Call to order. Go call the meeting to order. Gav it. We have a We have a couple of guests from the Cub Scouts that are going to lead us in the pledge of allegiance allegiance. Come up front here. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Any changes to the agenda? No. No, Mr. Mayor. No changes to the agenda. Motion to approve agenda. Second. All those in favor? I approved. We have one presentation for Chief Regis. We're going to do there. You're up, buddy. That's what she said. All right. Tonight, we have the privilege of honoring Chief Cregus for 35 years. Chief has served as the city he grew up in as a firefighter. For 25 of those years, Chief served as a fire chief. During that time, the community and the department experienced tremendous change. As chief, Todd had a commitment and a vision for the future of the department. One of his greatest accomplishments has been his forwardinking leadership. He recognized the importance of advancing the department and ensuring that it could meet the needs of the community. This vision for the department wasn't just about resources or capabilities. It was also about the people. As a leader, he encouraged growth, knowledge, and professionalism. At his last meeting, he said, "I hope you all learned something from tonight. We celebrate not only 35 years of service, but also a deep pride and purpose with what you've served. You've left a lasting mark on the fire department, the people who served in it, and the community you've protected. Your leadership, dedication, and vision have set a standard that will inspire us for years to come. On behalf of the city of Elen Market, thank you for your service. We wish you the very best in the next chapter of your journey. [Applause] got two minutes [Laughter] each added some cheat notes for the ones that you know me I'm not really good at doing this so anyway so first of all I'd like to thank uh start out by thanking the city of Elan New Market, the New Market Township and the Cedar Lake Township for their support for me as a chief and financial support to get us Elco Market Fire Department where we are today. Um, it's a it's a great honor to serve you. Um, and what else can I say? Also want to thank the firemen and fire women that I have worked with through the years. It was my my honor to to work with them. As I've always said, it takes a team. It's just not me. Um I've had a great team. Um we've gone a long ways. We've done a lot of things. Um I'm privileged to work with them. I'm proud of them and I hope the best for the future. And I think yeah, you got a good group. Elco should be very proud. New Market Fire Department has gone a long ways from the beginning to where we are today. So, thank you [Applause] [Laughter] a minute. Let's have a little meeting. You freed up some time in your schedule. All right, at this point we'll open up meeting for public comment. Does anybody have any they'd like to speak about not on the agenda? Hi, I'm Charles Fris. I own a house here in town, 340 St. Mary Street. And um there's some post office boxes there and they're kind of encroaching in my driveway and they also got the alleyway partially plugged so the access to the alley no longer can be used and so forth. I had talked to uh Rich about it several different times and so forth. I just would like to bring it to Mr. Mayor and council the awareness of it if we can come up with a different solution or what have you with mailboxes. So, thank you very much. You want to say something? My name is Martin Ser. I'm a live on 230 WM Street in New Market from with mailboxes to their butt right up to my driveway and they can't get through. They have to use my driveway to get through last fall. I was here at the meeting too about it. I was wondering if we could do something with that. It's a kind of a private driveway, you know. I just got moved out of here. Is that what you're asking? Yeah. Maybe move them all out or some of them out. Really? Yeah. Problem is on the private property side. There's only about maybe 5t. Then there's a curb that goes right between it from the driveway. It's it's going you can't go drive down the hill at all. You have to use my driveway to get onto the main road. Thank you. Anyone else? With that, we'll close public comment. Move on a consent agenda. Mr. Mr. Mayor, can I um um make a correction on the um approving of the minutes under the consent agenda? Um we inadvertedly put 2024 and the minutes should be approved for January 9th, 2025 meeting. All right. I make a motion to approve the consent agenda with that minor change. Second. In favor? I I item B, approve payment of claims and electronic transfer of funds. consent to Oh, we already All right. Any open for public hearings? No. Close it. General business. First item under general business, Mr. Mayer proposal. This is a follow up to the water system. that was presented to council last fall which identified anticipated improvements that we need to make. The council had basically accepted that and directed staff and consultants to use that as the assumptions moving forward for future action items and this would be the first of those presentations with your consent. If you'd rather jump to the business, we can do that too. But I thought it might be good for the tuna members to catch you up a little bit and for the existing members a refresher on why we're doing this. I have also uh Jacob Hberg from our firm. He'll be doing the actual work and he'll have a few remarks about the proposal itself. I'm going to talk more about why we're doing this, why it's important. Uh so uh we can go right to the next slide. I'm going to give you a little bit of water system 101, hit some highlights from the 2024 water study that will help explain why this work is important. A little bit about the schedule. Um, basically design and 25 and construction 26 is what we're anticipating. Next slide, please. So, your water system has three main components. supply and that's where we get the water out of the Prairie Duchaine aquifer or lower. Um that's assumed at this point. Um all your other wells are in that aquifer or all the way through it. Um but supply is basically getting water from somewhere in your case from a well to the treatment plant. Uh and it's a critical piece. If you can't get the water uh out of the ground, you can't do anything else with it. So um that's number one. Number two is the treatment. We take water uh at the treatment plant. We remove unwanted constituents, hardness, maganesees, radionuclides, things like that. And we add some wanted parameters, chlorine for disinfection, fluoride. Um, in some parts there's uh chemicals that might be added to aid the treatment. For example, to help uh oxidize uh iron to turn it to particles so we can filter it out. Um, and then from the treatment plant, we go to the distribution system. That's how we get the water out to the folks. Um, pipes, uh, water towers. uh we have to store finished treated water that's ready for consumption and deliver it where it's needed when it's needed at the right pressure. So those three parts are what we looked at when we reviewed your water system in 2024. There are uh recommendations for uh u all of those but we're going to talk tonight about the supply and the treatment parts at least the first the first phase. So next slide please. Uh this is a key figure uh because it establishes helps establish what the demand we're we're working for is. We can't just guess, we have to look at something. So the red dots on the far right represent uh population projections provided to the city by the Met Council. We use those population projections for all of your different activities that require population projections so that there's consistency between the water system, the transportation system, your land use plan, that type of thing. The