um madam mayor i believe uh we are good to go with that okay well then a call to order the december 7th 2020 bayport city council meeting please join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance there we go thank you with that oh go ahead no i was just going to say did brad join the meeting uh he he is listed down below okay good because i'd see i just had a call from him 20 minutes ago and i didn't hear my phone so i just was wondering oh he must be listening in instead of um doing the camera so welcome to anyone who's attending virtually with that adam would you please call the roll yes mayor staying orders here councilmember carlson here cross member doll here council member hanson here and councilmember buckley is absent good thank you that takes us to the approval of tonight's agenda are there any questions additions or changes okay if not would someone like to make a motion please i'll make a motion proving tonight's agenda for the december meeting thank you connie is there a second i will second thank you john uh adam our mercenaries councilmember carlson aye councilmember dahl aye alvare hanson aye mayor stan orders aye aye takes us to our proclamations accommodations petitions and announcements and the november recycling award recipient is melissa weidenstrom at 693 third street north and she will be awarded for her recycling efforts with funding made possible with a grant from washington county so thank you very much melissa for your efforts and that takes us to our open forum where we set aside 15 minutes in the meeting to address topics that are not on tonight's agenda so if anyone would like to address the council just please state your name and address for the record and we do have a visitor i can see um that's with us on video recording if anyone else is here by voice also please make yourself known um but with that brad would mr smith would you like to address the council oh we need you to unmute please in the lower left hand corner there you go did that work that did thank you sorry this is not what i do usually do um i i got a picture sent to me by my bookkeeper of a a letter you guys must have sent about the greystone that was supposed to be on this meeting tonight adam can you come uh yes thank you madame um the greystone property or colloquially referred to as the gravestone property um is currently vacant and it is supposed to be on the vacant registration list um when we sent the registration requirements uh to the property owner mr smith we have not received back the vacant registration application uh nor the fee for this year so with that we were looking to assess that that fee um as unpaid uh it's not on the agenda um we it would be on for the next year's uh assessments not this year um so that hasn't been uh to the council and we have not heard back uh from mr smith or anybody um on that uh item so mr smith i i would i would like to sit down with uh whoever with the city again and and try to get this figured out and finally put a business in there and and get over the hurdles that we've had i i believe uh i've spoken to a couple council members about this mr smith and what i would like to propose is that we have a council workshop um with the council um it would be at this point a virtual meeting but we could also have the billing official there as well as the council and yourself um and discuss options as to move forward on that i think it's a mutual mutual interest for the city as well as you uh to determine something that works okay so with that we'll be in touch to coordinate that that sounds great could someone uh i i i'm sure you guys uh send things to uh keep record of it but uh it'd be nice to get a phone call or something else or or have someone set something up and if it's again by zoom oh uh i guess we're doing it by a computer that sounds really good um probably i'm not sure we'd squeeze it in yet before the holidays possibly but otherwise right after the beginning of the year what does that sound acceptable it doesn't seem like there's much rust not like i can open another business over there we'll leave it with adam to coordinate and schedule that and we will plan to attend as a council with you sounds great thank you okay thanks brad thanks brad have a good one thanks thank you very good is there anyone else on the line that would like to address the council okay i don't believe so if anyone does pop on please let us know um that will take us into our consent agenda so we'll consider resolution adopting items 1 through 14. including november 2nd 2020 city council regular meeting minutes the november 12 2020 city council special meeting minutes the november payables and receipts november building plumbing mechanical and zoning permits report the city observed holidays for 2021 renewal of liquor and tobacco licenses renewal of employee health and dental insurance policies budgeted fund transfers for 2020 hiring promotion of jennifer ho charles braun as our part-time library clerk donation of holiday lights from the hesley jensen american legion post 491 um donation of city-wide landscaping and planting efforts for 2020 from dan and ginny colleen and danica ridgway a letter of understanding for impound housing with woodbury animal humane society and the reappointment of tom triplett to the planning commission for a three-year term january 1st 2021 through december 31st 2023 and finally to designate january 4th 2020 as the next regular meeting for the city council any additions changes or comments for the consent agenda if not would someone like to make a motion to approve i'll move uh to approve the december 7th 2020 city council agenda as submitted by staff thank you john a second please i'll second it thank you connie and adam counselor doll aye doctor carlson aye councilmember hanson hi mayor st orders aye aye okay this evening we do have a public hearing the first item is certification of past due waste collection bills to property taxes and the second item will be certification of past due utility bills to property taxes with that i'll turn it to you adam thank you madam mayor give me just one moment pull this up the so the this item is regarding the certification of past due waste collection fees to the property taxes this is something that we've historically done in december of every year for the past few years this year we've been working with republic services to eliminate properties from this list and collect payment as we have in the past we did get one challenge to the proposed assessment from a mr drummond that was included with the packet um down in just for the publix view um this this is the only challenge that we've had recently and uh the the response from republic is also in the packet this is a rental property just to clarify that it's not mr bruman's primary residence for some time i'm not going to go through the entire history of this but the over the last two years there was a renter there for a significant portion of that and they had some late uh late fees that were assessed in 2019 uh some of the 2018 charges and then again this year there were some late fees at one point during the last this last year the resident the tenant vacated the property but our republic was not notified of that and the city's not typically involved in that process um the owner of the property um does not occupy it as i said it's a rental property he in his appeal claimed that he hadn't been receiving any any invoices or bills um but those were being sent to that property um the when in my earlier conversation with uh council the city attorney's office they said that the council's duty is to if there's documentation or information provided from uh republic that they are they should then assess those charges um if the council agrees to that um if they're i don't maybe tom can answer any other questions on that process but based on the information that we did receive from republic um this would meet the um as it was described to me meet the threshold or the standard for assessing those delinquent costs uh we did not receive any appeals from any of the other uh properties on the on the list we do see some properties that are repeat accounts um that every year there's a couple that they certify their trash charges instead of paying them it appears um but we got this list down from about 50 or 60 properties down to this so we have been working on reducing that these get assessed or certified at the end of the year so if there's any that get paid between now and when we actually certified them to the county uh those would come off off this role the other item is as part of this there is a ten percent uh penalty as well as six percent interest uh that will be applied when they are certified to the county um this is a statutory state statute process as it's outlined and it is also in our city code as as being able to do this we are making a couple changes to this process uh nothing necessarily substantive but reworking it a little bit some of the language on one of the future items on the agenda tonight the solid waste ordinance amendment so i can go over that process in more detail at that point if the council would like um but if uh if the council has any questions i'm happy to answer them right now or for me myself or mr leunen i have one is the the 10 city charge is that what the city gets back from the individuals so that 421 421.61 yes um that the the totals that are listed before you are um what those include the the penalties um but that 10 penalty is state statute um and our city code also has that but that goes directly to the city uh for the administrative costs to do this uh we do pay just as a general comment we do pay washington county uh four assessments uh so each assessment there's there's a portion that we end up paying the county for them to process those as well um so there's that 10 gets covers our administrative staff time to process these as well as our to cover our costs to the county i realize it's a you know pretty nominal amount of money but um does the city come out whole on the deal would you say just from your rough estimate uh it would really depend uh we come out about even um every year there's some now one thing we eliminate anything we work with we've been working with the republic to eliminate anything under fifty dollars um if it's less than fifty dollars it's not really worth anybody's time to actually certify those to the county as an assessment there's some that you know the larger amounts we it takes staff about the same amount of time for all of them so in some we come out ahead and some would come out behind but it typically comes out fairly even just to let the council know what the process is we get the initial list from the hauler and we go through that work with them to identify to make sure that we have the correct properties and the correct pids all the correct property information and then we we after the hauler has attempted to collect those fees these are all 60 days or more so an extra billing cycle um delinquent anything current um that is only one one build delinquent that those are not um are defined well they're not assessed but we then issue a letter uh giving notice to the uh property owner uh the account owner and uh then work with republic to or right now it's working with the public to whittle those down into you know we contact the owners directly to try to get them to pay so we don't have to assess them and then we go through the certification process which there is paperwork that we have to process that but it's typically just the one letter and then any subsequent follow-up communications with that owner in many cases um we don't here it's a fairly short list but some years it's been you know 25 uh 30 accounts that do not get um do not get paid prior to the certification um another one and i apologize if you answered this question and um but has mr brahman had a chance to see the the detailed letter from romack at republic services the city has not sent those to him um so i'm i don't know because the the communication that mr bruman um sent us he's we've spoke to him over the phone a couple times i believe i believe twice and he's been in communication with uh republic okay we have not sent him uh republic's detailed uh outline so i'm a little confused about the detailed outline from republic his second to the last bullet says the total balance on the account is 708.76 but then we're certifying only the 540 20. so i guess do you understand why there's that discrepancy yes uh council number uh that as i said earlier if it's not more than six it's not 60 days or more delinquent those don't get september 30th that makes sense and so the city has been communicating with mr bruman but he's not here