are going to go up or have gone up you know whatever last year our increases were 16 18 20 percent um which was a crazy year and it's it won't be quite this crazy I don't think this year but it's still been strong uh just to understand that that doesn't mean your taxes are going to go up that much that's just how the market is it's our job to assess value and then the taxes are based on what all the different governments decide they need to spend and that's just we're just Distributing it based on the state formula so I'll stand for any questions if a mayor council or staff how many how many cities are you doing um we do a mix of cities and townships we probably have I think I probably have about 15 but many of them are small townships as well the parcel count if you get to that amount each of us the three of us Merry Chris and I together our responsibility is probably in the 7 000 range currently right now as far as what we're in charge of uh being responsible per person correct um are you pitching any other cities right now or townships no no sir we were quite the other way actually I have I have some great staff but they keep reminding me that five five six seven years out they they would rather do less than more so uh and uh you know just like everybody else you run into labor situations right you don't you don't uh there's more probably when I started doing all this as a contractor there was a lot more people out in the workforce and now there's just not nearly as many and um so I don't want to get anything that's not manageable and I feel we're pretty comfortable where we're at and I like I said having gone through now then now for five years I'm a lot more confident I have a lot better she said document I note things a lot so when folks call I have a lot more information I can go over with them and usually it makes the process a bit smoother cool Mr mayor council memory um and I don't have them to compare to anything else but I know that I've had residents call in conversations um they have always been very complimentary when they said that you've been out there and so I appreciate that and the the local updates I've worked on the last two newsletters and they were very receptive and giving stuff to us and I know that the residents have appreciate that additional information thank you thank you we appreciate the opportunity to get to put stuff out there and although that's the newsletter or you know if you ever want us to come out to you know festivals or whatnot I always I always tell people I talk to people anyway at the threshing show because we all go there go there for fun anyway and invariably the conversation comes up as I've recognized more and more people over the years hey you're that tax guy right you know yeah we're out here looking at tractors today yeah so when when you come out you're doing the quintiles so you've been through the whole city over five years um you here at Alex talk about you know doing it in 40 months um how do you adjust for what significantly was different the properties you saw five years ago the comparables now what you'd be comparing to the rates now would be so different how do you Rectify that well you the way it works it's and it's it's nice you talk about camera system that's computer-aid you know Mass appraisal is what that means but putting things in certain categories so it's easy that once once you get in there you're like you know this is the pole shed that has a gravel floor this is the one that's concrete there's the one with finish inside various things like that trying to categorize those things so that when you have these sales that come in I'll look at ones I was going through some today and go all right well this one I was uh it was on Viking was one that used to be a horse boarding and whatnot just off the pick or a lake over there but had all sorts of buildings and I was really low on it but I had a lot of information and things on there not only were they insert categories but I had a lot of good notes so I could see as I'm going through okay maybe I'm low on this this while what happened on that one and the way I feel it was I was low on the land and that was because not because of anything I had done but because of how the market has changed so much extra extra us acres and sites and things like that and so that will be in a certain category certain neighborhood or a style you know if you have more than seven acres or ten acres and all the other ones in the city that are have larger acreages are set up in that same way so what will happen is once you put them in these various buckets or categories it's a lot easier to change everything sort of in mass as you're going through and we've had since we started and even even prior you know whether it's local or the county or whatnot people we all try to work together and say all right if you're looking at these styles of houses make sure you have them at this quality you know if they're putting new siding Windows adjust them a certain percentage and we try to be very consistent about that so that there's not those wild swings you're not going out and looking at a house and saying oh man what was I thinking five years ago and so it's it's very consistent to be able to across the city at certain Styles and you're always going to get unique houses or unique properties but by putting in that category it's a lot easier to click a button and change everything that's in that certain category with that certain element than it is to have to go and rehash everyone and hopefully you don't miss something so that's how I've always handled it and I think the system they do have in the county they went through a conversion but even with the system they have now it's it's pretty good at doing that I work in a lot of other different counties around that aren't they don't have quite as good of a system for that and there is a lot more inconsistency but I I haven't noticed that issue too terribly much the one thing Alex did point out which I I have seen is when you're when you're on your own little world if you're in well you mentioned Columbia Heights right so Columbia Heights a lot more smaller older properties an awesome house in Columbia Heights uh is is probably not even close to an awesome house and now then just as far as the size and the age and the quality and things like that so when you're putting in these categories I think it's good to have a little different perspective uh you know and so we work in some of the communities around and we work in a lot of smaller and bigger areas and it's great to see that because you you understand the grading systems they have set up and you can be a little bit more consistent so you're not thinking that everything's a Taj Mahal or something else is whatever I know I've seen the cartoons the assessor comes and everything's a palace Council other questions all right thank you we'll mull it over while we finish up our professional process foreign setback variants score 20885 engine Boulevard thank you Mr Mayor members of the council he's about a 50-foot setback variance request for 100 foot setback from Bear Lake for a new home rather than the required 150 feet given the irregular configuration of this parcel Wetlands topographic challenges Etc the discussion at planning and zoning they recommended 50 to approve the variance request there was some discussion initially about possibly relocating the home and then they ended