e e e e e e this or this meeting of the O Park height city council for March 11th to order first order is pledge allegiance to the flag the United States of America and to the for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all okay and next would be approval of the agenda I move approval as presented second all in favor I opposed motion carries now we have Council and staff reports um I have nothing to report so we'll go to council member Johnson I attended the February Middle St Cay watershed management organization meeting and I was appointed treasur for the organization so that's um the main development all right council member lren um I testified uh in the house capital investment committee on Thursday the 27th of February that was um in favor of house file 214 which would uh appropriate uh under the bonding package $1.55 million for design and engineering um on our work for uh water treatment plant and we have a Planning Commission meeting uh this Thursday the 13th council member run um council member Johnson and I atten attended training at the county for the uh emergency services and I have a CVB meeting tomorrow that's it all right um City administrator uh council members uh good evening uh planning just for your calendar looking to have a a work session scheduled for April 8th um if that works for I want to give you advanced notice here and you can Circle back if there's any conflicts that you have so we've got some items that are starting to starting to creep up here and I think will be good discussion items for us to have so tly plan for that and I'll I'll Circle back with you all that's all it police chief good evening Council uh just a couple things uh this weekend's St Patrick's Day weekend we do have a couple extra officers on for traffic enforcement along with other agencies uh through a tzd grant and then uh We've also uh um we're fortunate to help uh escort the pony hockey team over uh this past week they did a great job congrats to them fortunately they didn't get the the number one SWOT but we're certainly proud they got to the to the finals there which was awesome to watch that play out and it was awesome to escort out of town uh we also had uh one of our officers involved in a squad crash on Friday on this past Friday the uh insurance company looks like it's probably a total at this point just a heads up on that but thankly nobody was hurt on that so but uh we'll be following up on that probably at the next council meeting more on that and that's it you have we got the truck yet good uh the truck is half built as far as uh we do have the truck it's it's being upfitted with all the emergency lights on it and they're about halfway done so it should be here within the next two weeks on the road so assist City administrator mayor and Council the only thing I have for you tonight is your recycling Award winner the first selection for the month of March Emily Schmidt at 14872 Opera 55th Street North okay thank you all right and visitors in public comment we have a presentation of the new Oak Park Heights coordinated Response Team uh thanks for having us I am Sergeant zok with the oakberg Heights Police this is kiby Claflin she's our newest member of our team embedded social worker um back when I started in 2007 we had no crisis response unit we had no embedded social workers in the county uh since then um law enforcement agencies throughout the county have really come to light with this co-response uh Team kind of um coming through Washington County they have several with the Sheriff's Office kaj Grove Woodburry um and now our department we have a part-time member Kibby and she started about a month ago so I'd like to personally thank the council and mayor for being supportive of our department to push this forward hi I'm Tracy Thompson I'm a clinical supervisor at Washington County and um supervise kib's position as well as our coordinated response teams throughout the county um again to just Echo Sergeant zok just want to say thank you to the city of Oak Park Heights for recognizing the importance of having this in the law enforcement agency um we started in October of 2021 um with our first two uh coordinated response teams at the sheriff's office in Woodburry and since then we've grown to five agencies um and still have a few agencies left to add to the county um but it's been super helpful in those mental health calls that come through law enforcement that have any kind of mental health or substance use to them that the coordinated response teams either go out in progress if they're available or they do follow up for um police reports and it's been instrumental because as we have seen there's no state funding for these so cities and counties throughout Minnesota have really look at looked at this and took it upon themselves um to recognize the importance of it so we're super excited to get this one going in Oak Park Heights and thank you for recognizing it as well Kibby want to skip a little bit your background um look as it's been said my name is Kibby Claflin um I have a history my work history is within crisis response crisis stabilization so I've done active respon resp post Crisis Intervention I've been embedded with several different U police departments and well I can plug that I'm also a crisis negotiator for South Metro spat and I've been super excited to be here it's been the most warm and welcoming opportunity so thank