All[Music] right, with it being right at 7 o'clock,let's get started here. Uh Joan, can you do a roll call? Um, Council MemberEricson here. Council member Larson here. Council member Valento here.Council member Miller here. And Mayor Roberts here. Right. If you're able,please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of theUnited States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nationunder God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, council. We have a agenda infront of us. Is anyone interested in making a a motion to approve? Mr. Mr.Mayor, if I may, there there was an amendment to the agenda. What's in frontof you is the amended agenda. Uh we are adding a close session to the agenda. Umand that is reflected in the paper copy that's in front ofyou. So if we had a motion to approve the agenda, uh if we could include thatuh change. And then I would just add that while they're not new agenda items,we would just add that there are two handouts that um go along with theagenda packet. So one is the sale day report from Ellers um our consultant onthe bond issue and that's just something that's new today and then also theadministrator's report which was noted in the agenda as a a handout that wouldbe coming. So um both of those are new items to the agenda but not necessarilyamended part of the agenda. Okay. All right. With that also move the uh toapprove the amended agenda. I'll second. Second. Any further discussion? Um, allin favor? I oppose. Agenda is approved. Next item is open forum. Uh, this anopportunity for anyone to speak. Uh, any city related business? Please limit itto three minutes. Uh, is there anyone interested in speaking tonight? Mr.Mayor, I don't believe anyone has signed up this evening. I'm just taking agamble on that. All right. Everyone's enjoying the the nice evening out theretoday. Great. Okay. With that, then uh we'll move on to item six and lookingfor uh the approval of the consent agenda. A motion. I'll make a motionapprove the consent agenda. Motion. Is there a second? A second. Any furtherdiscussion? All in favor? I opposed. Consent agenda is approved. Our firstregular item, uh 7A median refresh project. And Dave, looks like you'regonna walk us through this. I'd give you a good introduction, but Lucius has somethe introduction built into his sorry, built into his PowerPoint. So, you'reall familiar with Lucius. He's been here a number of times. So, he's going togive you a presentation on our median refresh project. Thanks. Welcome. Thankyou. Thank you, Mayor, council members. We've been working on the median refreshconcept and project. I put the timeline in here just to remember kind of wherewe've come from and where we're headed on this project and just give someupdates since our last um council workshop. So, we are looking at severalof the landscape medians on Broadway from 19th Street to the Lake Streetroundabout and just considering what we can do to refresh those medians, what wewant to put into it, and kind of the objectives of doing that refresh um forthe landscape. And so, starting back in September of 2024, we started goingthrough some workshops to just kind of um start the design process, figure outwhat we really wanted to do. if we wanted to just redo what was originallythere, if we wanted to minimize the landscaping and the maintenance effort,or if we wanted to just take everything out and just kind of go to a concretelowmaintenance solution. Um, that was not the preferred option. So we kind ofmet in the middle and decided to concentrate um the refresh on isolatedportions of it, keeping the intent of the landscape and just trying to findthat balance between the aesthetics of the landscape and the maintenance movinginto the future. And so as we went to October, we modified the design to meetin the middle with that and we started looking at the installation andmaintenance costs um around just this landscape median portion of the project.In November, we went uh we finalized kind of our design proposal and thepallet of the plants uh reviewed the cost and we uh move forward with somedesign renderings and estimates kind of to get to a point where we could go tofinal design. One of the requests was to meet with the beautifification committeeto kind of review the planting plan and solicit some of the feedback for um fromtheir perspectives and experience uh in the gardening and landscape.And so we met a couple weeks ago and we had done some renderings for the projectand we shared those with the committee and I put them in here too since wedidn't formally look at these in any of the workshops. But this is just a anphoto of the existing landscape on 19th Street and Broadway kind of existing.And then when I toggle forward, kind of implementing some of those uhimprovements, removing some of the landscape, replacing it with someconcrete, keeping kind of the original plantings and just refreshing median andthe boulevards between curb and sidewalk. And we also did the arendering, two renderings at the Lake Street roundabout, just going from theexisting to the proposed. Um, very subtle. If you toggle back and forth,you can see some of the landscape areas in kind of the keys for the crosswalksaround the the roundabout. Go to concrete. Currently, they're wood mulch.Um, just decided not to do plantings there for sight lines andsafety. And then third rendering uh packs even more into it because part ofthe concept was expanding parking area. And so on the right hand side you cansee the grass area city- owned property. And when we go to the proposed kind ofmoving uh a new raised bed planter and then adding that parking lot and somesidewalk and again taking out some of the landscape to some concrete. And so when we shared that, we alsodiscussed the the plant selection uh for the project. These are three plants fromall of the original plans um the landscape medians that ours thesurvivors that have done the best. And so we opted for these and kind of a ablock planting strategy of these three plants, but considering their heightsfrom like a low height to a medium height to a taller height of plants andmaking sure that our planting plan we keep those high plants out of like thesight triangle of the intersections just to maintain and improve some of thevisibility um in those areas. and going into the kind of the cadence of theplants starting kind of low, medium, high, medium, low, and kind of keep upand down as you go down Broadway. So, you know, most people probably won'teven notice it, but there will be kind of a a rhythm or a cadence to theplanting as you go down Broadway. And then looking at the treespecies as well. Um, again, these are original plants except for the BlackHills spruce. Originally in the roundabout on Lake Street was Coloradoblue spruce. We've learned that those trees after about 20 years thin out umjust as a a general landscape practice. And Black Hills spruce is a native verysimilar shape, just not quite that blue tinge, but it's still the same sprucetree. And when we reviewed this with thebeautifification committee, um they liked all the plant selections. Uh theyjust iterated that the dilly be an improved Stella cultivar, just known forits hardiness and kind of um compactness in the landscape plan. And then we alsotalked about the autumn blaze maple trees. All maples have surface rootingwhere they come up and out of the ground and kind of expose. And so there wassome concern like is that going to be a maintenance concern for um pavements inthe future, sidewalk, curbs, things like that. Again, these trees were plantedwith the original um plan 15 years ago. And so that has not been an issue so farfor those trees that are still there and surviving. So we felt pretty confidentthat we could go with the autumn blaze again. And with the Black Hill spruce,um, plants, uh, invasive bugs, diseases is always a moving target. And so,Blackill spruce, while more hearty than the Colorado blue, now has a new insectthat's kind of starting to eat at the buds on those trees. And so, thecommittee identified that as a concern or something to to look at. And twoother species that are um have not had that insect issue yet is this conar furwhich gets back to that bluish tinge or a white spruce. All of them areevergreen and kind of that pyramidal shape. So just really getting into thedetails, thinking about that long-term survivability, so we can still make thatchoice. Um we haven't finalized the design yet, but good feedback to have.And so we looked at um going for going forward into actually implementing thethe project getting to construction. And this was information we had in oursecond and third workshop where we've identified kind of each one of thoseintersections as its own phase and we put construction cost to it and we alsoadded the maintenance cost. um whether uh we did break out maintenance costthat's already accounted for versus new maintenance costs that would be added umjust to make sure that we're maintaining the landscape and not ending up backhere where we are where it's kind of a depleted landscape after 15 years. Andso Dave and I have some um bets going on about how true these uh estimates are.He thinks I'm estimating high. I'm being conservative. would rather surpriseeverybody when we come in below budget, but we'll find out um as we putour