up kind of backing off we had two members absent at that meeting I was directed at that time to contact the DNR relative to their opinion on this and as was stated in the request for Council action they were very accepting of the variants they had no comments or conditions generally speaking this new DNR area hydrologist we have he said that he will contact us if he has concerns otherwise if we do not hear a response from him that means that he is accepting of the request so there was some language about overflow of that Lake and the lake locks land blocked status which is kind of just a given topographically it goes but it goes way back so that's just basically for your information only it does not affect the variance requests uh one outstanding item on the findings was that um regarding the driveway easement and whether the city could include as a condition that the uh that an easement is obtained to create the legal access and have a recorded easement and driveway maintenance agreement because as you know if you have been out there or looked at the plans that they share a driveway with the neighbor to the South um I was directed to talk to attorney rupee about that and he said that yes you can include that as a condition but if if it's impossible for uh the pilgrims to achieve that then um you know we can't really hold that against them if there's no cooperation from the adjacent owner um I mean he indicated he or the applicants indicated at the Planning and Zoning that they are in favor of pursuing that legal access and getting it recorded for their own peace of mind so you'll have to voice in on what your feeling is on that otherwise TPC is recommending approval of this if you put Shoreland variance thank you any progress on driveway obviously a demolition permit can move the existing home and buildings interested the question that came up at p and Z was the Bear Lake overflow there was a resident a number of years ago that changed the flow of the water from the south to the north and the DNR that's when the DNR had some concerns with building in that area there was some restrictions at the time do we know anything more about that that is not physically possible so I did speak to the DNR about that they did have no records whatsoever on anything like that occurring the south side of the lake is very high as you might know kind of some Knolls down there making overflow to the South literally impossible so he thinks it was the land behind it was being drained for Farm oh maybe playing to that Lake instead of it used to go down to Twin Lake got it okay and that's why they were restricting the property just to the west from any more building because the water flow had been reversed interesting and that was the real question and you remember this from town board days or how okay it was it was quite the deal because it was affecting the level of Twin Lake and then others didn't want it to go back to Twin Lakers or going through farmland and they didn't want the chemicals but it had to do with the potential development for the Krieger property I see uh well right now the DNR has no they brought no restrictions to you when you inquired about that correct the lake itself and the water flowing itself yes and I talked to the city engineer as well and there's no concern necessarily about a landlocked Blake I mean they all have to overflow somewhere and this one will go over England Boulevard to the east first and then there's a little bit overflow yeah that goes over volgrin's property to the north but then it dead ends when it gets to a wetland on that piece of Farmland north of polgrin so it's interesting and sometimes yeah we just don't know that history but the city engineer did not have any concerns either and he did approve that three foot lowest floor elevation above the ordinary high water level all right counsel any questions um I just have a question on the the DNR comment so do we have anything in writing that says he is comfortable with this no um he just said you know we're required to give him notification of these hearings which was done and then if they choose to comment they do and if there are no comments they kind of move on I mean they keep a copy of their files if they were to show up later and say gee we have an issue I think we've seen on some other properties I don't know it's kind of like DNR can Trump even though we didn't say anything at the time but now we have an issue well I think it would have to be related to any you know manipulation of the Shoreland Etc because that's really what they're looking at and with Mr Pilgrim being 100 feet back um and outside of that 75-foot grading limit you know there's really no no effect negatively don't understand Mr Mayor and I just what I don't want to see is something come back to the residence later exactly right okay if you're comfortable with the fact that you've documented it and you have it in the RCA here that you've contacted them and it's in the bank findings and decisions so all right I just don't want something to come back to the resident sure right so what do you guys want to do about the uh the driveway you want it included or just obviously it's for the residents benefit to have a shared driveway agreement and a maintenance agreement in place because he never wants to not be able to get to his property right if you want to keep that as part of this or let him take his chances I don't think it needs to be part of it that ask is for an easement modification not for a maintenance agreement on the driveway so we have had in town or we've had that where somebody said you can't that the question is when the property owners that they have to go across changes now in this case the risk is is very small but in other cases where the property was sold the new people decided the people behind there couldn't get into the property anymore so obviously olgrens know the value of this and will work diligently and I think you have good working partners with it and again as I say they're not likely being anything different with this property so it's not as much of a risk for you but still it's one of those things that we've had to deal with before councilman rainbow are is the city able to enforce that no that was my whole point yeah that's what your attorney said yeah he recommends it but we can't enforce we can't enforce it so if the if with that understanding if it does the resident want to keep it do the residents want to keep it in there if we can't enforce it do you want it to be in the final documentation or I don't think it really needs to be Augustus and I have already had pretty in-depth conversations on it it's all been positive we just want okay before we finally crazy so so then I would if if no one else has any kind of comments I would move to motion to approve the 50-foot Shoreline structure setback variants for 20885 Indian Boulevard subject to the conditions as outlined in the city council findings with the understanding that we are removing number seven which is the driveway easement and maintenance agreement and that under number six that the existing structure is removed within 60 days of the temporary certificate of occupancy and issuance if that is an appropriate time frame and I don't know Mr Mayor mayor I'm not sure what the programs think but I would recommend slightly longer than that I'm you know if they end up getting a CO temporary C on the middle of winter or something