Pacific time today. Would you just fly in? Oh, we got a usual audience here, so I guess we'll get it started. Well, I call this city council meeting to order the date, being, what is the date today? February 11, '6 pm. Let's start with the pledge of allegiance, please. I pledge allegiance. Just 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. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Alright, Al. All council members are here. Any changes to the agenda? No changes.
Okay. Motion to approve the agenda. Seconded. Got a first and second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Agenda approved? Consent agenda. There's a few items down there. I'll read them or we can discuss them at the end or individually. City Council meeting from January 14. Planning and zoning meetings from January 7. EBDA minutes from December 17. Warrant list of 210,360. And the last one is approve after payment for 908,187. Any discussion with any of my items? I just had one question. The $771,000
and the approved after payment, I assume that was for a loan? Yes. Actually, it it covers two payments. Two payments? Yeah. Okay. We're good? I'm fine. K. I move approval of the consent agenda if there's no other discussion. Second. K. We've got a first and second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Consent agenda approved. Moving down to communication reports and petitions, mister Deputy Streed to present. Good evening. Didn't have a ton going on in January, which is, good. No, no news is good news. We did start running a few of our compliance checks for alcohol and tobacco last
month and into this month. So gonna slowly kinda trickle those in this spring and get those knocked out. And I'm happy to announce everybody's passed so far, so that's excellent news. Aside from that, it's been pretty good so far this, this month and January so far. Calls wise, we are one call short to 300 in January, which is pretty high for being kind of our slower year. Most people are usually hibernating, but it was a pretty, mild January overall. So, 60% of the calls were deputy initiated, though, so I'm pretty happy with that. That's pretty good proactive rate.
Whether it's traffic stops, community services, stopping out at the schools, anything like that is all a deputy initiated stat. So looking pretty good on that for calls wise. Like I said, it's been pretty slow, I guess you could say, and that's kind of expected for this, colder season. So not a whole lot going on if you guys got any questions for us. Any does Fourth Street kind of quieted down by the middle school? Or Yes and no. I think it goes in waves. As far as what we're seeing, it's been pretty similar.
Every once in a while, you'll pull someone over for speed or stuff like that. I mean, routinely, if if you pull in right at, 255, you'll get somebody parking in the no parking zone. If you park there at 240, everybody sees you and they obey, though. No parking zone. So it's kinda the game that you play every day. But for the most part, as far as actual driving concerns, it's pretty good Yep. With a rare exception every once in a while. So like to focus our efforts everywhere in town rather than just there all day. So It's it's one little point pain point is all it is.
There's lots of other places. So Yep. Yeah. K. K. Thank you very much. Thank you. K. The next item on the communication reports is a community letter newsletter. Couple things down there. Look, Byron Lions Club celebrates fifty five years of service. That's pretty awesome. Spring is coming not according to Punxsutawney Phil. He's gonna give us six more weeks he's in it. He's part of a questionable road in fact. Yeah I believe that too. Kindergarten registration yes they're doing a push for there because I don't know if you know the numbers but the kindergarten class is light And the graduating class was?
Yeah. So they put up a push out there for the kindergarten and maybe some other classes too but yeah. They need to keep the the enrollment up as well. So that's good there. And the buyer and this is the first open mic was the first one, but the second one was a knockout. Wasn't it? Yeah. We had, nine acts. We had diverse group of performers, mariachi, a rapper, a couple of bands, a poet, a couple of individual acts. So I don't remember. Most of the tables were filled. Yes. Steve was there. It was a lot of fun. A lot of time.