you and I look forward to the work thank you thank you yeah thank you very much all right moving on uh 2026 community Project funding presentation by the office of congresswoman Betty McCullum Mr H isn't here just yet person is not here yeah oh there he is oh he's going to walk in hi Charlie perfect perfect entrance you can just come up up to the front ready to go yeah R's been suspended and so forth well it's your time now so okay I I I told you we'd get you in and out so and I nailed the timing exactly I think that's the bottom line here right okay so thank you very much Council um on behalf of congresswoman McCullum thank you for allowing me to address the city council this evening I'd like to briefly introduce myself my name is Charlie Hammond I work in the congresswoman's St Paul district office here today in an Outreach capacity so I've got a uh folder for you and I can send electronic copies of its contents as well um in the folder you'll find our office's constituent service guide in a list of constituent uh casework service issue areas but really I'm here to discuss Community Project funding so each year members of the House and Senate can sponsor a limited number of one-time uh funding requests for local community projects that do not easily fit within existing Grant programs or Appropriations requests unlike a regular Federal Grant application which are submitted to federal agencies cities can submit a project proposal directly to their Federal legislators so Community project funding grants provide investments in a wide variety of projects such as housing homelessness prevention Workforce training public facilities Parks resilience planning and other critical infrastructure and services so included in the folder is a complete list of all Community project uh Community projects sponsored by the congresswoman since fy22 um so we do not yet have official guidance from the House Majority on whether Community Project funding will be available in FY 26 or what the requirements will be if they do decide to allow them however in the interest of preparing our potential Partners to apply for cpfs before those decisions are announced um please see the information included in this packet uh we do have guidelines from the previous fiscal year um we again it's just the best thing we have to go on for the time being given the unusually high level of certainty in the United States house at this present time um but you will find that guidance in here um and once FY 2026 is announced uh hopefully in the coming week weeks there will be a short window to apply with our office before the deadline so if you have potential projects in mind or any questions do not hesitate to reach out soon and once they do announce uh it is kind of a Mad Dash I mean I think last year was uh pretty unusual but we had like maybe a week and a half between the announcement and the application deadline so on behalf of congresswoman mcol thank you for your time I'm going to share this folder with you and again everything's available electronically my card is in here as well thank you great well thank you pass it yeah okay any other public comment yes sir substitute mayor city council um as the chief of police indicated the Stillwater high school did a heck of a job in the state hockey tournament and if you watched any of it you will have noted that at least one of the stars on that team was from Oak Park Heights and uh I was just would like to suggest that the city council think about doing a formal congratul uh um I don't know letter or whatever to the uh Stillwater high school hockey team for its great showing this year thank you thank you okay all right we'll move on to consent agenda um approved bills and Investments we have two different sets uh Che number let see 71,0 547 to 715 472 and 714 99 to 71 546 um approve city council work session notes from February 11th approve City counil minutes from February 11th reward the spring 2025 Boulevard tree planting project to Hoffman Nursery and Landscaping approved Proclamation for the 2025 city of o Park Heights Arbor Day in Arbor Day month approve license for sale and storage of consumer fireworks at Menard's number 3129 authorized Brain Tumor 5k race on May 18th authorized permit for the Stillwater Sunrise Rotary 2025 Bridge the Valley Bike Rally approved May 17th 2025 as City cleanup day set Party in the Park for June 5th at Bry Park from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. approve resol resolution authorizing submitt of a community energy Transit Grant application approve purchase and replacement of police officer badges I'll move on cons consent attend has presented second roll call Council M Johnson yes council member lren yes council member rank yes council member dhy yes all right we have no public hearings no old business so moving to new business mayor and Council we have Matt Layman here from the stillw area Scholastic Cycling Association he is planning to provide you with a little presentation on the Valley View Park mountain bike trail system as you recall Sasa is the organization that built and maintains those trails um he is actually requesting some features be installed on the trail system um they are will be using Sasa and team members to build and maintain those features not asking for any City resources just asking for approval he did provide the same presentation to the parks and trails Commission in January