[Music] The date is April 23rd, 2025 and welcome to the Columbus City Council meeting. Our first uh order of the business tonight is the pledge of allegiance. Everybody stand up. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Before we go on to item three, I just want everybody to understand out there if you could please sign in if you haven't. We'd like to know who's all here for the record. Uh speakers don't have to sign in because we'll get them on and every time you speak and this goes for the council members if you we usually do it all the time, but we're trying to try something new here by saying this is Ron and make my statement or this is Jenny. So that uh what is this we're going to do, Erin? We're going to use uh AI to attempt to do our council minutes. Nice. All right. So, it uh so it understands who's or whatever. And could I add something to that, Ron? This is a trial and hopefully it'll streamline the process, make it a lot less expensive and make the turnaround time very quickly. And I applaud Aaron. Aaron did some investigation and learned how to marry chat GPT with YouTube. And he came out with something that just to me was utterly amazing. So hopefully it'll work and we'll try it and see what happens with it. Great. Great. Just for everybody's uh for the record, this is Ron Hanograph from the mayor and item number three under A is adoption of the agenda. Anybody would like to make a motion? Uh so this is Janet. I um move to approve the agenda. Do we have a second? This is Jenny. I second. We have a motion on the floor. Any discussion? Any questions? Hearing none, we'll take a vote. Jenny I. Scott I. Janet I. Janet I. Oh, and Rob. There you are. Just for the record again. I was going to say this, but this is new to me. All the council members are here tonight. And Rob's on Zoom. We'll go on item B, uh, the consent agenda. Anybody like to make a motion? Uh, so this is Janet. I move to approve the consent agenda as presented um and the supplemental bill list uh which was distributed to the council prior to the April 23rd, 2025 meeting. Um I'll just note that I submitted a few minor edits on the minutes. Um they were just typographical kinds of things and those have been taken care of. Scott, I'll second. We have a motion on the floor. Any uh discussion? Any questions? Hearing none, we'll go for a vote. Eddie Jenny I, Scott I, Janet, I, Rob I, and Ron I. We'll go to line item C. And first thing on the agenda there is a public forum. Is there anybody out there that would like to make a statement to the council or to the city? I see none in the office. How about online on Zoom? Hearing none, we'll go on to item number two, which is an NOA County Sheriff's Office quarterly report by Lieutenant Jessica Slavic. Well, good evening, mayor, council members, city officials. Um, thank you for having me. I'm Jessica Slavic. I'm a lieutenant with the Anoka County Sheriff's Office, and as always, it's my pleasure to be the law enforcement liaison between the sheriff's office and the city of Columbus. Um, with me tonight, I have Deputy Matthew Bertina. This is his second year um assigned to the Columbus contract. So considering he sends spends his 12-hour shifts here, I figured he would be a great addition um to fill in any questions or calls for service. Before we get into the calls for service report, I just wanted to share some general updates from the sheriff's office. Um the first is um a free workshop that we're hosting here at the sheriff's office. I did pass out the flyer um and city administrator Jack Davis and assistant city administrator Aaron Berg were also provided copies and I believe posted in um the public. Um but we are hosting a free scam prevention workshop. It's on May 15th at the sheriff's office in Andover. It's from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30m. Um, and the reason why we're hosting this is we've been seeing a um a spike in the number of victims that are falling victim to some of the scams. Um, this is something that we used to see a lot with our seniors. Um, but we're now seeing a growing number of well-educated adults in their 40s um that are falling victim just to how advanced and the believability in some of these scams. Um so the goal is to bring awareness towards these scam trends. Um help identify scams. Um instruct people what to do if they do fall victim and then also provide some resources. Um and have a Q&A session. So this is actually being put on by one of our patrol investigators and um he's pretty well verssed in investigating a lot of the fraud and the scams that are occurring. If you can't make it, we are going to record the session and then we're going to post it on social media. So, I'll make sure that that is shared with you all as well. And um if we have a a lot of good feedback and a request to continue hosting these, we'll put on a second session as well. I just wanted to share some other updates. Um the sheriff's office was awarded an additional crime analyst position for 2025. Um so this is uh a really great asset. um the new crime analysts, we're going through the hiring process for them right now. They are going to be assigned to our digital and computer uh forensics unit. Um, so essentially what we're seeing with the advancement in technology and as I'm sure you're aware, cell phones play a very important role in our criminal investigations because they can do everything from track your internet activity, location data. Um, there's video, photographs, all the communication that takes place over various platforms. All of that is is located and and stored on those phones. Um but what we are seeing with a lot of these technological advances um especially over the last 10 years going from flip phones to now I think iPhone is releasing um the iPhone 16 is coming out soon. Um but the storage capacity of these devices is growing and can hold up to almost a terabyte of data. So the amount of time it's taking for our case detectives and investigators to extract that data and then go through all of it um is tremendous. So to have a crime analyst dedicated to helping with that um will help expedite some of our criminal investigations and then a lot of the other law enforcement agencies in Anoka County, they do rely on our forensic unit to do a lot of their cell phone and computer analysis. So that should hopefully speed some of that up. Um another update that I wanted to share, I'm really excited about this. We are just wrapping up a federal grant that we've had in partnership with the Alexander House. Um, it's a grant through the Office of Violence Against Women and we were able to create a lot of nice new programming with this. Um, which I'm really excited about. Um, and given the uncertainty with federal grants and stuff right now, I'm not too sure how many more funding opportunities we'll have like this in the future. Um, but with these funds, we were able to hire a victim advocate. So, the sheriff's office now has a victim advocate that serves all of Anoka County um victims of physical and sexual violence amongst other crimes um as well as co-victims. Um and then another thing that we were able to do with these funds is we've refurbished three of our interview rooms. Two of them being soft interview rooms where we interview victims and then a child interview room. So, we have a dedicated space to interview children. Um, everything that went into this from selecting the wall color to the decor to the furnishing was all designed to have a very inviting and comfortable environment. So when our victims are sharing some of their traumatic experiences, they feel emotionally safe in those settings. Um the importance behind this is because when victims are, you know, going through these experiences, they're already facing so many barriers and navigating the criminal justice system can be very challenging. Investigations can take a really long time. Not to mention, court proceedings can also take another long time. So when they are presented with a very victim centered trauma-informed interview from the start and then followed up with advocacy and resources, they tend to stay engaged in the investigative process and then are also present for court proceedings. Um so we're able to have a higher success rate in prosecutions. So very happy with what we did with that. And then the county actually when we hired our victim advocate, they then absorbed that position. So now we have the full-time victim advocate that serves um all of our victims in Anoka County. Um just a couple other things coming out of the criminal investigation division where I am at. We have had um some high pri high-profile investigations this past quarter. Um we had three murders unfortunately within the last couple months. Um, we had a homicide in Columbia Heights on February 28th where a 16-year-old male um was shot by another person in his friend group. Um, unfortunately, he was trying to remove a gun from his backpack to secure in his jacket. Um, and the gun accidentally discharged. Um, that juvenile suspect was identified and he has been charged. And then on March 2nd, we had another homicide, this time in the city of Ramsay when an 18-year-old male, he was a senior at Champlain Park High School. Um, he was found deceased in his vehicle in the city of Ramsay with a gunshot wound. That investigation revealed that there was a planned robbery. Those four suspects um have also been identified, arrested, and charged. And then unfortunately yesterday we had another murder in the city of Ramsey. Um that was determined to be a murder suicide between a boyfriend girlfriend. So um special thanks to everybody with the Columbia Heights Police Department, Ramsey Police Department, the County Attorney's Office for all of their resources and continued assistance with those investigations. So any questions on that before we move on to calls for service? I know I we'll see how the AI keeps up with my Fastpace. This is Ron. I have a question. Let's go to the scams. Uh, are you guys dealing with Bitcoin, the scams, and do we have to write an ordinance here or do you have something going? You go ahead and talk about the scams first. And this is Deputy Verina. Um, throughout my experience as deputy, Bitcoin scams are getting more and more common because it's untra it's untraceable currency. So, it's it's not far off from doing a wire transfer, though. Once the money is gone, it's gone. Sorry about that. There's an overtime opportunity probably. Um, so, well, you can take that call if you want. Oh, I'm happy with today's my Thursday. So, um, with these scams, we've seen an uptick in hostage scams where someone with a younger daughter or son, they are told that they stumbled onto a drug transaction in the city of Minneapolis and you need to send us his money now in Bitcoin or we'll do something horrible to them. And that's really pulling at the heartstrings of victims. That's something where especially I took one with a resident of the city of Columbus. her daughter was in the cities for um a school related activity and out of happen stance her phone died and so she fell the victim fell for this scam because they had an actress say