Good evening and welcome to the Newport City Council meeting. Today is Thursday, April 16th, 2026. We'll begin the meeting with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Will staff please call the role. >> Council member Schmidt >> here. >> Council member Ingamman >> here. >> Council member Taylor >> here. >> Mayor Elliott >> here. Council member Sumner is absent at this time. >> Thank you. Next on our agenda is to adopt the agenda. Do we have any changes to the agenda this evening? >> I'll move the agenda. >> I'll second. >> I have a motion from council member Ingamman and a second from council member Schmidt to adopt the agenda as presented. Any discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed. The agenda is adopted. Next on our agenda is public comments. This is where members of the public can address the city council about any local government issue not included on the regular agenda. This is limited to concerns that are relevant to City of Newport affairs practices and policies. We ask that you step up to the microphone, clearly state your name and address for the record, and to limit your comments to about three minutes. Generally, the council will not act on items at this time, but will refer uh to staff for uh future action if appropriate. Is there anyone who'd like to speak during public comments? Seeing none, um I will move on to the consent agenda. Are there any items that need to be removed from the consent agenda? >> I'll move the consent agenda. >> Thank you. >> I'll second. >> I have a motion from Council Member Ingramman and a second from Council Member Schmidt to adopt the consent agenda as presented. Any discussion? >> All those in favor say I. >> I. Those opposed, the consent agenda is adopted. Next on our agenda is the engineers report. I'll turn it over to uh our city engineer, John Herdigan. >> Thank you, mayor. Good evening, uh members of the council. Uh two items for formal consideration tonight. They are both very similar. So, I will probably explain them both uh together and then make separate motions at the end. Uh so we have prepared uh plans and specifications for our two reconstruction projects that we are planning to uh uh begin this construction season. Uh the first is Third Avenue improvements. That's from 21st Street to 15th Street. And then the second project is the 12th Street area improvements and that's uh slightly larger. So that is uh 12th Street between 7th Avenue to the Mississippi River. Uh 3rd Avenue between 12th Street and 14th Street. Fifth Avenue between 12th Street and 15th Street or 14th Street. And then uh 13th Street between 7th Avenue and 4th Avenue. Uh we have uh completed those plans. We did not include them in your packet because they're pretty uh sizable. uh happy to uh uh to answer questions or if there's I have the uh plans as well electronically here if we want to uh review them. Uh but we are planning to assess a portion of the improvements uh which uh requires a formal action by the council to approve the plans and then uh solicit for bids. Uh we will be uh hopefully advertising these uh projects in our uh local paper uh next Monday and then uh we'll be advertising for about three weeks. We post them online on an online planning plan room for contractors to view and then opening bids I believe May 12th is what we have planned and then bring those bids to council at your second meeting in May. Um as far uh we did do a uh a comparison between the fe feasibility cost estimates and what we have for a cost estimate now that we've completed the design and we have a a good tabulation of all the quantities. Uh so third avenue our original feasibility study estimate uh which included about 10% in contingency uh was was 3.72 million. Uh our postdesign uh estimate including about 5% in contingencies for some unforeseen um unforeseen conditions is about 3.64 million. So roughly about you know about the same I would I would say uh for the for the um size of project. Uh the 12th street area improvements uh that feasibility estimate was 5.47 million and then again our our asbill estimate came down a little bit and then we were sitting at about 5.28. Uh one thing that I will mention uh is we are keeping a very close eye on fuel costs. Uh not only for the um for trucking and the equipment that uh the contractors will use but also there's a lot of petroleum products in the Bubinous pavement that we use to pave with. Uh we don't have a lot of good numbers of recent uh for for paving costs. We're hearing that they're fairly volatile as you would expect. um as well, probably less so, but there are petroleum products in our PVC pipe that we use uh for sanitary sewer as well. I think that the the suppliers have plenty of stock. Um so, I don't think that will affect us much, but just making note of that when we uh when we're going to be doing our bid evaluation that some of those some of those batuminous prices might creep up and uh impact the impact the bids. Uh, with that, I'm happy to uh stand for questions. And like I said, if we want to bring up anything that council is um particularly um interested in on the plans, I'm happy to bring those up. But otherwise, looking for uh two separate motions. One for resolution 2026-27 for the approval of the plans and specifications and ordering uh bids for Third Avenue. And then uh resolution 2026-28 for the same resolution