today to discuss this neither is romack so i guess i'm not sure i mean we don't really have much we can do at this point other than to go ahead with the certification if mr brown wants to pay before that he can correct i mean there's nothing the city can do other than that correct councilmember um the the service has been being provided um as i said this is a rental property um mr bruman is the owner of that property and i know he has moved um i believe once during this process um and i don't he as you can see that fourth from the bottom bullet point um he was the mailing address of the the buildings were was changed during this um but there's uh the service according to the republic the service was being provided to the property uh but they're not they don't know if there was a tenant uh they were never notified to close the account um and as i said earlier the city really isn't involved in that part of the process okay and we did hear someone enter the virtual room so perhaps they'll want to address this during the public hearing if it's an outside visitor the all right well are there any other questions from the council that was when we'll go into uh public hearing would someone like to uh all right so i will i will officially open the public hearing and asking anyone that would like to oh adam did you cover the utility bills as well i had not yet uh we can do them separately or if the council would like matt and mary if you want me to quickly just uh do that now and it's up to the council why don't you do that because then we can do one motion to approve both together and um that way we don't have to keep anyone that's here visiting us waiting so we're going to discover that the the next item is the certification of past two utility balances so this is going to contain or entail water and sewer uh delinquent accounts um this is something that uh we discussed a couple over the last couple months it's historically not something that bayport has done we did revise our water or municipal water and sewer utility ordinance just recently to give the staff a little bit more flexibility in working with customers as well as make made changes to the billing process um this is something that we've had some delinquent accounts just over time where they they work with the city and there there's some again some repeat uh accounts that are unfortunately always behind um this gives everybody a little it's it's in everybody's benefit um if they're having trouble coming up with a payment plan this gets put onto their property taxes same as uh so it gets paid with the rest of the property taxes um but it allows them to kind of start fresh at the beginning of the year um it'll their their outstanding balance will be essentially zero um going forward now that those costs have been added or tacked on to the property taxes um there is no penalty or interest in those because they are a lien on the property and they are taxed with the pro as part of the property taxes not just along with them as a special assessment um special assessments we're able to have a penalty or you know additional interest charges but not just the general property taxes um so these we started out uh go to this next screen and as you can see the the outstanding is just about 2 200. um we did we do work with these customers um throughout the year um but at the at the end of the year this is something that uh staff has been discussing for a couple years and we think that this would be a a better way to process these so with these delinquent accounts these will all be added to the the outstanding tax the tax roll of payable in 2021 um so again this is per state statute and our city code um the the changes that we made just recently really don't affect this again if any of them make payment before the end of the year they will these accounts would come off the roll and they would not be certified are there any specific questions from the council on the water and sewer utility any questions from the council i seems like it's very clear thank you adams so madame go okay so with that then um i will move us into the public hearing and if we do have any visitors online if they would just state their name and address for the record um we'd welcome your comments i want to make sure i give enough time if anyone's on mute to unmute are you seeing anyone in in the queue okay all right well since we do not seem to have any uh comments from the public would someone like to make a motion to close the public hearing i'll make a motion to close the public hearing thank you connie is there a second oh second thank you michelle adam mayor councilmember carlson hi councilmember hanson hi councilmember dahl hi mayor stars all right okay is there any other further discussion on this on these two items okay if not would someone like to make a motion to uh to approve i'll move to approve the certification of past due waste collection and utility bills to property taxes as presented thank you michelle is there a second i'll second it thank you john adam councilmember carlson aye mayor stars hi as all that takes us to our first item of unfinished business which is to consider an amendment to chapter 46 our solid waste of the bayport city code of ordinances and summary for publication adam madame this item as i referenced earlier is an amendment to the solid waste ordinance of the city code uh because we just the council just authorized a new contract with a new hauler there were some changes that we had to make to make it congruent as well as there were some changes that our city attorney recommended uh making to update and bring in better in line with state statute um the the i'll just quickly just for the public we one of the items was increasing the insurance coverage and that was due to our uh the league's comments the league of minnesota cities feedback on the contract when they were reviewing it and then the same with the performance bond now this would have an impact on the other commercial haulers that we have that obtain licenses but this amount is not a very high amount the five thousand dollars that we had previously or currently existing um is fairly low all the major haulers that do business in the city that obtain hauler licenses should have far exceed their ability to get a performance bond in the 50 000. um so that was the recommendation from the attorney and the league of minnesota cities um the the section that i was referring to earlier as far as the billing process and how we're going to be assessing these um throughout the year if you if the council recalls uh the initial proposal from tennis was to either just terminate service for unpaid delinquent bills or um they they were not in favor of doing assessments at all um and the negotiation and the compromise that we had with the hauler was that they can send us the once they're 60 days in arrears they can send us those bills and we'll make the hauler hole and the city will essentially carry those costs through the through the year but assess them we are able to um apply the penalty as well as the interest cost for these and it's a fairly low amount so it doesn't really have an impact on the city's finances as much as it would potentially a smaller hauler such as tennis it is workable from the city's staffs perspective then again just some of the other changes where we expanded the plastics listing and recycling um and uh changed one other section uh from regular to commercial collection to make it more in line with our uh the rest of the ordinance um that was at the direction of the council or sorry the city council but our legal council um and as you can see we we don't collect hazardous waste um this is kind of an older section where that was in there uh but we are striking that um the other part of this uh item is a summary publication and again the purpose of this is to uh we're legally allowed to just publish just this in the newspaper after every ordinance that we passed we had to publish it in the newspaper and to save the city both time uh that time but to save money in the publication cost we do propose to do this this does require a four fifth vote um to approve this uh per state statute but this is uh common practice especially for more for longer ordinances so with that i'm happy to answer any questions from the council my apologies any questions from the council seems to make sense i had a chance to review it and i don't have any questions very good then we have two motions to go through if there aren't any questions and if everyone's okay to move forward then i would ask someone to make a motion to approve the amendment as the first step okay i'll move to approve the amendment to chapter 46 of the solid waste of vape port city code of ordinance as presented thank you connie is there a second i'll second thank you michelle adam councilmember carlson hi councilmember hanson hi councilmember dahl hi mayor st ors hi and now the second for the summary i'll move to approve a summary of publication for the amendment to chapter 46 solid waste of the bayport city code of ordinances as presented thank you michelle is there a second i'll second it thank you connie adam here councilmember hanson hi councilmember carlson hi councilmember dahl hi mayor st ours takes us test to our new business and the item is to consider authorization to complete plans specifications and a feasibility study for proposed 2021 city infrastructure improvements so matt and john over to you madam mayor members of council city staff is in the preliminary planning stages of planning this infrastructure improvement project um it's planned for the 2021 year so next year and it's on the capital improvement plan um if you take a look at the map it's uh sixth street north from fifth avenue north to pickett avenue and then the city cemetery access road um planned paving on both of those um streets uh a 2020 street rating which was completed by john and myself um this summer has this um roadway rated as a four out of ten this is the low end to fair rating um usually what that consists of is completing a million overlay for the maintenance project essentially we grind up the top layers of the road and then just apply another essentially a coat of asphalt on top of it we do need to do some due diligence on determining if the underlying structure of the road is still in good condition so we'll probably do some soil borings just to verify that this essentially this uh proposal that you have in front of you or um schedule it in front of you um is assuming that it's gonna be a mill and overlay project most likely um the sixth street north road if you've ever driven on it lately is fairly full of potholes on a regular basis and so we're spending a fair amount of money every year just to maintain and fill in those potholes uh usually on an annual basis if not twice a year um the cemetery road obviously consists of mostly of gravel that project has been on the capital improvement plan looking back a couple times over the years and that gets braided twice a year to remove potholes and then on a yearly basis we also remove gravel from the shoulders that has either washed in on the side or has been deposited when snow plowing has occurred so both these roads due to proximity are are planned to be done completed next year if the council would um say no to these projects it's probably not the end of the world we would just um patch 6th street again and just keep what on doing the regular maintenance on the cemetery road so while this project from a city standpoint would be preferable to move forward um if the council prefers not to move forward you know based on you know the current stature of uh money and stuff like that at the state level um it's fine um city staff and sch have provided a cost estimate for the proposed work um the proposal includes initial engineering work um and then for the seh proposal it includes completion of plans and specs and also a portion to bid the project and guide the work it also includes a feasibility report this provides an overview of the project and it also requirement for any assessments that would be assessed the property if um the decision to assess the the work um was forward a staff recommendation would be to adapt a motion authorizing essay seh to complete the plans and specs and a feasibility report for the project um as outlined in the proposal and then there's a not to exceed amount of forty four thousand one hundred dollars um i would stand for questions on anything related to this questions from the council yeah so the cip says what 113 for the sixth street mill and overlay and is the cemetery separate in there i'm just trying to figure out how much the project would cost and then if that's our share