Paul mck here lantman here uh varen Camp here Nichols here and councelor BMA is excused K good time up north hopefully You' like to stand and join in the Pledge of Allegiance the United States of America and to the rep for it stands na God indivisible with liy and justice for all great thank you on to agenda approval let's get a few things from staff uh yes mayor we have a few items so we've updated uh the South Fork Rush Creek briefing this evening item 6B we have updated minutes uh for item 7A items 7 b c and d are removed item 7 Y is added item 9A is updated we had an additional applicant come in uh before the window closed item 10A is updated with the slide briefing item 10B is updated uh with the schematic drawings item 11a is updated with more refined quotes item 12a uh has been added and updated and item 13 uh the city council schedule has been updated perfect anything from Council not I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda as amended I'll make that motion second second all those in favor say I I I okay uh commission Representatives have Peter and Judy thank you okay then on to open Forum if we have anyone who' like to speak on any items not on tonight's agenda now's your time and Jay can walk you through that ladies and gentlemen welcome ask if you have anything that's not on the agenda this evening to walk up to the microphone uh speak to the Das speak to the council any comments or questions you might have mayor we've received no cards and no emails uh so if there's someone in the audience that would like to step up uh we have you on the agenda ma'am all righty then we will move on to presentations and uh we have two of them today the first one is from reprentative Christen Robins mayce to see you all to a update from the end of the session that we just included in St Paul um I would say you know not as many things especially regarding bonding got done as we had hoped um that bonding projects that we're going to put in um there was not a bille at the end of session so that will um have to reintroduced at the end of the bium everything dies so um I'll work with you and the city staff to update um your interest in pursuing those projects next year and um we were I'd say the one of the big successes this year was getting the S back in school that was a really big um important thing for all of our communities we were pleased to see that done there were many small things that I was able to get across working with constituents one of whom is from corpin that I was working with she um got to about with a a young girl scout who wanted an update to the DPF form so if you have a a person in your home who um needs care and you're in an accident the um law enforcement is allergic to that and she had actually worked on it the year before and then wanted some changes we were able to work on that which was a really fun project for me um worked um with a different constituent um also from area who had some concern about how sister living facility hand handled um when there's a correction order out there that the family should receive notice of how the order was addressed and that wasn't in statute and so it wasn't being done and so I worked with her in the department of um Human Services and the different stakeholders um who provide assist of living care in our area and around the state and we were able to get language done that um was I think going to be very helpful to famili so I appreciate again so many of the things that I get to work on come through constituent so if anyone thought there listening things you me to work on I enjoy that a lot one of the most important things we did for small cities was working with our Fire Chiefs um particularly uh Chief bush from mapel Gro and chief Bowen from Albertville were the Weeds on that but I work very closely with them um to get language so that they are now pon call Firefighters are now exempt from the Ern statute that was creating a lot of problems for C budgets but also for Staffing for pay on call Firefighters um their model is very different and it was going to impact their ability to complete their uh required training requirements um so that was something we worked really hard on on year another constituent brought forward to me a concern about um uh eating disorders and we were able to get language that would require the State High School leag to have all their coaches as part of their certification get training and recognizing and dealing with leading disorders for our young athletes so I think that will make a big difference um it doesn't really applies to par but in other areas of our district that Ved the loose line the state was charging $2,000 for ement certification for property which was very problematic for many of our citizens in other parts of the district and so we were able to get statute language saying that the state cannot charge $2,000 for that so those are just some of also worked on limiting cannabis advertising and getting a clinical Pharmacy expert on the on the Cannabis board so things like that that are you know um making small improvements there's still a lot of work you need to do on the pay relief bill that by the way just so you know it impacts cities schools nonprofit everyone when that bill passed last year that payroll tax was going to be 7% of payroll and when the Actuarial said came out last fall they said it wouldn't be nearly enough to be solvent and so they um raised it to 78 and then statute this year8 but based on the Actuarial study they were recommending point6 so I grave concerns that this program still attemp solvent and that's something we're going to continue to work on but I mean that will be a b hit to City budgets and to the employees of you know all of um our business businesses and the city and school districts everyone is on the hook for that so just something for people to be aware of um that was an $887 million tax increase just this year so those are some of the highlights of this current session um oh the other real good thing we got done which I know um the chief and others were working with us on for many years if we were able to get um the uh crime of um straw purchas being raised to a f it's been a gross misor all these years and I worked with the BPA and ATF and others they've all encour Minnesota to get that up to a county and so the wake of the burn tragedy that happen I think that will really give a new tool to law enforement we so hopefully that will any questions or things you want me to be working on in the interim I'm working all the time so you know just we're not in session doesn't mean I'm not here for you so appreciate it any questions for representative robs I'll just we've talked about this million times about uh upcoming figuring out the the whole 61030 area I'm sure we'll be talking a whole bunch more in the coming year on it but just wanted to mention it one more time because it's keeps me up at no and we did have a bill on that this session and none of the bonding bills made it room right but I also just last weekend's meeting with our Comm commissioner Kevin Anderson and he also well aware that priy for you and me and everyone here so we'll just keep keep it at the appreciate i' let Kevin know it really be nice if we could see something as a step for the intersection of County Road 19 and3 and 117 and 19 pretty big accident on 19 and3 she's familiar with you're already aware of all of that stuff anything in the inter term to hopefully improve we've got to be we got to do something instead of just wait until it's redone so that might be somewhere um where we could also work with Mena the count on that and get some interum steps taken so yes I will to get and I don't have a solution for 19 and3 that would help but just adding one more stop sign to a Treeway stop would be nice on 19 and 117 but we need to do something sooner or later with all that you already know the traffic concerns we all have so I appreciate you very very much thank you for what you do thank you for your help also when helping to interal control over zoning remains yes that's great I absolutely Adit you guys on that thank thank you hopefully I mean I don't think anything's ever dead right so we'll have to keep fighting that but I I think we had a good Coalition working on the Shar for sure I really really appreciate that and just appreciate all you were doing with I know it was a a wild end to the session to say the least so appreciate you fighting the fight for us definitely the most unusual in my I guess always something new going on we sure well thank you so much thank you very much okay and now we have a presentation on the South Fork Rush Creek uh subwatershed Elm Creek Watershed in mayor I'm just going to introduce Eric Migo he is the um Elm Creek Watershed man management commission consultant engineer of record so he's here to talk about a project a joint project between multiple cities in the w sh that directly impacts cor so over to you mayor Cil thanks for me as said water resour engineered representing the Water Management commission overview of our start off you know why why would the water this area sou Brush Creek that you can see there and Ste are impaired Waters um meaning they do not need state water quality standards PLS of concern here are bacteria eoli excess Sim phos and phosphorous impairments that impact black light on these streams these streams and other streams and lakes uh in Watershed are appeared uh under a to maximum daily load requirement to reduce those pollutants so some of this reduction will come as Agriculture and um other lands are converted into development and we uh have that development under storm water management rules uh but the water quality benefits achieved through those development rules and Redevelopment um just won't be enough to reach those tmdl limits or those total maximum limits um so this study is to um identify other opportunities for reductions both in the near term and long term um so what is the sub water shed assessment uh it's a study that looks down to the field the neighborhood level for potential uh best management practice locations the focus in this subwat shed was on uh best management practices for Agricultural bmds and the study looks for the best most FOC most effective places within the subwat shed to capture those pollutants also within that study we look at ists locations stream and D surveys concentrated animal locations through animal counts along with count and tile and uh p f locations because much of this landar is a br residential we use modeling tools specifically uh designed to analyze those land uses uh program called espf uses terrain land covers soils to model water and flow across the landscape to receiving water bodies and then we use another program called PTM app that estimates those plut uh plut loads and removes from the bmps we're also looking for potential sources that models don't analyze like some of the um cattle and some of the um field studies um other uh we call windshield assessments through H County so how does water than so how does I that's what I have is the next slide okay all right I think it's in our packets though oh okay so how does the help yes that's okay so we the water has previously completed assessment rers and Diamond Lake PR areas we we did those in 2019 those uh headat the headwaters water assessment um I identified uh projects and we were able to use identification of those projects to win about $300,000 with grants that were matched by $1,000 $100,000 from The Watershed and the county even shipped in about $22,000 so using this tool to identify those uh bmps just help um for grant funding funding because they provide Grant there's assurance that someone has done a detailed analysis in sub water shed and prioritized and targeted um bmps to make the biggest water quality uh impact both of those uh previous Headwaters subwat shed assessment in the cell forque throw they were almost entirely funded by grants I think corin's contribution to those was about $2,000 so here are some agriculture bmps that we're looking at you might be familiar with some of these um The Watershed is partnered with and County Ro conservation is to promote and help sight and fund these practices um in the lower left here is grass waterway in the upper right is a was top or a water and sentation control Basin that's what that funny AC stands for uh the middle there is the contoured buffer strips and in the lower right is a nutrient removal we um these pmps uh many of the priority pmps identified are located outside the 2040 us boundary we partner with County to work with producers and the of watered and we can also look for opportunities within the area likely to convert development the advantage of this storm water assessment process is that it compares the relative impact and cost effectiveness of VAR actions and identifies the biggest bank of buff bmps in the subwat shed it also as I mentioned before identifies and unlock some of that potentially grant funding so the next couple slides should be examples yeah here's an