North St. Paul City Council — Transcript
Saturday, March 15, 2025
Municipal Election Results Certification
2025-2034 Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) Review
2025 Budget and Levy Update
Future Revenue Opportunities for the City
Votes (2)
Resolution Certifying Municipal Election Results (November 5, 2024)
Moved by Council Member Schweer [00:00:23] · Seconded by Council Member Norby [00:00:24]
The Finance Director presented the background, including Minnesota State Statute 25.185's requirements and the number of registered voters. The candidate vote totals were announced: David McKenzie (2439), Caesar Renoso (221), and Troy Woods (2512), with 95 write-in votes.
Review and Discussion of 2025-2034 Capital Improvement Plan (CIP)
The Finance Director presented the 10-year CIP, outlining $103 million in needs across buildings, parks, streets, and utilities. Key points included staff's adjustment of the Wold facility assessment from $25M to $18M by removing duplications, adjusting inflation and project cost factors. Proposed levy increases for facilities (0.45% to 2.1%) and parks (0.55% to 0.6%) were noted as not being in the current proposed budget. Council discussed deferring several projects, including the McKnight Field parking lot and concession stand due to an HGA study, and West End passive park due to lack of Park & Rec prioritization. Concerns were raised about the priority and necessity of certain facility improvements from the Wold report (e.g., Northwood Park Building, secure service windows) and the need for staff to re-evaluate and prioritize 2025 CIP items, especially for facilities, ensuring judicious use of funds given the city's financial constraints. The process for street maintenance evaluation was also clarified by Morgan from WSB.
Notable Quotes (6)
You'll see that we have the buildings and facility improvements and these are uh the numbers um and I'll give you a little bit more explanation on that um but these are the uh numbers that are coming from um the uh Wold uh facility assessment that have been incorporated into the capital Improvement plan.
The impact of this 2025 to 2034 CIP Levy uh or impact on the levy would be that for buildings and facility improvements um we have two pots of money that we could utilize... even with that it would require us to change our current Levy right now we have a levy um dedicated to facilities of 0.45% we would have to increase that to 2.1% um that is not in the budget that has been shown to date.
HGA is in the process of doing a study... so we certainly don't want to move forward with doing something in the parking lot that potentially would change... so that's something for consideration.
I've been very vocal in um wanting to see greater direction out of the park and wreck from a priority list and where they want to put their funds and you know right now it's in the study which is which is great... but does that take precedent over some of over some of the other things and um I didn't see any money here um we got a westm passive Park fund but was there funding set up here for mcnight to redo anything in the mcnight I think that's what MCN I know that's what parks and W is trying to establish right now with the hga study is what what do we want to focus in on in our last meeting they discussed what the outcomes of some of these um Parks look like nobody in the nobody with Parks and Rec right now have determined yep we're going to do West End passive Park so why it's here I'm not sure I don't know so it's it's trying to they're trying to establish what where are the priorities and what what do we want this year do we want to downtown park what does that what does that look like so I don't know if Riley made recommendations or what what this is but um so again it would just be it would be of my opinion that that gets moved out until their study comes back until they figure out where they want to prioritize their spending till they've had an opportunity to present to council and I think then it can be re re-entered in into the CIP but that's I'm a lame duck so it's up to you guys.
We are on an ongoing basis reviewing um boots on the ground one-third of the city so every three years we have a snapshot picture of the entire city for all of the pavement condition within North St Paul.
We're behind... we know we're behind so we just got to see where we get our number ones and make sure that we're doing them wisely to with the money we got because we don't have a lot to probably take care of every number one.
Ordinances & Resolutions (10)
A resolution was approved to certify the local election results.
Requires cities to certify election results between three and 10 days following the election.
Comprehensive 10-year plan detailing needed infrastructure and facility improvements across the city.
Initial report detailing over $25 million in facility needs, later adjusted by staff to $18 million based on assumptions and re-prioritizations.
Updates to park and playground projects are based on their input, but council seeks clearer priority lists.
Funding for an update was moved from the general fund to the EDA.
Tentatively agreed-upon contracts with five unions impacted the general fund levy with increased salary projections.
An ongoing study impacting McKnight Field projects and community center operations, leading to recommendations for deferring related CIP items.
A study for the community center, with its completion tied to decisions on opening the facility and related mechanical component replacements.
A report to be attached for the next workshop discussion, detailing operations and performance of municipal liquor stores.