of the project cost that means that same amount is going to be assessed to property owners and i'm just not sure that next year is the best year to be laying that on our residents it might be a struggle first i mean it's always a struggle to pay those assessments but i just i think we should just think about it whether this is the best time to be doing this or not what do the other council members think i mean the road is in pretty bad shape but matt have you have you spoken to any of the residents along that stretch so madam mayor members of council i have not spoken to any residents um obviously um there's a some rental property up there there's also the cemetery st mike cemetery who would get assessed a fair amount because they own obviously half of that uh road up through where we plan on um reconstruct doing the road project um there's always um i haven't i haven't talked to any of them so um how long could these inter you know these like i want to know how long we're kicking the can down the road and which always makes it more expensive later so i just want to make sure that we're not creating more problems if we if we delay this a bit so i don't necessarily think that we're creating more problems madame here um what it is is and a lot of cities have seen this especially in minnesota um um probably had started showing up maybe 15 years ago when they would do a sealcoat project on asphalt that has gotten laid or that got put down probably you know 15 to 20 years ago for some reason it pulls up the first layer or the the top layer of asphalt and nobody everybody tends to point the finger at everybody else on who's to blame but that's what's causing it on sixth street essentially the potholes really aren't any bigger or any deeper than one to two inches so it's definitely that top layer of asphalt underneath the city engineer myself believe that the road's in fairly good condition just because there are no bigger um potholes or deep potholes or any severe cracking or anything like that that's why we think a million overlay would be more expensive it could happen that if you put this off too long that a milling overlay isn't feasible anymore and then all of your sudden you're in a total reconstruction of the road um but i can't guarantee you what that date would be um one year probably not but multiple years potentially so and there's also no guarantee that um once we do a couple boreholes or even uh look at it further that this isn't a total reconstruction project either and that these prices could increase even a little more at that so well for my side i know personally this is sort of in my neighborhood sixth is bad um i could be convinced to hold off on that but i would like to maybe move forward with the with the soil boring just to make sure we're not already behind the eight ball um in terms of the cemetery um the saint michael's portion has been paved for a long time and i think it's high time that that we get our part of that cemetery paved i think that's a no-brainer and i'd be disappointed if we don't move forward with that at a very minimum so madame irwin um one other comment here and john can talk to this but um we would have the capability most likely of as long as we're going to move forward with this in the next year or two of still going through with the plans and specs in the feasibility report because those are very likely still good for a year or two down the road except for just the the pricing in in those two reports would just have to get updated year over year um as far as the plans and specs it's likely that they wouldn't change year to year um john can talk to that though um just so that we can move this forward um potentially if we're still on the edge of you know whether we want to do this or not because what we run into then is um you know the timing here in the next couple of months of assessing and bidding the project and then getting the project moving forward it starts to get tight um you know if we put it off a month or two did to discuss it and if we were to delay um what does that do with uh stacking up projects at a later date for the city and we have to come up with a larger sum on our side as well which impacts these these folks as well as everyone in the city yeah so from that perspective there's always the chance here in the future years that if we would stack projects there there are no projects um under this one necessarily that are super critical but if we would start to stack projects we could go out for um um uh uh not alone but um that the same thing that we did this year essentially um for acquiring uh bonding funding yeah bonding i'm sorry yes but that just adds to our overall debt it does matter mayor yep um the other thing we would do then potentially too um like i indicated there there aren't a lot of projects right now that are critical but as you indicated there is the potential that they would start stacking up um and as you can see there are a few projects that adam has pulled up that potentially here in the next couple years um could definitely add up now the good thing about potentially doing one big larger project is there's definitely the potential um that you could get better pricing on certain things whereas in doing you know two or three smaller projects yeah i guess i'm not concerned about stacking it because if we have the money to pay for it in 2021 the money should still be there in 2022 to pay for it or 2025 or whenever it happens so it it only seems other than the price going up which you know prices are going to go up year to year that's the only disadvantage i see in putting this off i guess i'd like to eat i i'm good with moving forward with you know having a ch do the plans and specs and just kind of see where we're at with everything um if we could then in the meantime try to reach out to some of these homeowners that are going to be affected by it i think that might be helpful how do you guys feel i guess um i tend to lean toward agreeing with michelle on on going forward with the specs but also maybe um seeking out some the only reason i'm my main thing is with the st michael cemetery if i'm not mistaken i think that might be run and owned by at least i know it's saint charles responsibility and and i know they were just hit with the street assessment and i know it's kind of rough for them right now and i might be wrong on who actually is responsible for paying the bills up there but i know sam we hire the the gravediggers and we maintain st charles does so i guess i'd want to kind of seek that out and find out if they are responsible for that payment or the assessment i guess i don't want to stop it completely because i feel like we always have these projects and then we put them on hold and then they get pushed back but yet so i guess i'm okay with going forward with the spec and just see where we're at so i guess i tend to go along with michelle's ideal right now yeah and i don't think it needs to i would never say it's not going to happen because it has to get fixed so i think it's like would you rather have it this year or the you know 2021 or 2022 basically is another year gonna help if we put it off yeah so matt will this tell us how bad the you know what the conditions are and how long we can go and is there any way to test that first layer in any way to see if it's going to pull up it'd be really nice to kind of have a crystal ball yeah members of the council um i don't have a crystal ball so that doesn't help um we we could do soil borings essentially to take a look at what's in the underlying layer um but really the top layer it it hasn't done much different over the past three years that i've been there every year new potholes essentially show up in areas other than what we patched i will say if we complete the feasibility report that will actually show what the potential assessment at least potential assessment that the myself and john think um that would be assessed to the property owners it would show the preliminary assessment that we would propose for them based on the city policy for assessments there is always a possibility that you could lower that assessment that you could stray from the city policy but that has never happened in the past you know to potentially lower that i will say that um michelle michelle and connie are right um putting it off a year while um yes it might save that money here in the beginning you might actually cause them to um end up spending more money just due to the fact that the costs are going to go up for the project um talking about cemetery i'm pretty sure cemetery is actually owned they probably split the cost three ways i believe there's three catholic churches um that um are part of it saint michael yes hr mary's in saint charles so you're right there are three churches that are involved in it i just know that saint charles is given the cemetery saint michael's the school and then uh the saint mary's the all the nunnery or whatever but i don't know like i say i'm just wondering who actually is responsible for the bill well it probably it sounds like it makes sense to move forward with the study get back the information then we can discuss it again and and see where we go from there does that sound like i'm summarizing things correctly yeah and is it worth looking into you know stacking it with other projects and getting maybe a better deal because it's a larger project i mean you mentioned that too matt so if we do wait and then it goes up because everything goes up can we maybe save a little bit by putting it with making more people have an assessment people can add to work happy um but matt please address your question yeah there definitely is that potential um councilman hanson um the the only offshoot of that is um the other projects that were slated i think are farther out in the um capital improvement plan necessary to do right now but there there might be another project coming up that there's a fairly big potential that it might happen um and so there is a possibility that not this year but next year um that we could actually combine it um with another one we might know more potentially about that other project here in the next two months maybe so okay does it make sense to get to separate out the pricing just for the cemeteries that doesn't affect anybody from assessment standpoint and i know that's a relatively small project but i just think it's it's high time that gets done the memorial day parade goes through there and i'm in that cemetery often and there's elderly folks in there checking on loved ones and i just think that that situation up there's been less than ideal for a long time even though you guys do a great job maintaining it matt yeah council member doll reluctantly i would hold off on the cemetery paving if we were not doing the sixth street north project i mean the scope of that project is just so small that i don't think we'd get good pricing on there john might disagree with me just because it's a small project and something it'd be easy to do um so i'd be open to hearing john's opinion on that one so i'd like to get his opinion and pursue that personally mayor members of the council at um i think i think that project is small enough that it could go it really could go either way and right now it's too far out to predict and what i mean by that is um sometimes you take a small project like that and you know combine it with like a six feet project and together they'll both garner the lower um prices that's generally what happens what but once in a while you can catch lightning in a bottle so to speak if your small project is simple and easy to state to have it be stable own and you give the contractor some flexibility if it's a if it's a nice simple flexible project they might see it as something that they could squeeze in between other work in the summer and that can be appealing but right now it's too early to predict where what would be the case for this project because we just don't know um how much work the contractor is going to have next year so i wish i could provide more of a you know a better a better answer to really predict but just generally speaking the smaller projects do benefit from being combined with the larger ones and that that that tends to be something you can count on more than whether or not this thing would you know fit into somebody's schedule in between and therefore garner small lower prices so generally i would say combining it is the better approach so one other question i don't remember over the last 10 years or so that this project was ever brought up before but has it been have we postponed it in that time frame or or slightly before that time frame does it ever come before us metamer are we talking about the