timeline together with those costs, those conservative costs. We're kind ofeyeballing uh a three or fouryear plan doing one intersection at a time inphases starting with 19 street this year in 2025.And so in addition to the construction costs, put together budgets for threetasks to finalize the construction plans because right now we put together onemassive design package. And if we're going to split that apart into phases,we'd have to break those drawings apart and put our quotes together to go getquotes and do that. And we also included some optional constructionadministration. Um, four kind of select key points, not necessarily 247 standingover the the crew doing the landscape kind of working partnering with publicworks to to monitor that, but kind of these key areas where we've had issuesbefore where bad stock comes from the nursery and then you're fighting aboutgetting a replacement. So, we'll just go to the nursery and do a pre-insspectionto make sure we're getting shapely trees, things that we wouldn't reject.Just try to make it smoother for everybody so we have less fighting withcontractors on the fly. We can kind of head off some of those issues. And so, tonight just looking toget approval of the kind of the construction timeline and the budget,make sure that's fits the scope of what the city wants to take on and when. andthen just approval to finalize the construction plans and bid phase one for2025. Any questions? Great. Thank Thank you, uh, council. Anyany thoughts or questions? I don't have any questions about theproject. It's something that we've spent a lot of a lot of hours on as acollective group and workshops and so I appreciate, you know, you following upwith the beautifification committee and getting their input on that. I thinkthat was important. Um, I mean, this is our main entrance, one of the mainentrances to Forest Lake. Um, I think it's I think it's something we need tomove forward with. I I just have a couple questions.Uh, on there, I believe are we're filling the concrete area. Is that goingto be colored concrete? Because right now the countyy's in the process ofremoving colored concrete, correct? On the outside uh of of each side ofBroadway. So, they haven't had any issues with the concrete and themedians. It's all on the outside. So, as they were doing the crosswalks, theyjust figured they'd remove the rest of it as they're removing the panels, butthey they didn't see any cracking or any issues of that concrete in the center.Probably mainly because no one's driving on. It's not getting used. So,um I think you saving what we have and adding that colored concrete versustrying to rip it all out. I mean, you're going to double your cost back that way.So, the trickiest part is going to get the closest color match to it. So, the19th Street one is we're going to have to do some pallets to try to get thatclose match and then at least we'll have that color. They used two differentcolors when they did Broadway. So, you have to kind of figure out which thatcolor is. Okay. Um I noticed this is somewhat it'snot related but somewhat related that uh someone struck the fence blue fence at35 there and um so what's the point? So we we filed a claim with the insurancecompany so we're just waiting to hear back back from them and we'll get acontractor to fix it. We're just uh our the league and our our insurance rep areworking through that right now. So, okay. But there all the fence work iscovered all the way down Broadway and lake part of our insurance.And then are we is there obviously the plan is to continue to maintain theseareas that that aren't going to be approached this year. Maybe next yearthe plan there you have people in line to to keep maintained as much aspossible. Right now we can't get in there because of the construction. It'sjust suicide trying to go out there and walk around. But I mean the the planwill be to once we get seasonal staff to try to get out there as soon as they'redone out there working. It still sounds like they'll be done beginning of June.So um then we'll get out. We'll have our our staff they're start coming backstarting next week. We'll probably have 15 of them by that time. So uh we'rejust we're using all of our people just to mow right now and keep up withmowing. So it's it's kind of tight tight timing.But like even even on this just the ones that we end up redoing, you know, Kevinand Kevin Warner and staff have looked at that what it's going to take fortime. It's a cost, but some of that's labor cost, right? But it's some of it'sfertilizer and irerration and irrigation maintenance and all that. So, I mean,it's it's a lot more thought out and will be planned in to keep thismaintained versus installing it 15 years ago and then no one had a plan to takecare of it. I think that was the detriment to this. It's 15 years old,too, one thing, but it's also I don't think there was ever a plan to to takecare of it once it went in. And Mr. Mayor, if I might add, you know, Daveand I have had a lot of talks in my first couple months here just about thatgeneral change in philosophy, right? that whatever we're investing in, wewant to make sure that there's a an immediate plan. Whether it's a newpublic works building day one, we got to have a plan as to how we're taking careof that. I think um Dave's been on that track before I got here. It wasn't myidea. Um but I just want to reiterate that I I do feel very comfortable withhow um Dave and his crew have mapped that out. So, yeah. So, to to uh CouncilMember Ericson's point, you this is the you know, the entrance to to the city,our one of our main streets. There's a this is not inexpensive, but a lot ofthat is concrete replacement, which is going to save in maintenance to thatpoint, maintenance going forward. So, um, if there's no other questions withthat, I would entertain a motion to approve. Looks like we have a couple. Isthere three different motions that we're looking for? I didn't know what you guyswere uh going to think about doing, so I broke out all three of his tasks inseparate motion. So, unfortunately, now you have to do that. Do all three.You're welcome. You're welcome. Mr. Mayor, you could actually make a motionto approve staff recommendations and not have to go through the whole rigomearroll if you choose. Okay, I like that.So, uh, Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion that we approve the median refreshproject as recommended by staff and presented tonight. Have a motion. Do wehave a second? I'll second it. Any further discussion?All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. Great. Thanks for your work on this.Thank you. He's fun. Right. 7B. Uh public hearing. Uh HiddenCreek Vacation. Uh Abby. Thank you, Mayor Roberts, members of thecouncil. As I noted in um that's okay. I could have done it soon.Um, as I noted in my staff report, when the city approved Hidden Creek ThirdEdition, we inadvertently um forgot about some of the vacationsthat need to occur before the plaque can be um recorded. So, as a reminder,vacation isn't that fun one, but it's the giving away of public land orreleasing of some public obligations. So, I'll run through this really quick.This is the Hidden Creek Third Edition. It's that upper um northwest corner ofHidden Creek. There's two areas on the underlying Hidden Creek plat. One is theculdeac on Enfield Avenue and then the other one is the platted drainage andutility easement over outlot C. As you'll see in the plans here, EnfieldAvenue will keep carrying all the way up and connect up with that Hidden CreekSecond Edition and the neighborhoods to the north. we no longer need thatculde-sac. And then that outlot is just getting replatted. Um but the drainageand utility easement associated with that is going to go away because it'sbeing developed as a storm pond that would be dedicated to the city. Sotonight before you is the vacation of Enfield Avenue North and that drainageand utility easement of uh Hidden Creek about Lot C. So, in order for thecouncil to consider vacating public land and releasing of that kind of a publicownership, you have to hold a public hearing after notice to affectedproperty owners. We have not received any public comments to date. Then youreally need to find that there's no public need for these um vac for theland that we're vacating. As I noted that um culde-sacs, the roadway is goingto extend through and then eventually once those storm ponds are developed,Outlot C will end up becoming property of the city of Forest Lake. So staffdoes find that there's no public benefit in keeping these properties and those umpublic encumbrances and would recommend that you move to adopt the enclosedresolutions. Again, there's I think uh maybe two recommendations, but you can,as Jolene noted, make it really easy and move to approve the recommendations fromstaff. Any questions? Any questions?Okay, with that, uh at uh 7:21, we're going to open up the public hearing uhon this issue of the V Hidden Creek Vacation. Um, is there anyone here tospeak to this issue? One more time. Anyone here tospeak to this issue? With that, I would um entertain amotion to close the public hearing. Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion we closethe public hearing. Motion is a second. Seconded. Any further discussion? All infavor? I I public hearing is closed. All right. So, let's bring this back tocouncil. Just um any any questions, any thoughts on this? I think it makes a lotof sense to do. So, if it's all right with you, I'll make a motion to approveresolution number 5122502, resolution vacating a part of arightway located between the Hitting Creek development located in the city ofForest Lake, Minnesota, and resolution number5122503. Do we need a second? Do we need to do those separately?You said you can do I think you can do them together. That's fine. Okay. Uh5122503, a resolution vacating a public drainage and utility easement locatedwithin the Hidden Creek development located in the city of Forsake,Minnesota. We have a motion. Is there a second? I'll second. Any furtherdiscussion? All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. All right. 7 C uh ordinance 753. This isrelated to military honors and um guns I guess in the city. I don'tknow. Captain Captain Hanigraph is not here today. So um I'm taking this one.Okay, Chief. Great. Um good evening and yes, what I have for you is an amendmentto our current city ordinance pertaining to use and possession of firearms or umother weapons. And as you know, earlier in the year, we realized that ourcurrent ordinance uh did not allow military honor guards or color guards uhto take part in military honors where they could fire blank ammunition uh fromtheir weapons to provide like a three volley salute. So uh what we did isstaff uh scheduled a meeting with the representatives of American Legion, VFW,and our two local funeral uh homes uh to discuss the ordinance. um thelimitations uh in the current ordinance and give them an opportunity for um forfeedback. And we had a great meeting. It was um it was long, but it was very umit was good. We got a lot of great input from them. Uh they learned a lot aboutthe current ordinance and why it needed to be uh updated. So attached is anamendment uh to our current ordinance that was approved by all thestakeholders and reviewed by our city attorney. And I definitely want topublicly thank the American Legion, the VFW, Matson's funeral home, and Robert'sfuneral home for their uh uh input in regards to this uh amended uh ordinance.So, staff recommends the city council approve ordinance 753 amending title 13,chapter 130, general uh offenses. And there's just one there. All right. Thanks, Chief. Any questionson this one, council, at all? Uh, yeah, this this was a u we found outkind of the hard way that we didn't wasn't aligned with federal law. So, I Iappreciate everyone's work on this uh uh Luke's and and yours, chief, and and thetwo um vets organizations. So, uh with that, is anyone interested in making amotion on this? I'll make a motion to approve ordinance number 753, anordinance amending Forest Lake City Code, title 13, chapter 130, generaloffenses. We have a motion. Is there a second?Second. Any further discussion?All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. Moving right along. Uh 7D uhresolution 05122401 awarding sale of $4.4 milliongeneral uh obligation spur street uh reconstruction bonds and Mark.Yeah, Mr. Mayor and councel um have some good news to share with you. Um, andI'll let Dan get into this a bit more here, but um, just in in very generalterms, uh, the sale of the bond that happened today came in, um, at more thanhalf a percent lower than we were anticipating. And that translates into,um, I think it'll tell us about $300,000 in savings over the life of the thebond. So again, a bond sale is much like a bid that we put out for construction.Instead of contractors bidding, it's banks. instead of a constructionproject, it's a bond or a loan. Um, and so, um, Alers's are equivalent to BIM.They're the consultant putting that bond out there for bid. And, um, we'll justturn it over to Dan at this point. Welcome. Thanks. Well, good evening,your honor, members of the council. Uh, by way of introduction, my name is DanTinter. I'm municipal adviser with Ellers and Associates. And you mayrecall that we talked about this about a month and a half ago on March 24th whenyou approved the street reconstruction plan after you held a public hearing. Wehad to work our way through a reverse referendum period. And then ultimately,as the city administrator mentioned earlier today at your request and onyour behalf, Ellers solicited bids from qualified banks and underwriters on thebonds that were offered uh and contemplated under those plans.We actually received ultimately eight bids which is a little higher than whatwe would usually anticipate. We would hope to be in the three to five range.So eight demonstrates to us that it was a good test of the market. There was alot of strong interest in the city's uh double A plus rated bonds. As mentionedthe low bid actually came from FHN Financial Capital Markets of Memphis,Tennessee. And you may think to yourself, Memphis, Tennessee, what isthat all about? Uh but it's not uncommon uh for highly rated government debt tobe purchased by banks or underwriters. really across the country. And so we dosee from time to time that we will have a state that you may not think of uhpurchase debt ultimately because they have investors that and clients that areinterested in these bonds for their portfolios either on an individual orcommercial basis. Um among those eight bids, the high bid was was just over 4%.So that's a fairly tight spread and that's generally what we'd like to seewhen we have a number of bids. That also indicates to us that it was really agood test of the market today. uh because we weren't seeing that therewere really that many outliers that everyone was in a pretty um tight rangeacross the eight biders. Um ultimately as a part of the process the countexcuse me the city did receive a reoffering premium on the bonds which isjust uh a premium is ultimately them asking you to maintain a certain couponrate and that pushes the yields on the bonds down so it ultimately doesn'taffect your interest rate. uh after talking with staff earlier today and Ithink consistent with your past practice uh staff ultimately opted to use thatpremium to reduce the size of the bond. So to the city administrator's pointearlier you actually got an interest rate that was a little lower than whatwe were anticipating and then you got a little extra money in the bid processthat actually allowed you to reduce the overall size of the bond. So, in theaward resolution that was circulated by bond council, you may actually see thatit calls for a principal amount of $4,145,000, which is lower than thepre-sale amount that was discussed. So, that's another thing to indicate that itwas a good sale. You got a lower interest rate than you're hoping for andyou're borrowing a little less than you thought you were. So, ultimately, whenthose things come into alignment, we feel good about thesale. Um, at this point in time, if the council thought it was an order, youcould certainly adopt the resolution upon adoption. Uh, we would then uhbegin the closing process for the bonds. You can think of your action tonight assomething like signing a purchase agreement and then about 3 weeks fromnow is when we'd actually close on the bonds. A number of documents would becirculated and then the money would ultimately be wired to the city and thenit would be available for draw requests on the project. So, after your actionhere tonight, there's still a little more work to do to get everythingfinalized before the city can ultimately uh possess the bond proceeds. So, that'san overview of a few of the moving parts. I'd be happy to answer anyquestions that the council has about the process uh to date, the bids or the nextsteps in the process. Mr. mayor if I could just have him Dan answer a coupleof I'll just sort of call them softball questions but um can you just speak towhether or not there's a call date on any of this bond in other words can wepay this off early uh your honor members of the council Iwould note on the second page of the sale day report that was provided uhthat summarizes all the actions early this evening you will note under thenotes section below the table that the bonds maturing as of February 1st 2036and thereafter are uh callable as of February 1st, 2035. So ultimately, as of2035, you could call the bonds, uh, meaning you could refund them or paythem off. And that would be for any maturities that occur after February 1ston or after February 1st, 2036. So essentially, you are locked out frompaying off the bonds until those dates. Just just to clarify why we do that, ifyou had a call date of every year and just kept that open, you wouldn't havegotten nearly as good a interest rate, right? So, when someone knows they'vegot something locked in like this, um you get a much better interest rate. So,that's a calculated question we ask ourselvesbefore we issue this is should there be a callate halfway through? Well, maybewe'd like to pay it off early, you know, something happened where we came in somemoney or something, but then you risk having a higher interest rate. So, we umopted not to have that culminated in there. Just want to clarify why that is.And then um the other thing I just wanted to highlight um and this is justpurely for bragging rights. Um but with this bond we did a rating call uh and arating reassessment and we're very happy to u report