so i'm going to call to order the march 1st at 2021 bayport city council workshop and adam um please take the role and kick us off with discussion thank you madam mayor uh mayor stanton ours here councilmember hanson here councilmember carlson here councilmember call president uh councilmember gilmore i do not believe he's here so he's currently absent all right um the because we do have uh one of the representatives from baytown uh we'll go ahead and get started with the the water connection water service extension request for bay town township uh matt if you want to go ahead and start madam mayor members of the council i'm just going to go pretty much so through my memo maybe not quite as in-depth but um high level um over that and then um if if there's any questions along the way uh feel free to just chime in and we'll go from there um derrick custom homes has requested a water extension for municipal water um at the proposed hills of spring creek subdivision um i'm sure you all are aware of where that is but if not it's at the intersection of county road 14 and osgood essentially where the railroad tracks go over osgoode there's the corner property right in that location the proposed development consists of about 102 homes if you'll recall some of you may recall this development was previously was previously proposed for development back in 2018 um and at that time we actually contacted baytown township um actually we worked through the previous developer really to kind of change the current joint powers agreement with baytown it essentially made it somewhat easier to connect future developments where so we didn't have to keep changing up the joint powers agreement um and it also um made it it imparted an impact fee essentially for future replacement of infrastructure i believe that that fee right now is 25 per quarter on any baytown resident what that money is used for is any future replacement of infrastructure so not necessarily general maintenance which would include like fixing a water main break or a uh replacing a hydrant but if the whole system like complete replacement of like water main needs to occur while they're redoing a road that's what that would entail then in the fall of of this past year fall of 2020 the city was approached by a new developer about the same property and about acquiring city water for that um at that time as you all know from the previous city council meeting that the upper zone which consists of inspiration in the miller farm developments does experience some max water usage during the summer months now primarily this max usage occurs in the mornings roughly from somewhere like 3 a.m to about noon due to irrigation issues that we have out there so staff recommended to the developer that there is the potential for them to connect but they would likely have to come up with an alternative to serve their irrigation for the development this current proposed extension to the hills of spring creek is only for potable water only they are seeking mpca and dnr approval for a pair of irrigation wells that would be used to fill their reused pond irrigation system and this wouldn't impact the city of bayport [Music] in in that way um so what the developer is hoping is that we give them some direction on whether we would allow them to hook up just for potable water they're also trying to move forward due to due to timing issues um you know they have uh they're going for preliminary plat at um the baytown meeting either tonight or in april i know they're on the agenda tonight um they're also trying to get approval from the mpca and dnr for the irrigation wells and then they're also trying to move forward with a summer start date so um all this is just coming into fruition you know rapidly so um just want to talk to you about water extension impacts so their proposal for just potable water um my rough estimate for their use on a daily basis for the roughly 102 homes is about 17 500 gallons a day to put that in a little perspective the winter usage for the upper water zone currently stands about 70 000 gallons per day um that's obviously on the low end of usage or that's essentially residential no outside watering usage um on the high end they're at about averaging about 350 000 gallons a day with peak days at about 450 000 i think out there so again they use quite a bit of water um during summer irrigation um so the question would be what is the impact on that 17 500 gallons and connection just for potable water um i did run this by um chad katzenberger ferressi from sch who's helping us out with a little water modeling um to show us what our new pumps at the booster station would use or help us out with and what this connection would do and his opinion was that this connection if it's just for residential use no outside watering that it would obviously have a minimal impact on water usage on a daily basis essentially um just given that the small amount compared to what we're already using the next impact would obviously be irrigation use um when city staff talked to the developer we had obviously indicated that you know given our max capacities in the mornings during the summer months there would almost be no way that we'd be able to provide you out of only potable water but irrigation water for all the residents out there we just couldn't make that happen so that led them to develop essentially a stormwater reuse pawn system um this system is used up in hugo uh quite a bit in some of the developments up there and it's been tried in a couple of places but it's a fairly new um system essentially we're they're going to collect water from the watershed and off of roads in a two pond systems um and reuse that and have all of the residents connected to that system so they'll be able to use that water to irrigate all of their lawns one of the issue becomes of course is backup for that system just in case the ponds don't last for a certain period of time or a dry period so that would be either city water potentially and that couldn't be done unless there was severe restrictions on time of use and multiple other things or if we didn't even allow them to use city water that is always a possibility too their their preference would be that you irrigation welds that they would connect to these pond systems and only be used as backups to fill the ponds during dry periods okay so staff comments uh on this request um the original jpa from 2006 um was essentially to extend municipal services to developments in baytown um this this was primarily done because of tce contamination and the ability to supply clean drinking water to those residents um and we were also worried somewhat about the plume being pulled in different directions because of that those connections the same is kind of the same or the the effect would be kind of the same here you know if we're drilling a hundred different wells in this area potentially if they're potentially individual wells you know we're not we're unsure of what effect that would have on the plume for tce um and the dnr would reiterate that too the other comments are the developer would be responsible for all costs associated with installation of the system those would include the piping of the system the city engineering costs related to reviewing and on-site