Yes, sir. Mayor Hibben here. Council member Brian here. Council member Glazer here. Council member Rainville. Council member Swenson here. And then we have attorney Mark Alites here. and me and Dileia. Well completed. Thank you very much. Uh Dileia, will you please uh read the code of conduct? I will, Mr. Mayor. Conduct at city council and committee meetings shall be governed by the following rules. It is requested that any persons wishing to speak at the council or committee shall state their name, address, and the subject matter upon which they wish to speak for the record. No person shall address the council or a committee until being recognized by the presiding officer. Persons addressing the body shall be limited to three minutes unless such time is extended by the presiding officer for good cause. Unless addressing the council or committee or entering or leaving the meeting place, persons in the audience shall be seated and remain seated during the meeting. Unless necessary for medical or other reasons, persons shall not stand or sit in the aisles or along the walls unless permitted by the presiding officer. No person shall block doorways. Demonstrations including cheering, yelling, whistling, hand clapping and foot stomping which disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the meeting are prohibited. Members of the audience and speakers shall not wear or display signs, playards, banners, uh banners, hats, costumes, or similar items that obstruct the view of other audience members. Members of the audience shall respect the rights of others and shall not engage in conduct that disrupts the orderly conduct of the meeting. Examples of prohibited disruptions include, but are not limited to, the utterance of loud, threatening, or abusive language, whistling, clapping, stamping of feet, repeated repeatedly waving of arms, or other disruptive acts. The presiding officer with the assistance of the local law enforcement shall be responsible for maintaining the order of the meeting. These rules shall be enforced as follows. The presiding officer has the authority to issue a warning to a person violating the rules. If the person continues to violate the rules and disrupt the meeting, the presiding officer will direct the person to depart the premises or be ejected from the premises. The ejection from a meeting shall remain effective for the remainder of the meeting session at which the rules violation occurred. Thank you. Thank you, Dia. Um we'll move on to approving the agenda. Mr. Mayor Councer, I have um some items to uh that I would like to request be moved from the consent agenda to new business. Please list them all. Uh again, uh item A, item C, and item E. for for item C. I would I would like if I would appreciate it if we can insert that um between items A and B. I think it's pertinent to have those two conversations together uh in regards to extending Mr. Bole's contract and uh um the approval of increased wage for administr interim administrator Johnson. That's a good recommendation. So, another one is um we did uh some some residents and other mayors reached out to me about the open forum. So, I would like to put the open forum back on. Um one resident in particular, Brandon Eert, did a really good job and sent a very professional email just stating that even though we are busy, we should allow that three minutes for people. So, I just appreciate his professionalism um along with other mayor's input. So I would like to put a motion to put the open forum back on the agenda. A second. Okay, Mr. Mayor. Council member Reville. Just clarification going forward or tonight? Even for tonight starting starting right now. All right. So we got a second on that. Um but is there any other changes that need to be made or do we need to vote on that one real quick and then come back to the rest of the agenda? Are we good with the changes? Council member Glazer recommended. Mr. Mayor, we're moving A, C, D, and E down under new business. Uh, what he what council council member Glazer stated was A, C, and E. You wanted to take C specifically. D is not yet. A, C, and E. Yep. Okay. So, we already got a second. We'll move to vote. Uh all in favor of approving the agenda as described say I. I. I. Those opposed. Motion carries. Okay. We will start with an open forum. I don't know if a sheet of paper even made it back there tonight. Um but is there anybody any members of the audience even though we don't have a piece of paper? If you'd like to take your three minutes and uh we don't have a microphone. That could be a problem. All right. So, we'll set that up and see if there's Does anyone anybody want to speak as far as for the open forum? I think so. Yours. Thank you. Stephen Schmidt, 6232 191st Lane Northwest. And uh we appreciate this opportunity to speak to everybody here. My wife was not able to make it tonight and she's the more articulate one than me. But uh couple of our concerns that we have, we just want to uh express our concerns to you is extending the contract for uh Frank Bole. Um we know he's been very useful in the past. He's highly qualified, but we and maybe we've spoken to feel that maybe he's not necessary anymore. Things are rolling along and Natalie handles things very well. Um, that was uh the main thing I see on here because I don't have our notes from last meeting. I apologize. But uh also I've heard quite some time that Natalie was possibly interested and would certainly be a good city administrator since it seemed like she was doing a lot of Scott's work in the past and she is very sharp. So we'd like to recommend that. So thank you. Anybody else for the open forum? All right, hearing that we will close the open forum and we will move to um approving the consent agenda. So multiple items were pulled out which is A, C, and E. Is there any other items on the consent agenda that or can we go with a motion to approve the consent agenda? Mr. Mayor, Council Member Bryant, approve the consent agenda. I'll make the motion to approve the consent agenda as amended. Council Rainville just did a second. All right, we'll go do our vote. All in favor of approving the consent agenda say I. I. Those opposed. Motion carries. Okay, we'll start with new business um which is 3A. Consider approval of the ordinance 2025 refining uh the definition of nuisance and excess services. Got to get to the right. Okay. Were you reading this particular one? Yes, sir. All right. I'll turn it over to you, sir. turn the mic right there or microphone to you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, before council today, we have a proposed ordinance amending chapter 3 of the city code to add additional nuisances to section one and to add a section six of chapter 3 of the city code uh for a code for excessive use of law enforcement services. In essence and in short, what this ordinance does is imposes for individuals, businesses or entities who are causing an excessive use of police offic uh law enforcement services to respond to properties uh or in response to offenses to allow for a fee to be assessed against either the offender or the property owner who is propagating the nuisance on the property. Um, the statute that kind of shapes the parameters of what we can do within this ordinance is Minnesota statute 504B period 205. Uh, this is a statute regarding residential tenants rights to seek police and emergency assistance. Um, what the law intends in this statute is to prohibit um any type of uh chilling effect on calls with response to mental health crises or domestic instances. That is something that is specifically called out and carved out by the proposed ordinance before the council today that those would not count towards the tally um that would be uh used to assess. And again um the ordinance allows for city council discretion as to whether count to count an instance as a response that would you would use to get to that threshold of more than three in one calendar year starting January 1 through December 31. Um in particular uh the statute that I had just presented before council um does give some discretion and authority to the city council to define nuisance. Um and that is why we are also proposing uh in this ordinance an expansion of uh the definition of nuisance and some changes to chapter 3 city code on nuisance as you already have it. uh namely that would include uh as I have highlighted in red on these sheets the unlawful sale, possession, storage, delivery, manufacturing, cultivation of controlled substances uh actions that would uh constitute disorderly conduct pursuant to Minnesota statutes 609.72 and actions that constitute a public nuisance under any local, state, or federal law. um in addition to some other more minor um items that could be discussed if there are questions regarding those as well. But in short, I think that this is intended to address some problems in the community um that could either be dealing with drug use or disorderly conduct that are causing some financial hardship upon the city who contracts with the sheriff's office. Was there a recommendation um because this is talked about establishing basically some penalty. Um was there a recommendation on the amount that would go with that? I do believe the proposed draft does have a recommendation on on that. If it does not um I do think that it would be something that the council could set and we could line item into here. Uh I actually don't know on a quick scan here if there was an amount that was set. Uh, I think that that would require an amendment to the fee schedule that would allow you to establish that fee. Uh, larger metropolitan cities tend to do this and can do this based upon an officer's hourly wage when they go out and they document time. I think it convolutes things a little bit much here. Um, the the statute uh does make clear that you can just use fees for the purposes just to cover um the call. So if there is an excess of those funds, it needs to be reserved to be used for emergency responses. You can't go delegating that to other portions of the budget. So I would recommend setting a flat fee. Um whether that fee is 300, 500, the amount determined by the council. Um I think that that should be adopted into the fee schedule and is subject for the council's consideration. Is there any recommendation or what have other cities done that have been successful with that flat beat? To be honest, the scope of cities doing this um hasn't been entirely clear. Um it's not very large scope. I believe the city of Cottage Grove was one other city that has done it. I can't remember the number off the top of my head. Like I said, it's the larger cities that have tended to do this and they use a bit of a different mechanism to calculate it based upon hourly wage. Um I could check the city of Cottage Grove's um fee schedule to see if they have a number that they have used. Sure, Mayor. Council member. Um, so my understanding is that the impact to our budget that this has is, you know, the the more calls we have, the higher the cost of the sheriff's contract. So I don't think it's necessarily an hourly wage issue. Is there any way, and I I don't think maybe we necessarily know, but any any way to measure what effect it would have on our sheriff's contract going forward, say, you know, in excess of 10 calls this year over last year, and what impact that would have so we could, you know, fairly do it because I think the purpose of this ordinance, if I'm not mistaken, is sort of twofold. one is to sort of incentivize, you know, these uh businesses that have excessive calls to um maybe take action or hire different or additional staff. So, there's like the incentive there, but it's also just to protect our budget and make sure that we're not out of pocket. And so, if that's the intent, I would like to make it as precise as possible and not arbitrary. Um so, I I don't know. Is there a way to figure out how it will impact the sheriff's contract? Somebody might have that information. I currently don't. Um, council member Brian or Rainville, do you guys either one of you guys know? I don't I don't know this, Mr. Mayor. I don't know the specifics, but I do know that they literally use the number of I don't have the formula, but I do know they go off of how many calls did we did we have in now then? And then they use that to to as a as some sort of indicator for how the um the the the fee would be the contract fee would be for the for the following year. So but but how many calls it would take to lower that to to hit whatever threshold? I don't know. I mean maybe I I don't know when our contract is up for renewal. Um if it is it's Well, I know is it J December? It's just January December. Oh, is it all right? I mean, maybe we could ask, you know, have the city staff ask the the county and see if they have any rough estimate as to what impact each additional call might have. Um, yeah, I guess my other thought just based on what our attorney just said there, if there are excess funds, you know, beyond what the actual call cost, I don't know how we measure that unless we know how much each call costs. And I guess my question for the the city attorney is um you know if we do have extra, can we allot that money towards next year's sheriff contracts? Is that an appropriate use of it? So I I'll answer kind of the first prong of the question and it goes to the mayor's question of what Cottage Grove did. I've just taken a look at the city of Cottage Grove's fee schedule. um they don't reference it the the amount directly in the ordinance proper but in the fee schedule they have 130 per hour is what they contemplate um with respect to the carryover of funds um applying it broadly to the budget it it it is hard um because the intent of what the statute is trying to limit it down to is the excessive nature of the calls. So what my fear is is exposing the city to some type of liability or claim in which somebody says you're casting a very broad definition just to you know discount your budget there save money so you can take your law enforcement budget and put it elsewhere. So I would advise against just you know at open just taking the money and putting it towards next year's budget. I mean, it sounds then like we almost have to figure out what each call cost so that we can charge an appropriate amount. Otherwise, we're not really following the spirit of the statute. So, for the ordinance today, we don't have to determine the amount. We can come back and determine the amount, but I think it's a great question to look into. And I think our office too had recommended it just would be a good idea to have consultation with the sheriff's department. So, a not only are they aware, but b we could also um if the council wants condition approval based upon feedback um from the sheriff's department if they have any concerns. Like I said, one of those, you know, carveouts that is in statute um is the mental health crisis. Um making a determination on what constitutes a mental health crisis is not a clear statutory bright line. Um, so maybe that is something that input from the sheriff's department could also be instructive or helpful on in determining and advising when to impose fees for mere behavioral incidents and when that behavioral incident is truly a mental health crisis creating a distinction there. Mr. Mayor, that that ties into um attorneys that ties into the questioning they have because one of the one of the organizations we're talking about is bar none. Yes. And so we've got residents that are maybe not only there for legal reasons, but mental health reasons. And so how do you, you know, how do you define what's what? Yeah, I think that's a very good point. Uh, council member, the statute that I cited is in particular to residential tenants, which would directly apply to bar none given they are a residential facility. Um my two things would be consultation and documentation um will be the two ways in which to establish that bright line. Um that would be legally defensible. Consultation with the sheriff's department. Has the sheriff's department worked with Bar None or other offending facilities? Have they engaged in training or any comment with respect to what Barn None could do better to reduce the number of calls? Um and then the second is documentation of the incidents. Um just having you know there's police reports that are filed. Just making it clear um that establishing facts in the police report is going to be important for the council given this ordinance given the contract that you have with them and given that we're imposing fees. Um like I said the ordinance is not drafted to require a a counting of an incident um towards the total of four which is when the fee four in a year is when it starts to impose. uh the council can most certainly have its own discretionary conversation as to whether it thinks something meets the threshold of a mental health crisis or not and choose whether or not to count an incident report towards that total that gets you to the point to where you end up getting fee. So just one point on page one of the uh ordinance here it says after the third violation is when they would assess loose. Yes the actual resolution. I'm sorry. Okay. Um and got a question. Well a comment and a question just to response council Glazer. I know that Natalie went out either this I think it was this last week spar none with the sheriff or the you know our deputy or whoever we have aside from the sheriff's office and did discuss with them you know the appropriate use of emergency services and they went over a few scenarios. I guess maybe maybe an idea would be any any property that would have fallen subject to this ordinance last year. You know, let's assume maybe they are the likely offenders of it going forward. I think, you know, it' probably be a good idea to have Natalie and maybe someone from the council and the sheriff's office go visit any business or property that would have fallen subject to this last year and just sort of review it with them and make sure that they know, you know, they can still call emergency services for mental health or, you know, emergency uh, you know, assaults or what have you, so that they're not discouraged from calling. Um, I don't know that that was, you know, the primary focus of their trip out there last week, but, you know, that might be a way piece of it. Yeah, it was a key piece of it. We call and it it might be a way to address that going forward. Um, we, you know, it could be there's a new business or a new property that pops up this year that we wouldn't have advised because they weren't calling last year, but I think it would at least be a good start talking those properties. And then I do have a question. Um, has has there been well, it sounds like not many all many other small cities have done something like this to your knowledge, so maybe this question isn't answerable, but do policies like this have a chilling effect on calling 911? So, I would I would hate to have that. I've, you know, I've certainly heard of like sort of notorious bars in the Twin Cities. You know, they have like a rule where the only person who can call 911 is like the manager on shift because they are already, you know, in that area of excessive calls impacting them with their license and all that. And I would hate for there to be a delay to call 911 in a true emergency situation at bar none or elsewhere because some staff member is running around trying to find the director or calling them at home or waiting for a response. So I'm just wondering is is there any research as far as you know that on this issue if there is a chilling effect? Council member, good question. There's no documented research as to that. Um, I wouldn't imagine that there would even be any in larger metropolitan areas given the date of some of these ordinances that have been enacted by municipalities. I do believe that uh Minnesota statute 504b 205, if I'm not wrong, was enacted in response to an incident either in Brooklyn Park or Brooklyn Center that sparked conversation on this at the legislature to create those carveouts. Whether bar none or any business institutes its own internal policy as to only this person can call is on them would be my take on it. Um I think that the council's consideration should be keeping the fee at a place to where it is merely meant to just recuperate the cost of the services. It's not meant as a deterrent. It's not meant to be prohibitively high. It's not meant to create a chilling effect. Right? If we set that fee at $20,000, just a crazy high number, it will create a chilling effect. We will not see a number of calls. If you set it at the actual cost of the service, uh, one would think that it would at least minimize the chilling effect. Um, I had one other thought. If it comes back to me, I I will bring it up, but I don't think it was within the scope of your question. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council Rambo, go ahead. to continue on with council member what council member Brian said. Yeah. I mean our our contract is kind of broken down into maybe three sections. you know, one is staff time and all that includes in a sheriff's uh the salary benefits of all all of that, the vehicle, what we get charged for a vehicle. Um, and then also that the computer systems and that we use with the county. But I and I wish I could think of when we had it because I looked for it on my phone, but I I think the first part of it talks about the calls for service and kind of a breakdown of dollar amount on that. Um, so that is something I think it we we should direct staff to work with the with the sheriff's office to see if they can come up with an average um of a per call cost, but some calls you have um, you know, typically in Oka County because they're able squads, there's just one officer per squad. You're going to get two squads to go unless they're comfortable enough to cancel the second squad. So you're always going to have two squads, two officers responding with the majority of the time. Um for bigger things, you could have four four squads, four officers. So we have to try to figure out what that balance is, too. And maybe we look at when we get the reports from the from the sheriff, you know, it breaks out who was there. And I believe it gives us our the time periods as far as how long they stayed there. This also too, our fire department is going out there at times. Our fire department is going out to other locations where they're needed and that affects our budgets. Mr. Mayor, council member, uh, council member Rainbow, this and I don't know if anybody knows the answer to this question. If there's shared services, for instance, there there aren't enough deputies to cover the the need the incident uh is there any uh for instance of St. Francis has called in to support them. Is there any cost that comes back to us from St. Francis as well for those services? Mr. Mayor, Council, go ahead. No, that's more of a mutual aid. You know, like the fire department, if we go to Oakrove and help with the fire department with a fire there, it's more mutual aid. This is the just pertaining to the sheriff's office contract. We contract for one officer for that period of time. If they have to bring in additional officers that one council member Swanson, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say I don't know the answer to that from my own research or reading something, but I did ask that same question of Natalie when I was in agenda review and I think her answer is no. We don't pay if Oakrove versus St. Francis responds. Okay. Any other questions on this resolution? Mr. Mayor, if I may just say a few things. Certainly. Just with respect to the thoughts that had come back to me. Uh, one of the questions or comments u made by council member Swenson uh was with respect to having representatives of the city council, maybe a city council member and a member from the sheriff's department go out. Uh in that instance, I would advise not to give any indication of uh what is and is not a mental health crisis. For example, I would just uh give an indication that the ordinance defines conduct that constitutes a nuisance and statute carves out uh what the exceptions are. We don't want to get ourselves into any type of estoppel claim to where we've told them what they can and cannot do or what is and is not a qualifying event. I would rather have the language of the ordinance and the language of the law control there and have the council exercise its discretion on whether to impose um it as one of the three to get you to when the fines go into place. Um with respect to that, there's also the idea I said documentation. Um, if the sheriff has gone out and has noted several times to a business, be it bar none or anyone else, you're severely underst staffed, you can't manage, that understaffing remark needs to be documented. So over time, it can be clear that you're having issues because of X. You're not fixing X, which you can fix. That should be taken into the council's discretion when imposing a fee. The last thing I would say is with respect to the scope of Minnesota statute 366.011. That's the charges for emergency services. Uh it's used oftent times to certify uh costs for emergency services with respect to fire. Um there is a world too in which the council can consider consulting with the contracting fire department to have the fire department to respond to a lot of these instances. you run less into the law enforcement um restrictions that are under 504 B205 for the mental health carveouts etc. Um and there is kind of an uncontemplated circumstance by the legislature there to where you are having um the fire department responding to mental health crisis uh for example instead of the police department just an outside thought. Go ahead. So Mor um I it would be my thought is that our sheriff's office has more training and mental health than our fire department does. there our fire department we would have few on staff during the day. Um and I my concern is how how do we determine what is that mental health? None of us are health