example of one area that we identified um this is on a parcel inside the M boundary that is uh likely not to develop it's a potential Wetland restoration and identifi some along some ditch laterals and this provides an opportunity to divert store some agricultural runoff in Wetland that would settle out some of those pollutants before being released in a rush tree um another example area is this next slide um this is an example of an area with just many opportunities on the right side there is that same field but within there you see the pink which is kind of those Contour bucket strip that provide that filtration the orange which is the nutrient removal Wetlands um the blue and yellow at the bottom right there represents some of those was cobs or some of those water and sedimentation control basins the bright blue green line is one of those grass waterways on the right side of the figure so you can see how our um how our uh models kind of implement where these are based on terrain based on topography soils and and site those within subat shed so moving forward the next slide here how do we use these results um The Watershed has a commitment historically has been mainly grant funding um while the county their set has brought a lot of time and other resources of funding and Outreach work with the farmers and try to figure out and Truth out some of our results as part of this process we kind of start with our modeling and it comes up with just a bunch of opportunities and then how we worked with tenen County they went out and did some field surveys and ground shoot a lot of our opportunities and that's where we resulted in probably like a top 100 opportunities within the subwatershed so there's there's up to unities outside of the 2040 use line and within the 240 use line um but so for those projects outside continue working with uh the county as they kind of lead an Elm Creek Watershed to help fund some of those projects a lot of times making a small Financial contribution can help to add or match funds and then this also limits some of your staff's uh time and the impact to your staff last time and then within the M boundary there are places where we've identified bmps that on places that might likely develop in 20 years and I don't sometimes it's well why would we introduce bmps or put some of these projects in place on those Parcels if they are going to develop and implementing those bmps before they develop sets a a baseline that's higher than what's out there right now and when that project comes in prek for development we assess their uh future plut loads to the existing Baseline so if we can tighten the Baseline that goes above and beyond what would what would be taken care of or what would be provided by them meeting our water quality or um erosion control standards um here's kind of just the general timeline on these projects they do take you know zero five years just planning from identifying to um construction monitoring and one area that I want to point out is between that after that year we we've already identified some of the partners with the nurse of watershed assessment and many of the projects but getting those projects from here are likely projects here are good bang for your buck projects to um look for funding for those projects and feasibility or pre- permitting to get them in there it usually takes takes you know between 5 to $10,000 to get a good feasibility design have boots on the ground to tr ground truth it and get some sort of cost estimate for those projects um and that's where I think the city might be able to uh help or accelerate some of those projects in that time frame and then moving forward here one thing that your staff is already doing is integrating these results previous results in the Planning and Development um there might be some opportunities to expand the Partnerships with henan county in that Outreach for agricultural bmps um and then the last part here is maybe considering uh policy development that outlines possible storm water and natural resource project with property owners so I think that's all I had I think uh you have any questions appreciate it any questions I can just maybe or introduce for folks I don't know Ken gther is our Watershed commissioner and then Tom's our Anderson's in the front row here is also our alterate commissioner they've both been involved for a long time with the Watershed and Been instrumental in kind of bringing resources to corkin like through these types of project so it's really this project really was an Ask of the city of Corker and staff Commissioners um so I want to thank the Watershed and the cities of Maple Grove and Madina who also contribute to this subwatershed and I just want to like I this is rough off the top of my head but we contributed about 3% of the total cost to this project so there's a lot of value just in having this this doesn't expire if we choose to ever be more than compliance based for anything this allows us this unlocks a lot of opportunities for us so I don't I don't know if K or Tom want to elaborate more but part of the part of the discussion is are we comfortable being compliance-based or do we want to consider any sort of policy changes for specific things that we value that are maybe more natural resource focused or Water Resource focused there would be things that we would choose to invest in right so there's kind of come least a half a second go for thanks May Council I just want to add on here what I think what Kevin is getting into is that um right now the city is set up to comply with its leging requirements for water quality and that's the ms4 permitting process and what we're really sort of focusing on here and what I've been laying the groundwork for a little bit in some of my earlier presentations is at what point might the city consider going above and beyond just a pure sort of compliance with them as for legal standards and look at ways to proactive enhancing environment out there in in the world of L of Po so um I I think I mentioned one of my earlier presentations that thought El has been very active in providing creating grant funding for projects both public and private projects and um what I want to plant the seed tonight I'm not expecting any kind of response I just want to plant the seed with this group that very small Financial commitment on the part of the city opens the door to substantial amount of grant funding for projects and those projects can involve both public property and priv property so I think to go forward sort of the ask tonight is next time when we come in when Kevin gives a presentation to consider the possibility of of putting some Financial backing behind um the evaluation of these projects whether it's on on public land or private land um I think the city park is probably a prim example where there might be some opportunities to get grant funding the city has some other goals it wants to achieve at the city park the public land from a national resource standpoint there's going to be money available and it's just a matter of the city sort of taking the first step doing the studies um and then sort of unlocking staff and pursue the grant funding this out um one thing I want to reiterate that Eric touched on briefly is that the subwatershed assessment I think I might have mentioned this in one of my Rie talks as well does a really really detailed job of identifying and prioritizing potential projects where are we finding the pollutants entering the system and then once we know that they're there um what would be the the fix the mitigation and once we know the fix where can we get the most paying for our buck so we're not sort of recklessly chasing a hugely expensive projects that aren't going to accomplish what we need them to accomplish maybe there's some locating fruit out there some projects that are less expensive would really accomplish a lot and you know we can put together a collaboration to accomplish those projects so I think one a nice followup might be in the future Kevin can help with this is to present um the evaluation that identified what Eric had on his map with some of the colored lines on there um some of these waterways that were actually went through this process as prioritization process and it was determined that you know the amount of uh result we could achieve for the dollar spent these would be high priority projects so I think maybe at a next session or a future presentation we can focus a little bit more on maybe an example of scenario or a modeling of what would a project there look like what would it cost who would Partners be what would the various sort of elements of participation be both financial management staff staff time at the various levels so that's really justun appreciate it thank you guys thank you okay on to consent agenda which consists of item 7A and then 7 e through 7 y does anyone want to pull anything I would like to pull 7 W please okay 7 W anything else nope one once one twice all right then I will entertain a motion to approve consent agenda items 7A and then 7e through V and X and Y so moved second all those in favor say I I I hey 7 W Jeremy you pulled it do you want to do the honors yeah this is the incon donation to the corkran uh police department in the city of corkran from the soda Shine car wash where they've graciously offered to extend an ink kind donation of 25 car washes per month as well as future can9 washes I really appreciate the public spiritedness of this business and I'm grateful for the chance for the city to partner with them to keep our future K9 nice and clean as well as with vehicles so thank you very much to the soda shine folks if you're listening absolutely all said Thank you thank you then I will entertain list uh any other discussion on that entertain a motion to approve sent agenda item 7 W so moved second all those in favor say I I I perfect then on to uh there's no planning business we'll go on to unfinished business we have the public comment opportunity for 9A which is appointing uh a planning commissions I think we're probably good is there well perfect then we will go into uh item 9A and Dean and I were the uh kind of nominating subcommittee um spoke to the candidates there was actually three uh there was one that was updated yeah there it is um kind of last minute in there but Dean and I talked about this uh earlier they all seem like qualified and interested uh parties kind of a very uh wide range of experience and background so I think they' all bring some value to it um Dean and I after some discussion I think we are are leaning towards or are recommending um cam Yang be appointed to the commission um and I did speak to all of them um so in this case it' be Diane and Sheamus that they are interested in keeping their if they're not selected keeping the or their um application on file and that they are interested in both potential opportunities on the planning and on parks and trails if and when they not so uh like I said to them it's a good problem to have too many qualified interested people and we'll make it work um because just kind of the nature of things with how uh vacancies pop up unexpectedly and all that so um there's no discussion on it I'll go ahead and make the motion that we appoint cyang to the Planning Commission um for a term we have the date on that it's not on the agenda item it's not be a three-year term right that's almost there it's it's filling a vacancy so what to do when that vacancy was set to expire right to I'll make a motion to appoint cyang to the term that was uh vacated when Council maned to the council that close through February 22 2025 through February 2025 right second any discussion all those in favor say hi hi thank you and again staff make sure to make sure to keep those applications on file and uh when anything else opens up you know we have at least two good candidates that are interested okay on to new business we have another public common opportunity actually for 10 a and 10B and then we're uh we have a public hearing for teny after that so we'll see if there's it's that's the public comment as well I talked to M we were thinking public yeah I don't think okay then we can do it okay we'll do a separate public comment opportunity um for 10c just in case there's anyone that wants to speak on one or the other so uh right now be public comment opportunity for 10A and 10B good then we will go into those items so uh a is conversation and classification study briefing Comm mayor and Council I'd like to introduce Michael Mooney who is helping us from ABDO uh walking us through our classification compensation study which you approved and uh this is to make you aware of the the strategy the rubric if you will for how we're going to conduct the study how they're going to conduct the study and uh truth is we've actually already launched we're we're doing active work on this so this is just to give you with public awareness of the process itself thank you m May thank you forend to us to have conversation tonight um as J mentioned this is really an