inspection of the system uh the developers also responsible for the payment of required trunk area charges um water connection fees and there would be a park identification fee split between baytown and the city of bayport for each lot that was developed um there are a couple of other benefits to the city potentially if this system would go out that way um the trunk area charges that would be charged to this system could very well pay for potentially pay for um the mechanical upgrades that we had talked about to the booster stations um from last month um and then there's also the potential um an ultimate build out of the system would potentially be looping the system so this this system would go up stagecoach and then over on 47th to the west looping the system could eventually include running pipe down to the new fire hall which would connect the system that way and actually adam can you share your screen but would we be on i can share i can share screen right oh sorry now can i yeah i'll wait i'll just i'm compiling a list here okay so right here is the development in question right out here everybody see where my cursor is no your screen isn't on my screen's not on huh no we just see everybody is it one of the pictures in the packet no sure you should be able to share i know i hit share screen and it comes up but you guys don't see any of this yeah oh it's trying to doing something there we go okay okay so essentially what we call what we're talking about looping is so right now from the upper zone to the lower zone there's really only one connection down here um and it's around the inspiration tower so the plan for the development is to run water down stagecoach and then over on 47th to development over here a future connection potentially could be that we would run water all the way down to here to have another connection out by the fire hall so if anything would happen to this connection here we would always have the ability to push water up here like this it's the same thing everywhere else in the city you tend to loop the water system so that's what i wanted to reiterate there so how do i get out of screen sharing stop share perfect okay um hold on matt customer doll you're you're muted sorry before we moved on from that part there because one of my questions is specific to the looping would that wouldn't be part of what's being presented right now that would be a future project and would would the city be responsible for that correct we potentially we wouldn't it's unlikely that we would require this developer to loop that at this point um that would be a future development at this point yeah and given that there's probably nobody connecting along that little stretch from the fire hall to where 47 turns there i doubt very much that we would um that anybody else would pay for that at that point so thank you matt can i uh interject a clarifying point to councilmember doll's question um this would construct let's say somewhere between a quarter and a third of that loop however so it would be on the developer's nickel to create to construct about a quarter you know like i said a quarter to a third i didn't do the exact calculations so i think math part of math point is that uh part of that loop would be constructed under the under the developers at the developer's cost and understand for the city to construct thanks for that clarification mr parody i appreciate that and just for the council i'm at if i can interject um that redundancy that water service redundancy would also be a benefit for the current baytown residents because they're connected to the same system so that that water redundancy is going to be you know it's mutually beneficial for the bay town and the bay port residents we would have to pay for the finishing of the loop we wouldn't baytown couldn't help with that we haven't had that conversation with them um it's that would be something that we would have to have i have not had those conversations matt um admitted that that just hasn't taken place yet it's something we could look into if that was something that the that the township would be interested in then yes okay so the other i should i should uh interject here the other potential when we would finish that loop there's that corner section of like 40 acres there um that was proposed for orderly annexation in the corner of um bayport just to the south of the new fire hall um if that were to ever get annexed into bayport it's likely we could complete that loop at that time so that would be a good time to do that actually but again we haven't had any conversations and there's no current plans correct uh so recommendation at the council meeting is probably going to be to um one acquire direction from the city council on moving forward with this request staff isn't going to ask for any any formal recommendation recommendation but it's likely that we would bring a resolution back in april if um if the city council would prefer to move forward with this again it's just for potable water only they would still the developer if they were denied the um irrigation wells in the area they would potentially come back and ask for a city connection to um the two um storm water reuse ponds but that can always be denied if if that's what we would prefer and the developer does know that that's always a possibility i'm sure their preference is to have city water in place specifically for residential use and that they will move forward with some type of irrigation system after that or the backup actually they already have the primary irrigation system i'm open to questions thank you matt uh questions from the council uh john you said that you had a number so why don't we start with you yeah i have several um so the looping was the one um did i thought i read somewhere in the packet that that um and i can't find it of course right now um they predicted that they would be wanting to irrigate about one acre of you know kind of one acre per um property is is that something i read that's accurate um i believe they're they're gonna limit that so there's a couple of different things that they would do depending on the irrigation setup that they have um and actually if i'm being frank i think if if they're going to ask for city water as a backup to their irrigation system that we put all kinds of restrictions and stipulations on that so to that point john i believe it was a half an acre is what they're going to limit it to yeah and it's only i believe they're talking only the front yard potentially of each property even that might even be in place just with their storm water reuse ponds so the other thing um you'd mentioned early on in your presentation um matt that you know our spike is from 3 a.m to noon and i know you you don't know what people are using water for during those hours but i mean if people are doing a lot of irrigating from sun up to noon that you know that's a gross waste of water just in terms of evaporation and that's just kind of from my layman's perspective but i know i've you know read different things about that so just something i'm throwing out there and then um you know the only thing i've i've heard so far is just some concerns from baytown residents so i want to make sure we give the baytown representative enough time to kind