and they provided unanimous recommendation to the city council to approve these so if you I'll turn uh your attention to Mr Layman and he will run through this presentation good evening council members as Jennifer said my name is Matt Layman I'm representing Sasa excuse me so uh yeah it's a pretty simple request we're just looking at adding some features to the park to the single track trails and this is a map of the park and in the upper right hand corner I am showing um the five different types of features that we're adding or we're asking to add and as she mentioned um we're not asking for any any material um reimbursement or labor we're going to provide all that so it's just strictly permission to to make changes so next slide okay the first one I'll talk about is drops and what a drop is is as you're riding down the trail there is a step where the bike would go down um and actually before I get into these details I guess I should say all of the features are being added basically for two reasons one is to um add focal points for the team to train develop skills and mainly build confidence and then the other so that's kind of the high school team focused if we talk about just the general public it's just adding things to the park that's more interesting and fun to ride right okay so the drop would be something that you go down uh we're looking at uh 10 to 14 in of a vertical drop and um for this we would have what you would call an a line and a b line so the drop would be on the B line the a line is the primary trail that you're riding on and the idea here is if you are somebody who's never been here before and you don't know the features there the a line is going to be the main line that you're following so you're not going to be surprised by this you have to kind of go out of your way to go over this this more technical feature and then the last point is if if we just build it out of dirt over time it'll erod and and disappear so we'll do something to kind of reinforce it and make it um durable over time all right the second one is steps so the drop you're going down as you go and the step you're going up as you go and it's very much like stair steps right so we even talk about these things with the same terms we have a tread which is is um the horizontal portion and the Riser which is the vertical portion so if we want to look at the size of the step the tread is going to be about the length of a bike and the Riser is going to depend on whether we consider it a beginner or an advance so we're looking at putting these in two spots the advanced the Riser would be about 6 in maybe a little bit more and the beginner would be less than that something like 3 in so here it's it's just offering a challenge when going uphill and making it a little bit more difficult again we would have an A and A B line for those all right and then the last two um probably going to be building them out of wood the boardwalk is something that's a little bit wider it wouldn't have a a ride round area because it's it's wider and the area we're focused on for this we're mainly putting it in because it's often muddy when it's after rain long after it's rain so we're just providing a spot to ride out of the mud and then the skinny is something that would be much narrower so if the boardwalks 12 in the skinny would be more like 6 in and that would have a ride around um that's primarily there just a challenging thing to ride on so and I think that's the last slide so any questions no it looks really f it looks great great so you guys have done a great job out there I would you've had success all right thanks for your time thank you great so if we could just get a motion to authorize s soov okay thank you been moved and seconded all those in favor I opposed motion carries next item is approval approval of an agreement with santex consulting services for completion of the multi-year water and sewer utility rate study y council members uh good evening uh before you is a agreement with stantech to complete a multi-year water and sewer rate study uh this has been made a part of our uh budget for this fiscal year uh we think this is a very good time to complete this uh just given that we've got some pretty significant capital projects coming up one that we're starting here this year related to our well project want to um certainly know that we have adequate funds from a water and sewer standpoint but at the same token I think it's important that we don't want to have too much funds so that's that's one of the benefits um with this is it guides looks out um the future to make sure that we have adequate resources to fund not only Debt Service uh but our operations and future Capital within the watered sewer U funds so uh with that uh we are asking for your approval uh from a project standpoint uh we'd kick started here over the next couple weeks and anticipate completing the project with stant's Team uh in sometime in probably late October that's all I have any other questions get a motion so move second it's moved and seconded all those in favor I I opposed motion carries okay now we have a trail reclaim maintenance project reward I'll jump all over this one hi folks it's been a while how are you great nice to see you thank you you as well Mr D because how come the only time we see him as when he wants money yeah g was so true well before you tonight is a continuation of our Trail maintenance