[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] 2021 bayport city council meeting uh please join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag with liberty and justice thank you adam mary's the meeting being recorded usually it says rec up on the top and i just don't see it jordan are we i i'm not recording it locally um okay it is okay just want to make sure gotcha jordan had given me the green light so okay well okay so that takes us from to roll call um actually madame mayor uh first okay so we have an official fifth uh council member um so with that please repeat after me raise your right hand um first of all gotcha so we're gonna have to do it one at a time to make it sorry about that hi susan st norris bye susan synors solemnly swear you solemnly swear i will support the constitution that i will support the constitution of the united states of the united states and of the state of minnesota and of the state of minnesota faithfully discharged the duties faithfully discharged the duties of the office of mayor of the office of mayor of the city of bayport of the city of bayport the county of washington the county of washington and state of minnesota from the state of minnesota the best of my judgment and ability to the best of my judgment and ability to help me god so help me god congratulations madam mayor 2021 thank you and that will take us to swearing in of the next member is connie carlson so connie if you'd raise your right hand and repeat after me i gotta get in the picture hi connie carlson hi connie carlson do you solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and of the state of minnesota end of the state of minnesota and faithfully discharge the duties and faithfully discharge the duties of the office of the office of council member of the city of bayport of council member of the city of bayport in the county of washington in the county of washington state of minnesota the state of minnesota to the best of my judgment and ability to the best minute to the best of my judgment and ability so help me god so help me god congratulations [Music] and ethan if you would please raise your right hand and repeat after me i ethan gilmore ethan gilmore do you solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and of the state of minnesota and of the state of minnesota and faithfully discharge the duties and faithfully discharge my duties of the office of council member of the office of council member of the city of bayport of the city of mayport in the county of washington in the county of washington and state of minnesota and the state of minnesota to the best of my judgment and ability to the best of my judgment and ability so help me god so help me god congratulations thank you excellent so now adam please call our official role madam mayor mayor senors here councilmember carlson connie please come after me here bounce remember carlson i'm sorry councilmember hanson here cross member doll here and council member gilmar here all present that takes us to the approval of tonight's agenda does anyone have any uh additions or questions adam um thank you madam mayor uh we did receive tonight on the regular agenda we had uh the appointments uh the city appointments for 2021. uh one of those positions that the city has is the resident liaison for the cable commission um and just this afternoon at about four o'clock today we received an inquiry and interest in that position um so that was something that i was going to recommend to the council because we're doing the recommendations um that that would be uh possible that that would be made to have that done um i don't know if it was somebody who council member hanson who had been the chair um if she was familiar with the individual let me just grab his name again um the the individual is andrew cading andrew keating um i don't know if the council is amenable to that um without getting into the discussion of the actual appointment at this time that would be staff's recommendation uh to add that individual have a lot of interest do they um have to fill out a form an application of some sort um we have not had a application for that okay historically um we've not had a lot of interest in that specific position as you know yeah um the uh the the individual just to give uh some background uh he's the technology director at periscope which is a creative and marketing services agency headquartered in minneapolis um he's also an inspiration resident um 1002 inspiration um so if the council is amenable to adding that to the agenda on as part of the appointments that would be staff's recommendation do we need to make a motion to that effect that would be part of the amending the agenda at this point and then when that item comes up to adopt that amendment to that item okay i'll make a motion that we add that rep for the cable commission to our agenda tonight thank you michelle is there a second i'll second it thank you connie adam is there any other um any other changes or additions to the agenda okay if not then would someone like to uh adam do we need to make a motion again or to for the full agenda no that i i was going to take that as the adoption of the well were there any other changes to the agenda okay if not we can go with um michelle and connie and then do roll call uh council member carlson aye brown server hanson hi councilmember dahl hi councilmember gilmore merry christmas hi okay that takes us to our proclamations commendations petitions and announcements and the only item that we have as our december recycling award recipient is jim kinberg at 332 4th street north and jim will be awarded for his recycling efforts with funding made possible with a grant from washington county so thank you very much mr kinberg for your recycling efforts with that we can move on to our open forum where we set aside uh 15 minutes to talk about anything that is not on tonight's agenda so if anyone would like to approach the council please state your name and address for the record and adam will just see if there's anyone listening that would like to address us at this time note if there is a topic on tonight's agenda we will open it up for you to make uh comments at that time i'm not receiving any indication it looks like mike willenbring might be owner of manger looks like his audio's connecting yeah he's here too for the agenda item i would think okay all right well if somebody does pop on we can make some accommodations all right that takes us to our consent agenda and we'll consider a resolution adopting items one through six uh the december 7th 2020 city council regular meeting minutes the december payables and receipts the december building plumbing mechanical and zoning permits report a commercial refuse hauling license for 2021 appointment whoops appointment of adriana tamale smith to the library board for a three-year term from january 1st 2021 through december 31st 2023 an application for optional 2 am liquor license from not just a bar located at 193 3rd street north any discussion questions comments or additions to the consent agenda if not um would someone like to make a motion i'll make a motion oh go ahead john you're fine connie usually connie's all right i'll make a motion approving the consent agenda items one through six thank you connie is there a second i'll second it thank you john adam roll call please ma'am councilmember carlson hi councilmember dahl hi councilmember hanson aye councilmember gilmore hey mayor synors aye aye zong we do not have a public hearing this evening so that will take us to our unfinished business where we have one item and that's to discuss a traffic analysis report prepared by our city engineer consulting firm sch as a follow-up to the workshop that we had just prior to this council meeting so adam and john uh thank you madam mayor uh we just the city council just had a workshop for the public's information on addressing some of the traffic issues that we've had within the city residential streets one of the inquiries was to potentially reduce the speed limit from 30 which is the state standard to either 20 or 25 the result of the initial inquiry led us the city to hire seh engineering consultants to do a cursory study um an analysis of what those questions that we've identified how to answer those the uh the the workshop entailed uh doing a quick review of our options um the the council did not take action at that workshop but did identify uh kind of three recommendations if you will on uh some of the various options which one option was reducing the speed one option was adding additional signage either stop or yield signs and one option was installing speed humps or speed speed bumps the sch did not advise any additional signs at this time nor did they advise any additional uh speed bumps or installation of speed bumps this time um the staff is open to uh addressing the speed now two things uh were involved in the speed the state allows under state statute that was recently revised in 2019 state statute allows the city to reduce the residential street speed limit from 30 to 25 without doing any further in-depth study but if it wants to go to 20 on any residential streets there does need to be a full-on traffic study so i'm going to turn it over to john perroti right now city engineer to kind of give a any other additional information regarding that then i would have the council or ask the council if they want to have some further discussion uh come up with some further direction for either staff or the engineers or take action on any of the options that were presented at the workshop this evening with that john thank you adam uh thank you mayor so yeah uh i think adam did a nice job of summarizing um what we discussed uh mayor at your uh if it's your preference uh chad jorgensen did join us again here for the for the meeting this evening um and since he's on we'd be happy to run through that powerpoint again um if you'd like us to do that but what i would like to say just add to what adam had uh has already said is that if the council would like to move forward with um with something this evening the direction that we would need to receive for instance might be a request to prepare a uh a scope and fee estimate for the speed study um at the council workshop it sounded to me that there was an appetite for uh for that and if that is indeed the case we would bring a a detailed proposal back to your february meeting for approval we did discuss sort of a range of costs based on another community in the saint croix valley but as i had mentioned during the workshop the two committees do have some differences so we do want to make sure that we're providing you with an accurate estimate of what the fee would be before you give us direction to move forward so that would be one um possible action or request you could make this evening and um and in addition there was some discussion around intersection signage and maybe one or two um specific intersections came up but there wasn't really a direction given uh although we weren't really looking for it in a in the workshop but if you haven't you'd like us to direct us to to look at specifically that would be an opportunity for you to do that we can also get that direction from the council at any meeting in the future as well but if you have some particular intersections in mind that you'd like us to take a look at then you could direct us to do so at this meeting so with that mayor um would you like chad to go through that slideshow for the benefit of the public or have we covered the workshop in enough detail for for this purpose um thoughts from the council connie was not present um was um you know so if i think that you've summarized well what you've um what you've recommended but maybe chad just a quick look i mean obviously if steve if the speed bumps are not something that you're recommending at all it probably is worth just a real quick overview of when stop signs and yield signs are recommended and not and which cities we are talking about since there are some that are excluded from our control um and then also you know how and when speed reductions can take place i think that that would be helpful for the public okay very good and then if i could just before chad starts talking i just want to make sure that we pause toward the end there uh there might have been a handoff problem when we finished at your workshop did we all jumped off at the same time so we're in good shape and uh and we're able to uh to rejoin quickly okay we just don't want to do that during your council meeting so we'll be careful yeah chad wait make sure that we have that transition back please i'm not turning over control anymore sorry chad but i can share the presentation that you gave me super good all right chad we need you to unmute yourself so sch reviewed a wide variety of traffic issues that were identified by council at a previous meeting if you go to the next slide adam um we looked at different types of intersection control yield versus two-way stock control versus always stop control we had looked at the use of stop signs to control vehicle speeds on roadways as well as the use of stop signs to help deter motorists cut through on city streets we looked at the new speed limit laws that were passed by governor walls in 2019 and uh what the options are for the city in terms of lowering speed limits and then we also looked at speed bumps humps and tables and the pros and cons of each of those alternatives uh two-way stock control uh it's typically installed when you have a major street and a minor street uh with the major street having uh average daily traffic volume exceeding six thousand vehicles per day uh typically you see two-way stop control at locations where you have higher speed traffic um restricted views on the side streets uh or a crash problem indicating that you need to increase control from either no control yield control and convert that to a stop controlled intersection always stop control is a little bit more difficult to have installed it typically involves collecting data such as traffic counts at the intersection doing a site review and it's typically used where the volume on the intersection roadway intersecting roadways is approximately equal and as part of a larger study you also need to compare the traffic volumes at the intersection to warrants or thresholds that are outlined in the minnesota manual and uniform traffic control devices uh to see if they are high enough to warrant the installation of an always stop control at a certain intersection we looked at the use of stop signs on a system-wide basis this can be done through a technique called basket weaving which is essentially install installing stop signs every other block some of the advantages with basket weaving it may reduce crashes it can help deter cut through traffic and encourage vehicles to use more of the mainline roadways some of the bigger disadvantages with the basque weaving approach is uh if it's a low volume intersection you may have motorists ignoring stop signs and roadways that have that do not have any stop signs today and you go and add stop signs to these roadways the emergency response times may increase stop signs should not be used for speed control there's been many studies done that indicate that installing stop signs is not a way to control speed on city streets uh yield controls typically for low volume intersections one of the big things with yield control is making sure that you have adequate site distance for so vehicles can see if there is another vehicle approaching the