uh blue line on the left is your historical population. We uh got that from staff and plotted it. And the closely spaced red lines are kind of a makeup um because if you take that blue line and just project it at the same slope, you're going to come in quite a bit lower than those met council projections. So they are anticipating um more um higher growth, rapid growth than the historical trends would indicate. Although if you look at the way far left, there was a pretty steep blue line at one point back in 2005 as well. So your city is certainly capable of taking off at a rapid more rapid growth rate. So those red dots are just kind of a a transition between the two um known data points. Can I ask a quick question? Sure. Um and I don't mean to be flippant or whatever about this, but how accurate are the Met Council projections? Have no idea. I mean based on previous met council projections of where again so many variables recession bubble bursting economic blah blah blah but I mean you want to take a swing at that I'm just curious even close to accurate I guess is my cynical way of looking at it. So for purposes relative to a population you look at the previously discussed. a little bit steeper in the current. I can tell you that having several efforts and other reasonable assumptions and for the work that we're doing but when we start the further we get out the near term Improvements that we're looking to do are needed regardless. I think we'll leave that there. We could talk about population all night. Um but um the decision was taken early on. will follow the met council's projections and plan for those. Um so once we have population projection, we look at your historical water demand. So what you see here is a chart of your average day and max day flows and the resulting peaking factor from 2015 through to through 202023 2023 sorry I've circled uh the kind of the bottom four um because you notice if you look at the trends just in your head there's a jump starting in 2020 where all of a sudden your average and max day and your per capita usage went up. Uh if you reflect on those years in light of uh the weather, those were three drought years starting in 2020 uh with significant um dry year in 2023. And I'll just finish this sentence and then so what that has done is driven up your per capita usage which in turn drives up that 10-year average. That 65.1 number gets applied to your population projection. So, it's also a key figure and this might help you understand how we come up with uh gallons per day in 2025 or 2030 or 2040. Keith, so may not, but 2020 2021 everyone had to stay home. Do you think that had any impact on this increase? No. You don't think that the the usage went up because people it maybe did a little bit but what we see is is domestic usage whether you working at home or going to an office in fact it may have reduced it a little bit because you maybe like me skip a shower that day work at the you know um uh but the laundry is the same that you know we'll see it go back down when businesses are now requiring I I think it really was largely weatherbased Okay. Okay. Next slide please. So then we can start making some plots. And what you see here in the blue line is if you had no new user, no Niagara, that would be your projected uh peak day water demand. And I'm going to emphasize that we're only looking at the peak days, the worst day of each year or the worst couple days. This is not everyday flow. We can meet that pretty easily for a long time. But it's those peak days and we have to provide water on those days too. So we have to size your supply and treatment and distribution for peak days. So we've only plotted the peak days. And like I said, the blue line is with no new user. Um Niagara phase one is the red line. So you can see there's a jump starting in 2025. Then it's kind of an even slope. if if it's only phase one going out to 2045, phase two comes along and we just took a guess. We don't know exactly when that might come on. Uh we said, okay, starting in 2029, that'll come online in 2030. You'll see another jump and that's that green line. So that top line represents Niagara phase 2. I don't recall why I highlighted it other than it shows you a trend of a jump in 25 and another jump in 2030. Now if we um go to the next slide, we plot on top of that graph what your wells can produce. What's your supply? So the blue line, the blue dashed line that runs flat across the graph at about 1.5 million gallons a day. That is your current firm capacity. And firm capacity is a key concept to remember. What firm capacity means is it is your your abilities to supply water with your largest well out of service. Your total capacity is the green line up at about 2.5. However, it's standard and recommended practice that you design for firm capacity because things can happen and they can happen at bad times. um maintenance or a lightning strike or something can uh take a well out of service and you still have to meet that demand. So um pretty common practice that you uh provide a firm capacity to meet your needs. Uh any questions on that before we show what happens when we add a well to this graph? Next slide please. So the new well moves your firm capacity from that dash purple line up to that dash green line and your total capacity up to that top solid blue line. Um even so total capacity would even be above Niagara demand through 2045. That doesn't mean you shouldn't add another well at some point because what you want up there is not total. You want firm capacity. However, for now, adding this well that we're talking about in our proposal puts your firm capacity up to 2.5 million, which carries you through up to about when um phase two would start. And we can talk nuances of uh whether you add another well at that time or maybe you wait a couple years uh and and kind of risk it. What firm capacity goes to is risk mitigation. It's not absolutely necessary to provide the water, but it certainly mitigates risk if something should happen. And so, it's wise not to roll the dice too long. Although, you know, you can provide the water if if you don't have it um right away. So, we are shooting to move your purple line up to the green line as part of this project to help meet that peak day demand. Any questions? Next slide, please. Then we talk about treatment. How much water can be treated? And uh I already mentioned we're looking at reducing iron, manganesees, and radionuclides which come out with the manganesees and the iron. They they uh fortuitously tend to attach to those same particles. And so when you remove one, the other comes out. Um we have different capacity levels there. The bottom purple line is a capacity as if we're flooding your filters at a rate of two gallons per minute per square foot. So every square square foot of your filter cells is getting two gallons a minute at that rate. And that is your uh the basic design. That's what the plant was d designed on was two gallons per minute square foot. It's a common number. It's um pretty conservative. And um with that you can treat a little over 1 and a half million gallons a day. If we flood those filters at a little higher rate, 2 and 1/2 gallons a minute per square foot, you jump up to the green dash line, which starts to buy you more time. Uh jumping up again to the yellow, which is doable, uh 3 gallons per minute per square foot, um buys you even more time. There's a trade-off though. As you increase that uh filtration rate, your filters clog up faster, need more backwashing. So, there is a limit to how much you can do. You you can't push them infinitely. There's just no way to keep up with the backwashing. Is there also a certain amount of risk as well? Absolutely. Yeah. consistently. You have no you have no capacity to shut down one to backwash it, right? Yep. Yep. Yeah. We