help me mom and so she wired money through Target through Walmart um and then she went home and her daughter was safe at home she come home early cuz she sprained her ankle it's very concerning almost luck Um, with the ordinance, I'm not too sure I track on what that does. The reason I bring it up, Matt, is a lot of cities, I I just know a lot of law enforcement are uh making ordinances not to have Bitcoin machines in their city. And I don't know if we have them at Running Aces or at Loves or whatever, but uh I know that over in Forest Lake, they had two or three of these. And they're copying some. I don't know. Noa County Sheriff's Department looking at this or I'm not sure. I'll look into that. Maybe our patrol division is and it'd be a good question for investigator Derek Lean who is teaching that workshop to see what he knows about that. Yeah, because I think they were trying to copy ordinances to get them to get these Bitcoin machines because for everybody's information, what they do is just what Matt says. and you take your cash, you get it in the cash machine, then you go to the Bitcoin and put it in there and then it's no man's land or whatever. But thank you if you're going to look at it. Yeah. Sorry. I was just going to say once the transaction is no longer pending and it's official, there is just no way to retract that and it happens relatively quickly. I also think that the perpetrators on these are they're getting, you know, they're utilizing open- source information. All of us are googleable. Um, you put your name in Google. Not only will it give information on where you live, who your relatives are, your social media, then people can go on your social media and see, you know, oh, this individual does have a daughter. She appears to be 16. You know, maybe calling at this opportunity during the day. I'll catch mom on her way from home from work. Have a young woman in the background saying, "Mom, mom, help me." And then they just play on that panic. And before you know it, um, very educated, smart people out of panic are doing senseless things such as sending wire transfers for thousands of dollars. And then after that rush of emotions sort of settles down, they start realizing, I think I was just scammed. Yeah. And they call you and then it's too late because these transactions and wire transfers happen almost immediately. I was going to say personally, I haven't seen any Bitcoin machines in Columbus. Um, for sure Loves and Holiday don't have one. I'll check at Renie Aces tonight. I'm on duty till 2 a.m. about. So, I'll check with Ren Aces and see if they have any of that technology. I do know some gas stations in nearby Ham Lake do have Bitcoin machines and I've taken a couple reports when I was countywide of people sending money through those systems on scam issues. Yeah, they they wire money in a scam through the Bitcoin machine in person at like BP and Holiday or I mean BP and Ham Lake. So I think um there's been quite a bit in the Forest Lake Times on this and Forest Lake did did pass the ordinance and last week they reported that um I think there are four in Forest Lake and of the four three had been involved in scams. So, they I think their ordinance was um they're requiring a deposit um like a $2,000 deposit from the business that has them so that they could put that towards law enforcement and investigations. And then there's some disclosures that have to be made about who owns it and some things that would help track things down. So, I don't know that they're trying to get rid of them, but I think there's a lot more of that that kind of stuff that they're requiring licensing kind of things. I I this is Ron. I don't uh I I don't know if they are, but they are trying to get rid of them. Yeah. Because well, I'm sure they'd love to some other city, but I know they're copying. You know how that goes. You copy somebody else's ordinance and you get only have to pay one attorney then, you know. Well, and I was going to say too, I know the banks are doing a pretty good job filing their mark reports through the Minnesota Adult Abuse Reporting Center. um they do submit forms whenever they feel that somebody is you know wiring money or coming and taking large amounts of money out and getting money orders and things like that. The problem is by the time that reporting makes it through DHS and then gets filtered to the local law enforcement agency to work through um a lot of the transactions that already occurred are final. Um sometimes the banks do a really good job flagging it and they'll hit you pause on it so it doesn't go through. Um, but they're doing a pretty good job with some of that stuff, too. It's another thing that's put in place to help identify that. Um, you know, a lot of times, too, at least then we can be notified of it and get a hold of their caretakers or if they're a vulnerable adult and falling victim to this and and troubleshoot any future scams that they might fall victim to. So, there's getting to be more and more things put in place, but with every crime, I feel like the perpetrators are always just one step ahead. Well, thank you. I didn't want to throw you off key here. Oh, no. You're fine. Any other questions? No. Okay. Should we move ahead with our uh calls for service? I passed out the first quarter report for our first three months um showing calls for service compared to this time last year. We can start with um our property crimes on burglaries and thefts. Um we were trending really good last year. Um unfortunately we did have two burglaries this year. Um they were within two days from one another and both very similar MA uh MMOs. Um one was on February 13th. Um the one was the prior one was on February 11th. Um the first one was in the 6300 block of 141st. Um that was a residential burglary um where the homeowners came home, a window was smashed. Um they threw on that one there was a carjack left outside and they utilized that to throw it through the front window to gain access um and then ransacked the house and took valuables. Um the second one was the 8600 block of Lake Drive. Um this time they used a brick to smash out the front window um and gain access. That one the brick um was submitted to the Midwest Regional Forensic Laboratory. It was negative for Leighton Prince and they're still waiting for uh the DNA report to come back to see if there's any touch DNA on there. Um I spoke with investigator Shawn Merritt who has the Columbus contract for patrol investigations and he's tracking both of those cases and then he also told me that Lino had one very similar um around the same sort of time. So he's working with those investigators to see if they get any leads and hopefully they can link these together. But as of right now, we do not have any suspect information on that. And then I'll turn it over to Matt to talk about um one of our thefts from Running Aces. This is Deputy Routine again, Matt. Um yes, at Running Aces, a victim had left about $1,500 in cash on the lid of the toilet after they used the restroom. Another person, suspect went in there and took the money and left with the money. Deputies were able to identify who that suspect was and they were able to tell them to bring the money back. The suspect did not want charges at that time, gave money back, and everyone was happy. Um, and there's been a few other uh stealing of lost property at Renees recently. Um, they have a wonderful surveillance system, so it's not the hardest crimes to crack, which is nice. Moving on to assaults. Uh there were three assaults within this last quarter, one each month. Um one of our assaults was at Running Aces on January 24th. We had a victim of the assault um actually stole Do you want me to go over this one? This one's quite complex. Yes. Would you please? So one night suspect was disorderly and ended up assaulting people in the hotel room. deputies responded with Lakes Police Department assisting. I was unfortunately not there, but he ended up being arrested for, I believe, fifth degree uh fifth degree assault, regular assault. He went to jail that night. Unfortunately, the suspect of the assault left his keys in the room. Then on video, the victim of the assault took his car, stole his car, brought it down to the Twin Cities area. I don't remember what city. It was recovered by the police department down there. and the victim turned suspect of felony vehicle theft admitted to taking the car. And so charges are filed against both parties in that case. Can't make this stuff up. That's unique. It was very interesting surveillance footage to watch the victim of the assault take the suspect's car. And we know who they are because they're victim of the assault. Thank you. Of course. Uh moving on to our traffic stops and traffic arrest. We can see that our traffic numbers are up. A total of 244 traffic stops made within this last quarter um with 36 traffic arrests. And I will let Deputy Verina highlight some of the traffic arrests that were made on the other rotation at Lake Drive in Zurich. So, by the casino, uh, DWI refusal. Suspect was pulled over for being Dak IPS, which is meaning he is a threat to public safety cuz he has driven probably intoxicated too many times. He showed signs of impairments. He refused the breath tests and was charged with DWI. On 115 2025, deputies followed a vehicle from I35 and Lake Drive. They stopped the vehicle for driving conduct. The vehicle was towed for no insurance and being a hazard to traffic. Drugs were located. The suspect was arrested and charged for those narcotics. On 226 of 2025 at the Lo's truck stop, deputies located a parked car that did not have any plates. The deputy approached the driver and consensually spoke with him while sneakily taking a picture of the VIN. He ran the VIN and it came back as a stolen vehicle. The male was arrested for having a stolen vehicle. And on 3:23 to 2025 at the Holiday gas station, security at Running Aces had called about a clearly intoxicated male who had left driving in his vehicle. I located the vehicle at the holiday. I attempted to pull the suspect out to do field sobriety and he was far too intoxicated to even stand up. He fell to the ground, eventually fell unconscious. troopers and deputies rendered medical aid. He was transported to Regent's Hospital. I obtained a blood to search warrant and obtained his blood and I'm waiting for the lab to get back on that to see how intoxicated he was and then he'll be charged once we get those results. Thank you. Uh moving on to arrest outside of our traffic stops um during downtime when our deputies are being proactive. Um, in this last quarter there were six misdemeanor arrests, three gross misdemeanor and two felonies. And Deputy Verina will highlight some of those arrests for us. It's Deputy Vertina again. On 210 of 2025, uh, deputies were at Ren's Casino and they located a stolen U-Haul, I believe. Um, the suspect was charged out of custody. Uh it was on the other rotation and he had a pretty good there's more investigation that needs to be done by the other rotation on that one, but he is being charged for possession of that stolen vehicle. On 217 to 25 at Love's truck stop, deputies