The public may attend this city council meeting in person or may watch and listen remotely by viewing the meeting on channel 8 wtv at the city's website at weisetta.org. Public comment during the public forum and or public hearing portions of the meeting may be provided in person at the meeting in advance or by logging into the team's call and raising your hand during the public hearing. When your name is called in the meeting, you will be seen and heard in our council chambers and the cable channel. You'll be asked to unmute, turn your camera on, and then you begin your public comment. All public comments must include your full name and uh where you're representing from. The first agenda item is the call to order. Uh no, we did that. So, we're going to do the pledges of allegiance. If I could ask everyone to stand if you are able and follow along. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Okay. And the next item is uh roll call. Let the record reflect that all council members are present. Uh earlier this evening, the council participated in a workshop and discussed the following items. uh the discussion of the 2050 comprehensive plan, discussion of our 2026 legislative priorities uh and a review of uh our Clapper Park project and a discussion of future council topics. Okay. The next item on the agenda is to approve the agenda. May I have a motion to approve the agenda as presented or does anyone want to make any changes? Make a motion to approve. Mayor. >> Okay. Could I have a second? >> Second. >> Further discussion. >> All in favor say I. I. >> Okay. That moves forward. The next item is the public forum. Just as a reminder, members in the public in attendance tonight, if you're interested in speaking, you can come to the dis and state your name and indicate who you're representing. Limit your comments to three minutes. If the item is that you wish to speak about is on the agenda, for those that are in person, fill out a form and hand it in to staff. For those are remote uh via teams, please send a note via chat to to let them know if you want to speak in the public forum or on the agenda item. We don't have any agenda items, so that's kind of uh moot. So, do we have any items for the public forum this evening? Uh, City Manager Joerger. >> Uh, Mr. Mayor, we do not. >> Do we have anybody on teams? >> Mr. Mayor, we do not. >> Okay. So, the next thing is new agenda items. Um, are there any items that the council would like to uh bring forward to be on a future council uh meeting? Okay, hearing none, we'll move on from that one. Consent agenda is approval of the consent agenda. On our consent agenda tonight is approval of the city council workshop and regular meeting minutes of October 7th, 2025. Approval of the check register. Approval of the municipal licenses. Receipt of the building activity report. Approval of the 2627 police union contract with LES Local 337. Approval of the embedded social worker joint powers agreement with Henipin County Human Services Department. Adoption of 43205 approving the Henipin County grant for night vision equipment. Receipt of the 2025 second quarter financial report. Approval of the addendum recording secretary service agreement with times saver off-site secretarial extending the agreement to December 31st, 2026. Approval of the Bigwoods right of entry agreement and related plans. Are there any items that uh council would like pulled? >> Uh Mr. Mayor, I don't necessarily need an item pulled, but I wouldn't mind having a moment to ask a clarifying question about item J. >> Perfect. I actually have the same one. any other uh items here that people want to ask questions about or pull? Okay. Uh why don't we let you ask your question? >> Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you. Um reading through those plans for um the right-of-way entry agreement, the entry agreement feels perfectly appropriate. Um my only hesitation is where it says related plans. There is a pretty robust timeline um of actionable items that we are entering into with um the county and there was one in there that stood out to me that I thought we should look at a little bit more. Sure. And I guess my clarifying question is the item that I that brought me pause was the digital component component to the tree track. And I just want to know if by voting yes to um the right-of-way entry agreement that we would be signing off as yes to that digital tree. >> So before you answer that, I'm just going to pull this one because I've got another question about it. So, what I'm going to do just because it'll take more time and let's just get the consent agenda approved. We'll pull this one. You can get your question answered. I'll get my question answered. So, I would accept a motion to approve the consent agenda, but pulling item J. >> Could I uh get that motion, please? >> I'll make that motion. Do >> I have a second? >> Second. >> Further discussion. >> Just one thing, Mr. Mayor, before we vote on that. Yep. >> Not pulling it. I just wanted to make a comment that I'm delighted to see that we came to a much fairer union contract with the police department to bring them closer to parody. Uh we do support our police. I want to make sure they hear that from me. I'm delighted about the contract. Just wanted to pull that out to highlight it. >> Thank you. Uh so I have a motion. I don't know if it was seconded. Was >> okay. Any further discussion? We had that. Um all in favor say I. >> I. I. >> Okay. So now, um, Aurora, I'll ask my question and then you can package the two together and and offer us guidance. Um, I I, uh, I I'm pleased to see that that county money is available to help address buckthornne and and other invasive species in there. I just wanted you to offer a little color commentary about um, I mean, we've had some complaints over the years that we don't maintain that property. When I say don't maintain it, let me be clear. We have mature trees that are diseased and falling down. That's my definition of maintenance. I'm not talking about the trail or the road. That's all perfectly maintained. So, could you just offer us a little bit of a narrative for the public about what what the county will be doing, how it benefits that track of land, and then please address Miss McDonald's question about the access easement. Miss Jagger. >> Yeah. Um, thank you mayor and council for your questions and I see city forester. So, if I misspeak, call me on it and and chime in with the rest of the council. Um so your first question is kind of like what the scope of work is and and the level of maintenance that's required uh that will happen as part of this agreement. It's really to deal with invasive species that basically will crowd out other um native trees that were growing in the big woods. So without being able to combat the buckthorn garlic mustard they basically crowd out those other species. So to protect the big woods as the big woods that kind of regular maintenance is needed. We've previously had some volunteers that did a lot of that work, but this is a really extensive agreement with Henipin County to do quite a lot of maintenance um in the big woods to combat those two invasive