opportunity for us to kind of fill you in on the process but more importantly give you a chance to answer their task and answer any questions that you might have about the process we find having the opportunity to have these discussions on the start of the project and as J mentioned we have kicked off but we're still in the very beginning stages we can get ahead of some of the common concerns that come up that make implementation don't smoother at the end so when we come back here in a few months to present our final report and recommendations we're hoping that you have any concerns alleviated by them you have an understanding of the process and you have a buy to our approach to the process uh we also kind of take a similar Approach at the city level I met with department has just a few weeks ago to take this off and they they saw very similar information that you're seeing today so our goal is to devel trust in this process through transing we know that compensation classification can be a little bit anxiety anxiety inducing for certain staff that they've met in the past so we want to make sure that we're very clear and transparent about our approach in hopes that that makes the implementation so today we'll do some brief introductions uh I want to go through the benefits of a conversation classification study and we're going to spend a lot of time talking about processes throughout the project phases we have a sample project up and again since you already this I of time but I do want to kind of outline what our general approach is when you can expect to see us working with their City on um so I've introduced my B manager here at ABDO most of the work that I do is in the compensation and or public sector so almost all of my clients are in the public sector and I do a lot of conversation specific work both in public and private sector I work with Le Davis she's a partner at AO and D our work for HR advisory team uh her and I work together on almost all of our public sector compensations that especially as we get into the fall she and I partner on P presentation so while I'm meeting this project it is quite likely that she will be the one to present just this schedule Stack Up meetings so if we do do will be involved throughout this project um and then we also BR our the senior associate on our team who does a lot of the work alongside of the project and she's also helping the city t with some various other HR projects so she's quite familiar with oration I I did want to emphasize that as Michael's saying uh some of our complex payroll issues Le has been very helpful with and Britney is is daily involved with helping us accomplish our HR objectives uh in the interim until we hire the HR generalist and until the assistant City administrator gets on board at the end of the month Brit Britney's been very very helpful to us and she's well vered in in all of our current practices and our concerns okay so I want to talk through a couple of key benefits of going through a competition and classification study because we know this is big investment both in time and resources for the city um one of the main things that you get out of comp class studies updated an accurate job descriptions and that's something that the city's already helping us work towards it that's a very collaborative effort um it's the part where the city and the employees and the department are most involved in the process because they're the ones doing the job so we lean to them to tell us what that job looks like we've we've distributed what we call a job annalysis questionnaire to the city for them to fill out and they'll be returning those to us so we can create new job descriptions uh and job are important in a couple of reasons one for the conf study we need to have an accurate representation of what those positions look like so we can accurately score them or use our pointing methodology which we'll get to in a second but there are also additional benefits outside of compensation that are really important things like ADA compliance or American with disabilities compliance workers can't compl supports so if you have an employee who goes out on an injury and is coming back on light duty restrictions we need to make sure that we have accurately portrayed what physical requirements are required in that role so when they come back to work and they say only lift 10 pounds we know is that position required to lift 10 pounds or do we need to start anation so kind of an additional benefit that maybe is in front of M when you go through account study but having that updated job description does help other isses throughout also things like recruiting the post make that of job when youate job descrition that usually turn because they come job have and get into own and hasn't been updated in 10 years and that job likely change quite a bit so it should also help rtion efforts um obviously go back a little bit here JS a couple things that were also more types of the compensation is an objective Su so it's very important as we go through this that you have an objective classification process so based on the duties and rules and responsibilities um that that position is valued equally in line with the state pay Equity uh requirements which we'll touch on briefly we're also going to be very intentional about our compensation and design uh we don't really have a one- siiz fits-all method here we'll go through the details here but we want to make sure the plan that we're designing meets your organizational needs uh your it's driving the behaviors that you're looking for the city and uh meeting the market position that that you're hoping to achieve and that's something we'll talk about towards the end all of our plans that we propose are confined with pay Equity we have a great relationship with the pay Equity office of Minnesota at the state of Minnesota and we want to make sure that whatever plan we're proposing you get pay equity which I know is the case with the city and your kind of good for three years we don't want you to have to start this process over again in 3 years if you're finding yourself l so we're going to make sure that our plan is compliant and we'll grow with the city as you Acquisitions another thing that we're really focused on is making sure we have clear processes and procedures for reification so if you have a anual position being added into the city or if a position is changing drastically it's adding super supervisory duties or something that effects we want to make sure we have a clear process in place for how do we reclassify that at or the points assign to that position and I should say to feel free to jump in with questions if you have along with make sure and I'll check at the end if you have I just want to touch on that if you recall we had to redo our pay Equity report uh two points on that one Leah and Michael are the ones who helped us get our ducks in a row and work with MMB to ensure that we were compliant and because we're doing this process over again it will be re-evaluated again to to ensure that the new job descriptions and any scoring that results are also Equity compliant so we're good we're good for a few years on what we just submitted and we're going to be updating it again as part of this process it's just part of their their normal process does that update result in the new submission or is it just internal uh it's a private submission so when you submit it the state doesn't see that submission and we've also developed our own internal analysis that gives us kind of a it's not necessarily the state system but it gives us what we call kind of the the first look and if fls any potential issues and if we find that that's very close to a pass or maybe not quite passing under an R analysis then we recommend that you go in and submit that private one within the state Equity or state pay Equity repor system again it would just be a private report okay thank question okay so uh for our our methodology for the compensation analysis itself we have a few different resources that we're pulling from uh the primary source of information for us like many consultants in the public space in Minnesota we're using Le Minnesota City's salary survey as our primary data source um if you're if you've been following that at all they've actually have a new provider as of 2023 they're going through theer which is a actually renowned salary survey provider we found that the survey is much improved from the previous provider and the new 2024 survey is coming out I didn't check today but it should be any day noway said mid to late June so it works out really well at the timing of this project so we know when we go to market we're going to have 2024 rates available uh we also will uh send a manual survey we call them to anyone who did not respond to the LMC survey that the city of Corr has even make good comparable so your neighbor down the road or or a city that we think is a good match didn't respond we sent a direct survey to that City administrator uh to have them help us fill out and get some W data often times we're able to collect that but that's something area where we might collaborate with j and his team because sometimes they don't respond to us but they respond to another city administrator so we do we're pretty intentional about making sure sure we get as much Market dat as we can from the organizations that are important to you another opportunity that we have is through the economic research institute which is actually a private sector Market database um and we use that pretty sparingly but it's kind of up to the if you have any position that you feel are are competitive with the private sector we can go close and work dat from there as well thank your um accountants maybe you have a those positions may be able to go back and forth between public and private sector or maybe you're losing staff in your public works or a mechanic position to the private sector and you want to know what that competition looks like we can access some of that information whether we use it to build your Stu and grade table or not that can just be an pending item for you to be aware of here's what the private sector is paying for these type of positions I would think engineer would be a good one for that maybe a planner as well yeah yep so that's one where we'll work with the city to identify those as well as we go through the project and um sometimes we can use that to supplement if we don't have enough matches from the other organizations that we identified as B comparables we can pull in private sector data to kind of supplement our overall Market data base uh what so this second bullet point is important because I think this is a misconception from Market surveys um we will have updated Market or excuse me updated job descriptions for the city of corporate but we will not have job descriptions from our other comparable entities that we're using so I think often times uh people think that it's a job description here job description here we're going to compare and look at the pay for each one what we have is a summary of the position that everyone who's responding to the LMC for example they see a two to three sentence summary of a position and they say my position of this organization matches closely to that description and they report in that wage so we're using those summary data points to identify what's what city or what position at the city of fortb matches that summary data it's not a one toone job description comparison and the reason that it is is because there's it's very unlikely to have the identical job description at one city to the other there's nuances for every position so it would be unrealistic to think that we would have a 100% match at for any position with the city uh another thing that's a little bit unique about our approach is we're looking at minimum and maximum values of the market versus trying to find the midpoint and work our way out we start in the outside and work we in we believe that that's a much more accurate representation of what the market pay is instead of starting at the midpoint and going out let's say 15% on each side and kind of estimating what those top and bottom ends of the market are we' like to focus on the top and bottom and mid fall naturally between the two so I touch a little bit about our exploring earlier we wanted to make sure to explain to the council what our methodology looks like every consultant that does this type of work has their own proprietary uh scoring methodology I understand the city of forment had consultant doing this previously that methodology is going to be different than ours baker has another competitive bars they have have their own propri proprietary methodology this is the abos scoring position methodology um all of these are kind of measuring the same fck of information but they each method has it to go WR with it so the important note here is that if your city employees or you the council and mayor are in tune with the individual points assigned to a given position we expect those to