cemetery project paving oh the whole thing the sixth hands and cemetery um i believe sixth street might have been on the cip the past couple of years but it was farther out than um what i brought it forward now um i believe the cemetery project has been on the cip before i've gotten here but maybe not while i'm here okay thank you all right well any other questions or would someone like to make a motion john um john brody if i can just ask what is the shelf life of the of the feasibility report oh you're asking me to by statute uh yeah how long does it can we can the council use it i think we have to have another uh public hearing if it gets put off longer than i know matt if you can you i don't know you know maybe tom would know too but off top of my head that date is not coming to mind i want to say it's it's three to six months or something along those lines can one of you guys help with that is it is it subject is it 60 days i thought it was i thought it was the six months um that for the public hearing that you'd have to have a have a new one if you don't order the improvement um but i think we ran into that with the highway 95 project right because we did we did have public hearings that we had to do again later in the year it's not critical i just i was just trying to define or clarify the time frame that we would be dealing with so but this study itself is is good for a longer period of time john the study the study will be is yeah yeah good for as long as you you need it there might be certain components that would need to be updated if it got delayed for for instance a whole year because we'll do cost estimates as a part of the feasibility report and if it gets delayed to the next construction year we would we would want to update those based on you know what we actually saw for construction prices in 2021 and then that would have an effect on the assessment role so the assessment role would then need to be updated as well but the rest of the rest of the report would stand as long as there wasn't a scope change you know if the council didn't expand the project or or change its scope somehow one thing to there um part some of those um like timelines and stuff like that adam was talking about six months and stuff like that uh part of that has to do with the public hearing not necessarily about the feasibility report and whether it's still good or not it's holding the public hearing for the improvement hearing and then you have a certain amount of time to order the improvement after that so what we ran into with the 95 projects was we held the we had the feasibility report and held the public hearing but then we didn't order the hearing because we were waiting on numbers from mndot and so then we just held another public improvement hearing um and so it's not um holding a public hearing obviously is not overly critical um as long as the information is still good so yeah administrator bell is correct it would be six months from that public hearing that the council would need to either adopt it or hold another hearing okay and john perroti how much is that re-evaluating the costs how much would is that added expense that ends up being tacked on just want to make sure that we have an idea your immune sorry am i back now yes okay um that's not very much of of the uh of the cost estimate i would guess uh just updating costs and the assessment role is probably a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars so somewhere in that range again as long as we don't change the scope of the project okay good to know any other questions from the council anyone like to make a motion well i'll make a motion no we can still get the plans and specs from sch but we don't have to move forward with the project yeah and that's all the motion really is right right okay so you want to go i'll ahead connie motion to authorize sch to complete plans specification and a feasibility report for the 2021 city infrastructure improvements as outlined by the proposed proposal but not to exceed forty four thousand one hundred dollars okay thank you connie is there a second a second okay adam thank you madam mayor councilwoman hanson hi councilman carlson hi councilmember dahl hi mayor stan orders i i think it would be a good idea to have that conversation i don't like to surprise anybody and if we're looking at that it's this year or even the next year that's still you know something that they should be aware of and start uh planning for so that it it doesn't impact them as severely adamer yes would you like letters sent out prior to getting a number um essentially of an assessment number from them or an estimated number i don't i don't know that that's helpful but i think it's good for them to know that this is probably in their you know in their future and that this is the current number and we're discussing whether to do it in 21 or 22 and would like some feedback yeah the reason i ask is in the past we've waited to get a preliminary number um from the feasibility report before we've sent that out so does that sound good council members yes yes i do think it's worth speaking with the church because they are going to be paying a large portion of it you know just to give them the heads up i don't know maybe you want to wait till you have an actual number but it might be interesting to hear how all that works on their side if it is going to affect saint charles that just had to pay and we could do some digging a little bit just to understand it at least they could plan and you know it's not like it's indefinite i think if we do if we open it if we do that we're you know we're gonna run into challenges all kinds of challenges but to at least allow people to plan and to provide feedback i think would be nice to suggest that you could put you could use your newsletter and our website at this point to just notify the residents in general that a project in this area is being discussed if you think that would at least help notify some folks that something's that it's coming and that the detail will follow i think that's helpful also we you know met and john you did all the work to get this list in order uh so that people would be start becoming aware and and could plan if it's you know two years five years whatever but i think in our newsletter we should remind folks of where that information is housed and that they should you know check in and so that you know every project doesn't come as a surprise i think that that having that whole list that you've prepared based on the different research and assessments of the conditions is very helpful and and if we could just remind people to continue to check there that would be probably a good idea for the whole community madam may remember the council i have do have another thing um i do have a contact at st charles and um just what kanye had indicated seeing what the situation is there on how stuff gets paid there that would be nice to know too for the assessments whether we need to do that differently i do know that it's one property owner at washington county i mean that i don't know we could switch it out but at least they would know then too that they would be able to do it split it three ways or however that goes so okay all right well very good we'll move forward and then we'll have more information shared and we'll look forward to information coming back to us okay that moves us to our public input truth and taxation on the 2021 city budget and levy and there's three items under this area so adam i'll turn it over to you thank you madam mayor i'm going to go ahead and present the budget presentation as you just noted i will remind the council and i'll say it again at the end but there are three separate motions for the three budget related items three resolutions okay can everybody see the budget presentation okay yes sir okay the whoops and i just noticed i still have preliminary please forgive me um this is the final 2021 budget um i updated everything but that okay uh the 2021 budget as i talked about in our preliminary budget we the city of bayport provides wide range of services uh we're what i call a full service city we have our own police and fire departments we have building inspections we do all of our own streets and we contract with an engineer but we have an administration hr department finance we have our own library not a lot of cities our size have its own library um so that is unique uh we have some great park amenities and we continue to improve those and add to those um we've been working on community beautification i know that uh public works just made a tremendous effort to put up some christmas lights with we worked with a couple different partners on that this year customer hanson i know you were involved in getting some of the lighting so thank you for your work on that um we we have our city a size we have our own sewer and municipal water throughout almost the entire city um we pay for all the signs and the lighting we have our own parking lot municipal parking lot um but all of that comes with a cost uh we we're just discussing our infrastructure and our capital improvements um all the infrastructure the physical improvements all the amenities they all cost money and to keep the high-level services that we have and get to enjoy in this city um we have to find a way to pay for that the preliminary there we go the 2020 final budget i my apologies council uh there is a budget from budget change from the preliminary um we were able to uh pair back a little bit here and there kind of whittle down a couple line items to get a small decrease from the preliminary budget it came out right about at the same for the levy it was about 500 cheaper but we did end up finding out about the lga that was one of the items that was kind of outstanding but based on the recent information from the state that their projected budget forecast has actually been a surplus for this year luckily for everybody involved we are expecting the full uh lga local government aid payments uh next year and the remainder this year we'll get another payment here in december what that does is it does force us to have a two point four seven percent increase which is only about eighty two thousand dollars more than last year um but what that what that does to us is it gave us uh the amount that was certified from the state was to about twenty two thousand dollars uh twenty hundred two thousand um less than what we had initially projected in our preliminary budget um so these numbers have been updated um so we were forced to find a few dollars here and there to keep us as a reduction um instead of because we're not able to increase from our preliminary budget as you recall um so throughout the as this as a reminder throughout the entire budget we we really did try to reduce a lot of our expenses um staff and i went through each year or each department each line item and try to figure out uh you know what we what have we spent in the past and what we project for next year without really any significant increases other than a few key items the levy uh with the increased uh fire equipment as well as the eab the tree replacement program that we started this year um that was that total about 60 uh six thousand um just over sixty five thousand of that eighty two hundred eighty two thousand um so the levy uh increase has it's about a hundred thousand hundred one thousand uh which does come out to be to be the eight point three percent that is actually down from the eight point three eight um that we had um in preliminary budget uh with some of those those trimmings that i we went back and did um as you can see here's just the historical um so the the new levy amount is the one million three hundred and eighteen thousand thirty four uh it was at 576 the last three the preliminary level um for the council on the public's information the the county's property values did not go up what we were expecting based on the preliminary market values in the spring projection there was five percent uh that we were going to see that ended up only being 1.1 um average increase in market value that is the average increase and so that's not just across the board standard and that was for residential properties commercial was not increased at all the city also saw a 3.75 increase in the health insurance cost which you saw as part of the consent agenda that was actually down from earlier in the year before the preliminary budget but this was incorporated into the preliminary budget um that was up in the four and a half 4.6 so we these are actually we're pretty happy with the 3.75 that's not a very significant increase compared to what we've heard from some other um some other cities and some other individuals we did have