[Music] good evening everyone tonight is Wednesday June 12th 2024 it is 6:03 p.m. and I would like to welcome you to the Columbus city council meeting for tonight our first order of business will be the Pledge of Allegiance please join us I pledge alance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all and before we go on any further let's take a minute or half a minute or so for a moment of silence or a little prayer whatever you want to do for officer Jamal Mitchell who was murdered by Mustafa Muhammad I listened to his funeral yesterday and I think he deserves a minute of our time thank you everyone and I make a motion to adopt the agenda for the May 22nd 2024 city council meeting is there a second this is Su all second any other discussion or questions don't you mean tonight's council meeting I'm sorry don't you mean tonight's council meeting May 22nd is not tonight did you say May 2 I said May 22nd yeah it's on here is May 22 June 12th sorry it's okay just want to sh we're getting the right agenda adopted all right Janet's on her toes I'm sorry and I have don't have my coffee here all right so I'll make the mo I'll remake the motion to adopt the agenda for the June 12th 2024 meeting and the second and this is Su second I'll call for a motion for a vote Sue I Janet I Rob I and Jesse I so we know what day we're on and here we are okay letter B the consent agenda which includes the approval of the May 8th the May 22nd the Planning Commission Tech step increase and approval of the bills as posted I'll make the motion to adopt the consent agenda as presented in the June 12th meeting packet this is Janet I second any other questions or discussions I'll call for the vote Ron I two I Janet I Rob I and Jesse I maybe we need a new calendar in the back room or something uh letter C public open forum is there anyone who would like to speak online or in person at the public open Forum hearing none we'll move on to Senator Michael KW presentation it's Pages two and three of our packet he's in the audience he's moving up to the table good evening Senator thank you for coming mayor members of council thank you uh for having me tonight um hopefully make this an annual event post legislative session for me to come and provide an update to not only the council but to any citizens that uh may be here or are watching online um to give a brief legislative uh review now it's always very difficult to challenge just to how do I compress so many things that happened uh into a brief summary we could be here all night and I still couldn't get through a fraction of everything that went on and that's always my challenge so at any time um you have questions about anything I'm talking feel free to interrupt me obviously it's your meeting so you could do that anyway but I'm inviting that and uh if there are any uh anything topics that I don't cover that are of interest to you please let me know and I'll let you know what I know if anything um about that topic I I I'll try to start uh with the things that I think particularly impact the city of Columbus um and I I know that all of you have a lot of knowledge about these things that I'm going to be speaking about because we we communicate regularly about them but for the benefit of your residents um I'll give a brief overview um this year was a non-budget year in the legislature which is commonly known as the bonding year um unfortunately we didn't get a bonding Bill done uh despite that's kind of the Central purpose of what these off years are and um there are reasons for that but I don't think we were particularly close on a bonding bill um whether you view this as good or bad the the Hornsby Street project was in the draft of the bonding bill that not get passed um if we would have passed the bonding bill you would would have gotten $475,000 Hornby Street in Columbus the good news about that is that there alers the president has been set for future bonding bills hopefully that will be in there unless you all find get that done we'll continue uh to try to get Hornsby Street funded um the uh fiscal disparities issue that city of Columbus is facing is you know a mixed review on that we didn't get it across the finish line but we did get a hearing in the tax committee as you all know we goes two there with me and uh I think that is movement that that is good news um for the people that don't know what fiscal the fiscal disparities issues I'm talking about the city of Columbus gets hit particularly hard on a an aid formula that in a nutshell takes a lot of the taxes from your citizens and doesn't get it back into the city of Columbus for reasons U that through no fault of Columbus really stems from the fact that Columbus has a small population and um in in a growing commercial and Industrial base but does not have the capacity or the ability to keep it residential base uh up with the growth of its commercial and Industrial base and that hurts Columbus on the fiscal disparities program try to find a solution to that um and one of the things that we will want to talk about before we go into next session when we take another stab at it is is the approach that we uh used this year the right one that we want to do next year which would be a state aid which is what we did a state aid package so that we don't mess with the formula at all that was a strategic decision we made so relatively low dollar amount um but my concern and why we will want to discuss about this is depending on what the budget forecast is going into next year and depending on the size of the structural deficit that we'll be facing uh in the state of Minnesota it's not whether we'll be facing one it's how big it's going to be uh any kind of state aid or spending is going to be even more difficult to get across the finish line and so perhaps we want to take another look and I know we've discussed alternative methods to addressing this problem and I assure you that we'll address we'll continue to try to address it we just may want to re-evaluate our strategy and and I don't I think it's premature to have those talks right now it kind of depends on what the budget forecast is like that's something I wanted to raise with you um the other thing of particular interest to Columbus uh was the sports betting bill in the legislature and I'm sure you all know that that did not pass and um it was really a whirl win of activity and um I was happy to be actively engaged in that process even if it was just behind the scenes and not out in front of the cameras fighting for Running Aces and um and the 644 people between the hotel and the casino um that Running Aces employes um plus the horsemen that rely on Running Aces and to make sure that Running Aces is in a healthy economically viable situation um which also greatly benefits the city of columus we were able through negotiations the the the bill that was moving was terrible for Running Aces as you know um it would not give a sports betting license to the non-tribal casinos including Running Aces which would have caused a significant Revenue hit for Running Aces we were unable to negotiate a license for Running Aces due to the immense tribal lobby at the capital however we were able to negotiate into the final form of the bill um funds for the racetracks Canterbury and Running Aces out of the sales tax revenue generated from the sports betting and more importantly it wasn't an amount sufficient to offset the decline in revenue and most importantly in the hardest negotiating point was that we finally got Running Aces the flexibility to spend that money in a way that works for them rather than the tribes dictating how they could spend this money and so ultimately by the last weekend of session we had that bill in a point where whether it passed or didn't pass Running Aces was going to be okay um all things being considered it's perfectly fine that didn't pass but that it wasn't a wasted effort so um when that comes back again next year we don't know what the political Dynamics we're going to be are going to be at that time given um political races that that this fault but um hopefully we'll be able to get that in a place where it isn't going to harm Running Aces when it com so that was a bit of good news um the some of the other things I'll talk about um I did a presentation at the Ham Lake City Council and I really did a deep dive into the transportation I won't do that here um H lake has Highway 65 needs Big Time still ones in bla got address last year but one thing that you uh probably want to know about here is that um the uh there is money and I want to be precise 11.35 million was allocated for um the small City's assistant account which you'll want to look into I think that because of your population you're eligible for based on the formula of that new funding which I hope I'm right about that your attorney will correct me I'm sure if I'm wrong but um the way I read it I think you can take advantage of that and hopefully it will be put to good use there was also a u transportation funding from last year there was a ship that you can use that now for Debt Service if you would like to bond I don't know if that's anything you're interested but that is now allowed some other things that maybe the public it's not specific to Columbus but uh might be interesting motorcycle lane splitting now is allowed um parameters um there is a red light camera pilot program which I'm not in favor of but it is coming it's right now it's just in Minneapolis and Mota Heights and also someway uh so your residents might want to know about that I'm uncomfortable with this kind of surveillance and I think it's there um you can no longer and this would be for I I suppose if it would directly impact the city um but it could you can no longer tow for parking tickets anymore no matter how many parking tickets somebody get um there's a lot more that I will go into uh one of the big um problems I see with transportation is they're robbing the trunk Highway fund to fund things that are not from Highway expansion think very unfortunate because you would think with all of the growth in government that we've had in a 72 billion budget that the state of Minnesota now has that we could at least have enough money to properly take care of our state trunk highways one of the reasons we don't is because they use the gas tax money that should be going exclusively for roads and bridges for other things and I have a laundry list of other things that I won't go into because it'll take too much time give us a couple of them please um bicycle paths yes that actually is one of them um now that you mention it I think the most unconstitutional one because trunk Highway the gas tax trunk Highway funds is in our state constitution um is they're using it for truck parking at private businesses on local roads now they'll say well this is a safety issue to pay truckers but you could pay them to stay at a hotel too the bottom line is you shouldn't be using trunk Highway funds to do it no that one is blly unconstitutional they're using them for things like greenhouse gas emission analysis um they're 20.1 million to fund new mot buildings which I'm not sure if youall are aware of what's going on in St Paul but there's a lot of unused offices right now I I don't know why that would be a need over actually using it for Highway funds uh 22.5 for a new state patrol headquarters which is a legitimate thing and I'm Pro law enforcement and and I you know I think the the Troopers need that but it should not be paid for with trunk Highway funds if it's important enough you should prioritize it from some other Revenue Source um and then there are specific projects for Minneapolis um m trails and that sort of things a couple of rest areas get some money just and then it adds up there's a whole bunch more but um these are things that should be going to trunk highways it's a core function of our state government and just a little microcosm into kind of the Mis prioritization I would say of how we spend our our funds but some other some other things that will probably irritate you as a provision um now for if if somebody gets pulled over for say a broken tail light or something like that can't anymore but if they did or or something malfunction malfunctioning there's now a grant program rather than ticket them you give them a voucher and the taxpayers pay for them to fix whatever's wrong with their car um so you could apply for that but you as a city you probably wouldn't get it because the grant programs are given to preferences for people in Geographic areas that have historically received underinvestment and have high poty R so as with most things Columbus isn't going to qualify for a lot of these things um