intersection uh typically has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis uh and then we looked at the 2019 legislation passed by governor walls there was two different state statutes that were passed one statute allows cities to lower the speed limit to 25 miles an hour on all residential roadways that are under the city's jurisdiction a key point being there they have to be considered a residential roadway and cannot serve you know cannot be primarily industrial such as i believe it's main avenue or street um the second state statute would allow cities to modify the speed to something other than 25 however that a study needs to be completed which takes into consideration national guidance intersection crash history and also involves some um public outreach and communication that needs to happen there sch reviewed speed humps bumps and tables uh speed pumps are typically three to four inches in height they are 12 feet long which is able to accommodate the full length of a vehicle which allows a lot less impact to a vehicle that's transversing over the speed hump speed tables are essentially the same thing as a speed hump they're typically installed at crosswalk locations they are 22 feet long that accounts for some of the tapers that are needed to ramp up to the crosswalk location um and then speed bumps are what you see in a surface parking lot they're typically three to six inches in height two feet long and they're definitely have a higher impact to vehicles and street operations as part of this study we also looked at some different ways to reach out to the public this could include city newsletter articles press releases um flyers distributed with water bills email blast etc there's a long list there and that was a high level overview of what we had looked at thank you very much chad so um with that uh i guess adam do you want to summarize or matt do you want to summarize the um general conversation of the council from the workshop uh sure one of the uh thank you madam mayor um the the the council asked uh some questions about possibly doing this study um that was something that i think the you know we can we can find as far as financial issue we can we can find the money um to you know absorb it within our engineering budget um these are the types of issues that we typically you know budget for we we expect that there's going to be some engineering costs um that are unidentified in the upcoming year uh we do that every year so that that isn't as much of a concern uh for staff we will have to you know want to squeeze it in somewhere um the the additional cost though as far as the the signage um that's always going to be you know that's uh we had kind of the the initial estimate was about 40 to 50 signs uh for the speed limit signs and they're about a hundred dollars a piece so we're looking at you know five thousand dollars um for the sign uh installation that those that comes installed correct matt that was the it was 100 installed um yeah that's about what i had for a recent installation of about yesterday um 10 signs or something like that so that's obviously only an estimate um but that's about what i paid for a couple years ago yeah for the public's information it was uh five to eight thousand dollars was the again rough estimate that sdh had provided for the additional study the speed study that we would be required to do um if we were to large 20. there the the consensus if i if i'm relating it correctly uh 25 miles an hour wouldn't really i don't want to say it wouldn't have the impact that is necessarily desired uh to impact the speed um so that wasn't something that seemed like the council was entirely excited about pursuing if it was only 25 miles an hour 20 miles an hour obviously would be a much uh stricter speed limit imposed but it does come with those additional uh steps and costs um my i guess one of my only questions uh that i had based on the workshop discussion and it's for sch is um what would i think some of the council started to ask or we got around asking about some of it um with the the 25 mile an hour uh for the entire speed entire city um that's something that staff including the police chief felt strongly about to keep it consistent and not have certain streets 25 some certain streets 30 um but if we're doing some at 20 i don't know if that's is that something that we have to do all this is for sdh again we have to do all 20 or can we do some do we leave them at 25 or 30 um can it be mixed or is it again all or nothing it can be mixed adam okay thank you chad um yep so that was that so the council was discussing whether or not to do uh higher sch to do the additional study to obtain the 20 mile an hour limit one of my other questions for because there's other criteria that has to be looked at and again with this study is there a is there a chance that we still wouldn't qualify for below 25 if we if the council wants to if the city wants to pursue the 20 miles an hour limit and these other additional studies are done is it still are we still confined or restricted to only being able to do 25 if the study doesn't warrant it or is that just information that the council can then still decide to go lower even though technically you know based on the engineering you shouldn't necessarily qualify for that uh the engineering is largely based on national guidance which states that slower speeds are safer for non-motorized users so the city would be able to go down to 20 or 25 the study is going to support that the the the council didn't really discuss the um the speed humps that's really a non non recommendation at this point um all around if my understanding is correct uh there were several intersections or several near intersections that the council had inquired about uh looking at further um fifth street being one of them around first have for second half there's some history of the crash data and one other item that counselor hanson and the rest of the council had asked about was more additional city speed limit data and what other options were to acquire some further speed data some of the speed data we had that the police was able to obtain or obtained was on both highway 95 and county road five um so those those being not city jurisdiction roadways we don't have the ability to control those we talked about other ways to better get or better acquire some of that speed data um madam mayor members of council i don't believe we had concluded um or finished the the previous discussion was there anything else that the council would like to know from staff well the one i had one question john you had mentioned getting if the studies done to have data through uh an entire summer now that highway 95 is you know completed and that that may impact the amount of traffic that we're seeing on several of the side streets so if you conducted this study um you know would you then recommend waiting maybe till fiscal year 2022 to implement the plan um so that we had all of the information that we really needed or you know this is an unbudgeted item um it's it's an import safety is obviously a very important topic to the city and all of its residents and businesses but it is it was not factored into our 2021 budget and it will eat into our engineering set-aside which will work but it means that other things that we may have needed to call upon for engineering services will be impacted and we uh the overall cost to actually implement new signs would be an additional 5 000. so i just want to make sure um that we're being very cognizant of the budget and when these expenses would hit if the council had um you know wanted to move forward so could you comment on that yeah mayor i um i thought at the workshop i was hearing a suggestion um or you know if i could use that word suggestion by one of council members that that implementation would likely happen in 2022 and that possibly the study would be completed in 2021 and if i got that right i appreciate folks speaking up if i got it wrong if you'd speak up and correct me that'd be great but uh if that is correct then it's then to me it does feel um like you have an opportunity to respond to a summer where you know where traffic levels tend to be higher and we can see really what the summer is like and so that's i had made a comment sort of to that effect um in the last meeting you know as engineers generally we don't we don't like to make traffic control if you want to call it decisions or recommendations on the heels of a major project like you had this last year and so um that's not to say that if the council disagrees with that that you couldn't direct otherwise and we would certainly follow your you know your direction but it would be my preference to see a summer or at least a part of the summer's worth of data before we complete the study now the council finds that there is money available to do implementation in 2021 then we would want to move that study schedule up and is there do you recommend outreach to the public prior to actual implementation there's a lot of outreach if the council decides to make a change but there doesn't seem like a lot of opportunity for people to weigh in and and we have we have a lot of um we have a lot of thoughts and and individual opinions uh that we have speeding problems and and safety issues um i'm not sure that we have all of the data that supports that so um we're just five council members is there a way to get more input or allow the input you know feedback from the community at large and chief eastman's not here either tonight we did have a representative from the police department but and al alan we didn't have a chance to hear from you regarding additional signage or anything in impact to emergency responses so just wanting to make sure that we allow full opportunities for people to at least be knowledgeable and aware so i agree with your mayor and i think there was a question early on in what you were just saying and i do think that the public involvement or public input into this process is is very important and how we do that now in a you know covet and post covet if you will environment changes a little uh i'll give you an example from pre-covered of something that might work uh you know an open house or a series of them um where people come in and can use even something as simple as sticky notes or sharpie markers or those sorts of things to provide input on a map and where we are you know they're hosting that would be a tool that we would use in the past we've shifted towards web-based methods now of collecting that sort of data and so we can we can include that sort of thing in uh the proposal if if that's what uh if that's what council would like to do we could also brainstorm with staff between now and when that proposal is finalized and see what ideas they might have for collecting that that input but i do think it's important because you're right it's good to get a nice cross-section of you know feedback from at least those who are interested enough to provide the feedback to hear where their concerns are as well we heard of some really good examples during the workshop and there may be others that should be added to that list or some people may feel very passionately in another direction so it's just good to be able to hear from everyone counsel any other comments or things that you want to bring out or make sure that connie has visibility into of us yeah so susan i did share my um thoughts with adam prior too too i was um definitely against the bumps and the humps and that and then he answered my question when i one of them was going to be if we do the feasibility or the study um can we still change it if we don't agree i mean well anyway he answered it that we could still change it down to 20. so those are a couple of my concerns and i guess i also um thought it was important that we um let the citizens know somehow or get their input so those are my concerns or my questions prior to the meeting but i did talk to adam and about some of them so great john ethan michelle anything else that you want to add or make sure that the public knows since we're on we're being recorded for our meeting did we mention oh go ahead john no just that you know this is something a lot of the residents have brought up and we take this stuff seriously and that's why we're talking about this stuff and and these are the hoops we have to go through so everybody just needs to be patient and hang in there through the process i can't remember yeah i can't remember if during this meeting or it was just in the last one that we talk about the relatively low level of accidents that we do have within on our city streets at intersections because i think that's some positive news i mean there may be some speeding that's that's going on and there are a few accidents and accidents are going to happen but i feel like we have a pretty a good handle on that which is good about only about 30 of the 105 accidents that happened in the last five years were actually on the city streets versus intersections with the highway or the county roads so um i think that's good news and it's actually you know so that is only about 30 some accidents and we have unfortunately had the a fatal accident or two in that time frame but um again those were on on not on city streets specifically so i feel like there's some good news there but i think there also could be some improvements if we could put a couple stop signs in here and there we could probably eliminate that at fifth street north and first avenue intersection is the one i'd like to look at specifically since there were three accidents on that corner in 2019 so very good ethan welcome to the council ethan oh thank you thank you um well it sounds like everybody seems to be on board that we definitely want to move forward with the uh uh study um i don't see a real reason to wait until after the summer i mean i understand we want all the data i would say the the one main thing to wait is to get public opinion on it a little bit more um but i don't see i just don't see waiting that long i mean i think uh you know anyone i talk to in the city you know as far as residents go they all seem to be for it um i haven't heard anybody say oh why you know 30 miles an hour seems fast for everybody and that's what everybody i hear talking about so um you know if if we need to wait till the end of the summer we certainly can but it doesn't sound like the other uh council council members even want to so i'm not sure mayor can i ask a question a response text i i fear i feel like maybe i'm misreading something um if if you don't have the money to implement until 2022 what is the council's um hesitation to taking the time to look at the summer traffic conditions i i might be missing something because what i'm suggesting is to look at the traffic through the summer which is different we know it's different than it is in the winter time and so to look at both you know the spring conditions and the summer conditions am i missing uh maybe there's a disconnect for me but that doesn't delay your implementation in 2022 and the only thing that's going to impact the public is your implementation in 2022. so if one of the councils maybe could council members could help enlighten me as to if i'm missing something there i guess i would need some comparison data so if we're going to wait till after this summer do we actually have data to compare last summer to this the current summer i mean i guess i don't know what the point is in waiting if there's nothing to really compare it to it it's not so much a compare because we didn't do an analysis in 2021 in 2020 it's it's it's to assess the new normal that's good that we won't see until 2021 but we've all lived here more than just one year so yeah i understand that yeah i understand i'm sorry i'm mayor i must be missing something i don't understand the rush but but but either way if the even if i don't understand the connection there um if it's council's desire to get it done quicker we'll we'll do it quicker i just don't get i don't get the rush if you're not going to implement until 2022. 