okay you know maybe 120 six months or yeah 120 days yeah 120 to 100 150 days all right so my motion would say number six is 120 to 100 would just be 150 days I'll second it all right we have a motion in a second any other discussion I've been hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye all right all right opposed motion carries welcome we're neighbors [Laughter] and me um we have a recommendation from our City attorney to table Item B information got in a little late and he has not had a chance to look at it yet and is not comfortable commenting on it until until he gets to look at that so I make a motion to table Item B the consideration of denial of the amended cop application for a cell tower located at 5606 Purdy Valley Road uh to the December meeting I'll second that motion a second any discussion hearing none all those in favor all right all right opposed Mr carries and the item C is assessments these guys Mr Mary passing down a revised assessment list we have three out of the eight no I will though uh we had three out of the eight on the list how many do we have [Applause] you guys want to share those [Applause] yeah okay we're fine just gonna share this is here so if you recall we had we offered to the srcs I guess if you want to find that uh the opportunity to come in and pay their assessment before it was pay their outstanding balance before it was assessed and we had three out of the eight do that so you're down to a list of five that will go to the county [Applause] at the hearing so this is a public hearing hearing all right so we will open the public hearing then for the approval of final assessments list certified for 2023 tax Rewards this is open and we do have somebody wishes to speak to it please come to the podium and give us your name and address oh well hi hi um yeah uh Brian why shelf is my last name and um I was you know given a citation for some things that that weren't uh even really they weren't an issue and I was told that if I complied to my temporary habitation permit and that I these fines would be waived so I am up against 600 more dollars that uh you know they want me to pay I wasn't aware of it I got hand delivered a letter yesterday I don't know why it wasn't mailed out but um question that but uh so I uh anyway so I have an issue with that um and with these different finds or violations and entail so that's one thing and um I guess that's my complaint about being assessed to the county um there was another issue too that I can't speak about right now about some monies that were given to the city that I was also informed that I would get back um to the tune of about twenty five hundred dollars so I'm a little upset about it all and I thought I'd come up here and see what's going on voice my opinion see what's uh I guess you guys want to assess it tonight or make a decision on this if it's going to be sent to the county so I think this needs to be addressed first and with me and can't speak for anybody else but for me and get it right first and go from there all right planner Stockman can you speak to the details sure I'd be glad to so regarding the notice um yeah the letter there was a letter sent the note the paper was noticed 10 days prior the letter was sent to the property address it came back undeliverable so um I called Mr weish out and hand delivered the notice 24 hours in advance of the meeting which is a legal notice um so back in January the code enforcement process started because he had the RVs on the property and we talked about possibly this temporary habitation permit to allow those to remain until he finished the structure that was kind of partially up so the residential structure when we talked so he made up made the application when he did uh when we talked about it internally with the interim administrator and the City attorney it was about that to make this an ironclad permit that they you know they needed to be able to Abate these violations um should he not comply so um there was back and forth there was some staff time involved on what was his escrow amount the 2500 he's referring to is the 2000 excuse me escrow and for this temporary habitation permit so months go by he does not comply reinstigate the code enforcement he was cited for the violations and you know didn't comply until I don't know when it was August or so and um you know that six hundred dollars that you're assessing well first of all tonight is not the time to appeal the appeal process has passed um the attempt to appeal is when you receive the citation that's why we include the um brochure in there that explains the process and you're when you appeal you're only appealing the you know conviction or the supposed violation in other words if if we sent the citation in error right there was no violation that would be an appeal but I was on the property there were violations so the citation stood so basically we're you know the point of the assessment is to recoup our money for staff time and um yeah move forward that way so the citation went out when the citation was way back in I think January of this year or possibly even the end of last year because each year we cut off citations in the fall late summer early fall and calculate all this and uh so his might have been like the end of 2021 and then I was on his property in January 22. and so that's kind of when it all right at that point you recommended the temporary habitation and that was applied for and that's why this didn't accrue more well he yeah I I have no idea if there's a balance if there's not I you know he maybe it has received an invoice beyond that I do not know where we're at honestly I'm just saying the citation though oh the citation amount right is it didn't accrue more I mean some of these citations on here 3 200 but this is capped at 600. in other words right we did not assess him again or excuse me cite him again correct he just received the one Citation for 600. three violations outdoor storage RV and I believe no building permit okay so those three citations were late last year early this year right we don't we don't have that information in front of us anymore we did yeah we talked about that last month all right this is three violations 2021 clock was turned off at that point there was no additional citations a request for a temporary habitation was granted the RVs and the outdoor storage are all cleaned up now and there's a building permit in process so the 2500 is a separate issue that's a separate issue right where you're looking at okay your fees attorney fees and building official fees if they apply right um well he would have paid the building permit fees I'm just saying if there's any additional yes Professional Services yes and and so you haven't you or the attorney haven't submitted your bills against that escrow at this point no we may have I just don't we don't know what the status is we don't have that information so that's a separate issue um because that can be cleared up by providing documentation correct and here's the escrow here's the charges against it right and that's not going to go on the assessment so that we're only talking about 635.90 that had the opportunity to pay or goes on the assessment correct and council members so if we look at it today what he was being excited for is addressed what yes he has removed the RVs yes what he was cited for correct was addressed but that was in August or so but not until August so this