species. >> Okay. >> Does that feel fair, Forester? Okay. >> Um and then Molly, your um Council Member McDonald, your question on the tree program. When I looked through the language that's in the contract, it it doesn't get into the specifics of what that tree program is. So, what I would be inclined to say is that we could take some of that feedback back to the county um about concerns on making a natural area too digital and seeing if there's ways to mitigate that. I don't know if you think the county would be open to that um type of feedback or if they've already got this plan kind of set in stone. Yeah, please come up. Thank you. Good evening. Benron, city forester. >> Um, and actually Matt Matt Stika from Henman County is here with me tonight as well. Um, so he might be able to speak in more detail. >> Hold on one second. There's some sort of weird feedback loop. >> Everyone. >> Is that better? Um I would just say uh in terms of the that one component that you uh pointed out about the tree track um that is part of a one of the other plans there's an environmental or ecological improvement plan a habitat management plan um and then the the right of entry agreement as well and I would say that the tree track um is not tied to the right of entry agreement and that's really what's being authorized tonight. Um, so this agreement would open the door for these two other plans and various other activities now that the county would have access, but we haven't agreed to any of the particulars yet. >> So those are all things that we can hash out with them for sure. >> Any other questions of council? >> No. So then I think we would um I would accept a motion to approve what was known on the consent agenda item J approval of the Big Woods right of entry agreement and related plans. If I could get that motion >> so move Mr. Mayor. >> Can I get a second? >> Second. >> Any further discussion? All in favor? I >> I that moves forward. The next is a public hearing. Um, we actually do have one item for the public hearing today, which is consider adoption of resolution 422025 certifying to the county auditor assessments for unpaid delinquent utility bill charges. Uh, city manager Joerger. >> Uh, thank you, Mayor and Councel. This is an annual item um that the city considers and you'll see as included in your packet there's a list of delinquent utility bills and false alarm bills that are more than 30 days past due. So our process is to um work with notify people who are past due and if they don't um present payment that then we will assess them onto their property taxes so that way no matter what the city remains whole effectively providing those services to the to the residents. Um, the reason why we do it at this time of year is because we need to do that in advance of when the county would actually um, set folks's property taxes. So, we would need to add this kind of assessment onto their property tax roles. So, we do this each year. Um, the assessments are to cover the costs that of the services that they received either for the the utility bill or if they had a false alarm that they haven't paid. We also charge a service fee of $100 to each account and charge an interest rate of nine and a half percent. Basically to discourage this as a way a mechanism that people are using to pay their bills is to go a long time without paying them and then just add them to their property taxes. That's not a practice we want to see. Um and it's not something we see a lot. Um but it's something we want to discourage. And there's work on staff to contact these residents, notify them of the prop uh of the process and send it to the county. Um sometimes I think there's questions on are there are there more than we've seen in prior years. Um we see generally around the same amount about 20 per year um about the same amount of dollars about 20 grand in unpaid bills um mostly related to um delinquent utility bill payments. So in the packet was a list of the addresses that do have delinquent bills with the city. And so what we would be looking for tonight is to open the public hearing, conduct that. After that public hearing is closed, we recommend that you adopt resolution 42-2025. >> Okay. With that, I'm going to open the public hearing. I don't see anybody here to speak. So, do I have the permission to close the public hearing, Mr. Schelzel? >> Yes, you do, Mr. Mayor. >> I'll close the public hearing. I'll bring it back to the council for any uh questions of staff on this uh item. Hearing none, do we need to a motion now to approve this? So, I would accept a motion to approve adoption resolution 422025 certifying to the county auditor assessments for unpaid delinquent utility bill charges. Who would like to make that motion? >> So moved. >> Can I get a second? >> Second. >> Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor say I. I. That passes. >> We're on to new business. We don't have any new business. Which then takes us to the city manager report and discussion item. Before you uh jump into I just have a couple comments that that I'd like to offer and then uh we'll accept your report. I um went to the city landscaping day. I think we call it pullet day or whatever on Saturday. There was probably a dozen or 15 or so residents volunteering to pull uh the flowers uh in the downtown corridor. It was a lovely day. Great volunteers. Uh it's amazing. You see the same people coming back and again and again to all these volunteer events which speaks volumes to their commitment to their community. But I just wanted to recognize those folks for for being there. Just for the record, I I didn't do any gardening, but I did hand out free coffee that I bought myself. Um so, uh with that, I'm going to turn it over to city manager Jerger. >> Thank you, um Mr. Mayor, um council. I only have a couple of updates for you. The first is a notice for you and the public that our regular meeting schedule is going to be disrupted for our next meeting. We will be meeting on Wednesday, November 5th, and that's because there is a school board election um on November 4th. Um so we're delayed one day. Um but folks can come and vote here at city hall um for the school board election on November 4th. Um, the other thing that I wanted to highlight is just some events that are um, coming up in town. Um, is that we have the upcoming Boo Bash Dash and Blue Boo Blast um, this Saturday. There's 10K, 5K, all types of runs. There's costumes, pumpkin derbies, things like that throughout the community. The chamber um, works on that event. So, you can um, look at the Weisetta West Metro Chambers website for more information on what >> What's the date, Aurora? >> Um, that's Saturday. >> Saturday. Thank you. And that's all I've got. >> Okay. Any questions of staff at this time? >> Okay. Uh I I need to ask you again, have anyone uh jumped in for the public forum on teams? >> No, they have not. >> Okay. With that, I would accept a motion for an 18minute city council meeting um from from somebody at the dis here. >> So moved, Mr. Mayor. >> Any second here? >> Second. >> Okay. Any further discussion? All in favor say I. I. The meeting's adjourned. >> Record time.