2022 is for budget reasons right exactly we can come up with the money we'll do it in 2021 i see okay so there's a chance you'd do it in 2021 then you'd put the signs up so what i what i want to be clear about is i can do a better job for you if you give me the summer and so that's what i need to make clear that doesn't mean i won't do the job for you sooner if that's more what's most important so i i get that i think i get it now any other anyone feel strongly about waiting until after the summer the the point that john i think is trying to make is essentially if we we wanted to look more at speeds on the side streets you wanted more information from pd for that and that's not something that we would do in the winter and get a legitimate uh description of the speeds that they're actually going obviously people slow down in the winter um so if we want to get a legitimate description of speeds it's likely that we wouldn't start that until may or sometime like that uh that's one of the major points that yeah i guess oh sorry quite kind i don't really see i mean i think it's important and i want to see us moving forward but i would rather get a a cleaner view of what we've got going and you know you can't compare last summer because there was construction going on and so i guess i don't have a problem getting started in may with something like this so that we can get a better read if if john if that would mean john doing a better job um i'm okay with that as long as we start moving forward on the whole process i guess for me um and and i spoke up about it in the workshop i don't i don't see that it's going to create to do what we need to do to get the speed limits lowered sooner than later i i don't see that creating a problem so i i guess i don't understand why why we wouldn't do it it's certainly not going to make the traffic situation town worse it can only improve it by lowering the speed limit so i i guess i don't i don't know what we're going to glean that's and i with all due respect and everything like that i don't just whatever we can do to slow people down let's do it and let's move on with our lives is how i i how i feel about it i understand there's more complications to it it's not my area of expertise in any way shape or form but um from you know looking around and driving around in town people need to slow down and and most residents of vapor are going to agree with that and certainly the ones i interact with and with that being said john i when i talked to adam today i said you know i think part of our goal should be to educate people or to inform people you know not only that this is what we're going to be doing but that this is a problem and they need to think about slowing down and not whipping through the intersections and stuff so i think education has to be a part of it too or just yes right and it is you'll know and i don't know if you had a chance to look through that memo i know you've been busy today but that's a part of that memo that was presented in your packets tonight is the public outreach and the education and i did i did yeah that's pretty important i mean it's very important so my two sense is that i think we need to lower the speed limit and i think it needs to go to 20. and if in order to do that we need to do this study it's a strictly a formality for me to get through this study so that we can get to where we want to go with the speed limit changes so whether we wait till after the summer or not i feel like it's better to just do it like john dahl said let's just make this happen if we can do it in the budget um and regarding the the communication um minneapolis and st paul had a really good example of some signs that they were yeah yard signs that they were giving to residents that said 20 is plenty to kind of start advertising that so we can think of like some marketing ideas to get the word spread too when we get to that point but anyways so i i believe in the study i believe that we should have the data to support um i don't think the data from winter is going to be as representative as in the summer i would prefer that we have the best job that we could have from sch because it isn't it's an unbudgeted investment that we're looking at now and the budget this year has to be mine we have to be incredibly mindful so my preference would be to just start the study a little bit later and actually have the data to support it and to be able to communicate that to the community that we want to make this change instead of acting on talking to certain groups of people and not talking to the rest of the people or having the data to support it but that is i am one of five and i'm more than willing to have people bring forward emotion so well i think i think chad had said that the the study was i mean it's a foregone conclusion that we will 100 the data shows that slower speeds are reduced deaths and crashes is everybody having trouble i'm having breakup issues with people no i think it's yours anybody else i have michelle on ethan i can't have been breaking up on me i'm sorry no that's oh i can hear you from what you mean okay okay um so i guess yeah going back to the the discussion i mean chad had said he he said you know there's not a they're not going to come back with a recommendation and say no you should keep the speed limits at 30. he basically said that um so again i don't know why we want to wait i don't know who's i don't believe anybody in the workshop had said we should wait to implement this until 2022. i mean it seems like most people are on board and every resident i've ever talked to no one has ever said that's dumb you shouldn't lower the speed limit it's like no one's ever said that so i don't know i just don't know why we would wait i would i would start it now the only reason i said 2022 ethan was because of the budget issue if we couldn't afford to put the signs out in 2022 that we would could earn 2021 we could wait okay well it sounded like but otherwise i agree with what you said i just want to clarify that sure okay well then would someone like to make a motion or is there any just other further discussion okay then would someone like to make a motion i will make a motion that we move forward with the speed study in 2021 for the city of bayport does that cover our bases adam is that adequate um i think well i think i'd i'd like just some more direction uh from the camera should we first get a proposal from them i would say request a proposal from sch for the speed study okay yeah john can that be done uh by the february meeting yes okay so the council could then direct sch or take action on on the proposal um at the february meeting that's february okay then do we need the formal um if the council could direct uh sch to make a proposal for the speed study john do you want to just rephrase it sure um i'll make a motion to direct staff and sch to work together to uh get a surface street speed study um done uh for the february 2021 council meeting okay the proposal excellent thank you john in a second oh second okay thank you michelle so roll call adam uh council number doll aye councilmember hanson hi councilmember gilmore hi councilmember carlson hi mayor sooners hi excellent okay so that moves us on to new business and the first item is to consider approving a six-month extension for carryover accrued benefit time for city employees due to the coveted pandemic so adam would you please present uh thank you madam mayor this is an item that i brought to the council because we have several employees that due to the code pandemic and the restrictions on use of personal time that were both that resulted as as a result of the pandemic were going to be subject to losing a substantial amount of vacation that they were not able to take this year um what i was what i worked with uh was to make a proposal to the council to make an extension of six months for uh the use of that time to allow the employees to carry over uh more than they our personnel policy uh currently allows uh for the public's information our current personnel policy allows employees to carry over only what they accrue in a year um and we had some employees who [Music] didn't take almost any vacation this year um and so without forcing the employees they're not also able not to have that paid out some employees are able to have their over surplus or vacation time paid out um they're overtime similar to overtime not all employees are subject to that there were multiple public works employees uh myself um and a couple others uh so what i requested from the council is to have a six-month extension uh to be able to use some of that time um and that if if an employee would leave employment during that time uh they would not be able to get paid out that it would get reduced back to what their our policy allows them to accrue and uh at the end of the six-month extension it would go away if even if they weren't able to use it so it's essentially just six more months to be able to use some of that vacation time that they had earned but did not use this is something that the state of minnesota has done with all their public union employees and some other cities as well as some other uh several universities in the area uh colleges um so this is something that uh is being done um it's not uh out of the blue um but it's something that i as an administrator i'm requesting from the council to prove for the benefit of some of the employees because we do value their their time that they and their benefits that the city does afford them so happy to answer any questions from the council otherwise any questions from the council no did staff have to use vacation days if they had to quarantine or deal with covet in some way uh anything outside of the uh so the the city had granted two weeks under the uh the ffrca which was the federal legislation that the federal government provided um we have some currently that are supplementing that um the it only afforded two weeks or two thirds of uh the pay so they have to supplement that with a third some of the employees are doing that now that would be subject to that um so they were they were afforded two weeks and then depending on what their position is the federal legislation also afforded um i think uh well actually i'm sorry it was uh 80 hours up to 80 hours of uh for the law enforcement um but to your question uh yes there were the city did afford some uh some employees um some of that time that paid time off right when the pandemic initially hit um okay but they were they were on call uh they were just they were there were some hours that they weren't at the office or not at work yeah i think it's a nice gesture the only concern i have is that we have such a small staff and that if everyone's trying to now take all that vacation in the first half of this year if that's going to be a problem for you adam or sarah or whoever's going to have to cover yeah i mean but you're suggesting it so you must feel comfortable with it yeah and if the council wants to change it or deny it i'm it's i'm making the request this is i'm i'll i'm as i said i'm on the list i i think i took one vacation day um i did take a couple comp days i i'm able to earn comp um but i didn't i didn't take any vacation or i took one vacation day all year um well at an admin we're also down one full-time employee so that had an impact on top of govid um but there's some other employees as well um not just myself so could you ensure that there's we want to make sure that city hall stays open and functioning so um you're confident that there could be adequate coverage to cover that up time and are you also sure that if they're taking most of their 2020 in the first half of the year will they also be able to get back on track and leverage what they need to use up in 2021 because we don't want to have this carry over we've had other employees where that's become a little messy right and so that that's going to be a um well i'm not proposing anything past the six months of the so once they they'll essentially if they are somehow able to use it by the end of june so by july 1st they would they it wouldn't be extended past that um so they have to use a whole year and six months is what the mayor is getting right if they don't want to use if they don't want to lose it um i i we would have to manage that from a staffing uh and every every vacation for the council's knowledge um every vacation has to be approved by the department head um so the staffing levels it's always subject to using them to staffing you know if the department had and are you sure then if they carried over a very healthy amount from 2020 to 2021 will are you also ensuring that we will not end up with a carryover situation into 2022. that's where i want to make sure that we don't have a rolling yeah so this would be um we wouldn't be i mean i i have no intention to propose this again this is kind of a one-time it would we can't do that because that's not obviously that's not the goal or the intention to do that yeah that's my fear as well not that you're going to extend it but that i i think if i'm understanding what the mayor was saying they're going to try to take a whole year's worth of vacation in the last six months which they're probably not going to do so then we're going to end up paying out that eventually those extra days that they don't take when they do leave right isn't that how it works they get paid out if whatever it is the employer were to leave with any surplus or any balance of vacation um outside of what's being proposed now they they are eligible if they leave on good uh terms right they are eligible for for that so at face value it looks like it's not costing us anything but in the end it is likely to cost us something when they when the employees move on because it's highly unlikely they're going to take a year with those oh go ahead i was just going to say there's only a limited amount though that they can accrue and carry over from one year to the next right correct okay this as i said this year was just odd that no not many people took vacation um even the when you're taking a day off at home you're you know you're working um so it's it's just not this hopefully this you know well we're hopefully we're getting past this point i mean that was their the request for the six months to just try to you know be able to use some of that as i said if the council wants to alter my proposal or flat just reject it it's no one's you know it's i think what we just want to make sure at least that there's always good coverage and that we don't end up with two years of vacation being taken in you know try to be taken in one year and then it it can't be used up and so that we revisit this or there's a large amount of carryover into 2022. we've been down that road before where we've had to you know it wasn't like you didn't use your vacation so you you lose it and there was a very large there have been some sizable checks at the end when people have left the city so we don't want to get into that situation so i'm looking to you how do we