professionals here that I know of. Um I you know how do we make that determination? That's it's I don't know. It's just that that worries me. And how do we do that? because you don't want to get yourself into hot water by saying you know A is B isn't you know how do you determine that I won't Mr. Mr. Mayor, may I I think one of council member one of the easy ways to go about that, it's not an easy issue, it's not defined, there's no clear black or white, is to look to does it meet one of the definitions of nuisances and having that be the starting point for the the council's analysis. Um, you know, is it a um drug induced mental health issue? Okay. So, if there's a possession and consumption of drugs there, that still constitutes a nuisance. I understand it could be mental health, but the nuisance was the condition precedent to the mental health crisis that had occurred. Um, so that type of framing could be helpful for the council's consideration on whether or not to count that incident as one that would qualify underneath this ordinance. Mayor Spencer, go ahead. Yeah, I would just like to agree with you. You make an excellent point about us going out there and muddying up their waters beyond the uh statute. After you point that out, it's a terrible idea. we should not set some sort of precedent for a future promisory stop opening. So it was a good point and it's not that I discourage you from going out. I think these businesses should be made aware of the ordinance. Um but that's the extent of what I would advise is they should be aware of the ordinance. Um let them know that the sheriff is aware of the ordinance and that it's in place. Any other discussion? Mr. Mayor, Council Member Brian, go ahead. Just looking at uh section 3-6-4, it talks about after two nuisance service calls within the calendar year that we'd be sending out a written notice. Um I understand we are re currently in the process of revising our complaint process, but our current complaint process that is in place basically is saying, you know, if there is a complaint that we're sending out a letter saying, hey, you might be out of compliance or might be violating ordinance like at after the first time. Um, I don't see why we would, you know, especially if it does get egregious. It might be, you know, we should theoretically be sending out that letter and following our existing process to go, hey, you you're you're potentially out of, you know, violating an ordinance and that should be going out right almost right away because that certainly we're advancing the timeline and it's less it's possible that they might be going, "Oh, okay. I won't do it." you know. So, are you recommending that that the letter goes out after the second occurrence? I'm just I just don't know if if this ordinance hasn't been reviewed with our existing complaint process to kind of meld the two together as far as how how this this ordinance would be applied. Anybody know the answer to that? Uh I What is our current complaint process if you or where can we find that? Would that be in chapter three? You don't believe that's in the actual written on the call. Council member I think it's in ordinance. I think it was it was put together by put together and agreed to and worked through with previous council and policy. Yes. Council member, is it your recollection that that policy then is to have notice sent out after the first offense? I'm pretty sure that's before we even before we even investigate it. There's been a letter that's been sent out to say, you know, somebody complained about this. There may be an issue. we're going to look into it and then act upon it accordingly. I mean, so if if they were violating an ordinance where it would be susceptable to a fine or whatever, then then that would take place. But if you went out there and found, well, it's really nothing that's um an issue, then, you know, there wouldn't necessarily be any action. And I think you'd want some sort of investigation that that should be part of the process anyway on any complaint or nuisance where there would be some sort of report back going, "Oh yeah, somebody really said that this was a nuisance or whatever, but it really wasn't, you know, it it wouldn't apply under this ordinance, but you know, I told them to whatever it is, keep keep their horses on their own property, just as a terrible example." So, mayor, go ahead. Council member Brian. So, this is saying an ordinance amending chapter 3 city code to add additional nuisances to section one and add section six, excessive use of law enforcement services. So, to me, this is separate than our policy for going out for those homes. Too many cars. I that's how I read it. It and it could very well be, but if someone's if someone's if someone is theoretically potentially going to be creating a nuisance, why do we want to wait till the third time to say, "Oh, we might start finding you because you're you're causing your your behavior is becoming a nuisance. If it's if it literally gets into that type of thing, from perspective of legal, there's, you know, more notice is never a bad problem. Um, I also think that it could have implications on deterrence as you, um, referenced, council member. Um, the idea of sending out it on the first violation and then sending it on a second, um, not only makes it clearer, um, but it gives you two opportunities instead of one to try and stop the action short of imposing the fine. Um, I will also just say in any instance that we get drawn into litigation with any of our clients, it's always great to say we gave them more chances than fewer, more notice than less. And so from a legal perspective, I have no objection to moving that to um notice upon the first determination. I would say, however, uh I don't know about giving them notice. You can give notice prior to the council making a determination if an event was qualifying under this ordinance. Um but to me the the minimum I would like to see would be doing that after you've made that determination and sending a letter indicating you have made such determination. Mayor Council member Spencer, go ahead. Um, I think that's not a bad idea, but thinking through it, if we're going to send uh letters like that on first occurrences, I mean, that would also potentially apply to any residents who just are oneoff callers of emergency services every year, you know what I mean? Are they each going to get a a letter or two letting them know they're on the the road to being a nuisance? And so I I don't I don't disagree with your idea or your thought, but I'm wondering if is there a way to narrow it in on the ones that are likely to reach two, three, four, five and not send that first letter to just a resident. I'm saying it it's it seems like there's there's some crossover between our complaint process and this and I don't know if that's been worked through. I think the only thing that um council member Splinton brings up that is a good point is I don't know the volume of the amount of police calls that you would get that withdrawal under this. Um if you allow kind of some backdoor calculations without having to send a notice each time you just have to wait to get to two. You can sit on the police reports and then send the notice. um you could end up in a situation to where you forget to send out a notice and if you don't send out the notice then time number two becomes time number one for purpose of the ordinance before you could start imposing fees. So just from a logistics if you have a high call volume and you feel like it would be imposing a lot on your support staff or the administrator whomever is responsible for sending out those letters just make that a practical consideration. If your volume is low it perhaps is feasible to send a letter every time. our our volume is not crazy high, but we can look from the just from all the council meetings, there's a couple repeat offenders and bar n the largest. I don't see a lot of repeat offenders from as we went through the data for the last few months. Um I could be missing something, but I think that starting with the second violation, a letter could go out. Again, I don't I don't know that we have a ton of second violations except a couple. And if there is concern with respect to a conflict of policy, uh there generally and you know in any ordinance that we'll draft there is a conflict section that's section four of this ordinance says if it conflicts with provisions of this ordinance and applicable provisions of state law, rules, regulations, the latter shall prevail. We could include in here a reference to um council policy. So that way it draws a distinction that the policy that you have for reporting uh in other instances is not applicable here and this ordinance controls if that makes sense. Any other discussion council? Mr. Mayor Council O'Brien, go ahead. Ordinance aside, do we have a plan in place for enforcing these and for whatever whenever we're going to send out the letter that is is is are is our staff going to be sending out the letters or is this something that's going to be um deferred to Rum River or what what is that that process behind it? I just don't want to pass an ordinance and we don't have a way to to follow up on it. definitely not defined in here the boom. I didn't see anything else. That is correct, Mr. Mayor. So, right now, I think we could determine that. I don't know if we need to determine at this date because we don't have a fee schedule. It's really adopting the the ordinance here for the resolution. Um, and then we can come back with that. But right now, I would look at our our city staff as being able to draft the letter and send it. Again, I don't think it's there's a lot of offenders in this. Now, could that be shifted to ground River? Absolutely. Could be. Yeah. Not that I want it to be because that incurs extra. But I just want to make sure that we have the capability to basically look into enforcing whatever ordinances or changes we make to something like this. Yeah. I was here, but I'm making the assumption that we could send out a letter to them because I don't see that there's going to be a high volume on this. And again, that's clear communication with the sheriff's department that will help facilitate that. They need to know when to refer to you. Um, and so just having that be the the general practice. My understanding that there's been a good amount of passing of police reports back and forth with respect bar none and um maybe another property go to and so just keeping that communication up. Mr. Mayor, council member Spencer, go ahead. Um I was just looking at chapter 3 here and it does have a section uh regarding when service of an order or notice is required. Any one of the more following methods of service shall be adequate. And so I would say you know I think it is it specifically called a notice in this ordinance amendment. So I think we would have to follow the rules for service. It looks like there's rules of procedure for a hearing. Council member, that's in chapter 3, section 3-1-10. And I mean, it looks like by mail is okay, but I'm I'm more worried about the stuff that follows that. But the hearing examiner, all that, I would want to make sure we're like Mr. Uh, Councilman Ryan pointed out, not conflicting maybe with some procedure we already have in place in the same room. Council member, just at a quick glance, this appears to be um abatement procedure for nuisances short of district court action. I think that there is a delineation between the council making a determination underneath this uh proposed ordinance and the abatement process that precedes legal action. Um, so I think that they are two distinct um, uh, notice requirements. If there is any ambiguity, I understand how there could be because there's nuisance that bleeds over both into this section that you're referring to, council member, as well as this ordinance. We could make a clear call out that the 3-1-10 abatement procedures and notice requirements do not control the excessive use of law enforcement services ordinance and that it's based upon the notice requirements set forth in the ordinance proper. You do that, Mr. Mayor. One more thing. Go ahead. Section 364 again, letter D, it's talking about that if if a notice of delinquency is sent out that the city can use any lawful means allowed to a private party. Is that I'm just trying to trying to read that. Is that like maybe it's just just the way it's worded. Is that literally t talking about is that just referring to the county and the county auditor or is that referring back to like an actual collection agency? Uh council member one second please. I'm just taking a moment to read which section 364 letter D. And council member your question again was I'm and maybe it's just the way that's wording it but it's referring to private party. Is that that's not referring is that referring to sending it off to the county to put it on their property taxes or is that actually saying that we should be using when it says any lawful means allowed to a private party. Is that like referring to a collection agency? Uh council, no. That that would be the chapter 366012 is the certification statute for unpaid service charges that affords the ability to uh impose those service charges. I think the language to a private party creates ambiguity and could be removed. Um that is a statutory entitlement that the municipality has. Um I think the intent of that language there was to impose on a private party. Uh and so that language creates ambiguity and could just be stricken to clear that up. That is not in reference to any type of private collection agency. Um it it it would be under 366012. I don't think 429 would apply so much here. There is a provision, it's 429021 sub8, that if you do get into that other section of chapter 3 that we were talking about, abatement of nuisances and court actions, you could see collection of fees through that subdivision. Um, but that is kind of a conversation for a different time. It's a different issue, but I I would agree that the language to a private party should be removed. Uh, and I would just clear up that language to make clear that it is certification under 366012. That is that process. Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I'm just reading this. Council member, go ahead or council member Swanson. Go ahead. The other day I'm looking at you. I'm reading 012 and it yeah, it doesn't uh it has very similar language to this, but it does not reference of a private party. So, I think that would be a good call just to that definitely makes it confusing for a private party. Yes. Was not a virtual private party. Mr. Council member attorney Alzartes in the event that um fees you know consider let's say considerable fees are racked up by one organization or another if they're not paid. Are these items that can be assessed? It so it technically it's not an assessment which would be under chapter 429. It's a certification very similar process. It's actually a little bit more streamlined than 429. 429 is your local improvement special assessment, which requires a public hearing and also requires um a notice of appeal to be sent. Chapter 366 is a bit more streamlined um and would allow certification to the county auditor to be collected along with property taxes without all of those kind of procedural hurdles and protections that are in place in chapter 429. Other questions, Mr. Mayor, Council Member Moreno, I I would like us to consider adding the fire department into this. Um, again, that's an expense that the city has. We're going out on some of these calls. Um, as that something that seems legitimate that we would if the excess abuse of the fire department, do we think we have those circumstances where the fire department is being abused at all? that I don't really know. I had I would have to go back and look at the calls, but it's if we get to the point doesn't mean we have to use it, right? The situation can arise. Yeah, I've heard talked to other pirate fighters that they it's like, oh, you know, you get the the one call where they they need help getting up and not that that wouldn't be one you wouldn't do, but not as but you could have the I can see situ here's I've heard of situations where it you know that that could especially if if we are in in more of a you know where can't I can't think of another good course examples. So, yeah, but it's at our discretion if we feel that there's an issue and that's something that the fire chief would have to bring to us. If there isn't that could we at this point could we table that one and bring it back and my concern is if we're going to just put it on top of this one. Okay. I don't know that we've done enough research and the way this is written, it's specifically written for code violation for law enforcement. Okay. That that's my recommendation, but I could be wrong. Go ahead, Council Member Swanson. Go ahead. Yeah, I I don't think that's a terrible idea, Mary. And I agree there could be very specific circumstances where that might be an issue, but I would I would be a lot more hesitant to impose something like this on those types of emergency calls. I would I would really not like to see delays and calls for life saving um services, but I if there is a way to target it very specifically to scenarios where that could be an issue, I'd be all for that, but I just I can't really think of one right off the top of my head and the minute I've been thinking about. My concern would be, as I understand it, if we pass an ordinance, we have to publish the news. Then once we go make changes to it again, we have to publish it again. And I don't know if we want to if we'd rather take a pass, take a pass and uh look at whatever language we need to change to see if it's even possible to do and then we've got the majority of it now and then we can fine-tune it at another time. Is that is your recommendation to add the plan? I'm I'm just going if it's something to look at. None of us really can go through it line by line and the however much time we've had to go through it to see if it would apply. Do you have a recommendation on this? I do. Um so with respect to publication another time you don't have to republish the whole ordinance. You don't even have to publish the ordinance. You can publish a summary of the ordinance each time. Um the second amendment to the ordinance could be incredibly brief. I think it's section 3-6-3A that defines law enforcement personnel. We could just do an amendment which would um alter that definition and make it broader to include both the uh fire department and the police department. It would be a relatively short amendment that would take little time to draft. and then you would just be publishing the um ordinance summary for the amendment the second time that you go around at it. With respect to whether the fire department can be included, um if you look to 366.011, that statute would say that you would be able to include the fire department on it. One practical consideration I would put before the council is how are you going to I know you're already struggling to calculate fees for the sheriff's department. You would have that with your fire services contract as well to figure out the cost that it would or you have um paid on call paid on call. So you would be calculating two costs, right? And and you could count contemplate it different. You could have the fee schedule contemplate fire service response and law enforcement response and charge them at two different rates. But it is just another logistical consideration that needs to be had if you do introduce the fire department. Mr. Mayor, can I ask a question back? Council member Bryant, does does that answer your question or should we look at it and spend more because if it's just a matter of writing the fire department in there? I can't do that. Yeah. And that's I that was your point. All right, Council Member Swans, go ahead. Yeah, I was I was just thinking through this more and I wonder if it's even necessary because are there many fire calls where um the sheriff's office does not also show up and if they show up to a call where it would have qualified as a nuisance, wouldn't that just count as one call? I guess I'm curious how many fire calls are responded to without a sheriff's response also. I can't give you that answer. Kind of depends on what what dispatch is triage and how they're determining who to send. So if it's a fire, you're probably not getting a police officer. Mr. Mayor, I hold on. I think Council Member Blazer was next. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, one thing, one concern I have or a couple concerns I have about the the fire department, how how do we determine in that split second when the fire department goes out? Because, you know, so what council member Rainbow said earlier is, you know, there's there's training that that law enforcement receives that our fire department does not. So, are they going to need additional training? There's also a safety um perspective that that law enforcement takes into account automatically that could potentially put firefighters at risk depending on what the circumstances of the call are. So I I think I just think we need to give some thought to that. Council Ringo's next. Um the council member Glazer um so my experiences within Minneapolis PD whether it's a fire, a medical, um, police go in and the other two agencies do not go in until the police have said it's a it's a it's a code four, it's it's secure, it's it's safe, they can go in. But in an instance of like a fire like we've had over at the brand name storage, sheriff and police are going to respond on that. Okay. Sometimes sheriff and the csos do the perimeter um traffic control while the fire department puts the fire. There's times where sheriffs have to go in to in into the perimeter based on what's happening on that fire. You know, what what blew up, whatever, you know, what are they looking for? I guess I'm curious at is the current policy with the fire department, do they write a a report, a run report on every call? Because if we are going to also apply this to fire, we're going to have to have them documenting every call so that we can actually figure out, you know, whether it was a nuisance and that if we don't already document every call, I think it would cost more than it recoups us possibly. I so I don't know the answer to that. Do the does fire write a report every call? Mr. Mayor, coun. I believe that fire does on other calls. Some of them may be very preliminary, you know, very big, you know, responded to a home somebody up off the floor. You know, they can't they couldn't get out of bed, they've fallen. But if it's more detailed, then yeah, you would have because if there's any if it's a fire and they're looking at it being an arson, they have to have a a report for the arsenal investigators to look at. So listen, yeah, I guess I I would like to have someone from the fire department give some input before adding them to the nuisance. And I don't think, in my opinion, I don't think that merits waiting on passing this ordinance necessarily. I don't know that the cost of publication with an additional summary is is too much of a burden um just to go ahead and and pass this now and and hold off on the fire. I think it's worth exploring, but I would certainly want their input to see if it's something that they're that would help. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut one more point. Yes, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Um, just because fire services are included, if you do choose to include it in the ordinance, doesn't mean that the triaging process has to change between when fire responds and when police responds. Um, if anything, you could think about it from the perspective of if you're finding a situation to where there is a concurrent response frequently. Um, you're having fees for fire that you're eating paying your on call firefighters that are not being certified under the ordinance. So, another thing to contemplate is if there is that concurrent response that happens a lot where both fire and police go out, you're only getting a bite at half of the apple and collecting roughly half, right? however the fees work out, but you're missing out on the fire side as well. Um, so that is something to consider for the inclusion of fire services in here. It's allowed by statute. It would allow you to recover more. It doesn't have to change how you triage or respond or direct fire and police to respond. Mr. Mayor, Council Member Swinson, go ahead. I mean, uh, maybe an idea would be to just let the sheriff document, you know, the sheriff's office document the nuisances. And if the fire is along, I mean, we could add the fire to the statute, but not have the firemen responsible for documenting nuisances and tracking them and documenting it. But if they do happen to be along, then like you say, I think that's a good point. You know, I think and again, I don't know the truth to this, but I I would suspect a lot of the fire calls would also have the sheriff and so there would be some overlap and it wouldn't add work or burden on the fire department's documents or describe nuisances. We just sort of piggyback on those sheriff calls and if it is fire alone, then maybe maybe we just lose those as as you know nuisance called at least applying the fine. I guess that's just one thought of based on what we were talking about. Is it possible for us to just bring this back up in the fall? Get a little data from the fire department to see if it's an issue before we write it in. Just move forward and approve this today. Would that be okay? Is there a motion going forward? I just on page 5D that's got us towards the end of the paragraph. It's got incurred by the township that should say city. Thank you, council member. I'll reflect that change. Got all the other ones. So we switch city for township and cross out to a allowed to a private party for the collection. Okay. And just so I can be clear, we're leaving the call period at 2 is when the notice would go out. Um and I will create a carveout for section 3-1-10 that this is a distinct process and this controls for this ordinance. I think the only unanswered question then, but I think it might be answered is we'll just proceed as is with the drafting of law enforcement and in the fall address adding uh the prospect of adding in uh fire services. The last thing I would say too just to make sure we don't have I will add the section 4 conflicts the language or any policy of the city. Um so that way this ordinance trumps any policy of the city with that it conflicts with for notice or anything else. We're good on discussion at this point. We're going to leave the fee for right now and come back with the right. Well, we've got some of the information. Is there any other discussions on fee that we should have? We talk about that now or should we shelf? Oh, you could just direct the city to talk to the sheriff and understand what that fee is and and how. Okay. So, I think that's the action you can give back to the the city staff. All right. Would anybody like to make a motion? I'll make a motion to pass this. All right. You make it more specific than that. Uh I move to amend the ordinance to uh of chapter 3 of the city code to add additional nuisances to section one to add section six excessive use of law enforcement services with the edits that we had uh discussed I think to couple sections in there. I don't know if you need me to highlight those, but I think we just highlighted them with with the attorney here. So I think we're okay. All right. Second to the motion. I'll second them. All in favor of passing this ordinance say I. I. I. Those opposed? None. The motion carries. Okay. That one's complete. All right. Council member Glazer had recommend to bring item C from the consent agenda down and put it between page A and B. Would you like to discuss uh item C? So, so we're discussing Mr. BL's contract. Yes. At this point, so um and this this would actually um tie into what Mr. Schmidt brought up in his um comments this evening during open forum and the the what what I'd really like to do is I'd like I'd like to talk about both of these RCAs together initially and and see what the council's appetite is um for for what I have to say. Uh if we go if we go back to um we have a an RCA that was put forth by um consultant boils back this dated February 11th and there's quite a bit to this RCA where it's talking about the process of um hiring in a new administrator and uh the different proc different paths that we could take. Um, one would be the the city going through um conducting the process of of doing the search. Um, the other is uh somebody like using a service like South Central Service Cooperative. Um, and then there's an option at the bottom that that Mr. oils um proposed and and I think and if I don't think I'm telling tales that there are other council members that have expressed that u Miss Johnson uh is their preferred candidate for this position. Um Mr. I'm just going to read what Mr. Bo wrote here at the bottom of the RCA. It says one final option should be considered by the city council. You can conduct alternate two considering only Natalie Johnson as your candidate. The cost of completing this work identified in addendum one is $3,500. I don't know if that opportunity has passed if you know that $14,000 check has already been cashed by South Central Service Cooperative. Um and and what their response to this would be. Um and then Mr. Boils uh goes into talking about how in a short time um he's been back at the city since since his stint in 2022 um his observations about um Miss Johnson's uh work that she's been performing. So, one of the one of the things that that is a common theme with a couple of folks on the real now then bulletin board in regards to some of the posts that are occurring is looking for solutions as opposed to um all the fighting uh and I guess yeah the arguing, bickering, um calling people out um let's you know our residents are looking for us to find solutions. So you know part of the council h had a strong appetite for deferring our special election in the uh in the uh attempt of saving $10,000 you know by not renewing Mr. Boil's contract. And if you choose to promote Miss Johnson to the uh position to to lead the city administratively, we will save somewhere in the neighborhood between $30 to $50,000 potentially. And so, you know, before we talk about extending Mr. Boil's contract. If you know the majority of the council has the appetite for for what I'm presenting, we could forego that and we could get on with, you know, business at hand and put this put the search behind us. Does anybody know if that's a sunk cost at this point or would that Mr. Mayor Council, you're talking about South Central? Yeah. I I don't remember in claims that we we cut any jets for them. We haven't paid any money though. Yeah. So, I would think if I just don't know if it's something if you sign up for pay. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, if we c we'd have to look at the contract. Um if we can stop that contract sooner than later. I mean, the application period is closes like May 23rd or 27th, something like that. So we the the majority of the work up from their group is going to be after that closes. So we could potentially depending on how the contract is written save some of those dollars. We'd also say probably even the majority I you would think so but um so Mr. Mayor Council please go ahead. It it just and you know, forgive me, it's I was I stopped in the office on Thursday to get something from Natalie and that was also an indication to me that there's a uh that she is being sought after to fill that position. She's already moved into the administrator's office. Lexi has moved her office into Natalie's old office. it it it seems you know you know destined that that's going to be the outcome and so um I I like the idea of saving money. Um I don't know that Natalie has even applied for it or that she has 100% committed to wanting it. I assume she does, but I don't know that. Well, we got applications from the recruiting company last week, didn't we? Or we got something. We got um Mr. We got we actually we got an update from Mr. Humple that that uh with an email that talks about um five people that have uh submitted interest in the in the position. Um, one of one of those I believe one of those candidates uh there's five. There's one candidate that that doesn't meet the full work experience and there was an email that went out asking us to make changes to that and I wasn't it was something that I felt that was something that needed to be discussed amongst the council um in a council meeting as opposed to um trying to you know elicit a a response outside a council via email. Um, so yeah, there's it doesn't we don't get any any names at this point. All we get is experience and uh um education and and so forth. So, but there's so far there's only five. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mr. Mayor. to council member Blazer. So, are you um I believe Natalie moved into that office so that she'd have privacy and no different than she's doing the work of the administrator and she has privacy in there. I don't think that that move that she's put her name on the door and and she expects to have that job. So, I I that's my feeling. Um if are you saying then that we would not go forward? Okay. And I don't have the document that you're referring to with me. Um so are you saying that we would go forward if council agreed and appoint Natalie as the administrator and then backfill from there? Backfill. Well, because we need we need staff. So, if Natalie's administrator, Lexi takes some of that finance stuff um that she's doing. Um we still need additional staff. So, if if council is willing to and Natalie I I think it's our responsibility to talk to Natalie about it also because this affects her. Um, but if Natalie is willing to take an administrator position and Lexi is there, Dileia is there, I would assume at a full-time position at that point and then we have to fill part-time positions. Natalie will have to and she's been juggling responsibilities between the group, but it it sounds like it's very reasonable. Um, it would save us money. Um, I think that Natalie still would need Mr. Bole's expertise on some things, but if his majority of his contract was dealing with South Central and that's out of there, there's a lot less money because there's less hours. Um, but he would still could be a reference for Natalie for whatever time council determines and maybe it's determined by, you know, a certain number of hours per work week, you know, and and then length of time to still give her some some assistance with that. I mean, I I I would go for that, but with the understanding that council then also has to look at what does she need for staff? And we're finding, I believe, with some of the part-time people think part-time is great, but eventually they realize I need full-time. And I think we're at that point with Dileia that that she would like full-time. There's definitely the workload for it. And if we have stability within our admin administrative staff, that's a major benefit to the to the city, to the residents, and to the staff that we have stability in there. If you look at our public works, we've had the same public works people because they have their jobs separated. They know what they're doing. You know, they're not overworked at there are there are times they're overworked, but you know, they know what they're doing. They have that expertise. We need to make sure that we also have that in the administrative staff. Can I just add one comment? Um, council um Glazer, what was the date? Is it the 25th of May? When is the closing date on that where they're taking applications? I don't remember. Remember, you know what? I didn't bring myself central. Well, as of the date of the letter, April 28th, it said advertising is open another 23 days. So, that'd be like what, May 21st or something. Yeah, we could go on the League of Minnesota cities. Mr. Mayor, one, so just one of the things I wanted to mention is um right now there's nobody destined to be the city administrator at all. We have an open process we're going to go through. That's what we signed up for. So, nobody's destined for anything. But my concern is I don't know that Natalie's put her application in, right? I I don't. So, I I think we'd have to potentially shelf this and say, "Let's take a look at it on the May 13th meeting and look and see what her interest level is for it." Um, and I think open discussion could happen at that point, but I just don't know that she's put in for it. Yeah. And Mr. Mayor, Council Member Glacier, go ahead. I bring this up because if the if a council majority is is already leaning this way, I'm looking to save the city some money. So, I appreciate the proposal, Council Member Swinsson. Yeah. Um, I sort of in line of what your thoughts were. Um, you know, I don't even know that Natalie's applied for this. I do think she would do an excellent job. She doesn't have my guaranteed vote yet. I was intending to review all the candidates carefully. And I would hate to set Natalie up, I guess, for failure or not failure, but maybe criticism, judgment in that she didn't earn the position and she was just handed it. And so, yeah, maybe the idea would be to, you know, hold this process open at least until the end of the application period to see, you know, what comes in. And if at that time we still determined that Natalie's a clear favorite and likely to get everyone's vote, maybe then then we'd move forward with that. But um you know I just I don't want to set her up for failure by chewing her into a position um and have people not feel like she earned it or deserved it. We we could talk to her and ask her to bring it back on the 13th. Mr. Mayor Council member Blazer. So to to something that council member Rainbow brought up is it is this m maybe maybe the best scenario is where we take a look at um Mr. Boil's contract to to what you were saying and the the scope is more limited. It's more focused. So maybe his his sole responsibility is is South Central Service Cooperative because you know potentially if if Natalie's applying for the position, she can't be you know having conversations with Mike Humple. Um, and then you know how how do we determine you then the the extent of what of what we asked Mr. Boilles to do for the city? I was going to bring up that exact point and so my recommendation was is Mr. Boilles his hours would go from zero to 10 hours 10 being max per week. Um and his sole focus would be on making sure the process moves forward on uh from the SC whatever the SCS um but that exactly it and then if she need she needed something she could reach out to him but it's to greatly reduce the amount of hours right now he's been averaging 30 some hours but he's expensive so if we reduced it down um that was my whole goal coming out of this a lot of the work is being done with Natalie and the rest of the staff at this point Um, if that would be your pet, something like that. It would. So, I know we got a couple things mixed up here. I think we're back. We're still on C, which is the uh resolution to extend amend consultant oils contract. Was there any other discussion on that? Mr. Mayor, run. I I would agree, but I just don't know if we can make that determination right now because theoretically as we get even if it's we even if we said it was 10 hours right now, theoretically as we got closer to the finish line, it might not even need to be 10. Yeah, zero to 10 would be the range. 10 being max, right? But how but how do we regulate 0 to 10? Mr. Bole's a very responsible individual. I think you can regulate it. I just don't want to be set into maxing out 10 hours a week if it's if it happens to not be focused on one particular thing that there is some some other piece of work that um that Natalie needed help with that I wouldn't necessarily want to be be using that time for that project when when we would have staff in available in house to to work on that task. So we could maybe state it as as a last resort if something needed to be finished up something like that. But for the general rule, um, and what I've seen for the last six or eight weeks is they're using Mr. Boil's lesson and less, but that's what I've seen. Um, but I don't think they would abuse that. They they're going to give them a range of hours. Mr. Boils, if we stated that it's specifically focused on this, I know he's a very responsible individual and if some weeks it's zero, some weeks it's zero. And if he's, yeah, keep it at the I think he can manage that process. Um going back to discussion holistically we had talked about just making sure we had an open and transparent process so nobody was self- selected into it and that's why we went out to SCSC. Um so I personally am okay with going forward with the process you know for our disc me and you personally talked on this one is just make sure we had an open and transparent process but I do appreciate the proposal. I think that was a really good solution you brought forward council. Any other statements Mr. Mayor? Council member Bryant. Um I would I think we the motion to table Mr. Bole's contract as well as um the any um adjustments to wages would be in order to determine if Frank is is amen amanable to the 10 hours a week. And if this is something we're going forward with, we would just be building that position. Just table till the 13th. Is that what you're call next council meeting? We can do that. Yeah. I mean I if Frank said I don't want to do this for 10 hours then what's the point of appreciating talk Mr. Boils and talk about an hour reduction. He said he was okay with that. So that's the one thing I can say they did. I didn't specifically talk about the number of hours. I just said a reduction. Council member Spencson. Go ahead. Yeah I I do get the concern in making sure that stuff like that would line up. But I I I do not think we even if I don't think we need to delay making a decision on on Bole's contract. But even if we do, I I certainly don't think that really influences our vote on the raise for Natalie doing the inter room job. So I I would not be in favor of pushing that out again, even if we do push the boils contracts. Although, like I said, I don't I don't know that we need to push the boils contract question if you've already talked to him about the reduction. Now, so give you an example for Mr. Boles, we can cancel his contract within 14 days. So, just say we we um did an update, we said 0 to 10 hours a week just as an option um and we come to the 13th and we decide to go a different path, it would just be 14 days um 14 days notice at 0 to 10 hours a week. So, I don't think it would be a large impact going that route. So, the question is is currently we still have SCESC going on that process and I think Mr. Boils is the right person to help manage it. That's the only recommendation I would provide because he's independent and I don't know that Meline's in the process or not. That was my thought. Mr. Mayor Rand, I agree. I mean, I I think we waited until the 13th. Um, other than Natalie is out and this week and he could be a reference just even to the other administrative staff. Um, but if we choose to go forward on the 13th and we cancel South Central, um, I'm in agreement with Council Member Swenson that these really two are are two separate items and I think we do a disservice to Miss Johnson if we again delay the discussion for Rays. Um, they're two different things. Can we finish with C first? I know they were tied together. We've discussed them both, but item C that was moved down is specifically the resolution would send an amend consultant boil's contract. So, if we could finish that one and then we can go to the next one, I think that would be the most appropriate. Did anybody want to make a motion on this? Mr. Mayor, I will just bring to your attention that there was already a motion made that just for clarity of the record should be rule on. Uh, council member is it sir? Is it Brian? um had made a motion to determine amendability and table it to the 13th. If that's the motion I'd like to be considered, that can be considered. If not, that should be ruled on so another motion could be made if that's not what the council wants to consider. Sounds like it died for lack of a second. So, perfect. Are you good with that? Okay. Yes. I missed that. Should have waited until we got a second or Okay. Okay. Is there another motion for council uh consultant boils? I'll make a motion to uh approve a revolution re resolution extending his contract limiting him 0 to 10 hours just to work on the the uh recruitment uh and hiring process of the city administrator. So that' be an update to a schedule from 0 to 10 hours on page 19 that would have to be made. Is there a second for the motion? Second. All right. Um we'll go forward and do a vote. All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed. We have one nay. Motion carries. Okay. So that one's done. So, are we back on we're back on um 3B at this point? Uh this is approval of resolution 25XX, increase wage and increase responsibilities for inter city administrator Johnson. Okay. Any discussion? I got to get the right page here, guys. I got that bugger in here. I just got to find it. Mr. Mayor, Council Rabo, go ahead, please. I would move approval of resolution 2025. approving a pay increase to interm city administrator Natalie Johnson for additional work responsibilities um and at the hourly rate of 4875 and that this is retroactive. Mr. Mayor, council member Glazer, I would second for the sake of discussion. Say that again. I would I would second for discussion. Second for discussion. So now we can go on discussion. Council member Rainville, just for clarity and my understanding, you say retroactive. Is there a period that is defined of how far back the retroactive remember the date December 12th? I see that is in the body. Thank you. So, one of the points I would like to discuss is um council member Blazer brought this up when when she initially assumed the position, he knew she was taking a position without a raise. Um I'm okay if you take the month of December and take it off and say hey you're assuming that position and I would start the time period as one January and the reason I'm doing that is when you accept a position you know that it's possible that you won't get a raise it's okay to work for some period of time without that so I would my proposal um would be to go to one January 1 start date my motion Mr. Council member Glazer. So, forgive me. I'm I'm fumbling through um our our personnel policy review that we're doing tonight because there's some there's some comments that attorney all sites um made in here in regards to um exempt versus non-exempt. And we we have a couple we have a couple of different opinions. Um uh Mr. Mr. Humph is of of the opinion that that leaving this interim position hourly would be the appropriate thing to do and it's done um regularly. The couple of challenges um attorney all sites commented that you know we're setting a precedent for a position that that is normally considered exempt. It's a salaried position. So, one of the one of the cha and one of the challenges being is that while I understand that that it's been necessary for um interim administrator Johnson to work some overtime approval of that overtime has never come to the council itself. So, I'm not I'm not sure we we do have a policy that overtime needs to be pre-approved. And one of the a big challenge that we have is u expense. We did not budget for any overtime this year. Zero. We went from $5,000 in fiscal uh 24 to zero dollars in in 2025. And there's a there's a table that that interim administrator Johnson um it's a small spreadsheet um she need page 53 included in with this uh RCA and that that information is correct. Yes, that information is is a bit dated because we have that I think that's for approximately the first five pay periods of 2025. Um I don't know what pay period we're in right now, nine or 10. So we don't even have for me I don't even have a grasp how how much overtime can work so far for this. So I going back to a meeting that um council member Brian and I participated in joint in a packet review member meeting with u consultant oils back in February. Our int our intent of what came out of that meeting we and we have never been the ones responsible for tableabling this and our our intent during that meeting was was not to withhold um any income that interim administrator Johnson had earned. That was never our intent. It was never part of the conversation. The question is the question is how much and specifically that we were of the opinion that it's an exempt position normally it should it should remain exempt for the in for the interim period. So so Mr. Mayor Yeah. And I just want one state u so right now what we're talking about is the the raise. Yes. and and we're shifting it. I don't know that's it's not on the agenda to talk is it exempt or not exempt. So what Mr. Mayor if I may? Yes, you got a question. Um the the raise is impacted by whether we go depending on what the amount is that we pay or if it's if it's hourly that that impacts could go that direction. Yeah. that that impacts how much we're we're going to have to have to pay. So the the two I think go together. They have to go together. You're right. You tied them together because even our proposal has them together. Thanks to Council Rainbow, the original um RCA that was in December said that there was no changes other than this title to Natalie. She would stay as non-exempt in this position and we haven't changed that. So, she should be eligible for overtime. It's difficult to if prior to Scott leaving, if she had overtime, she got it approved by Scott. All of the money that's she will be paid in overtime is coming out of Scott's salary because we budgeted Scott for the whole year. We didn't we haven't paid Scott for this year. So any overtime that she is incurring is coming out of Scott Laner's payroll. So, we're not gonna we're not going over budget. We'll actually be under budget because we budgeted whatever Scott said. I'm gonna say $100,000. If we budgeted $100,000 for Scott plus his benefits, we're not paying those in 2025. So, her overtime is coming from that salary. Mr. Mayor go ahead to to the mayor made a point that Natalie accepted this Miss Johnson accepted this position in December without a without a pay increase at the time. So, um, the situation that that we ran into though is for some reason and and uh our attorney was was asked to change Mr. Boil's contract from how how it was stated in 2022 from our interim administrator to um interim assistant administrator consultant and and we're paying Mr. Boils considerably more on an hourly basis than we were paying Mr. Laner. So I understand that we've budgeted for Mr. Laner's salary for this year, but Mr. of oil's consultant fees um have been chewing that up and then some. So what what we ended up we ended up with a situation where we have two very well- paid people in a similar position when in December and we would have to go back to the to the recording of the meeting from December because it was actually at the December 12th meeting um on Mr. Laner's last I think it was his last day or second to last day. Uh the the position for Miss Johnson was um going to be interim until Mr. Boils came on board which was January 15th. Well, that all changed with how his contract is set up as the assistant administrative consultant. So I I these are some of the things that that that I have struggled with. We and if if Mr. Boils was going to be our administrator, we did, you know, Natalie's role would be, you know, shortened at that point. Um she may still have additional responsibilities. And I'm not naive. I I'm aware of the fact that Miss Johnson was doing a lot of things that typically Mr. Laner shouldn't do. That's public knowledge going back into 20.4. So I'm I'm not naive about that that she did