of um frame the the thoughts that they have because i i wouldn't want to be vapor to be part of something that baytown you know isn't in favor of um and then the other thing is anything different from tc from the tce standpoint or is are we going back to kind of the original joint powers agreement to kind of get the framework out there from why we are doing things from a tce perspective is has anything changed from from you know any of the science or that kind of thing that would make it more optimal for them to have individual wells versus a residential water for their potable so from that perspective all the individual wells would likely end up having to have filters on it and i think that's one of the reasons that the developer would prefer obviously to have city water as far as pulling tce that way per se um and moving it that way uh obviously a hundred wells in that area would cause that to happen now i know that they are proposing to put two irrigation wells in there um the the funny thing about tce is that when you expose it to oxygen it oxidizes into the air and becomes essentially inert um and so there's a catch-22 there do does the dnr and npca want water pulled that way potentially yes if they're gonna put it in the air and dump it into the ponds because that would remove some of the tce but it would also cause the plume potentially not for sure potentially to move up farther to the northeast there but that's a question for them to answer and not not us potentially and one of my only other concerns is and i'm not sure how i'm very familiar with residential plumbing and irrigation systems and stuff like that but um if we move forward with something like this in the residences that i've seen irrigation systems it'd be a pretty quick afternoon job to plumb your irrigation system into your city water and start pulling from city water to irrigate your lawn if and then have a valve to be able to switch it over just something like that you entirely correct um we would see obviously a huge spike in their usage for that point in time sure and so i think we'd have a pretty easy way of identifying any people who did that okay again sorry john go ahead i'm sorry to interrupt i think we need i think we need really need to think through all the stipulations that are going to be attached to this um and some of the penalties potentially for doing something like that um and so yeah fair enough thank you i'm good for now somebody else needs a chance to talk are there questions from the council no john kind of asked two of mine mine was about the if they with their doing their irrigation with the two wells i had some concerns about the ccs and then um oh one of other john's other things so they were answered by matt what i had was concerns with or given an answer anyway thank you connie uh michelle uh my questions were answered as well right ethan sorry i just had to unmute there um yeah i think john answered uh uh or asked the questions and they were answered i do agree with him as well i've seen um some people in baytown that do not want this development i think what he said with the uh getting the baytown uh people to make sure that that's really what they want you know so i think that's important to hear from them as well i think we have to talk about that though what is our role in that i mean do we have a say i mean if we can't say okay we're not going to give you water because we don't want you to do this development i mean is that really our place legally or does should tom help us with that or you know what i mean like i feel like we have a jpa with them and the the with regards to you know your role in it you do have the jpa you have to comply with that and and you know the restrictions that matt talked about and you know the reasonable restrictions you can place on it but as far as you guys having any ability to halt this on a waterfront as long as it is feasible and there's a way to do it feasibly you can't stop the development that's up to the baytown board and how they want to react to it but yeah that's there's no say from bayport because the jpa would require that water to come in as long as it is feasible that's kind of what i thought yeah me too which i guess is better than us getting in the middle of it you know i mean we have parameters so and we can put rules on what the how they can use the water so i'd i'm interested in having a more in-depth discussion on the parameters um you know because we have kind of a challenge right now enforcing our currents especially in the upper zones so making sure that that language would be strong enough and enforceable would be something that i i'd want to take a look at yeah for example i don't think i saw anything and there are notes about every property having an irrigation system that's hooked to those um palms you know like that has to be and i don't see it in their little bullet points so it will it that's how they will hook it up every property will be connected to the stormwater response okay i mean you mentioned it i just didn't see it in there sure no so with with that and and with tom's guidance in mind um are there representatives from baytown that would like to address the council with items that you know are are pertinent to our our decision making john or rick would you like to address the council and the mayor scenarios this is rick ware from baytown township i don't really have anything additional everything i had for questions or concerns have been addressed as well okay thank you uh uh mayor st ours john hall uh baytown township board chair i appreciate the uh the council uh reviewing and looking at this you've pretty much answered a lot of the same questions that i had we're not looking for you guys to get in the middle of our of this this development but we want to make sure that we do the right things and we do the right things for both uh the city of bayport in the in baytown township we want to make sure that we work together and that we don't stress out the water system and then we don't you know put you guys in a bad position that that's not what we want to do uh we want to make sure that we follow everything properly and our developer follows things properly and that we continue to have a good working relationship so uh it will be discussed tonight um we'll probably look to some kind of a a vote on it in our april meetings what i'm anticipating so we still have a lot to talk about a lot to do but again i i appreciate the uh the council going through all this trouble thank you well thank you for joining us so um so the one thing matt if i could circle back we're talking about um potential of the trunk fees you know helping offset some of the immediate costs of the pumps what about long-term costs you know is the 25 dollars per quarter enough to sustain us with the various developments that are up in this upper zone um so if you'll remember back i believe that 25 was a starting point um that would be increased on on to an amount determined in the future essentially now this development per se as far as replacement costs you're talking 75 years down the road before any any money would need to be spent um and i believe we we did a rough calculation and i don't 25 obviously per person didn't cover it in long-term future and that's