located a male with a warrant and he was arrested without any issues. On 317 of 2025 at Running Aces Casino, male who had been previously trespassed by me came back and he was arrested by the other rotations deputy. And that's all I got for arrest. Thank you. Um I also wanted to include I'm not sure if anybody saw in the news I think on the 21st a couple days ago um but the US Supreme Court did deny the Minnesota appeal on keeping the permit to carry permits for adults um 21 and older. So they did deny that appeal. Um, so now in the state of Minnesota, any law-abiding adult between the age of 18 and 20 are now entitled to their second uh second amendment rights. So the sheriff's office will be issuing permit to carries for that age group. now. Um, so I thought it would be interesting to just kind of highlight some of the calls for service involving firearms and then um as we track data, it will be interesting to see how many more incidents involving that age group um with those who have permits to carry um how those how those calls track over time. So um do you want to cover some of these since you work some of them as well? I was involved with at least three out of four of these so I got good experience with them. So, on 3:23 of 2025, um, a male had threatened his ex-girlfriend and their family, including saying that he was going to burn the house down. Um, I believe there's something about firearms. Um, one of our countywide deputies covered this while I was on a different higher high priority call. Um, they ended up getting a ping on his phone and they did not find him that night. Uh the male who was the father of the ex-girlfriend accidentally shot himself in the thigh while putting his pistol in his pocket. He was armed he armed himself in his own house because he was concerned about this suspect who was later arrested for felony stalking, terroristic threats, and some other pretty not good charges. U but he ended up accidentally shooting himself. So, he was rendered medical aid and chose to stay at home. Um, on 211 of 2025 in the 13500 block of East Rond Lake Road, there was a road rage incident with a gunpointed and possibly a gunshot. This was on the other rotation, so I unfortunately don't know too much about it. They did find the suspect and he was arrested. Um, and then in January, I had a reckless discharge call. Uh we have taken quite a few firearms complaints this year so far. Um and in Columbus there's not many there's only the state law and you cannot carry or shoot parks or shoot guns in a park. So we have a lot of reckless discharge or just shooting complaints that end up not being illegal. But this one was illegal. Two males were shooting at a headle target with no back stop and they did not check to see where their rounds would end up. The rounds ended up more than a thousand feet away shooting the neighbor's dog house with the dogs inside. Uh both suspects were cited because it was only a misdemeanor level crime not witnessed. Cited with reckless discharge and they were advised to set up a back stop and verify which direction you're shooting because you are responsible for the rounds that you expel. That's all I got for them. Thank you. Any questions? How did the dogs do? The dogs were uninjured. The dogs are uninjured, which is good. Um, it ended up being probably 3 ft off the ground cuz they were shooting at head level here. It went more than 1,000 ft away. I think it was 1300 and it landed with the round still intact in the middle of the doghouse. Um, both dogs are fine. No humans were injured. It was just uh hopefully a really good education moment and they'll have consequences criminally as well. This is Ron. How did you get that call? I mean, how did you figure out where that bullet went? So, the neighbor's house who had gotten shot, he was out of town. His employees were working on trucks there. They called him very concerned about there was a round coming off. Then they called me and told me that they were confronting the alleged shooters. So, I got there pretty fast and everyone was calm and they had a target set up at head level. No back stop lined up right with the neighbor's property, which as you know, it's a rural area, so there's trees in the way. You can't see the neighbor's house from there, but rounds still go thousands of feet, if not miles. Um, and it was a pistol round that ended up going through the doghouse. They had been shooting rifles, shotguns, and pistols. Oh, a pistol round is the one that made it through. The victim didn't find any other rounds. Cool. Yeah, we just never know what we're going to hear here. I have one, this is Jenny. I have one question. I know you mentioned a few different issues that um happened at running aces. Were a lot of these non-residents I assume that are were having Yes. And one of the things I see continuously from running ASUS and another data piece that I want to start tracking um is the trust the number of trespassing. Um there's a lot of trespassing warnings that are issued and then I continuously see that they ignore the trespassing notice. They return as security is pretty sharp. So they pick up when these guys return um and they always call and then they end up getting arrested on the violation. So, um, typically they're not an Oka County residence. I can't I can't This is Deputy Vine again. I can't say I have put too much thought into remembering if they're residents or not. But certainly of the people that we handle at the casino. Most are not residents of Columbus. It's people coming up off I35. And it's the same something happens and they can get right on that freeway and get south of here fast. So, it's kind of a cat and mouse game really. But when I read the deputy uh reports from the city of Columbus, I see those trespassing. I mean, I see when the notices are issued and then when the arrests are made. And I have noted that um to check with our administrative staff that run a lot of these reports because I am kind of interested on, you know, what the ratio of, you know, trespassing notice issued and then how many of them ignore that notice and come back and end up getting arrested because it seems like it's quite a few. And I will say, and this is, as you know, in law enforcement, this could be luck. I have never arrested someone for coming back after I've trespassed them. Nice. That being said, I know Daniel Guru, the other deputy on the other rotation, has for sure. Isaac Thompson before him as well. Um, and then our wonderful countywide Rovers because it seems like it's happening. They're coming. They are returning. So, um, I do have something else I want to share that's not really law enforcement related, but before we move on to that, does anybody have any other questions about the calls for service or the stats that were provided today? Okay. Well, I just wanted to share that law day is coming up at the Enoka County Courthouse. Um, so this is on May 2nd. It's from 9:30 in the morning till 3:30 p.m. They have a ton of resources um for anybody that has any legal questions. So, if you happen to know somebody who has um a petty misdemeanor, a misdemeanor, you know, crime on their record that they want to get expuned, there'll be resources for how to go about that. Um if somebody has a revoked license and they're looking to get that reinstated. um any kind of legal questions that somebody might need to navigate. Um that's a great resource for people to go to. And this is Matt again. I just like to note a lot of our u this is really good resource for people with those revoked licenses who just can't seem to get their license back cuz we both the Lwood deputy and I have noted a lot of people have gotten three out of four steps to getting their license back. We catch them at the three to four step and then it is what it is, but we might set them back a little bit because they might have their interlock, they might have this, they just don't have their license back and obviously there's consequences for that still. So, they get very close and then they get issued a citation for driving after revocation or driving after suspension and and just kind of puts them back and it gets to be a vicious cycle and sometimes hard to get out and um you know, spending your money on the highway is never fun, right? Um, so those citations can get pretty expensive and then just needing those resources to get out of stuff like that. So yeah, but you get to know them too, don't you? It is quite a different amount of people. The PE we do remember names. We're humans and I can't say it's been too many of the same people here in Columbus, which is nice actually. It's refreshing uh because I do see the Lynwood deputy has the same couple people that he keeps catching and But we certainly do remember things. All right. Well, that's everything I've prepared. I'll look into the city ordinances with the Bitcoin and and talk to our patrol investigators and see what they're seeing in trends with the other cities that they're working for and and bring that information back. Well, I don't Anybody have any other questions? This is Ron. I I want to thank you. Thank you for your service, Matt. You must be doing a good job out there. And she's doing really important work in C too. Oh, I I hope she is. But I think you are doing good. I You must be doing really good because I see we got zero domestics. So, we're all happy here and that honestly I don't see this until the city council meeting and I was also surprised by that. But that is certainly refreshing to see. It is. It's odd. Domestic incidences I don't believe have gone down. However, arrests going down for that is certainly not bad news. I don't mean to take up any more time, but did you want to talk about any of the group homes and the mental health calls? Yes, I'm sorry. That would be because that's been a little bit of a spike in those. Yes, we have had one resident at a local group home. Um, and I actually believe it is our actually uh, so one resident at the group home, he we have had a call for service for him probably six or seven times in the last couple months since the start of the year for him being in a mental health crisis. He's barricaded himself in his room with a knife. He's barricaded himself in his room with a broom he broke that was sharp. He's tried to run into traffic. Um, and so I wanted to actually highlight our deputies, not just myself, but Deputy Jack Manard up in Lynwood who comes down to assist down in Columbus a lot and Deputy Daniel Gruy on the other rotation in Columbus. We have successfully been able to deescalate situations with him all of these times and get him to drop the weapons, come out peacefully cuz he is barricaded in a his own bedroom with a metal door which is very hard to breach. So, we've been able to get him calmed down a little bit, talk to him, get him into the ambulance to get him treated for the mental health crisises. And it has been a good amount of time since I have had to go to go back to that residence. Uh, but I just, like I said, wanted to highlight how our deputies are receiving their good deescalation training and using it in everyday circumstances that are quite stressful. Yep. Times are changing. Mhm. You know, was he off his medication? Is that usually the problem? I honestly don't know. I answer the call as as I know you used to be a officer. You answer the call and sometimes the medicine just isn't there or it doesn't work or um his underlying issue is he doesn't want to live at this group home anymore. So, he continues to do this. And my place in life is to help him where he's at and get him to the ambulance to the hospital or maybe just talking to him if it's not quite to that level, but it usually is unfortunately that level. Well, you must be building a relationship with him then. I mean, he knows you and Yes, sir. he calms down and Mhm. and he really likes stuff animals, which is nice. Yeah. And I I will say to the the growing mental health crisis and is definitely becoming a community problem. Um because of a lot of that, the Minnesota Post Board, I can't remember about 5 years ago, added um for one of our mandated learning objectives to go through a crisis intervention training that our law enforcement officers have to do on a continuous basis as well as autism training, implicit bias, a lot of those other things. Um we also use Canvas Health as a resource. Um, and we're also exploring getting a social worker at the sheriff's office to assist with some of these calls, which is another trend that you're starting to see in law enforcement. Um, as law enforcement starts getting victim advocates and crime analysts, social workers is another trend to help with combating some of these community problems. Well, either way, you're doing a good job. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having us. Thanks for coming. Thanks for the update and your service. Absolutely. Thank you. Going on under item C, number three, Lo's site plan review. Elder Han is with us tonight and will present the staff report and the request for this item. Hello everyone. Um, Love's Travel Stops acquired a conditional use permit for a travel center and um with accessory restaurant food sales in 2021. Construction of the new business was completed in August of 2022. Since then, there's been a higher number of visitors to this location than was initially anticipated. The facility reached out to city staff to ask what type of permitting they would need to add four additional fuel stations to their existing fuel pump island in order to accommodate the influx of guests. City staff decided at that time that this project would better fit a site plan review rather than a cup amendment as the proposed addition does not constitute a true expansion of use, nor does uh it affect any conditions of the cup. This item went before the planning commission twice for discussion. First on April 2nd and then again on April 16th where the planning commission recommended approval of the site plan review based on the findings and contingent on the conditions present in your staff report. Um I would now open it up for any discussion or question among the city council. Anybody have any questions? This is Ron. Um I don't have a question, but Ellen, do you want to just kind of update the council on the plans for the um landscaping that they intend? Because I was really when you and I spoke earlier, I was really happy to hear that. I think everybody else would be too. Yes, of course. Um, as a part of this site plan review, um, it was brought to the city staff's attention that there were some issues with the screening and landscaping plans. Um, with Loves, the original CUP gave them 5 years from, um, completion in order to, uh, create 80% opacity across uh, 35, that area, as well as Hornsby Street. Um, and there's been some issues with the landscaping, and it doesn't seem like they're going to meet that deadline. as a part of this site plan review, we put them on notice and said, "Hey, you're not going to meet this deadline. Um, something needs to be done soon." Um, and they noticed immediately and uh we'll probably be seeing a um new screening plan in the next month or so um to address that issue. So, this is Janet. I just would like to thank you for following up on that and also thank um Zach who I know is on um on Zoom for bringing that to the right people in your organization and kind of getting on that. That's really helpful. Thank you. This is Jenny. I have one question. I noted um in section 14 it talked about 22 vehicle accidents uh within Loves in the last two years. Does that seem high or does do you have any information about what that looks like? Because if we if they add additional pumps, I'm more concerned that it's going to create more of a cluster in a sense than what they already have. I think that it's pretty difficult to tell if that is standard or high um for a business that is this there is a lot of traffic there. It is a busy gas station. Whether you add or remove pumps, it's going to stay busy. um we don't have a lot of comparable areas to see um whether or not 22 vehicle accidents is extremely high. If you read some through some I did provide the actual incident reports for you guys. It's not part of this packet because it's like 52 pages. Um but they were all pretty minor accidents. Um, and unfortunately we just it's there's a little bit too many variable variables to know um what resulted in that or if that's a high number. Yeah, this this is Scott. I I do agree that 22 vehicle incidents is a little bit of an eye openener, but when you dig down into what type of accidents they they were, there was one major damage and that was when they were exiting out on the Hornsby. I'm assuming to make a left or right turn and then one injury with a vehicle and pedestrian. So, most of those accidents uh just by looking at this were probably no damage, five of them, or very very minor fender benders, you know, touching bumpers, dinging doors, which would be typical for for any business that size, I think. Yeah. And this is Ron. We don't know what Holiday had, do we? Um, we do not. Okay. I might be the only one who thought that that wasn't very many. When you think about the number of vehicles that go through that place, I mean, that's 11 a year. There's probably, you know, 10 times that many that happen at Walmart or whatever. So, I'm amazed that they have as few as they have. Well, this is Ron. I think that uh that one they had exiting, wouldn't that have been the one where the fuel tank was broke open? Y remember that at Hornsby Street that had the diesel fuel that accident that was on Hornsby Street, right? But it was somebody exiting Loves. Well, it was actually almost to 97, so it wasn't even really anywhere near Loves at that point. So, I mean, that's just a traffic accident at that point. Oh, I thought that was exiting. Oh. No, they were probably 300 feet from the from the 300 ft from the diesel area, which is where that semi would have came from. They were they were probably realistically less than 100 ft from the traffic signal at that accident. Well, it ruined the road, right? It or Well, the diesel soaked into the road. And if you look at it today, you can't necessarily tell that it was there. But, you know, diesel fuel is not really good for asphalt. So, to know what the deterioration will be over time, we're just going to have to see because it really didn't go anywhere with that attempt for Yeah. Okay. I disregard that one. Yeah. And this this is Scott. I think the other thing to consider with accidents at Loves is uh the truck parking there, the semi-truck parking. Um I wonder how many of these accidents cuz it's not uncommon when semis are backing into truck stops to to hit the semi next to them. Very common. That might be skewing the data a little bit here too. It may not be car versus car. This is Jenny. I think Zach noted they are the busiest loves in the state. Is that right? They they we had um not this year but last year I think the general manager at the time said that they were the busiest uh they said they were the busiest loves in the country. They were in terms of of revenue generated I think. So I think they had 500 and some odd stations too. So yeah it was I think they picked a good spot. Any other questions on the site plan? Do you want a motion? Yeah. So, um this is Janet. I would move to approve the love site plan review as recommended for approval by the planning commission and the findings um of facts and contingencies as presented in the staff report for this item. Dated uh what's the date on this? I don't see the date on the staff report, but on the memo that it's part of, it's April 23rd, 25. This is Jenny. I second. We have a motion on the floor and it's been seconded. Any other questions or discussions? Rob, I can just barely see your name up there. Yeah. No, Ron, no questions. Well, Jack, you keeping track of the He holds his hand up or whatever. I don't think I can even see the hand. But anyway, thank you anyway. So, we got a motion. It's been seconded. No other questions. We'll call for a vote. Jenny, Jenny, I. Scott, Janet, I. Rob, I and Ron I. We'll go to item number four. And thank you, Ally. Thank you. Uh, we're going to go to item number four under C, the tennis court reconstruction and resurfacing bids. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As part of the city's ongoing efforts to maintain its recreational infrastructure and enhance the city park amenities, the reconstruction resurfacing of the tennis courts at the city park was included in the fiscal year 2025 capital improvement plan. This project aligns with the city's long-term goals to maintain park facilities and expand recreational opportunities for residents. The Columbus City Council approved the 2025 capital improvements plan to include the tennis court resurfacing reconstruction as a project, but without a commitment for funding until bid alternated. The estimated cost of the project is $130,000 with the capital improvement plan funds available for the work are approximately $87,000. Any cost over this amount would require additional unbudgeted funding from the city. Bidding this project will determine if the proposal can be done with available funds or if there is a deficit between available funds and the bid cost. Is this an amount the city could or would cover from the city general fund to move this project forward? The city engaged Bolt and Mink to develop design plans and construction specifications for the tennis court project. Bolton Mink has worked closely with city staff to evaluate site conditions, finalize court layout options, address grading and drainage needs. The design has now reached a point where is ready to move to the bidding phase. The base bid for the project would be only for the repaving and resurfacing of the existing facility and include the other pertinances necessary for two tennis courts with the pickle ball court overlays which are exhibited attachment two of your packet and is the base bid and is shown on the screen with the photograph to the right. So in this drawing each tennis court has a pickle ball overlay on it. The alternative bids, one would be for two tennis courts with one of the courts strapped with an overlay for two pickle ball court [Applause] use. That would be the top photograph