change so if you have an accountant today that's scored at 200 points on the current system and we go and score it at 22 that doesn't necessarily mean that we're scoring it higher it just it just means that our our math is a little bit different than the previous version what really matters is the hierarchy position so your highest pointed position should still be close to if not the highest pointed position in our system as it was in the previous system uh we do expect some fluctuation there but all this is driven by the job description work that the city's working on right now that we're going to support once we get those HED back a couple points that I won't go through this whole thing but a couple points that I think are important to note um the one of the main drivers of the score is the education and background requirements so that's something that a lot of cities that we're working on we're working with our evaluating do we really need a Bor degree for this position that's I mean a big drag of points I know the state of Minnesota just drop out that bachelor's degree for many of their positions and we're evaluating we need to update our sporing to reflect those experience requirements over departments uh any questions on this I don't need to spend a ton of time because we're working with the city very Clos on this but if you'd like me to more detail here I can think I'm good is anyone else thank you all right so uh again this is just a template uh project phase that through this isn't the same one that you've approved already but just to kind of go through our process right now we're what we've already gone through the orientation phase because the city of cor is doing a lot of work already we had a lot of that core information that we would typically look for in a kick off um so we were able move right into a job description uh process right away so the city has the jqs in place they're going out filling those out getting those back and we're going to start writing the job descriptions we're also currently evaluating um what is your labor market so what are the comparable entity that that we want to be bringing into the set that'll be an opportunity for us to go into a little bit of discussion there at the end here uh and if I can just put it so I want to apologize to the council one of the things that I said was I wanted to get you some data so that we could have a more thorough discussion uh with some events that have happened this week I wasn't able to compile that and get that to you if I wanted to so so while we'll start the discussion I would expect that we won't actually be able to solidify these until the 627 meeting that's when we'll we'll have to so it'll just be two weeks uh so we'll start the discussion but some of the the data points that I wanted to get you I wasn't able to collect and get to you so and again with the timing of the LMC survey not quite out yet and it'll give us and once it comes out it take us a little bit to compile all the export data and get it into our tools so that's put your time on our end to get those solidified um and J's point for starting that discussion we have our proprietary tool that that we built out to evaluate the the quality of comparables so I think sometimes cities just tended address C on the map around here the cities around us that that's we should be preparing against we're looking at things like population uh expenditures per capita proximity to Metro areas uh specialty departments that might be in your city but not in your neighboring city so we maybe expand the the Capal net specialy department so it's a very intentional approach that we take and as Jed to we'll be able to provide you some better data so it's not just kind of throwings as we all really to make sure that the CI that we're saying are um we have some evidence behind that and of course we want to get your op those to because even if we have the best data around uh you as as a council have insights into your the communi surrounding you so if there is a city that you definitely do or definitely don't want in there that we've identifable we'd love to give your feedback on that as well uh so kind of simultaneously we we'll move into the compensation analysis where once we've identifi those comparable cities we'll we'll start pulling the data we'll start sending out the market surveys and then we compare what is the minimum and maximum by position U against the market and then we'll get that's the opportunity to get the first look at how the city stacking up against the marketplace today uh and I know that's going to be important as we approach budgeting season here so we'll get you kind of a first look and that's a pretty good indicator what that might like as we continue tode the plan next so once that market analysis is done we're going to Mo classification compensation system development and that's really where rubber meets the road we we pointed at this point uh we got all Market data and now we started assigning the grades and and drawing uh this is really a collaborative process with the city as well I think a lot of organizations come into these thinking that because we're a city we just have to do step grade it has to be this way that but there is a lot more flexibility that I think many Believe coming into this type of project so we're making sure that we're designing that to meet your organization goals whether it's um pay for performance pay for longevity we want to focus on bringing in people at the top of Market or Ling the market letting grow quickly there's a lot of opportunities for us to kind of customize that PL to city um we're also going to come back to you within a few months and present all this information and then we'll if you do Cho to adopt we provide the city with training and administration support so it's not uh just this final report it's Excel tools that administer the plan it's training on pointing and classifications that's the city wants to take on internally so they don't have to rely on us to repoint positions uh we want to make sure we're kind of going through that post implementation handout very intentionally to set you up for longterm success we don't you have to come back to us in years to do this all over again you want you to be able to ride this point into the future could you explain how schematically payer performance differs from step and grade yeah so you can actually have a paper performance plan on step and grade table so often times a steping grade is associated with longevity pay where every anniversary date or calendar date you get that step increase so long as you're being minum cases if you wanted to move towards the paper performance model in order to achieve that step increase you have to meet certain performance standards that are not just bare minimum and you can design a performance metric or Performance Management program around that to say if you're exceeding expectations you maybe get two steps or if you're meeting expectations you get one uh so you can get a little bit more creative adding or removing steps in the process to reward your top one thank you yeah good question all right so this is this is the part where we really wanted to get your input on uh so a couple key questions up to the council are what is the city's overall competition philosophy and what we're really driving at here is where do you want to be positioned relative to the market so when we say that we'll get all this Market data back you're going to get average wages by position and what we're hoping to to learn from you is do you want to be at Market meaning you want to be as closely aligned SP as minimum maximum pay ranges for each position within the city you want to be a market leader that meaning you're maybe 5% above Market or do you want to lag the market because uh either Financial constraints or maybe you believe strongly in your benefits and and culture here that you don't need to be a market leader in compensation there's no right answer here but I'm happy to kind of facilitate a discussion around that or if you as councel mayor have thoughts on we have we've had the conversation before a while ago um is that what you were going to talk if you might remember more the details of where where that led but I think we kind have landed that we wanted to be somewhere in the middle to Middle to upper middle of that you I think it was 10 cities down at time somewhere in that five to three range yeah we the way I remember the conversation I don't remember if Dean was on Council I know councelor lman was not at the time so maybe our position as a whole will have changed what I remember and what I I think I still support is the idea that we we want to Balance cost Effectiveness for taxpayers with providing a high performing city government and we we landed on the idea that it would be helpful to have staff compensated close to the midpoint with comparable cities and the way that we retain and ATT track staff is with the kinds of challenges that they can encounter in corkrin because of how fast we're growing and the kinds of Novel systems we willing to implement with the intent that we're holding on to people who are really interested Innovation and making city government more effective and more efficient but we're not compensating at such a high level that people who are not interested in that would be compelled to stay because they can't find something comparable so we want to create a fun and engaging and passionate Workforce uh an Engaged Workforce but we don't want to incentivize folks just with Finance because the small City our our goal at this point is to try to come down to closer where some of our Pure cities are in terms of tax rate and not continue to keep it at a higher level but we we acknowledge that the way that staff is incentivized and the way that staff performs has a big impact on quality of life for residents and so we don't want to treat them poorly either is that y a fair summary yes and then people can comment on either side of that if you have other view points yeah I think you nailed it from what the previous conversation was and I I don't feel differently from then J uh so so a helpful next step that's adjacent to the compensation classification but when we identify what our comparable cities are it would be an intention for me as well to use those similar comparables when we're looking at things like tax rate or amenities within the city and so when we're doing our financial reporting our quarterly reporting and we're benchmarking we're benchmarking off of our comparables not just in terms of what's happening for our employees but what's happening overall in the services that are delivered by the city the level of expectation that residents have of City staff in terms of not only those services but the scope of services the timeliness of services there's there's a whole lot of second that the example that I I think of right away is Trails you know as there's some significant impact as we look at comparables if we're going to grow Trails we have to grow staff and Equipment uh that that would be like an a second and third order effect of these sorts and types of decisions uh when I look at strategically but the reason these comparables become helpful for us in terms of your intent understanding not only for compensation but those are all we're competing for our employees but we are also competing for satisfied residents and potential businesses that want to PL in the community so thank you that makes sense just to make sure what I'm hearing is you're looking to be positioned not necessarily a leader of Market but slightly above the median or the average that we're seeing of the market comparable that that's the ideal position for for the city yeah I think so a way of putting it or or at that median yeah and and what I'll say to with the cabet here is that you're not locked into this right but it's helpful for us to have an end goal in sight so that we can go when we get the market dat and we start building that plan we know that that's where you in an ideal world that's where you're going to be positioned of course there may be Financial constraints once we get there so we always like to present various options once we get to implementation or your city leadership will be aware once we get that market survey we get that first on the the estimated cost if we're going to be off track by the direction maybe you're maybe you're better aligned with Market that we ini thought you have an opportunity to be more competitive and we can entertain the thought at that time but it's helpful for us that spre project know where the city wants to go so I appreciate that feedback I I was intrigued by the notion of pay for performance that would be a novel idea I think we'd want to I I would want to consider I don't know about and J that's something that we discussed at the department meeting as well because I think that it sounds like the city leadership is also intrigued by that notion and the discussion that we had at the department head meeting is that's