think it would be safe uh on higher demand days to run maybe around 2.75 gpm per square foot. So kind of between the green and the yellow. And the recommendations in our uh 2024 report reflect that. So um any questions on this? So we'll show what happens if we um introduce blending into your uh system. The next slide, please. So blending would allow us to take that um peak day capacity up to about 2.7 2.8 8 million gallons a day, which pretty much covers uh demand for treatment even through uh the initial uh beginning of operation of a phase two of Niagara. Uh and that's assuming we'd be first running our filters as kind of as hard as we think we can. Uh and if we still can't keep that, that might be where we'd introduce blending on those on those really high demand days. Um I will uh just move on from this and talk about uh what that might look like. Next next slide. So uh what we're talking about now with treatment of course is quality of the water. We have to deliver water that meets the primary drinking water standards. Those are mustd dos. They're for health reasons. There's also secondary standards. Those go to the goodness of the water. Everybody likes to have water that's not rusty. doesn't have black gunk in it. Um so forth. Those are secondary standards. They're not health standards. Uh that that stuff isn't harmful, but it does make the water much less pleasant to use. We've met those standards since this plant went online in 2015. And any options that we reviewed during a study would continue that achievement, including what we'll talk about next. So next slide, please. Here you have a very interesting process flow diagram and you don't need to see all the detail um but this basically lays out in a graphical form how your plant works and I'm just going to walk you through kind of by areas. If you look in the upper left corner that's where the water comes into the plant from the wells. The first thing it does as you move to the right is it goes through an airator. We can also bypass that aator and and uh what we're trying to do is turn the iron into rust by exposing it to oxygen. So that airator is just like the airator you might use to keep your minnows alive. It introduces bubbles and and stirring of the water to uh add oxygen from the airator. It flows down uh a single line straight down. Maybe you can trace it with your uh mouse. Over to the right. Over to the right. Up. Go up to the area. It's that box of Nope. Left. We'll get you there. I don't know why I'm spending time on this. It's not probably going to remember anyway, but um Corey, you got the airator? It's a single single square box in the kind of the upper left. Yep. It's just this mouth. So, it's going to come there. Then it goes down and goes into a detention tank. That detention tank is a long tank with dividers in it. So, that water has to flow back and forth around. We're just giving that water time to interact with the oxygen we just added to it or chemical if we choose to do that or both. Uh, and it comes out of the detention tank on the left side of it, goes around and over into the filters. And those filters are specially designed with material that um will grab those particles that we just created and separate them from the water. So, the filters are over on the right hand side, kind of just above the middle. comes out of the filters and goes to a um well there's two things that happen out of the filters. The clean water that we filtered the stuff out that goes into the clear well uh basically your reservoir and it's ready to be pumped out into the system. The dirty water that we backwash out of the filters periodically goes to a reclaim tank where we do further settling. We we can salvage some of that water and run it back through the plant so that we don't have to waste all of that backwater. So, it's a that's a conservation measure right there to reduce the amount of water we use. Uh, so once it's in the clear well, um, we've added some chemical um, the the disinfection, the fluoride um, I think that's probably it here, but u, and it gets pumped out to the system, fills the towers and and uh, is supplied to the users. The red line you see is how the blending would work. So blending would come from one of the wells, possibly the new well. We haven't made that final decision yet. It bypasses the aeration, the detention and the filters and gets mixed with that um filtered water prior to adding um chemicals and going into the into the clear well. So it's fully mixed. It's not like we're putting untreated water out into the distribution system. It's all being mixed into the clear well for use. So it's it's that's why we call it blended. Next slide please. So will the blended water meet standards? Um our discussions up till now have considered that we would treat the water out of Elco well 2, Elco 3 and Elco 4, all your existing wells. and that when we needed to, we would also take partial water from Elco well 5 up to the maximum filter capacity. If that still wasn't giving us the water that we needed for that day, we could divert a second part of the water from the new well up to 20% of the total around the filters to the clear well for mixing and final treatment. And there's a mathematical example and I just picked manganesees. So if we have 80% of your water now follow these numbers very important 80% of your water that's 0.8 8 times 3 mg per liter uh of that's the concentration after it's filtered plus 20% of the water at 0.1 mg per liter that's the raw water concentration you get 044 mg per liter of the blended water the department of health secondary standard for manganese is 0.05 5 milligrams per liter. So we'd still be meeting standard. And the same thing happens if you look at the other constituents. Yes. What is if we do not blend the water? What is our milligrams per liter? 03.03. Oh, that's what that is. The 3 is when it's not been blended. Okay. Gotcha. Yep. Making sure. Yep. So, um, that's about as clear as I know how to make it, but I'd be happy to answer any questions. Next slide. Well, we're young. Thank you. Um, so the question was, how often might blending be employed? And um if you think about it, we would expect it to be very little initially, but as demand grows, uh it could occur more often. What we did to to make a projection of this is we looked at your daily peaking factors from 2000 2019 up through 2023. And we applied that to the years going forward 2025 26 along with the demand to see how many days that would indicate would peak exceed what we could treat without any blending. And then we took the average of those days for each year 25 26 27 28. So um you can see in 2025 we might see it one day. Uh 2029 we might see it eight days. And this is all just based on historical actual peak days. Uh, of course, we don't know the future. Uh, it may be none. It may be more than this, but it gives you an idea um based on historical u peaks and Niagara uh phase one and phase two, how many days we might need to employ blending to meet that demand. Um, an important point on the bottom of this. These projections assume Niagara's peak days coincide with your peak days. That's a conservative assumption. We really have no way to know if that's true. Uh, it could be that they have a peak uh in May where they're ramping up production for summer sales, but your peak might not happen till August after theirs is long over. And in case these these numbers would drop u quite a bit. The other thing I didn't talk about um here is what the blending means. Uh if we go back, could we go back to the um graph with the treatment another slide or two? There you go. you can treat um Niagara phase 2 with blending until projecting the year 2032. If we did not do that, you would be looking at a plant expansion or a second plant in 2027, 2028, something like that