why we kind of did a sliding scale which we haven't increased yet but we do have the ability to do that um go ahead adam it was actually 20 where we started yeah um we did we did the calculations and were you know this would increase that we'd have to do we have to recalculate those to see what what that would be um this you know as matt said it's you know 75 years off for this new development um we were looking at between 75 or 50 to 75 years for the the first sets of developments that had gone in the miller farms uh those we had indexed you know how much we're gonna have to uh increase it every so often to get to that end result 50 years from now obviously there's a lot of factors that are not taken into account with that much amount of time but we we did uh come up with the estimates for the long term and that we settle on the 20 as the starting point um so we'd have to redo that with this in addition it's been a while since we discussed the miller farms in that agreement so let's just keep that on our radar because it's a lot easier to go in small increments then you know at some later date jump things significantly had a mayor if i could add another thing um essentially if if you look at water production and the cost to produce water and the effect of like high irrigation essentially you put more stress on the system for that than like this development who's going to be only using residential water and so really the cost to provide them just residential water is going to be a lot less per capita per se than what it is for the houses in in the miller farms neighborhood especially given that um the um the houses will be essentially a lot closer um they'll kind of be like a inspiration neighborhood whereas out in miller farms um they're slightly bigger lots um and farther apart and so on a per capita basis they're they're way more expensive than what the um the hills of spring creek would be for like a full replacement so so i have a question kind of along though somewhat along those lines and i guess i'd probably address it to city attorney lunan um first of all the beard is phenomenal looking really sharp so oh thanks i appreciate that um secondly um so in terms of the joint powers agreement so what kind of things would would preclude us or what would we be able to use as a reason to not connect um you know we don't have the capacity but but we're required to meet the the extra capacity or i'm i'm just trying to get a general feel for it i don't i obviously expect an in-depth legal answer but just getting a feel for at what point we can say well we can't because of x y and z yeah the um and i'm trying to pull it up here we had a little bit of back and forth with administrator bell and matt and and the capacity question is the primary question uh my understanding is that there's ways that the project has been proposed um you know particularly with the stormwater irrigation that would make it feasible and allow for that capacity so in reviewing it if the capacity is there if there's a an ability to to connect the water without over you know over running your system um the joint powers agreement would require it and the proposal as i understand it would uh allow for that as long as they comply with sort of these restrictions and ideas that have been put into place and so um we had a little bit of back and forth about making sure and matt alluded to it when he was talking to make sure that the wording of of any resolution granting this is clear about the requirements and what they need to do to make sure that they don't over um you know overuse the water that would exceed the capacity that we have okay it really comes down to the capacity and that that includes the long-term modeling that matt was referencing that we were in the process of updating um that's that's really the big the big catching point um that was one of the the first questions that we had to answer when we were first contacted by uh by the developer is whether or not we even had the capacity that's always going to be the bottom line and so if say the the state doesn't approve them putting in the the wells for the irrigation would could they still say well yeah if you upgrade to you know x amount of gallon per minute pumps you will have enough to meet our needs and then and then are we on the hook to do that obviously you know having you know their portion paid by this project but just trying to get a feel for it i mean good answer the question but i'm trying to kind of extrapolate out to the next step those yeah go ahead matt um as far as capacity like i had indicated there there would be a chance that they wouldn't be able to acquire those wells um and we would have to run that run that connection through um through the water model just to see what it would do i think it's going to be inevitable that we have to upgrade the booster system pumps i don't i just don't think that water conservation although i've to let you know too i've already contacted sink very prep they're actually doing some things with their irrigation system already to preferably use less water and i've been in contact with the irrigation guy who does the um stuff for inspiration and so both of them were more than happy to try and work with us on stuff like that but even with that said um given that we haven't had a really dry year i think the upgrades to the booster station are inevitable now with that said i still don't think that it's a foregone conclusion that we would be required to connect city water as a backup system to the to the stormwater reuse ponds especially if we're concerned that we may not have enough for there and really you can do all the modeling in the world and it doesn't really tell you about human behavior on you know even an emergency people are still going to use water so i think there's enough doubt there that unless they would agree to some huge parameters on that and in the bed the difficult part is that when they're going to want to fill their ponds is likely at the end of like a two-week drought where they've gone through all the water and their storm water reused exactly and we're going to want that you're that the rest of the residents up in that area are going to want to use water at the same time for their irrigation um and i think that would be shown in the water model as essentially exceeding our capacity so in in i should there there'd be two two things of capacity here one would be our full capacity which we're we're at now during mornings in the summer which is not something that we'd prefer to be at either because of emergencies um i'd prefer that we'd be pumping two wells with third for emergency or a backup in case one of the other welds go out so really we should be talking about capacity at two of those um pumps rather instead of all three um so then moving forward john doe to your question about the future and i think i had brought this up last month about you know build out in baytown essentially along as good there there are quite a few lots that are quite a few larger acres there that could have development placed in them but without the potential of a new well and potentially a new water tower somewhere out there the capacity would not be there to hook up another development likely and that would likely be so cost