good for us to know and we look to build this plan out so that you can plan to incorporate that in the future for a city that has not historically been on a paper it's going be advised to not do that at time as an implementation of with new compensation structure because it's a lot of change for oration to take on anytime to train managers on performance manage performance effects not really been ask them in the past so that's really kind of a a minimum twoyear transition often time one three to kind of get that first year is okay we've implemented new C plan year two is now we're going to implement a new Performance Management or started asking our managers to really take good Performance Management steps and then your three or maybe you're evaluating performance and tying that to compation so it is a transition um but it's certainly something that we can help support and make sure the plan that we designed has that grow and and while we gain some efficiencies in terms of more effective employees there's also a cost associated with it so I've been speaking with with other cities who have implemented who tried it or who are considering it uh Performance Management plans they're usually software-based they do require a significant amount of care and feeding on the part of staff to ensure that they're you're getting the outputs that you want so that it's not just proforma uh and so to Michael's Point like there's there's a cost Associated to that benefit that needs to be considered yeah and and something that we sawney on screen earlier that's one of her Focus are she works with a lot of clients on Performance Management plan and design and uh you're right a lot a lot of organizations that have those using a software to administer them not necessarily required but it's one of those things where if you it certainly makes it easier to administer once you have software to do it um but again more conversations be have with leadership on on if that's something pursue but either way it's good for us to know if that's something we uh we also want to talk a little bit about what are the primary uh behaviors we looking for I heard a little bit about wanting to engage your Workforce and looking for those people who are work so what heing attention retention employ that's important for us as with to design the plan because getting into the customization of the stepping grade some cities have 15 Steps where you have e year for 15 years they get to the top of scale and that can be kind of demotivating for an employee because there might getting only one and a half or 2% step increased every year so are there any other uh challeng areas or Focus areas that you're you're hoping address I think retention is huge any have thoughts on the other ones or other aspects of it not all at once I think retention performance and you get performance through development so this is Mom and apple pie right there's not a wrong answer to any of those um and then we we did touch on on compar entities we'll be able to provide you more detail on the meeting I believe was two weeks out so we'll provide that in so you can review some of our our preliminary recommendations there but um any other questions that you have I can back methodology processes that we going through happy to address any questions concern I'm got any other questions for Council Michael could you unpack one thing so I I know one thing that I've heard from staff is that as we look at comparables there's other cities that have been comparables in the past that their salaries are not comparable but they have a whole bunch of other secondary things like incentive pays and things how do you methodologic you know methodologically uh address those disparities in which they've got the salary but they're also getting the longevity pay or they're getting some of the other incentive pays that aren't part of our framework so that you get Apples to Apples comparison yeah that's a great question and the unfortunate answer is sometimes it is challenging to get that Apples to Apples comparison if it's a directly related to compensation like a longevity pay which if you're not familiar that's that's in place if someone gets the top of the scale and then maybe after five years at the top they El additional dollar per hour or something to that effect um are often un negotiated uh that's typically where we see them in in police departments in particular that's very common uh so what we can do is provide uh we can survey and ask for p along with your comp data please send us your Union contract so we can see the typ of things and provides sort of a matrix look at those so you can see these cities are offering this type of benefit um and it can be very challenging to roll that up into one base rate or uh comparable in terms of an hourly rate but at least it'll give the city line of sight into what else is being offered out there as to build your total compensation package um maybe that's the driver of we don't want to offer longevity pay but in order to keep up with that we need to bump our our base wages to be uh more competitive in the marketplace so instead of being at Market we need to be 5% above to compensate for these things that we're not offering that's a strategic discussion that that I would encourage the council to have once we get some of that information in um but if you're looking for a true role of all the benefits and the value of benefits I think be very very challenging to make that figure especially if you look at benefits insurance benefits that that's great bring into compensation other than that I think we're good great well thanks for your time appreciate it on to uh item 10B which is the police lot fencing act right thank you mayor so you'll recall back in November the council approved uh uh with the work being done on City Center Drive in 79th Place and the septic system being red with our connection to city sewer uh with the work being done there Paving that to create additional parking space at the South End of the police department that was funded with arpa funding um at the time we also had discussions that the police department was recommending that we secure or fence that area um we brought back the quotes the fencing and security for that wouldn't qualify under arpa funding so this was brought back as a separate consideration um and looking at it um you know the the initial scope of the project you'll see in the red outlined area um the pricing for that including the gates and electrical and all of the associated um parts of it came in at about uh I believe was 156,000 or everything that includes more decorative fencing along the would be the northwest and South sides with a chain link along the east side um recognizing this was a you know pretty expensive uh undertaking we we said what would it look like to reduce the scope is there a way that we can effectively reduce cost um we got a quote for option b which is the blue outline it's approximately a 20% reduction in linear footage which actually which only resulted in about a 12% reduction in cost of the project so what we found is the real a lot of the cost drivers were in the gates and a lot of things that just wouldn't change dramatically by reducing the scope so before you are the two options um that we got quotes for and estimates um some of the considerations with that option A the red one was really to help create only one conflict point if there was pedestrian traffic coming from the downtown area outlining that and that the police traffic would only cross one spot that would be clearly designated it would also secure the on duty Patrol vehicles and you know and our kind of Mark out where our vehicle circulation was for the on duty uh equipment the alternative with option b in the blue outline excludes the on duty um Vehicles it leaves that circulation area more U out in the open I guess less delated where the crossing points between the pedestrians might be in the and the ony squad cars but it does at least secure the parking area where we'd be keeping a lot of our like for instance our Command Post our trailers the um parking for our on Duty Officers so on happy to answer any questions or you questions on Logistics or costs happy to talk through with you appreciate it um J do you know roughly what the balance of our long range planning fund is uh we haven't completed the sale of that property yet so I believe right now we're roughly one point just shy 1.2 million okay uh so okay got it thank you um my initial read on this is if we were in favor of the fancing I think that option A but the like Matt touched on the there's not that much savings for a significantly less effective we're going for the fencing option so I think I'd be more in favor of option A if we are going to do the fencing um but open up to you guys what you think just the only question I've got is the current police entrance as far as the pedestrians coming up is that changing is that going behind the fence and to Matt no that that's still where is that at right there where the mouse is that the same we're a long ways from the main I thought that was the main okay yeah cool no I agree with the the option A is uh something that I think we should be doing also in the cost difference between 12% yeah lower cost but losing 20% of the overall i' I'd rather the safety be one entrance one exit and uh well striped and those kind of things related to D Crossing and such so man I I I think this adds value to the building for whatever longterm you know plan is uh we're still figuring out but um whether it's a certain apartment a PD or or a different use yeah in their long term I think that this secured area fencing could be valuable to a lot of tenants so I wouldn't be concerned about that aspect of it too much maintenance is important also Matt um in the biggest failures on these are the gates and stuff what kind of warranties those kind of things do we get um the specific the details on the warranty I'm don't have off the top of my head this is a pretty reputable commercial um product that we um and as you talked about maintenance I mean some of the other conversations we had was the challenges it creates acknowledging that for Public Works snow removal um uh you know things like that doing what we can to try and accommodate it you'll notice for instance on the south end the fencing being offset off the parking lot trying to add storage space for snow um trying to reduce that burden as much as we can there's no there's no fun fence to plow around um but you know we're trying to do our best to mitigate those kinds of things we had discussions about options if there's a gate failure um they did say power AES or some bypass y there's manual bypasses for the gate itself and then we also you'll see on the red option have a manual swing gate on the North End that would add an alternate if if it became blocked for some other reason on the uh on the mechanical opener okay chief uh would this uh improve uh officer safety yes for sure then what why why would arpa not help pay for this I think some of the conversation that we had around the arpa funding I think that related to um I think most the the expenditure for the parking lot related to public utility and infrastructure Improvement and returning the I think when it connected and correct me if I'm wrong I think you did a review of this John and we did the parking lot analysis that with the the reason the parking lot counted is that was a that surface had to be restored regardless and restoring it to parking lot was part of utility Improvement and I think that this the first part of it fits squarely in the this is a utility project we're connecting to se we're restoring the surface we're restoring it to parking lot instead of grass but that was by nature of what what was there I think the consideration of fencing that fell outside of a utility Improvement therefore would have been a different more cloudy use of the funds I don't know you if if if I can speak to that the reason it's not even really an issue at this point is because uh the arpa funds that we had remaining uh for 2023 the city was able to reimburse itself under the water projects which was category one under and then the money that we were able to reimburse oursel for has been put into the long-term planning fund that's where we're at 1.2 million uh so uh we we were able to unencumber the arpa funds through an approved expense reimbursement that now allows us more flexibility and in essence the money that we would be using are formally ARA funds got it thank you thanks Chief any other questions thought otherwise I will entertain a motion to um let's see here direct staff proceed with option A and authorize the expenditure of longrange planning funds in the quoted amount with the 10% contingency as I'll make that motion Lan have a second second all those in favor say I then on good job good job um on to we have a separate public comment opportunity if uh our commission leaon are interested um for the draft uas policy we'll do that quickly thanks mayor