where we start crossing that between that uh green line, the green dashed and the yellow dashed. um we would not be able to serve Niagara phase 2 without either adding a plant or expanding your plant. And if you recall, I know two of you didn't see those numbers, but um we're talking millions of dollars, whereas the blending improvements probably two or three 400,000 something like that. I don't remember exactly, but it's it's an order of magnitude smaller. So, uh, we think it makes a lot of sense to put this in place now to buy you that time to not only plan and site and see what happens with your population, but also to um pay off existing debt and find the funds to um to afford that that next plant, major plant expansion or second plant. So, it's a it's a it's a key thing. We think it makes sense now because the new well will likely be up near the plant. It will involve piping to the plant controls all a lot of overlap with what this uh blending improvement would be which is largely a piping and controls and some valving um improvement. So we could jump uh back down to um 20 I got my slides mixed. Oh no 20 Yeah, I got my slides mixed up. 2025 there should be one that talks about what we'd be doing in 25 is figuring out where to put the well and Jake will talk a little bit more about that. 2026 we think because there are limited numbers of firms that can drill a hole this big 500 ft deep straight up and down put a pipe in it develop it. There's just not a lot of folks that can do that. The ones that can are pretty busy. We're hearing there's a backlog. Uh, so even if we had those plans ready to go today, I don't know that you'd get that well in 2025. So I think it's in the city's interest to mitigate that risk of not having that supply capacity to get started on this so we can get plans out on the street as soon as possible, even if they can't build it to 2026, we get on the list. Um, I think I will leave it there. Maybe I'll field any questions on this part before I hand it off to Jake to just go over the proposal very quickly. So, I like simplifying things and and pardon if I oversimplify it, but for purposes of the blending, we're doing some plumbing at the plant. Yes. to put off the much greater expense of having to build an expansion with a negl which would result in a handful of days having a negligible impact probably not noticeable on the water on those handful of days precisely question I had um so on those days that we blend what's coming out is blended does that blend further in the system based on water from the previous day or the day that comes after when it's out in the system based on how it functions I don't know that it'll blend further because it's moving in a pipe, but it's not like it's going to hit your glass instantly. There'll be a transition because it also has to move through the clear well, through the pumps. So, I I don't want to guarantee that no one will notice it because I I can't. But it's certainly going to meet primary and secondary standards. It would be perfectly adequate water if that's what you always provided. We'd be happy with that. Imagine that that was the result of the treatment plant today. We'd be satisfied with that result. So, this is no different. Although it's slightly higher concentrations, it still meets standards. And it's not like all of a sudden you're going to get a cup full of black water. It's just you won't um I don't know if people will notice it or not. I I kind of doubt it myself, but um as soon as you say something, then it happens. So, but it'll certainly be safe to use and it will be um it's not going to be forever. It's just during those super high demand days when we have no choice. We're first going to certainly try to maximize flow through the plant. Maybe we can do more than 2.75 gallons per minute per square foot. Every bit we can go up reduces the chances that we might have to do that, but it's not a bad thing and and it's not uncommon. I know you guys have done some asking around other communities and there are some that I'm sure you told us that they take water out of oil right into the distribution pipe. They don't even run it through and blend it or or uh chlorinate or anything. So, um this is certainly better than that. Previously, Corey was does anybody else do this? I know you have some. Yeah, so I reached out to a bunch of different communities. Um, typically ones around here around the cities, they have interconnects with other cities. So, Burnsville is connected to Apple Valley and Lakeville and Savage. So, all they're connected. So, they don't have huge firm capacity issues because they have so many connected to each other. Um, so they don't do a lot of blending. Londale has capabilities. They have one plant that can do a thousand gallons a minute. They have two wells that can do 1,000 gallons a minute. So if they ever needed to, they can bypass their plant and do 2,000 gallons a minute. They they've done it a couple times for testing. Other than that, they don't typically do it because they don't need to. Um Blaine did it years ago when they had a bunch of growth. Same type deal. Um Wakonia did it back in like 05 06. They would blend the water just just on peak days. I um I don't see it could never happen. I mean, that's a possibility, too, where we'd never have to do it. Um, but not a ton of communities have done it because they've grown and they have interconnections with other cities. We don't. We we we're because of not having that option, we have to be on the safe side. So, and just to clarify this, what I noticed from that chart is there's how many days you want to or can blend. This seems like it also provides the council with flexibility to make decisions on timing for a plant expansion at that future point. Yeah. It buys you buys you several years. Yeah. But even when you get there, it's like, well, do we want to blend three days a year? Do we want to blend 25 days a year? I don't know that it'll be a choice. It'll be something you would need to do to meet the demand that day. um which you don't know till that day. You might see it coming because there's a trending or something and be prepared all the time, but it's not something you choose to do until you have to. And like I mentioned, I'm sure we're going to look at other things as part of this design report. And even during operations, can you go a little higher to avoid that? But it's certainly a simple and fairly inexpensive way to buy time and make sure you're covered on those worst days. Does it hurt us to move forward now under the assumption that the blending will only be on like peak usage days, but let's just say a couple months, a year from now, it's a lot more than that. Is it going to cost us more than to move up the timeline of um you might think of it a different way. If you didn't do it, you'd be in deep trouble on those days if it happens that fast. I don't expect that unless something really um something really disrupts the system. But, you know, couple months is going to be March. Typically, we see the peak usage in kind of maybe June, July, August, those hot months where there's a lot of lawn watering. That's where the that's where the demand comes. Um, Niagara does have peaks, but it's more muted than yours are. And so much of this, in my head, too, is still so hypothetical until we see Niagara actually running and then see what our growth actually is and how many of those dots are actually accurate. I mean, there's still so much variability or potential variability in all this. So, that was the attraction to this option. It It's a lowcost way to make sure you're covered until you know more and can see what's actually happens. Well, and a couple things too, like typically a peak uh month in the summer 20ome million gallons a month. So when we did our pump test in December of