have extra responsibilities. Um one of the things one of the things the challenges I have with Mr. Bole's other challenges I have with Mr. Boil's um RCA is can't decide whether I need my boy five vocals or not. Um that where is it? No. No. So, so there was something and maybe maybe the wording has changed. You want to take a moment look for that please and we'll let the let the attorney answer the question you had asked about um exempt or non-exempt. You have a statement on that. Yes. And I've consulted with Mr. Ruby from our office who's generally the attorney uh appears before the council. We believe that um given the interim nature and the uh mere title change that it would be a salary it would be a non-exempt position in the interim capacity. Um that's a question that would be revisited if it becomes a full-time administrative position if it would be subject to an administrative exemption under the Fair Labor Standards Act, but that would kind of be uh defined by the scope of employment at that time. So because it's interim, it's okay keeping it non-exempt. Yes. And in particular, some of the considerations um that come under the Fair Labor Standards Act are passage of higher fire um those types of things that an interim nature does not have. Um but they do they would be council member I'm sorry I'm sorry to interrupt but they would be able to hire on fire if they're the interim administrator. They are in charge of the office. So Mr. Mayor, city council has go ahead council ultimate authority over hiring and fire recommending they are but we still have the there is a delineation between the power to hire and fire and recommendations for hire and fire uh which is part of that consideration. Um it is Mr. Rupes as well as my opinion that given the interim nature of the position um that it would be non-exempt. Council member Swson, go ahead. I was just looking back at some of the Pat's agendas referenced by Councilman Glazer. I wasn't here, but I'm just reading them. And it looks like that one from December is December 10. To Councilman um uh Council Woman's point that um it it was made clear in the request for action says this acting position, this is in regards to Natalie, this acting position will be in place until such time as the council deems it appropriate to return her to existing title. All other terms of her employment remain the same. And so I I think that would I guess support well for continuing to be non-exempt because it is a name only. And then I I was looking in I don't know the history of this if it was already in contemplation that we were going to bring Frank aboard in December when we were having this talk but it it does not look like Frank was mentioned at all at that time when Natalie was appointed. It wasn't until, according to at least what I'm looking at, the meeting in January where um we hired Frank and he was hired um to be um interim city administrator assistant consultant. Um so I just wanted to offer those clarifications just go ahead. I don't know if it was the November or December meeting, but um I I believe it was I don't know which. Maybe council member Bryan or Council Member Rainbow can uh help me recall, but Mr. Boils was um the concept for bringing Mr. Boilles back uh was brought up um e either in November or December. And you know he was he was in a position though where he couldn't come back until come here until January because of um otherwise being engaged down with the city of Kenyon. Um so I I did find Mr. Mayor if I may continue just a second here. Go ahead. Um so one of in Mr. Boils on on the the back of the RCA. It says background and supplemental information on December 12th. The city council by resolution appointed Natalie Johnson inter city administrator until she re relinquished the additional responsibilities presumably when the long-term administrator arrives most likely in August of 2025. So, and maybe attorney Alsides can answer this question for me in the event. So, we're giving we're giving Miss Johnson a um an increase of and if we're following the hour the suggested hourly increase of of $9.75 an hour. Am I am I correct from $39 to 4875? Just what the resolution says. So, let's see here. Bear with me just a second. So, just over 20,000 just over a $20,000 raise without any overtime. The way this is worded, in the in the event we we hire somebody else to be our city administrator and and Miss Johnson keeps some of the responsibilities that she had she has, the way this is worded, are are we potentially obligated to and and not hamstrung and not able to go back to um her uh wage that was um provided for 2025, assuming Mr. Laner was still going to be here. Would it not would it? So long as she's on a non-exempt status, you can change her job obligations. is you can change her salary. Okay. I was under the impression as soon as the administrator was hired that she would go back to her and that could be a condition of the motion as well. Yeah. Mr. Mayor Council, I would say we adjust the MO. Yeah. I to me the raise was until the point where it was either she is appointed by council or Jon Jones is appointed by council. She would then go back to her previous salary. But I in good conscience cannot not support a raise for her in the additional work that she's been doing and whether she was doing some of it prior to it just showed she should have had more money then. But for us to ask her to do this additional work and not be compensated for it is unconscionable. Mr. Yeah. Can I can I make one point real quick? The other thing we could do as part of our discussion is and maybe there's a better happy medium because right now it's 39 the proposal is 4875. Is there something that would make sense in the inter that still rewards her with the raise but maybe not quite as much. Council member Gler go ahead. So, for the record, I would like to state again because Council Member Brian and I have taken some shots on Facebook for this. Never have have either one of us been responsible for this subject getting table at any of our council meetings. And and Mr. oils. It I I wish the meeting was recorded because the meeting that we had with him, the the the packet review meeting the day before the council meeting, never did it come up that we our desire was to withhold additional paper. It is it was always how do we do this? So, I I I've really because especially because I' I've taken some shots on this. It's never been about withholding paper. I I I believe that people should be rewarded for for the work that they perform. But I also believe that that we have a responsibility as as the council to the taxpayers to make to make sure that we're being responsible with with the revenue that that we receive from them. Thank you for setting record straight. Um, I would like to I know we already have a motion. We're on discussion. Here's what I would like to propose. Instead of going to the 4875, I would like to do $45. I think it meets the intent of giving a raise. I think it doesn't go to the extreme of what was said. I I think it's a happy meeting. So, that was going to be my part that I wanted to bring up. I know you've already created the motion. You'd have to amend your motion for that. there any conversations on something to that? Mr. Mayor, I would be amendable to that. The other thing that I uh another caveat is I would like the language in this change to um state that she's in this position until it is until a permanent administrator is hired as opposed to her relinquishing the additional responsibilities. So, I I would like that taken that out. So right on the on the fifth whereas I guess we'd say sixth whereas we just change it to state that when the position is hired then she goes back to her normal. So on the day of firing it once we say that person the city administrator is hired the wage goes back. Yes that would be my incentive also. I accept that. And Mr. Merit would possibly recommend including or mirroring that language as a fifth whereas or whatever you recommended as well as whatever it is seventh right as well as uh perhaps in the resolved uh number two to include language until a permanent not the whereas but under the resolve section. Okay. So resolved to effective December 12, 2024 the wage of 4875 or if the council elects to set it at 45 whatever that may be per hour is hereby approved for Natalie Johnson while she serves interim city administrator and having some language that includes which is determined by you know which terminates upon there you go which terminates upon the city administrator being hired whoever that may be that could be her it could not be it could be whomever yes so I would like to on that number two where it says effective date 12 December. I'd like to take that one January 2025. And my motion was $45. I don't know if we've got agreement or alignment on that. Uh any other discussion, Mr. Mayor? Council Ryan. Um yeah, as we've talked about because we made a proposal to go up for for 53 at one time. Um and that was what was presented. Um, it would be I don't know if this is the right if this is if it's in order here or not, but it would be I think it would be prudent to get an update on the um if this is paid out as well when this is paid out as well as the amounts of that we've um paid to Mr. Boils. It'd be great to get an update of where we are in our budget for um for for salaries for this thing to to know if we're even with a projection to know are we going to be about where we're at with with where we were at or or if it it's a it's a case where we're going to be going over and get an approximation to how much and I have one of that. So I think with council or consultant boils contract being reduced to 0 to 10 if you do that for the next couple months it the uh it should fall right in line. So if you look at council correction consultant boil's wage up to this point at what his salary was at $30 and you look where Natalie was we might be a little over but we could make that up over the next three months with the reduction of uh consultant boil this month. I just haven't seen anything. I don't think anybody's I don't think we've done it. So I think that's something we can provide but I think we're going to be again just doing numbers in my head. I think we're going to be uh in line. But so part of the part of the motion would be to get an updated on the budget if if if council member Randle's amendable to that. Yes. I think it's a great idea. Any other discussion on this? Oh, Council Member Swson, go ahead. Mr. Mayor, I I think your suggestion is reasonable to get consensus on this of reducing the hourly wage, although I I hesitate to do that because I I do think she's taken on a serious job and she she's by all accounts doing a good job of it. And I I do feel very strongly that she'd be paid for the work that she's doing. And so I don't I don't necessarily want to chip away at that at that wage that I think she deserves. [Music] Um I don't Well, that's about it. I just I I don't necessarily want to reduce that. I think it's a fair wage as was. But I do understand that if that's a consensus of the council and not I was I just made a recommendation. I don't think we have consensus one way or the other. He truth be told and Mr. Mayor Council member Rainbow. Um I I agree with the 4875 when I look at what other um other highlevel administrative people make in in um in the world or in the but um so that this gets passed I am willing to go down to the 45. I'm not comfortable with it. I believe she should be at the 4875 but I don't want this to fail. So Mr. Council member Glazer. So what back at that February meeting that council member Brian and I had with with Mr. Boilles, one of the things that we talked about was um the efficiency of the office because we're we're not there on a daily basis. So we had we had lengthy conversation with Mr. oils about ho how is work being handled within the office are especially as it pertain to because because we're talking about this overtime subject are there are there things that Miss Johnson can and should be delegating to other people in order to minimize some of the overtime because her over time her overtime rate is considerably higher than anybody body else's and you know um forgive me I'm not nitpicking and at some at some point you know all the all the old documents you know would need to be scanned and and and cataloged and so forth but are are there things that are being done right now that that can be put on the back burner that that are non-essential so that in the interim some of some of the things that are chewing up a lot of extra time for Miss Johnson can can be handled by somebody else. Now, I understand that we're you know, now we've gone um you know, Chris has had to pick up some of the slack from from Shelly and and you know, yes, we're going going down to zero to 10 hours for Mr. Boils. So, how how do we do that? How do we manage um get a better handle on salaries? So, Mr. Mayor, Randall, go ahead. I think one of the things, you know, I honestly believe that Natalie, if she didn't have to spend eight hour, more than eight hours in the office, she wouldn't. Um, she's got family, she, you know, got grandkids. She's missing out on a lot based on the workload. There were a lot of things I've had to be caught up on. One of the big things was the esport. Both council member Flatabo and myself helped to try to do that and it was either I think it was Dileia also worked on. So, so Natalie is delegating, but sometimes to delegate, you've got to train. And so, it it is always you can just hand this. It's not like you have a recipe card and said, "Make this cake." So, she I believe Natalie is doing a very good job of trying to delegate, trying to look at what priorities are. She's had, you know, we we had our top five items that we wanted to work on. She's had staff working on the lower levels of those five to get them off the plate. You know, I don't see her and and Chris could say it. Well, Julia's not here. Um, they could tell you if they think that she's doing a good job of delegating. I I believe she is. Um but when she walked in there from day one there was a lot to be done and a lot of catchup and um a lot of changes within systems that had to be learned and then taught and then the staff turnover. Staff turnover has killed us, you know, and and people leave for different reasons, you know, some is our fault, some is theirs. They they choose to do different. Um, but I think we're on a good a good pro trajectory of getting things under control, but in order to keep that, you need to keep it staffed and so we may, you know, I had said that earlier that we may need to make some changes within the office staff. Yes, Mr. Mayor. This is not to derail the train of thought and conversation that's having um but just one proposed amendment to the motion you made to that language. I know we contemplated a reduction of $39 or down to back to $39 after a full-time administrator is hired. Um in the event that Miss Johnson is hired as that administrator, I want to create a carveout for that in the language as well. Uh and so I would, you know, ask to reflect that in the language that I draft or that is drafted for that motion. That be acceptable for your motion to Mr. R. And there is a salary range for the for that position. So I just don't want it to be preset at $39. Oh, no. I I didn't miss I didn't want unintended consequence just based on the language drafted. Yeah. Then it would switch to salary and we'll go exempt at that point. I believe uh to go back to the comments, I believe staff turnover has had a big impact. Um we've got some good continuity with the the staff right now. I think they're going very well. I'm also concerned about overtime. Um, is that something we can reduce? Yes, the goal should be to be a zero overtime. That should be the goal, but you can't get to a zero overtime until you get things necessary things in place in training. Training actually takes longer to delegate something on the initial time or the second time and then it gets better. So, I think we're just like you said, we're on a nice trajectory right now. Mr. Mayor Cmber Glenn, I don't want us to forget about the fact that when we had a full-time administrator last year, we spent over $21,000 on overtime and the majority of that went to Miss Johnson. So, Mr. Mayor, and that's because she didn't have staff in the office and the work still has to get done. I I I understand that, but and we we added staff. We we added 70 man hours a week um starting in starting in November. and and you know we had Mr. Boilles in the office as well starting January 15th and that that's another reason why we would really like to see um the uh what's been going on with payroll since then um because the you know the information that we have here is through five pay periods and we're through nine how much more have we spent on overtime even since Mr. Boils has been here. So I'm just I'm just trying to be responsible tax dollars and to Mr. Mayor, council member to Mr. Glazer. So am I because they're all our dollars, too. We all pay property taxes. Sometimes people think because you get elected to a council, you don't pay your property taxes. That's that's a that's fake news. We all pay Yeah, we all pay property taxes. Um, I'm in the office a lot. Um, I volunteer. I I you know, can I do projects? I try to do things to try to take them off staff staff's plate. When Natalie and Lexi were out with the death, I spend all weekend, you know, thing. It It's not chitchat, do nothing all day. People are working. They're working hard. Um Chris is working on on a a project that goes back years that was ne things were never updated and we needed to have those things updated and so things are getting done. Um again I Natalie Lee in my opinion would love to get down to not working more than eight hours a day 10 at the max. Um I she I mean who would want to have to put all those hours? We are lucky that she was willing to do that and and I'm grateful for her because she's really what's helped keep that office together. Any other discussion? We got a motion. We got a second with discussion. Any other discussion? Can we do a vote on this? Council member Rainville, will you read your motion again so we know we're talking about this? um that we approve the all the way till now without coughing. Yeah. Approve the resolution 2025 including pay increase to interm city administrator Natalie Johnson for additional work responsibilities. The increase would be to $45. It would be retroactive to one two of 25 20 and or one 25. Thank you. 25. Um and that the resolution is updated. Um this is affected until uh the appointment of a permanent city administrator. Um, can we also add with the language that the attorney has provided? Okay, we already got a second. Can we go to vote at this point? Are we adding the part about getting an update on the budget to this or not? Oh, yes. Yes. Budget updates. Any budget updates? Okay, we'll move it to vote. All in favor say I. I. Those opposed? Motion carries. All right. Next one we're looking for is the fertilizer. I got to get to the right page. So, this is uh the request for council action um to apply fertilizer. Hopefully, everybody's read this. I know we have a budget of 6,500. The proposed cost were proposed costs were smokes. Anybody see it? 8,644. Uh, one of the things I would like to do is talk about if we did instead of four applications, we moved to three. If you do the math, it puts it to 6,483, which is right in line with budget. It's actually just a little bit under. Perfect. Me and Council Member Bryan are synchronized tonight. Mr. Mayor, Council Member Bryant, make a motion to approve the quote to apply fertilizer to various city turf surface areas, city turf areas. Um but um quote but use the quote for three applications instead of four to bring the budget to bring the total amount under the 6500 budgeted law. Perfect. I'll second your motion. Mr. Mayor, council member question though. Um so in the requested council action says move second vote to approve the resolution accepting the quotes and complete grounds maintenance for 64.99 which will provide for application coming in under the 65 to the total 86. I think something is miswritten there because it's 8644. Okay. So is the motion on The total amount would be $64.99. That is written incorrectly because the total amount up on top is 86.44. So I think there's a a mistype right there because then the resolution is wrong also. Yeah, I come up with 6483 and three. 6483. Okay. So, you said the resolution was incorrect also. No, not it just says the budget was 6500, but I didn't see that it was written in correctly. It says authorizes four applications. So, can we just ask can part of the motion be just clarification from staff? If it includes the four for 64.99, do the four? Sure. If it doesn't include the four, then go down to the three. I think we can answer that question because if you just do the math on this, it says clearly the four applications. If you add up the total and divide by three, it tells you per application. And that's the same math that council member Ryan and myself did. So, okay, Mr. Mayor, do we know for sure that the the application rate per application will remain the same if we only do three versus four? No, it wouldn't. I don't know the answer to that. And you don't want to burn it either. I'm just looking to keep it in budget and a little less fertilizer. This is new especially for doing mult multiple applications. The baseball field with the sprinkler installed that one of the one of the conditions by the donor that we needed to keep up with the fertilization and the and the weed control. No, I'm I'm totally on board. I just I you know, they put in a bid for four applications. If all of a sudden we're saying we want only three at three quarters of your bid, like I mean Ken, you're sort of in this field. Is that something that you would accept? If someone says, I only want 10 feet of fence instead of 15. I'm paying you two/ird the amount. I'm not going to catch the horse. But I'm okay with it in theory. Maybe I'm just overthinking. We ready to go? All in favor of those say I. I oppose. But it are we asking clarification? We can ask clarification. Please include that in there. Thank you. Give us clarification. Approve. No. Right. Mr. Attorney, I think it is up to you to talk about personnel policy. All 772 pages of it. Mr. Mayor, Council Randle, if I'm not mistaken, does Councilman Glazer have the agenda items? We pulled those. Uh but we the only one we put in we would do that after um the uh personal but is it something that can be quick? Yeah, it's just two claims. Okay. It's just two claims. Okay. Um so so one is is a claim for $15 to the um to be paid to the League of Minnesota cities which should uh I am currently working on. they were supposed to credit that back and not charge us for it because there was actually a the class that I mistakenly registered for was one that um you and I participated in um when we were in Plymouth. Um so but I left a message today for a particular person and I'm just waiting for a call back. Um the other the other one pertains to um $325 um for um Dryen Acres. Um a question that I have is uh which number you want? Uh this is this is actually out of the consent agenda that we moved down to item uh B. What was it? Item A or B is the No, it was B wasn't it wasn't but I think you're talking about A I I made a mistake then. I had intended to move B down from claims and not A at all. Correct. Is he good? Are we okay if he talks about B instead? All right, let's go. Tell us about B. So that and and I have um a copy of the page from the uh the attorney's office. Um there there was a quarter hour for uh conversation uh between um Mr. Rupy. I'm assuming RTR is Mr. He was the one that had this conversation. Um, and it pertained to unpaid funds. And the second item was was an hour and that was um uh telephone and um telephone conference with with planner Nash for a total of $260. The total being $325. I'm not sure why the guidance this is being charged to their esper account when it doesn't does it pertain to the the actual project itself. Um one one was about unpaid funds which they ended up paying their balance and then the other was about um a conversation between planner Nash and the attorney in regards to PIDs. Um, so is this something that should actually be charged to general as opposed to the esco of the drafts? Mr. Mayor, no. Is um unfair as it seems, if it has to do with the project, it gets built to the project. So, Mr. Mayor, council question. Our next question is when when is the Dryen's file considered closed and we are no longer uh incurring costs from contractors. Mr. Mayor for their project. Can just can you what's the date on the on the billing right here that you just This is from March 13th. March both both from the 13th. Okay. So it helps us put in perspective. Customer So Mr. here that the the account is open until the job is complete and as we've talked about it before and I'm just going to pick dates. So if there's a conversation on March 1 that gets build to the city on April 1, then whatever the April council meeting is, it gets approved for payment by the council and then the consultant is paid and the escrow is build. So there's always a delay, no different than a credit card. But there are things that do come up until it's all done. And and so that's my understanding of what those were. I mean, it's it's associated with that project and those costs go with the project. Mr. Mayor, please go ahead. What defines all done? final inspection, certificate of occupancy, all the work is completed on the project. That's I I can't give you a legal term. I I don't know what legally it's just when the work is done on the project, Mr. Mayor. Council member Swans, go ahead. Yeah, my understanding is, you know, the project is done and the billing is done. I I'm trying to find the email, but I thought I saw some email from Bob. But, you know, as long as this is it and there's no further need to discuss the the project, if