for the 12th Street area improvements. Okay. >> Thank you. Any questions from the council? >> Ed one. >> Yep. Council member Schmidt. >> Just confirming the second meeting in May is where uh the action would be taken to actually approve any of these bids. So today is purely about approving the going out. >> You're going to add >> Yep. to to advertise the project. Yep. >> Nothing further. Thank you. And we do have some people in the audience here. Any questions on either of these projects? >> Hi, James Neville, 16153rd Avenue. My wife Rebecca, um, we've heard a lot of rumors about this project throughout the city. Um, whether it's going to be a go or a no-go, and I know we don't know at this point, but are we still looking at the same kind of time frame? It sounds like we're starting later than expected. >> Yeah, we we are starting a little later than than expected. Uh we do expect for the third avenue improvements to be uh to begin in early June and then that will uh take a similar timeline as our second avenue improvement. So likely finishing up in in late October, returning for uh next uh next summer or spring of 27 to finish up Boulevard restoration and and that and that type of work. The larger of the two projects on 12 Street, which you may or may not be interested in, is uh we're currently having that as a two-year project uh with some milestone completion. So we'll allow the contractor to start well we they will start in 26 but they'll need to get a certain amount of that work completed before they move on to other segments and we'll allow them a second uh season to construct that. So in the hope that you know that we'll attract more contractors that maybe don't want to take as big of a a project on uh in in a single year. >> Okay. Thank you. >> John just want to briefly address you know for the public why the third avenue project got delayed too. Uh well for there's two reasons. Uh one when we had originally planned to have Second Avenue and Third Avenue and then 17th Street um as one collective project uh and that was to be let in uh last year at this time. Uh we split the project um one for for funding reasons because we could obtain a uh a grant for storm water resiliency and at the time that we had to uh to advertise the project for bids. We didn't know if we were going to be successful on that grant and we ended up getting it and it was about $1.5 million which made a significant uh um uh benefit to our project financing. uh but it was a little too late to try to bid that project that uh in 20 or construct that project in 2025. So we are returning to do Third Avenue uh Third Avenue this year. Now a portion of Third Avenue uh or the Third Avenue project will include a portion of 17th Street that is uh not paved right now that did not get uh repaved as part of the Second Avenue project. uh that the 17th street corridor is where we plan to run our storm sewer. And once we remove the uh the pavement and begin constructing that storm sewer, uh there is a uh a petroleum pipeline uh owner that occupies that that rightway. And it turns out that we were uh too close to their pipeline uh and they they stopped our construction process last year. um we did share our plans with this utility and unfortunately the uh the the impact was not uh raised as an alert on their end. So we're currently working through that pro or through that process to be able to complete our uh improvements. We're confident that we will get them uh uh completed this construction season, but there are some protective measures that uh that the pipeline owner needs to complete before we can go in and do the excavation work and particularly the the rock excavation, which is a pretty aggressive uh um aggressive uh work in that in that corridor. Um, we're working uh we're meeting um often with the utility uh with the uh owner and trying to figure out a way to uh um to to get this work completed. >> Does that >> Thank you, John. >> I think that does because I know that's probably why there's a lot of rumors is because of the delay, but that's it's not a lack of commitment. It's because of these reasons. But >> thank you. >> Thank you, John. Um, so with that, I would take a a motion on resolution 2026-27. >> I move to adopt resolution 2026-27 resolution approving plans and specifications and ordering advertisement for bids. >> I'll second. >> Thank you. So, we have a motion from Council Member Taylor and a second from Council Member Ingamman. And this is the Third Avenue improvements. Um, any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed. The resolution is adopted. Do you want to do the next one? >> I'll move resolution 2026-28, a resolution approving plans and specifications and ordering advertisement for bids. This is for the 12th Street Area Project. >> I'll second. >> I have a motion from Council Member Taylor and a second from Council Member Schmidt. Any further discussion? >> All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed, the resolution is adopted. Anything else for the group? >> Uh, no. I'm happy to stand for questions. >> Okay. Thank you. Next, we have the Superintendent of Public Works report. >> Uh, good evening, Mayor Elliot and council members. I have nothing uh formal this evening, but I do have a few updates. Um, you probably noticed the street sweeping going on. We hope to finish that tomorrow um or Monday. Um, and then soon