manage how do we manage that because i'm not opposed to it i completely understand and especially since we had a transition in staff that created a lot of redistribution of work that also impacted people's ability to take time off so i want to just i want to just hear from you how you think we can manage this without having a lot of carryover um well if the council is concerned about the you know as it was described the two years of vacation benefits you being used in one year um we we could change that to uh you know a year and a half where instead of a six month uh you know only or carry over half of what's left it's i mean i'm i'm open to um i want to say counter proposals i'm not trying to bargain with the council assistance and they may i'm going to make a suggestion um is my understanding correct that you do always carry over year to year so anything not used in 2021 that would be 20 21 vacation would carry over to 2022. uh our current personnel policy allows uh if there is any left an employee is able to carry over up to the amount that they earned in that year so our current policy does allow someone to carry over a year's worth of vacation and then they continually accrue it so if they went two years of not using any vacation they'd have two years of vacation accrued um yeah i think that that's the concern here is that it will back they what if what if um what if instead of the six month cap you you a suggestion would be you carry over the 2020 however the vacation time used will first be applied against 2021 vacation hours and then if that's used up then they can use the 2020 vacation that they've built for the entire year and that avoids the issue of 2021 vacation being carried into 2022 so you have that be used first and credited against the 2021 vacation and then you don't have a big build up going into 2022. does that make sense very logical i guess i'm not clear as to how that's different than what's being proposed because in june at the end of june whatever was carried over that's beyond the so we have some employees who [Music] earned more than their they already had because they hadn't they'd carried over from the previous year or the previous year um the so they they used that or they were able to i guess i'm not explaining very well um that that's fine i mean that i don't i guess i don't see that as being that much different but if that i think i think the difference is that the concern that the council has as i'm hearing it is that everybody's going to take their vacation the first six months which would be applied against what would be credited forward and then maybe not take any vacation in that last six months and then that vacation would carry into 2022 and you'd have a large build up i think that's kind of what i was hearing from the council about the concern yeah so then if you apply 2021 credits first then that vacation can't carry forward and if people want to then use their 2020 um which you're suggesting carry for then they would have that opportunity it would still be available to them it just avoids the issue of all of it carrying the back half into 2022. so within that sorry i think i understand what your what your distinction was um so is it the but when does the 2020 have to be used is that still the first six months i would suggest you allow if you're gonna do credit 2021 first you would allow employees to use 2020 for the whole year but the 2021 vacation when they use vacation time it's personally applied against whatever they are afforded for 2021 and then after all of that is exhausted they can dip into their 2020 for the remainder of the year whenever that's exhausted and then at the end of the year you just go back to your normal policy adam does that make sense yeah yes absolutely i'm i'm fine with that as i said i'm not trying to make this uh you know huge issue but it was something that i wanted to request on behalf of staff no i think it's reasonable i mean and i think we all appreciate um what you guys do for us and boy i don't ever have a problem with my uh leftover paid time off at the end of the year mine is all long gone so um yeah i think we all just want to come up with something equitable and reasonable and um i certainly don't want to deny anybody time that they've earned and accrued but we have to as long as you're comfortable with the the city's going to be in the normal position from a personnel standpoint i'm comfortable with it yeah i'm fine with what i mean i i'm happily please don't i can't under state i'm i'd be elated with what tom proposed i might i'll speak to the rest of staff i think they would accept it we're not negotiating i think that um we just want to avoid having a large amount of vacation accrue and large buyouts at the end of any end of employee term so just that we ensure that and we want people to take time off even if they're stuck working at home it is mentally healthy to step away and take care of yourself so we need to be better about that i know it's very easy to continue to work so um council members does anyone have a different idea a better idea um i want to make sure that it's it's equitable as well for our staff because we did put that everyone was under extreme situations this last year so connie any thoughts um no i am in support of them being able to use this vacation i i told adam i would support that because they've been working under a different circ you know situation all not only between staffing but the covet and stuff but what when i forget the attorney's name suggested um and i'm sorry about that what his name is um i thought tom thank you uh i think it made sense to me so i i'm comfortable with that um ethan michelle yeah i think i i liked uh tom's idea once he once he got explained i think uh you know people that at work if they earn vacation we should definitely allow them to use it and but i understand the concerns for budgetary reasons to not have everything being rolling over having big buyouts um you know if somebody were to were to quit or whatever so i like that idea i think it's good okay thank you ethan michelle okay and adam if that you know if you work through six months and you're like you know this isn't working you can bring things back to us but if we could try this approach that tom laid out let's let's let's try to go with that very yeah i uh thank you i mean i'm like as i said i'm not trying to negotiate with the council i'm i'm making a proposal and i actually think toms is easier to do it it's easier for the administration to administer puts less pressure on both the city financially as well as uh department heads so that uh thank you tom for yeah thank you tom all right he earned his keep today [Laughter] so would someone like to make a motion um with this approach okay oh i've moved that weed to go with tom's plan um do i have to spell it all out of making of having them use their 2021 vacation and then if there's still time left and they have more vacation they'd like to take they can use the rollover from 2020 that they did not use okay great thank you michelle is there a second i'll second it all right go ahead ethan it's your first second take it i will second dude okay thank you ethan and adam please do the world that didn't come out quite right mayor councilmember hanson hi councilmember gilmore aye councilmember carlson aye councilmember dahl hi mayor senors aye and we're going to look forward to a very relaxed staff by the end of time on behalf of the staff thank you members of the council okay thank you very much so then the next one under new our next item under new business is to discuss potential coveted relief efforts for local businesses um adam would you please take the the lead thank you madam mayor um so this item was a request by council members hanson and dahl um it's something that the city has been discussing uh for some time uh with without getting into all the details about the pandemic and the business shutdowns um i do i need to i do know we have some guests i believe are here to speak on this item again tonight um so staff has been researching this and it's regarding uh well more broadly what relief efforts can the city make and what has already been done i was able to obtain some more data from the county regarding what was received through the cares funding as you recall the city was not able to uh when we received our cares funding not able because we don't have an eda we were not able to give specific grants to uh businesses um that we didn't have authority for uh but we did recommend and advise people to go through the county's process the county did have 10 million dollars in uh cares funding for small businesses they had three rounds of funding that they went through they ended up only using about 6 million of that 10 million dollars there were multiple reasons that they speculated and that they knew why they didn't weren't able to provide grants to everybody um and i know we've got a couple of business owners uh on the council so that that'll be great to get their perspectives um but the the request was to come up with some other additional ways that the city could help some of the local businesses in bayport one of the items that we do have authority for and that was kind of a common uh common action taken by a lot of cities was refunding or reducing the liquor license the on-sale liquor license fees um because of the government shutdowns uh by governor waltz uh through the pandemic we just are getting out of another one hopefully um the the these bars and restaurants were not able to utilize the liquor license that the city had issued most of the city's work on that other than the enforcement and uh police side of it was already done but that is something that we we have the ability to do um we bayport does not have any general business licenses we license refuse haulers and we license liquor and tobacco we only have one tobacco license at the gas station the off sale licenses we also do those were not that aspect of those businesses that do off sale um was not shut down as you can see on the memo in front of you i listed the uh 2021 liquor licenses this is what we have issued the council has issued for 2021 um now obviously that 2020 is over um and we also have above the uh the different amounts of uh liquor license um i'm sorry to interrupt please i think we might be missing one of the fees isn't there a 2 a.m fee for some of these businesses um that's just to the state oh that's to the state okay that's a state license um and related to that so the um sarah i'm correct on that so then why did nj apply for uh one of those three we still have to sign off on it the city still has to authorize it um but the the permit fee or that that 2 a.m application um there's not an additional fee that the city collects oh we don't get any part of the thousand dollars or whatever yeah i mean they are paying more than in total costs it's just not to us just so we have a perspective on what they have to pay in order to be in business for alcohol yeah it's the i'm trying to remember exactly i want to say it was uh i think the fee depends on how much sales depends on their revenue so it's as you can see it's it starts at 300 um and that's to this state so um for our our purposes again okay uh the one one item also to recom or to mention was that the the washington county as i mentioned a lot of cities did the off sale i'm sorry the on sale licenses um because of the multiple month shutdown uh that the businesses were not able to utilize their licenses um in addition to providing some type of release which does impact the bottom line um as i'm sure all business owners would would state um not just the the sale of the liquor the washington county government also refunded or gave reimbursements on 25 of their food licenses depending on their category of the type of food license they had um so we only had i want to say six or seven businesses in bayport that were granted that of the cares funding we had five businesses uh receive care's funding of the initial 10 million and so with that staff you know staff understands that i mean i we just got done discussing how staff hasn't been able to you know use their vacation so i'm very cognizant of the fact that you know everybody is there's challenges for everybody one way or the other um staff doesn't have because we've already already budgeted for this we don't it would be another basically unbudgeted um revenue reduction however with this one because it's related to the pandemic because it's an action that is is not just something that the council would want to you know elect to do it additionally we could justify using some of the contingency funds um the total that staff if we were to be consistent with uh what a lot of the other cities and the county had done uh which is the 25 reduction or refund um that would be approximately 2 275 so that would be basically come out of the contingency funds that are in the budget um is where i would have them come out being a council directed expenditure or lack of revenue um i'm i'm i don't know if there's any other questions from the council there are there is a new program or there's three new uh state aid that are rolling out this month that the minnesota legislature had just passed i don't have all the details on that i know that the chamber council had sent out some information that i had forwarded to the council previously that i was told by the the county's uh economic development manager that uh those programs were supposed to be you know again they're related to kovid but they were supposed to be a little broader than some of the previous funding um because there's a lot of initial funding wasn't just for you know loss in revenue um unless the business was completely closed uh you know the eligibility was an issue um just because you don't have as much traffic and we had a lot of businesses in bayport because of the mndot project they they were impacted negatively that way um unfortunately there's very little that the city has the ability to do as far as providing some type of relief on fees or and we can't pick and choose which taxes that businesses uh pay um so that's that that's kind of where where staff ended up if the council were to decide to do this we would propose a 25 refund on the on sale licenses to be consistent with what the other government entities had done is that on sale and sunday or on in the table i just want to make sure that you're being that we're very specific because there's off sale on sale sunday are you including on sale yes so the the sunday um is uh is included if it if it's on sale sunday um so that's for me i have something in my throat tonight for for instance the american legion it would be the total 500. correct okay well it would be 25 of that 500 right okay right whatever sunday that was my question okay and that's that's staff's recommendation just to be consistent but council is their program okay thank you yeah the questions uh question can we cancel should we hear from our guests next or do you have questions for adam specifically i don't know if adam knows where the 25 came from are we just copying what the county did or is there some justification for that because it seems really low to me um so a lot of it was based on the number of months that the the shutdown orders impacted which came out to three or four months over the year so that's when they're completely shut down or i mean because there's been other things it's more than that yeah there's way i mean they've been dealing with this for nine months totally yeah in some way whether it's you