here. So, the tennis court on the left would be totally dedicated to a tennis court. The tennis court on the right would have two pickle ball court overlays. The third alternative bid would be for one dedicated tennis court and two exclusive pickle ball courts on the same footprint as the existing court. So that's the bottom photograph. The tennis court on the right would be dedicated exclusively for tennis. The pickle ball courts on the left, excuse me, and the pickle ball courts on the right would be dedicated exclusively for pickle ball. Staff is requesting city council approval to allow Molton Mink to move forward with publicly advertising for bids for the reconstruction of the tennis courts at a lump sum fee of $1,800. This process will be conducted in accordance to all applicable state and municipal bidding laws and procurement procedures. If approved, Bolton Mink will coordinate the advertising process to time the best period to bid relative to the disruptions to the use of the facility. Once the bidding period closes, Bolton Mink along city staff will review and evaluate all submitted bids and return to city council for discussion. Staff recommends that the city council approve the authorization for Bolton Mink to advertise and solicit bids for the reconstruction and resurfacing of the city park tennis courts and bring the results back to city council for discussion and direction for the project. This is Janet. I have a question because I was confused when I read this. So, it it refers to resurfacing a lot, but it sounds like it's really this is going to get ripped up and redone, right? Correct. That would be the reconstruction part of it and the resurfacing would be the final coat and which striping option would be. So, it's not really resurfacing because it's going to be all a brand new court. Correct. It'll be a brand new court. The whole court will be removed asphalt. The resurfacing just actually refers to the finished topping of it. And then do we have any idea how how like what gets used? Is it all pickle ball now? Is there people still playing? Do we know like how these are being used? So we have a sense of what would make the most sense of these options. It's really a mix of each, but you know, depending on who you talk to, you know, there's a fair amount of pickle ball players that are, you know, wheeling around and tennis court or, you know, just tennis players. So, I at this point, from what I see, it's it's probably a 50/50 mix. Okay. I mean, it's it's there's pickle ball has really come a long ways in the last few years, and I mean, they are uh picking up steam, let's say. Yeah. This is Scott Jim. I agree with that from what I see. I mean, I don't think I walk up there nearly as much as our mayor does, but when I do, it seems to be a good mix right now. Yeah, it's hard to find those players out there at 5:30 in the morning when he's out there. I can't see the ball. This is Ron. I have headlamps. I I do have a question, Jim. And and being a pickle ball player, I I used to be. Are is there going to be a fence between the two pickle ball courts if they go that way? So, so there's a couple of options in there. Um, having a dividing fence in there. I think I think what we end up doing is putting I don't know what we would call temporary fences in there. So, they wouldn't be permanently mounted. We would just buy fences that have their own little stands and you put them up in there because I see the issue if you have tennis court going on and you got somebody with ball uh pickle ball next door that ball going back over you know what I mean the course that way or the pickle ball courts the way you got them like north and south there the one court going into the other court that's what is so the so the fencing wouldn't be between the tennis court and the pickle ball court. It would be between the two pickle ball courts. So, they would be back to back with a fence there, if that makes sense. Yeah. Um, and a fence being not necessarily a fence, but more of a net. And then I have one other question. I Is this an option for us, Jack, or the park board to decide if we have two pickle ball courts and a tennis court or two tennis courts in a pickle ball court or whatever? Or is it already decided that it'll be two pickle ball and a It is not decided. So the base bid will be what we have out there today. Two tennis courts and pickle ball court painting inside of that. Option two bid is going to be I don't remember what they are off the top of my head. Um I don't remember what option two is, Jack. Option two is the one dedicated tennis court and the other tennis court with two pickle ball courts overlaid on it. Okay. Okay. And then and then option three is one tennis court, two pickle ball courts. I've looked at this so many times now and there's been so many options I don't remember what they all are. This is Jenny. Um so I have neighbors that have pickle ball courts in their driveways. they have dedicated their, you know, their own um houses to pickle ball. And I I the only concern I see with potentially having um the first or the option in which both courts would have both pickle ball and tennis would be that you may have one playing on one, pickle ball on one and one on the other, and then you have no opportunity for tennis players. Um, so I think having dedicated courts may make more sense um, just in the sense that you're keeping everybody somewhat in their lanes. So, so in years past we've, you know, the tennis courts are pretty busy here cuz I mean they for all intents and purposes are pretty wellkept. Um the we we've talked in the past about almost having a signup sheet for that because they're so busy and you know there's groups of people that come and they might play for hours and you know other people show up and you know they can't play because they're being you know they're being used. So we've we've talked about things like that in the past. So if you had them dedicated I think maybe that breaks it up a little bit more for um for different options for sure. Ron, to answer your question, this will be brought up at the next parks board meeting in May to get their input on it and a recommendation to city council. Uh, if we go out for bids, it'll probably be at least 30 days before we had anything back, maybe a little bit longer. One of the things that I talked to Brian about too is if this is authorized to go for bids, we would choose a time in estimating how it affects the market. Maybe we don't even bid this till the end of June when maybe contractors are starting to look for work for fall. We would have this discussion, but we will bring it to the park board for review on the three options and hopefully maybe have some cost so they can see what that is and bring that back to city council for final approval. And this is Scott. Is this first come, first serve? I assume there's nobody making reservations for the courts. First come, first serve. Yeah. Uh, this is Ron. I don't know if a lot of you people play pickle ball, but when they get going into those games, people will sit and wait. It's kind of like a rotation. One will come out, one player will come out and another will go in. So that pickle ball could keep going for hours. More people that I mean, you may be playing with somebody you don't even know. So it's a lot different than tennis. Usually people show up as couples or for or whatever. This J I think this is a question more for Brian and Jim. Um is the base under what we currently have adequate or is there going to have to be a bunch of work done to get that to where we need it to be? It it's it I'm going to I'm going to say well one I don't know that 100% right. But knowing that it's been there since 1998 and we have some substantial cracks in there, but it's, you know, how many years old, I'm saying what I see today, it's it's adequate. Okay. I didn't know if that was something that the engineers did when they did their study or No, we we didn't do any borings. We just kind of looked at it, looked at the age to say that, you know, it's been here since I I thought it was like 2000, but turns out it was 1998. So, I mean, it's, you know, mid20 and has a handful of cracks in it. I mean, it's it's pretty stable. Okay, good. Thanks. Any other questions, discussions? Well, I'll make a motion. I move to authorize Bolton and Mink to advertise and solicit bids for reconstruction of the city park tennis court and return results of the bids to the council for discussion and direction for the project at a future meeting. This is Janet. I second. We have a motion on the floor that was seconded. Any other discussion or questions on the tennis court hearing? None. We'll take a vote. Rob, you want to go first? Sorry, Rob. I sticky stuck button there. Janet I, Scott, I. Jenny, I Ron I. We'll go on to item number five, the city hall building generator bids. Well, the motion passed just for the record. As part of the preparation of the 2025 budget, the Columbus City Council discussed the need for a backup generator to serve city hall, city council chambers, and the senior community center. A backup generator is essential to ensure continuity of operations during power outages, allowing critical city functions to continue when electrical services is disrupted. This item was deemed an important need and $45,000 was included in the 2025 capital improvement plan for the acquisition of this equipment. The city hall building was constructed in three different stages and is served by two separate electrical feeds and service panels. As a result, there are individual services for the senior community center and individual services for the city hall offices and council chambers. Staff soliciting received bids for the purchase and installation of generators to serve city hall, the city council chambers and the senior community center. The generators was run on natural gas and are sized to serve the load demand for each addition to the building. City fire hall and public works building each have their own generators. The consideration of the generator purchase includes the following options. Option one would be to install a generator to serve only the city hall offices in the city council chambers. Option two would be to install a single generator to serve the city hall offices, council chambers, and the senior community center. The third option would be to install separate generators to serve city hall offices and chambers and a separate generator to serve the community center. Realizing too that each of these have different electrical services and some fees, the city requested proposals from four qualified contractors and received bid two bids from Kodiak Power Solution and Midwest Electric. Veterans and EME Electric were contract contacted requested to submit bids for the generator but were nonresponsive to our request. After reviewing the Kodiak and Midwest proposals, staff recommends that council consider approving option three proposal from Kodiak Power Solutions for two separate generators that would serve the city hall chambers and another generator to serve the city senior community center at a cost of 28,23928. Funds are available in the 2025 