that we maintained ourdouble A+ rating. So that's just excellent news. Again, that speaks towhy you got such good numbers here and that's why you're going to continue umthat's just overall very good news for you as you look to do any other bondingin the future is that um the markets think that um S&P thinks we're a verygood sound investment for investors. So um that's a slap on the back toeverybody including the council for running a good um city. And you know, Ithink some of the things that were in the the report um you know, speak tothings that are should be important to us all. I hope if you didn't have achance to read that, you would take some time just because there's a lot ofthings in there that you might not think about, but you know um Jessica, yourinterim finance director and I were on a ratings call and you know the questionsthey ask are around the stability of government, how much do you have inreserves? You know, do you have a policy? Are you following that policy?So, there's a lot of things that you might see us as staff guiding you on inregards to those decisions. And there's a reason we're guiding you and thatthat's because the markets like to see that kind of thing. They like to seestability. They like to see that you're saving money, that you have a policy andthat you're sticking to it and all that kind of stuff. Not overextendingyourself, all those type of things. So, those are all important in in keeping uswith that good rating and able to get this call it cheap money. We're gettinga very good rate here. So, that's because of that double A plus rating. Soyeah, that's that's great great news. Any questions of either Dan or or Markon on this? The only question would be are we awarding a sale of 4.4 or 4.145?Your honor, members of the council for the reduced amount. Okay. To reflect thepremium that the city received earlier today. Okay. Anyone interested in making amotion? Make a motion that we approve resolution 512401 awarding the sale of4.145 million dollars in general obligation street reconstruction bonds.All right, we have a motion. Is there a second?Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries.Thank you for the information on this and present presenting this and Mark foreducating us a little bit on on why we're doing some of these things. So,it's all great news. Thank you, honor, members of the council. We appreciateyou working with others uh on your bond issues and congratulations on the greatsale. Thank you. Best of luck with the project. Thank you.All right. We have just a couple discussion items here this evening. Uhjust as a reminder, these are discussion items. There will be no action takentonight. Uh likely something action further uh in future meetings. Firstitem is grading escros and fee schedule adjustment. Abby. Yeah, thank you. So uhas I noted in my staff report to you, we started analysis during the 2024construction season. Um there's a couple catalysts for us. a combination of arise in drainage complaints and then um when Corey our Corey Murphy, our formerbuilding official, left, we really just started to look at some of the gradingand drainage issues we were having within the community and trying to getget a better understanding of what was some of the causes to see if we neededto look at some of our policies, procedures, codes, those sorts of thingsto um maybe start preventing some of these problems. And what we did find isthere are a number of city code sections, engineering standards,processes, procedures, um, that exist to kind of createthis just let's throw it all in a box and shake it up and then then we gotproblems, right? And so tonight, uh, the idea is to introduce you to thoseissues, kind of identify some of the opportunities that we have forimprovement, and then seek some of the policy direction associated with ourgrading and drainage complaints. So, as I noted, um, there's four differentsections that I outlined in our staff the staff report. The city coderequirements, so that's true city law. The engineering standards is generallyhow we're designing things. um our administrative procedures andthen financial implications, fees and escros. So when it comes to our citycode requirements, um one of the biggest things that we had learned is not all ofour land disturbing activities were having their grading and drainagereviewed. Um generally speaking, when a new home was coming in, certainly ourcommercial construction because we go through that site plan review process.Um but a lot of major additions, major landscaping projects, retaining walls,pools, um a number of those types of projects just weren't addressing thedrainage on the property, how this was going to affect the property and thosearound it. Um we also didn't have any sort of base requirements for what wouldbe required in a grading plan. And then um we didn't often require an ads built,just proof that you actually graded your property to how you said you were goingto grade your property. And then, you know, we didn't do things likewithholding our inspections or withholding back escrow funds. And so,you know, the foundation of kind of some of the things that we're doing justaren't embedded in our city codes. So, what we would recommend is that we dorequire grading plans for all new structures. Um, major additions, majorimpervious surface additions, certainly um significantly sized patios, pools,those sorts of things, or landscaping that could um, you know, where where wemight have some engineered components and such. really starting to look athow's that affecting maybe not the subject property, but are we are we surewe're not affecting the properties around that subjectproperty? Um establishing some of those base requirements. You know, just simplethings like what kind of elevations do you show? Do you five foot contours,twoft contours? This starts to get a little technical for even me, but havingsome of those base standards established, I think we all wouldrecommend, staff would recommend. And then requiring asbuilt plans when landhas been disturbed and if we've required a grading plan, making sure that we haveproof that they actually followed that grading plan. Certainly before we wouldrelease funds or conduct inspections. I'm going to get to all these as likebullet points as discussion and so we can kind of vet through these. Is thatall right or do you want to kind of walk talk through them as we go?Okay. Um engineering standards. Uh what whatwe've really found is that we're reacting instead of preventing. Likethat's just plain and simple. We're seeing the rise in drainage complaintslargely because our lot sizes are getting smaller. Our setbacks are beingreduced. We we're working in areas of high clay soil and anytime you've kindof put those things together and get the slightest bit of workmanship issues,we're going to run into some challenges. Um we also have some prettyuh I don't want to say steep, not steep side and rear yard standards. And sothey're really not well aligned with the industry or allow for any tolerance.very kind of flat is what we've been asking people to build towards where wemight need to maybe pitch our yards a little, not a ton. We're talking about ahalf of a percent, but doing that in a way that then there is some tolerancetrying to get water moving down properties through the back ofproperties. And then also driveway grades. We have some we allow for somepretty steep driveway grades. Um just anytime you're kind of moving thosedriveways closer to the roadway, you've got them at a steeper grade. You'regoing to have that water shed down and without places to go, we're going to endup with pooling and drainage issues. So what we found with theengineering standards is that we just really need to better align them withkind of those industry standards, right? Kind of looking at what othercommunities do and making some recommendations of of getting the waterflowing a little bit better. administrative processes. Um, as I notein the, uh, presentation here, there's no city hall staff that's skilled toreview grading plans. And so, um, really when, you know, when I first started andwe I knew that this was a problem, but didn't necessarily recognize how much ofa problem it really was. you kind of think that we're doing it, we're doingit well enough, but then when your grading and drainage complaints keepincreasing, you start to realize that maybe we're not doing it well or at all.And so, um, last year we really did find that it was necessary to be sending alot of these technical grading reviews to our city engineer to have ourengineering firm verify these grading plans aren't going to negatively impactthe neighbors and the communities. um a lot of times in the new neighborhoodswe're building, but it's not uncommon to have these drainage complaints on theselittleer lots around the lake as well. Those are really common complaintareas. Um so definitely we would recommend that until we would havein-house kind of technical engineering services that we would continue to havethose services conducted by the city engineers office.So that does then get us to kind of some of those financial implications. Um wehave two different types of ways that money gets involved. One are escros. Ithink the council's been briefed on escros. Think of that as the debitaccount. If we need to