you know, further bills are not disputed or additional legal work isn't required, then I mean, this is it. You know, we can't promise that because if if something else comes up regarding the projects and is discussed specifically related to that project, I mean, that building needs to be passed on. So I think if if this bill is paid, my my understanding is that pretty much puts it to bed unless there's any additional discussion regarding the espro account or anything with respect to that project. Mr. Mayor, council member, who decides when the discussions stop that have a financial impact on one of our residents if if their project is done and so we'd have to go back to the 13th, find out what this was specific to if we're going to ask that question to understand. So, right now we're six or seven weeks later when we're talking about it. I don't even know what this pertains to anymore for this specific billing. So yeah for so one one item was a telephone conference with with Miss Johnson um an email regarding drive makers unpaid funds and the other was work on resolution certifying unpaid service charge and telephone conference with Cindy Nash regarding P numbers. I mean we could ask M counsel what that was about. I'm not going to be able to tell you what it was about from 13 March. I don't know. So Mr. Mayor what? Well, well, it may seem like a small amount of money. It's an important part of the discussion, but again, an even more important part of the discussion is when is it closed? When when when do the when do the Dryidens or any other resident get confirmation that we are we are no longer going to have conversations that are going to have a financial impact on you unless you come to us with another budget. Sir, council member Swansson, go ahead. I guess I don't know this for certain, but I I think and I suspect that the bills incurred that are listed here were specifically with regard to that bill that the Dryen owed and in the developers agreement, it does say if those fees are being disputed that they are obligated to cover our attorney's fees. And so I don't I mean there there can't be a solid end date. if a year from now or two years from now they decide to go back and dispute any of those that would necessarily require opening the file again and and potentially building those attorneys fees. So I I get your concern, but I I mean I think for all intents and purposes the the project is done and it's put to bed unless it keeps getting brought up or you know some further bill gets disputed and and these guys got to talk about it. Um, so yeah, my my understanding is is those bills were specifically related to the bill dispute itself and that's the only reason they occurred. I don't know that for certain. I I wasn't present for that meeting, so I'm not going to say that with certainty, but that's my understanding. Mr. Customer Brian, it just it just seems that there should need to be some clarification to this because knowing that the DR just wrote out a check for over $9,000 and then to me I could be wrong. This since this is being build back to the attorney, I don't know if this has been has actually been applied to the Dryen. So it just seems like this is this is an additional charge now that's coming coming along that that is going to be applied back to the the escrow. So it just does kind of get the impression is at what point is a can be a resident go okay everything's squared away everything's paid rubber you know put the done stamp on it and move on. I think Miss Johnson could probably answer the question as she was here but I think that's seems to be the concern. It's like, you know, we thought we had thought it was it was we were to the position that we were done and then and then there's another check on there's another payment on the on the claims for that payable to the escrow for Dryen Acres. Any other conversation on it? So, does this check need to make be pulled until then or we're just we're going through it anyway or could I see the minutes for a second or the the bill? I'm sorry, not the minutes. My mistake. Thank you. He's got superpower. I have no such power. all sites. It's all seen. So, council, is your concern that the bill was paid in full for Dryen for that $9,000 sum at the time that this work was performed? So, was it was the bill paid in full by 313? Um, may I direct that question to Miss Dryden? Actually the bill said we had until March 31st and that's from March 13th. What were they numbers were done in? So when was the letter sent requesting the payment in full? said in January, but it said on that it's not till March 31st and then we had something and we were going to try to get it reduced. So we didn't pay it on 31st. We waited then after the meeting they said they were going to put it on our list. So I I do I do think that that provides a little bit of clarity. So this work, you know, the certification work to my understanding would be because it was not paid on time. The 31st was the deadline and it went after the 31st. Um the work that Bob would have done was preparing a resolution that would allow for the certification of unpaid service charges pursuant to 3606012. Um, so even though the amount was paid in full, there was additional work done by our office because the payment wasn't timely to prepare the city council uh to consider a resolution that would certify the unpaid service charges should they not obey. They were eventually paid but the work performed was done because of the unttimely nature of the payment if that makes sense. Mr. Mayor, please. So if the Dryens were weren't making that payment solely because they were continuing to have ongoing dialogue with the city and specifically some conversations that you were having um can can we ask Miss Den she by all means so if it was dated March 13th that they had how did they know on the 31st of March. Uh I think it was just drafted in anticipation would be I I think we need Mr. Ruby would be the individual who would have had that correspondence with city administrator. I mean obviously yes if you're not at the date that's the deadline yet. I I understand that concern but I think we got to get the facts from Mr. Rupy and Natalie and understand what it was. So, Mr. Mayor, I'd make a motion to pull the uh I'm assuming this is the code invoice G100-2470 for the escro payable on 313 for driving acres from the claims. So, we can review it and make sure it's where it needs to be. Pull it, review it, understand the facts, and we'll bring it up on May 13th. and and law office can be paid for all other you know get that check off. We're just Mr. Mayor we're just holding the three and a quarter out of NA have to cut a new check. So de boy out and we cut a new check because she's already cut the checks. I just want to confirm that we're only taking the 32 that one check out. Yep. Mr. Mayor C. I don't have one in front of me, but I also believe that our escrow billing at one time there was a statement in there that does that these are the costs to date of that escrow billing and that there could be addition. I don't know answer that. Okay, if I may just one more thought generally documents are drafted in anticipation to advise clients. Um so that could be one reason why it is drafted you know prior on the 13th is so that certification could occur on the 1 of what would that have been April or whenever your soonest meeting thereafter. So that that is just food for thought for council's consideration is you know you can't just show up and draft something on the spot. Oftent times things are drafted in anticipation. So did you want to make a motion to that was a motion. You did motion. Did you have a second? Second. All right. Any other discussion? move it to vote. Um, so the motion was to delay the billing, reveal to get the facts, and um, bring it back up on May 13th. Is that correct? Or that's a future date. It doesn't have I don't know. Can I clarify? Are we delaying paying them their bill or just delaying attributing it to the Dryen escrow? I think we need to make sure we need to make sure it gets coded right in our system. All right. Yeah, we're just pulling, Mr. Mayor. We're just I think the motion is just to pull the $325 out of the billing, pay the attorney the balance and and then also what you total bill 325 just yeah that portion is $35. Yes, we just won't send a voice this point till we get clarification. So So Mr. Council um I would like to just we got we owe Rupy the money no matter what. So let's pay him the money. Let's get an explanation. We're going to get charged for an explanation. It's going to cost us um whether that explanation from Rupy is sufficient to no longer bill that three and a quarter to the Dryens then that can happen. the taxpayers pick up the money, pick up the task. But Rupy build us in good faith for work that he performed and and he should be paid. It's not like he's not going to get paid. Either the city pays him out of our general fund or our legal fund or the dry, but he's he's not going to give up the money. I mean, I can't imagine he's going to give up the money. So, let's just pay him. get an explanation and if it's sufficient then that two three and a quarter of goes to to be build to the and Mr. Mayor, if I may, I I would just consult with um Attorney Rupy as well. Uh given I I've not read the developers agreement in totality. I know um council member Swenson was making reference to fees in the developers agreement. I would speak to him as well about implications of the payment in the context of the developers agreement um to make sure that there's no material impact on not paying these fees having some form of impact on capacity to collect future fees through the developers agreement. I would just have that conversation with him as well. Mr. Mayor, question for attorney. So you were talking about maybe this was this document would have been prepared in preparation. So if if the document was prepared in preparation for a future event and that would be and that this is where I'm a little confused and that event never happens, why would we still be charging the escrow account for that preparation if the event never occurred? Council member Bryant, I'm merely speculating what happened. I understand. I'm just I'm just playing that scenario in my head. Yeah. I don't feel comfortable making calls based off of speculation off of conversations that Mr. Rupy could have had with Miss Johnson. And I think it's just best to go to the source. Do you want to amend your motion to what Councilman Rainbow stated? No. That you don't want to pay the attorney at all? No. I' I'd really like to figure out what's going on before we pay the attorney. If if the council determines that they just want to go ahead and pay it, then they can they can vote my motion down. Okay. Was there a second on this already? Anybody want a second? I had seconded. Okay. So, we already did. So, we had discussion. So, let's go and do the vote. All those in favor of the motion say I. I. Those opposed say nay. Nay. Is there nothing motion? Mr. Mayor, Council Rainbow, I would move that we pay Mr. Ruby for the $325 he did the work, but asked for a more detailed description of what that work entailed. If indeed it it was associated with the initial project, then that goes to the escrow. If it's determined that it isn't specific to the initial project, then the city will have to cover the cost. I'll second a motion. Mr. Mayor, member, I believe we don't need to make a motion because we've already passed the claims with that with that particular one included. That's very true. Well, except the way that it was passed. It would go to the escrow account, right? Well, we can still make them we can still a change the motion to be doing the investigation piece, but the motion to pay the claims already been made. Oh, because it already went to incorrect agenda item. Okay. So, done. To go on to Are we going to do a motion to investigate what that bill is for? We still need that, right? So I will amend my motion to say pay bill Bob but let's have a uh have have Natalie have a discussion with Bob to get details on that there will be back charge back to the dryens at this point if there's a conversation if it is indeed related to the initial project then it would be build to their escro if not then the city will pick up that three quarter and just the motion to have that be Bob's discretion or the discretion of a council vote Just so I can be clear when I discuss this with Bob. Well, Bob is going to get paid no matter what. So, understood. Yeah, I would say it's council discussion on whether it goes to the ESTO or not. Okay. Look into it. Second that. Second that, Mr. Mayor. All right. But would this discussion get this discussion between Natalie and attorney Rupy be if it's determined that it it it is escrow is that going to be additionally charged back to the escrow? That's a good question. For free. What I just brought up is no no more additional charges going to it. So if it's a 325, leave it at the 325. Get the facts, bring it up. City can eat that. Whatever the case is, leave it at the 325. If that's the case, then it would be assessed for no additional charges. That's what I brought, which is slightly different than what you said, but would you agree to accept that as part of your motion? Okay, we'll go around. They're going to look at it. No additional charges to the Dryen. They'll bring it back for council to determine. Okay. Any more discussion? Can we do a vote? Okay. All those in favor say I. I. I. Those opposed? Motion carries. Okay. Can we talk about the personnel policy now? Any more that we missed? I think we're on the personnel policy. Can we take a two-minut uh bio break real quick? Please make a request. You had a lot of good points about the fire and the police. Yeah. Great. Great. Yeah, I Yeah. phone. So, we called a quick recess. We are back in order. You can uh take off and lead us through the personnel policy. Appreciate it, sir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Before the council today, we have an amended personnel policy. This personnel policy is a modified version of a draft that I was provided that provides, I would say, several forms of updates. I characterized that for the council in an email that I believe that should be a part of the agenda packet tonight. Uh just to highlight those key focus areas. It was creating consistency in definitions. Um some of the terms were inconsistent and how they were used in the body uh versus how they were used in the definition section. So keeping that consistency uh to remove ambiguity from the personnel policy. Additionally, the way that the draft policy that I received and retoled was drafted um did a ver very thorough recitation of many statutes. If we just take ESST for example, it put all of the definitions of what family could be in the statute. Those instances I always like removing those definitions as they are in statute because statute is not static. it changes. So, your personnel policy, you would be paying me or someone to come back and revisit and read it every time the law changes. The idea here was to kind of create more of a living and flexible document um that just makes reference to statute for that definition as amended from time to time is the type of language that I like to use that helps keep the document up to date. Um, additionally, we'll have some conversation about paid family medical leave. Uh that's something that is not fully flushed out in the iteration that you all have. I kind of have some updates on that that we can address when we get there. Uh and then lastly, um I found a lot of times that the personnel policies were placing more obligations than are required by law uh on the the council. Um, and while some of those safeguards I think are important and should be retained, there were a few to where it's just really random things like very hard notice requirements on the council and that type of stuff that just leads you to procedural errors that could lead to more errors and problems for you all. Uh, so looking to remove those. So what I've done um and I noted this in the cover letter is there are comments along the whole right column. uh those comments where they say uh council conversation was intended for you know those to be the talking points of the conversation. Um CM council member Rainville did um give a kind of detailed list of thoughts on um some of those comments but also some other parts of the personnel policy. I think my preference would be to maybe move through the personnel policy proper and then jump to these comments as they apply and then any of the comments that weren't addressed kind of where I have these tabs on the council conversation, we can come back to your concerns, council member Ringville, and address those as long as. Perfect. So, um, starting page five of the personnel policy, one thing that I just needed clarification on that I did not get from Mr. Boils or Miss Johnson is with respect to your paid on call firefighters. Um, paid on call firefighters can be considered employees or they can be considered bonafide volunteers. That's kind of controlled by an IRS letter ruling. The general rule there is twofold. It's are you paid less than 20% of the general prevailing wages for similar firefighters in your area? And um are you paid on a per call basis is allowed but per performance or paid by performance is not allowed. So yeah, you put out the fire, you get a bonus. Um you would be considered an employee then you would not be considered a volunteer. A volunteer you're just paid per call. It's that same paid rate. So my consideration was do you all know if those two criteria would be met? because then purposes for your personnel policy, firefighters would be listed as the policy not applying to paid on call firefighters. But if they are paid more than 20% or are paid based upon performance, they would be considered employees for purposes of the personnel policy. And you received that clarification right here in your note. Correct? Could be perhaps so it's not. So they would be treated as bonafide volunteers. Yes. and that language learning. Perfect. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Page eight. Um, your employer size um does not have a mandate from the Affordable Care Act about types of benefits that are employed uh and when someone becomes benefit earning. As a quick question on page six, you had a comment over here on the right. Did we skip that? Is that one you want to talk about? Not all of these comments, and I'll just make this clear for the council, Mr. Mayor. Not all of these comments were um comments that merit council conversation, I would say. Um so it's only the ones that I have tabbed that are highlighted that council conversation. These were things that I addressed with both Miss Johnson and Mr. Bole from some concerns that they raised that I don't think weren't council consideration. If anybody has seen another comment that they talked about, you want to pause there and talk about that, let me know. No, I'm fine. It's not a bad one. I just thought we were skipping. Great. So for benefit earning employees, um because you're not subject to DACA, you get to determine kind of when people are benefit earning and if they earn benefits, uh one council conversation is at what point will someone be a benefit earning employee? How many hours do they need to work per year? How many hours do they need to work per week? Um it is common to have that set anywhere from 30 hours to 40 hours. Um, generally speaking, I would say that if you keep it on the lower end, it incentivizes yourself and makes yourself a more attractive employer. If you have concerns for retention of talent, I'll kind of highlight that as a theme. It's a balancing act. How much do you want to pay people? How much do you want to retain people? And those two, it's it's it's a highwire act that you have to navigate. So, I would open that up for conversation that 40 hours per week is just what was contemplated initially in the draft that I received. I figured that would be um it's kind of an important one and would be good for council consideration. Mr. Mayor Council member Glazer, go ahead. Attorney Alsites is in all situations when it's less than 40 hours a week are the benefits are prrated. That's at the discretion of the council. And so that's another conversation for tonight is you can structure at what point it becomes prrated, at what point you become full-time. You can not do pr-rated benefits. That's all at the discretion of the council. So, we got You have a followup. Pardon? Do you have a follow? Not at this point. So, so Mr. Mayor, this is one of the ones that I had a question on is I just think I would leave it at 40 at this point, but it is something we should talk about during our budget cycle. Do we want to offer the ability for less than full-time to receive benefits? Um, you know, some of some businesses are offering them at 32 hours, full benefits. Some are prorating them, but that's a discussion I think we should have in the budget, but leave it at 40 for now and then just tickle that to have a discussion during the budget years. if that's if that's my opinion. Any other conversation? Sure. Council member uh Spencer, go ahead. I do like the idea of offering benefits at 30 hours, whether it's prrated or or full rate. Um I just I I do think it aids in retaining employees. Um in in my job as a work comp attorney, a lot of times I'm dealing with employees resigning with settlement. And I can tell you, I mean, I've I've had hundreds of employees of clients who needed to resign, and the biggest obstacle is always them not wanting to give up their health insurance. And so, it I do think it is a strong incentive to to keep people around, whereas if it's just 30-hour employee who has no benefits, they're sort of in the wind and it's not a huge deal for them to quit. Um, so I I do think it makes us more attractive and then just, you know, I think it likely would help us retain employees. So I think it would be a worthwhile investment, but I'm okay with your proposal too that that might be more appropriate for the budget talk because it is going to cost money theoretically if we have a 30-hour employee. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I do agree. We've got a um say staff that is currently in that position and the intent would be to not lose because you you're providing some PTO and some healthcare. That's the challenge. Otherwise, you get great turnover and you go into the training and it leads to more overtime. So, I think it's something we can talk about and we'll talk about in budget season. I'm okay with that proposal. Any other comments? That's good. Okay. Good. 40. Next page I'd draw your attention to is 16. Two portions of this uh one is under 5.2 uh or 5-2 breaks. It's a question of paragraph 2 in that section. The city of now then observes and supports the Minnesota Clean Indoor Act and there is a consideration no smoking is allowed in any city buildings. Um the question was posed for council consideration by either Mr. Boils or Miss Johnson about baseball, softball, football, soccer fields, beaches, rentals. Uh, does the council have any input there for no smoking? Mr. Mayor, we did parks. We did. Yeah, we years back and I'd have to I was going to ask Judy. We did have an ordinance that's not all the property within this. You maybe could smoke in the parking lot, but I I just don't know where that ended up. Was it was like 2017 2018ish. Okay. Yeah. So, is there is making a recommendation to change it? It's already been it's been if we're if the question was referring to the park, we've already addressed at one point in time and so there's no need for its inclusion in the personnel policy. I don't know. Does it need to be included if it was? So, was the park ordinance, just for my clarification, is it a generic no smoking at parks for everyone and that thereby effect would cover employees? Okay. Um, my understanding I don't have I haven't read that or I'm sorry, council member. Go ahead. No, you're Yeah, you're right. Yeah, I haven't read it, but I'm that that's what I that's what we're collecting. If the if the intent is to include these places, I think we list them in the personnel policy just to double down and be explicit. Um, I haven't read the other ordinance, so I can't really counsel on that. Puts it all in one spot. I have it in here. So, what do you recollect? It's okay to smoke in parking lot, but not in the rest of the park. I can't remember. I I just It's too longful. I will re I will look at home in my files to see if I can find um the ordinance that was unless we can find it in the office. I'll go to the office too and see if we can go through all the old files. Let's see. Obviously don't want to allow smoking in a crowded spot. Something to that effect or around a lot of people, but if they're off by themselves, does it matter? I think at this point we leave parking lots as a carve out just for sake of consistency. Does is there any opposition to that? Perfect. Um the second uh place for council's consideration on page 16 is under section six outside employment. Um this was something that um Mr. Boils and Miss Johnson um had some input on. They were considering um not having this provision in place. The question is really, do you have employees that foreseeably could be overburdened by outside obligations, outside employment that would be infringing on their capacity to effectively do their job working for the city? Uh, keep in mind that if you do not prohibit outside employment, well, and this doesn't prohibit it. It just requires council approval for outside employment, you're a city employee. Um, if you don't take that course of action, you can still discipline someone for not doing their job. So you could allow outside employment and say you don't have to come get city approval, but if you're not doing your job, we're going to sit you down with this personnel policy and talk about all of the other ways you're not performing your job properly. So in light of that, the question is, does the council care to regulate outside employment in any capacity? I personally would prefer not to. Yeah, I would I I don't think we should be regulating what employees do outside of work. Only what they're doing in work. If they're not doing the job, we'll discipline them. If they're doing the job, let them be. So, Mr. Mayor, Council Brian, go ahead. attorney also, how do you is there something that you can I mean I it's it's I' I've heard it's been an issue in the past with and then I think there's a concern about well if let's just say I I did have my own business and I was for working for the city and I did get excessive calls at work you know that if I'm taking those calls for my own personal for for my business when I should be working how does you know is that is that I'm assum that's different than allowing outside work, but that's now could be getting into, oh, I just need to make some copies for this contract that I'm working on and and you know, you know, part of this is to go, you know, where's the checks and balance for for involved? It's one thing to do it over your lunch hour, but it's if if it became excessive that you were you happen to be using company resources and and city city resources and city time for this outside employment or outside work that you're doing. Uh, council member, my thoughts on that would be that could be regulated via additional policies. In particular, exhibit five, for example, is a technology policy. Um, language could be written in here saying that you cannot use, you know, government or city devices for personal purposes. You could include language in there about that being on the job or off the job. You know, we could work that into different sections. I think some of your concerns are more so not necessarily about the holistic idea of somebody doing outside employment, but them doing it during their job hours. Again, that would leave them subject to discipline under just the general conduct provision of this ordinance. And if there are specific concerns with devices, we could write that language into the technology policy or social media policy. You think somebody's on social media during work hours, whatever it may be. So, um, sounding like, and if I could just kind of get a loose idea here, scrapping section six outside employment is the direction that the board wants to go and regulating any outside employment just through disciplinary activ um because you're doing outside employment and that's impeding your ability to do the city's job. Yes. And my thing is, you know, to what council member Brian was talking about, if some if somebody is has, you know, a side gig, we'll call it, are they are they doing it during right while they're being paid for the city by the city. So that's my Okay. And I think that can be addressed in the conduct section just fine. Okay. Next page. We had a conversation. Page 18, we've kind of addressed this already. The um opinion from our office because it was just um change in title, not change in duties um then non-exempt for overtime pay for Miss Johnson in her current status. I think we've already addressed that. So having no further comment on that, I I think we could move to the next page, which would be 20. I flagged this provision as existing language that was in the draft policy uh provided by the city to my office for review. It was absences of less this is I'm sorry 7-7 leave policy for exempt employees. Paragraph three exempt employees are required to use paid leave when on personal business or away from the office for 4 hours or more on a given day. This is the section. Absences of less than four hours do not require use of paid leave as it's presumed that the staff member regularly puts in work hours above and beyond the normal 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. My question was, does the council want this provision? Seems kind of like a burden to track and monitor. It could be abused by allowing exempt employees to regular take off 4hour chunks without recourse. Mr. Mayor, council member Spencson, go ahead. I I don't mind this policy. Um I you know I'm a salaried employee and I I couldn't imagine having to take sick leave or vacation time to go to a doctor's appointment in the morning or something. I just think it's sort of a little micromanagy. Um you know if you know how many exemp exempt employees do we really have and be the city administrator, right? And so I mean either they're doing the job or they're not. And I I think it's easy enough to track that. I I mean I Yeah, I don't think we necessarily need to make them take vacation time for every hour they're out of the office. I'm all right with this 4hour allowance. And Mr. Mayor, if I may. Yes, absolutely. Go ahead. You know, the only contemplation just to the other side of that is the earn sick and safe time requirements which we'll talk about as well as the new paid family medical leave. um you know the earn sick and safe time certainly would be applicable to pay for any doctor's office visits. So that's just kind of where the thought document behind that comment was coming. Um I do think you raised fair consideration though that for the exempt employees who do you really have the administrator. Um, my only concern was if you do create this 4hour carveout that it does allow an individual who, you know, maybe falls into that position at some point or does get a salary exempt position to just kind of take off 4hour chunks without substantial recourse or accountability, which is why I brought it to the council's consideration. Council's fine with it. Great. So, by removing it, you think we actually have more more influence or control over it? Is what you're saying? Yes, I'd be okay with removing it then because we only got one position. We can monitor that position amongst us. We're asking them to put it on a calendar. So, if they're going to be gone, we can track it. I And I don't believe it's being salary people. I guess Frank is still early. Well, let me reread this. By removing it, it would require them to use sick time. Correct. Earn sick and safe time. Yes. And we can have that this this kind of this could be something to revisit too because there is a huge restructuring in the law and frameworks of sick time and just paid time off in general. We'll have a bit of that conversation here and it's probably coming up just right around the corner. So this could be right for us to come back to. Maybe we shelf it and come back in light of that because you're right. If you need an hour Yeah. Usually PTO for a salaried employee is not a one hour block. It's a four hour block or a whole day. So, yeah, that might be a good point to shelf and come back. So, we'll come back to 20. All right, next page 26. So, this is going to be the hot topic. Um, new earning and safe time laws. What's the general familiarity of the council with the the new law? Do we know about it? Do we want a quick rundown? You should give us rundown then we're all synchronized. Excellent. So, earn sick and safe time law came out in 2024. There were amendments to the law that came out in 2025 that changed just a few minor things. Uh the very basic premise of the law is um every year there's an acrruel of 48 hours of earn sick and safe time for all employees within the state of Minnesota that employers must recognize. that acrual rate breaks down to one hour for every uh one hour of earned sick and safe time for every 30 hours worked. Um there is a rollover bank. So while you acrew 48 hours in a year, the max you can carry from year to year is a total of 80 hours. Um by statute, you are not required to pay out earn sick and safe time if there is a bank left over when somebody uh leaves whether on good terms or bad terms. Um there is no payout requirement unless if your policy specifies otherwise which is a carveout or consideration that you can have. I think council member Rainville had addressed that. So we can put that as root for conversation um within the scope of ESST here is do you want to pay out on that 80 hours that's banked even though state law does not require you to. Um currently you contemplate I think 200 hours of banked PTO. Um, what many cities are doing is adjusting down their bank PTO in light of the new sick and safe time because you get 80 hours. So, in essence, if you make no changes, what you're permitting is 200 hours of PTO and 80 hours of earn sick and safe time. And there's paid family medical leave as well, um, which is up to another 20 weeks that somebody can take, 10 caring for themselves and, uh, 10 for caring for another. Um, so there's potentially a lot of time that's gone that's important for the council to consider that to look at their PTO policy in light of these changes to the law. Um, also a relatively substantial update. This is one that Miss Johnson had communicated somewhat with uh somewhat with the League of Minnesota cities about. There is a statute that we were kind of reading otherwise uh at our office, but the Department of Labor and Industry has given some clarification. That statute's Minnesota statute 181.9448. The language is this. All paid time off and other paid leave made available to an employee by an employer in excess of the minimum amount required in 1819446 which is earn sick and safe time for absences from work due to personal illness or injury but not including short-term or long-term disability or other salary continuation benefits must meet or exceed the minimum standards in sections 1819445 through 1819448 the earn sick and save time policies. So what does that mean? Um the department of labor and industry has interpreted that and the legislature has drafted that all PTO now is subject to the requirements of earn sick and safe time if somebody is taking their PTO for earn sick and safe time eligible purposes. So I can't just turn my PTO into ESST because I want to. I need to be sick. But as we kind of know earn sick and safetime laws, it's really hard to tell somebody no. Um the reason why is uh there are protections regarding the medical data. The statute makes it so that you can only request uh uh written documentation if there's three more than three consecutive days of absences. Um and what you can request is severely restricted by medical protection laws, HIPPA, etc. So, when you're considering your PTO policy tonight, one thing I want you to think about is this change in the legislature um change in what the Department of Labor and Industry has clarified here is that all of your PTO, if somebody wants to take it because they're sick, that entire PTO bank is not subject to your approval, they can take it because they are sick. Does that make sense? So, that is a big change in 2025. Um because before what we were advising clients to do before this change to the ESST laws and uh related statutes was we were saying well you could just go back to your vacation and sick and protect your vacation time um and just have sick and ESST in a different bucket or what some cities were doing is you have 200 PTO hours. You can use PTO to satisfy ESST, but the condition that the legislature put in place on that was you have to then make your whole bank of PTO subject to the ESST requirements. The reason why cities were saying your first 48 hours of PTO you have to run as ESST. Well, that person says, "I'm going from vacation. I'm sick." And their employer would tell them, "No, you have to run it as your ESST." And the legislature came down, said no. Um, and so that is why I think we've gotten such a knee-jerk reaction was because employers were doing everything they could to circumvent the ESST law. The legislature doubled down in the other direction and said, "If you offer any PTO, it now needs to be ESST compliant. If somebody is taking it for sick time in light of that, you have 200 hours banked now. We got to figure out what to do with those hours." Um, the two options that I talked about with Natalie and Frank, um, are to pay out the bank of ours, um, to employees who have them in excess of whatever you set it at. Let's say you set it at 120. You pay out those 80, watch it clean, and somebody's at a bank of 120 in compliant with the ordinance. The other is we draft in language in here that allows a grandfathering of um, hours. So, you keep the hours that you had, but moving forward in the future, if you dip below the 120, you're not going back above whatever you I'm using 120 as a number. You don't go back above the cap. Um, the last thing that the Department of Labor and Industry, I know I'm throwing a lot at you here, so I will field questions for sure. Um, there are the bank of hours that were earned before January 1st, 2024 for PTO and the bank after. The Department of Labor says employers can still apply their notice and documentation requirements that were in effect as of December 31st, 2023 when employees use PTO acrewed before that date. So before the ESST laws came into place, your personnel policy controls. They have to give you notice when they take the leave, etc. What you cannot do, however, is require employees to use PTO acred on or after January 24 or January 1st, 2024 before using PTO acred prior to that date. So, they're saying you can't make somebody burn through all of their flexible PTO that is ESST eligible by going through all of that first and then putting them back on their old hours. So if somebody's got a bank of old time and a bank of new time, you can't tell them, well, you have to run your bank of new time first so they get to keep their bank. Does that make sense? Okay. So with all of that, again, I'll put it before you. This is substantial change in the law. So I understand that there's going to be want to be a reaction one way. There's always the flip side of the coin, which is you have employees um and you want to keep policies that make your employees think they're still getting treated well. they're receiving their benefits. Um, if you take away from employees, there could be an adverse reaction to that. So, that is just the purpose of this conversation here is to figure out the happy medium of how do we keep employees happy but make sure that will we protect ourselves as the city in light of these new laws that are kind of hard on employers, especially small employers. Can you talk a little bit more about the payout? So just say it was currently at $200 and we drop it to 120. So then they can fill in 80 hours in the SST. You just pay out that 80 hours at whatever your PTO is. Yes. Is that what others have been doing? Do you have any other examples? To be honest, you guys are kind of at the cutting edge here of changing your personnel policy to reflect these changes in the law. Um the penalties are really steep if you don't. I can actually read you the ESST penalties here. Um the SST law establishes if employer fails to adopt or allow ESST is used as requireable is as required is liable to the amount of ESST they should have been provided plus an amount of liquidated damages which can go up to double damages if you don't pay them within a certain period of time and they get their hours back. Um so you know there's a good amount of pressure by the legislature. You could also be sued civily by the employee as well. Um, so when it comes to I'm sorry, your question again was with respect to payouts or it was specifically the payout. Didn't see if that's a recommended path. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Going back to the recommended path, we haven't seen too many places going. It's a question of can you stomach it in your budget to do that type of a payout across your employees. Um, if not allowing them to keep those hours and create a grandfathered bank of those hours. give them like a year to burn it off. Is that what you're saying? I would be careful about the year to burn off because those bank of hours, if they're entitled, if they never expire under your standing policy and they're entitled to payment, you're going to tell them you get a year to burn all of this time, but that takes away the it foregoes the option of them getting paid out on that time upon retirement or termination or you see what I'm saying, Mr. Mayor? No, please. So the city of Mel then has a very in my opinion has a very generous PTO policy as as an example when I first I'm going to use Kexus energy when I first started working at Kexus energy as as a professional employee I I acred two weeks a year and and as a professional employee and my wife has been at the same company for 16 years now. She does not yet acrew five weeks of vacation a year and we provide our employees with five weeks of vacation a year. The the EFST is a requirement by state law um to to be used as as earned sick and safe time, but we're not obligated to it's not a law that says that we have to um pay out what is banked. Correct. My my preference, Mr. mayor is it's it's a benefit that we have to offer by the state. Our employees get to take advantage of it. Um they they get to carry over, you know, they can they can have they're only allowed to to have 80 hours total in the bank at a time. So if they don't use it, they lose it. Am I correct? Anything over 80, they would not be able to retain. That is correct. Correct. You know, personally, I and you know, this maybe goes to what Council Member Rainville, you know, was saying. Um, this is this is a conversation that we need to have at budget time. And you know, we're talking about now uh you know, seven weeks of of time that they earn. Excuse me. No, because it's 48 hours a year that they can earn max, but over six over six weeks a year that that they're earning as potential PTO that we would have to pay out. I I just I think it's a a budget talks thing and uh to to make a decision on it tonight I don't think is is prudent and I I'll just to be clear if I may, Mr. Mayor. Yes, absolutely. Um it is not a recurring payout and I want to be clear about that. It would be a reset of your cap, right? because your cap right now is at uh 200 hours of PTO. And so the proposal would be to the option I I won't even call it a proposal. The option for consideration is to drop your cap of PTO from 200 hours permanently down to 120 and do a one-time payout to employees who have 200 banked to pay them that 80hour chunk and say our hands are wed. your cap is now 120 PTO with 80 ESST and Mr. Mayor Council that was similar discussion we had last summer. So this is a part of this is not new. Okay, that at least to two of us where it's been how does how does EST work? I mean it the assumption what the assumption I believe was last year was oh it you can basically replace ESST with PTO so that's what we're going to do and then we can keep it where it is and the full-timers are taken care of and anybody who's part-time gets ESST but it's my understanding that we can't do that then well it it could be an option um and quite honestly with the language that the legislature has come out I don't know how far a deviation this is from the requirement anyways to just let the full bank 200 hours be subject to that ESST requirement. Like I told you, if you use PTO to cover your ESST requirement, the whole bank of PTO, this is the legislature contemplating ESST laws is required to the ESST requirements, right? But given the update that is in Minnesota statute 181.9448 that says all paid time off and other paid leave must be available in excess of the minimum uh amount required for ESST to be used for ESST anyways. So, one possible consideration is just say we're not going to give you more ESST and your 200 hours of PTO that you're allowed to bank at this point um covers. Now, the only thing then is you you are paying out but this is kind of the case now on a full bank of 200 hours because if you use PTO to cover, you know, the ESST you don't have to pay out, right? But if you use PTO to cover, your policy would control and say that you would pay it as PTO. And the discussion was that the the the advantage of the one advantage of having that much time banked was because it could literally be used as a semi short-term disability option without having to um have a uh a grace. Sure. And so but if but ESST fills that in then that certainly could be would could be a potential option. And there's also a fill in from the paid family medical leave. I guess we can chat about that as well just to kind of inform the conversation a little bit. Um paid family medical leave is in addition, it's above and beyond the requirements of earned sick and safe time is an additional 24 weeks. You'll hear me say 24 and 20. I'll kind of explain this discrepancy. It's 24 total weeks. It's 12 hours of sick time. 12 hours of family time. Caring for a family is the family portion. sick is your personal I'm sick. Um, caring for family. Family is just about anyone under the sun. Um, so long as you are not being paid. So, I could go care for somebody at a nursing home who is not my family member. And if they are relying upon my care and they are not my family member, biological whatsoever, and they do not pay me, I could go take time to do that. Um, the total cap you can use out of those 24 possible hours is 20 combined. So you can take a maximum of not hours weeks. So 24 weeks 12 and 12. The max you can take in one year is 20. Um the important details here for the city are the legislature has set a payroll tax which is how this program is funded. That payroll tax for this coming year in 2025 is set at 0.88%. Um that is the payment is kind of as follows. Um, it's for most employers a 50-50 split. Uh, the employer pays half of the payroll tax, the employee pays half of the payroll tax, or I should say up to the employer as a benefit could assume the entire employee side or any portion of it. So, you could say, I'll pay 80, you pay 20, 70, 30, or 100 or 50/50. You get to choose that split and that's something for council consideration tonight. Uh, there is a provision in a carveout for small employers. If you are below I have to get this exactly right and I can pull the it's a certain percentage I want to say if the average salary is below 90% of the state average annual wage which is right around 107 um then um the implication of that is if you would have that and employ fewer than 30 people you can qualify for a small employer benefit where you only pay 25% instead of 50%. % and the state eats the other 25% from the program. So, um I I'm not sure if DED has the state agency requires an application. That's something I can check to see what the process is for that. I know there is a statutory carve out for it. So then what you're looking at is 25% eaten by the state, 25% obligated for the council. What do we do with the remaining 50%? That's going to be for your consideration tonight. Do we cover that for the employee? do we have the employee cover that? Um the other important consideration is that the paid family medical leave act was drafted by the legislature in a way that it runs um consecutive with by default to federal uh medical leave. So unless you specify in your policy somebody could run both a federal and state program, the statute does have a carve out that if you state in your policy, and I would get a signed written acknowledgement, you know, I I've recommended that in the comments here, I believe, from your employee, if you state in your policy it runs concurrent at the same time, um it will run concurrent with the federal. I would advise that because otherwise somebody's getting PTO, ESST, state family medical leave and then federal. So it's a lot. Um so the practical implications are like actionable items. Figure out on paid family medical leave what percent of the 50% from the employee you want to pick up if any. Um two is deciding if you want it to be concurrent or consecutive. And the last practical consideration that's not for your consideration, just as a practical note, um the payments from the city will be quarterly for the portion that you cover, that 25% or more. Uh anything that the employee covers, you'll want to start withholding from paychecks start January 1 because the first payment will be due Q1 of uh 2026 when the law goes into effect January 1st. So you want to make sure you start collecting from your employees at the beginning of the year. So that way by the time you get to that first quarterly payment, you've already done that collection. Okay. Can we start with concurrent or not concurrent? Concurrent. I think concurrent. Lost the rest of it. Okay. So what happens? Say I'm employed for 2025 and they start taking the money out of my check and I'm not here in 2026. Is that those funds just go to the state and sit there and I've lost? That's how they're going to there's going to be ways they need to find I think it's going to be wolffully underfunded. Uh the 088% payroll tax. So the breakdown for payout we did the math on this and for somebody who earns on average about $1,000 a week will still be making $850ish dollars on paid family medical leave. Um it is a a scale. It's like a three-step. If you make this percent of this percent of the state average minimum wage up to this percent of your salary, right? and it goes through it three times. So if you make a substantial amount of money, it marginally benefits you. Um for individuals who are uh on the lower side of the scale, they will be seeing it's a sliding scale, if that makes sense. So you'll be seeing a lot more of your income. Um so we do think that this is a situation to where it's another policy that's subject to abuse by employees um because you're getting paid a lot still a very substantial portion of it. Um, so, uh, that goes kind of back to your your question of I think that's how the state's going to cover their aspirations to cover the cost of this program. It's finding ways to keep money in that pool for pay family medical leave. So, is that time taxable? Is that money taxable as income? Yeah, I would assume so. I would almost be certain. I would hope so. Otherwise, everybody is back to work. You know, I joked uh our secretary, I'm going to get sick and our secretary in her office is going to care for me and then she's going to get sick and I'm going to care for her and then