capital improvement plan in the capital general fund account and are appropriate for this purchase. Staff is seeking direction from city council as to the purchase of this equipment. I just have one question. We don't have anything right now. Right. This is Jim. No, we do not. Uh this is Scott. Um question for staff. Uh why would we consider doing an emergency generator on the senior center? Well, that's why we broke it out. We could leave that off. Uh however, in case of an emergency, that could be a needed room. Uh it is an option. It's option number one. We would only do the offices in this side of the building. They're on the same feed. Option three would include the community center. So, it's just a choice we make while we're doing it. If we're doing it all, it would be cheaper to do it at once. Uh the funds were appropriated and are available, but we could always go back and do that one at a later date. My thought on it was if we had a severe emergency, a major storm, we had to have set up for FEMA people or something like that here or use that as a temporary shelter that could be utilized for that service. Yeah, I'm right there on your thinking, Jack. I I cuz my follow-up question is are we part of an emergency uh management plan with no county or city where that building is identified for that use? It's not identified for a shelter. Uh I did have this discussion and I did look and see. We do not have a specific emergency management plan for the city of Columbus. I've contacted Al Newman to see if we're included in with Forest Lake since we're part of that fire department. And one of the things that uh I brought up here with Ron and a couple weeks ago was this is something if we don't have it, we need to develop it because it's going to be critical not only in the structure organization. So, we'll know the command and control of how the process works so everybody's knows what they're supposed to do in the event of an emergency, but it'll also help us qualify for more emergency funding. Correct. Yeah. And then last follow-up question to this, I hope, is so we have three of our four buildings on generators. Do we really need the additional space if there is a natural disaster or something? Um, as far as a shelter, um, probably not. We've got the public works building. We got the fire hall. But I do think we need this one because if we did have a natural disaster or some other type of emergency, this would be essentially where most of the work is going to be done as far as coordinating plans, uh, being able to communicate. And at a minimum, I would recommend that we do city hall offices and city council chambers. And the preference would be to do both buildings while we have that uh just in case there is a need for it. Uh we have the space we'd have the capacity then to serve it with power. And so if I'm hearing you correctly, this could al be a shelter but could also be used as a command post. Correct. situation. That's correct. Um so therefore the generator would be and that that would be more beneficial over there probably in the community center part of it than the rest of the building. Okay. Okay. Uh Rob's got his hand up. Rob. Yeah, thank thank you, mayor. Um, it was just in relation to kind of service in the the senior center with one and I know there was extensive uh conversation over it there. But, um, my personal opinion is it does get used. It gets used by the seniors and we're renting it out. But in the event that there was some sort of disaster, I don't venture to guess there's going to be a pancake breakfast or a senior lunchon or something of that nature. Um, so I guess I'd be more in favor of just making sure a city hall was up and usable and in the event of some sort of FEMA shelter or something like that, we opened up the fire hall and the public works building for possible shelter. I think it'd be uh safer buildings for that anyways in that type of disaster. So, uh, this is Ron. I I I agree partially with that, but I sometimes when you got a disaster like that, you got a full kitchen over there and I don't know what you need. I mean, the ultimate uh disaster, I don't know, tornado comes through. I mean, you got kind of a kitchen over at uh Mhm. your place over there. I So So, Mr. Mayor, this is Jim. Um, you know, it's not that we're talking about disasters here, but you know, I've been here during meetings when there's just a thunderstorm and we lose power. So, you know, you have a building full of people and you're, you know, right in the middle of a meeting, you're done. So having emergency power just for day-to-day operations, if we have a thunderstorm during the day and we lose power in this building, whether it be city halls, council chambers, or the community room, no work gets conducted here because there's no power for them to operate. So we're just we're done for the day. Now public works on the other hand, we can work um because we have a generator. But, you know, that said, you know, it's not just the natural disasters that we're trying to cover. It's day-to-day operations. So, you know, if power goes out in the area, we can still operate as a, you know, normal 8 to5 here, which we can't currently today. Yeah, this is Scott. I Jim, I agree with that. You have to have I I don't think it's a it's a no-brainer option. One, right? My question is is is it necessary to have the the senior center with power? To Rob, to Council Member Bush's point, you know, what is that space used for on a day-to-day basis? Well, I I mean, potentially there's meetings in there a fair amount. Um I know, you know, Council Member Hangland and you know, the mayor, they they have meetings over there periodically. It's like my second home. It is. And you know, just before this meeting, I um Brian and I had a had a meeting in there. So I I mean, it gets used a fair amount um a lot more than it did when it was solely community center once the COVID kind of came around. It was set up. So, you know, we use it a lot more than we ever have in the past. So, um is it is it more important or as important as the council chambers and city hall? No. I I mean I mean and essentially that room is used as our conference room. Now uh the more important consideration for that space is it would be overflow space if we needed in an emergency. Is it something we could survive without at this time? Yes. But you know if we're looking toward the future that might be a good investment to consider in this decision. Um, do we have internet connection or phone connection? Anything in the senior center in case of an emergency? Everything's Wi-Fi in this building. Okay. Uh, that's its own electrical place over there, right? Correct. All right. So, if we lost power and it's the middle of winter, does the heater run over there? They do not. So, you'd have to drain the pipes. Yeah, Mr. Mayor, this is Jim. Um, we would have to do something over there, whether we ran, you know, an extension cord from here to put heaters in there. Um, it's, you know, you would have to get a little creative on the water setup because there's one weld around the whole building. Um, but yeah, there would not be any heat. I mean, I think we have to I tornadoes, they come and they go and they may take a part of a town down, but I mean, our buildings are so far apart and the landscape, I see more winter problems even though we're not having much snow. But, uh, I I just see if we lose the power and we're out a long enough time, we got to worry about the water or you guys have to come in and start draining. Is the well on this electric or that electric? I'm gonna say this electric. Okay. So, this is Janet. I have one other question. So, um if I'm understanding this for option two and option three, they're covering the same two buildings, but two just has a single generator and three has two separate generators. Why would we do that? Why would we go? I mean, why would you choose one generator over two generators? Maintenance cost and the cost of the generators. Ultimately, what we're trying to do at this point right now is give you every option. Yeah. No, I I like that. But I'm just trying to understand like what would be the because it it looks like option two is the most expensive. So buying one generator that could do everything here is the more expensive option than buying two generators, one for each part of the building, which I'm amazed that that that it turns out that way. We were surprised, too. Once the generators go up in size, they become ultimately more expensive. So if if we wouldn't have done this option, you would have asked, "Well, what if we had one?" No, I I'm not I'm not critical of it. No, no, I know. I didn't understand I didn't understand why you would. But now I see because if you do the one with two, it's cheaper. Yeah. Who would have known? Yeah. Right. I wouldn't have when I seen the price of the single generator, I figured it was going to be cheaper because you're going to have to run power from one all the way over to the other. It's not a standard transformer. It has to be a different kind of transformer because you're if they if you lose power, you have to make sure that only the power supply that is lost would transfer, not both of them. So, there has to be some fail safes in there. It it gets to be a little a little more tricky going with one on two services. So, you know, with the wiring cost, the cost of the generator being more money and the transfer switches, it it's not surprising to me that that is more money. The the other thing with that too is you would have a little redundancy. So, if one generator went out, you would have some power somewhere in the building. Where would they plant these generators? So, the one generator would sit um by the community room um in the general vicinity of the air exchanger and the generator for city hall council chambers would sit out on the back slab um by the um by the air conditioners just to the north of that. But they're both on the south side. They're both on the south side of the building. West side. West. Yeah. Yep. Well, it looks like we have this is Janet. So, it looks like we have enough um in the budget. I'm looking at the right line here for any one of these three options. So, I think I would vote for the one that would be both buildings and also provide some redundancy. I mean, you're talking about emergency situations. That's what you want to plan for. So, this is Jenny confirming. Are you wanting two separate generators or one generator for all buildings? The the option three option. Y. So that would be the $28,000 bid or quote and right now it looks like there was 45,000 that was in the budget. This is Jenny. I I think my major concern is the cost versus use of that space. I think I mean obviously we have it in the budget but I I just struggle. I mean I I know there are meetings held in there but could those meetings be pushed into here in the event of an emergency? I mean obviously we have some FEMA planning or emergency planning potentially to come up with but we don't have that plan as of yet. And so I think I would lean more toward option one but option three if that's you know where we're leaning. I think I think