there's uh few things uh the Met Council there's some transparency requirements a detailed report um I co-authored a bill that would abolish the Met Council that of course but I'm going to probably be that'll be an annual uh bill that I probably sign on to zero emission buses so um one really really good bill that was in the transportation bu mind your residents might like it because it uh it's for snowbirds or military personnel or it's a secondary address for renewing your driver's license you're going to renew your driver's license but then you're going to head down south Arizona for whatever you can uh it was a really a pain to get that done before and now nice easy process for that so uh that was one shining example now there's a whole lot of other stuff uh that I could get into the Paid Family Leave adjustment might be something the city wants to look into there was um that was a very controversial Bill last year which was an increase in the pay roll tax to establish this new Paid Family Leave program it was very predictable we predicted that it was forecast for how much it was going to cost was way low and that proved to be true $735 billion low and so the program was going to be an increase of a payroll tax of 7% to the employer 7% to the employee for that now to go up to 88% um um and then a couple years later 93% and I would say that that will probably even go higher because that progam now myed um so that that was unfortunate another tax increase after the 10 billion tax increases they push last year which for reference anybody watching we went into last year with A1 19 billion dollar Surplus that is now pretty much gone and10 billion of new tax increases um plus more tax increases this year and we are now facing structural budget deficits going into the next ban we don't know exactly how high that structural deficit is going to be that's going to depend on our economy and and some other things but we went from a record historic Surplus to back to deficits in one bym with with tax increases very very unfortunate excuse me senator may I interrupt are they all smoking crack or what how can this go from a 19 billion Surplus and then next next year we're going to be in the negative I mean what's our logic I don't understand that the state budget went from 52 billion to 72 billion which represents a 39% increase that is the short answer to your question why we're in the predicament we're in unsustainable growth to government and where does the money go bicycle trails and well I mean it goes parking lots or what across the entire spectrum of what the state spends money on everything got a lot more money now some more than others some legitimate some illegitimate depending on your perspective some things that state government should be doing but many things that state government should not be doing in my view um and uh and I don't deny that there were some needs out there there were some things that needed to be addressed could have done that with a$1 19 billion Surplus without raising taxes very easily and we could have done it even providing some tax relief with uh with part of that Surplus and still address key issues that need to be addressed um and so but it there's not a short answer it went everywhere um some you know housing was a really big winner education was a really big winner and um again schools you could make an argument uh needed more funding but um the way they did it um was unfortunate I don't think it's going to get causes of some of the struggles that our schools are facing right now which is getting a little farfield at a city council meeting but um yeah that we could talk all night about Mis prioritization of finite public dollars we stewards taxpayer dollars and I know you all do a really good job here in the city council understanding that and being very uh respectful of tax paare money unfortunately I don't believe we did that at the state of Minnesota not nearly as well as we should have um another bill um that probably got a lot of press is the Uber lift bill I know I don't know how big Uber lift is in Columbus probably not as much as blame but it shows you kind of how dysfunctional our state capital legislature is they created a problem with uberl this the city council Minneapolis and Uber Uber left were threatening to leave the state rather than the state coming in and doing the responsible thing which would have been State preemption saying sorry City of Minneapolis you cannot dict the transportation policy of the entire metropolitan area that should be within the purview of the state which should have been done they instead accommodated um The Uber lift drivers and essentially what they did is they took independent contractors which is what Uber lift drivers are they essentially made them employees and not just employees but they wrote their benefits into State Statute and so they get under state statute now a128 per mile and 31 cents per minute and that is written right into State Statute which is crazy you pick up one sector and just decide they're not even state employees or anything like that just say this is what they're going to get and so I guess we're in the position now where every couple of years when they want to raise to the legislature they hire some lobbyists um and the and what It ultimately what it's going to do is it's going to increase the cost of those Services by about 20% is the bottom line um so that was an interesting bill that I thought maybe you all might your residents might be interested because it's it just shows that when you have a activist mentality to your job those are the kinds of things that happen um I you know I will talk a little bit about the process as well I I'm try not to be partisan it's really hard though um when there's such an abuse of the Omnibus Bill process in St Paul where an Omnibus Bill for those that don't know is when you package a whole bunch of bills into one know there's one yes and no that process was abused beyond belief this year particular there's always been omnus bills and to be fair both parties that use whoever happens to be in the majority this one has really gotten out of control because what they were doing a typical of this bill let's say has 50 or 60 bills in it maybe maybe more and they were combining three om ofis bills together they would regularly do that so and subjects that have nothing to do with one another and so um that is unconstitutional under our state constitution unfortunately our Supreme Court our state supreme court has not properly enforced that rule and that has allowed the legislature to abuse it for example this year they put agricult the agriculture Omnibus Bill the Commerce Omnibus Bill and the energy Omnibus Bill all into one giant Omnibus Bill and there must have been two 300 200 bills in there and there's one yes or one vote so how are you going to hold your elected officials accountable in that kind of scenario you don't know how they they're voting on anything because they they masked their vote behind Omnibus bills Transportation housing and labor and so this is not good government we need to do better than this um and then at the end of session I'm sure a lot of you heard about the chaos that ensued um in the legislature in the final hour of session that resulted in a 1,432 page Mega Omnibus Bill which had about eight Omnibus bills packag together they jammed through in the last half hour of session and we didn't even have an opportunity to read the bill there was no paper copies available the revisor's website crash get it online there's no way and they just they just rammed it through and so I'm still sorting through that we have a general idea of the Omnibus bills that they package together but I honestly I haven't even done gotten all the way through it yet um so that was very disappointing which I thought your residents might want to know about but some good news um you know we got the school resource officer situation squared away we got them back them back in our schools um you know some things that uh your constituents might find important um Sanctuary State bill um was killed that didn't go anywhere so there were some successes um I personally did get seven bills through that I was the chief author on IND the law which if you're in the minority party like I am that's something that I was proud to to be a part of and to despite the challenges and the partisanship I was still able to accomplish um some things for my constituents um um let's see here I could go on and on but um so been taking a lot of time i' be interested in talking what you talking about what you yeah no I just had a question on that so you said you're able to get seven bills done so there must have had been some sort of bipartisan partnership on that were you able to work across aisles with you know both parties on those those seven bills is that how that got done or was it just having the right amount of votes on your side of things there there is some bipartisanship that does take place in St Paul now it's not on any of the issues that you're going to read about in the paper or see on TV um which is why I needed adjust my expectations um being in the minority party to focus on local issues things that will benefit my constituents things that may not be partisan in nature and try to work with the majority party get those things accomplished and I was able to do that now a lot of times what happens is you work in a bipartisan way and you get a bill heard and you get it into an Omnibus Bill and then for me I end up having to vote against most of the Omnibus bills because one I don't believe them and two there's probably more bad things in there that I disagree with than good things in there and that again gets to the lack of transparency and accountability five of these seven bills I believe I had ultimately had to vote against myself because they were included in Omnibus bills with 1002 200 other bills sure um but I view my job in those situations of getting my bill into the omus and working with the other party in order to do that and I have established some good relation some good working relationships with some members over there so bipartisanship isn't debt it's just very dysfunctional and um with the overall process is Extreme partisan but on individual bills there's still some opportunities there so that's is is that answering your question yeah so I guess what you're saying is you you got it into the ominous Bill those seven but then you were forced to vote against it for party reasons is that I wasn't forced to vote against them I chose to vote against them because when I'm evaluating an Omnibus Bill it's kind of like a package sure is there more good things or more bad things in there more things that I agree with more things that I disagree with more good things for my constituents or more bad things that my constituents won't want and so with every single Omnibus Bill I've ever voted on there are bills contained in there that I agree with that if they were a standalone provision I would vote Yes on sure and so um you know and and sometimes it's even worse than that there might be 50 bills in an Omnibus Bill I might agree with 40 of them but I still have to vote no because I I choose to vote no because there might be one or two in their that are really really bad that my constituents would really disagree with that kind of overtakes the rest of the smaller good bills that are in there sure so that's kind of how that works now two of them were Standalone bills that I did get through on the senate floor shows it's still possible to have Standalone bills passed it still happens just not very often so the fact that I got two bills through into law a standalone bill from the minority party is pretty rare um so that's um that's on that issue is there any other issues I have not got gotten into that you all yes sir Senator um thank you the um the mega Omnibus Bill I thought there was going to be a challenge to that process as against the single subject rule I don't know if that's happening or if that's dead I hope it does because if the single subject clause in our state constitution means anything at all if it's worth if our state constitution is worth the paper it's printed on that bill violates the single subject Clause there is in no Universe could you consider that 1,432 page Mega Omnibus Bill a single subject it's just and so but what what has to happen is there needs to be an AG grieved party from some Bill that's in there they challenge it in court and they raise the single subject as one of their causes of action do I think that'll happen probably somebody will probably pursue that do I think the courts are going to strike it down I'm pessimistic