last year, we did 49 million gallons. So we doubled that and we were still only running at our peak was like 1,250 gallons a minute. So what our plant was originally designed for was roughly 1,600 gallons a minute. So we could even go up another 350 gallons a minute. I mean that's 49 thou 49 million gallons a month right there. Yeah, which you you may have peak days which you know you have this option. I in the near future our plant is very large, very robust and it's been not at idle but until we really stressed it during our aquifer test, uh it's basically just kind of idling along. And when we did the aquifer test, we I mean that was kind of a crapshoot. We didn't know what was going to happen. And everything worked flawlessly non-stop for four weeks straight. Nothing shut off and we didn't have and you could have issues at some point in time, but we didn't have any issues and we stressed it double what we ever had before and we didn't have any issues. Not saying there's not going to be issues in the future, but I'm pretty confident that ramping things up. I think that this is a good safety measure. Um but I don't foresee it being used all that often. Yeah, we don't either actually um based on this, but it could happen and this isn't a thing to take chances with. So um so I'm going to just let Jake talk a little bit about what the work would actually look like and then um take more questions. Thank you, Rich. Uh, Mr. Mayor and Council, um, as Rich said, I'm Jay Cumber. Um, I'm a project manager that'll actually be managing, uh, the project we're moving forward with. Um, I'm just going to go over, you know, he's gone over the scope of what we're actually looking to to design and construct. I'm just going to really quick run through our actual proposal that's in your packet and kind of give you an outline of of our work going forward on the project. So, um, the design right now, we're just proposing on the design for this, uh, project. Um and it's broken down into two main phases. Uh the first phase is going to be our preliminary well sighting study and and resulting preliminary engineering report. Um so we'll be working with um LRE water who you know we've already been working with with the city for the aquifer the previous aquifer test and and other stuff in town. Um they're the hydrogeeologists that'll be helping to do perform the well sighting study. uh goal is to identify, you know, in the area that we're looking at and Rich already mentioned are we're going to start with the existing plant property. Um identifying making sure that the aquifers that we believe are there and the sources of water that we believe are there are available. Um and the goal is to try and pin down the ideal location um based on a number of factors for uh the new well. Um um it evaluate a number of things too in addition to that interference um potential for interference with other wells or or with with other city wells or private wells. Um um basically look at the well at a theoretical high level. It will be a a desktop study um by LRE. Uh the second kind of portion of that first phase uh is producing a preliminary engineering report and that will include both the findings of um of that well sighting study and our preliminary um ideas for location of the well uh as well as uh the uh pieces that we're looking at at the treatment plant. You know, we'll be we'll be doing kind of the preliminary design or a highle design of the improvements that we're looking at for that blending option at the treatment plant. um and what will be needed there. You know, kind of the the logic behind it of of which, you know, making sure that the well that we want to split to do the blending, how are we going to get that to the plant, you know, what piping reconfigurations are we going to have to do at the plant, how is it all going to be controlled? Um and then also uh along with the well, well, both pieces actually do preliminary coordination with the department of health um so that we're taking care of uh all standards um that they're going to require. Uh once that's done, you know, we there'll probably be some discussion in a meeting with the city. Um and we'll go through, you know, if there's any if we see any major uh challenges. Everyone's okay, though. Um yeah, go through any major challenges that we we see ourselves encountering with either option. You know, if we need to discuss at that point and and you know, figure out a different way to go or a solution, um that would be the time. Um, and then we'd move into phase two, which is, uh, the actual final design of of the project. So, we're talking final plans, um, project specifications for both the the water treatment plant improvements and the new well. Um, conducting an actual survey on the site to be able to design those. Um and then you know moving through the the well development process, the permitting for the well um the submitt of those plans to the department of health for um for certification um by the department of health and then obviously finally um helping to advertise bid the project and award the project to a contractor. Um so again as I mentioned this this this proposal only encompasses the the design portion. So through through what I just mentioned, um our estimated fee for this uh is $152,000. Um this would be build as a not hourly not to exceed. So it will be it will be build based on on the actual time that we're spending on it. Um and we estimate that we're looking at 12 staff members both uh within and outside of Bolton and Mink um and upwards of 750 uh manh hours uh to complete the project. um for construction. Um we would ask we would look or we would ask that you prepare for probably a similar fee. Um you know obviously we will we will propose on that at the time um once we know the final scope of work but but in our experience it's likely to be a similar fee. Um also included in the proposal is a um a rough schedule for the project. So just walking through that quick. So the first few phases here with this desktop study, you know, our initial looking at the blending option and and you know, beginning design or high level design uh going to take place in the next couple months. Uh obviously we're already late in January, so we're we're looking to move pretty fast on this now um to be able to keep up with the schedule. Uh come spring and warmer weather, we'll be doing the on-site survey um and any uh geotech investigation, you know, soil borings or similar that might be needed once we know where where stuff is going and and have a good idea of that. Um, and then finally, uh, completion of final plans, uh, as I mentioned, and and submittal of those to the Minnesota Department of Health for their certification, uh, and then bidding the project in late summer or fall of 2025, uh, with the eye on constructing it in 2026. Um, as Rich already mentioned, right now, what we're hearing out there from well drillers, they are extremely busy. So that's why part of why we like to move forward as as quickly as possible because um that's likely going to be one of the um timeline holdups or one of the defining factors of of you know how quickly um the the work could be complete is getting a well driller on board and getting on their schedule and being able to get that done. Um with that that's pretty much the the summary of the proposal. I'll take any questions at the time. First the financial aspects Oh, I was just going to ask questions and then answer. So, the cost of the project this project would be financing it. However, we don't want to go out and issue that interest on that debt until we're construction project. So, we have the ability that we cash flow this portion of project softs. We probably wouldn't after we actually received bids for the project. We know the actual and then we would do the financing