plan um which uh we evaluated City Trail segments using the uh good oldfashioned Pacer rating system uh We've categorized categorized our Trails into um poor fair in good conditions and um our immediate focus is of course uh replacing or repairing those trails that are in poor condition quite obviously I think um and so this year's maintenance is going to focus on two key areas uh Autumn Hills Park the trails within Autumn Hills Park and then uh Trails just uh to the north of our city hall building and carrying all the way through Swagger Park uh We've also included uh an alternate to uh replace that easement Trail between 57th Street and and uh Swagger Park as well um we had a a pretty strong turnout for our RFP uh request for proposals we had five qualified contractors that submitted bids and Minnesota Paving and materials uh was the lowest uh bidder and so since this work Falls within our allocated budget I am recommending that we award that contract to Minnesota Paving and materials and we include that easement Trail the alternate uh for a total project cost of $48,750 that's an incredible price okay when would they start the projects I know people are going to be asking about it yeah we don't know yet that that at that point uh we're not quite at that point where we can start scheduling but uh perfect do you guys have a preference I mean earlier is probably better I would think I'd think yeah yeah I know I've had questions from residents about it so I know people are going to be very very excited to to hear those sure yeah just I'll keep you posted just some of a amusing comment um apparently the deer in the neighborhood really appreciate that path they really do which path the one in uh swag when they cross Oldfield oh I mean it's kind of a become my daughter joked about the fact that she was talking to somebody and she said we've got our deer trained in our city cuz they crossed in the crosswalk there was a herd of them that crossed at the inter like at yeah at Crossing same time last week cuz my my daughter ran into it and she said and they weren't exactly in any hurry yeah yeah it was like I think six or 10 of them it was we'll give them a special assessment those they really need to contribute nice job on the training Andy yeah yeah we're feeding them all right can we get a motion so moved second all those in favor I opposed motion passes and then we have a replacement replace easement Trail fence between 57th Street North and Swagger Park and I'm going to stay right up here so this agenda item is separate from our Trail reclaim work but the two projects of course are coordinated um I think you folks have uh seen that fence in the trail there on that Trail it's it's it needs to be replaced and so uh now of course is the right time to do it since we're going to be working on replacing the asphalt in the park M Fence Company provided a quote for $16,500 to remove the existing fence and they will install a new cedar fence similar to the one they installed in 2004 along that South border uh I think that fence turned out really nice so um anyway this this project could be funded through the park and Trail improvements budget which currently has a budget of uh just over $550,000 so the money is there and that's uh essentially what I'm asking for is authorization to contract with Mau um fence company uh for the removal and replacement of that easement Trail fence between 57 Street and uh Swagger park for an amount not to exceed $16,500 I got a quick question I I don't I don't have a problem with the fence do we need the fence is there a reason why that fence was put up there and the residents want it can we just put the trail I think they do they prefer it be there okay cuz like the city fence is all around the park line and so it's put in so that people wouldn't go through the park and so that kids wouldn't go through people's private yard and now it's been used because people have dogs in one of the Yards yep fair and it's a pry big I just thought if people didn't maybe they didn't maybe they no longer wanted it and there is a reason and then not put it in there good just to have a a little line as you drive down you see this little you know fenced in piece are are they okay with that so only very good question but yeah absolutely I believe it's they do want it because of the dogs and council members we have a couple others too that director Kegley and I have have talked about these Trail um fences or easement fences I guess we call them so we're going to have some more conversations and talk about how those fit in our our Capital Improvement plan here you know over the next few years cuz I think that they're getting to be a little bit tired as well so we've got some more that we're going to want to talk to you about in the future when were those put in the fence probably original to the development I'm going to guess you know they still have the shadow box when was the the Swagger neighbor was that in the 70s he was Mr R you probably know huh those houses have been there since the would be early 70s maybe they it's not original to De development though cuz my neighbors showed me original photos of the properties and there was not a fence until I think later years I know the houses on Old field in that section were built in like 702 era oh okay so probably in that time yeah in any case needs to be replaced did we get a I make the motion motion second