was assessed looks in 2021 so late last year and it wasn't rectified until late summer but it was not cited again Mr Mayor minor Stockton so we talked about this last month where we kind of went through item by item on our assessment list and yeah this one um yeah you moved to assess because of the number of trips you know I had out there attorney laner was out there or administrator lainer was out there so it you know it's up to you but can I say something all right so this house had a you know a permit a certificate of occupancy before I owned it there's been multiple owners and so the site the citation for no building permit who says that I have to pull a bird building permit when the previous owner hadn't started a project and I hadn't decided if I was going to move to that property fix the house whatever so I mean I I argue with just that first one no building permit um my son was living in a recreational trailer there and actually I was too temporarily for a walk for a while and um so I'm not arguing that point but this undeveloped property it should be illegal to park or store a permit to be parked or stored in any vehicle on undeveloped residential property what's a vehicle consist of a car if you own a car you can't park it on your your profit I just that's that's an argument there too I mean that I think that's totally ridiculous and the only cars that were there was the ones I was driving anyways so I mean we'll let her address how the citations were so the you know the previous owner or owners may have had a CO for a structure there but this structure Mr weishout was just just a shell it had been either demoed or torn apart or damaged and started to be rebuilt right whether you did it or someone else did it to to complete it and work on it you would have had to have a building permit um and I did have one previous to that there was a family member that owned the property actually two different family members owned the property before I owned it so pardon me but remember with inactivity in a building permit it does expire so okay regarding the outdoor storage the the rule the regulation is that if you don't have a legal residence there you can't store you can't have outdoor storage so that was what that was you had boats you had motorbikes you had a whole slew of things out there in addition to multiple vehicles so I you know that's what I am looking at is what I don't have any junk laying around there's no unoperable vehicles there that you said I could keep the bikes and things in the shed I did have some things in the house because the shed was full now everything's in the shed but um I just died I was told that this was going to be waived that's that's the problem that's the biggest highlight of it all I was told it would be ignored so what was said and what I was told and what is happening are two different things wow and that goes with the twenty five hundred dollars also what what did you what was told to you that had could be ignored the money you mean that the citations would be waived yep Mr Mayor Harris doctor that's not something that I can promise or even say because that's not up to me so Liz you also told me that I would get all of my 2500 escrow money back I didn't know about lawyer fees I didn't know about X Y and Z I have a list of it you told me that I'd get all of my money back unless you came onto the property and had to remove the things the items and have to pay somebody I didn't know that there was going to be fees for your services nor lawyers up in St Michael or all these I have a list of all right here I mean that's one thing so we'll have to address that another time but I was told that these fees were going to be this citation was going to be waived so that's that's my complaint and uh do we have any documentation that says an authority party from the city said we were waiving these dot this the 600 dollars no no I would I do not have the authority to waive the citation I told explain the escrow process to Mr White I don't want to talk about escort because that's not what's that correct in front of us got it so so we have no documentation that says some responsible authority of the city and now then said we would waive this correct a lot of phone calls going on and that's what was said so you know thank you it's only go off what I've Been Told and I should have I wished I would have recorded the conversation but I do record all my conversations from here I know then I would have proof but you know there are other questions from Council um any other questions from Council Mr Mayor comes mayor Blake what are you asking four I'm asking that these fines be um excused as I was told and that they're not just to my taxes because I guess that we're making a motion tonight for other people to send it to the calendar right correct right so any other questions public hearing closed I will close the public hearing thank you thank you for coming Mr Mayor comes remember angel I would move to approve a resolution 2022 number to be assigned authorizing submission of this revised final assessment role to Anoka County which outlines the miscellaneous special assessments plus the administrative charge of six percent per year and it is relationship to one two three four five properties I have a motion that comes from rainbows foreign I agree with the four I think we should waive the one properties cleaned up at 600 bucks he came here and blew to this case there's potentially some communication issues we talked about this last month on having a revised process for this it feels like that one uh we could uh I'd go either way up but I would say we waved the one and charge the other four it would be one thing if the property isn't cleaned up but I think he did his diligence and cleaned it up and made an effort to uh align to what we're what the ask was what is was it as quick as we probably wanted no but if you go out there today it's cleaned up so that's the whole intent of the of the ask is the uh building on the property habitable at this point no no he has an active building permit and he did go get that and he has a band making progress on that but it is not it is not habitable right now where is uh Mr weishel where are you living at this point on the property in an RV no I haven't lived there for forever so it doesn't matter where I live I don't live there well the it was about a couple of RVs being on the property that was allowed as long as you're building on the house so if he's going to live in the house and the house is done we could wave the feet he's got an active building permit and he's making progress towards completing the project and there's no RVs there anymore and the other miscellaneous stuff is cleaned up so the three things that he was cited for get that deferment get rid of the RVs clean the stuff up I feel like he's taking care of that I'd be in favor if there are no RVs come back and the house gets done so don't don't I would agree with you Jason if those two things are met the house gets done no RVs I mean time will tell that that's where we're at today there's an active building permit and the RVs are gone I asked Liz how long I'm semi-retired and I'm working on it full time every day how long was this in place before you cited Liz how long was the it seems like this property has been before us for quite some time oh yeah it was a couple of years I was dealing with it he was cited before we tried to resolve it