the other thing to think about is it's you know if you depending on what the type of emergency is it could be that this side of the building's incapacitated and you have to do all your business in one side or the other. So if you know if the one that you have the generator on is the one that gets damaged and you can't work out of it and you don't have a generator on the other one now you're now you're out of luck. This is Jenny. But we have public we have a public works building. We have other buildings as well that can be utilized. Not that you want them to be utilized, but I I'm again just thinking from a budgetary standpoint because we also have tennis courts and things that are far over budget. And so I'm just trying to be a little bit more reasonable and at least thinking No, I think I think I think it's a good discussion. The tennis courts though come out of a whole different budgetly different budget that's out of the park budget. So that's not anything we'd levy for or anything like that. Well, it's this is Ron. I I think it's odd because we're predicting some something to happen, right? And you know, when it happens, then you go, I wish I'd had that. Mhm. And I don't I might push towards three two only and the idea it's not going to get any cheaper every day we go. But then again, at the same time, I think if you have a disaster come through is like a tornado, it's probably going to take the whole darn I mean, this building isn't made out of brick. Well, well, I was thinking more like, you know, if you ended up having a tree go down across this, but it didn't go down over there, or a really heavy wet snow that caved in the roof on this side, but not on that side. I, you know, I don't know. There's there's a lot of different possibilities. It's just, it's, you know, it's about $14,000 $13,000 difference between getting one versus two. and it's still, you know, quite a bit under budget. So, I I think that it's a good plan. Here's another option. It wasn't included in that, though. But if you took if you approved a generator for these two sections over here, you could go ahead and install all the transfer switches and the electrical stuff and then rent a generator for use over there. But the rental cost for those adds up. if it's longterm, it would not be the best option, but it would give you some source of power for that should anything occur. And um I don't know when we've been without power here for a long time, but uh that could be another consideration. Yeah, Bob, this is Scott. Yeah, Jack. I I know Henipin County used to have a big portable generator, the sheriff's department. That's exactly what what they did. Um, you know, when you're talking emergency management, if something happens, in the unlikelihood that something, you're always looking for space. Um, you just are. And having been a part of of a a couple of those situations, you know, you're throwing up saw horses and plywood for a desk in a in a shelter somewhere or working out of a a a truck. So, I I see the benefits to doing that, but I I'm just not sure that the bang for the buck there. I kind of like the idea that if we don't go with option three that we uh plum it in or or wire it in for a a large portable generator if we need it for emergency management. Well, and then two, if we decide later that we want to install that second generator over there, we've already got some of the cost already taken care of if that's something you want to consider. Uh Rob, you had a your hand up there a minute ago. Yeah, it was more of a comment. I was thinking if if we got a tornado, I don't think our building would be left there if it came through its path. It's just a pole barn pretty much. You know, with rotted footings, you know, it's really weird because I know when we had the tornado go through here, what was that 10 years ago or whatever? I mean, you saw really hit and miss. I mean, we had one one uh house in down towards crossways where the garage got picked up and kind of turned like that right on the foundation and the one next door was completely un unfased. So, I I don't know. I mean, probably unlikely, but you never know. I I honestly Yeah. Yeah. You don't. and and it was more just a comment knowing what we've we've been looking at built, you know, changing some things and fixing things with the building. Um, but I think I would be for the after the conversation, I'd be for the I believe it's option one where it's the one generator just to service the office area. If that's option one. Uh does any Ron here does what's the cost to wire it all up and get it ready for the other one? This is Jim. You'd have to dig through the bid a little bit, but the electrical service is $3,600 um to do two generator or to do two generators. So, I'm going to assume that it's going to be maybe half that. And then you know the I I I don't know that I can give you a cost on that. I'm going to say that a generator is 67 $6575 and the rest of the cost is labor and wire wire and you know connections. So I have one question. Um so if you end up with a portable generator those are run off of what? Diesel or gas. They're not going to be hooked up to natural gas, I'm assuming, or is that wrong? You could get them to probably run off natural gas. Most of them are probably going to run off diesel fuel, though. Propane is now becoming popular, too. But we don't have a propane tank here, do we? No. It would be a self-contained tank. Yeah. And you know, if we're going to kick the can down the road and say we're going to put a generator there in there in the future, it doesn't make sense because it's budgeted now. The cost is only going to go up. So, if we don't do it now, are any chance we would be doing it in the future? This is Janet. So, what you're saying is if you're going to wire for it, you may as well just do it. Well, if we're going to put a a a second generator in in the future, it it doesn't make sense, right? I I mean, as a hypothetical, I get the numbers aren't totally equal, but you've done all the work except for the $6,500 worth. I and I I know that that doesn't work out exactly that way, but in a nutshell, you're $6,500 short of completing it. If it was me, I would do one or three. I wouldn't do part of one. I would either do all or nothing. But that's that's just my Yeah. my opinion because you know if you throw a different transfer switch in there, you know, and it sits out there for how long and there's nothing connected to it, does something happen to it or, you know, is it I don't know why it would never be compatible with a generator, but you know, things are electronic today, so maybe some compatibility changes, different, you know what I mean? There's there's just some things that you could run into potentially that might not work very well that way. This is Ron. I uh What's the lifespan on these things? I know you fire them up every once in a while to make sure they they run and stuff like that, but is this something worth 20 years, 30 years, or is this something that could boop? So, this is Jim. The generator that we have on the public works building was actually bought from the Minneapolis housing whatever um as a used generator. I I guess I don't even necessarily know how old it is, but I mean they'll sit there for 25 years and you won't I mean they'll run once a week and you know they start up and you know we do oil changes and you know maintain batteries and do all of that kind of stuff. So I mean there's no reason why that thing wouldn't sit there for 25 years. So this is Jan. I have a question for um Jack. Is there I you you mentioned that we don't have an emergency management plan and I know an NOA County one or two of those local government official meetings ago talked about that there was one countywide. Is there a possibility of checking to see with the county whether or not if we did both of those that you end up having one of these um designated within the county plan and then there might be some dollars available to help pay for the second generator. Uh, we could definitely check on that. Uh, I'm not sure. The only thing I still think we'd want our own plan so that we have the designation of duties among local people. We still have we still have to rely on the sheriff's department. No, I I agree with it. But if you're if you're kind of donating an asset towards the county plan, too. I just wonder whether there's dollars available through their, you know, grant or whatever pays for that. That would help offset the cost. I mean then that would address the co the the cost um issue for people. Yeah. This is Scott. The other thing to check I I don't know with the current political situation on a national level but FEMA does offer grants for things like that as well. This is Janet. So, do you think it makes sense to defer this vote until you find those two things out? This is this something we have to act on within a certain period of time because the quotes are only good for a certain period of time or I'm going to assume in today's market that you know the quotes could change a little bit but generally when they give me a bid they they honor it. I mean, if if you were to tell me that we were going to wait six months, they might not. But, you know, another couple of weeks or a month, we're probably okay. Yeah. You You're thinking about maybe we could get money somewhere? Well, that's what I'm I mean, I just think then everybody would probably land on three if if some of the costs were deferred or paid, not deferred, but um picked up by the county or FEMA or whoever, I think we would all agree that three would be the best option. We can certainly check on that and should be able to report back to the next meeting. And I then I would move that we that we table this this uh vote until the next meeting. Yeah, we're coming up to tornado season. So yeah, you asked if it was uh this is Scott. You asked uh you know if it was a a an item needed quickly. Time will tell if we have a power outage. Yes. All right. So do I I just made a motion. You may I know you did. Anybody second it? This is Jenny. I second. Okay, we got a motion on the floor. It's been seconded. Any discussion? Rob, any questions? Hearing none. We'll go for a vote. Jenny, Jenny, Scott, I. Janet I. Rob I. Ron I. So we'll put that off until we can hear back from Jack. Go on to item number six is the Lackner second amendment to development agreement. Who's going to be uh presenting this item? Jack. I um thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh this item was discussed at a work meeting back in November and some issues were presented uh regarding the development agreement and some problems that it didn't address relative to the current residents and owners of the property. It was brought up again and discussed at uh the March 26 meeting again. And there were some things in the developers agreement that were reviewed and requested to be approved for change. Uh these were the escrow payments that were uh originally set on the property that would if it wasn't done by a certain date, I believe it was October 2028, the escrow payments would go back to the existing owner and not to the ones that paid the original