North St. Paul City Council — Transcript
Friday, September 5, 2025
Public Art Projects and Initiatives
Community Arts Programming
Autumn Arts Festival Logistics and Volunteer Management
Strategic Planning and Budgeting for 2026
Administrative and City-Wide Updates
Votes (1)
Autumn Arts Festival Planning (September 13th)
Extensive planning for the Autumn Arts Festival on September 13th was conducted. Commissioners were asked to recruit volunteers from their networks, and it was decided to offer meal ticket vouchers to external volunteers as an incentive, approved by consensus. Day-of tasks were assigned, including setup (Tom, Raquel, Laura, Carrie, Sharon), vendor layout direction (Tom), Art Cart manning (Laura, Raquel), City Booth manning (Troy, Tom), food truck contact (Tom), and ribbon distribution. The commission decided against a photo booth due to current workload. Efforts will be made to promote volunteer opportunities for high schoolers to earn community service hours. Remaining budget funds (~$1,500) were discussed for potential decor, literary walks, or attendee surveys. Tom and Troy will lead the setup of the large canopy tent.
Notable Quotes (14)
We gave them the wrong information because we didn't know better. Sorry.
I think the thing with last night well one from my understanding the money needs to go through one of our systems. So, open gov baseline the parks website and also it has to be a staff member that processes the payment.
So, as it stands, we tentatively have an artist to do the mural on the wall of the history museum. Uh we have not uh seen the final submission that is going to be presented to the city council yet, but she is my understanding is going to proceed to work on it.
So, for the Heartands project, um we've changed boxes um to a box that is further into Casey Lake Park, um but it is a better location so that people can walk all the way around it and if they want to take selfies when they find their heart hand, um it will allow for that without them possibly getting hit by a car.
I mean, can we break them into Yeah. groups, so to speak? We should to say you know so if we come up with criteria we can say okay for a a box in a residential neighborhood you know this is criteria for a box in a park this is criteria for a box you know in a business you know can we break them in I guess you know
I'd like to create a larger map of the city and the boxes of availability. >> Yeah. and you know have somebody from the city look at them and then we start planning out a long range plan of >> there you go >> these are the types of things we'd like to see and this is these are the ones so we don't have to keep going back every every >> every three months when we're ready to go on to the next box to take up your time for them so I think that you know Laura and I can get together and we can create kind of a master kind of catalog of these and then on to you That sounds great. Wow.
I think to emphasize too that the middle of the day needs less help. It's more the end and beginning if that helps. I guess clarify general time.
Was that story sign? Was that something that we paid a rental fee for? Was it checked out from a library? >> Check it out from the library. >> Okay. >> Right. >> I don't remember. >> I thought it was a county initiative. >> Ramsey County Library initiative because it would make sense because we have a library. >> Yeah, that's where I thought it came from. I don't >> Yeah. No, I think you're right, Sharon.
I almost want to say we have enough going on. >> I think so. >> Okay. So if if there's nothing done with it yet and it's whether we take on more stuff, it's a no. Okay. Okay.
I think timing is more what I'm trying to focus with because it can be a struggle when we are, it feels like we're planning when we also want to do the thing, if that makes sense. Because a lot of this stuff is weather dependent.
So, I um I think I understand is that oh we can start using some of that winter time to get prep work done in the first quarter of the year so that we can hit the ground running because so much of what we do is in warmer months.
I guess the easiest way to think about it is anytime you need to spend money, it has to go through council approval.
my how I'm reading it is it's not necessarily um financial proposals that she needs, but just project proposals. ... It would be good to know like oh we want to do two murals this year and we are tentatively thinking this place this place and we're working on this or something. I don't know something like that.
we did have an emergency meeting on Monday to talk about the uh cyber security breach that happened with police department just to sign a contract with a law firm and a cyber security firm to come in and do an assessment and make sure that everything is fine.
Ordinances & Resolutions (5)
Budget for 2026 presented to council, serving as a reference point for future planning
Previous committee-drafted document intended to guide project concepts and implementation
Document Jordan plans to draft to standardize project proposals for departmental approval
Visual tool Jordan plans to create to clarify project approval processes
Agreement signed by the city to address a cybersecurity breach in the police department