at that time and probably late25, early 2026. Oh, yeah. Hopefully late 2025. In our packet, it said $152,000 for the design and 150,000 for construction observation. So, $32,000. So, we're and we're not we're not officially proposing on construction right now. 250. That's what I Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It says we we suggest I wanted to make certain that it wasn't a typo and it should have been 150 and you know they were repeat but it is both 152 and 15. Those are typical percentages for both of those aspects of that scale. And again it would it's going to be a build as not to exceed you know it's not a lump sum amount the design we don't do that because we can't predict how it's going to go correct. Can I ask a question? Yeah. All right. Cool. No. Uh so and I saw the the sentence in here uh about public engagement and and things like that. I mean I just want us to assume or I would assume that we will do a lot of whether it's built into you know this proposal or something the city does to make sure that we're communicating clearly and effectively with the township especially up in that area where it's potentially going to be. So just making sure that that's factored in somewhere and if it is an additional cost like I would just rather plan for it initi like now so that we account for it just so we communicate well with the township folks and the surrounding potential if there's well interference possibilities you know where that new well is going to go. So it's a bit of a new duck. Um it's not in our proposal. We certainly have people that can do that kind of thing, but you also have people here that might I don't know where it fits, but right, we need to fit it in somewhere. So, what I'm thinking we'll do, we're meeting, we have our engineering meeting coming up Tuesday. I'll put it on the agenda and we can talk with staff about how we might and what we might do because there's really nothing going to be visible. Um, and I don't expect any pumping oddities or anything from this. um they will be developing that new well, but that's typically only a few days. So, I don't know that we'll have any interference impacts, but we'll talk about what we might what makes sense um to be good neighbors. No surprises. Yeah. Any other questions? I think this would be a great time to get a tour set up for Newcastle, but it's an excuse for me to get to go back and check it out again. So, maybe it's a remarkable place. It's so fun. Yeah. So cool. You can sign me up. So, do we need uh Try to scroll through the memo. Yeah. I'll second it. I Thank you. Doesn't help it. So the reason this is not under consent is the same reason it was last year when we approved it. So normally if you have a vendor who is um operating they are a licensed business they carry normally carry liability insurance etc etc. In this particular instance, they are this is not an actual business entity. It's individuals who are basically renting out equipment. So there is some additional risk exposure to the city. However, as the packet indicated, the League of Minnesota cities indicated that we have liability insurance. And even though they're not a normal business entity, they're also um provide and have provided copies of their or will need to provide copy of their liability insurance. So the reason we're just putting it there is just making the council aware that if you do approve this, there is the potential for some additional exposure. Motion to approve DNS pedal tractor pull. Second. All in favor? Hi. Hi. Is that a kids only or the adult version? Ask asking for a friend. Although that might be really interesting. Mr. Mayor, you're good for your back. That's what I did. All right. Um, reports, administration, nothing. public works. Um, not much, but I want to touch base on the mailboxes that they brought up. I was going to ask you to So, mailboxes, the city doesn't install them. We don't have anything to do with mailboxes unless we hit them. They were reinstalled after the project. Are they in the same spot they were before? Okay. So, we in the alley a little more. Okay. Alleyway. Okay. So, they're they're in the alleyway. They have been for as long as I can remember. As far as I know, the city has never installed them. Homeowners typically find a place to put them and they put them in on their own. So, we we don't move mailboxes. We don't put them in. If we hit them when we're plowing, we'll fix them. Other than that, we don't have anything to do with them. So, could I add a comment? I was going to touch on it in my report too if we want to wait for that. I have some thoughts how to approach this on for I live right next to Marty here or my house is right next to Marty. Anyway, the driveway a new person has Can you come up to the podium? Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Uh I we live Marty and I live side by side on the same block. And anyway, since this here all has happened, one of the houses across the street has gotten sold right now. And they have a temporary mailbox which encross in closer into my driveway as of a few days ago. So I I assume the mailbox will be and there's really no room for a snow removal and so forth in my driveway. And if you go the opposite way, 3/4 of the alleyway is already closed up due to mailboxes. And years back, one of the old neighbors, he had to have an ambulance remove him from his house due to health. And he had to use the alleyway to to do that to accomplish that cuz his his steps in front of his house were too steep to go up and down to the gurnie and so forth. So So we talked about this here different times. Uh the mailboxes from my understanding when they all got taken down they were possibly going to be moved to a different location. I had talked to the post office in Elco also about this year and he said it don't make me any difference at all where the mailboxes go. So this has kind of been ongoing now since they've been put back up. They're spaced out wider than what they were before. So they go all the way from my driveway all the way 3/4 across the alleyway. And the only way you can come up and down that alleyway, you have to turn across and move over and drive in Marty's drive private driveway. And he's showing cracks in his asphalt due to that traffic. There ain't a lot of traffic there, of course, but some from time to time people do use the alleyway. Do you have any other questions? You have some possibilities of moving it on your own based on what Cory saying it ain't just it's it's I'm not familiar with its own I don't have anything to reference I don't know what seven eight mailboxes possibly it just keeps growing is what it does it started out one mailbox and now it keeps growing and growing the area looks like about 10 mailboxes now it could be I don't know the numbers yeah like I said we don't we don't put them in it they're and it's a very gray area because the post office doesn't tell you where you can put them either. They don't I mean they have to be in a certain area. They have to be a certain height and they I don't think the post it's a very gray area but the residents are the ones who kind of I would say suffer from it a little bit because um they have to go somewhere. I I don't care if they're moved out of the alley, but I don't we didn't put them there. So we just reinstall all I owned the house there. I'm third generation with that house. So the house has been in the family for many years. And normally those issues are between I could give you a brief what I plan to do and what I promised Charlie earlier today u if that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. So um first of all as far as the project uh the reconstruction project Charlie's absolutely right. He brought this up very early uh seeing this problem and and we did take a look at the idea of um some