a three percent contractual increase for wages for both union and non-union staff just as a reminder the city does have three unions two in police and one in public works and typically the practice has been for the non-union staff to receive the same as the union staff we did add the one just as a reminder we did add the one part-time basically the oss position the office support specialist position uh one part-time staff person in the admin department because we did not replace the full-time finance officer um that we separated with this year um so that that is being added in for next year we have not we've not hired that position or tried yet in this year one of the other big factors is the decrease in the min spec expenditures now that comes out of both our revenue and our expenditures uh but that so that that that decrease in our revenue um does have an impact on the property tax levy um because they're different revenue sources uh the reduction it does not uh one-to-one uh offset each other um but that is mainly due to the construction build out uh we have sold all the lots in inspiration that we but uh the the developer has sold all the lots and inspiration uh other than the phase two uh which is the land duty property um and those are all sold and so those last few remaining houses uh should be being built in the next six months six to nine months um the fiscal disparities that was another hit that we took this year um that's something that as i've explained to the council in the past it's a complicated procedure but each community either pays in or receives funding for the fiscal disparities across the state and that that 32 thousand dollars there that we received less than we received last year does have an impact on the levy one of the other items that you may have seen this year that was explained was the reapportionment of staff wages and benefits across both from water sewer into the general fund departments as well as just across the general fund departments um that's something that we try to we try to apportion um a little bit every year just to make sure that we're spending money where staff time is being spent we want that to be a accurate reflection of the expenses to run those various departments as i noted earlier we also added the 27 500 additional funds for addressing the emerald dashboard problem that was identified this past year um that that's a significant amount of money we did receive grant funding to help pay for that on top of this but we will for the next decade we will have quite a quite a bit of an expense to make sure that we can address that problem in our city and then the last item listed there was uh we increased by 40 500 uh additional funds for the fire department equipment fund that was something that we've identified as staff and council that we need to play some catch up to be able to pay some longer term future equipment replacement in the fire department um that 40 000 just to give you a little bit of reference that only 26 of that was outside of the three percent the department um if you recall our capital improvement funds are split some are in the department and some are just out straight out of the general fund um at the end so that's why that number looks so high um but if the council recalls at the september preliminary budget meeting we just the council decided to add an additional ten thousand dollars to that the tax rate um is the again the percentage of the taxpayers overall tax payment that's allocated to the city if you think of the tax the tax the basic tax bill as a pie um a certain portion of that is to the county a certain portion of that is the school district and a portion of that is the city um we don't have a separate watershed taxing authority as some cities do but those primarily those three taxing authorities make up the entire tax bill our tax rate is the city's portion the city's percentage of that tax bill the 2021 levy again it was the 1 million 318 thousand 34 dollars when you add the 175 library levy that comes out at 1.493 million which is overall 7.25 total increase the reason that that is lower than just the general fund percentage is because you're dealing with a larger amount the so really because of the minor increases in the home values but still maintaining the important investment in the areas of need the 2021 budget is achievable with a 33.357 percent which is a 5.4 increase over 2020. the median annual property tax increase is 53.14 and to show the council what that does across kind of across the board um with some with a selection this is what the county uh kind of the base that they give us um we don't we don't believe that there's many properties that are only valued at a hundred thousand but it gives you kind of per 100 000 at that first bracket you can see the the various different differences due to the levy increase ranges from in those those amounts and again the median in bayport is the 53 um so with that i'm you know as i said this has been a difficult year for everybody um and we you know we just got done talking about the impact of this on uh on the regarding assessments and potential assessments and everybody's you know struggling we were able to you know save a lot of financial potential problems with the cares act funding but we we did identify several areas of the budget that we felt were very important to continue and make investments continue to make investments um not just for the short term but for the long term uh as the council recalls some of the fire equipment um we've got significant costs coming down the road in you know eight nine ten years uh but it's better to start saving for those those costs now um instead of again piling it up and not you know really being put in a difficult place um otherwise we've we've made significant cuts in some areas to to make sure that we're not doing unnecessary or unneeded expenditures and we're trying to be very responsible with the taxpayer dollars and with this it we do believe that it maintains a high quality of life for bayport residents um while trying to be responsible with those dollars so with that i'm happy to answer any questions that the council has one note that i want to bring up that it was pointed out earlier in the materials that the council had regarding the cip um the ice rink uh that was on the 2022 to 2025 uh future projects that there was no amount listed there um that our estimate is about sixty thousand dollars for that um that that's a another small oversight on my part uh that was not included um it doesn't make a difference this year because we're not approving the the future years uh but just for the council's information um so with that as i said i'm happy to answer any questions otherwise the council can take action on the three resolutions very good thank you adam are there questions from the council i have none i just thank you on the on the cip well and also just just to help me understand how it works we already received from the county what our taxes are planned to be for the next year how can they do that before we've actually done this step did was am i confused did everyone else get that piece of mail that said what our taxes were i'm like wait we haven't actually finalized ours how can they tell us this yeah so that was based on the preliminary value the predictability levy that the city certified to them back in september so they use that president you wouldn't know that's that it's not real you know you think that's what the final is well most in most cases for most cities the the amount does not go down or it doesn't change much after the preliminary value or levy is set um in this case it actually is coming down by again only 500 but um so you spread that out across the city and it's really you know it's negligible a couple dollars maybe yeah but that that's how they determine those that's why they're due in september so they can then send out the preliminary um so it will change um other things you know there could be other each taxing authority has to set their final budget um so when you actually go to pay when they send you the actual bill not just the notice um that that number could come down it can't it can't go up so is it just a war it's just for the truth and taxation here so you understand what it might be so you can complain if you want to is that sort of how it's playing or command that that it's for providing notification to the residents okay my other questions were about the cip for 2021. i didn't understand a lot of the blue section on that page so apparently we need to install a generator for the air stripper which is quite expensive but then i didn't know what all those other booster station pump things were so maybe matt could help me understand what we're doing matt you're unmute yeah that's better madame remembers the console um so you're wondering about the blue items so um this has to deal a lot of the booster station pump stuff and the vfd um has to deal with our summer water usage um i think we touch base with this when we went over the capital improvement plan um so we're experiencing quite a bit of water usage in the summer up in inspiration and miller farms and what we're seeing is that we're running all three booster pumps up there which means we don't have an emergency backup essentially that means if one of those booster pumps went down we wouldn't be able to provide enough water to the residents up there during the summer months so we're hoping to work on some conservation up there but we also realize that pumping up there probably is not going to decrease just based on the current demand so we're looking at changing out the pumps to allow for a greater amount of pump edge as it turns out i'm not sure that these numbers are viable anymore because the electricity up there that we need um is not enough for is only enough for the current pump system that we have so um i'm still working with some numbers and some vendors to get a viable estimate and so that will probably be coming to you here hopefully in uh january or february so that's what those are the generator installation is for the airstripper and the booster pump um currently there is only a generator for the booster pump um i'm not sure why that is but at the time when they put in the air stripper they never put a connection in or never got a generator for it where that hinders us is if the electricity goes out during say during the summer and we need to pump water wells two and three have to run through the air stripper to remove tce um if they can't then we need to pump from well number four which is kind of our emergency well at this point however well number four does not go through the air stripper and is not treated for tc um so there are um there are small amounts of tce in well number four and they're starting to rise and well number four as [Music] it has setbacks um based on where it is in the floodplain and so during high water we can't necessarily pump that um due to issues with it being in the flood plain and so if you look at the really future capital improvement plan it includes a another well and probably not even in this one mine goes out like 15 20 years so but the long term one includes a new well just based on well number four needing to um essentially be abandoned at some point fairly soon um so that's the long and short about the generator installation the booster pumps and the vfd pumps with that said we are getting ahead of myself but we are looking at connecting to the kejanis property we've talked about that in the past two years ago and they are also petitioning us to supply water with them again the good thing about that is our water capacity in the winter is or during the fall winter spring is very small compared to our water needs in the summer and so 75 of the year we easily have enough water to splat supply a new development connection but that 25 percent is when we'd be cutting it close so we've made stipulations with kahanas they are actually going to install potentially a irrigation system that uses like pond water and storm water runoff um with an emergency connection to the city just in case they would need it so um they shouldn't have a very big demand on our summer water usage um the mayor had indicated in the past two that we need to start pushing conservation which i'm definitely all for but um woodbury has already done that in the past where they've severely increased the um the amount for water usage over a certain amount because then they believe that that's extra amount is used for sprinkling and they have never seen a real reduction based on that so um we've sent letters out in the past this last year asking residents both in inspiration and in miller farms development sent them out