prohibitive that all of those property owners with property along osgood would likely have to combine all at one time to put in a water tower and potentially a new well just to make that happen because of the cost of it so just curious why is it bay port that they're hooking up to instead of oak park heights when they're getting that close to oak park right um i believe so we ran into this the original uh two years ago and oak park heights doesn't really have a close connection they have the dnr land between them um and so there's no easy connection and i don't think oak park heights was interested in providing um water either so and the fact that bayport water was already out there made it more feasible what about that osgood stretch you were talking about is that feasible that they could hook up to park heights instead of bayport that the osgood stretch is actually the south stretch of osgood south of the railroad tracks then connect to the autobahn essentially development okay uh madam mayor there if any of the council members had any other questions right now um uh we do have another topic uh for the workshop um we've kind of come up against the accounted or a lot of time we were going to discuss this if there are any other questions that the council wanted to just last ask to have staff either work on or go obtain otherwise any further questions or discussion can occur at the regular meeting we were just going to give a brief recap of what we've discussed here um kind of and give a status update on on the this workshop i'm at the regular meeting so anything pertinent critical that we should cover right now no okay if not then thank you all of our participants from bay town um and we will uh adam will be back and matt will be back in touch so that takes us to our second item adam yes thank you madam mayor um at the last meeting the city council meeting uh the traffic uh speed limit and stop signs yield signs the whole traffic discussion was uh had by the council at that time we were staff was instructed that the vote was to have the staff basically do the public engagement do some surveying uh get the public feedback and to make available for the may 3rd meeting uh for every recollection the question was whether or not to hire basically consult with seh to conduct a full study to lower the speed limit to 20 if it was only to 25 full study was not required but we still had to determine where the signs the speed limit signs would need to go so there'd still be some work in there the since that time staff has been working on the survey process we've also been uh doing some other research and getting some more information on the issue um a couple of them i will i'll just kind of go through some of the bullets um one of the items that we were planning on doing regarding the public engagement is we are going to have a survey monkey online survey uh we're also including uh information so we'll have the information on the website but we'll also have the information and this is all the data all the facts the discussions that we've had available we won't have all of it on the newsletter but we're going to have a basically a page and a half of the newsletter with some of this information and a cut out survey portion so they can turn it in uh we'll also be making it available to the public to be able to call in or email and we'll be tracking that um we're gonna we can set up a uh we'll we're basically gonna be tracking all the all the feedback we can get um and uh councilmember hansen has provided um some information on the actual survey that i'm working on uh the the other thing that we are gonna do is uh send out a direct mailing it was something that i talked to councilmember hanson about um and we found out the the last mailing we did it's a it was about i want to say it's about 350 uh to do basically every residence in the city to send a postcard to um that was something that i think because some people may not see the newsletter um or they you know this just we just want to make sure that everybody is aware of it um and that was the big the big part of the statutory requirement was the you know to notify the public that this was taking place um it wasn't specifically just to garner feedback but obviously that's that's a assumed portion of it um the other uh so that that's kind of that's the the current plan and the the newsletter is planning to go out uh by mid-march so that's we're still planning on uh doing that in the next uh two weeks um we're gonna we plan to have uh the survey and that done within the next two weeks to be able to start soliciting that feedback um we haven't done we haven't done anything yet i did pose some of the questions that staff had on the city administrators listserv through the league of minnesota cities um and i got a little bit of feedback um the i've i received three inquiries of they also want the information that i get um i only had uh two notific or two responses from other cities that have looked at it uh one was in breckenridge which is a north dakota minnesota border city and their only feedback was that it was really difficult for them because there's no you know it's there's a river there but the border from one city to the other it was if we were closer to hudson and one was a different speed limit it made it confusing uh depending on which area of the city people were in uh that was the only feedback that they had was that it was challenging you really need to try to make it clear as to what portions of the city are what um one of the other the the other one was uh there there really wasn't a whole lot of help um but i can i can share that with the council if they'd like um one of the the legal issues that we had some information on regarding the enforcement of the speed limit uh chief eastman attorney weidner and attorney lunin all worked on it the the criminal enforcement because it's a strict liability crime uh that is not an issue the the potential issue is if someone wasn't uh they could claim civilly that the city didn't follow the or comply with the statute regarding the notifications but actually enforcing the speed limit doesn't the sign placement doesn't really matter but with that with the sign placement one of the things that we determined was that if we only go to 25 then we need to have all the transition zones basically a sign at every intersection for those transition zones um if we go to 20 we are able to do the the gateway signs uh comes from my hands i know that was something that you had seen um and so it's it's a it's a strange uh idiosyncrasy but um i think uh attorney lunan and i talked about it we think that the legislation itself was just drafted i'll say poorly um kind of it was rushed and not thought out as well as it should have been as we're all determining um so they didn't they didn't catch that so there's actually it's easier to sign the 20 mile an hour speed limit versus the 25. um so we did we did if if the issue is the cost well then you know we're going to have to spend the same amount of money in just the study for the signage as we are for 20 as we are the size for 25 um just because the vast number of signs that would be required um so with that um i i guess i'm just wanting to give the council an update on where we're at and