about that because in the last 20 years the courts just view it as a legislative matter and you all should the legislature should police itself and they've really declined to get involved and then when you know I won't get partisan about the judicial process but when you look at the appointees it would be it'd be pretty shocking if four of the seven members if it gets to the Supreme Court vote to strike down huge part of the majority party's agenda they should because it's the right thing to do we'll see thank you and there's a lot of other bills that passed that I would argue are unconstitutional for I have a whole presentation if of you are ever interested I can walk you through all of them it would probably take too long and and they're not all things that if you're not a lawyer you would inherently understand dorant Commerce claws full faith in credit clause United States Constitution Federal preemption but there's a whole lot of things that we as legislators really need to take our job more seriously in terms of the laws that we're passing making sure their constitutional both the state constitution Federal Constitution so um yeah it's uh there's there's a challenge down there but there there are opportunities there are you know we did have some successes I'm very I want to make it clear to you presidents of Columbus I I uh it's an honor to repres present you in the Minnesota Senate and despite the challenges and the partisan nature of the place I'm committed to representing you to the best of my ability and try to get the culture of the legislature turned around so it isn't so partisan and that we can do good work and be less about party and more about people we represent I think that would be the direction we should move in any other questions anyone or comments uh this is Sue I just thank you very much for all the work that you did and and Reporting um it back to us but I have one question about the sports um bill which and thank you for getting into the bill even though it didn't get ped um what's needed for Running Aces do do you foresee like next time when it goes through the whole negotiation process that that piece would be taken out does that how often does that happen well technically all bills that didn't pass are dead when we adj so any there no bills are left over starting next year everything will have to be done from scratch so it kind of depends on who is going to author a sports betting Bill and what they want to put in it I would say though that given where we were if there's anything less than that in a bill um um I think it would run into the same problems that the bill did this year and it wasn't in a position to pass until they genuinely started to work with tracks with Running Aces in can and of course all of this is going to depend on the outcome of the elections this PA who's going to be in control of the House of Representatives which is on the ballot and now in fact um one of the Democrat Senators uh who's running for Congress has resigned so technically right now it's 33 Republicans and 33 Democrats in the Minnesota Senate there's a special election this fall to determine the majority of the Senate so there's a lot you know that's in the lake minona area that district and so what happens with sports betting is to be determined all I can do is again my my focus will be to get that bill in a position where whether it passes or doesn't pass um it's not going to hurt Running Aces or the city okay thank you and one other question is is your your term doesn't end this year does it I have a four-year term and so I'm not on the ballot till 2026 okay good thank you so this is Janet I just want to thank you also I had the opportunity to to work with you pretty closely on the fiscal dis parities and it was um amazing to have someone so responsive and attentive to our needs and willing to go out and and do the hard work so thank you very much it was an honor I I enjoyed it I enjoyed learning about fiscal disparities and oh can you say that with a straight face he can can he he's a little twisted it's it's a challenge and it's it's an ongoing Challenge and it's one we're as long as I'm here as long as the voters and trust me to represent them I'll keep working on it till we get it done hopefully sooner rather than later I hope so thank you I just like to Ron here Senator I'd like to thank you too and uh I watched you on television a couple times uh you presented a good uh a good cause I think when we were talking about the physical disparities and seems like you got right into was there is it rest was that her name Senator Senator I think she understood what you were talking about and I thought that was pretty good I mean they know what's going on so and I appreciate that she did give us a fair hearing Senator rest is the chair of the tax Committee of the Senate um I thought she gave us a fair hearing and um once we kind of decide what direction we want to go with that uh there's another opportunity to have a meeting with her and and hopefully it's a productive meeting but cross that verion when we get there I have one more question here so figuring out whoever whatever party wins so she may not be there next time as the chairman well she's got a four-year term so she'll be there whether she's the chair of the committee or the ranking member depends on the outcome okay that's what I thought thank you thank you for your service yeah I guess I'll just say thank you to and uh is in interesting to see the outcome of the sports betting bill after we had some conversations at an event uh during the day and so I think the point was received right yes was a it was not going to lie that was a stressful issue uh that weighed on me quite a bit when you have 644 people in a city um that is dependent and at least largely dependent on one business um I took it personally like this is this is my cause if I'm here to do anything it's to represent my constituents and this is a very local issue so um and I don't think anybody knew exactly how it was going to turn out so I was very pleased with how the it took a while too long for my liking but eventually we got it into thank you may I ask Senator so little Running Aces is not the biggest thing in the world even Canterbury is okay but not the biggest thing in the world how can there be so much opposition and trying to steal the power and why do the Democrats all fall for that you ask a very political question in a in a nonpartisan well the truth is in a nonpartisan truth is the truth meeting I I would just generally speaking I'm not going to impute anyone's motives and I can't speak for the people that don't support or that do support tribal exclusivity for sports medical I disagree with that whether or not you agree or disagree with sports betting and there are legitimate arguments on both sides of that issue and I I've tried hard not to really take a firm position on sports betting itself which is what the average person thought we were down there debating well that's really not what was going on it was how what does it look like how does it work and is it fair to everybody and my view was there are 13 casinos in this state 11 tribal two non-tribal if we're going to expand into sports betting all 13 of them should have an opportunity to get a license the government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers um and so there's obviously heavy lobbying efforts and there's campaign donations and all the dirty side of politics that get involved in that representative West talks about that quite a bit um I'll just say that you know I can't speak for anybody else as to why they would think that some should get well and my point is the money that they take in and the money they pay the city is a small potatoes compared to 18 million 18 billion they just threw away and 10 billion in the whole for next year and on and on and on why pick on the little guy yeah well that's a great theme why pick on the little guy and it's not just relevant for Running Aces it's a lot of things that are going on right now in terms of a lot of the laws that um affect businesses um they may hurt business in general but the big businesses are much better equipped to handle some of these new regulations that earn sick and safe time that's coming up a whole bunch of other things it's the little guy that has a really hard time navigating through all these complex regulations and programs and are ill equipped financially to absorb some of these uh new programs as well and so when I look at a lot of these things I'm thinking of the small business owner I'm thinking of people that work for small businesses in addition to the the small cities and whatever you have to think about that because um these are real businesses and lives that it affects and I'm concerned about our economy here in Minnesota I'm concerned with our overregulation I'm concerned with our high taxes and uh we're first and sixth itate individuales country right now well we just had a two-hour meeting yesterday Janet and Jack and I about all the new programs coming on including Jun and what do we do get rid of one or two people how can you pay somebody to not come to work for 6 months we're a small City just like a small business and and who dreamed that up and what do we what do we do about it raise their based taxes or fire two people or what do you do and it's a serious every small business I was a small business person we've been going through this for 50 years and now here we are at the city and it's the same problem and it's gotten worse worse by tenfold and don't they talk about the stuff before they vote on it or what I do yeah anybody's listening is the question is another story another issue is the U minimum wage they eliminated the small business level Y which lower than the big business so if you have Revenue less than $500,000 a year you currently qualify for a lower minimum rate wage they eliminated that so now regardless of your size of your company lar is now $10 current minimum wage you'll be subject to that rather than the8 one you currently are and that's a joke anyway you can't hire anybody at Dairy Queen for less than 15 or 20 bucks an hour so so what a all it does is raise the prices for everyone it makes less people purchase which means less people get hired I don't know and it's also makes it more difficult for teenagers people trying to get their first job because they're not worth bucks an hour they don't have experience and so um you're sometimes hurting the people you're intending to help pass laws don't think through consequences of those very pragmatic stand and so uh yeah it's a challenging time but you know we'll I love Minnesota C my whole life and uh I like the communities I represent and we'll just keep at it and um try to get some more balance do you believe if we have a a different outcome on the next election that you could correct some of this is it correctable or is it cast in stone is it too late now nothing's cast in stone I mean any law that's passed can be appealed and maybe legis should spend more time on identifying laws that should be repealed rather than adding I didn't bring my visual aid but um there's assession law books that we get as legislators that show all of the laws that were passed in the legislative session when we had divided government the book was this last year there were four books about this to which shows you the volume we had record record numbers of bills that got through the sheer volume was unparalleled a lot of the residents and the citizens of Minnesota don't fully understand everything that happened the last well no one does or they be leaving the state the ones who understand are leaving I've got four people I know personally who have taken their money and their businesses and gone to Nevada and Florida and Texas they said we're done and that's multiply that over next five years this state is really going to be hurting and so when we had divided government you know people would complain about gridlock and my response is gridlock is okay because when you see the alternative divided government is okay it takes off the table the extremes on both sides the bills that have no business passing on both sides and it forces the legislature focus on the things that are important things that have bipartisan agreement and it is ugly even divided government and sometimes they don't get their budgets done in their special sessions and it's not pretty all the time but I think having that balance um is preferable to what we've experienced and I try to say I don't I'm not trying to be partisan here I'm just trying to be honest in my assessment of the situation and try to be hopeful that um we can bring that balance