all right it's been moved and seconded all those in favor say I I opposed motion C carries thank you so much thank you very much all right any other Council items or announcements I got one thing yes sir just in case anybody didn't know the county did at their February 18th meeting authorize the beginning of the grading for the 58 Street Extension project and and so they're going to be cutting trees and starting the grading fairly soon and naturally when they gave their presentation the public works department tried to rewrite history and the fact that they made the claim that this was planned it was in the CIP since 2019 which I knew was wrong because I have an email from the Public Works director to his then assistant who is now the Public Works director and commissioner creel from from November of 2020 so that would be basically a year after it's claimed have been in there and he specifically states that it it is not in the CIP and that it wasn't even going to be in the CIP that they adopted for the following year so this is just a case where they they ended up taking the project and putting it into where another project had been using the same number and now they're TR telling the public that it's it's just they're just falsifying the records in order to try and claim that they uh didn't have a private deal with the uh developer prior to them publicly announcing the project in terms of other announcements should we since we kind of breezed over the part part in the park and the cleanup day have someone and staff explain the details of the cleanup day since we alternate now between the seasons and what we're collecting and what time and everything sure mayor and Council uh thank you for authorizing those dates the spring cleanup we at this point we'll have to talk about whether we'll have a fall one but for now we are scheduling the spring one it'll be Saturday May 17th 8: a.m. till noon Anderson Corporation Southwest parking lot uh we will be accepting General household waste recyclables large bulky items um the only things that we won't be accepting are hazardous waste appliances electronics and mattresses so pretty much everything else will take and it's no charge to our residents so no no restriction on the number of trips to come through during those time periods we often we'll see people multiple times so it's a good way to clean up your yards and your garages and um we'll stay tuned for fall to see if we'll have a yard waste one or if we'll have something more robust just depends that and then sorry go ahead finish the other thing I was just going to point out that a Party in the Park thank you again for scheduling that Thursday June 5th 4:30 to 6:30 at Bary Park this is an annual event I believe this is maybe the 38th 39th year that the city's been doing it um we specifically like to do it the first first Thursday after school lets out so maybe kids haven't gone off for summer break yet um summer vacations and they can come on down um meet the city council meet the city staff we serve hot dogs and chips and and snow cones and mini Donuts all for free to our residents and then we do have several businesses that come out and hand out free things to our residents as well and activities thank you and then from a from a newsletter standpoint assistant administrator we we we have one going out before the 17th of May so so Council we we make sure that it's in their details about the spring cleanup too so that our residents know yes I got a quick question for the administrator uh any followup with Bayport on fire advisory Council meetings moving forward yep um council members so and we didn't really touch on that earlier we had our our first um meeting uh fire advisory meeting in quite some time um I thought it was from my perspective good to get all the parties U together and and get things rolling again so uh reached out you know to check in on some of the next agenda items of what are planned the Bayport administrator has uh has reached out with some ideas and so we're we're continuing those conversations behind the scenes but we are planning you know I want to make sure that we have we don't get off track and not have these meetings like we we got off track before we need to have these meetings regularly to talk about business and where we're at and especially with the city of Bayport uh for those that are not aware of considering hiring a full-time Chief you know that is certainly their decision it's a service contract as I think we're all aware of but uh to answer your question council member yeah there's been some dialogue um going on between myself and the administrator at Bayport perfect and just for the council I I agree with the administrator I think it was a a good start we heard a lot of good things that we probably weren't hearing before so I'll look forward to those meetings as we move forward and I think we're going to try to I think they were thinking maybe more quarterly and I think we probably pushed in some of the other um entities push to have them a little more regularly to start and go forward so I think that was that was good as well yeah absolutely absolutely good all right um just um wishing the mayor speedy recovery and for her to return back to her chair as soon as possible and um I look for a motion to adjourn so moved second all in favor I opposed motion carries we are adjourned I was going to say this doesn't do it just e for