through the temporary habitation now one option that you could have is to completely remove it from your list now the citation would remain until the following year then you could see if he complied or Not by that time that you can assess from previous years to next year's assessment list you could also reduce the amount of pianists as part of it so Mr Mayor Borrego to Ms Stockman so we have been trying to work with the property owner for three years a few things at least two yeah at least two okay and until an assessment was evident did we have progress the citation yeah the citation was issued we did not have progress until after the deadline of the temporary habitation permit so it would have been August of this year temporary temporary habitation permit was requested in Winter to expire in August the reason it was July July or August yeah and uh and then the completion of these issues the removal of the RVs the outdoor storage and the building permit didn't come about until that temporary habitation had expired correct Mr Mayor the building permit was was completely well I I stand by my motion all right I've been working on the property I'm cleaning it for more there is three years more than two years it's been I've been working on the property having progress is just completely effective no I think it wasn't a lack of progress it was the completion of the elimination of the three things that were cited last year wasn't completed until the expiration of the temporary habitations permit the campers there it's good there's I bet but it expired before those that's not actors at all they were often an expired was designed I got all clear from Scott and everybody stop was altered I understand this administrator the complaint was received initially in 2020. um so we you know worked with him for over a year year and a half we've for we cited so he had gotten a letter a notice then the citation still had no action we tried to go the you know special permit route um but his yeah the temporary habitation permit had a deadline and I'm trying to find that here uh and he did it may have been soon after the deadline but it he was not in compliance when at the deadline of that permit the deadline was July 12 2022. and then [Music] correct and the RVs are still on the property correct as long as they're still Outdoors third one yep so within about a month after that deadline or so into August then he he did he did work hard to clean up after that that was after the deadline it issued March 8th July April May June July August September so we're off of roster I got the blood right here it was issued six-month group so that's one um [Music] so he's talking about a permit um that he may have applied for and that may have been issued but he the way I understood it it was not acceptable because he was not clear on the work to be done so after minspect was out there they actually made him reapply and to go through and submit like revised plans that he had to show Mr Mary I call a question all right bottle I have a motion and a second to approve the assessments has stated here the revised five was it one two three four five all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye opposed all right okay another motion Mr Mayor that's my Gringo I propose that we knocked down white Shields from 600 down to three hundred dollars uh in a good faith motion to try and uh lessen the burden but also to make a statement that progress needs to be made on the home so he can live in it and complete this process so we can close it once and for all the motion do we have a second okay motion a second discussion Mr Mayor I would ask council member Greenberg if he would be willing to amend his motion to remove the right racial property from the list and we would then vote on the other four properties and his separately that's good emotion wait a second Valentine Ranger was that second yes I would say this second okay we have a motion to assess the four properties uh 5833 Norris Lake Road 19066 Jasper 19960 Saint Francis and 19611 West Ford Brook as presented the motion the second any other discussion seeing and hearing none all those in favor of that assessment they're signified by saying aye aye opposed motion carries all right I want to deal with Mr weishel's property go back to councilmember Greenberg you have an option of keeping it on there and looking at it again in a year that's what I like Mr Mayor councilmember Greenberg what is so pleased the council that we uh stay at this point reassess in a year is that what I'm hearing Mr Mayor the reason that seems sensible is that if we're all here now and we we're here it's not going to be him saying Liz said this or I got this message we heard what he said he's going to work on the house and so if he's works on the house and it actually makes progress then we can reassess this this whole thing about penalizing or assessing or whatever if if he doesn't then then what do we do do we increase the the amount he has to pay if a year from now he hasn't complied with what he said he'd do no there's no there's no additional Citation for not following through with a building permit but if he bring you know that house can sit there empty but if he brings back the outdoor storage or the RVs then he's again in violation we can issue uh additional citations okay so if he doesn't bring anything back and if he works on that house and a year from now we're sitting here and that house is almost complete then I had good progress I would say we strike it because it's like we the intent of the process of this is if we're not making progress and we're not getting the results then we use the powers of government to assess to tax it and recover our cost or remove it in this case he removed it and again we just talked last month on the clarity around these when we come to a visit are we coming for one specific thing are we opening up the whole book so we don't have great clarity on what we were looking for so I feel like he removed the RVs he got a building permit he's working on the house and he's got the storage under control so it's like we're done I know it cost us 600 bucks of Liz's time I'm willing to gym that and we move on Mr Mayor that's what I dreamed it well I think the escrow should still say stay that's its own separate thing it is I understand that but that has to Bear its own fruit so we strike this the escrow has to Bear its own fruit yeah that's part of the building permit process okay I agree so Mr Mayor Raymond so there was not the progress made and hence the citation and now the possible assessment if we waive it the fact that he finishes something down the road has nothing to do with this here okay and so I I believe the fine should be assessed he didn't make the progress that was agreed to um we had staff time involved and that staff time should be paid for but it's a vote of the council did we go back to that Progressive public hearing is closed thumb I do want to say you know the question was this came up in 2020 December okay December of 2020 we had all of 2021 and uh at least half of 2022. and I think that's why the the citation was to get things moving and the citation was you know a year old so it's not like this just happened this technique could have been assessed last year and it was was kept out there's also a small pandemic so I mean I totally understand that I just don't believe our role is to hit somebody after the fact that they've