to the hoa specifically saying what our rules are and stuff like that and we'll do that again definitely i do believe that we'll probably this year have to do we'll probably have to start driving around and making sure people are watering on the correct day which takes time out of our schedule but if we don't get the new pumps in it it's potentially possible that we would start running short of water even during the this summer uh and it really depends on how wet or dry a year it is the last couple summers have been fairly wet and but we've still used um all three pumps now we've never come short of being close to being short but if it's a um if it's a dry summer then of course even more people water even downtown and other places and so they could become critical so thank you matt i i understand the need to want to you know you want to be smart and you want to make sure that we have the water when we need it but it's a little bothersome to me that the entire city is helping to pay for these properties that don't know how to not water too much i feel like we should there needs to be another plan um i suppose it's way too late to do whatever this new development's doing with trying to get pond water to water the lawns up in inspiration and miller but it's i don't know i just feel like is there i don't know what our current structure is in every other day watering system do we need to make that even more strict in terms of you know twice a week or something that you just can't use as much water up there yeah so um councilmember hansen um ours is currently every other day you you can water um there's all kinds of data out there from the u of m that essentially says that you need about one inch of water a week to keep your grass green um and the preference would be at least from them is um you know twice a week is actually good for longer periods rather than every single day or even every other day so we do have residents call all the time and say hey we have these smart controllers that actually look at radar and all kinds of stuff and so we give them leeway based on that every other day thing because sometimes if you do every third day then on one day you're watering on the wrong day essentially so every other day or the odd even day thing um definitely helps but sometimes it hinders because then we need to keep a running list of well who's called and who has smart controllers and we haven't even we haven't gotten that far down the road yet um so is there a silver bullet out there that works but that this new development if if this proceeds and this is um been going on a fair amount hugo has a huge area that they're really pushing this pond irrigation stuff and using storm water runoff but there's an added cost initially for the development so okay actually for the whole council um pardon me madam mayor um the generator uh costs that was part of what we had bonded for that was included in the bonding um so some of that is um already i will say paid for but planned to be paid for with some of the bond proceeds um so that was just for everybody's education that was that's on there i i would like to add too many mirror that um so both generators cost about fifty thousand dollars each um one for the booster station one for their stripper um we did receive a ten thousand dollar grant um for one of the booster stations um for for the airstripper and we'll probably i'll probably put in again for the booster station as separate things um so hopefully we can get end up with 20 000 to cover part of that hundred thousand dollars so that would be great the cip just says for an air stripper but it's the 110 000 is for both is for both yes okay all right i'm not real excited about spending all that money for the booster pumps but i guess we don't have any other solution my other question is about the light pull painting and getting new light poles mostly about the light pole i know it's a small amount 7 500 but i always thought excel owned our light poles is it just some of them and we own others is that so councilmember hanson uh good question uh the light pole painting is for the light poles specifically on minnesota 95. uh the city owns all of the polls on 95 and all of the well not oh sorry the city owns every pole from central avenue to fifth avenue on minnesota 95 and then from fifth avenue with the intersection of third street up to uh bronze um our business district basically kind of is what you're wanting we own them and are responsible for maintenance of those poles which is why we can hang our christmas decor on them and flower baskets that is correct if we did not own them we would not be allowed to hang that stuff on them and then we're just going to get update the light poles on the 5th avenue business district side is that the idea to make them that is an option i have not looked into it yet um and that ten thousand dollars per poll is just a rough estimate that could go as low probably as five thousand depending on how decorative you want or as great as 20 000 would be my yes um as far as pull decorations and stuff like that okay because right now they're just really basically pulls i guess i don't even know never noticed so right now on fifth avenue there are they're a mixture um we have i believe like two lantern ones two of the really tall top hat ones um and maybe one that's similar to 95 something like that it's just a lot of money for light poles so didn't know if there was another priority item we could spend that on but and again this isn't necessarily critical this year those um the reason that we talked about switching is those out is those are not led yet um and they can too uh there's ballas in there so there's two poles there's two lights out right now by the cemetery that are lantern style um it's about 500 each to get a bucket truck out there fix the ballasts and just work on them um if you move over to led it lasts a lot longer so um it's just it's about maintenance costs essentially right that makes more sense okay thank you very much those are all the questions that i had about the budget in the cip i think the topic of what the water is possibly a workshop topic because this is i mean it's critical that we maintain i mean we're adding more homes all the time um you know i think it's just a topic that we should dig into and look at different options um in a workshop just to make sure that we stay ahead of that topic um you know we have enough water to support the homes but we you know we have to have compliance and not over watering so that we don't get into a critical situation so we want the homes and we want all of our new neighbors um and we want the community to look beautiful but it can't be at the expense of of the environment or the other home and businesses within the community so um i think let's maybe revisit that sometime this springtime ahead of watering season just look at different options see what other cities are doing etc so yes adam mayor we we are still staff is still planning on having a stormwater impervious surface discussion with the council that has come up over the past several months so different conservation incentives and that that topic can we can include the water conservation um for the watering um i think that would be well related that sounds good early early in the year all right are there any other questions or comments about the 2021 budget i have none okay if not would someone like to make our first of three motions i'll start out um i'll make a motion that we adopt the city budget for uh city of bayport 2021 at three million four hundred eleven thousand nine hundred and sixty four dollars is that one of them that we have to do is that one no i didn't that's what i thought it was lost i think it's the general fund levy is the first one oh i think am i right well it looks like it yeah i so emotional i'm sorry you're right uh order doesn't matter no but is that one do we have to do the full budget one i don't know no it's the budget is the second motion second one yeah and then i'm missing where we are at with our motion so you're on it john made john made a correct uh motion for the okay precise amount of the establishing the budget for 2021 it's just the second uh resolution so we can go ahead with that one i don't see that resolution anywhere i don't see where we're seeing that number but right it's right below the other one on my packet i hadn't scrolled down page 56 of the pdf i don't have page numbers two pages below the picture of the cemetery two pages below the picture of the cemetery on my packet i have it okay i see see thank you so three million four eleven nine sixty four i will second that okay great thank you john thank you michelle adam eric councilmember doll aye councilmember okay so now let's move to the adaption of the resolution for the levy would someone like to go forward with that i'll make a motion to adopt the resolution establishing the levy for the 2020. 2021 sorry i'm stuck on 20 20. thank you connie is there a second i'll second it thank you john all right adam councilmember carlson hi hi councilmember hanson hey mayor stan and our final on the capital improvement project plan you want to go michelle i know i'm like should i take a turn is that oh sure all right um i move that we adopt the resolution uh oh adopting the capital improvement plan for 2021 that simple i'll second that thank you michelle thank you connie on to you adam collins former hanson hi councilmember carlson hi dr rodol all right thank you just work on that yeah thank you to the entire staff for all the hard work and that and uh the presentation was nice adam thank you i think i'm stuck on 2020 as well sorry about the wrong dates in the presentation yeah it's an unforgettable year what can we say let's not get stuck here though please no and uh thank you john for the the positive remarks for the staff as well uh that takes us to our city council liaison reports um john i'll start with you um i have a meeting coming up i don't have anything to report from last month the meeting this week sounds good connie library yes um the library board match virtually again um and i'm sure you all know they're going back to curbside service for right now um jill's hoping maybe sometime around january 11th go back depending on how everything continues to go or not go but that's a date that she's kind of got in the back of her mind to open for appointments back in um they are going to have a virtual new year's eve party for the kids at about starting at 11 45 on new year's eve day um and i guess things have been going well she said they are gonna meet with two new two candidates for the open position on the library board pam uh johnson is um resigning or stepping down or whatever so they have two candidates that her and jill and sarah wagner will be um interviewing i think tomorrow i think it is and then um sinclair oh my gosh i'm drawing a name or blank on her first name janelle sinclair retired and so as we had in our consent agenda jen braun was hired and then um the washington county purchased some chrome no i'm not techno chrome chromebooks are they okay that are available for bayport residents to reserve if they'd like and that was basically it we meet this week or next week i'm sorry we meet the 15th again i think there's hot spots too yeah great thank you you bet thank you connie and michelle was there anything with the cable or any other yes we did meet um unlike connie i wrote notes because i can't remember yeah uh we met and uh we had a new commissioner for the stillwater resident rep his name is todd gardner and i think he's going to be a really good addition because he's got a tech background and seems to understand it way better than some of us others that went in about eight years ago um we also had to say goodbye to tom wagner he is the stillwater council rep so he's been on the commission with me for the past eight years and i was sad to see him go but he's no longer a council member who's done this here we reviewed the um financials for the commission and surprisingly everything's in in pretty good shape because we still get the peg fees for the um table service so we're able to continue to pay salaries and keep everybody going for the valley access tv we had an update from the station manager greg and they've got their covid19 plan in place for the employees doing some remote working and you know jordan's here as you know doing these kinds of things with us and they did um still working on some marketing plans for the coming year so they can get some other revenues as we know uh people are cutting their cable cords so we're losing uh um business and and some revenues on that side so we're trying to come up with other revenue sources we will be