welcome and Bob won't have to see me for a long time. Great. All right. So, can we go back to this? Um, yes. So, specifically for us, if we right now we got $200, if we reduce that to 120, they can't even earn now. They've been earning ESST since when? And if they haven't taken it, they could be up to how many hours coming in this year? 48. January 1st, 2024 is when they would start earning it. If you haven't logged it since then, go back and backlog it. That's what we're telling all of our clients because otherwise, you know, you're subject to all of those penalties that I talked about. Could have been 48 hours last year. So, it could have been 48 hours last year and one hour per 30 hours worked this year for however much they worked. So, for a full-time employee, they could make another 48 hours this year. Yep. Which could get them. Yep. Y. So the concern is if we do not reduce the 200 hours, they will be able to have 280 hours, right? And that 200 hours under 181.9448 is subject to the ESST requirement. So they could, you know, if it's 3 days or less, there's no written notice requirement. Um, so they could take sporadic days off all of the time under the guise of being sick. Um, the law says even when you require documentation, the individual is not required to provide you with documentation from a doctor. All they need to provide you is a written statement saying the time I am taking off is for ESST compliant purposes. That's literally all they need to provide you with. Um, the last thing I will say though, because of all of this ambiguity, there is a little bone that the legislature threw to cities, which is a provision that I've carved out in here. I drafted an ESST notice policy. Uh it has to do with taking um foreseeable if if there is a foreseeable notice of earned sick and safe time. Employers do have to provide you uh written notice and if they don't do that and it is foreseeable time as defined by the policy uh you can reject it. So if somebody wants to take off for a big surgery and they say, "Oh, Mr. Supervisor, Miss Supervisor, I'm so sorry I didn't tell you about this. I've had this scheduled for months." You could deny the surgery or whatever it is that they're taking earned caring for somebody. You could deny that u because they did not provide you proper written notice. You do need a separate written policy to invoke that provision. The legislature makes you jump through some hoops and say you need a policy. Uh I advise getting that policy signed so it's aware. It's an attachment. There's an exhibit to the policy here. But it is the little bully that that was thrown out. But I think to get back into the meat and potatoes of the question of where you were at, mayor, Mr. is um what to do with these hours, but you know, keep in mind your entire bank of PTO can be used for ESST first. So I I would be inclined, so the goal is not to punish an employee, but it's to try to take an updated policy in enacted. Um so I'd be inclined to drop to the 120, pay out 80 hours if they have it in the bank, but to get the employee down to the 120 and add the 80 hours in that. But you don't add it and they earn it. So it's a PTO type concept. But is would the employees look at that as a negative by doing this? I I think they certainly could. Um their total cap at the end of the day is decreased. Um the amount that they decrease it. Yes, because it would be 280 otherwise. They're currently entitled to 200 280 under your existing policy because technically ESST laws are in effect. So, they're getting the ESST time and the 200 hours that you're giving them right now in theory. Does that make sense? Yes. I don't know any private employer that allows 280 hours to be banked. Not one. Understood. Um, it I had one other concern, but it slipped my mind. No, not a problem at all. Council member Ryan, can I ask how many hours would be normal to bank? 120. No, you're right. This this gets into the debate that we that we again that we had last summer and there was um requests going out to several neighborhood cities and we are not at the top of the amount of PTO that you could bank more than 200. Yes. Oh my. And council member uh I'm sorry Mr. Mayor rather I would just like to jump back in to answer the question that you had uh with respect to drawbacks from the employer employee perspective. Um what I meant by the comment of it reduces the total bankable hours. It's bankable of PTO. So unless council member Rainville's proposal of paying out earned sick and safe time is adopted upon leave, you know, leaving uh employment uh separation um the amount that you would get paid out as PTO hours would only be 120 as the other 80 would be ESST which is not required by state law to be paid out. So that is a loss of benefit. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Go ahead, council member. So, but let's not forget they're still acrewing 200 hours of PTO time plus they're getting the 80 hours. We're just we're just determining how much they're going to be able what they'll be able to carry over whether it's that's it. whether it's 200 or 280, but I I'm not I I would not vote uh in favor of um paying bank paying out bank uh ESST time in the event that somebody leaves. I agree. I don't think we should pay that out, but it that's one thing that as an employee that would state is, hey, I I used to be able to get paid out $200. Now I can only get paid out. So from from I'm just trying to make sure we understand all perspectives from the from the employees is um but I I think making $200 is like crazy amount. Mr. Mayor go just one final consideration is the idea of keeping your PTO to satisfy earn sick and safe time. Do you keep it all technically by name as PTO? It would be subject to the PTA PTO payout policy in your manual. Um, but you would just be keeping it 200 of PTO and then the earn sick and safe time requirement is covered given the updates in the law that you need to allow people to use it for earn sick and safetime purposes anyways with any PTO. Um, I don't think there's a strong disadvantage to just saying you keep your 200 PTO and we guarantee that the PTO covers your ear in sick and safe time. It's pretty much a statutory requirement. So, we just keep the same rules, just say ESST rules apply to the 200 banks, and they could get them to apply to the 200 banks through a little clever gaming anyway. So, if they're already intent on doing that, they would get it done. That's that's exactly right, council member. The, you know, 181.948 is the clever gaming that would allow them to turn those, you know, PTO hours into EXST by operation of law. So, if we kept it at 200 banks, I mean, what would the acrruel be? The acrruel would still be whatever we have listed plus 48 hours a year. So long as they're acrewing your PTO at a rate that exceeds one hour per 30 one hours of PTO per 30 hours worked that would satisfy it would be more generous than so we don't even change the acrruel. We just say ESST rules even the first year employee earns more than that. Yeah. So all we would just say is the ESST rules apply to our current policy in total pretty much. The only downside of that is if they left you're paying out, but in theory they earned it anyway. So I I could look at that side of it too. And with the payout, so say we reduce the bank to 120 and we say additionally you get 80 hours of whatever. I mean, you know, that way you're just saying, "All right, anyone over 120, we're going to pay you out now." Whereas the risk of keeping it at 200 is having to pay it out later, right? So, we're just forcing ourselves to pay it now rather than later by keeping the 200 cap. Yes. So, I would rather pay it later. Given the budget this year, I'd rather pay it later, too. I don't have a lot to work with. I mean, I I think if they can if employees are are able to cleverly finagle their PTO to have ESST apply to that anyways, let's just have ESST apply to it all and take away the the gaming of it. And I think it simplifies it so we don't have to keep two separate counts of PTO. I mean, administratively, it seems like it'd be cheaper and easier to administrate that than keeping it separate, right, Council Member Swson. From an administrative perspective, that is correct. There are administrative statutory requirements for logging ESST. Um, it needs to be reflected every pay period. It needs to be reflected uh either in writing or if electronically there needs to be a computer provided to an employee to access during work hours their PTO bank to view how much PTO they have. um if there is a notification or notice that goes out to all employees that your total banked PTO hours satisfy and then on their pay stubs or however you all do your pay programming it shows total banked hours on every paycheck that would satisfy the administrative burden of it streamline it you wouldn't need to log ESST because all your employees will be on notice that their PTO meets the requirements of the SST one question I guess and I don't know the answer to this are summertime employees do they acrove PTO They don't. So, we would need them to earn ESST. They earn ESST. Yes. And my suggest, Mr. Mayor, go ahead. My suggestion was on the part-time, you know, our seasonal employees that if they earn some ESS, ESSST during their three months with us that at the end when they go back typically to college that we'd pay them for any ESST on the books. just part- timerrs, just as a little Betty sipper saying, "Thanks for coming in. Thanks for helping us through the summer." Um, other words, now he's got to keep that in the bank and if they never come back, they don't get it. So, it's just a little And it encourages them not well to actually work every day. Taking it saying they're sick two days before they're done, then they take their EST. Exactly. There's nothing you want to comment on that, Mr. Mayor. I I may there's just a a couple of considerations here. One, your non-benefit earning employees would we would need to carve out a provision for them to still earn ESST. Um, Council Member Rainville brings up a good point about, you know, your three-month employees. Uh, this is something I should have mentioned when introducing the ESST law. The general requirement is anybody who is expected, any employee, I should say, who is expected to earn 80 hours in a year. That change of expected to earn is a change that the legislature brought in 2025. Originally, it said earn 80 hours in the first draft in 2024. What employers were doing was withholding payment of or withholding use of the SST until somebody clocked the full 80 and then unleashing the bank of hours upon them or giving them access to it. Um the legislature wanted to make clear that if it is the expectation of the employer that an employee will earn 80 hours in a year, they start immediate acral. And so that would be possibly the case. You know, the people who are only going to be here who you hire to do 15 hours of work is all that's expected. They would not acrew ESST by operation of law. Can we go is it a legal thing to pay out ESST? Of course it is. It's a parttime employees pick and choose pay to some, pay not to others. It would be a carve out in your personnel policy. It would need to be explicit and clear because we don't want full-time employees twisting and turning that we're going to now pay out what but you're already paying them. Well, if we apply ESST rules to the full 200. So, you can apply the ESST rules to the full 200, but they're getting paid on the full bank of 200 anyways. They're getting paid on their full bank. So, all that the carve out in the policy needs to say is that for full-time employees, PTO will be used to satisfy earn sick and safe time as it is a more generous policy. meeting the requirements of the ESST law. And then for those who are not benefit earning employees, if they are expected to work 80 hours within a year, they do not acrew PTO because they're not benefit earning. They will acrue earn sick and safe time at a rate of one hours for every 30 hours worked. And then that approval is just a matter of state law. That's not up for your consideration tonight. The only consideration is council member Rainville's proposal that for non-benefit earning employees, do you throw them the bone or benefit of paying them out on banked ESST hours? Question. So if if we paid our summertime employees just straight PTO, hour every 30, we could just call it PTO with ESST rules applied. Because my concern is if we're going to apply ESST rules to the, you know, the 200 banks, we don't administratively have to separately track the PTO. Can we just make a rule that our part-time employees or, you know, temporary employees earn at an acrruel rate of one for every 30 or PTO? Yeah. So, we don't have to like create a special line item on their page stubs of ESST or some system in our computer banking ESST. It's just PTO that's paid out. What if they don't work 30 hours? What if they work 20? Well, the the other consideration there, council member, is if you're giving them that PTO, you are allowing them to take vacation. Um, that is something that if you leave it to ESST, your part-time employees who are not benefit earning cannot take vacation. just call it and not give us a They could take their vacation sick, you know, without I just I think if an employee is bound and determined to screw around, they're going to and there's an avenue for them to do that. They're going to do that. So, I don't like and what we advise all of our clients is the type of people who are going to be gaming that system. You cannot terminate them for using the SST time. they will be the type of employee that is having other performance issues that the conduct portion of the policy will apply to. And you just need to make very clear in those situations why you are terminating them that you are not terminating them because they disappeared um because they were sick. You are terminating them for these specific performance-based reasons. customer rea and I believe Natalie has already gone back and reworked our payroll system knowing it had to be done and so it's already all set up in payroll to do that council member have have [Music] you has has anybody run the numbers to know what the costs of the city will be for these seasonal employees that are going to acrue ESST what it process. Well, Mr. Mayor, the budget that we did in 25 24 or 25 would have had that in it, you know. So, it's our two park people that we employed um and then it would be any um snowplow drivers in the winter and those are already captured in the budgets. Mr. Mayor, customer science, I don't have exact dollars. No, but they are in the 2025 budget enough to cover. Yes. Which is just doing quick math on a three-month employee, if they worked 40 hours a week, they would earn 17.33 hours of ESSC by the end of that three-month period. So, whatever their hourly rate is, times 17 is what that payout would be at max. If they haven't taken it, think it's $17 and $17 for the Well, let me finish that calculation then. It's like $294.66 at $17 an hour. So, it's not it's not a big hit to the city, but I just think it's something people give up their summer. They I mean, they're working because they they need money, but um yeah, it's just it's a benefit to the somebody that comes in, a college student come in. I think you have kids in college. $300 is $300 to a college kid. I was thinking it was a book. But you need you need a decision on this tonight. That's what you're looking for. Would be ideal. Um I'm going to make a motion. I'm looking at a lot of faces right now. I'd be willing to make Okay. Make a motion, please. My motion is we keep at 200 banks. We don't track ESST separately. We just apply the ESST rules to the hours we already pay our employees and I would be all right paying out earned ESST at the end of the temporary employees employment period. So that would be and that FMLA federal and state run concurrently. There you go. I'll second that motion. Go ahead. I need clarification before I vote on this. So in in your motion, are we paying out ESST that's banked if somebody when somebody leaves? It's compile. Well, it would be it would be subject to the normal PTO policy, right? So essentially essentially they're earning let's say a newer employee because we have we have we have some senior employees that acrew more than five weeks a year but a newer employee would essentially um acrew 248 hours of PTO. No. Well, cap of 200 to there is no entitlement to earn sick and safe time if your PTO policy is more generous than and explicitly covers earn sick and safe time. So, let me give a concrete example. Let's say someone is hired, they're in their first year of work. Our current policy for PTO awards 10 days per year, which is more generous than ESST. So that person would only earn well 10 times 80 80 hours of PTO but since we apply the ESST rules to it it's just 80 hours they've accured. It's not 80 plus you know a year of ESST. So it saves us from giving them that extra ESST. It just burdens us from having to apply the ESST rules to the normally acred PTO. But they can get it there anyways if they just cleverly use one of their, you know, their ESST before jumping to PTO. Otherwise, they would have had 128 hours in that first year to play out the other scenario. If you kept PTO and did not use it to cover ESST, that first year employee would have earned 80 PTO plus 48 earn sick and safe time. And so it could cost us theoretically where it might not otherwise in paying out a few ESST hours to a quitting or fired employee, but it would save us in the acrruel because it's well in that example it's 80 versus 124 128, right? 128. Is there any thing we've missed in this math or analysis, do you think? No, I I think that analysis is pretty right. The only thing that I would say with the motion that was raised was the concurrent versus consecutive. I would separate out. We'll move to paid family medical leave right after this because that that is a paid family medical leave issue, not ESST. The lines kind of got blurred in my conversation. So, my apologies for that. That's for the next hour. We'll get that. That one should be quicker. Mr. Mayor, council, go ahead. I heard in this motion that we're going to be paying out ESST to everybody. Temporary seasonal people who are not full-time employees was the motion. Yeah, that's the only question. They earn it anyways. The question is, do we pay it out at the end or not? I don't really care. It's 300 bucks at the end of a summer employees. Again, it's more money that we don't have in the budget. If we want to figure that out, let's figure out how to budget for going forward, not for this year. And I would be all right leaving that off, too. I don't feel strongly either way on that. I just figure it's I just we're we're dealing with I hear over and over again about there's no money in the budget. There's money in the budget, but now we're now we're creating unfunded mandates and nobody likes that term. All right, that I mean that's that's a fair point. I would be willing to change my motion. So I would I would move that we just apply the full ESS the AS ESST rules to the normal AC cruel process we have and the 200 banked and and well and then that's it. the part-time employees or the temporary employees already earned ESST. If we're not going to allow them to be paid out, we don't even need to mention them. It's just really what how we acrew them and what we allow to bank, right, for the full-time employees. Would that cover it if we just applied ESST rules to the normal 200 cap bank that we currently have in the acrruel process? Correct. That'd be all right. That was a very unclear motion. That's exactly where I'm at. and not follow what happens at full time. Please clarify the motion. Yes, I believe uh council me council member Swenson's motion would be to um adopt a policy in the personnel policy that PTO would be more generous than earn sick and safe time and therefore satisfy the earn sick and safe time requirement eliminating earn sick and safe time as its own separate pool of hours. And then the result of that is 200 hours max and with a 200 hour PTO cap which remains unchanged. Right. So I'm I'm just trying to I'm trying to wrap my my head around when you were saying originally well we we really should think consider dropping this to 120 and then they would use the ESST that they can cap up to 80. I'm just trying to still you kept them separate. I understand. Okay. I'm just trying to understand the still trying to wrap my head around the pros and cons of doing one over the other. So given the update that the legislature has come out with that you must treat all PTO as earned sick and safe time. If somebody asks to use PTO for earned sick and safe time eligible purposes given that update um individuals could use that bank of PTO anyways for sick time. Uh, and so the point is by keeping it at 200 hours capped and making all of your PTO ESST eligible, that's pretty much already the requirement of the legislature. They're requiring that if somebody is sick, you let them take that sick time from their PTO, even if they've burned through their 48 hours they're entitled to if you bank them separately. So if I'm on sick hour 75 because I've got a one and a half year old in daycare and he gets me sick all the time. I'm way over the 48 hours. No, but if I am, I could take my PTO that the employer gave me anyway and I would get to take it anyways. For that reason, my recommendation is to keep it at 200 hours. It pretty much is status quo. The employee should be happy because they get their full 200 hours. You're not dropping PTO time. The employee should be happy because they get paid out on the full 200 hours instead of doing 120 PTO in 80 ESST, which they're not entitled to pay out on ESST upon separation. And it protects you all because you're not giving them 280 hours that are all theoretically ESST eligible. So based on your recommendation, it's status quo. status quo but specifying that your PTO policy will cover ESST. You haven't specified that. I would specify that. Notify your employees of that. Mr. Council, it's not this scenario is not costing us anymore. Correct. I don't see why it would. I think it actually saves us. Yes. Saves us from And it saves you too. additional 28 hours to each employee. Correct. It saves you especially when you need the coverage for somebody who has 280 hours and uses in excess of 200 hours and goes into the 280 and you need to get coverage. You have to contract a grader or a you know snowplow driver or whatever it is. Does that make sense? I'm trying. Go ahead. kind of go back to figure out what meeting we approved the seasonal um the seasonal parks and boys. They don't do 40 hours a week. Um I want to say they do 20 if if that. Um, okay. I don't I'd like to see the our seasonal people get paid their whatever hours they have out. Um, the approval meeting was April 23rd. It was April 23rd. Okay. What are you looking for? I'm looking for um all the That's right. This is to approve the hiring and Okay. Did it say hour, number of hours per week or anything? Wage it looks like at least on this page. Okay. It just I mean it isn't it is not 40 hours a week for both of them. So, it's less than $300 for for both of them. That's right. Council member, um I it's not that I'm because yes, I do have young people um at home. Uh, but this isn't any different than than not expecting the taxpayers to eat $325 from our attorney that we just got built. So, u I'm just not willing to I I would We have a motion right now that went through that portion to pay the assistance. It's It's withdrawn. It's withdrawn. I'm all right. So I second the motion. Can we go ahead and vote? Yes, sir. All right. All in favor? What is the motion? The motion is to use PTO to satisfy the requirements of earn sick and safe time keeping it at a cap of 200 hours with no separate bank for earn sick and safe time as the policy is more generous. Okay. motion clearly right about I will just say that I'm gonna go back to Natalie and ask her if those dollars are captured in what the budget is that we have for 2025 for those seasonals I'm going to do that okay all in favor of the motion say I those opposed motion carries apology to attorney all sites for that it's just fine paid family medical leave. We've addressed part of it. It sounds like by a quick voice vote and we can formally talk about this more. The idea is that we wanted to run concurrent, not consecutive with the federal leave. Uh that leaves just um an additional policy consideration, which is what percent do you want to collect from the employees? Um remember as I described, you are likely eligible for that small employer discount. I did pull that number. Um two important facts that I kind of omitted before about paid family medical leave. The first is that individuals are eligible to take that leave when they have earned 5.3% of the state's average annual wage. Don't ask how the legislature came up with that number. Um round it down to the nearest $100. So for 2025, that wage threshold is $3,700. That's the magic number. They hit $3,700, then they're eligible for the leave. Um, with respect to uh the amount required, there was one other number I wanted to say. So that small employer exception I was talking about where your obligations fall from 50% down to 25 is if you have 30 or fewer employees. And if your wage falls under 150% of the state average annual wage, again, don't know where they came up with that 150%. The magic number for you all to know is if it falls under 107,16 in 2025. So, you're average. So, if you qualify for both of those, you're at 25%. Keeping that in mind, the state's at 25%. We have 50% of the pie left. It's council's discretion tonight to determine if you want to take any portion of that pie away from the employer or employee rather as a benefit or if you just want to take the statutory right that you have under the paid f family medical leave laws and say employee are paying all 50% that's going to be withheld from your paychecks. I think that's reasonable let them pay. I