use the money, it's there. It's a security. A lot oftimes we're not using those funds, right? They're just there in casesomebody doesn't do the work, but a lot of more often than not they're justreleased back when the work is done completely. Um, currently our escros arefor landscaping and erosion control and it's$2,000. Um, that would not cover the costs to rectify some of these drainageissues if we needed to. In new developments, our developmentagreements, the ones that you approve and enter into with developers, werequire a $10,000 escrow. And that escrow is really broken out by grading,drainage, landscaping. Um, we also talk about lot corners and the submitt of anads build survey. What staff would recommend is that we move to kind of amodel of a higher escrow, possibly still that $10,000, but it really covered thewide range of things that we can use that to tap into a number of differentthings. Right now, if there was a new build in a residential subdivision andlet's say we've accepted the streets and the sidewalks, but the landscaper comesin, new home being built, and they chew up this the curb. Right now, we don'thave securities from those builders to go inand fix that. Those are just little ways that we need to maybe be protectingagain the public's infrastructure, that neighborhoods look, all of those things.Future homeowners. The other one is fees. Um, indiscussions with our with Bolton and Bank, we've talked about what would bethe cost associated with their review of grading plans and asbuilt plans. Andthey have provided a quote for services that staff would recommend we embed intoour fee schedule as a flat fee that's passed on to the applicant for newconstruction projects. It's a net neutral circumstance. For reference,last year in about half the year of 2024, we sent 109 permits out to Boltonand Bank and we spent over $24,000. And so those were costs thatwere coming out of the general fund. Right now, our permit fees, our buildingpermit fees aren't high enough to cover those additional engineering costs. So,there's two different ways we can pay. continue to pay as we do or what staffwould recommend as we do a pass through cost to cover thosefees. So again, tonight seeking city council direction and I've got some kindof pointed questions for you to at least start discussing and help provide somedirection. So are you favorable with us moving forward to making necessaryrelevant and industry standard code and public works engineering changes? So guess we'll just take these individone one one by one. Yeah. All right. Uh thoughts on on the firstI should note um all of this will come back before you but the idea is you wantus to kind of keep working to fix these systems. Um some of the public worksengineering standards would come back before you fairly routinely or quickly.you about once a year adopt updated engineering public works standards. Someof these codes amendments will be a little bit they're just a little bitmore nuanced. They might have they might affect the zoning code. It might need togo to the planning commission with a public hearing before they come back toyou. Um but I think the whole idea is hey council we've identified someissues. Do you want us to kind of keep moving forward with trying to fix theseissues? Can can you just uh for public recordmaybe a couple examples some of these complaints? I mean I they're kind ofobvious but some examples that might say okay yeah we we need to address this.You talked about driveways and pools and like so what kind of complaints are wegetting? And um a lot of the complaints uh we get right now a lot of them aren'taren't always com aren't always like some of it is just kind whathappens during development. So we're getting a lot of complaints in HiddenCreek. Well, so some of those complaints have to do my neighbor's yard's finishedbut that finished grade is higher than my grade and so it's draining onto theproperty. Granted, once that gets finished out, there should be a drainageswale, but that drainage swell requirement is so low that the water isprobably not going to move. So, when it comes from an public works andengineering standards, increasing that requirement to have a greater percentagedrop would help move that water back some. Um, some of the complaints in theuh the city code are the neighbors discharging their sump pump and it'scoming across a property line. Our code does indicate you can't necessarily putyour drainage onto other people's property. But when there is a drainageand utility easement on your property and your neighbor's property, that wasthe intent and to be able to move that water is part of part partly what needsto happen. So even though it's truly a black and white violation of the code,it's counterdicting to the intent of an easement. So those are some of thoseareas that we need to fix. Some of the areas that we need to fix are theprescriptive things like our fees and our escros all usually are a part ofordinance and what we can use those fees and escros for um need to be codifiedbut they're not well codified right now. So Mr. One of the things that happens isyou have a brand new development. You have a master grading plan that we allreview and the engineer says looks good. And then each individual home comes inand of course we don't build one, two, three, four in in an order. Whoever buyswhatever lot gets built first. Guy in the middle comes builds the lot and ourprocess um as Abby mentioned we um previously had a little trouble you knowreviewing that. So each each builder will submit their plan and it shouldmatch the master plan, right? Um it doesn't always and but that wasn'talways getting caught and um part of that's just a skill set around theoffice. Um so we've got a better process working there. Um and then someoneactually has to go out and check that they actually build this to what theirplan and the master plan said. And sometimes that wasn't happening. And soyou the guy in the middle builds too high and then the It's supposed to draindown here. Go, well, now I got to get up to you. And there's a cascading effect,right? Um the the complaints are generally new homeowners, brand newhomeowners that have a they haven't settled their final check with thedeveloper and there's a soggy backyard or a soggy sideyard where they just youcan't even walk through without getting your shoes all wet because the gradingis all terrible. And it's a it's a tricky situation where how much does acity get involved between a homeowner and and the builder? Um but at the sametime, we have a global drainage issue that really lends itself to the cityneeding to be involved because this guy in the middle caused a problem. How doesthe builder two houses down fix that problem if it's not the same builderespecially? Um and you end up with these homeowners that are caught in the middleand expect the city to be able to facilitate a more orderly pattern ofdevelopment. As Abby mentioned in one of the first slides was smaller lots arecausing this. And if you've ever looked at a lot survey nowadays, they they'reshrinking so much that there's really hardly any room left on the lot foranything but drainage and utility easement. And the areas what we'reseeing is that people back in the day when your lot was 150 ft behind yourhouse and you had all sorts of backyard, you could avoid the easements, put youryour swing set and your fence in these places, maybe a little retaining walland not bother the general drainage pattern. Now, there's no place in yourbackyard to put those things without being in the way of drainage. And so,that is compounding things too. I know that um Abby, one of the things shewanted to look at is how do we address fences in the in the rightway? I knowDave has waved in too just are we going to allow fences in drainage andutilities ements? There's an argument to be made. No, you shouldn't because a lotof times they impede the drainage. At the same time, if you put a fence onlyin the area that wasn't draining and utility easement, people would havethese little postage stamp fenced in areas and you'd have all this weird areabetween homes that was outside of the fence and just wasted area, right? So,um definitely a lot of this problem is just the size of lots has shrunk overthe years and we all know the reasons for that. Cost of building a home andall that kind of stuff. We're trying to keep that down, trying to keep thedensities up. Um, it's it's rearing its head here. So,so the first question then, any any thoughts on this? I got a question. Howis how how will this pertain to existing homeowners? You mentioned the idea ofputting in a patio, other impervious things that could affect drainage.That's a very different scenario than a builder who's got his own engineer andthe whole nine yards. So, what are these standards as we envision what thatimpact could be for that existing homeowner? What is that going to looklike for them as far as from just a burden of being able to add something?And follow-up question to that is we've got a lot of new homes without decks onthat board on the back just waiting for a deck. So, with these, you know, isthat considered impervious surface? Would that trigger some sort of fees,studies, the whole nine yards? What does that look like for those existinghomeowners? Sure. Those are great questions and