just to preface it so as as we're rolling forward with the police department and City uh drone programs as part of the public safety funds uh part of a city's adoption of a drone program with the police department is requiring a public comment period at a at a formal business meeting so the hope for this evening is to meet the public comment requirement for that and then um continue on with that process okay let's have that public count opportunity I think we're good I think we're we've met it um does council have any questions on the policy itself or anything I think this is been just to an extent before any questions for M anything okay then I will uh entertain a motion if actually if I could um maybe the timing of this maybe I missed the discussion but um I I've not seen and may maybe I'm missing something um well I'll I'll withdraw my question you sure and there certainly is opportunity for feedback with our policies so if there's questions comments we're happy to talk through it and we still are as we're we're molding that policy it's not set in stone but certainly you're willing to wanting to accept feedb sounds good appreciate it then if there are no questions I will entertain a motion to authorize staff to move forward with the implementation of the uas program and policy so move second any further discussion all those in favor say hi bye all righty on to item 11a which is a staff report on cropland weed control maintenance quotes thank you mayor and Council um this conversation primarily relates to City owned property and two carels can scroll down two pages that figure there's B I think two or three years of History here so I won't go into that but certainly if anyone wants to revisit some of the previous conversations we can entertain that but these are the fields so just to give everyone some clear context these are the properties that we own the north prop or the upper property identified there it's immediately North of city hall one property it was acquired through henen uh henen forfeited properties um and it's got three Fields there so that's our County 116 property and then the the lower image is really the egg pable areas that are part of our city park so we purchased this property roughly four or five years ago from Rockford School District um and historically we've bid those out and to Farmers and and would rent them all basically so henic County changed their policy where they start taxing the farmers that led us to a scenario that we face today what do we want to do with these carols until we repurpose them for some reason um that conversation's kind of gone back and forth over a couple years and really I think we've exhausted most efforts and we really need to figure out how we're going to control the weeds or what we're going to do for repurposing so uh I think last meeting we requested that we go up for quotes So I I Tred to go up for a bunch of quotes to try to get real life data so that we can kind of have a conversation about options the recommendation in the report is kind of a worst case scenario for 2024 U this would be an unbudgeted item and I'll I'll just kind of start going through the the items that we got quotes on so we we can't just really leave these fields um let them go to weed we get a lot of complaints from weed complaints for in our community with agricultural background is a high priority so uh staff's opinion is that we shouldn't really be receiving weed complaints from folks so we want to be proactive in that mainten into our Fields if we can't rent them out um so to give you real data we solicited a quote that was uh to prepare and cultivate in seed with only supplied seed for acre basis we split them up by those fields so we want to Harve them up all aart them we can do that but roughly to do all the fields that we just identified was $10,000 just to till it and seeded from a vendor we only received one bid um the other item that we bid out with mowing so essentially twice a year was our assumption that we need to go in all these fields um you can see that there it's roughly $7500 to do all all the fields collectively and then uh in terms of the owner supplied seed there's some variability what we had in the staff report was a fairly robust native seed mix um that's about $15,000 that was primarily driven from some comments from council member botma who has some experience with Natives and a passion for natives quite frankly I did some additional our actually our team patent helped um we can also an update for you there's a pasture seed mix that's a lot lower quality but we can certainly insert them for $4500 so those are kind of two data points if we want to do natives 15,000 if we want to do Straight pure it's about a third of the price um so if we were to to perform that uh and do all the fields this year um that would be roughly 32,000 I think we wouldn't need to m this year so ballpark 30,000 for this year in kind of a worst case scenario and then looking ahead we probably have annual maintenance so that would be a a big bite this year if we went that route and then ongoing annual maintenance of two Ms is about $7,500 if we whatever we do with this land we should start budgeting that in the 2025 budget so that's going to be on staff's radar um and the feedback we get today will help us identify that through the course of this year as so um a couple other alternative options that we could do we can certainly we don't have a mower that would be set up for doing Fields so we went through and had some quotes there's a there's a quote in there just as an option for information of about $41,000 for the mower that we recommend which is roughly a five and a half years pH app if we were to do that in all the fields uh that would be self-performing work by public work staff to accomplish that could that be used for other maintenance tasks too or is it really only useful for something of large format like this it's most useful for a large format but we are starting to collect larger pieces so like linear park for instance we could do it in linear Park um and it would be effective there's you know so I think we try to obviously utilize it in other areas um but the current equipment we have wouldn't be useful in this area so we could we always look to leverage those but um they primarily be used for this or any like new land that we acquire that we would might run into a similar situation so about those Trails by public works that were part of that development planned around it would it be useful there too or is that too small too small okay yeah and those aren't pav so yeah I think wood ships orever would be problematic but yeah we would certainly try to apply it if we went that route it's also a significant cost and was not really planned to this point so just a lot of what I was trying to do here was collect real data points in previous information we had assumptions and I'm just trying to show the reality that we're facing um certainly understand that this is my opinion perspective is that I know I think everyone was just hoping that hen County would change their policy and we could raise crops and and help people that are hungry but I think the reality is we have to start evaluating this more closely and what we want to do um I had some conversation with council member Bama offline and he you know he's a pro advocate of Natural Resources pollinator areas he did it on on some of his property I know there's been slides on that at the council level um but I don't know that we want to do that to all the pieces of property maybe the hen County forfeited Parcels would be a good place for that but city park where we're actively planning the park and there's a time period for planing the park maybe we don't want to invest at that level and see so there's definitely some opportunities to pick and you know match what we want to do in each area and we might not know that today or even in the next couple months but I think it's important that we really start focusing on what we want to do here because there's a real cost that we need plan for so there's also also if you do some of that above and beyond seating there's potentially we can work with different agencies that might provide grains for the seed mix um we didn't reach out to anyone yet because we haven't been directed itude but uh what comes along with that is sometimes commitments of the land so typically thre will be a 10 year commitment it depends on the Grant and the agency but you know we obviously we went that route we' bring back those options and you guys would be part of that conversation but just keep in mind if we do get grants it ties up to land so you'd want to pick and choose where you do it yeah I I would agree that if we went down that route potentially the field one and two and three on that Northern parcel would make more sense with with how much Wetland there is and and just what the use of that is likely to be in the future the park would be a little concerning to lock that up a large amount of land in the park although realistically in 10 years I don't know if uh more Park development not the whole thing but some of this could even be part of that field four on the park what I would think potentially impact with some of the phase one the green fields yeah and then um I know there's been some other discussions about at least some of the areas here um that would maybe be good for us to keep flexibility on but yeah there probably some portions that we could do that as well would we seed in the fall would that be the best time for it I think we'd seed soon so Tech I had a lot of rain we're still in we're still in a window we wouldn't want to really do it in the middle of July but uh we have a window here where we could still see soon if that was the where we wanted to go um and and there is options I mean there's a whole bunch of options like you could seeed the pasture mix this year and then you could overseed like the native mix next year y it's a different you just let the the regular P Mi grow and you you know basically drill on a farmer well it ends up excuse my language but but you basically just drill it in over top a lot of us take two to three years to grow and establish anyways how you do that if you have a covered crop and you keep Ming them down and then once they establish enough and they kind of Co mingle and that's really what a native mix is so you know we could still do a native mix you know we could buy a temporary we can do a bridging mechanism where we lower the seed mix to still pursue some those either grants or expensive on our own if we didn't want to land so I guess the point I'm trying to make is we're probably not going to decide it all today but if we should try maybe a stop G for this year and then some Direction so we can better budget or you know move forward with plans on other properties and I don't know what that task force would look like but um maybe one bridging option I realized 30,000 this year and un budget is not ideal we could do all these fields for roughly $4500 on that fure mix yeah that's new data today um and public works could start we could find a way to rent something we don't have a seating equipment but I think we can do that uh you know for a couple thousand 3,000 so for I don't want to over promise but maybe $7,500 we could seed all these properties maybe it push to 10 but for that we could at least get pasture mix anywhere where we'd want it where we feel like it would make sense from a from a weed maintenance standpoint and and you know that would be our exposure for this year okay or that we wanted to leave out intentionally that would be reduced on basis that's probably the minimum where looking at yes something I wanted to say so so uh Kevin and I have spent a lot of time talking about this and I think this these data points are really critical for Council to think about I I uh pushed back and I said what if we do nothing what are the consequen and uh de's just shaking his head because the reality are we live in the community that that's not the kind of message that we want to have as far as stewardship of our agricultural land Uh Kevin brought that up it's it's not a helpful message but I do think we need to be Discerning about what we're doing where because we have some potential opportunities here Field Four as the mayor brought up is is part it's going to be impacted by our phase one plan of city park and so investing resources in that probably doesn't make a lot of sense at this point as we're trying to discern it but there's some parts that we know that we don't have any intention of touching here and coming up with some sort of strategy whether that's a bridging strategy or even considering uh differentiating between those spaces and doing the long-term strategy just for those spaces uh the information that Kevin brought the the bidder did differentiate costs per field and so that helps us so we could reduce it whether that's going with a long-term strategy for fields we know we're not going to touch or just for now saying let's do what we need to