know restrictions causing it or just fear and people not wanting to go out i mean i feel like there's a lot going on there that 25 feels really low to me personally but i'd like to hear from ethan and some of the other business owners about their thoughts i guess i guess if i could speak on this for a moment i don't technically own a restaurant however i work in one right sorry i'm completely impacted by this and and many other people i have friends all over the industry um we were shut down for i think it was three months at the beginning we've been shut down almost for two months now um that's five months and then when we were allowed to be open for those three months we were at 50 capacity so if i was going to look at doing some sort of refund i would look at potentially maybe looking at somebody's sales data from 2019 and then look at it in 2020 and see how it's impacted so if somebody's down 60 then to me the numbers should be 60 if somebody's down only 30 then that should be 30 i don't think we should just do it as a broad stroke like oh this we just give everybody 25 i think it should be based more on how your business was impacted uh by the shutdowns um and the limited capacity within the restaurants um i know there's a couple people on here that probably have a few words to say as well um but i would like to see something like that um because this is not i mean 25 is it's great and i and it's awesome that we'll do that at very least but i think you know if we can if we can do more for these these folks i think it'll go a long way and it you know and when people hear you know hey bayport did this and you know everybody else did 25 but you know we stepped up a little bit that can that can be positive for people to say hey those guys are that's awesome you know you could get more businesses out of it you know or if one business leaves because we only do 25 the economic impact on that can be negative i mean if two restaurants leave i mean you can't even imagine i mean these these guys you know they do a lot for the community um and yeah i just i definitely want to get more support for them so thank you ethan um other council members or then otherwise we'll ask our guests to participate i'd like to hear what our i don't have anything to say at this point i certainly want to do what we can to help these local businesses out as much as we possibly can but i'm interested in hearing from our audience okay so with that um i'm only going to do this because i can see two guests at this point i can see mike and i can see alex so first i'd like to compliment all of our businesses for the resilience that you've shown it's amazing i i really admire all the creativity that i see come by twitter every day of of how you're you're managing mike if you'd like to take the microphone first and go off mute and address a council if you choose am i frozen frozen um alex are you frozen alex can you come off me here comes my echo okay well mike williams left yeah they came out alex is there a possibility for you to come off mute [Music] hopefully we have somebody joining us again okay it looks like mike's back on mike mike can you hear us hey hey yeah can you guys hear me yes now we can computer just died like the second i was about to like flip my mute thing so glad that i'm back um but yeah so i mean i totally agree with ethan and you know what people have been saying so far um one of the things i wanted to ask you know maybe adam about first was like what the reasoning was for not being able to um give more businesses you know funding or grants through the cares act that that first wave that came through just because i know there there's some money that was given to like the chamber of commerce there's like 500 out of the whatever the 230 some thousand dollars um and then other money towards you know the anderson school i guess what the reasoning is for that sure uh great question so as we were navigating the uh the cares funding that the city did receive and if you recall or if you knew the the city did receive 393 000 um of cares funding here's act funding um what that was all subject to uh both timing requirements but also the public expenditure authorization so there's state statute only allows cities to spend money on certain items it either has to so we needed basically needed authority to be able to spend the money we couldn't spend on something that we didn't have the authority to spend it on uh because the city of bayport does not have an economic development authority which is something that we've informally talked about at the staff level but there hasn't been one at the council level and it takes a while to develop that we were the initial guidance both from the league um and our attorney at the time was that with the city that didn't qualify uh we didn't qualify to give out grant so the city didn't have any type of grant program the the ones that we did give out the money it did give out were to two uh one was a food a food charity and one was um another one was uh it started like another charity a non-profit charity um that we we did have statutory authority and the chamber of commerce was specifically um that that's specifically listed in uh attorney general guidance um that we're able to donate money every year to the chamber of commerce um out of uh we can donate up to fifty thousand dollars annually to uh these types of groups um so that's uh that is the reason why we were able to do those but not give out business grants um so we did direct people to the counties uh grant program um some of the other cities that you may have seen uh oak park heights stillwater um woodbury that did have group specific grant programs um within the city they they do have the economic development authority uh that gave them the ability to do more economic you know grant programs that you did see so that was the reason why got it yeah and i guess um yeah i mean so that that definitely you know helps to know that i don't know if you know maybe playing for the future an idea that i had was you know if it even be possible but to you know establish some sort of um you know fun sort of preemptively you know thinking about you know if something like this were to happen again you know either we you establish that counselor you're talking about or you know have some sort of you know fund a general fund that the city could donate to and then you know maybe someone would be able to you know disseminate that you know money to other businesses or whatever just because you know it hurts to see you know a lot of money being given to the city and then you know only five hundred dollars of that to actual smart small businesses when in fact was actually to the chamber of commerce and you know so they're they're getting money but actual no physical money was able to go to businesses um which i mean i know that your hands are tied if you don't have you know the infrastructure to to do that but um anyway so i guess i'll talk a little bit about um you know our the restaurant um we own i mean my wife major restaurant and wine bar uh right in bayport um we're a really new business we opened like two years ago uh so first year sort of just getting you know the first year under our belt and then you know year two was basically all covered um so you know we weren't really sure what our normal looked like um you know we you know sort of assumed that you know year two we would continue our growth um but then with coved you know we had you know drastic sales losses um you know across the board from food we have the off sale license which has been you know super helpful um without that i don't know where you know we'd be just because we've been pushing a lot of wine sales and cocktail kits and things like that um but even with that um you know increased effort uh we have been down like 48 of um what our alcohol sales um you know have been comparative to last year you know so had we you know had increased sales this year you know would be even more but um just based off of our first year business down 48 on alcohol which is you know a huge number um and that's with being able to expand our patio which we were able to do into our parking lot area which is was another huge helpful thing um but you know there's a lot of businesses that you know like the wilder um two down from us they um you know don't really have patio space you know to do that um so i just think that you know it's really important to think about you know all the businesses and how they're all sort of limited in different ways um and you know going back to the other grants that have been available um you know i think it's important to note too that we you know the grants have been very like specific and they all cap out at a certain amount whether it's ten thousand or fifteen thousand dollars um you know and we've lost you know significantly more than that um you know every dollar helps you know so if we can get you know 25 percent of our liquor license back you know we're certainly going to take it because anything anything helps um but you know there's really no amount um realistically that you know we'd be able to get that's going to make you know the restaurants whole again um so i just think you know 25 you know would be would be nice but i would certainly ask for more um and then you know i'd also talk about um how the with washington county with their um food license they you know gave us 25 you know back from you know last year so that was 2020 so i don't know if that's something that you guys are talking about whether it be you know we're getting some of our last year's license you know back because that's what was impacted the most um and then also 2021 or a combination of the two or if you're just looking at 2021 um and then yeah i guess that would be sort of where one of my other questions would just be is it 20 20 21 or just 2020 um and then i guess i have some other ideas too about ways that that you know city could potentially help restaurants um or just businesses in general um you know back to the whole signage thing i don't know if it's an option or not but i know stillwater they have a historic district sign that got put in a few years ago as you enter um you know downtown from i think the just from the south i don't know if there's something similar to that where um you know there could be a restaurant sign or a business strict sign or something that could be posted by the loop trail with the new bridge um you know business directory of some sorts that would you know show that you know there's businesses you know just a you know half mile away for people who are biking or you know walking and could use the the trails you know throughout bayport um so just yeah another idea that i had thank you and keep the the ideas coming we we do have on our agenda um us revisiting our signage policy overall and i know that we've been talking about adding different directional signage over the course of the last few years so um so thank you and it's nice to know that you'd think that that would be helpful um again you know kudos to how creative you have been it's been amazing um so thank and thank you for your feedback and comments it's very helpful for us to have that kind of context so and if you think of anything else you want to say just i'll circle back okay okay sure alex are you on the phone alex messaged me that he's listening but he's got a a toddler issue right now okay and alex is from which business oh he's from not just a cafe right okay and did adam did you hear from any of the other um businesses we we did hear i heard from judy johnson at the legion and she is on board with you know whatever she said will help she didn't have any other new ideas but she was excited to get something back because they've had a rough year of course like everyone and mary tickner and brad smith were on the line from woody's but they i think at least mary was to um voice her opinion and she supported ethan's idea she told me in a message but she had to leave so she couldn't voice it she said to me she didn't expect it to take this long because at this point in the meeting i guess but yeah it is i should have warned people that it would take a while but um yeah so i guess i'm trying to think if i heard from anybody else i think that's it but um to ethan's point i i i thought it sounded like a great idea to look at like income comparison until i heard from mike and then it made me think well that's not real fair to someone who had their very first year was last year because that's not necessarily a good benchmark so i think we really need to think about the best the best approach for this and personally i feel like it was you know and to answer mike's question i feel like yes we're i would like to refund from 2020 and then we can think about 2021 we're barely into it right now and i don't know if things are going to change it sounds like the governor might be making an announcement soon but um i i would like to look at since it's been basically 75 of the year i think the easy thing would be to give 75 back that's that's what i would which budget line item have you given that thought of where we would yeah well adam suggested the um contingency budget but i don't know how much is in that yeah the contingency is it has 50 000 um for contingencies um that's that's been the amount that the council set for quite some time um so obviously that that has and that just for everybody's recollection that's kind of the rainy day fund um that we you know for something unplanned that's uh obviously really important uh that way we we don't have enough uh not just unbudgeted but you know over budget um at the end of the year that's the the the the area of the budget that we would um do something like this um it there is there isn't really anywhere else that we could you know offset um that we haven't already uh done um the you know we're doing the emerald ash borer trees this year um we're doing the capital saving and those are the the big areas that we that the council you know chose to invest in so that's i think those both are things that we it wouldn't help to it wouldn't help us in the long run to do to impact those there isn't a whole lot of other discretionary funds available but the contingency fund would be available for this um type of essentially an expenditure for 2021. um as far as 2020 um i would have to verify offhand i don't know if we're able to do that now um because it's in 2021 um i'd have to check with our auditors to make sure that we could do that i don't know offhand um i know there are still expenditures coming in that were done in 2020 that we may have not you know paid the invoice or something similar to that but i'd have to if we're taking the action now in 2021 i would i would want to check with the auditors to make sure that that was possible david booked in 2020 and i'm certainly hoping that we don't have nine months of this that we actually can start opening our doors a lot sooner with the vaccines now on the horizon but um question have we i mean obviously how the restaurant business has been impacted for the entire nine months um our other businesses were also impacted for different periods of time and and probably are still seeing a lower amount of foot traffic um just because people are much more cautious about going out and about like chiropractors or hairdressers or doctors on parent appointments everything is is down so have we heard anything from our other businesses at all um even anything that they would find this to be fair or unfair um question i haven't heard anything well i