it's still something thatwe're kind of wrestling through especially with those attached umpertuances. So those attachments to homes, elevated decks where that ledgerboard is there, even if it's, you know, just slightly off the ground and youkind of go down a step, those generally would not require any sort of additionalgrading review because they've been accounted for in that initial planreview and more often than not aren't changing the grade in a way that's goingto impact those adjacent property owners. major additions to structurescertainly if we're starting to get um major additions. Uh new garages are atrigger often and patios that get within a certain distance to a property line.That's really been that kind of those areas where we're really seeing a lot ofthe challenges is that our we don't have maximum impervious surface requirementsand we don't have setback requirements for our imperous surfaces. So, some ofthose complaints that we're getting right now are complaints based on pavingto the edge of the property line. And so, looking at some of those standardsof when we would have them, we still haven't vetted through. Um, but I wouldsay our major additions, new accessory, larger accessory structures, not shedsor anything. And some of that impervious surface would incur probably uh thatpermit fee. Not yet established, but what the hard cost would be was in thestaff report $600. I thought about 900 I think or 750 I don't remember somewherein there. And then they would have to show a grading plan. Now that gradingplan may not be that extensive if we've already got something on file. It's allgoing to be on a case by case property basis.Great. Thank you. Yep. Any other questions? That'sWould that include like driveway or I should say garage slabs and additionaldriveways? It could. It just kind of depends andthat's still something we're trying to bet through. Honestly, we haven't Thishas been a project that I've been working on for a while. first looking atthat analysis and then kind of like what are all the codes that would potentiallyneed to be addressed. I've referred to it a lot as the octopus in the box.Every time we kind of open it up again, it's just more and more. I think whatwe'd be doing is kind of working in increments and bringing you some smallsteps along the way. Definitely that area of driveways is always a can be aconcern because more often than not they're going right out into the publicrideway and they are filling drainage ditches, you know, and so those are thenjust backing up the drainage for the adjacent properties. It's likelysomething as simple as a driveway may not. I think our publicworks has been pretty good about knowing where there's grade issues and drainageissues already. Um, but it's something that we'd have to consider. Thank you. So, let's say you have a homeownerthat's DIY and it's going to do it himself um he or herself.um they not only then they would have to hire an engineer or someone to toprovide this this plan, this drainage plan, then they would also pay for thecity to review that. Correct. That is correct. Now, that being said, I don'tnecessarily think that all projects need to have a professional engineer. I thinkwith guidance from our engineer, we might be able to develop somestandards, project specific standards that could allow for a more rudimentarygrading plan. I've worked in communities that don't require professionalengineered surveys, um, but they do at least just want to know how are youaccommodating for your drainage. So all too often what's happening is peoplearen't and they're just causing problems for their neighbors in theirneighborhood. Yeah. It's it's one thing for adeveloper to to be able to do this and they can get that cost back when theysell the lot or the house, but when you have a homeowner who's, you know,struggling to maybe pay property taxes and now we're requiring this, it's we II I agree first. I agree we need to do something because it does create justhavoc if it's all these situations happen. But thread that needle whereit's just not getting cost prohibitive for them to be able to do anything thatthat's that's just a concern. Um so as we move forward Sure. So what I'mhearing is there's concern for the potential impact of the cost increasefor projects especially when it might be a smaller project maybelandscaper patio improvements those sorts of things. Um, I think anytimewe've maybe got new structures, I don't think that we could get away, we shouldbe considering getting away from it, um, and, you know, major additions. Yeah.Um, those are major construction projects, but we definitely can keepthat in mind as we're going forward trying to really hit the big ones. Nothit the big ones, that's awful, but make sure we're addressing the the projectsthat could have the big some of the bigger impacts.So any other thoughts on this first plan? Kind of keep moving forward butkeep those things in mind. Okay. So the next one do you agree that uh until suchtime as we have some in-house technical engineering services um we utilizeconsulting services for grading and asbuilt plan review.Yeah. Yeah, I guess a note I made to myself on that one is in our staffingplan is do we see hiring somebody with that skill setin the near term or is that a longer play? I think it's a little longer play.Um, you know, I think an engineering tech was a part of our staff at onepoint in time. Um, you know, if we see that the development pattern is isheading in that direction where we can support that uh staff member, I think itit might make sense. Um, sometimes there it's a bit of a tough jumping off pointto hiring an engineering tech without some support staff around around you.Uh, that person might need specialized software and equipment.And quite frankly, this is a pretty good spot for a consulting firm, you know,um, to step in and provide those services at what might seem like a bignumber, but when you look at the overhead that it might cost to get thatfirst on the engineering staff. Um I think maybe a little bit longer termplan um is when we even look at maybe a staff engineer when we're at25,000 plus, you know, someday. Um I I think it depends on on some skill setstoo, right? I mean, if you could hire a public works person that wants to pickup a shovel and also has some of that skill set, you know, maybe that cancould be a dual role type thing. Um, but it it can be a tough thing to just havesomeone who's all alone on an island as the only sort of engineeringprofessional in a in a group. One other thing um some cities do andI'm not necessarily advocating for this but an option could be we have a quotefrom Bolton and Mink. I would recommend if the council is comfortable usingconsulting services that we adopt that fee and we utilize that practice to sendthings out but maybe on an annual or every other year something basis. Welook to see if there's other firms that might be able to partner at a lower costfor the residents. It's an option. I don't know what that really does withour contract with Bolton and Mink, but um we could always look, you know,towards the end of the year to see if there's other firms that couldpotentially provide it for less. I I think that's that's that's keythere. Um love what Bolton Ming does for us, but um to diversify a little bit andget some bids on that might be a good move to at least look at that.And I think you'd mentioned and I had, you know, just talking to we had aprevious staff member that was doing some of these and this is where we gotinto some of these situations. Maybe they weren't being done properly or thatdidn't have the skill set. So I think it that's important to havethe right person, you know, at the switch doing this. And so if that's thatsounds like that's a a third party. Um, I mean, I often hear from engineers,it's an easy one to learn, but it's also when you do have such a high amount ofcomplaints, when you do have that many concerns in a neighborhood, when you'rereally trying to build new neighborhoods for the long-term preservation, I thinkthat it's worth those costs to be having professionals take care of it. If it'sthose oneoffs, you know, every now and then, maybe it's not a big deal andmaybe in time we can teach people those skills. But I think right now wherewe're at, I don't think that we should be trying to do in-house services. I I'I've had a lot of experience. This is not not unique to Forest Lake. We hadthe exact same problems in Centerville, had the exact same problems in everycommunity I worked for for the 20 years previous to that as a consultant. Umit's I will tell you that you'll a lot from builders. You'll get phone callsfrom builders, well, I can't believe you're going to charge this or that. Thebuilders that do it right, get their money back right away. And um to me,increasing the escrow is the way to go. Um you know, keeping the fee as low aswe can makes sense to me because it rewards good developers and goodbuilders that want to do it the right way first time. Pay attention to thegrading. Um a lot of times grading is an afterthought. Builders are in thebusiness of building the structure, right? They got carpenters and plumbersand the landscaper is the last thing they worry about. And some are good andsome are don't pay attention at all. Right. And builders who payattention get approval