back and get the government to focus on the core things the core functions of state government the things it should do like there are a lot of needs out there but it gets Lost in Translation when there's so many other things for example uh $1.2 billion last year alone went to nonprofits taxpayer dollars well there are good nonprofits out there doing really good things but there were also lots of nonprofits that were getting money that barely weren't even a year old they were just created no track record of success in what they're doing no track record of managerial uh dis or budgeting executive directors making six figures that are getting taxpayer dollars to go out and probably not do any good in a lot of cases and that's money where somebody's getting up every morning and going to work we can't lose sight of that but at the same time there are good nonprofits with track records that are doing amazing things that probably help save the government money but they get you know the baby out with the bath water so to speak because of the abuse of that system and so those are things that we really need to take a closer look at too so have you got enough left in you to keep fighting two more years yes absolutely and and and uh if the voters will will have me um another four years um I I serve on the education finance committee in Judiciary and Public Safety Committee which we didn't even get into any of the public safety stuff if anybody's interested reach out to me I give you a summary of some of those things um that pass but um uh like I said I it's an honor to be there I I get to do I get to represent my communities and uh despite the challenges that's the mentality you have to have opportunities um find purpose in your work and despite the challenges keep on going at it every day andity I try to bring well thanks for spending the evening with us yeah sorry this went much longer than I anticipated um thank you for the questions and for the opportunity to speak and for anybody that's watching out there um I oh one thing I wanted to say too uh I have been doing cons consent Services uh working with DNR uh there's a in the inoka sand plane here there's some some issues with the Endangered Species Act causing property owners and developers to have a really hard time and I've opened a line at communication with DNR uh to help find reasonable Pathways forward on some of those issues and so if anybody out there is dealing with that please reach out to me or if it's just on anything else wow you're just a few months too late for us we had we had a Butternut Tree that that held up a project for quite a few months and added thousands of dollars on cost us 10 grand I don't know we had to do DNA analysis to to to determine the paternity of that tree before we could move forward so and I'm not kidding you yeah there's a a couple from Columbus I'm currently helping and to dnr's credit so far they they see they also want to look especially with small Property Owners or small developers the law does not distinguish again between the big guy and the little guy so you could be having a huge development company that gets treated when end dangered Species Act the same way as somebody who owns 10 acres and wants to do lot with um and that just becomes very cost prohibitive the mitigation requirements that DNR has in place and to their credit I think they recognize that and we have a productive uh dialogue going on to see what we can do to be more creative in helping the the smaller property owner deal with some of these issues so I just wanted to throw that out there but it could be any issue uh reach out to me it's pretty easy who Google who's my state senator you'll find me uh reach out uh I will schedule uh Zoom telephone inperson meetings and go over whatever any other questions anyone no thank you yeah thank you very much but before you go everybody if you care to check your calendars I just got an invite just today actually Senator KW is going to be at Running Aces on July 18th I can't comment that's a fundraiser so I'm he my official capacity not my campaign capacity so but we can still talk to you there right I I will be there on so anyway pencil it in there's no meetings here that night thank you Senator all right appreciate everything thank you thanks we are on to number C3 part-time employee approval Janet uh pages 4 and five it's actually Pages 27 and 28 um in case you're looking for it in your packet so it's really just a housekeeping matter we talked about this at our last meeting and this is just taking the formal um uh action to approve the part-time uh position for Connor to kind of tie us over until particularly for the um the website management until we finished doing sort of our organizational development so um there's a memo in here that describes it if there's any questions i' be happy and Sue would be happy to answer them and if not I can make the motion no so then I would uh move to approve the part-time employment of Connor Keith as presented in the June 12th 20124 meeting packet this is Sue second second go ahead I didn't hear you I think Sue got in there first I think she did this is Sue all second any questions anyone I'll call for the vote Ron I sue I Janet I Rob I Jesse I letter D number one city engineer report the final water system study they have this res which is the big green one resolution cont looks like yes Kevin go ahead good evening mayor and council members uh Kevin bner city engineer so as you recall it's been a couple months ago when uh we reviewed the initial report the draft report at a a workshop um and some questions came up and so uh We've addressed those questions in the final report and so Brian golden here is here to uh basically go over the report again and and to address some of the the primary recommendations that came out of the report so I'll turn it over to Brian all right thank you good evening mayor and Council um I believe there was a hard copy passed around here too of a uh will you pull your microphone up real close okay is that better yep okay thank you uh there you should have had a packet go out with some um slide Deck with the slide deck here okay if everybody's got that we'll just step through that I I know we talked in length last time too about the report and so the slides we went through last time I've updated those uh and kind of condensed it a little bit to focus on some of the specific things um but again the purpose of the report was to look at both the immediate and long-term needs of the water system uh so you guys can plan and budget um and meet approvals from the Department of Health and then also move forward with looking at obtaining funding um so those are the purposes of the report um going on to slide three on page two just a quick overview of the historical water usage uh again over the last five years there's been a kind of a steady increase except for the dip there in 2020 in 2021 which would have been related to the pandemic uh where obviously businesses were shut down and there was less water usage um the next graph shows kind of a monthly average water usage and you can see the trends uh peaking in summer months with water usage and then dipping down through the winter so just a profile of your monthly water usage as a city uh the next slide looks at the well capacity versus historical water usage we did talk about this last time but again the important thing to take away here is there are two uh horizontal lines on that graph there's an orange one with the total capacity and then there's a green one with the firm capacity so the firm capacity of your wells is the pumping capacity if one well is out of service and so a standard uh practice for public Water Supplies is to if you lose your largest well do your remaining Wells have sufficient capacity to meet your demands and this graph is just showing that yes your existing Wells can meet that capacity um so from here the next slide gets into some of the needs and this would be where I expect uh most of the discussion to take place and again at any time just uh feel free to interrupt me with questions as we go through this so one of the main system needs is the water storage and distribution and at the last meeting we talked about some of the challenges with the existing system um how the wells and pressure systems interact with each other without a tower um and so that creat some reliability concerns um it also as we look towards future storage needs are you're going to end up becoming short on system storage here as you add more and more users to the system um and so what I want to focus on next is actually represented in the next slide which is a water storage evaluation um looking at a 20-year design and then also just a a much longer term design um and so what this table does is it looks at the different demands on your system uh for fir flow Peak day usage it it takes into account how much water you can pull from a well and then it calculates how much storage you should have in your system so this is a typical calculation used it's based on the fir flow demand is going to be your your biggest thing dictating how much storage you would need that's the Topline item so for the type of facilities you have and need to serve water to the recommended fire flow is 2500 gallons a minute for a 2hour duration and so as we work our way down that chart really the Bold numbers at the bottom are kind of the indicators of what a range of storage would be for your community and so in 2023 there based on these calculations you see we're at 172,000 your current storage is about 157,000 and again that is storage on the ground so it has to be pumped to get into the system uh as opposed to a water tower where would be in the air and can flow by gravity um as we look to the future we can see by 2044 that Pro projected storage has gone up about 40,000 gallons and then again in the future would increase um after our last meeting I I took a deeper dive kind of looking at some of this and one of the other things that occurred to me when I started to think about the future of the system is if a treatment plant is added in the future or becomes required and we'll get into the manganese conversation a little bit um that would start to dictate a change in storage needs for you because if you're supplying water through that treatment facility and you need to treat all the water that treatment facility will start to limit your firm capacity more than the wells itself and so your wells right now are rather large and can provide a a lot of water if you're required to do treatment you'd only be able to push what you can push through the treatment facility which would be considerably smaller than your wells and so at that time that would actually increase your storage need if you were only sending treated water to the system so for example The Firm capacity of your wells was 1400 gallons a minute your treatment facility would be much smaller than that 5 to 600 gallons a minute and so when we look at storage we would assume you only have the 5 to 600 gallons a minute coming through the treatment facility to supply a fire not all of that excess flow from the wells that is a future unknown you know if the treatment plan would be added but as I wanted to account for that in here because as we look at storage needs um we do want to think longer term and flexibility for the future and so at the bottom of that table that's why you see there's two different bold numbers there the top bold number is the storage without treatment if treatment came and you had a limited capacity through the treatment facility we would actually have a higher recommended storage another reason for that is if there was a treatment facility the filters that would be in there need to be backwashed and the backwash water would be supplied from that water tower and so you would have some additional demand to backwash filters coming out of the Tower so that's another reason the storage would be higher with the future treatment facility um so is there any questions on that I know that was uh well I'm curious how and I think I had the question last time about the uh this to show I mean it looks like we don't need more capacity but it's other issues that we need to address so I'm curious if for our future when you list the numbers of what's needed in 2044 and 2075 does that make this number go up into here I was trying to correlate I don't know what 1.7 MGD is and over here it's 400,000 gallons yeah so this table is STO would be storage in a storage vessel so how much water do you have Sitting ready to be used to the system in case you can't pump water into the system from other places or in case you have a really high demand