any further uh direction or i guess some of the the feedback to some of that updated information um we're still as i said we're still planning on doing the public engagement over the next uh next couple weeks and then uh bring it back to the may third meeting um so with that madam mayor i turn it back over to you to solicit input from the council zipper thank you council members any comments discussion questions adam have you had since our last meeting have you had many residents contact you at all on anything no uh no uh councilmember uh we i had one on the list serve there was one resident who's actually administrator in another city um she did respond to my questions you know that she didn't want it oh man why haven't we contacted the public and let them know about it and i said that's the process that we're in um but that's really the only um the only feedback we did have one other resident who had uh spoke to um miss gillette on the phone uh he said we only need four signs you know he gave us the locations that he thought they should go so we appreciate his input on that but as far as the uh the amount or the pro versus you know opposed we have we haven't we haven't solicited it yet that's you know like i said that's the rapture right and i realized that i was just serious with our last council they initiated it or took it upon themselves to contact the city so okay i have a couple things um i guess i first want to talk a little bit about the method for doing this survey um i thought adam and i were maybe going to get a chance to talk about that but we haven't yet um i'm not sure that it's fair to give the data background information only in the newsletter to those people that might see that i don't i think we need to talk about what kind of information you're going to provide and how detailed that information is and the purpose of it i just i didn't know that that was part of the survey process i feel like not everyone's gonna have equal footing when they're answering the survey if you do that so i'm not sure that that's the the best know what is is the postcard intended to have the survey on it that then they return or is it a link to the online survey or it would be another it would be a link a notification saying you know there's this traffic issue you know this item that the council is discussing regarding the speed limit changes um go to the website for information and to participate in the survey the link it'll be linked from the website i would say when i invest in a postcard maybe we use it as a reminder to the newsletter survey you know so we're hitting them twice but hopefully they don't do the survey twice because everyone in town gets the newsletter right i mean it goes to every house the postcard we know we've had problems with postcards being delivered so i wouldn't rely on the postcard alone but it could be a reminder i'm not sure it's necessary to be honest i think we should see what kind of response we get from the newsletter and from social media postings but um i mean this whole thing total could cost about five thousand dollars and we're going to invest 350 or so in a postcard just seems kind of like a little overkill to me but um and i i've talked to i talked to the woman in nevis which is one of the i think the first small city to actually change their speed limit and she said it was really easy for them so i think it just depends on the city structure she's she said that they don't have any intersecting county roads or state highways which unfortunately we do but so for some reason she said hers was easy yeah and i don't know i would i looked at so i looked into that and matt and i both did and they have state highway and two county roads i believe she said as long as we did not have an intersecting county road or state highway our public road authority was able to set the limits what what municipality was this again what's the what brainerd i didn't talk to anyone in brazil she said all they did was have the public works director basically just set the limits they didn't do any kind of study or reporting or anything they just went yeah we're gonna change them so um and i also talked to someone at the league of minnesota cities and it wasn't extremely helpful but he pretty much was saying yeah it's pretty wishy-washy the way everything's written and it's kind of up to the cities to basically make sure that the word is spread to the community if you do change it and that i think the city itself could do its own study we don't necessarily have to have the engineering company or an outside company do it for us or anyone we could do it ourselves um but there was they said the best practice would be to have someone else do it but he didn't really have a good reason for that other than potentially maybe legal issues that we might have because i don't know why lowering the speed limit would cause legal issues but um and i guess i'm not sure what and maybe i need just more information from john but it seems like i'm not sure what that study is going to give us other than information that we already have kind of collected into one place which i feel like we could do ourselves you know we have our traffic data and then we give it to them for them to use i don't think they're going to do their own study and other things so i just i i was curious about could we avoid the cost of doing that study altogether and then i also did like um adam said i looked into the where would we have to post the signs and i didn't say anything about the 25 miles per hour being different than 20 but i know that there are several cities that just did the gateway signs i think minneapolis and st paul did that and maybe rochester but anyways so that would be really good news if all we had to do was like uh you know any residential city street is 20 miles an hour as you come into town that would save us a lot of money so okay other council members okay um excuse me madam mayor if i could just respond to one of the questions sure please um plus my hands and they well we just so we're clear the the newsletter as you said that everybody gets that's going to have kind of just the high level background summary of where we're at um and then it's going to direct people to the website for any like if you want to watch the movies or read the minutes um so that's that was the directing everybody to the the even deeper backup data because everybody gets the newsletter and so it's going to have the you know high level bullet points of here's where we're at basically saying we are curious to we want to change we're thinking about changing the speed limits i mean basically what i wrote a survey invitation it would be something like that very basic um i mean i guess you could direct people to go watch the council meetings and everything but i think it's not true anyone's really going to do it anyway so that's probably fine if if i may um you know i i just i want to take just a step and i i just appreciate just a little bit of time here just just walk through the steps of where we are so far you know we obviously all care about safety we have um taken steps over the past 10 years to do that on 95 and pinky bells um intersection and we all agreed in october to explore different options with sch which we did bump outs speed