fee. And the other one was the uh borrowing of the owners on this to vote on any petition for repaving the road. This was discussed by the council and uh they agreed that these changes need needed to be made that was approved and this was incorporated into the development agreement on the second amendment which is in your packet. So, what we're doing is asking for approval of the second amendment to the Lakner's Woodland Ponds develop agreement, which would remove those sections that were problematic and discussed previously at both the workshop meeting and the city council meeting and staff recommends approval of the Lackner's Woodlands Pond Second Amendment Development Agreement. Uh, this is Ron. Is uh anybody have any questions or discussions before I want to make the motion? Okay. No, mayor. Okay. Thank you. Uh I move uh to approve the Lakner's Woodland Pond Second Amendment Development Agreement, which removes the sections for escrow requirements and reinstates the eligibility for voting on petitions for future improvements to the land owners. This is Scott. I'll second. We have a motion on the floor. It's been seconded. Any discussion? Any questions? Hearing none, we'll go to a vote. Jenny, Jenny, I, Scott, I. Janet, I, Rob, I, and Ron I. We'll go to item number D, consultants, leaison, and staff reports. Brian, your number one. This is Brian. Good evening, mayor and council. Well, I have no prepared reports this evening, but I appreciated the opportunity to kind of hear the discussion on the love site plan review and the tennis court improvement project. So, thank you, Brian. Welcome. We'll go to number two, our city attorney, Bill Griffith. Um, not much to report. The um legislature uh is back in session after its uh holiday break and so what we'll be tracking now is work on the bonding bill um and the status of uh North Hornsby funding. So, um, and that's usually something that comes together at the very end of session because it's there's horse trading. So, stay tuned. Um, can I can I just add something really quick on that? Um, for Bill, I we had a chance to talk to Senator Kun when he was here for the um running aces and he said, don't count the fiscal disparities out yet. So, okay, for whatever that's worth. Bill, I have a question on the bonding bill. If the bonding bill for Hornsby Street was approved, what is the process for the city to receive that money and what is the timeline when we would be eligible to draw that down? Mr. Mayor, uh, council members, this is Bill Griffith, city attorney. Uh, typically there are agreements that have to go into place uh, for those funds to re be received. Um unlike some of the grants through deed which can take you know months and months uh this is a fairly streamlined process um because there are a number of recipients in the bonding bill and they've they do this every other year you know with uh with some exceptions. So I would you know I I can find out but I would guess that it's you know a couple month process before we would have confirmation that those funds are appropriated to us. Um why don't I check on that for you and and bring back uh that if another report. And my second question to that is are do we pay for invoices and then request reimbursement or how is that given to us? Is it given to us in a grant and we draw the funds from that grant, draw the funds from the state or what's the process for requesting reimbursement? I'll get two answers. Any other questions for Bill? And and just just as a note, when we got uh funds for the big project, no. Um that all was administered through the county, so we didn't administer those funds. And the the reason I ask this is the timing of it is it's something that we can't receive any funding for bills we've already paid. We need to figure out a way to time that so we can utilize all the funds to go to the project. Sometimes these funds are only eligible for costs that have yet to be incurred. They don't pay retroactively. So this is Janet. I have a question. Um do we So what's the timing on Eureka? Isn't that supposed to start this year? Yes. So I mean like when do we have to like sign on the dotted line with Forest Lake on our little 1,200 foot project? Well, we'll find that out pretty soon. And the good news on that is most of the cost will be incurred in 2026. The first part of the project this year is going to involve the searchcharging of those areas that need to be have that compaction done with them. So, I'm sure probably we can work out something with Forest Lake uh on the timing of this as long as we're going to receive our money maybe by fall should this be approved. Okay, good. Thanks. Any other comments to Bill? Uh, no. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Okay, we'll go to the council's reports. Jenny, do you have anything? Um, yes. On April 14th, Creek Watershed uh had their um bimonthly meeting and so or had their um meeting and a few things were updated including they have a boundary correction. I believe council member Hegland discussed this at the last city council meeting. There was a slight mapping error between uh Sunrise and Creek and that's being corrected. Uh they also had some updates to permit fees and escrow and I'll have more information about that at the next meeting. And FallFest will have their meeting tomorrow. Thank you. Scott, do you have anything? Yeah. Uh on April 17th, the Forest Lake Cable Commission uh met. Uh couple items of of possible interest is number one that day of the meeting we received the preliminary financial audit. Um this audit was very very comprehensive and we were digging through it. So we will be um taking a look at that at the next meeting. Uh second item is they've ran out of space for storing data. Obviously you're dealing with video so you're doing terabytes upon terabytes of data. They are purchasing a new system called a NAS system, NAS system um that allows for uh storage of a large amount of data at a reasonable cost so that they can continue to um keep our meetings uh live on cable TV. And lastly, the new member from uh uh Forest Lake and myself, we'll probably be having a breakfast meeting with the staff over there to get a in-depth get Sorry. Oh, that's okay. To get an in-depth look at how how their operations work over there. So, uh, this is new member from the Force Lake Council. Uh, I believe it's their member at large. Hannah is still uh their council member over there. Is that all? Yep. That's all I have. Janet? Um, I don't really have anything. I'll I'll talk at the personnel committee report and the planning commission report. Rob, thank you, mayor. Uh all I have to report is just uh attending the uh grand opening which all of you were at at grand reopening at running aces. It was a nice event. Um and it uh looks very nice in there. So that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, Rob. Uh and as the mayor, I have nothing to report since Rob took my line. So we'll go on to the item number four, the personnel committee. Uh so this is Janet. Um just a quick update. The personnel committee's been working diligently on the um compensation survey. So we spent some time on Monday going through and scoring all of the positions that we have and then yesterday we compared our scores to that of the consultant and they turned out to be pretty darn close. And so he is um putting the numbers together based on those scores and then we'll be aging the um the impact to the budget uh to uh reflect an implementation date of January 1. You will be seeing all of this, but the good news is that it doesn't appear that it's going to be that big of a hit to our budget. So that's good. And you'll be seeing all the details on this in June at a June meeting. And if I if there's anything else that I forgot, Erin, chime in. No. Okay. Excellent job. Is that it, Janet? That's that's all that I have on personnel committee. Okay. Then you're on number five, the planning commission report. And the planning commission report. I'm going to refer you to the love site plan review memo in our on page four of our packet because that says it all. I don't need to reiterate that. Um the only other thing that happened during the planning commission is that there was a inservice that Dean conducted uh to explain how property is legally described. Um so he talked about meats and bounds versus plats and the difference between the two and I'm sure if any of you are interested you can watch the video because he got pretty much in the weeds on that. I know you're laughing at it. I bet you know which one he likes and it's not the one you like. Indeed. That that is it. Thank you, Janet. Uh, number six, public works. Jim, Mr. Mayor, this is Jim in council. I dropped my phone doing some math because somebody was earlier when we were talking about loves, we were talking about how many cars go through there. And I know somebody that did some um road counts. So, on the car side, and I don't know exactly how they did their numbers and where they didn't didn't count, um, but from uh September 3rd to um September 8th of 2023, there was 42,213 cars that went through and on the truck section from that same date was 992. 2. So, I just thought I'd throw that out there since we were kind of talking about the 22 accidents. Um, that's a lot of vehicle traffic in just a couple of in a few days. So, I mean, to say that, you know, you had 22 accidents is is potentially not that bad. So, that that's all I have. Thank you. This is Scott. Jim, do you know what day of the week that was or days of the week? I didn't look at a calendar. Um, but I I'm going to say that it was probably started on a Thursday, went through the weekend, and then, you know, stopped, you know, some appropriate time the next week because you can kind of tell when they count. They may not check it every day then. And then there's a bigger jump if they skip a day. But I I really don't know what those days were. I didn't look that up. Do you think that was right around Labor Day? Like if that's if the numbers are really inflated cuz it was a Yeah. around a Labor Day or a weekend 93 to 98. So, I don't remember when Labor Day was last year, but that was in 2023. So, it was a couple couple years ago, but Well, suffice to say, there's a ton of of vehicle traffic there. I mean, I usually when I go there, it's like 10:00 at night and almost every tank is filled. I mean, everything is filled. So, I mean, they're busy, I'm sure, almost 24/7. That's it, Jim. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll go to item number seven, city administrators report. I have nothing to report. Thank you, Jack. We'll go to item E, announcements and reminders. In Noa County Local Government Officials Meeting, Wednesday, April 30th, 2025, 6 p.m. at Bunker Hills Activity Center. City Council workshops May 6, 2025 at 5:30 p.m. Planning Commission meeting May 7th, 2025 at 6:00 p.m. And the city council meeting May 14th, 2025 at 6:00 p.m. And right now we're going to go to item number F which is a closed session which means the audience has to vacate. Thank you for coming. Mr. Ne does he need to read that little statement? Yes. Done. That was it. I think you [Music]