that takes a lot of water at a time I believe to answer your question in the future does the amount of water you can get from your wells does that start to become a limiting factor where now and I would would say no okay not based on the projected future usage it would take some major expansions major industries to come in to to put it where your wells are a limiting factor okay y something B Kevin MGD is million gallons per day million gallons per day yes okay thank you thank you for defining that K what's GPD day okay I have this is Janet I have a couple questions so when I look at that historical water usage and it peaks in the summer months so this is just in our freeway District so most of the users and most of the water is going to be used by corporations which are year- round corporations with the exception of Running Aces so are these Peaks really just because of Running Aces I mean that's a big difference between your you know your summer your summer months and your and your winter months because I can't think of another I can't think of another business that would be a big user that would have that kind of Swing seasonally so some of it is going to be irrigation so any of your system users that would irrigate normally a community is going to see higher peaks in summer lower in Winter because of irrigation and just outside use and things like that yeah but we don't really have that I don't so so the biggie is for us so so it is irrigation who irrigates everyone um but but there's not that many residential users on this system so the biggie is it I'm calling it irrigation because Running Aces irrigates their track so I'm T so I'm saying besides Running Aces is this this fluctuation is primarily because the Running Aces that's my question Running Aces is a huge factor in that but but the other huge factor is irrigation so if you drive through prer preserve everybody Waters their grass they water their grass every day if you drive through any of the other business businesses um they all irrigate as well so Running Aces irrigates Ziggler irrigates St CL Lakes truck truck Aline irrigates they all do so I mean that is a huge portion of water that does not get used in the winter time so I mean you can say irrigation and that covers 98% of it because I I I use the terminology that Running Aces pumps water out and they water their track with it so that's a form of irrigation in the same nope I get I get that all right so then my other question is um more in line with uh well two things I'm going to say the easier thing first so looking on page four at the bottom when you talked about um overview of the main existing systems and you talked about the fire use um could put too much pressure If if we had to have a treatment plan is there a way to segregate the water that goes to the hydrants that would be what the um uh fire department uses so that that would be non-treated water and there therefore you would not have that so it could it could potentially be so you could bypass the treatment facility and not utilize that capacity um part of the question there is Will manganese ever be regulated as a required treatment method because right now there's a health advisory index that has a recommended level but it is not yet required right so and I and I get that I'm just saying that if it is one that we end up having to treat for and you were making the point that the treatment uh facility then becomes the rate limiting factor if you were able to bypass the treatment facility for any use high high amount of use that would not require treated water that would mitigate that problem is is that is it possible to do that that is true um if manganese was regulated then you would not be allowed to bypass the filter even for something like fire suppression which who cares uh correct if it is if there's a health level regulation the when the minute the water enters your public water system you need to meet the limit and so you would not be allowed to bypass the filter if manganese was regulated as a drink drinking water limit in the future so if a fire truck hooks up to a hydrant no one's going to drink out of it no one's going to use it for cooking it still has to be treated sure in that scenario you would have to have a completely separated system so you couldn't connect it to the rest of your fire hydrant you would have to have a dedicated fire supply line only that does not connect to any users so if you had a connection at a wellhouse to fill a tri truck mhm that was nonpotable you could set up something like that but if it connects to your distribution system it it would have to meet the drinking water regulation okay so so then my last comment is I I appreciate why we're we're going through and looking at this study but I still and maybe it's further along somewhere um I still feel like the current system we have since it's not a capacity problem it's more of a synchronization of the pumps Etc before I would be comfortable seriously considering the cost of this I would really want there to be a serious study of what we have and and a determination of whether there could be a way to optimize what we have at a much lower cost than putting up a water tower and there is a bit of discussion on that uh in here um and so part of the problem with the system right now is there are pressure tanks uh that are just frankly too small to really be able to buffer the changes and flows you have M and so realistically to address those concerns without a tower would need facilities with bigger pressure vessels mhm so you can manage those swings in usage and you know when you have a 10,000g pressure vessel that's not 10,000 gallons of actually usable water the volume of usable water is much smaller in there than the tank itself so the tanks get a decent size to be able to buffer the flows out and so one of the things we we did look at pricing up in here is what if you did a pressure tank system like that in Li of a tower I think that's really what you would have to do to make a more robust system than what you currently have um so that that is priced up later in here okay which we can jump to as long as we're talking about it uh no problem doing that um so it appears at the bottom of page five uh in slide 10 um and so alternative one there is the hydr pneumatic tank option versus is the water tower option um and so basically the the expenses you would have in putting those bigger pneumatic tanks in is a larger building construction the tanks the piping and then the controls and everything that would go along with changing how that system operates um some of that stuff you'd have with a tower to controls changes and things like that would still be involved but options one and two there kind of kind of break down the cost differences um probably the biggest difference between these as we talk through the options is a Pneumatic tank system is going to limit future flexibility so if in the future you went to like a treatment facility or something like that those pressure tanks aren't going to help accommodate a future treatment plan if you needed one um as I said earlier usually the tower is used to help backwashing the filters and things like that so the pneumatic tanks although they serve a purpose they just provide less future flexibility for what the system may need that's probably one of the biggest differences I see be between the two and um not that they don't work to solve your problem but but what you're going to do is you're adding smaller and smaller pieces of infrastructure along the way and then you have to maintain those and My worry is that 20 years from now then a different Council May CA come in have these pressure tanks now need a tower and kind of have to redo stuff so that is kind of part of the discussion I think is what's right for right now and what is the best choice for the next 60 years some of the bigger troubles that we have too is we have what we're going to call capacity right but it's not in the right location so if you look at the Ziggler pump house which is our biggest water capacity at 150,000 gallons is on the opposite end of all of our users if you were going to plan that out that's not how you would plan it it would be centrally located or where your biggest users are so now if Running Aces fills their water truck say by the time that water loss is sensed down at Ziggler they've potentially shut that tank off already so it it takes so long for the system to figure out what's going on and where it's happening is the biggest trouble that we have it's not necessarily capacity it's not volume of our wells it's that we've pieced it together to get us to where we are today and functionally it's just not right no and I yeah it does make sense and I and I and I appreciate that I'm just saying that before at least me was willing to dive in at three to20 million investment depending on what you decided I'd really want to make sure that there wasn't a way to optimize what we have at a cost obviously um because it's not a capacity problem almost almost every other city that puts up a water tower they're doing it because they need more water we don't have that problem we have a different problem that I don't feel we've adequately brought in experts to look at and say can we solve that problem without a water tower and maybe the answer is no but I think we need to ask that question and and and determine that so my opinion only um unless you did you is that what you did here I mean did you address that problem or not I we did from a a maybe a broader Viewpoint right so as far as a detailed analysis bringing in control people to analyze the system on a much deeper level no that was not the intent of this to go right that deep into things um I guess just to clarify one one point there about water towers and needing more water I I do want to clarify something there because a water tower doesn't provide you more water so needing more water is not solved by a water tower because you need the water to come from a source the water tower typically has two main purposes one is to buffer out uh High demands and so you may have uh plenty of capacity in your wells but when there's really high demands there's too much water being pulled out of the system to keep up so a lot of people use water at 6:00 a.m. in the morning and then starting at 6:00 p.m. at night through night if you have residential obviously with industrial you're going to have different demands well you may have a small pump that can meet all the water you need in a day but it's not big enough to supply water from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at night now for you guys that is you do have big enough Wells to probably handle those Peaks so for your system that particular need wouldn't apply uh the other thing is fire Equalization so do you have enough water sitting there if a fire happens to supply that fire and that kind of that table I went through that's analyzing the fire storage which right now you're you're just behind on and you're going to continue to be farther behind on storage as you add users so that would be one reason the tower having more storage would provide fire protection so those are like the two main purposes that normal communities have here you actually have kind of a third issue going going on and that's the coupling together of multiple different tank systems that as a group don't function very well and so instead of them having to pump into smaller tanks to pressurize the system once you put the water in the air the weight of the water creates pressure across your entire system so it's a very stable system and it's easier to operate and you know one of the other benefits as I looked at this was and you could do this potentially with a pressure tank system as well that you know you do have higher manganese but one of your wells is quite a bit lower than the others and so if you have the ability to dictate which well you run more frequently that would actually help your water quality and so combining the system so you don't have these different Wells trying to run together to maintain pressures would allow you to run the well that has better water quality as maybe a primary well and that would actually put less manganese into the system so it would actually kind of help address the quality issue as well MH um that would just be one uh side benefit of having a more robust system that's easier to operate is you could pick the well with the best water quality and just run that as much as possible um so I just want to clarify that because that is kind of a common misconception that the tower gives you more water it doesn't give you more water it just allows you to use it when higher