cleaned it up was it within the timeline that we wanted no at the end of the day when you drive past it's a leaned up that's what we want for the residents I don't know that we should it's not worth it for 600 bucks in my opinion to keep messing around with this I will respectfully say if if counselors were all paying attention this has been an issue for a couple of years this is not something that just happened something I got done but it's up to the council so what's the motion Mr man really she's the kid been running on and on and on in this city and we don't resolve I'll make a motion to strike this 600 and eliminate the fees and the separate issues on the building permit stands on its own motion from councilmember Alders second councilmember Blake any other discussion all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye aye opposed name nay motion carries B is struck don't bring more RVs out there thank you no no problems okay I'm done all right administrator update all right thank you Mr Mayor so for Council there's just a few things that I wanted to update you on that are going to be coming and and a few things that are important to this evening the first thing under the administrator update that we were talking about that I'd like to talk to you about is the fee schedule and those of you that are familiar with the fee schedule we are starting in a kind of a process to analyze where we are with some of that when it comes to permitting while we're charging at the recycling center and so on and so forth the fee schedule is pretty extensive we are taking a look at you know what makes sense here we are doing some comparables to surrounding cities or surrounding recycling centers and kind of what we're we're charging for some of that I just wanted to make it kind of put it on your radar and make you aware of what we're looking at there we should have it prepared and ready to come to the December 13th council meeting because if we are going to make any changes and and you're all in agreement with uh with what we present there we would like to have it in place by January 1st so going into 2023 we start fresh uh with anything that may be decided here at the council foreign are you making sure that we're covering because a lot of times our fees are for either Consultants or contractors of other sort but we're not necessarily covering our own calls so you're looking at fees that make sure they're covering whatever the city costs the administration yes we're not attempting to make money here but we're trying to cover cost that is correct sir okay yep okay item number 200 administrator update is is the uh the election update and I'm sure most of you know kind of what was going on there but there's a couple things that I wanted to to bring to your attention um the unofficial results are in and uh mayor Pilon will continue to be in the mayor here for the for this next term you receive 51.37 percent of the vote and uh mayoral candidate Matt wesling received 47.92 percent of the vote we also have two council members that will be leaving the council and The Replacements have been identified Shannon Le Divo flatable I'm sorry and uh the council member candidate also will be the second one will be Dan Bryant some of the things I wanted to bring to your attention was we had 24 judges working really hard uh some of you that seen them in there 15 16 hours a huge thank you to all those people that came out and spent the time and and uh an even bigger thank you to Natalie for coordinating it all and taking good care of the election judges and I was there most of the afternoon and evening and everybody was singing high praises on how well it was run um how approachable Natalie is and how everything really worked very smoothly and it just went over really really well and one of the things Natalie said to me is she feels extremely blessed to have the group that she had that she was working with that there was some multitude of really good people that were part of that so and along with that comes good leadership and good training so thank you man nice work the first clap I've ever seen here so a couple other thank yous uh if you see uh Joe Blaze or Eric Madsen around make sure you uh thank them for their time they did a a phenomenal job moving equipment taking care of things for us um making sure things were set up really really did a good job working with the fire department they worked well with the fire department they cleaned out the Public Works building so we could get the fire trucks over there I know the firemen are are gone right now but a big thank you to them again being flexible allowing us to use the fire station there while putting their equipment over to the public works some of the equipment was still at fire station and their vehicles were over there and it just it went off very smoothly and I thank you to the fire department and all of them for allowing us to use that facility also so one thing I do want to address uh and some of you may be aware of this but at the end of the night it was really difficult to close things out it was extensive amount of time was spent and what was triggering that is that residents had a good time putting write-ins in the ballot not real people but fictitious people that they thought would be fun to be able to to write in and and what I don't think they understand is when they do that is that you know in this case we tracked a time we waited approximately you know an hour and 45 minutes to be able to close out the polling and all that type of stuff because you have to print it all out and all those things that were written in have to be addressed and when you say addressed what does that mean well yeah since we're a statutory City they they they're not registered so we actually have to report out on every one of those so when Mickey Mouse shows up Mickey Mouse now has to we have to have a report that stated you know this was a write-in and it goes to the county it's more reporting on Natalie's and and the judges and even more importantly every one of those judges have to have to stay there until everything's closed out and then sign off on all the tapes and that so we had you know I just stated in there we had uh 24 judges that had to stick around until things were signed off on until that tape got done so we were spending paying them time to be able to do that and it's just not a good use of our time so I just wanted to kind of make it just like a public announcement here that you know it it just it's not good money time spent and I hope people will consider in the future to to refrain from doing that now if you have a legit write-in it's absolutely real people you can write them in we're totally accept that but it was very obvious to us that there was a multitude of people that weren't real being written in I'll just leave it at that anything you'd like to add to that I gotta vote yes not for anything I want to do and we do categorize her as real people might have been your husband but no no no but we um well the thing is that quite frankly tomorrow is Veterans Day and I have to have two judges come into the office tomorrow for a few hours so that we can go through every one of those and Mark all the Elvis Presleys and all of the Mickey Mouse and my name and you know John Hancock and a whole bunch of different things and but we have to tally them so you know that's I'm in my opinion it's just a waste of taxpayers money