meeting in february and at that point we need to elect our officers for the next year because we don't meet in january we were going to do it in december but we realized tom whitener will have a replacement i potentially could have a replacement we talked john and i john dolan i talked about maybe doing some shuffling of positions since we've been in the same ones now um and then we also need to get a bayport citizen rep because we lost brian delisle so we decided it was uh not pertinent to elect officers until we actually knew who was on the commission so we'll do that in in february and uh penny miele house who's the director there i asked her to put together some materials to help us recruit the resident representative so they understand what the commission does and what their role will be so she's finalizing that and i hope to have that this week so we can start reaching out to some prospects for filling that position very good over the last month um i attended the bayport fire department board meeting so it's good to see some folks again over the over resume um i would like to recognize and thank john buckley for his service as an employee bayport employee as well as a council member and we would want to wish him and his family well so thank you to john and then finally adam and i met with the department of corrections there's been a lot of articles in the news regarding coven 19 and the impact to the staff as well as the residents of the facilities and so just wanted to make sure that we understood the situation what we could do to help what we could do to keep our own staff um safe as well as theirs and so it was a it was a very um open uh candid you know discussion they brought both of the wardens um assistant wardens the gentleman that's in charge of the prisons overall uh they're doing everything that they can to address the situation they um and their as well as for their staff and the staff's families so i felt um like obviously they have everything un you know managed uh but i did want to make sure that we had the opportunity to at least understand if there was anything else that was needed from us as a city partner or if um you know our staff in itself needed anything from us to ensure their safety as they respond so adam is there anything else that you wanted to add no it was a it was a very good meeting i thought staff has been working with the communications director for the dos department corrections to provide uh kind of a an update for for residents and just the general public um specifically about stillwater uh prison that we had discussed at the meeting um so we we do have that and we're we're working on getting that out to the public right now it's gonna it's gonna be put on a website with uh directing people to go get more information there right and we also discuss them uh possibly supplying some kind of newsletter to our e-newsletter or an article to our e-newsletter as well as maybe a short article in the print just to direct for more information if if there are questions because it is a topic that is in the newspapers quite frequently right now so so so those were uh my liaison i can turn it over to adam for the staff and mayor uh the i will call on chief eisinger council did receive the library report madam mayor and members of the council uh the november call everybody hear me yep if the november calls volume was 69 compared to 89 in 2019 our year to date is 867 compared to 1137 our monthly drills were confined space and then we had to go to distant learning our fire inspections are ongoing as well as plan reviews we've had members test positive to covid and we're quarantined the members have recovered and our return have returned back into service per state requirements our drills have been changed back to distance learning we are limiting the number of members per vehicle to assist uh in with social distancing there is promising news with the vaccine hopefully in the next month or two we should see that coming through to help us meetings in that we had the fire improvement team meeting the washington county fire chiefs covet meeting regions ems's covet updates are weekly now the santa escort on over on november 27th was great a lot of great comments that we got received via facebook and email and our car seat clinic is this saturday but it is by appointment only no drive ups you have to have an appointment so with that i stand for questions i just want to say um shout out to santa and bayport fire department for uh having one thing in 2020 be normal um for our kids and um santa was right on schedule and my kids look forward to it that friday after thanksgiving every year so chief please pass along my uh warmest regards to santa from the girls will do thank you any other comments or questions next we'll move on to chief eastman with the police report good evening madam mayor and council our past events uh alcohol and tobacco compliance checks were completed and there was a memo in your packet october 31st we had our community engagement event with the officers and the reserves uh canvassing the neighborhoods and passing along close necklaces and that um got raving reviews uh november 21st and 22nd we held a reserve academy we had six reserve officers that are volunteers some of them are post eligible so we're excited about having um six new volunteers to assist us with hopefully um memorial day parade coming up would be our next big event that i hopefully with the vaccination coming out that we'll have um uh reserve sergeant tom roosev she's been with us since 2012 he was promoted to the community service officer um tom has assisted us since 2012 with weekly vacation and vacant building checks he assists us with numerous community engagement events throughout the year many assist us with bringing squads to dealerships for checkups and and also picking up new squads the upcoming events we still will have toys for tots um they're currently at department of corrections is assisting us as well in the bank we will have tom ruzich ryan ruzich and officer khalid will assist with getting that over to carrie 11. miscellaneous we i did discuss this earlier but uh we are um decided to move the speed sign to several locations throughout the city and we are left with two more spots so i'm hopefully maybe february i'm hoping to present that to the council in graphs with it'll provide times and speed levels throughout the city and the locations our total incidents to call self-initiated responses and calls from dispatcher at 8195 as the day i turn this report into the administrator and i stand for questions any questions for the chief i just have a quick uh request i guess um chief i appreciate you doing all that speed monitoring do you think we could also get um traffic accident information i don't know how many there even are in the city but i just curious if there's certain intersections that have more problems than others we can absolutely look into that um okay i don't know how hard that is to well some of it if it's on that it be state so it might hurt but we'll uh we'll see what we can do and go back to you know five years or ten years um i just even the past five years i think would be helpful thank you yep laura i'll have to say though having that speed sign out in front of the daycare definitely slowed some of the regular racers down sure yeah it usually does and that will throw some of the data off i believe too because when they see that it's present but sometimes the way we placed it it's not seen until you know they're on top we'll get some good results that'll it'll give you guys some good ideas during the january workshop so i'm hopeful that'll be helpful that i'll have and maybe i just present what i have and the last one will be tied into february and i'll do an update thanks laura thank you i think having these totals of the calls that we respond to for fire and the total incidents that we have with our police in a year is these are phenomenal stats we have a very small staff of people and many volunteers with our reserves in our fire department and even our free staff is is small and that is a phenomenal amount of activity that we have within our city so thank you to both departments for everything that you're doing to help keep us safe and i know and the community outreach as well that's done so just thank you very much and maybe those are good stats to put in the newsletter as well reminding people that while taxes are what they are they are going towards a very good very good cause so thank you back to you adam thank you madam mayor um sarah and i have actually been discussing those statistics uh for the newsletter so that is the plan um okay with that uh next moving on to public works director kline mr members of the council um public works staff with the warmer weather has had an opportunity to get back outside and do some much-needed uh clean up on the streets uh that would include leaf mulching street sweeping also watering our newly planted trees so that they're healthy for next spring and then also obviously decorating for the holidays um this was already in the um consent agenda but i'd like to thank the paulians and the ridgeways for their volunteer work in the um in the parks um they do a lot of the flower beds that we have and without them um we probably won't be able to uh display as much flowers as what we do um um as i had indicated um we did some decorating for the holidays um the city was uh able to uh it's more holiday lights um thankfully from bayport american legion they uh donated about let's see about two thousand feet of lights which is about four 000 lights um that are now at the uh village green um and then i also like to thank blackwood's tree farm which is just uh south west of town here our southwest of bay park um we were able to get five uh very tall trees from them at a very reasonable price um and they let us come out and pick out whatever we wanted essentially some of the major work that's going on not too many things left to talk about the highway 95 improvement project is generally done um there are a few punch list items left but that is will be finished up in the spring um and then one big one is the ms4 which is a stormwater general permit renewal um every five years the permit gets renewed and the epa sets more regulations that we have to follow so there might be some policy changes that are needed and potentially some ordinance changes regarding storm water and also a whole lot more work from a public works standpoint they they allow you to renew the permit and then a year after you that renewal date uh you're required to have all the changes in place uh moving forward uh the last one is just the kahanas development but we've already talked enough about that one tonight so i am open to questions questions for matt i just want to thank you and the guys at public works for doing all the new lighting and i know you had to put the bulbs into the strings by hand and that's a lot of work in itself so thank you for doing that and big thank you to the legion for stepping up and footing the bill for us to have a much more beautiful village green this year and then we have more lights around town as a result because we could distribute those so thank you everybody and don arneson helped us purchase the lights at a reduced rate he's the party ball guy that we he came to the city council a couple years ago and party balls and springer so yeah it's beautiful up by the fire hall and public works and village green and city hall and so yeah it looks very nice so thank you all yeah hopefully something special for this special year we're having in highway 95 i've gotten quite a few comments as well as how nice it looks and um having the parking stalls defined i think is working out really well so we just need to remind folks of those flashers and where they are and that they're available because i'm still seeing people dash across um without using them and it is hard to see and we wouldn't want any um anything bad to happen so all right very good anything else for matt otherwise we'll move back over to adam okay uh with that i'll call on assistant administrator taylor thanks adam madam mayor and council over the past few weeks steph has been focused on wrapping up ongoing projects and tasks and preparing for the upcoming year i've summarized this workload in my written report but i'd just like to mention a few highlights specifically by department in administration we've updated all the forms and handouts for 2021 we've been processing renewal notices for various permits and licenses for 2021 and mary and chantel worked very hard to reconcile the delinquent refuse and utility counts that were previously on the agenda tonight so thanks to them in