sort of a gang or modernizing like we have in new developments where they have those mounted. Uh but that quickly became a problem. Uh who pays for them? Who maintains them? Does the city want to get into the mailbox business? Where do they go? How many do we need? That type of thing. Uh because of those complications and the lack of bandwidth to go through a mailbox decision process, we decided for this project, we're going to put things back where they were and if there's still a mailbox issue later, we'll take it up again. Um so that's what we did. Now we can quibble. We may have missed the mark on the spacing or whatever. Basically, we had the contractor take them out and put them back up and they uh made a different mounting system. they're a little wider and maybe closer to the driveways. Um, that's all true as well. Um, and certainly the alley is blocked. What I'd like to do is put this on our next um, engineering meeting agenda to talk over with staff. I think there's some broader implications that we haven't thought about, and that might be um, what do we really want those alleys um, to be maybe not improved, but should they be accessible? Does this lead to some new policies that we might want to think? And I I I'm not advocating up or down anything, but I think there's some unintended consequences that can happen by just going and jerking them out and putting them somewhere else besides it not being even our our issue. But we can have a part in in resolving it. And Josh and I are looking at the street view right now. So where would where would you if you had your brothers, where would you want it moved to? inside of your driveway. That's an old picture of before the street construction ever happened. Where would you move that to? If you if you had your D brothers, which where you want to move to? Well, you can see where my driveway is right now. There's a mailbox about 2 feet away from my driveway right now. My driveway is right there. That's 340 St. Mary's Street. Yeah, they're certainly closer than they were before. And the spacing the spacing of all the mailboxes got wider. So they encroach almost a full alleyway and that asphalt driveway that's Marty sireers. So consequently they come down the alley they turn onto Marty's asphalt driveway and they're cracking it up and and doing damage to it. Right. Who come down the alley? We don't know. Yeah. Was it was it during construction or No, there's I'm at work. I don't know who Yeah. I We don't come down there. There's a natural gas line running down that alley that accesses all the homes. I think the council can see that this leads to a lot of unintended things, you know, with traffic that's going around it. Uh just jerking out those mailboxes for say there's eight of them there. That's eight different property owners we need to notify and work with. and we can't just go put it a block away and not have someone else angry. So, um we we have promised to take it up at staff and see if we can come up with a solution. Uh and maybe a broader policy if that's indicated so we don't have this happen again. I'd like to talk with staff about your alleys, whether they should be open and and why. Um, there's some very compelling arguments Charlie made on the phone and tonight and and Marty as well. So, I think it deserves discussion, but I don't think this is the place to get it sorted out. Can I just ask a dumb question? So, I've driven down William Street a while ago to look at this because Marty had brought it to my attention. Whose houses are all these mailboxes for? Exactly. Mostly all on St. Mary Street, I think. I'm not sure. So why are they not on located on St. Mary Street? Why are they on your street? So there there's mailboxes on St. Joseph that are people who live on Main Street. So it it's where the boxes in front of their house. See, like I said, that's where that's where it falls. Yeah, that's where it falls. We're going down a rabbit hole. We'll let these guys do their work. The part that just a little additional A couple things that need to be understood I think by property owners even staff before we get into it. This is an unve it's clear that the access and there's no pieces of equipment that is occasional. The other point out is that it's an unimproved. It's a platted right away, but it's not an alley. It's not an improved and as such legally that area gets to be treated as private property by the adjacent property owners until such time. So there isn't a right of access for any of these property owners to get through here even though they might done it over the years and Charlie neighbors come through as well. So that's part of this as well. There isn't a burden on the city to provide for free access through there because there isn't any inherent right for that in that location. I'm not suggesting either that Charlie and Marty got neighbors and just through there. We still want to take a look at this issue, but we need to understand that this isn't a true ride, but it's not. If I could comment, Marty had told when we were talking tonight some years back, he said he received a letter from the city. He had his trailer sitting in that alleyway and the city had asked them to remove that trailer out of there. Yeah. You can use it as yards, but that, you know, and and the house you were just showing behind mine, that's where the ambulance accessed the alley to go up and pick up a patient out of that house here some years back. And they can do that. Yes. Right. The only problem is they have to enter off Marty's driveway. They cannot enter onto the street. Right. And how many times there? But people do use that alley. That's the problem. Yeah. But I'm just pointing out that it's not an alley. It's right just like the boulevard in front of a house. It can be used as yard. But it's not a street. It's not an alley. There isn't there isn't an inherent right for those property owners to use it as a street to get access to their properties. He don't really approve of the tracks going across onto his driveway all the time. So what they do curbing now it's at the end of driveway they have they come up on sides. So you got the mailbox here, the curb here. There's probably that much room that you can drive through besides driving in my driveway. So, properties are access when you look at an aerial photo, there's only one property that needs to there's it may not even be a property owner. It could be somebody that's just trying to scoop through there. Who would ever think to do that? I don't know. There's I know that there's I would say during construction this summer, I'm sure that somebody went through there because it was I mean with the rain we had I'm sure that some I drove through there once during the whole I've I've never seen anybody back there. Not saying I'm not saying they don't, but during construction this summer, I could see where somebody would have gone through there. Outside of that, I don't know why anybody would drive because it it looks like you're driving over somebody's yard. Right. Right. I I I was just throwing it out there. I was being devil's advocate and just saying, you know, maybe somebody just saw the driveway on Webster and thought, "Hey, let's just go right through here." I don't know. I think we have a pretty good understanding of this particular problem and we'll We'll You work on it. Yep. Please. People do drive through that alleyway different many times. I I have had I have had offers on my house over there from people sitting in the alleyway and taking pictures of the house. Yeah. So, people do drive through an alleyway. Charlie. All right. I believe it. I'm just I've expressed it myself because this has been ongoing for a long time. Right. Okay. All right. Anything else for public works? Is there is there a way to figure out why the mailboxes for St. Mary