right away and are on with their lives and andeverything's hunky dory. The ones that don't, it's a struggle.So, um, that that jumps ahead just a little bit. Going back to the the thirdparty. Um, is everyone in favor of that? I do wantto ask the question. Would you like us to seek um other bids before we bringthat back to you? Are you comfortable with us bringing back a fee schedule,getting that kind of established in place for the construction season, thenmaybe as the construction season winds down, we look to see what kind of costswe can save in subsequent years. You're okay with that? With the time of theyear we're in makes most sense. Yeah. Thank you.Um, so then escrow increases. As a reminder, um, currently I, uh, the codeis limited in what we're using our escros for. Um, and it is for $2,000.the question of increasing it and if you're comfortable increasing it to$10,000. Um that is what we would require right now in a new development,but as Mark had said, those are often the builders that were are gettingit done and getting their money back and moving on quick. Umthe escro is it just for the new builds then? Is that what we're talking about?Uh, we could definitely escrow for um break out the escrow for newconstruction versus a like a remodel project. New construction has a greaterchance of us not getting necessarily like asbuilt survey and the propertypins put back in place and there's probably more potential for damage tothe public infrastructure than maybe just a average homeowner remodel. Istill would um recommend we increase those average homeowner remodels becausewhen they go south $2,000 isn't generally enough.Now granted, we also do have an enforcement program and we do havedifferent tools to try to use um before using ascos,but I think that one of the differences too is homeowner that has a remodel or abig addition. As Abby mentioned, we have other tools, right? You can correct itthrough the nuisance ordinances and assess it to the property. If you have abuilder that does that, you can still do that, but now you're putting it on thathomeowner and that homeowner is not going to be happy with the citysort of ignoring who caused the problem and just putting it on the property andthen having the putting the owner in a position to have to sue the builder toget that money back if it really is the builder that's causing the problem. Andas you know, 2,000 just isn't enough to do anything these days.I mean, when you talk about sod, damage to curb and sidewalk, not having theproper trees planted, property pins, grading as built, um, drainageissues, all sorts of things that can go ary. I mean,um, we heard from the waterershed the other day, I think, you know, just abouthow important it is for black dirt to be put down. Often times, you know, we'renot out there 24/7 watching and you get ready for the sod to be put down andyou're expecting first black dirt then sod. There will be many of times maybeit's just a thin layer of black dirt or none at all and the sod is right on theclay and you know you're left to tell the homeowner good luck, right? If youdon't have that escrow that this is meant to protect your brand new home whoare just moving into town, right? These are people who are scraping by to makethat payment on that first house of theirs, you know, and um 400 for a four$500,000 house, a builder will walk away from $2,000 and justAnd of course, it's not the builders that are here all the time because theywant to maintain a relationship. But I know it's hard to think about sometimes,but there are builders every day that just go out of business and or almost goout of business. And um again, I've dealt with a number of them in previouscommunities and it just happens way more often than you want to think thatthere's you go belly up or just get way behind on stuff and can't keep up andjust stop having to care about that kind of stuff. So, yeah. So, I'm I'mdefinitely in favor of that increased escrow, especially for those buildersand those new homes. Again, I just want us to be mindful of, you know, thatneighbor that's been in the house for 20 years and they're putting on an additionto come up with a a bigger escrow, you know, is could be burome for them. I canunderstand that. We can look to see what are maybe some reasonable securities.Again, escros are that while it is that debit account that we could use, theintent is the security for them to do the work. You know, that's the goal morethan anything. It's um do the work, you get your money back. Mark is right. Theamount of escros that we still have, not necessarily because people haven'trequested them, but because the builders walked away, is very high. because$2,000 to them is nothing compared to just being done with that homeowner andmoving on. So, how are we using that money? Pardon? How are we using thatmoney if they've walked away? Right now, it's just sitting there. we have torectify it at some point. But yeah, I mean it's it technically there's, youknow, probably a legal time period in which it's for forfeit and then there'sprobably there's legal processes for actually the forefeite of of property orthey're they're um that's a whole different conversation. Usuallywhat happens is we we find some dead time in the winter and go, you knowwhat, let's try to clean up all the 2022s that we still got sitting outthere. and you go through and write people letters saying if you don't callus back we're keeping your you know you know generally we're trying to give itback to them you know at some point we try to clean that up once in a whileit's not because it's a tough one because the it just they linger and theylinger and they linger you know yeah and a lot of time it's not that homeownerright it's that original applicant that original builder and soand so we have to release that escro we can't give the can't give that escrowback to the home They didn't write us the check. We need to go back to theperson who wrote us the check. Right. So, uh, recently I had a a developerreach out complaining maybe that we were asking too much. Um, he shared with mesome comparable cities. I shared that with you hadI mean the data that was given there was not maybe I get so frustrated becausebuilders do this all the time. Well, my building permit in such and such cityonly cost me 11,000. But they they forget. Well, it didn't include this andit didn't include that. There was that data that was there was apples, oranges,bananas, and pears. I mean, it was there was so much differential in what itmaybe included and what it didn't. Um, that's I I actually worked my last citytoo to revise our building permit to because it used to mix fees and escrosand you get one number on the bottom and it was a big number and builderscomplain about that a lot. And so we we made a different permit and we put feeson one side and that's grows on the other. So that there was they couldstill write us one check, but there was a clear differential between what we'recharging for fees and that you will not get back. And here's the chunk of moneywhich is a much bigger chunk of money that you will get back if you do theproject correctly and on time, you know, and I think it's important for us tomake that distinction to builders is that we're happy to talk about keepingour fees as low as possible. We all want that.Keeping fees low helps people um get into an affordable house. Keeping escroshigh actually helps us keep fees low to me because we don't have to play thegame of winning some and losing some. You know, we can be nice and tight onour our margins on the fees that we're not making money. But with the escros,you've got to win every time. You can't afford to lose. the city should not bethe rest of the citizens in town should not be paying for a irresponsible bidbuilder, right? Um so I think that escrow part needs to be high and we canwe can stay tight on the fees as long as we can but um the escros really need tobe there. When we come back we certainly can show you some of the comparablecities too to show you kind of where we are in a range of things. Yeah, thatwould be great. as long as we're not an outlier, you know, either way, I I morecomfortable with increasing these these fees.And then I think um you already kind of intermittently addressed that line itemfor the fee schedule to cover those third party costs for that grading planand asbuilt review. And I heard you say you're comfortable with us using BoltonAmink's quota fees, but in uh when it slows down and looking at 26B schedule,start to see if there's other firms that might be able to do this work at a lowercost for us. So um that I have enough direction at leastright now. Is there any, you know, final thoughts the council may have as wecontinue to embark on this? I will say we started this process last summer. Um,it was a kind of work on it through the winter.Uh, I don't have a ton of free time right now to be working on code stuff,but that's why I think I wanted to have this discussion big, holistic. We'llstart bringing stuff back to you that's timely and appropriate. So, our wholehope to have this done, my hope to have this done before this construction year,but I think we can get small bits kind of coming at you so that we're stayingahead of it through this construction year.Yeah. And to to the point that Mark made on on that schedule, if the more thatyou know because people see that big number and they're that's what theyhear. They're complaining city it's x amount to just get it. But if that canbe just as transparent and laid out openly as possible, I think is going tohelp communicate why they need to be what they are. So, for sure, wedefinitely can do some better handout materials, too, at our front counter onwhat are escros and why we need them and what they're used for and that you getthem back when you do a good job. So, yeah, for sure. Great. Thank youvery much. Thank you. Thank you. Right. 