do to get through this year uh if we were to use that just what we need to do strategy I do want to point out that it's still less than what we would have had to pay in taxes and a big thing just knowing you need that Nursery crop you need the the pastor mix get that in get that down Mowing and then you can drill the whatever we decide and we would have the rest of the summer decide most the winter and then be ready to plant in the spring so the easiest in my mind is get that pasture mix out there and just be done as far as the start of it all so you get the base in go ahead was that clarifying point we have the option of either using self-performing that or using this vender who bid on it to install you have a preference I think we'd self-perform and be a cheaper price so the way the reason we'd B this out we as a staff workload standpoint we don't I wouldn't advise to self-perform it every year i' like some sort of long-term Evolution to it because we have a lot of competing interests but I think the bridge and GAP Str is an option to commit to that this year um so I guess looking for direction whether we self-performed or we use this vendor so the vendors you know 10 grand to install at 15,000 or he self performed to be half I know the answer resourceful as you guys are I think you could find a whole behind cater and uh do an awful lot for a reasonable price yeah and it's something that's going to be used again and again if if we go and we start doing those next steps of seaing and stuff but I think I think that would be a good thing uh Mar Council my only caution is uh we have a remarkable team in public works that will show up every time and and my only caution while self-performing is it's important to note that they're operating one person down right now yeah and and they're already spread pretty thin and uh just as we were having that compensation conversation about retention uh our selfless folks will burn themselves out on the altar of corkran if asked and so I just want to be really careful C Kevin's Zeal and willingness is trying to meet the the council's intention to to be conscien just about cost but I just want to factor in the cost of our people in this equation do you have that concern with even if it's just the bridging strategy for a year as opposed to uh potentially mayor because because I just know the things are being asked to do right now they're doing dust control right now with the rain that we've been having that's kind of messing their Mojo up uh and being operating with one staff person down uh they won't say anything about it that's why I need to uh because they will self-perform and get the job done because they take a lot of pride in their work uh when we look at the cost of it I just asked to consider that if we can if we could do the pasture seed and then just pass this off uh and and the pasture seed would probably be appropriate for all of the lands for right now even if even if we've got the phase one going in on the park and then they don't have to worry about it they'll do it and they won't complain about it uh but on their backs right now is that really something we need them to do with all the other things I'm just raising that question June's one of June's the busiest month besides snow PL for I have two questions go for first question once the native mixes establish is it continue to require annual or by annual cutting it is but the long the better it's established the less frequent so it potentially would be down to one and it's seasonal right if we you know but I think that's five it takes a while for that to be reduced and it's not just cutting uh eventually it'll get to a phase where you also need to work to burn it uh depending on what it what mix we put in that in in terms of maintaining the health of of those natural Fields um that was a conversation I just had when I left Shaka is factoring that in long term uh because I'm I'm not a horticulturist can you is can we work that in with the DNR and and our local fire departments on I think we will burn burn practices burn we didn't engage them but that's something we can talk to about I think some do some don't I don't know what ours do I don't know we'd have to talk to them to guarantee that those would be good good strategic discussions if we if we did the past year mix this year and then strategically we're looking at where uh to do the the higher level mix Kevin was talking about some great grant opportunities come bottom of brought post to the table too uh so once we've identified those spaces that we want to commit to that those other strategic Partners would be critical in the conversation so have we considered converting anything to Forest or planting trees and parts of them no but that's certainly something what is lower maintenance I mean I I would speculate that it would be likely more cost but I I don't think so I couldn't get we could look into that I don't want to either either way you're going to need that base you're going to need that grass in first so wouldn't prohibit it I it later my second question was I think we might have missed an opportunity with representative Robbins here earlier because the statute that drives this whole conversation is a state statute and she seems to have a number of wins of similar small scale tweaks that drove significant beneficial outcomes so i' I'd like to invite staff and we reach out to her I know we tried reaching out to the county uh and and they were not flexible so maybe this is a legislative issue rather than a interpret issue where is that uh statute do we have that in the is that in the packet or it's not in this packet it's from a couple years okay yeah yeah if you want to shoot me a message on which what that statute is I'm happy to give for call and bring it up with her talk to her fairly regularly so yeah it's something that's going to take a while to get going that wouldn't happen this year yeah but that's a good idea um so I guess what are Council council's thoughts on whether we want to self-perform or potentially go out with the vendor I'd rather go to the pasture mix and farm it out to somebody to do it after to the comments that were made so okay yeah I would agree with that I think to me it makes sense to look at the long-term maintenance equipment as more of a CIP item we can plan for that in the next round say that again I'm sorry the John Deere Flex Wing rotary cutter rather than just buying it add it to the cic on a plan basis yeah something we can look at long term for sure okay so we have kind of consensus on at least the initial plan for the current year of Dean mentioned with yeah i' like I said I would just do that and then further discussion on what else can be done going in future make the plans instead of trying to do it all at once we got to do step one and we got to get that we got to get the uh Pastor grass in now and let it grow and that gives us a lot of time to make some calls I do like the native's idea I think it aligns well with the vision for the city especially on these high traffic and park centered areas so long term I'd like to see us do that but I agree short term it makes sense to do something more limited I think on that Northern property it could look really nice 116 there yeah just to revisit the cost mayor and Council so uh with the fact that we'd only really get one mowing requirement this year that Dr that down to 3675 and the pasture seat 4500 uh to have Tony's Outdoor Services if they were to do a highend right now and not to exceed would be $17,995 where where what fund are we thinking that would be from uh so at this point we'd have to look at it if this is an unfunded requirement uh we if you recall for the 2024 budget the desire was to have the crop land be covered by the bids and we didn't receive any bids as far as the this would be a $115,000 tax expense to the city if we were to have that uh the crop go out for bid as we' expected and so we're really talking about another $3,000 in order to take this over as a long-term maintenance cost this buys us some time uh so this seems like a potential long-term funding roughly $188,000 uh that buys us time to figure out access to Future grants potential access uh or acquisition of equipment us to develop a better strategy the reality is we've been kicking this can and we have it really developed a cohesive strategy uh and so this $118,000 investment by staff and Council time so that in the next 12 months well the next nine months we can develop a better strategy incorporating both in the master plan of city park as well as some of these other properties that we need to so that would be the funding source I think would be long term unless we're able to squeeze it out of the operational budget and I should have longterm planning wouldn't be the end of the world um but that makes sense um do you you want a motion on this or you just want a recommendation if we go the route where we awarding the the to Tony's V or service second a motion okay well can I ask K clarification am I overstating how over tax Public Works is right now I think you stated it correctly I think they'll yell at you and say we could have done it for Less I you know but I do think that we I do think they will always say yes me the way they described like that how long is is the bid good for uh I would say this growing season so a month you yeah we need to get it in before mid July yeah we got to get it so if this could be helpful mayor and councel a pursue this project with a not to exceed budget of $188,000 if staff is able to deliver for under $18,000 wonderful uh and that gives us some flexibility uh it also gives us Direction on whether Uh Kevin needs to go forward with this particular vendor uh or we are able to find less cost the Alternatives that MO two of us will make that motion can Baron Camp motion Nicholls second any further discussion all those in favor say I hi hi and on to uh yeah we can uh and okay uh so first we have item 12a which is something I asked to be added to the agenda basically I wanted to get your guys's feedback on this um we are currently part of the Highway 55 Coalition um I've been attending for the last two years I believe it's a group that's been around for about 30 plus years um and they have for the longest time been operating under an initial pool of funding that finally this last year has just about run out so they are looking at changing their du structure uh going forward and they have kind of two potential um structures that they're looking at changing and Bas they want feedback by tomorrow so I was going to call um uh Kent who's the mayor the mayor out in Loretto who's the chair of the uh commission the high5 co and give him whatever our feedback is on on the proposed due structures and if we're interested in continuing on the Coalition the issue is there's that small bit of 55 that actually hits corkran so it's a limited impact but I think there is value in um having a seat at the table for the plans um as they get made and as as potential upgrades to 55 happen uh my understanding is that it was really close happening last year they came just short of getting basically the scoring program by the state um I think like the top five got funded and they were sixth or seventh and they had a couple specific things to update in the in their plan and they would have gotten um funding and now they're trying to do that this coming year and then hopeful in the next year or two they will get a project funded and get started um so questions are are we interested in continuing and if so do we have any feedback to present on which Fe structure we would prefer going forward if they are going to make a change and I would think that it would be of the two uh the flat feet which would that about, 1500 as opposed to per capita because in the chart they used they put our population at 6,770 and that put it at, 1693 and once they update the population that would be accurate that'd be way more doesn't Max out till 5,000 so what were we paying now I thought we were paying something yeah uh 250 or five no I think 500 I thought it was more it was 500 because um yeah we we I think maybe the first year we paid the by accident they let us into the under the the small population um and then they updated that so last year was $500 um so it' be you know $1,000 increase if that one if the second option is adopted um yeah what do you guys think how is the funding used um for a number of ways in terms of getting uh actual plans put together um so on engineering on uh all the different requirements for an application that they have to get which is very extensive um there's all sorts of uh fees associated with the different studies and everything that they need to get that need to be updated every so often and then also on the management like the one or two people on staff that actually helped run the Coalition it's it's uh you know typically representative driven by the different mayors and and representatives in the area um but there are a couple staff positions that have been funded for the last 