because it's not a legitimate write-in it was a legitimate write-in that would be above City level that we would have to report to the county so be it I mean do it logistically but I it's we were quite frustrated sitting there waiting and you know I know that there were some posts on Facebook about it taking so long for now then to be reporting that would be the reason because I couldn't get anything to report until all of the the receipts were done and it doesn't print just one copy it prints three copies that have to go and I think one of my judges posted it on Facebook and it had the receipt going all the way across the fire station turning and going up to the doors and turning and coming back so you know it was just the problem Mr Mayor Blake the problem is whoever is doing this probably isn't going to risk watch this meeting oh no I mean how do you reach the peop this is a good message but how do you reach the peop maybe before the next election you put it in a in a newsletter and talk about it or something I mean I I doubt the people that do these kinds of things are watching our meetings to be reprimanded or whatever and I'm sure they thought they were just being funny but I and it is a discussion and it's already gone in to go into the um fall newsletters smart into the schedule if it's an election year very good idea thank you Natalie last thing on the elections the canvassing board city council minus the mayor since he was on the ballot we'll have to have a meeting next week as Natalie alluded to alumiere we need to get the abstract from the county and then we'll need to verify and certify the election we should be receiving that information on Monday the 14th and once we receive that that's where we once we receive that then we will have to have a meeting to certify the election so be watching for that an evening meeting excuse me of an evening meeting for the four people okay just one just was asking yep very good any questions on any of the the election Mr Mayor councilman Raymond to administrative who is on the canvassing board then may I speak yes please the four it's supposed to be Council and whoever is not on the ballot okay so all right Mr Mayor is on the ballot or was on the ballot so he cannot be a part of that he can run the meeting but the four of you would have to certify the election results when we get the abstract have they ever done that before all right we've done it they've never excluded anybody yeah so what do you do if let's say that Linda and Joel were were also on how do you have a quorum that would be a phone call back down to the county because that was my question to the county is that's going to say unless that changed in in years past they never excluded anybody it was always his counsel so whoever lives um yeah I know Tom was very specific that if you were on the ballot you could not be a part of the canvas process all right thank you so the third item under the administrator update and it seems like it's it's the night to talk about Natalie oh boy so one of the things that uh I've been working on and uh we'll be bringing to the December council meeting also uh for for your for discussion and input from the council would be moving Natalie from part-time to full-time so when when Natalie started with us she was set up as a part-time employee roughly working about 32 hours along with that of course no benefits PTO anything was was offered at that time well I've gone back and looked since November of 2021 and looked at the timesheets that Natalie's been putting in and the hours that she's been putting in and she's nowhere near putting in 32 hours a week it's extremely more than that um you can see the only time that she's roughly in that 32 hours a week time frame is when she's taken vacation or taking time off for something personal um so I think um what I would like for us to consider at the next meeting I just wanted to give you a heads up so you guys could all kind of think about it ahead of time is um proposing that we would move her more to a a full-time status and uh offer PTO or end benefits to her at that time um the other staff we have in the office is that's how we're operating there I can't speak to the agreement that Mr Boyles and and Natalie spoke to before my time some of you may be aware of that um but I think what we want to take a look I badly does a great job she's outstanding I think very highly of her and I think if we were ever to lose her it's a very valuable piece she's a lot of value to the team and what I don't want to happen is is get to the point where she's not offered time of you know she wants to take a day off or something she's taking it off no pay right now and I would just like to treat her like we're treating our other staff member in there and and provide her with an opportunity to utilize the benefits or specifically the the paid time off if uh if the council soul looks at that so I will be putting together a presentation that I will be bringing to the December crew meeting but I wanted to give you guys a heads up on that going forward just so you have an opportunity to think about that or if you have questions from now until then I'm available and the last thing I have to share with the council this evening is is around the 2023 employee benefits package so Natalie and I did meet with Bill singer who talks to or works with us when it comes to our benefits package I learned a few things and here we're we're in a two-year cycle with our benefits with them so there wasn't a whole lot of changes that needed to be made for 2023 other than there was a six percent increase uh for benefits for 2023 employee benefits um like I said we're in a two-year cycle uh our second year here so one of the things they wanted to talk to us or that bill wanted to bring to our attention that many cities uh in 2023 are seeing an increase of 40 to 50 percent when it comes to medical benefits and that he encouraged the city all of us to plan for somewhere between a 30 to 50 percent increase when it comes to the 2024 benefits package right now this idea is picking up a hundred percent of single Medical and 80 of the family medical employees pick up their Dental and as at this point another thing that we'll be looking at when this gets closer is there is no life insurance offered no short-term or long-term disability for any employees city employees I mean Mr Mayor Blake um are we comparable with other cities our size so that was a councilman the amount of the amount that we're paying and how we're paying is it comparable with other cities our size so in in our councilman Blake in our meeting with Bill singer um we did ask that question right and um we probably are paying on the lower side the dollar when it comes to the dollar amount um then some of the cities that are comparable we we have a very good rate uh right now um but I think what he wanted to encourage us to do is is talk about it as a city or is this 100 for single 80 for families still somewhere where you want to be and then prepared for 2024 that that there's going to be an increase but he he was very confident when he shared with us in other cities that he talked with us about that that were we are comparable okay do you hear anything different than that Ellie or would you I think the only thing I would add is that we're also on the cheapest plan that there is we did look into some better coverage plans but they were really expensive really