demands are happening and and I probably Ed the wrong terminology what I heard in the prior um presentation was that most cities have to go to a water tower because the capacity and capacity is not our problem sure and storage capacity is probably probably the capacity term that would have been I probably should have defined better um before we go on may I ask of course the prices are shocking to us that's bigger than our budget for the next 5 years is there any benefit to having conversations with brings prer preserve so all the old ladies water their FL every time three times a day tell them to cut her down to once a day and tell the racetrack to fill their water truck at 2:30 in the afternoon when nobody's using water does that benefit our issue for no I I suppose it could make strides towards it but I don't know enough about specific usages and times to say that you're really solving it right or you know if a fire happens and you have some unexpected water need that you can't control does that then throw cause issues with your system when all of a sudden you have a 2,000 gallon a minute fire you need to fight can can I ask a question about the fire is that is that just um measuring what they would take from a hydrant or is that the fire suppression in the in the businesses or is it a combination of both and the reason I asked that question is because we have a joint a joint powers fire agreement so if there were was a big fire in Columbus we'd be getting fire firefighters from Forest Lake who would be filling up in Forest Lake and as well as our own well I'm just saying that that's a possibility so it's not just like we're a standalone fire department here we're you know so I I just was curious how that fire suppression how you factor that in when you have a a joint Powers so that would need to be factored in this table is based on ISO ratings for firefighting uh and so the flow rates are basically just saying this is what you should be able to provide to fight a fire mhm if you have multiple different ways to provide that amount of flow that would have to be considered aside from this this is more setting the standard for this is what you need and in this table it is assumed that it's coming from your system right and I and and that would be true if if we're just talking about um water coming from hydrants but if you're talking about filling up tanker trucks or you're talking about you know what a business just their fire suppression might contribute Then I then I it's more complicated than just the hydrant and that's so I was trying to understand is if you look at let's just say bear Holmes or Ziggler if I remember correctly their fire suppression runs at about 15 to 18800 gallons a minute so you take that that as part of your demand we're going to call it um and then you have fire trucks pulling water at the same time you can suck Out Your Capacity pretty quick so capacity in the sense that you might have three Wells running but you're also pulling water that we have as storage that make sense yep so so it could be it could be that our capacity is500 gallons a minute that we can produce from the ground we can produce another th gallons a minute with pressure pumps um to the tune of probably 120,000 gallons because there's still going to be there's going to be a point where that tank shuts off right so there's probably 120,000 gallons of capacity if you're running 1,700 gallons a minute out of a sprinkler system and there's how many fire trucks connected somewhere along the line you can suck up your capacity pretty quick I think that's that's what systems are really designed to take care of not necessarily mom and pop washing clothes and taking showers it's designed for what the worst case scenario can be which is why they always say too that they take your biggest well out of service and say that's really what your capacity is because sometimes you might have trouble yeah so there is definitely a an element here of being a robust public water supplier right and and you know there is we we've see failures in other systems um that you know can can the system function the way it is right it has been functioning but the question is how much risk are you willing to live with that all of a sudden it has a problem at a really bad time right and and those are some of the things it's a hard decision for the city council right because yeah can we get by we can get by but you know we worked in Blaine and they had two boil water notices within a month of each other right and then the next thing they did was authorized tons of money on water infrastructure because they didn't want to be in the paper again so there there is a level of how robust a system do you want to have um I think that's I I I appreciate that too but the other part of it is is that you have Columbus that's you know 48 square miles and only a very small portion of it has a water system so you have a fire call to my neighborhood it won't matter what the water system can provide because there are no hydrants we're on Wells so they're going to fill a pumper truck if they're going to do anything right and so so it's a big cost to the city when a very small portion of the city is serviced by that that system it's a very important part of our city it's our economic engine I'm not minimizing that but that's part of what we're weighing you know in in a city like Blain their entire city is on their water system I'm sure not or or if there's little pockets that are still on Wells that that's a very tiny part of it certainly the the systems are completely different and that wasn't necessarily the point of my my example is um and yes the people that are not on the system this will not affect this is for the people connected to your system and the future people that will connect to your system not just the people that are connected now but who is going to connect over the next 20 years um probably still just that small part of the city be unless things change with our neighboring Community or the cost of you know what met Council will let us do sure to your point Janet we're going to tax all the people of Columbus for the small sliver of people or is it only the people that would be on the use of that water that would pay for this only the users the these projects were typically paid through your user rates so the people using the water are the ones that would pay for it it would not be a tax but I'm assuming it would happen just like it did when we put in the infrastructure that there would be years of running in deficit that gets subsidized by everybody else until it's able to break even uh if you go through the state of Minnesota for funding they are going to look at your financials so you're not subsidizing with it should be coming from your user rates so part of doing the project would be having to set up your user rates to appropriately fund the debt and that is who should be paying for it is the people that are benefiting from the system well it'll be that would be an interesting analysis because I don't believe there would be enough users to be able to float some of these numbers I have a question Brian and Kevin do you ever see cities I just look at it right now we got Forest Lakes sitting right next to us with a big water plant sitting there and everybody that needs water is on the edge of them like you said Janet most of us everywhere else has got a well do you see cities buying water or yes you can do interconnects with cities that um there are multiple interconnects around the metro area um obviously that city has to be able to supply the extra water that you need so sometimes they may be adding infrastructure to be able to do that for sure I only bring that up because when you talk about I don't know if it's water pressure or what but that a lot of that construction on Everton there by Menards they're running another water line back there for that one reason the pressure back in that housing area wasn't it wasn't adequate enough because of the rapid number of multi-unit housing that guy added those apartments too that really threw their water system off right and and uh me and uh I went with uh Jim and we went on a tour of their new water plant over there which was amazing but I just sit and look that if you go down on 140th or down Hornsby you can see where they're building houses and they got hydrants sitting you can almost touch them over there I mean not you know literally but you take uh quick trip and all that they're getting water there's hydrants there and they're so close I just wonder what the you know when you talk about cost mhm historically the this city is at that City at least on two occasions maybe maybe three but at least two occasions how' you like to let us have a kind of a joint operation and twice they've turned us down and I and I'm aware of um the development that's on the edge of Columbus because um they were trying to work out a deal to get more uh capacity I think both sewer in water to that western edge of um Forest Lake and it they may have solved it recently but it was historically a problem there was some capacity constraint in the middle of the that had to go through the freeway system I don't know maybe Kevin knows more about it I I know I understand what you're talking about because I remember that was down off of uh how Lake Drive and Gren a back there they wanted to build I think Columbus wanted to build housing area back there hook onto the water there had been previous discussions both on the Columbus side and on the forest lake side about residential development on the edge on the edge of our community and actually within our community I think one one proposal was that the water access come through Forest Lake and I think both of those were shut down historically well it's just a question or a a thought I'm just sitting there thing and like you say councils change all the time so well and I do think from the the um graph that you show on the seasonality of the water usage that one of the things we should think about is is what Jesse was alluding to which is you know I mean lots of lots of communities put in sprinkling bands or times that you can sprinkle or use the irrigation or things like that and if that's one way to to kind of smooth things out a little bit and and having that conversation with running NES about whether they can fill their truck at an off peak time um that's I think those are things worth looking at and seeing if that helps the the problem that you're that you're talking about I know it's not a forever solution but it it could it could buy us some time that would take the stress off the system for now mhm and everybody drive anywhere and their water's running down the street their sprinklers are going this way and that way and run 24 hours a day which you don't need I haven't sprinkled a thing for 3 years at my house grass is all green but I think I think we we're not done yet there's some recommendations that are a little bit different than what previous so right finish thank you let us let us finish the so um if if we refer back to it's on sheet five it's slide nine um and so in what's represented here is four different Alternatives and these are the costs that were in the next table down and so alternative one was looking at those bigger hydropneumatic tanks to supply pressure to the system so that that was option one option two was water tower um and then option three and four had added treatment to that if there was interest in treating for the manganes uh which is above the health Bas based limit um so those costs are what's represented in uh table 7.2 there um now treatment is not recommended at this time um so the numbers on the right side of the table for treatment costs none of those are are being recommended for treatment um there are some things you can people can do in their homes to remove manganes if they're concerned about it and um so I think educating the users on manganes uh alerting them to resources they could use to treat for it at home um you know you can have $170 RO system on your faucet at home that that takes out manganes so there are options for in-house treatment of the manganes the difference would be if down the road that becomes a mandated treatment at home treatment does not meet stake regulations because again once your water hits that pipe it needs to meet drinking water standards so if the rule changes in the future at home treatment would not be a viable option um and so um so this evaluation again focused really it was looking at Alternatives one and two were the the two for consideration to address the pressure issues um and so as I mentioned if you're looking at those two options between hydromatic tanks