mean it's almost like an STD policy premium or something. I mean it's a benefit they're getting. I think it's reasonable for them to pay 50% of the payroll tax. Is that what most companies if I was I'm gonna guess most most public companies are going to charge the whole thing back 100%. And again, we're not even into 2026 yet. So, because we're dealing with personnel policies, we're kind of ahead of the ball a little bit here, which is a good thing. And I just think while we're hammering all this out, we should just make this determination. So, we cut it down 50%. Perfect. So this benefit pays out in addition to work comp if the benefit amount is higher than the work comp pay rate. So we could be paying employees work comp and state FMLA. But just for scope, so I kind of ran the numbers. Let's say you have an employee who earns $50,000 at the payroll tax of 088. $440 a year that in total payroll tax is collected. So from a small employer, it's $110 a year for the employee. uh if the city elects to be responsible for the other 50% or give it to the employee, that remaining amount is 220 and then the state eats 110. So that just gives you an idea if you got a $50,000 employee what it looks like for an employee. It's 440 and then you're obligated to cover 110 for that employee, they would cover 220. So you're not taking a bunch of money away from somebody who's making 50,000 if you require them to pay 220. It's not inconsequential, but it's not like you're taking away thousands of dollars from man. Well, and here's a thought, if I may. If if you're right, and this is a woefully underfunded thing, and they jack this payroll tax up to 3% three years from now, and then all of a sudden we're like, "Hey, employee, we're not going to pay 50% or the whole thing anymore. You're going to have to pick up the tab, and then we really hit them with with the increase rate, I would rather just charge them 50% from the get-go." Mr. Mayor, if I may, go ahead. There is a statutory cap that's legislated for 1.2% 2% on the pay payroll tax cap. The legislature is the legislature. They could raise that cap. So, you know, it's it's 1.2% now. Keep that in mind. So, next year, the most they could do is 1.2%, but they could raise the cap year after that. Uh the other consideration is there is an annual notification that comes down from DE, the state agency that oversees this. Don't remember what DE stands for at this point in time. They'll give you an annual notification. I don't remember the date either, but you will get a once a year notification about what the payroll tax is going to be. At that time, you could amend your personnel policy. If there is a drastic change in the legislature or your budget changes, you could change that contribution for the next year. We have to have a vote on this 50%. Um, it would be ideal. So, I could draft the language into here. It would not be required for you to have it formally set until January one of next year because you need to that's when you need to start doing the collections or with okay to to do a vote on this. I'll make a motion to leave the employee portion at 50%. Perfect. I'll second your motion. Excellent. Can we go around and do a vote? All right. All those in favor say I. Those opposed. Motion carries. There we go. We're down to 62 pages now. Page 44. Make a big jump. I only have three tabs left if that gets people excited. This one should be quick. Frank mentioned something about an 80 degree rule. Pardon my maybe public works lack of knowledge. I don't know what the 80°ree rule is. Is it a weather rule? And do you want an 80 degree rule for your public works employees? Mr. Mayor Council, what Frank meant by that is so we have a policy that the seasonal employees have to wear boots, long pants when they're on equipment. He was saying that if it's 80 degrees or above, you could allow them to wear shorts, but they still have to do their work boots when they're on equip running equipment and stuff. And that's what that that's what he meant by the 80 80 degree rule. Mr. Mayor, counc and I would say if you're running a trimmer, you're not wearing shorts. Well, that's I think I mean yeah trimmer or if you're on a you're going to want you're going to want long sleeves and long pants just in case. So there's natural consequences that come along with Yeah. So leave it as is. Okay. Good. Leave it as is. We got a vote. Everybody happy? 51. Um, I contemplated a drug alcohol testing policy. It's relatively standard practice for um for cities, especially cities of your size. The scope of what you can do within that policy varies. You can have random testing. You can't do targeted testing. Let me start with that. Right? You can't just say particular employee, I'm going to test you, test you, um, just at random. Um, you need to do it by job class. For example, everyone with a CDL will be subject to a test once every so often. Um, at the minimum, the way I have it drafted right now is just a test after an offer for employment has been accepted. Um, we can make that testing more often, but I thought as a bare minimum, it is a starting place for a policy. Um, and I know Natalie had concerns given there isn't a testing facility in close proximity. She's called around apparently to figure out who could do that type of testing within 30 miles. And and so here's my thing. I I drive 30 miles a day just to get to it. If somebody has to drive 30 miles to go take a test twice a year, once a year, or when they get their job offer, I don't think it's unreasonable whatsoever. You've got it written just as for the job offer is the way it's written. Okay. Yes. If I'm not mistaken, I think there's a drug testing facility in Andover. The one my husband had used, this was during Super Bowl. Um, that one was closed. That was on um bunker. Yeah, if you're driving to get a job offer, it's okay to drive 30 miles away. I'm assuming that's just fine. And is is this all positions or just those with say to normally driving? This is currently drafted as a I mean would we drug test an administrative support person? Why not? That's I I don't know. I've always had to take a drug test one. I have I have but they were in law enforcement positions. Mr. Mayor, if I may. Yes, absolutely. Please. Generally, anybody who has access to administrative duties or books or recordkeeping, it's something that people do consider having drug testing. It's I would say relatively standard practice. I'd be certainly okay with Yeah. Mayor Cber, go ahead. For our DOT license driver, do we arrange for their yearly physical for their DOT car? Do they just go do that on their own? Does anyone know? It is a yearly requirement in DOT, isn't it? Yeah. Another pop another another fun debate that we had last summer on how all that works because there was conditions and then actually council member Alders said rules like have literally changed and it literally came down to how it mattered about how heavy the truck was and all sorts of different things. So bring your attorney back for that one. It needs to be looked at and it's and and I would say it's definitely a concern because I definitely you know I know you know messing with the messing with government requirements is not something that we want to really or you could make your policy contingent upon government approval DOT relicensing whatever if they do the drug testing on their end. So if they lose their DOT or CDLert whatever it's through that could be an avenue to approach it. the the big question was I think there's something about pools and who qualifies and do can we are we in with like is there a county pool or do we have to do a city pool and that's that was the whole discussion that never really got ironed out Mr. That's right. Natalie mentioned that they did check on that. He should got checked on that and the county doesn't want to do any pooling. So there was no one we could go in with. Right. So then yeah. So key piece of this policy just bring up reason suspicion. Uh if they have that um they can be tested to that also and I think that's an important thing. Thank you uh Mr. Mayor. That is an important thing. I would also just recommend in consulting with legal before making a determination if there is reasonable suspicion to order testing for someone. Um, I would be a relatively decent consult. I did prosecution work for a couple years, so feel free to contact me in that regard. Um, so the the consideration really is, do you want to move the goalpost in all and make testing more frequent for anyone else or just once upon, you know, application for the job? Um, that would be, I think, what's up for consideration. Just to flag, exhibits two and three accompany exhibit one. It's a pre-esting acknowledgement form. Before you have anybody tested, you need to have them sign this pre-esting acknowledgement form that they've read the testing policy and the consequences resulted thereof. Um, there is also exhibit three, which is a notice of the results. When you get the results back, uh, there is the employee E needs to be notified on this one. So, are you comfortable with our discussion on that testing before they're hired and then reasonable suspicion after that? Me, that's a fairly good control measure. Reasonable suspicion. I I know half of them are public works employees that have to be tested anyway on an annual basis, but regional suspicion allowed you if you see it, we can address it. Obviously, you consult with the attorney if you need to. Um, so I'd make a motion to approve this, guys. Oh, second. Is there any other discussion? Are are you talking the whole thing or just this? Just this. Okay. Yeah, let's do exhibit one. Yep, that's fine. Exhibit one of drug testing. How's that sound? We good? Yes, sir. All right. Move it to vote. All those in favor say I. I opposed. None. Motion carries. All right. Um, last one that I have tabbed for consideration is technology policy. The one thing in your technology policy that is not super clear is if you have an email policy or not. Um, it is relatively standard practice for a lot of municipalities to have an email policy. Uh, in short, it allows for consolidation of uh public records into a public email account. So there is not comingingling in any employees personal email accounts. It has implications both in litigation. We're fighting a lawsuit right now that deals with comingling of documents and private accounts. Um there also are data practices implications as well. Your personal device if you're doing a bunch of personal stuff on there or business stuff on your personal device rather could be subject to Minnesota data practices searches. And so I would just, you know, wonder if there is a desire for the city council to have a policy that you must use a city issued email account for all city business. I would say that this at the Sorry, Mr. Ryer. Yeah, council. Um, what again when this was drafted, we didn't have city emails. Now we do. Um, so I don't see why I mean using a city the the issues going to come up about devices and that's been a debate and how does that get paid for and it's still be determined. I mean just can't imagine everybody need carrying around different funds for all but it doesn't just affect as I understand it correct me if I'm wrong it doesn't just affect staff it literally it would affect council and the mayor as well. Right. So and Mr. Mayor, if I may, um I would also recommend some type of provision where the city administrator is provided the username and password for all city email accounts. Um that way if there ever is termination not on great terms or somebody leaves, they're not leaving with city property in their email account that you don't have access to. It is just something for consideration. Um you know, it it just gives you a way to access the email as as the city. So every private company would already have that. Well, we use Outlook and we have an admin running our Outlook and they can do whatever they want to any of the email accounts that put holes on preventing us from deleting things, changing passwords, lock us out. So I think Microsoft already okay allows us that ability and we the only question is does our IT consultant have the ability and Natalie doesn't have it but he does have that. He has that available. The IT consultant, right? He's been my consultant for 30 years. So I I would just recommend including language in there that the IT consultant or any consultant similar consultant will provide to the city township usernames and passwords for all the email accounts for a reason. For for a reason. Sure. Meaning the the employees terminated whatever the case might be. We could do specific is this specific to employees or that is that including council mean when you're dealing when you're dealing with a policy that's understand this is personal or staff policy but I'm just and we're not this so so that that would be a thank you um council member Rainbow brings up a very good point this is the personnel policy so it does not cover it would be technically uh contemplation for a different day and given this is a special meeting I wouldn't delve too far into a conversation outside of the personnel policy if it's what's noticed. Yeah, but I'm just going so it it is an issue that should still be addressed and that if there's a concern from a legal perspective, I would advise so like I said, we're fighting a lawsuit over, you know, fighting board, not getting documents back, etc., etc. Yeah, we need to vote on this one or are we all good? We we can certainly vote. So, we want to make a motion, but sounds like if we use email and this is coming to staff. Make a motion to approve the amended technology policy, including the language regarding email accounts. Perfect. Second second by council council member laser. All right. All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed. Motion carries. All right. How many more we got? So respond now. Mr. Mayor, I I hope not too many more. Um we're done with the issues that I have marked as um council compensation. Council member Rainville did some time prior to um the meeting tonight provide everyone with her comments with respect to the personnel policy. Um I've address those comments. My comments are in red. I think this has been distributed to all members of the council. If I have highlighted it, it is been adopted into a draft that I also circulated that's not your agenda packet tonight. Uh that just reflects the changes that council member Rainville proposed. All of the ones highlighted in yellow I think are just you had this numbering wrong or it's very non-controversial ideas. Um the ones that are uh not highlighted um I would just say I either had a differing legal opinion or opinion of stylistic opinion about which category something should go in or it was subject for conversation. Much of this was about ESST which we've already addressed. So, I I don't want mean to take over here too much, but for anything that I have not highlighted, if I've highlighted something and you disagree, let me know. If I h for what I haven't highlighted, Council Member Rainville, if there's anything that we haven't addressed that you still think you would like to address, uh, I would be happy to provide any input. So, we did the stuff on page five, seven. Okay. If I can look at 32 hours benefits, we'll talk about that at budget. Um, one of the things I wanted and I say it's page nine, but I can't think where it is. But what I want to do is that and Natalie sent out some information that she had gotten from her copy with the clerks as far as overtime and how overtime is figured. Um, I would like us to look at um that overtime is paid after your regular work day, whether or not part of that work week includes vacation, sick, or a holiday that you would get paid for the time after eight hours. And I'm trying to think of where page Oh, the first one non-exempt. We would not carve out um policy proposed. So, council member Randall, if I may, I think that you're indicating that you would like the non-exempt employee definition at the top of page nine to reflect uh that if an individual takes earn sick and safe time, paid family medical leave, or otherwise PTO, that those hours count towards the 40 hours worked for purposes of overtime pay in any given pay period. That includes FMLA. Is that what we just said? Leave Act. No, Fair Labor Standards Act. Well, no. That's why I'm trying to clarify the scope of are you including paid family medical leave even earn sick and safe time in that computation to get to the 40 hours or is it just vacation? So as the FMLA are those can that be incremental or does it have to be a full week? So paid family medical leave can be taken either in consecutive or incremental approaches. The only the only thing that changes about it is when you're entitled to start receiving the benefits. If you run I think it's seven days concurrent. If you know you're going to take at least seven days off, you get the benefit paid right away. If you take it incrementally, two days here, two days there, two days there, one day there spaced out, you don't get the payout until you've reached the seven hours. If you reach those seven hours incrementally, does that make sense? Or uh uh seven days. Thank you. Seven days. Seven hours. Seven days. It's getting late. Mr. Mayor, so what council member Rainville is is is proposing um Miss Johnson's sampling of of cities that responded to her email request is very small in comparison to the number of cities we have in the state of Minnesota of approximately 850. Um I I believe that uh you know we currently follow the the um Fair Labor Standard Act and and state guidelines for calculating overtime at hours worked over 40 during a week. I would like to stay the course on that. Um, you know, uh, again, we're we're going back to being able to manage budgets and when we start paying overtime on hours worked over eight hours in in a given day, what's that going to do to to our budget on an annual basis? We have no way to predict that. So, um, and and to fact to allow employees to factor in uh PTO and, uh, holidays. Um, we're we're just, you know, spending tax dollars that we don't have. Mr. Mayor, Rebo, go ahead. I just think of an example of, was it last weekend? Um, public works worked there 40 hours. I don't know whether any of them had taken a vacation or or or sick day, but then they had to go out on what was it at Friday night to work on a culvert. And if you had taken Wednesday as a holiday or a vacation day if it was Christmas week, you wouldn't get overtime for that. So, Mr. Mayor Council do and I don't know council member Rainville or council member Brian do do we currently have a policy that so Miss Johnson's question to these other cities pertains specifically to public works not to all employees it was it was a public that was an example that she gave so so and you know for instance in in my in my experience as a um years ago I in an HVAC technician. So if I got called out after hours, I was be there was an exception. So I I don't I don't if we have an exception for public works, you know, whether it's nights and weekends and and I believe if they get called out on a weekend to plow, aren't they being paid time and a half? Well, they aren't. if they worked if they if it was Christmas week and Christmas was Wednesday and then they had to plow on Saturday and Sunday, they're not getting overtime because So, so there is a there isn't a a caveat for just paying those specific hours at that I'm at higher rate. Mr. Mayor, if I may. Yes, please. There is a carveout in the draft of the personnel policy that says non-exempt employees that are eligible for paid holidays who are not regularly scheduled to work on an actual or observed holiday but are authorized to do so by their supervisor due to a city emergency shall receive pay at one and a half times the regular hourly pay rate in addition to their holiday pay. So for all right well I will ask Natalie to readress this. I mean, she sent it out to the email list served that they have whether they get, you know, whether 75 of them respond or six of them respond. She can't direct people to respond. So, she just provided what she had gotten. Mr. M. And I I appreciate she has no control over who responds to it, but um you know, some of these some of these cities, what what's their what's their uh um what's their financial situation like? Is it do they have is our tax base drastically different than ours? I have no idea. So, these are I think these are things that that need to be to be vetted out. Well, I'll do some more work with Natalie. what you just read is already in here. Yes, that's been happening. May I ask question on what you read? Council member, go ahead. Was that just about work on the holiday? So, if they're called in on the holiday, they still get paid the holiday plus time and a half. So, that wouldn't affect councilwoman um uh Rainville's example of a public works who has Christmas, you know, we have Christmas holiday on Wednesday. He gets called in on Saturday to do plowing. that that doesn't necessarily entitle him to time and a half on Saturday, right? That is that is correct. I'm just saying it kind of partially addresses the concern in that for holidays itself, it is in page 25. Uh it's section 9-3 and it says full-time and benefits eligible employees will receive the follow holidays off with pay and underneath that it says non-exempt employees that are holiday eligible. maybe halfway down the pave. Only if it snows on a holiday. Sure. Or a water mane bursts or you know whatever the circumstance may be that constitutes an emergency. But it's Christmas if Christmas day it's a beautiful day. There's no snow. You take your eight hour holiday and Saturday and Sunday we get slammed with 12 inches of snow. You're not going to get overcome. Council member Rainville, you are correct. The current ordinance does not contemplate that as proposed. I think that absolutely needs to be added back in. I take that public works. I'm gonna I'm gonna work I'm gonna take it. I'm going to work on that because I think people should get paid. Councilman trust I I believe that our current policy is to pay overtime like that and that it I mean one of the issues was it wasn't super clear but I think that was the policy that Scott city administrator Scott put into place during his tenure was that overtime would be paid as we just discussed in and Mr. Mayor, that's my reason. My reason for doing it is just to get it documented that what is our policy going to be? My my is that I would like to see the couple bring that back. Is that what you're saying? Y well if it's if I may, Mr. Mayor, if it's standing policy, it hasn't changed. I just for clarity for all the council members, I was working from a my understanding is a proposed draft that was a rework that was in progress already. never fully approved go and I I do think it needs to be clarified because it I mean we have what Scott discussed with the employees but I don't think it's written down anyway and so I think we do need to clarify it in the policy one way or the other and I'm okay paying overtime as council Rainville select or suggest Mr. Mayor, if I may go ahead, I will just say one thing with respect to council member Rainville's comment that was made here. Um, I didn't read the comment as that way and so I don't think my answer to her was super responsive in writing. The way I read it was her request was to have employees um be eligible for overtime at one and a half times for every hour worked over regularly scheduled work days. Um, my analysis focused on the Fair Labor Standards Act requiring overtime pay only after 40 hours. I was focusing on a world in which you contemplated 32 hours be a benefit earning meaning hour 33 through 40 if you worked them would have been a time and a half based upon the proposed language. Please don't go and that was that's why I you know I didn't answer it in that perspective of what council member Ringville is now asking. Um so just wanted to make that clear. So may I make a motion or suggestion? You can I mean I guess I would move to keep the the overtime policy just hours beyond 40 hours worked in a week time and a half but change definition of hours worked in a week or however you want to phrase it to also include PTO sick leave or holiday and then they have a question that came up on that that could be your motion but is it just for public works or is it for all employees? I would like to see all employees. not fair to treat them differently. So, Mr. Mayor, I I would prefer that we look into a caveat for public works public works employees who have to come in after hours and whether it's a weekend or whatever it happens to be and we not move into this paid paying overtime on on uh and factoring PTO and and holiday pay in the acral. We It's not something that we It's not something that we have to do. We're operating within within state law and fair labor and standard tax right now. And we're talking about we're talking about budgets that are already already stretched. What What is this going to cost the taxpayers now then um on an annual basis? Can I could I ask you to resend your motion because council member Rainbow is going to go look into this some more? Bring it back. Yeah. Would you that be acceptable? Okay. Thank you. But then we'll see if there's additional information that can come out. All right. Is there anything else you have to cover on the personnel policy? Um, not to my perspective. Council Rainbow, there anything else in your statement that needs to be covered? I think I'm good. I was going to add, but doesn't sound like that will go over well. Right. Is there anything else that needs to be discussed? Ryan Dan's turn. It's my shirt. Would anybody like to adjourn the meeting? Uh, I make a motion to adjourn the meeting. Second. All right, we got a second. Thank you. Made a solid four hours. This is awesome. Put a lot of pressure me on there, Dan. That was good. Last minute pressure, too. You know, just so I can understand workflows. I haven't worked with y'all before. They'll propose to change any flaw.