think going back to what adam said is we don't have the ability necessarily this is one thing we have the ability to do is the liquor licenses some of the other businesses they don't have as many fees and regulatory things that the city collects so if this is the one thing we can do like i said i mean if we lose a business i mean the whatever what 75 percent of now it's what about 70 he said 2200 if it was 25 so if we're looking at 66 7 000 but if we lose one business one restaurant goes we're going to lose all that tax revenue so i mean you you got to look at on the other end um you know and adam said this is the rainy day fund this is for unexpected things well if there's one thing i know in 2020 i didn't think my restaurant would be closed for seven months or six months or whatever it's been and then only be able to operate at 50 capacity i mean it's just it's crazy so i mean if there's if there's one if there's one time to use it to me this would be the time i know i'm new but that's one area i'm passionate about because this is what i do i'm a restaurant you have a bird's-eye view of the situation so it's great to have to have your perspective here yeah so i'm going to circle around to the other council members connie do you have anything that you'd like to add no i i feel like i was telling adam i wish we could come up with some ideas of how to help the businesses out today when i was talking to him you know we talked about this fee and stuff i just said i wish there was other ways but um we are kind of limited so i'm i'm in favor of supporting our businesses now whatever we can do i did suggest again you know getting out there and doing some more advertising and when mike brought up the signage thing and so i don't know whatever we can do to help him i guess is what i'm supporting do you have a do you have a percentage in mind at all um i no i didn't give it a whole lot of thought i mean as i'm listening to ethan i'm weighing more i was leaning more like the 25 when we when i talked to adam a day 20 because i said as a business owner when i received that check back the refund for my food license from the county it was like whoa okay good now i can pay my my worthless cop company so it was nice to get that refund back so at that point it was a 20 to me and that made a difference too so i just know anything [Music] helps a business but i do know that the food industry is or the restaurant industry is i think taking the hardest um yet i think so um i just think we have to help promote these businesses in town to get people to um order out call take an order home whatever i mean whatever we can do to support them so but as far as a percentage i guess i could sway with whatever the majority is comfortable with okay thank you connie i do want to make sure though that we do have it in our in our fund because have we um if we're talking about 20 21 i guess we have a little bit more so i i guess i'm talking about 2021 and i don't know what we can do about 2020 right now so okay thank you connie john adam looked like he needed to jump in go ahead um sorry john i'll come for a doll i just the one thing i just want to well two things i want to i want to make sure that the the 25 percent that staff recommended was um because i i completely understand customer gilmar's input i that was again as i said that was to be consistent with what other cities had done lake elmo day for 2021 they decided for 50 they were going to reduce their fees 50 to 50 um so 25 was the the vast majority of what most of the cities had done um we don't have you know a lot of the cities that i was able to find information on were larger so we were and each city sets their own fees so that that that's another thing that it doesn't really matter what the percentage is it could have a different impact on on the businesses um bigport doesn't charge a lot compared to some cities but we don't charge anything near like what woodbury you know large city charges um and a lot of the cities that did do this did it much earlier in the in 2020 so it was it was done they they kind of did it it wasn't it's a different time that we're doing now so had the december shutdown taking place maybe that 25 would have been higher so i just wanted to make sure that that's where that amount came from it wasn't a specific well based on this number of days this is the mathematical calculation as to how that was determined um that was based on the information that staff was able to get so i just wanted to make sure that that was no i under i understood that but yeah okay back to you john yeah i you know um businesses make decisions you know uh based on things that that they can foresee and you know this thing was unforeseen for everybody so you know they pay for a a fee based on having a full year worth of revenue to offset that fee and if they don't have that through no fault of their own um it seems pretty logical to me that you know michelle's percentage that she brought up in nine months seems seems uh pretty reasonable to me um i and to council member um gilmore's point that this seems to be exactly what a contingency fund would be for i'm comfortable with being as you know generous and forgiving as we can for these people that um have have hung in there for a long time and and if if it you know hurts the the community as a whole in a little bit then i'm also okay with that everybody should share in the pain in some way i think so i guess that's that's where i am i i want to be as forgiving as we possibly can reasonably so i'm going to ask i'm going to ask again what percentage you're thinking uh i think i said the didn't you say somebody said 75 i thought and that seemed reasonable that the the nine months um that's how long this has gone on and um seems reasonable to me okay thank you just for the clarification thank you can i can i just ask adam a question sure so adam the fees that that they would be charged in 2021 that money does that where does that money go into does that go into what fund uh that goes into the general fund it is okay yeah so it's that's part of the as you as you may know the the city has only a couple funds the general fund is the one that all the tax revenue all the licensing fees um the vast majority of all our revenue goes into um and stays in throughout the year and then it's expensive so okay we've and we've already collected the 20 21 fees um so this would be they'd be refunds give them a refunding okay and the contingency money that comes out of that the general fund or is that a separate just contingency that would come out of the general fund okay all right i just want to make sure we're just trying to get an idea of it yeah and i i if you have any other questions on the how the budget works with that um i'm happy to answer it offline it's not the most exciting please let me know okay thank you i guess i want to just clarify that the refund would be for what they paid in 2020. in my no he said he couldn't do that right away but but but that's that's the amount we should be calculating is for 20 20. if they change like nj's trying to change theirs right now that's a different thing right that was a state thing so if anybody changed their licenses they didn't so okay but we will refund it we're going to basically say it's the 2021 refund because we're doing it in this year is that what you're saying yeah okay um let me i want to verify and maybe um i'm just checking my notes quick here i want to say one i believe the wilder did not do [Music] i think they changed their license they dropped one but i don't maybe sir if she's available she can verify which sarah are you there i am can you hear me okay yes uh yes there are a couple adjustments to that chart you're showing there the wilder decided just to renew their on sale license and nj applied mid-year for an off sale license so they also have an off sale license so what did the wilder have in 2020 they had a sunday and an on sale and they no longer i believe are open on sundays and that's why jeffrey decided not to pursue that this year gotcha okay so that's my point i guess is we should be looking at what they paid in 2020 when we do their refund percentage not what they plan to do in 2021. even even if it still comes out of the 2021 budget it can still be exactly right because that's the year that was affected it doesn't sound like it's going to be that big of a much of a difference though no not much of a difference but i just feel like that's the fair thing to do is to do it based on the year that they have the business issues and what they paid them okay well is there additional discussion anyone want to make other additional comments oh go ahead mike just need to go off mute yeah so i guess it would is there a plan at all going forward to establish a you know whatever that council was the economic development um council for the future if another you know round of you know funding were to come through just because i mean so what what happens if you know new administration comes into the white house and they pass you know another bill that's you know the same or bigger and the city of bayport ends up getting the same amount that they got or more um you know what what happens to that fund are we in the same position again because there's not a council that's been established that you know we have to either return money or spend it somewhere else that may be not in as much of need or how does is it is it a really difficult task to establish that sort of council um and then i guess my other point would be you know noting the other you know cities that did the 25 if those cities also had that council set up um then they were i'm assuming that they were giving grants or additional money to businesses and so maybe that's why their percentage was a lot lower um so i guess you know to ethan's point like there's a rainy day fund it rained heavily uh most you know heaviest on the restaurant industry um so i don't see why especially if refunding 100 of the funds um or the the fees wouldn't deplete the rainy day fund um i would ask for 100 of the the money to um to refund our license i guess go ahead adam um if this is like mayor madame if you'd like me to respond uh to a couple of the questions um the the eda it's the economic development authority um which is what would have given us the legal authority to uh issue those types of grants um to just the general public um though we we are looking at that we have a the council will be having a kind of a goal setting session here in the coming months um and that was going to be one of the items to look at um so that will it does take a little bit to create one of those it's not an overnight process um and it's it's it has a lot of power a lot of authority they can that you have to be careful when setting it up that you don't they set it up correctly um so it's not just something you take very lightly because you have to be careful um but so that is something that uh that we'll be we'll be looking at um not just for future pandemics which god forbid we have to deal with this anytime again in the near future um we're not even out of this one but there's there's other benefits that uh can be uh used from having one of those uh so we will be looking at that um one of the the issue about the uh the grants and the percentage that other cities most we decided to send people to the county one they have the better opportunity to well they had 10 million dollars to start with as you heard they only issued 6 million in grants because of lack of application the eligibility would have been the same with the city or the county um so that's not really the issue i know that some some individuals had said that the um you know there's it was only eligible for certain items and that that is that was the case across the board with a lot of the money um so a lot some of the larger cities like woodbury uh they they had some parks started theirs and then they rolled it into the county so they actually used um they ended up not using um theirs uh so it it was a mix but a lot of the cities that did do it um they they were much larger and they had a better ability to manage the administer the programs so i just want to make sure that that that's known it wasn't we were trying to get people information to the county because they they had a lot more money available and they could administer it much easier just to be sure that criteria was the same for the it was you know and it was quite restrictive it was that the ppe and and covet impact not revenue impact it wasn't just loss of revenue um the and the county actually broadened their their eligibility with the three rounds because they're they still had a lot of a lot of money left that um they started narrow they didn't allow non-profits without getting too deep into it they they kept broadening their eligibility um to try to make it easier more businesses to be included um but there was as i said there was four million dollars that they that wasn't applied for that they weren't able to give out um in grants so they did end up using that internally but bayport wasn't the only one who put put that off on the county if not look at it that way so the question for adam and and maybe tom um could the council act as in in an ad hoc fashion as that entity or um it just doesn't work that way it needs to be the council can name itself as the economic development authority but it still needs to formally create um the entity it is a legal entity that um is created legally so and it would take some time to i mean maybe in order to i mean in order to establish in order to establish it would have to go through the public hearing process and as adam said it's also something that you and yeah the counselor could appoint itself but it's not something that you want to take lightly um because of the powers that that is given to that authority um and so but it is it is a situation that the council could appoint itself but it still would have to go through the process go through the public hearing and reach final approval through the enabling thank you guys hey other discussion from the council would anyone does anyone have a motion that they would like to bring forward i would move that we refund 75 of the liquor license fees for on sale in sunday sales for establishments in bay port did that did i say everything we needed i think so i think the only other thing that you wanted to stipulate was for their 2020. oh i thought i said that did i say 20 20. i thought i did okay we have to specify where we plan on taking the money from is that requirement that i'll second that motion okay so thank you michelle thank you john any other discussion okay if not then adam will you please do the roll call i'm married thank you uh councilmember hanson aye councilmember dahl hi councilmember carlson aye spouse member gilmore hi orders hi it's all motion passes and we'll just keep a pulse on our our spending throughout the year and and uh just get them there yeah it it is obviously early in the year metamer and we you know part of the it cuts both ways we don't know what's gonna you know we don't know what the expenses are gonna be but we the more we know early on the better we can get control of that um so we will we will have those uh mike and every um we will we'll have those done this week so i'll get that to you guys um mike if i can just say one quick thing if you've had any if you have any other ideas staff is happy to talk you know we we have there's been a lack of um i'll just say communication between the business community and city hall um since i've been