20 years on that same pool of funding that that now Run Drive essentially so okay they're needing to think about how it's going to be going forward um I think there's also value in the group in that kind of their philosophy has been all the cities even the ones that are farther out or that are further in from where this area that they're talking about 55 being improved um are kind of going to support this section and then when other parts come up all the cities will be supportive of that so I think it helps in that if there's areas maybe not on 55 but just in in similar areas on on projects whether it's 19 or whatever if we need um group advocacy be a place that we can we we bought in and we have a seat at the table like I said before um so think there's some value in that it's just do we think there's enough value in it for us I'll leave that up to you guys what you think I think the primary benefit I see for corking is Improvement to safety especially along places like Rolling Hills Road which it's really difficult to access 55 in a safe way I I know nobody down there would like a more intensive traffic load on 55 which this would probably generate uh but I think the safety benefit and the ability to get stop lights as those intersections improve is probably I would like so I I would support it and anything I've seen the major part of that area would be be widening that bottleneck that happens right there where about 55 kind of kicks up um so I do think the road Improvement in and of itself would certainly be uh good for the area and for the residents in the area um you know that doesn't necessarily mean that if we're not part of it the project wouldn't happen likely wouldn't make a difference in that but wouldn't have a seat of the table if we had specific concerns um with the design or any of that so any other thoughts I agree okay good yeah okay so I will uh follow up with uh their team and let them know that we prefer the flat we're good for this calendar year I believe um but that we prefer if they're going to change it to do it plat which would be better outcome for us and I'll follow up with you guys when they actually make that decision and we can decide if we for sure want to stay in so thank you and then Mark um for just Council reports if anyone else would like to speak or has any items let me know but uh Mark mentioned he he had a couple questions that he remember that he wanted to ask so thank you sir uh Chief I'm listening I just got to do something if I could if I could ju you know I um I uh review the policy and something in the city Pol and I'm sorry I'm referring to the unman the the uavs I think they're called and I read the policy and something confused me and then I realized that you were simply in compliance with State Statute you cited a a statute and uh I I just want to clarify something and I wish that our representative was still here you you would agree with me when I see that drones fly outside usually often times yes okay and and typically not inside of a resident's home uh not all the time we are planning to have interior drones as part of our program okay but but generally speaking drones are for the outdoors right and if uh an officer wants to walk outside and look look through the windows of my car does that officer need a search warrant no no um and that that's kind of part of my confusion here because uh State Statute states that a law enforcement agency must not use a UAB without a search warrant and then it carves out some exceptions and this makes makes absolutely no sense to me how long does it take you to get a search warrant depends on the scenario and the availability of the signing judge but it takes time yep and you have to find a signing judge so I guess what I would um ask is the next opportunity where when we have our representative here I would like to understand why are we you know restricting law enforcement in the state from essentially looking around the outdoors it's public the drones are not flying into someone's home you know generally so um I I mean I was confused by the policy but it's not your policy You're simply following State Statute and to to me um it doesn't make any sense so so yeah and I I was um our group as the State Chiefs Association was part of the the formation of that legislation and there was actually many pushing in the state for an outright ban on law enforcement use of drones um we had to actually Advocate pretty strongly because the initial drafts of it also didn't allow any usage without didn't even have the car vots which meant you couldn't do training flights which meant there was no Public Safety exception for imminent threats even um initially they didn't want to allow it over the scene of a traffic crash on a public Ro way um it took an extensive amount of work on law enforcement's part just to get even the seemingly practical exceptions um well God forbid you should have the same uh uh items that my 14-year-old uses flying over my house taking pictures so uh yeah it it just makes no sense to me why we would intentionally uh restrict uh the use of a drone um you know you'll agree with me that there are many uses uh for drones and uh it just it just doesn't make sense so thank you for indulging me I agree with you I think I'm sure chrisen would be happy to look into it but I think that might even be a better topic to bring up with Senator limmer that's kind of in his wheelhouse so and I'm sure he would be all in favor of helping with that well and if I could just had one one more thing there is um you know there's a uh okay so there's a limitation that states a law enforcement agency must not use a UAV to collect data on public protests or demonstrations but yet uh earlier in the statute uh it says um a law enforcement agency may use a UAV over a public event where there is a heightened risk to the safety of participants well which which is it and now so now we have some event going on and we have the chief wondering well okay now okay wait I gotta read it okay now which is it which way do I go I don't want to get jammed up because I launched this thing and and and the whole time the clock is ticking so to me uh I think that this statute and you know granted we have no authority to do anything but I think we should bring it to the attention of our Representatives because just a just a cursory read of it it just doesn't make any sense and I hope you agree yep yeah can't hurt thank you I wonder if there's a carve out for M aerial Vehicles I'll buy a helmet and I'll take that ride we we did have suggestions to start our own air unit we'd ease into it with a with a UAV first hot air balloon we want a helicopter I I was asked earlier this evening uh in terms of trying to get City Hall where our city helicopter was to assist someone to get here I don't get here the roads closed that wasn't inconvenient I had the same challenge you see a helicopter could have picked us both up all right so uh item 13 is the updated schedule which uh not too many changes from what was on there before but uh also subject to more changes as always uh there is one item mayor that's on there that's been added for discussion uh and want to get your feedback um there has been discussion about clarifying an understanding of what is the council's desire for a business park um staff wants to get clarification because what our present code says and where the discussions have been going there's a disparity there right now and so uh staff feels that going on a field trip to look at some of the local business parks and get clarification on council's desire to have those similar or confirming that we do not want those similar types of products and it allows us to shore up our code uh and and so we feel that would be a real productive use of time we have some proposed dates uh and we're open to other suggestions the proposed dates right now would be on a Tuesday and we chose some Tuesdays in July uh Tuesday or a Wednesday or even the 16th or other suggestions that Council might have that would work better for their schedules but we feel that this would be a really uh beneficial use of time I'm all in favor of the only hency I would have right now in sing on on determining when is that councilor Bob is not here um but in general that stretch we could we use Council bottom as drone to fly over these business parks and then only if you get a warrant bring back well it would be private use for any help well feedback from council member bottom and the past had been anything outside of normal Council meetings are not something he's true in favor of uh so so but I have the question why does staff think that this is necessary we can see you know when applications are filed I mean I I know what a business park is because what our present code says council member lanman and and the different types of products that have come in actually there's debate on whether it aligns with our code or not and uh some of the uses the impression that Council has communicated and what the practices are we just want to confirm that everybody's on the same sheet of paper uh so I I don't disagree with you we've seen them you drive down uh 94 and you see different types of business Parks the the reason it would be a fruitful exercise is without violating the open meeting law to have everyone discuss yep that is a deer we all agree that's a deer and we want it here or no we don't want it here um and so as we've thrown up different pictures the discussion over the last 12 months for sure has created confusion from staff exactly what council wants and so having everyone Collective on a spot here's a business park as it's been built as it's been advertised and as it's in use is this what we want I I totally agree with the value and getting people on the same page I think finding an synchronous time for all of us would be very challenging other than within meetings is it possible for that to be done by someone on staff and documented and then presented in a council meeting for us to discuss which of these do we intend code to permit and which do we want code to prevent so if you would like us to put together a virtual tour that's kind of what I hear the direction being that was my staff can do that that could work and then maybe if we could get those locations that staff picks um so if anyone wanted to go out there on their own I I think I'd like to go out in the field and actually see it um so if we could get that list so we could make trips as we want and then do the virtual for what I think would be helpful then also is whether then using this time once we put together the virtual tour we can send you the information and you can watch it at your leisure MH uh and then what would be fruitful is to come back and have the discussion based upon the feedback that you had uh that would allow us to not break the open meeting law it would give you sufficient time to review and ruminate or visit on your own and then that would be the most fruitful discussion everybody had access to the same information you had time to think about it process it so that then when we got together to get the feedback that we need staff has given you the information that you need in the adequate time to digest it be great I approve I like it thank you okay and with that uh the city council is going in to close session under the authority of Minnesota statute 13 d05 subdivision 3 C3 the city is permitted to close a meeting to consider offers en counter offers for the purchase or sale of real or personal property the city council is going into close session to consider an offer for Real Estate the following properties are the subject of the closed meeting P 0111 92331 00002 p1211 9232 20009 P ID 11119 2311 012 P ID 1 1111 92314 00003 P ID 24119 2333 00001 um and then we will have a second close session under the authority of Minnesota statute 13d .05 subdivision 3A a public body May close a meeting to evaluate the performance of an individual who is subject to its Authority the city council is going to a second close session to discuss the performance evaluation of the city administrator during close session I will go ahead and call the meeting back to order uh and in the uh first Clos session uh let's see here do we have a follow up on that item to the City attorney was on there ah yes I'm sorry in the first close session the city council discussed an offer for real estate and relate uh that was related to the following properties P ID 01119 2331 00002 P id1 12119 23229 p1111 92311 012 p1111 92314 00003 p24 11923 33001 staff has provid a direction in the second close session the city counil discussed the performance evaluation of the city administrator and found his performance to be exemplary uh very high um in this 365 degree uh performance review uh just for your information there well there's additional information on there I need that um certain amendments may be made to the uh administrator's contract to recognize performance and make Equitable adjustments as necessary and with that I move to adjourn second all those in favor say I I