Nice job. Cool. Yeah. And thanks, Lisa, for getting that flyer out and creating that, because I'm not very techy when that works. When's the next one? We, next one will be March 8. And actually, we're gonna plan on having one in April and in May. So, they love having us there, obviously, because it's good for business. Mhmm. So, yeah, he's like, come back once a month. We were not gonna have one in February, but he's like, yeah. Come come come in February. And we're like, alright. So, yeah, it was good. We had a couple we had a our young group of high schoolers,
they have a band. They were there. It was great. It was good. A lot of fun. Very good. Good job. And then the Byron has a new logo, so that's on there. That's the one that, was agreed upon. So cool. Good, good, good. Alright. No public hearings. We got resolutions to go over. First one is twenty twenty five zero eight Interim Use Permit, 518 Second Street Northwest. A new breakfast place in town wants to try it over there at the old Bears, whatever it's called. The old Jone's. Big Papa Pizza. And again okay. Our our zoning code requires a an interim use permit even though it was a
pizza place. It is no longer pizza. So, the use is changed to a breakfast, lunch, diner. Finally, zoning is saying we agree. Need it. Definitely. So we would ask for your blessing to award the interim use permit for, 518 Second Street Northwest. Okay. Do we have a motion? I move approval of resolution twenty twenty five dash o eight approving an interim use permit for 518 Second Street Northwest for the recommendation of planning and zoning. Okay. Second. We got a first and second.
Any public comments on that? Sure. Okay. Alright. Very cool. Very cool. Any other public comments? Any council comments? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Resolution twenty twenty five-eight approved. Next one, Resolution twenty twenty five-nine is, increasing the water and sewer rates scheduled for the City Of Byerad. Al, Bill, whoever wants to take it. This is based on our water and our wastewater rate studies that we completed last year. The rates, do increase. We just want a resolution to formalize that so that it's easier to track
down the road but it is a 4% increase for each. Okay. Got a motion for that? I move. I move to approve of resolution twenty twenty five-nine for increasing the water and sewer rate This was discussed last year. Okay. Second. Got a first and a second. Any public comments? Any public comments? Any council comments? Okay. Resolution twenty twenty five zero nine. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Resolution passed. No unfinished business, new businesses. There's four on the delinquent utilities, so if any, no other discussion on that. Motion to approve the delinquent utilities.
Seconded. Okay, we got a first and second. Any public comments? Any council comments? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? None? Okay. The delinquent utilities motion carried. Now we got, Byron ADA transition plan. I think Bill's gonna lead this one. Nice long presentation. Yes. Thank you, mayor. So in your packet is the ADA transition plan. What we are looking for tonight is a motion approving this, but what the the plan does is it goes over the need for this, the statutory authority. It does several things, so it goes over that. What it also does is it establishes,
an ADA coordinator, happens to be Tom Rickey is our point person for this. It also establishes a grievance procedure, and then it also establishes the improvements that, we're going to take. So what I would like to do is I would just briefly highlight, I'm not going to go over the statutory requirements, I figured that would be fun reading for everybody, but we will skip by that. So in summary, what we are requested or required to do is the city is required to inventory all their pedestrian ramps, other railroad crossings, their sidewalks, and their paths, and then we're required to give them non compliant or compliant,
and then we rate them high, medium, or low. So what we inventoried were three fourteen pedestrian ramps, six railroad crossings, 23 miles of sidewalks, and almost eight miles of shared use pass or bike pass. The good thing is Byron, is really in really good shape, So we've been very proactive in the city, and quite honestly, most of the deficiency deficiencies that we have are items we've built in the last twenty years that at the time were ADA compliant, but the standards have changed so that are not compliant.
So what we have done is the city is we are laying out an improvement schedule. So this is something that we have to do, by the way we have to have an ADA transition plan in place on our website, so that we are eligible for federal, funding, and now with that we have to comply with the law. So what we are proposing though is after ten years, 80% of the pedestrian ramps identified as non compliant, will be ADA compliant. After twenty years, ninety percent of those ramps will be compliant, and 99% of all sidewalks will be ADA compliant. So again, so this will go into our capital improvement plan,
we'll be paying attention to these things, you know, Tom and Al and staff will continue to incorporate these in and those will help guide our decisions. It's not a small price tag, when you add up all those repairs, there's not a lot of them, but it's about $1,700,000 worth of repairs that we're going to overtake over the next ten to twenty years. Now again, compared to other cities, we are in a pretty good position. We've again, we've been very proactive, when we reconstruct streets, we're adding sidewalk, we're making the improvements, we've been very proactive on our trails,
our trail plans, so all those things serve us well. So this document lays that out, there's some maps in here as well, to graphically show that, but, oh and I'm sorry, the last part is we did have a public outreach component, so Tom coordinated, out what we have to do is we have to select interested parties, so that would be people like Opportunity Services, the schools, Chamber of Commerce, etcetera. We did not have any comments. If we would have any comments or would something come in the next couple days, we will include this in the plan. And then we did follow the public notification requirements,
as well as when we prepared this. So again, the long term process here is we'll revisit this, you know, probably every five years or so, but we'll keep a copy of it on our website and really it's meant to guide us in our capital improvement planning. So with that, no further comments, but I'd be happy to entertain any questions. K. I was looking at this. So, there's a portion of the city that's controlled by the county. Are they required to bring those up to ADA compliance as well if we're going ahead with our plan?