bumps speed signs traffic studies etc and they came back and they presented their information to us we also have taken the time to look at our own stats and you're right michelle we do have our own data our accident history on our city controlled streets does not indicate that we have a need to change or support the change our bayport police department did a speed study and it did not support any changes chief eastman acknowledged that we do have a few repeat offenders but it's not a pervasive problem and we heard from staff that they don't recommend or support this change of speed limits although they would enforce it and mndot does not recommend this change and so that they um that if they did the speed studies it would not support us changing it so those are the data points that we currently have in hand and uh chief eastman did state that the police department will regardless of of what this outcome is they will enforce it so and they typically enforce anything that is five to eight miles an hour over so anyone who's going 25 to 28 miles an hour will be subject to be pulled over and cited warned ticketed depending on um you know conditions um and we're not planning currently to include or increase our police department so we if we have a problem which i'm not seeing any data that even says that we do yet um we do not have any additional ways to enforce so we have a 30 mile an hour speed limit right now and we're we have no additional ways of of enforcing if it goes to 25 or 20. um there is this requirement for us if we want to go to 20 if the council were to want that to have to do this the survey with the engineering firm so that's you know not if we go to 20 not if it were to change 25 but if it were for 20 that is a requirement um but they are not um going to do a speed study as part of their current proposal to us that was stated during the last council meeting that there's they would do some um basic uh traffic counts for a short period of time but not a speed study so this the survey in other meetings that we've had has been indicated by sch that it's basically a rubber stamp so they do a survey it says if it's changed from 30 to 20 that's safer and that's probably true for pedestrians but so would be 10 miles an hour or so would be banning cars so i'm just trying to figure out yet what problem are we trying to solve where is the data that supports where is the data that supports if this is a change that must or should be take move forward and if it's going to be still on the conversation and moves forward then i am very adamant that we take every step possible to inform all residents and businesses that this is a potential um that's a topic that's being discussed and has been brought forward so i'm very data driven i'm very much not into emotional or anecdotal no decisions so um i'm just posing all those questions again but i i very much strongly support every kind of communication vehicle that we could possibly pursue to get people to allow and be informed so um michelle you had your hand raised so i'll circle yeah um a couple things first of all i don't recall mndot saying that they didn't think it was a good idea to decrease the speed limits i don't remember where that data point came from uh adam can cite that for us so just adam they uh i i don't recall well they were they were opposed to the statutory change they were if it's the council song they're emailed they didn't uh they said that if they did the study for us we probably wouldn't like it because it wouldn't have the results that we wanted um if you recall that was the question that i had forwarded yeah i'm thinking it was a bad idea to decrease its feelings but anyways okay so the point is and the fact is that 30 miles an hour on a city street in bay port residential street is too fast and the problem is when you get someone then listen you said okay they're gonna enforce it going five to eight miles an hour over the speed limit that's someone going 38 miles an hour before they even get can get a ticket or get pulled over and that's the problem that's what we have to nip in the bud before it does become an issue we already had i don't been only a couple different times where we've had issues but it's just it really is just too fast to safely drive through streets where there aren't any stop signs you know we have very few intersection signage you know it's like it's just makes and i know you think it's an emotional thing but in it and part of it is but you have to think about that you can't just strictly go on data you have to go with what your gut tells you makes sense and 30 to 38 miles an hour is way too fast for our city streets and we should be able to ticket someone who's going 25 to 30 miles an hour because it's too fast yeah i invite i invite anybody i live on the corner of 3rd avenue north and 8th street drive 30 on either of those streets you'd be you'd be within the law to be driving that speed and try it and see how safe you feel driving that speed and and the people that would drive that speed you know are going to say hey i'm driving the speed limit another example i i deal with electrical code on a on a daily basis and um it might be a stretch but here's how i look at electrical code is is a bare minimum set of guidelines set forth to meet a minimum safety requirement any homeowner business owner commercial entity industriality is allowed to go over and above the call of duty which we do at my employer very often because it makes sense for a variety of reasons and it doesn't it gives you an added level of confidence safety protection um and peace of mind so um yeah i i seriously would invite anybody to jump on these streets drive around bayport and drive 30 and see how safe you feel driving 30 on these surface streets of bayport if you feel safe driving 30 um i i think you should question your um driving ability because you're you're not safe driving 30 on these streets you're just not it's too fast yeah exactly and we aren't the only city to consider this this is like a widespread thing now that lots of cities are doing because it makes sense you know it's not like we're some crazy renegade little town this i mean minneapolis and saint paul decided that 30 was too fast for their streets rochester i think i sent an article about a bunch of other cities that were doing it too to adam but it's um i don't understand why what i guess i need to understand from you mary i know there's all of the data that you're saying i just i also i don't get why you think it's not why it's not a good idea what what's it what's the problem that you see with it okay one have uh go ahead connie well no i just wanted to i just wanted to i guess reiterate that um what susan said is i i would like to hear from the residents i mean i know michelle you're very um and john i know you're very your hearts are in this and and i'm not saying i disagree but i i personally think we need to hear from more residents because i have had residents tell me the opposite that they don't think we need to change anything so but i've told them then you let the city know that so i want to hear both and i guess um i can't be just our heartfelt emotions i think we need to hear from the residents well we already decided like citizens said as much as much feedback