Street are on William Street? In a way, it's irrelevant. They're there now. We we got to see if we can come up with a solution that doesn't involve us too much. But um um I think there's broader issues that I want to make sure the staff thinks about there. There I mean mailboxes between and like I said it falls on the resident and the post office is going to tell you one thing that they they will let you know where they can be. Um, we obviously allow them in the rightway and they have to be a certain standard, but we don't I mean these new gang mailboxes are going in, they're not ours. We don't own them. We don't maintain them. Like I said, the only thing we do with mailboxes is make sure that if we hit them, we fix them. That's that's all at least public works has to do with mailboxes. We don't move them. We don't raise them. We don't do anything. So, they were put in there privately by whoever they are. Um, we have a lot even out down St. Joseph, there's eight of them down there and they're all kind of hodgeg I mean and we had an issue this winter with them because one was too low and Postmaster said they wouldn't deliver it. So then we get the call and we had nothing to do with it. So I mean I understand the frustration but I it's not something we touched. There's a gap that needs to be worked on. The issue is is between property owners. Property owners don't always want to work with each other. So we get we become the person to solve the problem. I was just trying to understand. Yeah. Are any of those mailboxes your guys'? No. No. Okay. Yeah. Your yours is one of them. Mine is one of them. Okay. In fact, when these original mailboxes appeared on on the property there on 340 St. Mary Street, no one made me aware of it. They just appeared. And when one was there, suddenly there was two of them. And then there's three of them. And there's and I don't know what there is now. I don't know the number, but it just keeps growing and growing. And like I said, now there's another temporary one there sitting in a pale of sand and crouched way over the driveway, which it makes pretty miserable. move so it just keeps growing. And if it would be one or two mailboxes, you wouldn't even see me here. And if I drive around town, this is the only driveway in the whole old part of town the mailboxes have encroached that close to driveways. It's the only one in the old part of town. Yes, it'll be brilliant. We're going to blend the mailboxes. All right, Chief Engineering, I'm done. Okay. community development. Um I only have one update. Our staff had a conference call with Met Council um this morning to review uh 2050 comprehensive plan try to understand what their time frames were with adoption of their policy plan statements and release of the um planning handbook which gives us the direction to start our plan. So just looking forward, we'll be returning to the council in the foreseeable future, talking through those timelines and starting to plant seeds with the council what that might mean from a resource standpoint. Um it will have a budget impact over the next over the next several years as we work towards comp plan adoption. Do we have any concerns with their 2050 vision or whatever they're calling it of, you know, number of units per acre and all that stuff? I mean, does any big impact on us? Are we far enough out we're not in that area of the Yeah. suburbs that are getting fired up about it? Yeah, our density will not change from the uh 2040 plan uh based on our community designation as a rural center won't be changing. So, yeah, that's not the primary concern. three the ones that are getting upset about the three and the four or whatever density. Yeah. Yeah. No, our our concerns with the plan are multiple but not that specifically. Yeah. and we really have to wait until the um so once the policy plan is adopted by the M council uh then their staff goes back and they prepare this handbook for cities and they put the minimum requirements in this handbook and that's really what we're waiting to see and that u based on our meetings today that won't be available until the fall um likely fall yeah likely September or to October of uh 2025. So So our work will really start kicking off in 2026. Um so as we start coming into the budget cycle for 2026, we'll need to start thinking about what work we have to do in 2026, 2027, 2028, and and 2029 as we move towards um having to update our comprehensive plan. That was one of the purposes for the call is not only to understand it but to see if we could spread that work over multiple years so it's not such a big impact financial impact in one year. That's all I have. All right. Parks. Anything from parks? CC. Oh, do you want me to give it or do you want to give it? I can. It doesn't matter. I can do it. Um we elected officers at our meeting on Tuesday. Um confirmed event dates and for the year um discussed budget and talked egg hunt plans. Um the minutes will be in the next packet for the next meeting scale. So trying to think if we've had if the meeting was had a meeting after Yeah. Right. No, after our last council meeting. Yeah, it was the morning after our last council meeting. You can tell how hard-hitting it was. Um Oh, uh part of the meeting we actually had Brandon was there. It was a discussion kind of an update on cannabis and cannabis zoning and regulations. To be blunt, it's nothing that you guys aren't already familiar with based on past um uh discussions. Uh a lot of it was a what did you do? What did you do? Um type of discussion with re with regards to it. We also had an update um from the Bell Plane um school district um as the host for that particular meeting. I think that's it. All right. I35 executive committee. Sorry. Um, no executive committee meeting since the last um, council meeting and no service delivery meeting since the last council meeting. No, we haven't. We had one the day of our last meeting. So, it'll be coming up here in a couple weeks. Um, taking on to that I35 at the last city council meeting. Uh Josh S Josh suggested that somebody from staff insert themselves into the I35 solutions technical advisory committee and uh I'm now on that committee. So I don't sounds like they don't have a regular schedule. They just meet as needed. But um just what was that called? T technical advisory. I don't know what they It's TAC. I don't know what that stands for. All right. Any other discussion by council? The only thing to plant a seed of is, you know, do we have any plans for the bonding bill and I35 county 2? Any study, anything that we need to get done that Cosnic or Duckworth could carry? Um, I think we'd still be looking for the previous bills where it was looking for design dollars. I believe the total dollar amount was in 4 and a.5 million. I mean, so I don't know if that's something that you guys want to float over to Cosic and Duckworth or something that you want us to reach out and start working on behalf of. It doesn't hurt to reinforce. I was unable to connect with the senator and the representative prior to the session. And I'm a little bit hesitant to bug them right at this particular moment in time, but they're fully aware of it. And um it's my understanding that uh uh Representative Cosnik has indicated he intends to continue to try and move that and Senator Duckworth will do the same on his side of the house. So So I'm not hearing any resistance to continuing to push and nudge because I mean there's been 750 Senate bills dropped already and of those a good half of them are bonding bill asks and I just keep watching to see if ours is going to trickle in there. So, I'm going to if it's okay, follow up with them to see where it's at and push it. Absolutely. All right. Anything else? Motion for adjournment. So moved. All in favor? I'll second it. Second. All in favor? Hi Journ.