So so the pedestrian facilities in county right away actually are the responsibility of Byron. Actually, our responsibility. Yep. Okay. Correct. So were they counted in your Correct. Yes. Survey. Okay. Now in the past, actually, we've done projects where, like, we connected schools, things like that. The county has participated cost wise and actually sold the school, but it ultimately falls back on on the city of Byron. And I think some of those, when we redid County 5, were brought up to speed. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. Yes. Yep. Very good. Nice forward thinking. K. Any other quick discussion?
If not, need a motion to approve the ADA transition plan? I move approval of the ADA Transition Plan. Second. Okay, we got a first and second. Any public comments? Any other council comments? If not, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, Approved to the ADA transition plan. Last one is accept bids and awards of contract for the BCRC Trail Extension. Talking to Al earlier, great job. Yeah, so this would be, this was a project that we brought forth last year. And if you remember, we applied for a DNR grant. This will make a connection to the front entrance at BCRC to around the backside
over on East Village Fifth, the final phase there. As Bill noted in his our ADA transition plan, this will connect that loop with over eight miles of bike trail, meaning they're now in Byron. Once this project is complete, you won't have to stop and turn around. It'll be all continuous. You'll be able to continue on the bike trails. So we did get, because of the original cost estimate, we were able to just solicit bids. We sent it out to five contractors. We received five bids from them, very favorable, with a low bid coming in from snow contract at $67,005.78.
Staff is recommending that the council accept these bids and award the project to snow contracting. Very nice. And just one caveat out of that. We have not fully reviewed the DNR grant yet, because there will be a match. We did we were eligible for a hundred and $8,000 worth of funds. So with us guaranteed that we were gonna match 36,000 and some change, So we'll have to circle back on that grant contract to find out that, you know, obviously, we got a a grant enough to cover it, but I still think the city will have to put in kind money in.
K. Yep. You wouldn't wanna increase the project to get views up on your entire grant? Off the record, Steven. No. It's just it's just one of those where we do the city does have matching funds of some sort in there. And I know it was the grant was for a specific project. So Yep. Yep. And then we have to put a deed restriction on the property that we use money. Yep. I know. So there is quite a spread in, pricing though. I am kind of surprised. I mean it's nice to see the two of them really close together though. So Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I'm So, Al, did you say you had a meeting too with the the, channel three on this or something?
Channel three on this. And Al did or, did it earlier, but, Al, you took this one off. Yeah. Tom was busy, so I took care of channel three today. They wanted to find out what was going on with our trail grant, application. They saw it on the agenda, and they were intrigued by why this was so important to us. And, we shared with them the importance of connecting our trails in town and and finishing that loop. And, I also shared with them our vision for where do we go next and so Yep. Very nice. Good job. Thank you. Alright. Need a motion to accept the bids and award the contract.
So I move accepting the quotes and awarding the contract for the BCRC Trail Extension. Just no contracting. Second. K. We have first and second. Any public comments? Any other council comments? Okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, bids accepted. Okay, public comments. Public comments. Any other public comments? Alrighty. I guess we'll go around round table here. Bill, is there anything else? Just one one thing is that, we will the city, we will be making a presentation tomorrow on surface transportation block grants, for the reconstruction of Seventh Street.