as we can get from them so i guess that's where i'm at um right now okay so maybe we're just i mean i feel like we're just rehashing what we already did and we already came to the conclusion that we're gonna do a resident survey so right and i think i thought that's what susan was agreeing to you were questioning whether we do the little cards the postcards so i guess that's well i just feel like why spend more money on it when we're i'm sure we'll do just fine without sending a separate postcard if we already have the newsletter going out but that's yeah well i guess i trust the city staff to make the best decision on well i only did research for like 30 years so i know that i hope someone trusts my judgment on that oh i didn't mean i didn't trust your judgment i'm just saying that that's why we hire adam and them to take it down about the postcard it was going to be a second it wasn't going to go at the same time as the newsletter um that we don't see any value in that but we want to make sure it goes out with enough time closer to may um to be able to one compile the data that we get received but also give them enough time to respond so we want a little bit of separation um and do we have a surveymonkey account that we're paying for we do yeah because we don't really need that you could do it in a google form or something too i don't know how much we pay for it but i'm not a big survey monkey fan personally but any other comments or ethan yes uh we need you yep i was just waiting um i also i live on fourth street north and i would invite people i live on the street that the school is on and now this might be something that chief eastman would have to chime in on but if i'm correct that means you could drive 35 miles an hour while kids are getting out of school down that street before you would really get a ticket that's absolutely i hope not now exactly so if there's a lot of school i mean kids live in houses all over the place it's like we're do we we have lower speed limits by schools to protect kids correct so if in my book we have lower speed limits in town because kids live in town and we we do that to protect children that's that's my number one thing i have there's nine kids that live directly next to me five and one house four and the other and they're all under eight years old and i see people continuously driving down fourth street at 40 plus miles an hour and it's and it's insanity to me and the fact that you can't get a ticket or you're not really gonna get a ticket until you're going 35 or 38 that's that's just crazy but if it goes to 20 when somebody's going 25 to 28 now they can get pulled over and they're probably going to get a warning and they're going to say hey you know we change the limit here it's going to be lower now and i get that that's that's and that's fine with me as long as people start slowing down because i agree with john 100 driving 30 miles an hour in these town and like on the side streets crazy with no with no driveways and everything is alley parking and the l cars are parked in the street it's just it's it's too it's way too fast so that's my opinion again it's just to do the full study with sch actually get data that talks about speeds because there's other elements that play into different kinds of accidents than just speed but to have you know the cert the uh if if this is something that the council wants to pursue and invest in that it's a a sound a ch survey and it's uh the opportunity for the public to have their voice heard so and if i just everyone wants it and it looks like it's uh a go that's all i'm asking it's just i want to make sure that people are very very informed we've had discussions here where council members have said we know what we want to do let's just do it let's just move forward and that is not representing the people of bayport and that's when we're elected we make decisions every month that we don't go out and ask everybody how should we do this i mean i feel like at some level i don't know i mean i'm fine with doing the survey but i'm not going to be happy if it comes back and you have some way to say oh well it's not enough people i mean i don't know what the limits get it's 51 is that gonna be enough you know like i mean right so one of the numbers could be a cost benefit analysis which is probably i mean this it sounds silly and and frankly it might be different if we were talking about a million dollars but i think we're talking about a pretty nominal nominal amount of money to exactly to um make the city safer in in there's not there's nothing bad that can come from this nothing there's i don't i don't see how there could be a negative outcome from this it's one of the few things us as a city council can act on that nothing bad can happen nothing right other than people driving slower and being safer yeah so to me it's it's like one of the most no-brainers we've had since i've been on council and and i i don't mean that as a personal attack towards anybody i'm just stating my opinion i respect that john thank you all right well is there any other discussion on this or adam do you have any other questions or any other direction that you're looking for all right no i just want to give the give the council an update on where we were um that we were still on track um the uh tom did you have something you were wanting to say or did you have something i thought you started say something i i just i just simply wanted to say that you know speaking i i'm i'm the civil attorney but our law firm is the prosecuting authority for your city um and i know chief eastman didn't chime in but the speed limit is the speed limit is known as the strict liability certainly we give our police officer discretion prosecutors have discretion but one mile per over the speed limit is over the speed limit that is a prosecute prosecuting def um offense so i i just think that i just want to iterate that because it's a strict liability if you're over the limit you're over the limit the discretion the prosecutors and officers is there but that is the reality of the law thank you tom i and yeah i was not clear in my statement so thank you adam the one last thing um just the regarding that state statute allows the law enforcement to write a ticket if they believe a vehicle is not driving appropriately for the conditions um so regardless of what the speed limit is um if you know if it's in front of the school and there's a bunch of you know whatever the situation is um and that that they're not driving safely they can still issue a citation so okay even though the speed limit is 35 or 30 it's it doesn't really matter at the end of the day all right thank you for that so i i'm probably misstated um in my estimates there so thank you all right is there anything else that needs to be discussed at the workshop otherwise we'll take a brief break and resume uh for our meeting if not you'd like to make a motion to adjourn the workshop i'll make a move to adjourn i'll second okay thank you john and thank you connie uh adam if you please call the roll councilmember doll aye councilmember carlson aye councilmember gilmore hey councilmember hanson hi mayor st arms hi hazel we we need to leave this meeting room right and yeah there's another link yes okay thank you all right