here it's it hasn't we haven't heard much from a lot of the business owners so if you have any encourage your other your peers your colleagues the other restaurant business owners if they have anything that they need or want or have ideas to suggest please please bring them to us so we can you know at least get you in the right direction or maybe it's something that the city itself can't do so hey adam this is on a kind of a separate note but with mike still on there is and this is future has nothing to do with right now but is there any way where like the city or the businesses in town could like set up their own not home but like have a business advisory board or kind of something like that to come to the city council with ideas or requests or you know i'm not talking about the covet stuff i'm just talking in general or ways to promote businesses um you know or is that something we wouldn't i i would say that's something that i mean it sounds like a chamber of commerce is what you're exactly yeah i'm just talking like maybe on a smaller level but yeah you're right because the chamber of commerce is what they do but you know i guess even if the businesses got together and just met and kind of like you say we haven't had a whole lot of connection with them um as council so i don't know i was just sitting there thinking about that or or somehow that we can promote their businesses a little bit more the signage i guess is a one way that mike brought up that we could as a council look forward to but anyway i was just throwing that out there i didn't know if that was something yeah i mean the businesses can organize however they'd like to you know sometimes a unified voice is you know clearer if nothing else um sometimes so that you know as i said staff welcomes any input from not just residents but you know business owners obviously we need those as well so please come to us and the community is you know we've been wanting to do more with the businesses too so if if there's a way that all three work in partnership you know the council or the city staff and businesses and you know we've been brainstorming do you put together some kind of a you know punch card thing if you go to each restaurant in bayport during the month of february do you get a gift card drawing or you know just any ideas that you guys can think of you know the community actually would be there to help implement something too so and i want to thank mike thank you for your time today thank you for hanging in there and all you've done for the community during all of this with the free lunches and everything it's it's amazing i'm glad we have you guys in town so thank you very much agreed very much nicole too right and thanks for being there here tonight so yeah well no thank you very much and i mean you guys have been great throughout the process like being able to expand you know our patio and um you know all the little things you know really help and you guys have all been really accessible throughout the whole thing which has been you know really nice so it's great to have this new opportunity to talk with everyone and be involved so you're welcome anytime so thank you thanks mike okay well that item is concluded so um that takes us to our consider appointments and designations and city council liaison assignments for 2021 um so adam would you like to lead us through this discussion adam he's muted sorry sorry about that uh yes madam era so i pulled up the appointment list um that we had that staff has put in the packet um as we noted there there weren't many uh changes from last year we do have two changes obviously that need to be addressed um one is uh councilmember buckley is no longer on the council and he had two council city council liaison assignments that need to be filled we also have one new council member consumer gilmore who needs to be appointed to one of these or assigned to one of these um there was interest from some of the other council members i know councilmember hanson had mentioned that she was interested in trying something else i think both her and councilmember dahl had talked about um switching up the appointments or assignments that they had had i think councilmember hanson had said she's been on there for some time on the cable commission um so with that um the the appointments and designations at the top those were the uh the most of the standard ones um there weren't many there weren't any changes on that um the mayor is still the wheat inspector that's kind of the running running joke and that statutory city government um but the city council liaison assignments um for 2021 we do need to designate the primary and the alternate for each okay so um who well we want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to on nights that work for them um it is an additional commitment so that's one thing to take into consideration and if there is an interest to try something new maybe give that a voice as well so um ethan is there any any times that will not work for you or is it an additional evening um outside of i'm not i'm not familiar with your schedule yet [Music] go ahead sure i would say the uh anything on mondays and tuesdays work um wednesdays and thursdays not so good i mean i can make it work but i'd prefer not to take a night off of work you know because i do work nights so so you're saying yes it looks like the middle middle three there okay all right great so michelle and john were there things that you also had in mind were you thinking of flip flipping or just something new for me i it really doesn't matter to me i can make any of the evenings work for the most part so and i've done um planning commission cable commission and anderson city citizen advisory um so i was kind of thinking maybe watershed but second thursday of the month is um paper community action league meetings i just looked it up i was like oh so i guess the only one i haven't done yet would be the library board yes and i had told adam earlier that tuesday's really at least for now this year is probably it's the good night for me because thursday we usually have our staff meeting nights and mondays are not great um [Music] and i've done it all of them except for the anderson city advisory light is on which i'm okay with not doing that um but it barely meets um so right yeah it's not very often that's why john buckley had two two things that barely ever met well um so um i'll take those two yeah john's jobs you're learning well ethan well the one would work it's amazing if you want to make it easy the cable commission only meets quarterly too that's not a huge commitment and it's very well organized so and it's a monday night it's a monday so that might be a good fit for and if i have to stay on watershed it's not the end of the world for me if that's what makes the most sense that's fine just whatever it's not at the end of the world susan are you planning to be a primary on any of them you know i was a couple years ago and then you know people had a lot of interest and so i kind of stepped aside um so i'm i can definitely fill in if there's something that needs it so thank you ethan for cable commission does that sound it's quarterly it's a monday is that where we were leaning yeah and i can be as alternative that makes sense all right that would be a good substitute since you know so you've been on there for quite some time um and just as i assume ethan would understand that an alternate just is can be called upon if you can't make it to a meeting so ethan is that okay with you yeah that's fine okay well and we'll actually i'll go to the first meeting i'll be there at the february one so they'll will both be there because there's a lot of changeover going on so that might make it a little more comfortable for you it's february okay whatever the third monday is 20 something if okay we'll leave that to you two to work out thank you very much um so michelle is a primary do you have a did you want to try the middle saint croix and i i'd have to give up bcal if i did that oh that's right that kind of secretary just got elected yeah that won't work um john do you want to stay on that and i'll stay as your alternate i i like revisiting that group sure that's fine i'll stay okay so that leaves me with john buckley's jobs does how does that work for you um it should be fine let me check oh you know what third monday i think is wait let me know that second monday mondays lions let me see what's on i swear something's on third monday i can take the anderson one too i know that one doesn't meet very often yeah no i think i'm good with them are you okay with the planning commission yeah i can do planning commission and i can do anderson too unless you would like to do it john dawn no that's fine you can have that okay and connie that would keep you on library right and i and i could be the alternate on um well a monday would be better than a well i don't need there's no thursday a monday to be an alternate would be better okay so why don't we put you as an alternate for planning commission okay okay and then um alternate for library board i'm happy to be an alternate for either of the library board or the anderson so just um i haven't visited with the library people in a long time either since i was on the foundation board so connie should i sign up for that yeah if you want yeah okay is that okay is that okay with everyone yeah sure okay i'll take alternate for anderson super who's the primary on anderson again yeah michelle was going to take it okay so i'm going to run down quickly middle saint croix john was susan as alternate planning commission michelle connie is alternate library board connie with susan as alternate uh cable ethan with michelle is the alternate anderson michelle with john as the alternate perfect okay now adam did you want to uh talk about the application um yes so the one other yes thank you madam mayor for reminding me um so as i mentioned during the approval of the agenda there was we the city received one inquiry today interest in the resident uh the resident citizen representative liaison to the cable commission um the last one was prior to 2018 uh which was brian delisle he was not reappointed in 2018 um and there has not been any interest since then this is a position that we have not had a lot of interest this is the first and the only applicant we have currently um but the individual who applied his name was andrew cading he saw the notice in the bayport brief e-newsletter about the volunteer position so that was effective he said he'd love to be considered for that position and i'm happy to provide any background information you'd like on myself i'm the technology director at periscope a creative and marketing services agency headquartered in minneapolis uh thanks in vance for your consideration and please do not or please do let me know if there's more information i can provide as i said we haven't had a lot of interest in this specific liaison position but we staff would love to have this appointment made so staff proposes or makes the recommendation that council add the resident liaison to the cable commission and names andrew cading so moved right thank you michelle is there a second all second thank you john um and thank you andrew for volunteering it's fabulous and it's wonderful to start getting more representation from inspiration neighborhoods so perfect let's do a round robin of roll call madam mayor councilmember hanson hi councilmember dahl hi councilmember gilmore councilmember gilmar thank you councilmember carlson aye mayor cenors hi i thank you very good so we have our liaisons all set up and that takes us to our um fourth item is to consider city council regular meeting dates for 2021 um has everyone had a chance to review them is there any conflict that's known at this time we have a little bit of leeway and rearranging i think it's it's easier now that we have the zoom option um makes it a little bit easier but does anyone see any dates that would not work for them currently um there were just the two asterisks as you see um were due to holidays obviously labor day uh we're not allowed to have a meeting on that date um so it was moved to the the next day which is the tuesday um the only other one was monday july 12th that one being a more of a more of a time when people are out of town potentially that week of the fourth staff suggested moving it to the the following week just because of schedules um there's a couple staff people who uh were potentially going somewhere at that time we didn't know if the council was but now's the time um so those were the only two uh items of note okay yeah i would say anytime we can get away from any sort of holiday weekend just for the people that want to do sort of an extended vacation we need to do that i don't have any specific plans right now but just as a general rule of thumb what do what do you think of the seventh the tuesday after labor day is that okay um yeah it probably is for me um you know i i i would think we probably want to maybe stay away from that but um you know maybe not i mean i i can probably make it remotely no matter what okay adam um the only the only item that i could see um as as a fellow parent i know some of the rest of the council a lot of times that's the first day of school yeah it might be a might be inconvenient for some of the council members who have children to you know could we move that just to be in this on the safe side that that's usually a pretty big weekend and for me and and it might just be me that's absent but i i don't like planning my holiday weekends around council meetings i prefer not to because i'm i'm on vacation and then i'm trying to get through my packet and it would be better for me not to have it around a holiday weekend i'll just throw that out there okay i remember that just from last year that you did that comment so um would anyone have a problem with us moving to the following monday which would be the 13th now i i have no problem with that oh um i mean i have ryan's meeting but that i can skip that maybe we'll just have a really short meeting hey i'll go to any meetings that are short we're gonna we're gonna work on that yeah okay so monday the 13th thank you okay all right if that is okay then would someone like to make a motion adopting this as our meeting dates i'll make a motion adopting the 2021 city council regular meeting dates as presented with the change of monday september 13th was it no six yeah thank you connie is there a second also i think that went to john adam thank you mayor councilmember carlson hi house member doll all right councilmember great okay so we have two well three quick items perhaps to get through yet we have our city council liaison reports does anyone have anything to report from one of their their respective areas all i was going to report was that andrea tamale smith was appointed as our new library board member but that was in our earlier packet so yeah and that's great she looks like a wonderful candidate and she'll be great thank you very much for volunteering so thank you for reminding us of that connie yes anyone else i just had oh boy off the top of my head there's something in uh middle saint croix something to do with the with the uh cemetery in saint charles doing something and i think that might be coming down the pike um for us to look at maybe adam you know about it but um other than that there's nothing middle synchro watershed related that was really earth shattering or nothing really for vapor do you want to comment on uh sir i'll let the city planner assistant