Al, I don't wanna steal your thunder, but we're we're most likely, knock on wood, gonna win this grant. We are the only applicant, so this is for funds that are directed through ROCOG. So Al is on the ROCOG policy board and I'm on the technical advisory committee. So hopefully next week we will have, some good news that we will have received grant dollars to reconstruct Seventh Street. How long will we have under the grant to actually do the project? Well, the the federal government looks four years out, so the grants aren't available until 2029. Oh, that's fine because yeah.
We have four years. Assuming that there's still money there, but yeah. That's good. That's great news. So that's it, mayor. Thank you. Thank you. Steven? PNZ is the only thing I had. It was a very quick meeting. We already passed the thing that they recommended for the interim use, so it was good. Very nice. Got them. I was gone for the EDA in January. We just met on sale financial stuff that I'm sure Al will be updating us next month or the following month. Other than that, nothing. Okay. Same thing with me. We just, the finance there earlier today.
So, you know, quiet month for me. Nothing. Alright. Let's see. No park board. First responders, no real news there. They do have eight applicants. They're just thinking about what number they wanna get to, kind of prioritizing afternoon availability. Diversity and inclusion council. We had our as I talked before, our open mic night. We'll have another one in March, April, and May. That's going real well. We're learning as we, go along, you know, what kinda entertainment, clean, family friendly entertainment is the goal. So nothing happened that night,
but we had we had to lay some ground rules to some entertainers. And, we'll be continuing to make that better each month. And then, at our last meeting, we talked kind of bounced around the idea of a smoked meats brew fest tentatively called Brian Byron BBQ. So, with a tentative date of August 23. So Wow. We're working on that. It's far out in the distance still, so plenty of time to plan that. But the idea would be to have that around here, at city hall, a bunch of people with their smoked meats,
maybe a contest, a celebrity taste contest, and then local breweries and stuff like that. So Great. And they kinda incorporate maybe some music as well. So maybe some of the entertainers we've had at our different open mic nights. I've already talked to one of the bands to see if they'd like to play at that. So that's an idea down the road. And that's all I have. I will be attending the League of Minnesota Cities, elected leaders institutes, twenty first and the twenty second of this month. So that's it. K. Very good.
Thank you. No park board. I did have the, community ed council advisory meeting in January. It's kind of a kickoff to the year. Little bit of concern, you know, from the city's perspective. I just made sure that, you know, we work together, you know, with what's happening with the school right now that we don't have to cut things that the city can help out with for kids and stuff around for the summer stuff. So that was kinda more of introductory stuff there. I did meet with, forgot her name from the county for the grant, the sidewalk pedestrian. Kate.
Kate with the county. She's looking at putting in for a, safe routes to school planning grant, to just do the identifying where our, needs would be in that situation. So, she's hoping to hear back from that in March, and then it's a long process from there. So, but, yeah, that's all I've had so far and internal meetings. Thanks, Tom. Anything new? Just wanna make everybody aware that next Tuesday at the, Economic Development Authority monthly meeting there will be a presentation, on the draft feasibility study for a municipal cannabis dispensary.
We've been working frantically over the last sixty plus days on getting that put together to see if it is worthy of a, an application to the state for a license. And, there are a limited number of licenses available in the state. And so we just wanna find out whether or not it's viable in Byron or not. But, at this point, they'll be making that formal presentation next Tuesday. Very good. Thank you. Rob, anything? Okay. K. At least the school update, anything for us? Nothing? Grad, anything from the chamber?
Quiet. Okay. Didn't miss anyone. Okay. Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Seconded. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Adjourn. Strategic planning downstairs. Right? Yep. We adjourn downstairs. Correct. That's no official meeting, is it? I think it's a workshop, isn't it? Okay. It's a workshop. There's, like, a agenda for it. Would that be I mean, I think I mean, the biggest one I see is kinda crossing the counter of five. We can all be there. Okay. I don't think you have this. I don't have to go. Yeah. We've got them before for extended Cool. The tool. Customize. Not bad.
Yeah.