and a water tower the recommendation would be the water tower because it is going to provide that long-term flexibility for the system so if something was to be done that would be the recommendation is the tower not the hydr numatic tanks because I do believe over the life of that infrastructure that's actually going to cost you more because those tanks will need maintenance and then down the road they're probably not going to be able to um help the rest of your system and you may need to put a tower in anyway but that's just between those two options and I know there's been a lot of other discussion about other options to be looked at so in your option two what is the size tank you're recommending that one was at the 350 ,000 gallons which you're going back to that fir flow table included if future treatment was added to have some excess capacity in that Tower available so even within that option with the water tower we could look at different sizes but that was the 350 um the the next slide just showed uh three different site locations that were being looked at for facilities um these were shared last time but sites one two and three shown there and site 3 was was the preferred option it had enough space for a tower for a future treatment facility uh it was also in good proximity to the Wells to allow connection if a future treatment facility was needed um so again the final recommendations there were addition of the water tower and then uh no treatment at this time for manganes and uh as I kind of mentioned the funding a little bit earlier but uh through the public facilities Authority we've applied for loan funding uh for any improvements at this point it's just a uh there's a project priority list that comes out and is published in August September it doesn't uh require you to do any projects but it's kind of the first step in getting you on the funding list so at the after the April meeting there was letters submitted to to get on that list just to put you in position if a project is coming um there's no need to actually do a project if you're on the list but that list doesn't get published till September uh and those for the water tower would be a low interest 20 or loan I think right now interest rates are about 2% through the PFA um so that would be a funding resource that could be used ran on the number three do we have to purchase land on that for a yes yes either way whether we have a facility to filter or whatever Plus the water tower yes yes either way yep even if it was just for the water tower if you were going to put the tower up it would be recommended to purchase enough that you could put a treatment facility there in the future just so it's set up for it there's no there's not a good site on land that the city already owns so we wouldn't have to purchase it is is all the city owned property in locations that wouldn't make sense for this so so some of the things that you got to look at when you're planning this is as he talks about future water treatment you have to run a separate line from your well to that water treatment facility so it wouldn't you're not going to use the existing pipes so hypothetically if we put it up in the northeast or the northwest corner because we own that property if we decided that we were going to do water treatment in the future we would then have to run pipes from all three of our wells to those locations too so if you look at location three that's somewhat centrally located in our water system but also centrally located between the three Wells this is something we have to take action on tonight or something we can talk about in the future well maybe somebody I I might be a little bit confused about the process so we had a discussion during a workshop and then I thought we said yeah go ahead and put our name on the list doesn't cost anything you can change your mind after the fact so did that part happen yes and then would you have would you have to have this study if they come back and say now now you're at the top of the list I mean why why why did we do this study if we could have you know if we don't get to the top of the for 2 years um I imagine some of these things change so help me understand what we heard before the list the the priority list and then this study how that all fits together so regarding the funding they they do require You' have some analysis done on what options you're looking at it it doesn't need to be specifically this format or report but they want some analysis done on options you're looking at so some of the report would have been used to help put that in there the findings of it and what you submit though you're not held to so later if something changes uh you can submit a revision or a different plan and um and easily change the funding and is there a certain time period that whatever you submit has to be current to I mean I know like in some grants you know your analysis has to be within 12 months or I mean yeah there there's no specific prerequisite on this so This funding list once you're on it they'll keep you on it for 5 years whether you do a project or not if you do a project though there are steps to take to kind of move you farther up the list so as of right now this is just the first step in a placeholder that would allow you to take future steps if you wanted to um but there's there would be no really update that you would need to do um really the next step in the fun is to actually submit a project that you're going to do where you would design something and then submit it to the Department of Health um so this study was really just to help us to further discussion of What alternative to pursue when we started this process um we needed to identify in clearer terms what the real issues were in terms of you know what what is the water system and how does it operate now and what do we need to do to address those issues and so when Jim and I uh started talking about this that was the focus and and identifying what the costs were uh to to address those issues so that's and we needed to look at a thorough analysis of what is the water usage what is what are the projections for the water usage and what do we need to do to meet all of those needs into the future so that's what this is doing okay so as far as you know council member bush in terms of what your question is you really don't have to take any action at all tonight this is a presentation on the final report we do make some layout a schedule uh moving forward but you know that isn't locked in stone uh you know the next step when if you were going to move forward with with this recommendation uh there would be some additional preliminary things that would have to happen uh primarily I then is going into more detail into design and also looking at land that's probably the first step is is identifying a parcel that could be acquired uh for moving forward is land acquisition an eligible cost for some of these low interest loans yes it is um and and so are prior incurred costs so if you did move forward with a project even the cost of like this study or future analysis can be submitted for reimbursement and get lumped into that loan um the the only thing is that funding package does not get finalized until you actually bid a project and so that's at the point then where you could get reimbursement so if you were going to go through design a project Implement a project get a contractor that could be 12 months 24 months and so these prior incurred costs could not be reimbursed until you get to that point and land acquisition as you said would be one of those eligible costs so you can hold that for five years or four years uh the prior encour cost I think they have set at 3 years unless you have other circumstances that would uh would allow them to extend that um but the application that was submitted to get on a funding list that carries for five years and even beyond that at that point you may maybe would need to do some sort of update but again that effort is not a huge update and so there's 2% interest on a if you win the lottery and you get the state loan am I correct it's easier than winning the lottery but uh yes there the state funding program is is set up to help municipalities fund water projects and I suspect you would get funding for a water tower I've not had issues getting funding for water tower um and again that interest rate varies but it's going to be well below mark Mark and so the cost of number alternative number two which you favor is 4.3 million on the bottom of page five yes is that correct 3.1 to 4.3 correct at 2% so they fund the whole works is that correct they fund the whole works correct if you win and then you get it's 2% annually um I think roughly i' I've at 2% every million do is about $60,000 a year in debt service payment so if you had a $4 million loan that'd probably be about $240,000 a year in loan payments interest in principle's water bill they'll go berserk I mean they're already complaining that we're higher than Force Lake Center Bill and North Branch was worse I guess well that's what I was saying I don't think there's enough users that you could do that unless you ran unless you ran the project you ran it in deficit and subsidized it with leving which is what we had to do for the first however many years of our uh utilities but that got paid back through the general fund I believe because those of us who lived over there and had businesses we paid for the whole works except for the people on green acers and Senior deferrals no I don't think I I mean explain it Jack you know what I'm talking about I mean we our our Enterprise funds ran in deficit until last year this year Well there wasn't enough people hooked up that's right and that's what I'm saying I don't know that there's enough people that you'd be able to float this from a financing standpoint our issue is the small customer base and low usage so you know we'd have to do several models to see what the feasibility of it was what it would do to people's water bills that would be another part of decision making should we get some type of authority to be approved for any of these grants or PFA loans we'll have to do that analysis too to make sure that we can sell it politically and from a practical and economical standpoint also another item in this whole mix is that there are a number of people that are not connected that have never been required to be connected to the system learned about that yeah we have approximately 30 people these this doesn't count vacant properties we have 30 structures that should be connected that aren't connected we've had some discussions about that and I think one thing we'll be looking at down the road is trying to get those people connected is one of our goals that'll help some but you know from this base we need a lot more than 30 connections so I think one thing we we need to try to look out too is Project what our capacity needs are at total buildout of what we currently have in our service area and get some numbers from that and some projections that'll help determine some of our ability to pay for this in the future also I when you when you talk about a $240,000 a year bond payment you're talking right now our whole total City budgets 5 million so that's a lot that's a big percent to add on to a small you know percent of our of our city yeah and that's why I think that I mean the the issue if if you have 30 structures that aren't connected that that might be the first step that would done in order totally agree spread that cost because um you know you have an investment in there since 2007 200 eight some sometime when this whole system went in uh with the intent that at some point everybody that's being served will it need to be connected in order to pay for the system and that hasn't happened no I agree although I thought we were told a year ago that everybody was connected so this the fact that there's still 30 oce standing is was a surprise and and to your point Janet I believe there was two that we forced to get on board right one was down by binus Road WS wasn't there a portion we forced them to hook up and then and then there was another one down there well I mean they all were supposed to some legitimately had deferrals or had requested and we did that but I distinctly remember being told a year ago that every you know we were finally in the black on these Enterprise funds we were everybody who was supposed to be hooked up was hooked up would soon to be hooked up but that's not true so now we need to make sure that happens and I think from what we show in our Enterprise funds we're probably in the black to cover our basic operational cost but there are still some cost we're absorbing on the