expensive they were really expensive and those are also going to go up to 30 50 percent everything was going to go up and a really expensive plan okay but part of the reasoning that I understood and and Scott please correct me if you didn't hear it the same way is peip that public employees you know they used to do it as a whole big group what they tried to do is because they are under market for so long they started doing it by your experience in your own City well our city hasn't really utilized the health benefits having very few people on it and nothing really majored we didn't have any cancers leukemia long-term treatments anything like that some of the cities that are our size and they had an employee with cancer or some major surgeries and that kind of stuff the costs were explosive um and what pip is trying to do is get up to a market rate because they work quite low well this is how they're doing it is by increasing Yes you heard that correctly that's exactly all right thank you crazy something command that's the end of my update okay along the old business how do we sit on the gambling warden so there's been a Headway made in the gambling ordinance unfortunately it's not prepared uh completed I should say for for this meeting we did have to shift some time and resources for the election um but just know that it's moving forward in times of the essence I understand this is a sunset of topic and we will get it wrapped up as soon as possible so nothing to present this evening okay new business discussion regarding Economic Development Fund account at Pine River State Bank with a balance of 24 8902 uh our background we put in about 2500 so years ago when we started our Economic Development Authority we put in seed money in case we would get be looking to entice people out here and we'd have some basic talks to put an account that's fine River State Bank I'm not sure why it's only 24.89 but I think we put in 2500 bucks back then took it out for some usage but anyway you are The Economic Development Authority the council is and we have had no request to utilize These funds for economic development in our communities since back in our very very early days um so the accountant was going through that and there's a this account is sitting there and that little amount is not really gaining interest and so her recommendation is that we take that money put it into the general fund and then should we need Economic Development funds to be able to draw from the general fund for that purpose and if we think that there's going to be any larger need in the future than to budget that into an account going forward but rather than keeping this one bank account open for that small amount transferred over into the general fund because it's not going to hurt the general fund should we need Eda money the idea was if we had to have some matching funds for Eda requests from the county because that right now if we're doing Eda development we're getting we have an Eda fund an HRA fund with the county but last time we utilized this I don't think we had to pay any matching so okay recommendation is just put in the general funding and draw from there if it should be a good idea any questions on that all right and I take a motion to uh transfer I make a motion that the dormant account at Pine River State Bank The Economic Development Fund account of 2489 and two cents be transferred over to where do we want to transfer it to the general fund second motion councilman Blake second councilman Greenberg any other discussion so you're hearing none all those in favor but was signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries all right and now the moments you've all been waiting for a little of a resolution appointing a City Assessor for uh actually it's 2023 it's that's not the right January 2023 to December of 2027. or paper of 2012 April 26 26th so Mr mayor council member based on the presentations provided by the two different um the county and and the skull Quest Wells company I move that uh the city contracts renews the contracts with Western Wells for what is listed as twenty three thousand nine hundred and fourteen dollars with a two percent increase in the first year and the contract would run January 1 2023 to December 31st 2027. second just to to clarify they said that would be a flat fee for those five years correct after two percent after two percent this year yep so what we heard Eric say was two percent increase this year and then a flat fee going forward depending on parcels and right unless the pins changed right the parcel counts will change every year depending on how things shift if there's new developments or but the the rate stays the same for all five years okay yes okay sorry all right so we have a motion and a second any other discussion Mr Mayor Greenberg I want to thank both Eric and Alex for coming out and presenting presenting thank you and any other comments discussions so you're hearing none all those in favor of the motion please signify by saying aye hi hi opposed motion carries thank you and Alex thank you for your presentation and your patience to sit this line yes all right well good for you that's a polite way of saying that so thank you thanks all right item number three you have a request from staff for the purchase of a snow blower to go on to our skid steer to improve the efficiency of our snow removal uh we are relatively limited on staff we do have a number of buildings that because of the way we've been doing it in the past takes two and three actions to get snow out of the way we have a request here to uh purchase a snow blower going on a piece of equipment that's actually matched for that equipment it's a piece of caterpillar that's available and would be utilized in our tight areas in front of the parking lot that these parking lots buildings city offices parking lots and would could not facilitate multiple machines having to go in and do the I just want to clarify that because this is a cat skid steer and a cat snowboard has nothing to do where where I work no you're not going to get a cut on this Jason this is this is through Ziggler I'm guessing that was not planning okay yeah you should have gotten ahead of that yeah you're behind um to allow the purchase of a snowblower attachment for the skid loader the purpose of efficient snow removal for years to come not to exceed 8 600 dollars second a motion councilman Randall second council member Blake any other discussion thank you yes let's administrate one thing I'd just like to add and the mayor did a fine job of explaining to but we are also looking to use this for the um and it's it's really going to help us with efficiency as far as that goes so I just wanted to add that case to itself the Rings has been been a problem Mr Mayor councilman the uh broom ball you would like to think I would like to thank the city for a new well and the new snow blower so they can go out on the ice and whack that ball this winter well in addition to what the city's done they can thank the Elk River Youth Hockey Association and thank you Elk River Youth Hockey Association for your donations because that's awesome yeah that's all the difference all right any other comments singing hearing that all those in favor of the Motions with the signify by saying aye aye hose motion carries that's a motion to adjourn move to adjourn second we are adjourned perfect Natalie do you want us to keep in this request