8B,administrators report. Mr. Mayor and Council. Um, one of my handouts in frontof you is just our sort of first run at a more robust u Friday update titled itthe administrator's report for lack of a better title right now. But, um, this issomething I wanted to put in front of you and get your thoughts on. I don'texpect you to go through all 11 pages right now, but please over the next fewdays u at your leisure just take a look at it and give give us some feedback onwhether or not this is um is this an appropriate format for a abi-weekly update? We were thinking we might put this in the packet.Um I I will say, you know, as we compiled this, this was a bit of a aheavy lift. This is a lot of information and whether or not we can do this everytwo weeks is is a bit of a a question outstanding. Um I I'd like to give it ago and see if we can do it, but um this is also as I mentioned it's a lot ofinformation to keep um up to date. That being said, this is all information thepublic should have at their disposal, right? And um there there's a balancebetween um literally putting every thing that we do on a daily basis and everydecision we make into a report and not having enough information for thepublic. And I don't know I'm trying to find where that line is. And um you knowI think there's a a balance there that I'm trying to to find with same thingwith with not just the public but you guys as well is how much information canyou even take in? how much can we should we just be going about our duties anddoing our thing and then if you got a question we'll ask we'll answer it rightmaybe I'm answering too many questions that aren't being answered here I don'tknow um so we would appreciate your feedback on whether or not this is isgreat and you know whatever it takes let's get this done to n this isprobably a bit more than we need um so this is um kind of a a first flush editand uh forgive the the probably little typo and forat type stuff we're workingthrough a little bit, but this is something I wanted to put in front ofyou as a enhanced communication. And again, what we're we're kind of movingtowards too is just a more strategic um thought around communications bothexternal and internal. How much do we do on social media, keeping our website upto date? Last time I told you about how we're doing some more timely websiteauditing to make sure that that information is correct and timely. Um,At some point, do we value this enough that we have a half a staff persondedicated to social media website newsletter type stuff? As Jolene I thinkhas talked to you about before, we'd like to get a newsletter put together.That's something very very common with cities and we're not doing that rightnow in terms of putting out a an actual newsletter. We are putting out that thatemail blast that that Jolene puts together. So, we have all thesedifferent platforms and the question is how do weum manage our time putting information on all those places in the variousformats in a timely fashion that makes sense. Um it's a it's a tough thing towrap your head around how much is too much and how much is not enough.So any feedback you give me would be great. I'll leave it at that. Anyinitial thoughts? A lot of information. It's good though.Yeah, initial thought. I mean, I think it's put together very well. Uh, I thinkit's could be excellent for um just u not only building awareness of allthat's going on in the city, which I think is under known, you know, thinkabout that. Um, but also just building that um community identity, which ishelpful. One thing I did do miss is a Friday email that I think is internalfocused, you know, and just some of the celebrations that are called out inthere around, you know, staff's anniversaries and whatnot. So maybe acombination of of the two, some some format. Yeah, I I think this is great. Uh but Ido realize it takes a lot of time to put this together. So you know that balanceof getting as much information without just consuming a bunch of staff time.Every hour put doing this is an hour we're not doing something else, right?So striking that that balance is is important. But this is really it's it'sgood. And if we can get to And when we do get to a full newsletter to can goout to the public, I think that's that's ideal. Sure.I agree. That's all I have, Mr. Mayor. All right.Thanks. Actually, I'm sorry. I should I should note uh since the last meeting umI did uh head down to the capital and um gave some testimony on a House bill thatum Congressman Congresswoman Anderson um was helping us put forward for moneystate appropriation for the um Cassad 32 11th Avenue project and the forest roadrealignment. And so that was presented in front of a a committee and got a whatweek and a half or something like that till we find out what's in the omnibusbill and some late night we'll hear get word that it was either in there or notand I really can't predict whether or not we'll get that money or not but wedid put that forward and thank you to Representative Anderson for helping uswith that. Is there anything that council can do to help that do you thinkat all or the that opportunity or that you know I it's one of those thingswhere you kind of got to pick your battles on how often you're contactingyour congress people and certainly Representative Anderson is already awareshe's the one putting it forward and um you could email the committee members onthat appropriations committee but you know as you can imagine they're so busyright I don't know that they're really going to get to your email before thesession closes. Yeah, I think I asked you this. Youknow, since uh we have Force Lake is split by two districts even though uhRepresentative Hill's not in that that part of his district is not where thisproject is. Does it help to reach out to him? Yeah, I think it's it's always goodto have community voices. I mean, if if certainly Representative Hill also is arepresentative of Forest Lake, right? And I think um the people on thatcommittee want to know that the representatives of Forest Lake are insupport of this project and so certainly uh he might be a key member to to reachout to if you're going to do that. Good. Uh so number nine, mayor and citycouncil updates. I see that we don't really have staff updates. Is thatmoving forward going to be the kind of the plan or Yeah, Mr. Mayor, that was inlight of the incredibly robust administrators report. um we kind ofmoved that off of this agenda. This is going to kind of be a work in progressand we'll feel it out as we go. But I I guess I would encourage council afteryour first glance if you have questions for staff based on that and now would bea time to ask. Um otherwise follow up with staff by email as well. Okay,great. All right. Uh Council Member Larson, do you have anything for us tosay? Um, as noted in the administrator's report on Friday the 9th, myself andCommissioner Gerard from the planning commission interviewed a gentleman foruh, open position on the planning commission and currently we're justdoing some more background on that and hopefully we'll bring something forwardto the council for a vote. Great. Council member Ericson. Yeah,last Friday morning I had a chance to attend a round table discussion withsome of the local business leaders in Forest Lake as well as RepresentativePete Stabber. He was soliciting feedback on just the business community and thetax law that's scheduled to sunset this year. So, it was a great interaction notonly with our business community, but also Representative Stabber and hisstaff. Great. Council member Miller, I have nothing this week. Council memberValento, nothing for me. All right. I don't really have anything. Uh youeveryone received an email from Jolene just being mindful uh we have uh we'regoing to have an addition to the council here uh family eventually and so with uhuh council member Valento being gone uh for a period of time just be mindful ifyou're not going to be able to make it to let Jolene know and uh so we makesure we have a a quorum. So okay with that um we have a closesession this evening. Uh would someone like to make a motion to put us intoclose session? Sure. I'll make a motion that pursuantto Minnesota statute 1305 subdivision 3B for confidential attorney clientdiscussion regarding active litigation in the matter of city of Forest Lakeversus Jonathan East. Strom and Seline Finance LP court file number 82CV252807. All right, we have a motion. Is there asecond? I'll second. All right. Any further discussion? Allin favor? I opposed. Motion carries. We are in closesession. We will stop videoing uh the live feed uh recorded feed this evening.We will be coming back to council chambers after our close session tosimply close this meeting. Thank you.[Music]