administrative side yep and I'm not sure that we're covering all of our depreciation costs either but operationally we are in the black so you're right I agree with you Kevin and to your point Kevin uh Jim and I sat down Jim did most of the work but we did determine who isn't connected as far as being having a structure on their property there's still some vacant properties aren't connected but that's going to be a policy decision is how we want to do those but the ones that do have structures where the services passing and available to them those are the ones that we are trying to develop a way to encourage them to connect as soon as possible yeah so is the next step to look at those scenarios that you would run I I I think it is I think we need to look at it a little bit more from our financial side and what our potential ability to pay is and then get some information too when we get some more in September when we we'll see what this eligibility list is and see if we qualify for any Grant funds and then work and see if there's a formula that would make it cost effective for us to consider these options that you developed yeah so it might be a you know next step might be a rate study yeah you know to determine you know what would the impact of $4 million uh be on rates um with or without those 30 you know users um and see see what the what the real impact of that cost is another um funding option always is the bonding bill you know there wasn't a bonding bill this year but uh that means that there's likely to be one in the uh tax year in the budget year so and and um we actually made it in as Senator KW said on our modest request for Hornsby so that's always a I I looked at all of the requests from cities this year because we were in and there were several that were looking at utility treatment centers uh they just you know it's The Usual Suspects that always come and and ask so so I will I want to clarify that because I think at the workshop and you might not have been at the workshop when we talked about what are the funding options and I thought we couldn't the only option was a low interest loan yeah so this is actually where I was going to go be before the attorney jumped in is yes so the the PFA does have Grant programs but you guys aren't going to qualify for them they're they're affordability based for residential users and I think given the high commercial usage here it's going to be hard to get those grants um and so direct bonding is probably going to be your best Avenue to getting whatever project you want to do funded uh PFA will have low interest loans for you that that should be fairly straightforward but I don't think the grant programs are going to be able to help when you say direct bonding you mean on the bonding bill from the state correct yes correct Bond issuance on our part yep and you know obviously some going that route is is kind of you have to tell a story right why why you should get money over anybody else and I think you have a bit of a story here right is you're transitioning you're in this transition phase right where you have users that rely on your system and you're adding users and as you add users you want to be more robust to make sure people you add to the system have a good water supply right it's one thing to have people hook up but if you they hook up and then they have problems that's not a good position either but so as you add more people you are going to want to be a more robust system but it's very challenging for you to fund the things needed because as you see they're not cheap I can't change the numbers on here right and so I think you can have a story there that explains why you guys are unique and why you could use it um and that's the angle you have to take I laugh because we're always in that position of explaining why we're why we're unique that's our middle name well thank you very much yes it was helpful lot of good information thanks any other questions anyone Kevin anything more from you I have nothing further mayor well City attorney report M mayor and councel the item that's under the attorney report is comes from the Personnel committee Megan Rogers worked with the Personnel committee to finalize the contract for the city of administrator um I'll go through just a couple modest changes from what you approved um in your session uh in your second meeting in May I forget the date so I think it was the 28th of May um so the the salary would be set at $146,000 U that was the amount that you approved the um request was for 10 additional vacation uh days time recruit effective June 1st 10 additional sick days is uh time recruit effective June 1st and then on the termination provision both the first and the second year um termination would have uh the same Severance uh basically six months of pay and benefits um the the third year would be as as written I think it's one month all of these uh changes went through the Personnel committee the Personnel committee recommends approval so and I have one when we get to it I have one tweak to the um to the contract itself I'll explain the resolution uh that you have in front of you resolution 2404 there's a couple of things it approves the contract and and the package it allows um since Mr Davis will be signing on behalf of himself as the employee uh the deputy uh clerk would then sign it just provide witness um that's just a technical issue uh sign both the contract and the resolution along with the mayor um so that's the resolution you have and then the one tweak I wanted to make um just in proofing this against the redline version on I don't know why we don't have page numbers it just isn't that hard to add but on page two of the uh the employment agreement um you'll see in 13 A1 it says termination with one within one year or two year within years one or two uh but then it should be that's just a heading so it should be also added to the the line that follows if employ termination is noticed to employee within the first or second year so I would add or second so when you make your motion it would be with that uh those changes so with that I stand for question or or you have members of the Personnel committee here who can also answer questions about this I will just say it went very smoothly and uh I think all parties were happy with the uh the process and and that were're here tonight to recommend the employment contract so this is Rob my only question would be for the Personnel committee is this similar to what as far as the vacation and the the sick leave is that very similar to what Elizabeth was getting in the past or is this something more than what we've done in the past I I was never able to see what she made or the vacation and sick leave she accured at the same rate that the employees do and so would Jack he's just because he's starting at zero he's just asking for for 10 days to be front loaded for this year for this year okay that's not on that's not an ongoing request and I believe this uh salary is if I correct me if I'm wrong I think Elizabeth's salary was 138 am I right there 138,000 so it's a little higher than higher than what she was making okay thank you appreciate that definitely in line with our our range which we did correct I should say Megan did Heavy research to make sure that we were um in line with other communities of our size very good thank you any other questions well I can make the motion um and I do concur with Bill that it was a very smooth process so thank you uh let's see I move to approve resolution 24-4 sent to the city council on June 10th 2024 as an attachment to the June 12th 20 24 meeting packet with the exception of a change in section 13 a I um to read to add first year or second year of the agreement this is Janet I second we have a motion in the second any questions or discussions I'll call for the vote Ron I sue I Janet I Rob I and Jesse I so and I would like to say thank you and I look forward to serving the city council and the residents of Columbus I really appreciate the opportunity thank you very much thank you thank you anything else Bill yes I will just make sure that we get a clean version with that change uh emailed over tomorrow so it can be signed up and it is effective uh June 1st 1 which I know Cheryl the payroll person was happy that that was the effective date it makes her payroll work well so all right that's it that's all I have thank you thank you uh mayor and City Council Members report Ron um other than going to the open house at uh Ruck line I just want to say I don't know uh I have to ask Jack uh the billboard or electronic thing out there still on the blank the West Side works perfectly the south side or the east side is nonoperative Jim and I have discussed that um he's getting some quotes or somebody to look at it from some of the signed companies to see what we can do to get that repaired again that's something that we may have to look at that may be a replacement item at some point down the road because it's been in there for probably over 20 years there's a lot of electronic components in there they're probably maybe on their L leg but uh it is on our agenda to get that East Side fixed and operative again and and one other point I want to make this weekend Forest Lake's going to have that red litter day whatever you want to call it on the 18th or what is what's Saturday 15th and all the counties are welcome to come over there jump uh dump off electronics at the library oh okay the only reason I brought that up is because I thought if we could put it on our our website or whatever because I think a lot of people don't understand that there's reciprocity deal yeah and we can go over there and dump paint and okay all that stuff so I know there's not many people listening tonight but might be a little late but something to keep an eye on thank you I always seem to make it where' the mayor go oh dear well I are you done yeah I'm okay thank you I have nothing um I just have one thing uh June 6th we had our Sunrise River wo meeting um we approved a data practices policy which we did not have prior to that and the process to access the $775,000 grant um that we were awarded from Bowser through that um waterbased implementation funding uh process uh we we finalized that and so those are the two main um topics and our next meeting is on September 5th uh this is Rob and all I really had to report on Ron covered it the the bla Brothers trck align facility that grand opening it's a great event I thought and uh we all got to interact with public and businesses and almost seemed like an Eda thing at the same same time so um no it's good but that's all I have got a nice thank you from Dean for attending and that was he appreciated everybody being there and and uh wanted to um I guess promote the transportation industry which I I loved how he put that I thought it was he he called out the fact that people don't like I think what you say big smelly trucks but they're great industry and he's right oh my report is it's thundering but no lightning oh thank you how about hail no not yet so our well and I had a note from Dean too that thanked everyone for attending his grand opening uh I hope you're able to see the supports provided by many of our business partners suppliers and customers uh we look forward to our business representing the beautiful city of Columbus for for many years to come so that was nice he said to pass it on to everybody yep and we did Planning Commission report nope Eda report nope Public Works Jim no report Mr Mayor City administrator Jack again my only comment is that again I look forward to serving the city council and the residents of Columbus for many years to come and again thank you for the opportunity I really and truly appreciate it thank you thank you and we appreciate you thank you for agreeing to be our city administrator Personnel committee you already did it we had it that was it that's it all right uh announcements and reminders Planning Commission June 18th at 6: pm. City Hall will be closed on June 19th city council meeting on the 26th and by then the days will be getting shorter oh stop absentee voting starts at City Hall 8:00 a to 400 p.m. what's the date that that starts June 28th okay okay so now we'll move to a closed session to cons we have to excuse our we have to excuse everybody well you you have to give the announcement publicly so you're on the right track okay and then you can excuse folks uh the city council meeting will be closed to consider offers to purchase city-owned real property identified as P 2432 222- 005 and P 24 3222 11- 00006 pursuant to Minnesota statutes section 13 D- or .05 subdivision 3 C3 how do I do good better all right so everybody out [Music]