elections we canvassed the local lecture results on november 12th that were compiled by washington county and the declared winners of the election are mayor st orrs and council members connie carlson and ethan gilmore i just would like to recognize fellow city staff members and residents who helped set up and staff the polling place for all three elections this year a really big thanks goes out to all of them from me thank you in zoning we identified a preliminary location for the permanent public access to the clean water land and legacy parcel now we can complete the habitat management plan with the washington conservation district and also discuss an access easement with anderson corporation we also reviewed and approved a subdivision monument sign for landucci's villas of inspiration and i think their plan is to install that yet this year assuming the weather collaborates we also continue to coordinate with the middle saint croix watershed management organization and saint charles on an expansion project at the st mike cemetery for city liaison assignments and meetings i attended the allen s kane plant decommissioning and reedus advisory panel um on november 18th the meeting focused on a virtual tour of the plants highlighting some of the potential opportunities and challenges for redevelopment due to co-ed future meetings have been suspended until spring of 2021 but i will provide updates as those become available i also attended the highway 36 transit technical advisory work group meeting on november 19th the meeting focused on preliminary results from the ongoing public questionnaire regarding transit improvements and ridership on highway 36 december meeting topics will include additional public engagement results evaluation of transit improvement options based on ridership and an analysis of operating and capital costs for potential projects and finally i'm working on the next edition of the e-newsletter so that should be distributed and ready to go in the next week with that i pause for questions questions for sarah just a comment about how well well run the election this election was run my family chose to vote in person and um you wouldn't have known it was any different than any other election other than everybody inside was wearing a mask so hats off to you sarah for organizing and pulling it off with all the hurdles we had to get through so thank you very much thanks i appreciate that it's a nice facility to host them at as well the fire hall worked really well agreed all right well thank you sarah it's a busy month so thank you thank you sir okay council uh mayor members of the council moving on to my report um i want to cover a couple updates uh we've been working with uh i've been working with republic services along with some of the staff and both tennis sanitation as well regarding the cart transition there should be a postcard either went out over the weekend or today to the residents notifying them all of the change in our hauler um we didn't want to put it out we kind of rethought it didn't want to put it out too early because we wanted we don't want them to forget um but december 28th will be the last collection of the republic uh trash containers um on the 29th or after the 28th efforts picked up residents are instructed to leave their carts out at the curb and republic will be beginning to pick them up right that day after they're collected after the trash is collected so leave all your carts out there you leave your republic cards after they get collected on the 28th the tennis cards are going to be starting to be delivered on the 21st of december um those so there may be a little bit of a space crunch on a couple properties um so hopefully that doesn't become too much of an issue there really isn't uh perfect option for uh some of the smaller alley uh lots um but hopefully uh if there's any issues that the that the public has you know please contact city hall and we'll work with you to try to remedy that um for the council and the public's information uh the parking lot at barker's alps will be being used for large dumpsters from republic to collect the carts themselves they dismantle all the carts and transport them in the dumpster so they're they'll be there a couple days um coming and going uh but just in case anybody wants to know or wonders what those dumpsters are they're the old republic cards being collected so they shouldn't be there too long the if they run out of space there they may use some of the extra space down at the gravel lot by lakeside hopefully there's no issues and that won't need to be needed but there might be again a couple days if they run out of room um just with capacity i know they're trying to collect them over four days um which is somewhat of a feat in and of itself but um one of the other items regulated trash that a lot of the residents may have learned about or been notified of is the december invoice that they just got for december and january that was a billing error on republic and republic is supposed to be sending out a all customer all residents in bayport phone call and sending out new invoices refunds will be issued if a resident has already paid um that for some you know it doesn't necessarily surprise me but apparently some uh some issue occurred with their customer service slash billing and it billed the residents for two months even though they the contract is up at the end of december uh so hopefully uh that doesn't cause a lot of issues for people but if uh if you just learning about this now either pay half your bill is what we've been instructed or contact the haulers customer service and if you've already already paid you can contact them to request a refund or a refund will be automatically issued that's the case um i think that's all i had for the trash yeah the uh moving on the cares act funding just to let the council know we finally wrapped that up in november um the final report to the state was submitted december 15th by the deadline um the as i kind of mentioned during the budget we were very fortunate to have this funding to get us through this year and a lot of the unexpected costs and because of the kind of the new world we're in with a lot of the technology and virtual meetings we were fortunate to be able to make some upgrades to some of the some of the aspects that the city deals with one is the city website which i'll kind of go into next the expected go live date was supposed to be january 1st uh but because of some of the redesign requests that staff has made and some other delays due to covid we were told that it's going to push it back a couple weeks so i'm i'm still excited we've seen a couple kind of previews of what the new site's gonna look like and i'm i'm not i don't wanna over promise but it's it's pretty impressive um it should be way more user-friendly much more aesthetically you know inviting and much just much easier to both conduct city city business both for residents and visitors as well as staff to help people find things there there also will be some additional options such as online forms some online payments as well as uh easier to sign up for certain things we're looking at doing online park reservations as well so it's really going to be a exciting rollout when it does happen but unfortunately it will be delayed a few weeks from the january 1st preliminary date i already spoke about the local government aid during the budget um just a couple things i wanted to highlight uh update upcoming events or upcoming dates um the as we said tonight it's no longer tentative but the january 4 will be the first meeting of 2021 um we we're planning on having a workshop um but it'll probably be especially since we have one new council member uh council member elect ethan gilmore will be joining us replacing councilmember buckley we were planning on having kind of a little bit of a council grounding slash orientation session that first meeting in january for the workshop just to make sure that the first meeting itself goes smoothly um i'm in the process of uh coordinating with councilmember elect gilmore on both his new elect new official training as well as orientation that the city provides and um he will have to be sworn in and brought on board so working with him on that um the what that does is it pushes the the traffic the speed limit traffic sign uh workshop that the council has requested i'd rather not do that at the january meeting it really is appropriate to have a workshop for that discussion first um so that will either take place later in january or possibly at the february meeting so we will i'll be working with council to find out what works best for everybody for that discussion um i believe that's all that i had again there are several dates coming up later in this month that city hall has closed uh but otherwise we are still close to the public for in-person business other than appointments um we are still accommodating appointments and we do have those um but monday through thursday from 7 a.m to 5 p.m we are still answering the phones and emails are all week we are looking forward to the vaccine coming i was at a county administrators meeting two weeks ago and they were discussing how the vaccine may be in minnesota by christmas um not rolled out to everybody but it'll start being distributed and those immunizations will take place starting uh the end of the month is the current plan uh so with that that definitely gives some you know a bright plate at the end of the tunnel uh i know myself i'll speak for myself but i presume the rest of the staff based on the feedback i've got from them is we're all looking forward to being in person it's been a difficult year um not i've only seen sarah in person once since march that was the day of the election so it's it's uh it's it's not easy but uh we're we're hanging in there and we're very fortunate so with that i am open for any questions it's been quite a couple weeks so that's good life quiet go ahead michelle well i just wanted to say how much i appreciate what you guys have been doing i know it's been difficult and done a great job keeping the ship afloat and thank you very much for that and thanks to the staff who's not here as well but please pass that along to them oh i had one question too about the trash waste transition did you say that cards are have already gone out they they were either supposed to go i believe they were going out today um with the update that we got they were so mailed out today so they should be here this week through the residents this week either tomorrow i was just thinking we could have i think you're going to get some questions about what people are going to want to do with their christmas trees you know they're used to having republic pick them up so i they might just wonder is that you know can we still do that because it's going to happen right away after i said we can't put that on the card but it's and maybe we could do some more communication about it too in case people don't postcards aren't as deliberate as quickly or as well as other mail based on my experience in mail survey research so i would recommend that we try to get the word out in some other ways too through the facebook on our website whatever just make sure people know what's going on thank you for i yes we'll make sure to get that out um yes just for everybody's knowledge uh holiday trees will be collected the first two weeks of january um by tennis so i'm at no cost so okay well i'd like to thank adam and the staff too for the job they're doing and i'd like to apologize for being distracted tonight with my two visitors i'm sorry when i'm they're cute i know but it's very distracting and then the cat climbed up and the nose was pulling my ipad it's like oh so i apologize for i just want to make sure that we call out one more time the american legion and uh dan and jenny pulling and dan and kit ridgeway um amazing we have so many volunteers and we couldn't do what we do without them and so there's so many organizations with you know that we there's too many to even if i mention them i would leave some out that are critical but um lots of hard work so much so appreciated so thank you all and and we are going to look forward to 2021 and and um like to say goodbye to john buckley and again thank you oh yeah service and um and wish you all a wonderful holiday season however it gets celebrated thanks susan see you in january sounds good oh we need your journey to make that my last notion of 2020. i'm open thank you michelle is there a second i'll second it thank you connie adam house member hanson aye councilmember carlson aye councilmember dahl aye mayor stars aye and with that meetings adjourned good night everybody merry christmas you