after that, we'll start with the hydrant flushing. So, um we'll we'll post that online uh for the official start date, but um this is obviously a fairly busy season with uh patching and um all that all that stuff. So, juggling juggling a few uh staff to try and get as much done as we can. Um and then my final update is that the county 74 uh project with our new trail is supposed to start uh next week. So, >> Okay. Um and and spring load limits should come off uh Monday morning as well. So, >> okay, >> that's all I have, but happy to stand for any questions. >> Thank you. So, that's just a caution to people who use that 65th Street um County 74. Expect some detours and some delays and I'm sure the cones and barriers are already lining the road, so you know it's coming if that's where you drive regularly. Um any questions for Matt? Okay, thank you very much. >> Next, we have the administration report. >> Mayor, members of the council, just one update. Uh we just got a notice from uh Mandot and they are doing a survey asking for input in regards to the pedestrian crossings um I think throughout the state, but they knew we had two here. So, this would be the the pedestrian bridges going across 61. They're asking for input and folks to participate in providing input. Um we did provide some information on our website and on Facebook. So if folks are interested in providing that um there's information on the website and uh that's all I have. >> Okay. We also have a closed session on our agenda for this evening. We will go through our mayor and council uh comments. Uh then we will go into close session. I believe the close session is justformational. >> Correct. and which means uh when we come out of close session basically the only uh city business after that is to adjourn the meeting and so we'll end up doing that off camera. Uh but there won't be any other um significant action taken by the council uh once we go into close session. So with that um I just wanted to remind people that we've got our new uh mini darts bus uh going around. It's free or donation uh driven if people want to use it. And it's got a couple of locations within Newport and there's some stuff both in our lobby and I believe we've got it on our website for people who are interested. Make some stops in Newport and it will also in um St. Paul Park. It happens on Tuesdays and then it has uh multiple dropoff locations for popular businesses. And also just a reminder that our we've got the regular bus service running that goes from our transit site out to Mall of America, the airport, a couple of other stops and up to the goal line in Woodbury. So we've got a lot of options that we didn't have 12 months ago. And so I'm really excited to see this here and I just want to encourage people to use it if you uh want a different way to to get around. So that's what I have. Uh Council Member Ingamman. Well, the only thing that I've got is I uh last week I attended the funeral for one of the fallen firefighters that uh served Newport. Uh Romero Mido Resendez. He was on for 10 years. >> That was back in my time. >> So just a few years ago then. >> Yes. So, we uh express our our sympathy to the family and I was uh amazed at the number of firefighters that did show up. >> That's wonderful and >> nice. >> Thank you for being there on behalf of the council as well. Council member Taylor, >> I have nothing to report. >> Council member Schmidt, >> nothing for me. >> Okay. Um with that, we will then move into our close session. So, um the agenda for this, uh portion of our meeting is pending litigation related to property located at 15457th Avenue. It's in the matter of the city of Newport versus Cube LLC, Washington County District Court, file number 82- CV-24-6467. This portion of the meeting uh of the city council will be closed pursuant to Minnesota statute section 13D.0 05 subdivision 3B under the attorney client privilege exception to the Minnesota open meeting law. The city's need for confidentiality outweighs the purposes served by the open meeting law in this case based on the following. Absolute confidentiality is necessary so that the city council and legal council can have candid and open discussion to determine the available legal options to handle pending pending litigation matters including strategy and any possible areas of resolution. The purpose of the closed meeting is not to make decisions behind closed doors but instead is to determine the legal options for handling the referenced matters. This only um the only business to be discussed in this closed portion of the pending litigation is pending litigation matters including strategy and any possible areas of resolution. An open session would be detrimental because it may take place in the presence of individuals involved in the litigation. A closed session would be would benefit the public because the ultimate outcome of the litigation may impact the finances and regulatory authority of the city. I will now entertain a motion uh to close this portion of the meeting. >> So move second. >> I have a motion from council member Ingamman and a second from council member Schmidt. So the council will now go into close session. Let me The time is 5:49 p.m. Um, only the officials and consultants of the city who reasonably require access to this data may be in attendance at any portion of the meeting for this agenda item.