administrator taylor talk about that um there will be a planning commission meeting i believe in january so sure right when i sign up for it then there's a meeting [Laughter] you should try being on it sometime michelle sorry i shouldn't say that i'm not busy enough with meetings do you want to cover that now adam with sarah we can do that during the during her staff reports fine i yeah i don't think it's anything earth-shattering but just something vapor-related excellent okay otherwise no other reports then we're going to move quickly over to the administrator thank you madame um i will be starting with fire chief eisinger good evening madam mayor and council members uh for december the call volume for the fire department was 79 compared to 117 in december of 2019 our year to date for 2020 was 946 compared to 2019 of 1254. we're continuing with our drills on distant learning as well as the fire inspections are ongoing as well as plan reviews we still have had members quarantined and members have recovered from kovid and are back into service last week the members did start vaccination up at the still are the courthouse and a few more are going to be done this week so we'll be all taken care of there we did participate in a drive-by retirement for tim bell uh t.j bell for stillwater fire he had 51 years of service that was great he appreciated us uh doing that drive-by and we attended our covid meetings and our regis regions ems meetings as well as the car seat clinic was well attended with that i'll stand for questions any questions for the chief just a quick one alan do you do you think that the drop in volume for calls is attributed to the oak park heights change i know there's a little bit of covid probably affecting it too but have we tracked to see if the call volume has gone down yes we've we've we're tracking the call volumes uh with that we i do have a meeting with the new police chief of oak park just to meet him next uh in the next week or so um but we are tracking we can have more in depth of how many of those calls were attributed to that policy that they implemented as well as any uh any uh issues we've had with those new call policies maybe we'll circle back on that um in an upcoming workshop or meeting does that sound good yeah that would be great thanks excellent thank you chief all right next uh public works director client madam mayor members of the council i'll keep it brief um obviously i can't put uh as my first sentence in my report with the lack of snow um that didn't turn out well um yeah just a couple of things um in regards to snowing plowing um just make sure people are getting their vehicles off the street so we can plow and be aware of the trucks and the equipment on the street the ice rink um we've had open for a couple days now it's being well attended please know that there are some warmer temperatures coming up um that we probably won't be adding water to it just because of that so the conditions might not be the greatest there but as soon as it cools down some more we'll be adding some water and hopefully have some good ice our intent obviously is to keep a nice rank public works does not not want to have good rank a couple of the major work areas a couple of shoreline river projects that are going on i just want to remind everybody if you live on the river um it's likely you need a permit for just about anything that you do um so if if you happen to be doing some work or plan on doing some work please contact city hall about that work um that's about all i have this month a lot of projects coming down um there will be i believe we'll be having a workshop next month on some of the water conservation stuff and um the potential project um or the connection of the potential project in bay town township so thank you any questions for matt i actually do have one question i know in some of the larger cities when we talk about following by the way you guys do a great job following but um where they do you know opposite sides of the streets is that something that would ever be like you know like if it snows you've got you're on the north and west that day and then you move them for the next day so they can come back and get everything cleared out the next day i mean i know people try to do a good job at getting like once you plot one side getting it to the other side but a lot of there's such lack of driveways in bayport that so many cars are are on street parking that um it seems like i said you guys do a great job but i don't know if that's something that you guys would ever think or thought about maybe that would be a good idea to do um yeah so councilmember gilmore that's been talked about um continuously since i've been here and probably before i've been here um debated talked about and ultimately we've always kind of left it um how we've had it people have done a pretty good job of moving their vehicles sure um and that's that's kind of how we've left it because we're always back out the second date anyway cleaning up and that be our intent to plow any snowbirds that are left over from essentially the night before so it's it's worked um we do have some essentially reoccurring people who do leave their vehicle out and if we get time we try and let pd know um that these people need to be identified and let them know that they need to move their vehicle so cool thank you the one thing uh customer gilmore as you are sure aware we don't have a you know emergency snow policy and that's something that matt and i have talked about several years and every time we we start developing one it it it's really difficult to have something apply across the city conveniently and still work better than what we currently have sure so today there hasn't been one but it's something that's constantly being looked at so uh ethan we also established a priority list um so that people know basically you know when there's a hill that those are going to come first so people are aware of the sequence and when they can anticipate but um like you said boy it's it's cleared off so quickly so matt good job with the team there and thank you for cleaning up the boneyard and around the uh salt building i appreciate that as i drive by frequently so thank you you're welcome all right um next all right uh thank you uh sarah assistant administrator taylor thanks adam mary and members of the council december workload consisted mostly of wrapping up ongoing projects and tasks and preparing for 2021 in administration the liquor and tobacco license renewals were processed and distributed to establishments the winter e newsletter edition was completed and sent out last week in building and zoning final edits to the habitat management plan for the clean water land and legacy project are in process and that's to meet the requirement of the city's grant agreement with the county funding final edits to the city's 2040 comp plan are also in process final adoption of the plan is anticipated for february and as councilmember dahl mentioned a conditional use permit for a columbarium expansion project at st lake cemetery will be heard by the planning commission tentative meeting date is january 25th finally for city liaison assignments and meetings i attended the king plant reuse advisory panel on december 16th the meeting focused on the decommissioning process for this type of plant including retirement remediation demolition and restoration and due to co-wood future meetings have been suspended until spring answer any questions any questions for sarah sounds like you're busy thank you thank you sir um all right last i'll go through this quickly um the waste haul transition obviously everybody has been dealing with that i know just for the public i know that there are some people who said that they did not receive the postcard notifications um we're still trying to figure out what happened there um we we do know that there's some that probably were just not noticed um so anything like that in hindsight we'll probably try a second um notification other than you know print notification just because that's some people's only means um hopefully we know that there's still some parts out there uh madam mayor you probably saw them down at lakeside those are hopefully going to be removed asap but we have had some questions and so we're coordinating that with you know these these transition panes uh with the public and tennis i'm trying to get that updated information to the individuals there with any signifi this is a major transition i mean every house in the every property in the city um is now under a different trash service um so that's there's there's some to be expected we're trying to mitigate that and deal with those if anybody does have any issues any questions please please contact city hall and we'll get you pointed in the right direction um the other uh just let everybody know council member gilmore and tom and i uh conducted an orientation new console orientation last week uh i thought it went great went way longer than uh i thought it would but uh i i hope that councilmember gilmore was at least entertained if not enjoying every minute of spending time together it was great because it was our first time uh i got it i got to meet him and i thought it was a great meeting with him and tom i just on that point i know that councilmember dahl had asked about some of the uh the experience admit experienced official training um i'm gonna get him some information try to get some of those dates but definitely the rest of the council want to do the league training please let me know the city does pay for it and it is a great value for for elected officials with that i stand for any questions any questions for adam yes adam might i do have one question um the yard waste bins i don't i feel like it's unclear how that is supposed to work for distribution do they have to alert tennis if they want them or would they automatically get them if they had them in the past um i my understanding was that they if they had it before they were going to either be contacted or have them delivered but i think i i will verify that and let the public know we'll send out a some type of notification and get the message out um if they if they need if residents need to sign up um because it is a subscription service on top of the regular um it it will want to make sure people have the opportunity as well as don't automatically get signed up if they don't want it so clear that that they had to put their yard waste container out to be taken either so i bet you a lot of yard waste subscribers still have their republic we have heard from some residents who put theirs out um but it hadn't been picked up they get picked up separately um i don't know right but um i will verify with tennis as to how that is being handled um the it won't be until spring uh so that's when they um when they when they do the yard waste that's also when tennis said that the the new sizes if if residents are interested in a different size than what they had with republic um that's what they would they would be able to make those changes so well you can't change your your regular garbage bin size until the spring correct because they had they had to go out and buy all the they went based off of the republic's data um for whatever sizes you had because they had to go and buy all new containers um and so there there's a there's a a waiting period before you can change your size because they they just delivered the the size you had so if they're if there are questions send them to city hall mary and chantel will field their questions and get them serviced that's for sure i've been sending them to tennis that's that's good too tennis customer service is great they pick up the phone um there's some there's you know local person so um please either us or our tennis so perfect the transition went great for us i don't know about everyone else but it worked real smoothly for us so it did as well hopefully that's a good sign i will say i've had lots of people comment on loving that they get their recycling picked up weekly yeah that's a huge deal yeah many yeah we did i was told they're informed we did have a couple residents uh stop the snow plowing snow plows to complain about the change but i think that was pretty isolated and limited so yeah you're gonna have that they felt it was important to make it known um but we haven't we haven't really had many complaints about the transition at city hall so that's that's good yeah a lot of questions so when will the new website be ready because i i find that our you know e-newsletter is buried and information about the transition for the carts probably could be a feature so when are we going to see that yeah so the new website i have a meeting um in i want to say a week or two um of the uh the latest update they're the original as you as the consumer calls the original uh go live date was supposed to be january 1st on the beginning of the year that has been there was a couple issues one was due to covet with their team and their we had actually had them rework a couple sections to make it more user um so right now february is what their what what the target is but it's the delay will be worth it um we're i i can send i can send the council kind of a dummy link if you want to take a look at just what it just to look good and see what it's going to look like um that so you can see it's it's exciting was it fixed bids so that these delays are not costing us more right yeah it's not costing us any more it's actually saving us money from doing some things differently so yeah very good well excited to have that go live all right anything else adam uh not from mayan tonight thank you council any other thanks for having me any other comments or announcements from the council um i'm planning to attend the toast and topics thing on wednesday and if anyone else is doing that but it's a virtual meeting yeah if my schedule allows i'm definitely going to dial in so that's um that's something that the chamber of commerce puts on and this time it is our state and federal representatives so it's a good time to get information and it will be virtual so if you are interested um just sign up is that the one from patricia naumann that you got an email about or is it from the chamber it's from the show from stacy so adam did you distribute that to the um i did not i don't know that i saw that one come in but i can i can send that out but yeah great and ethan are you planning to join us again where are we is it it's not coming back next the next meeting yeah i'll be back i think you guys are all right excellent thank you nice to have you on board it's very i don't always have a workshop so this one was exceptionally long yeah yeah well we will try to speed things up but uh nice to have you on board and thank you for volunteering and and signing up to join us and uh great participation with your first meeting so thank you yeah thank you guys we look forward to it great you have to make a motion for me to officially not be the new guy yeah yeah especially make motion that john doll is no longer happy new year and thank you to all of our our staff and extended staff and our visitors tonight um and with that would someone like to make a motion to adjourn and will we adjourn thank you michelle is there a second second thank you john and roll call please and mayor councillor hanson aye councilmember dahl aye calter gilmar councilmember carlson aye mayor stars aye as well thank you all bye guys happy new year everybody happy new year so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you