[Music] Good evening and welcome to the Rapids City Council meeting for Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025. If you could please rise and join us for the pledge. 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. Please call the role. Council member Griscoiaak here. Council member Butler here. Council member Novak here. Council member Gesler here. Council member
Armstrong here. Council member Carlson here. Mayor Cook here. All right. Why don't we adopt this evening's agenda then? Your honor, council member Novak. Move to adopt the agenda. Second. Motion by Novak, second by Butler. Is there any uh discussion or changes?
Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. And that motion carries. Um we have one item on our consent agenda this evening and that's to receive the schedule of electronic payments. uh Minnesota state statute requires a list of transactions made by
electronic funds transfer be provided to the city council meeting at the next regular meeting after the transaction and we have an attached list of electronic payments. So we're looking to receive the schedule of electronic payments from May 15, 2025 through May
28th, 2025. And there is our complete consent agenda. Mr. Mayor, council member Butler, I think we need to approve the minutes first from the May 20th meeting. Why don't we do that? I I'd like to move that we approve the minutes from the May 20th, 2025 council
meeting. Second. Motion by Butler and a second by Geesler to approve the minutes. Is there any discussion or corrections? Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. Opposed. And the motion carries. One abstension. Council member Gresco. Thank you. I
inadvertently gave my agenda away. So I'm just trying to work bouncing around on the electronic here because there's so much on the agenda today. Well, I thought I there's only five four things. I think I could handle it, but obviously I couldn't. All right. Um, you've already heard the consent agenda. We're
looking to receive the schedule of electronic payments from May 15th, 2025 through May 28th, 2025. Motion to approve the consent agenda, Mr. Mayor. Second. Motion by Carlson, a second by Novak. Is there any discussion
or corrections? Hearing none, all in favor signify by saying I. I. opposed and the consent agenda is adopted. And council member Butler, we're going to move to number three now. Is that okay? Yes, sir. Um item three is to consider resolution
25-74 awarding the sale of $6,850,000 in general obligation bond series 2025A. Ms. Hansen. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We have um I am going to defer to our mun municipal adviser Nick Anhut with Ellers um and he
will provide results from our um bid opening today on these bonds. Thank you. Uh mayor, council members Nick Anut from Ellers and Associates, financial adviserss to the city of Kon Rapids. And as mentioned, I come here
with uh results from a a sale that was held on the city's behalf. uh we opened bids on the purchase of bonds to fund uh some of your infrastructure projects that are moving ahead this year. So, just to remind uh the folks at home, uh
last month the council authorized up to 6.85 million to fund the 25-1 project, the street reconstruction and utility replacement, as well as some uh other utility capital improvements that are being uh underway this year.
That debt is structured as a long-term fixed rate uh financing uh with a 10-year repayment term. And it is structured to be repaid by a combination of special assessments from the properties benefiting from the 25-1 project as well as water system revenues
from the utility funds and then a dedicated tax levy. Uh in the time since that authorization, we did uh approach Moody's investor service who holds an existing bond rating on the city and I'm pleased to announce that they uh felt that uh the city's rating should be
affirmed. That's a double A1 rating. It is the second best rating that Moody's does uh provide. AAA being the top and A1 being the next. And that places the city somewhere in the top 15th percentile among all municipalities
across the country, sovereign nations, corporations, and everything that Moody's rates. So, it's a very high level, which means that there's a low risk or low probability of any kind of a default on these bonds. And what that does is that third party opinion provides the market an indication of
where they should price these bonds and what kind of interest rates they should assign. And typically something with a lower risk, a higher rating means that they can get aggressive and assign a lower interest rate on that. So we hope to see that in the results I present. Um we did also circulate offering documents
on behalf of the city and open bids at 10:00 this morning where we received nine bids which is a fantastic turnout uh in the market especially given the size of this uh bond issue. Um winning bid came from TD Securities at a indicated rate of 3.41%.
41% as you can see the eight other biders. It got as high as 3.63 from Hilltop Securities. A lot of faces on here that we have seen in the past, but not quite this high of a turnout, which is excellent. Uh, all in all, less than
a quarter of a percentage point differential between the low and the high. And if you pay attention to the top five biders, they're all within 0.1 percentage points of of one another. So, a very tight spread on on the on the low end. Uh, which usually gives you a pretty good indication that you're
getting a fair price in the market. There's kind of a consensus on where this should land. Um, but we'll certainly take the low bid from uh TD Securities. They actually won last year's bond issue as well. Um, where we got five bids. So, great turnout. Um,
great bid from TD Securities. Uh with that bid, we're actually able to lower the the principal amount that will be necessary. So the authorization was for up to 6.85 million. We'll actually be able to fund the projects and do that at
a $6.2 million principal amount. So 6,215,000 will be the final amount if the council chooses to move forward and accept this bid. um that reflects the uh offering premium that was provided within that bid, the final issuance costs, all the fees and transactional
costs as well as an adjustment we made for the uh amount of assessments that have been prepaid to the city so far. You know, we don't need to borrow money to cover those if we've got the cash in hand. So, we're able to reduce the bond amount slightly from just that information as well. Um but the final
amount will be 6,215,000. the uh when we did all those adjustments, the final true interest cost calculation over that full 10-year time span uh will be 3.418%. Um our indicated rate that we
provided to you last month on the heels of all the April festivities and all the changes in the marketplace was I'll say conservatively higher at 4.1%. It's great to see a an a result like this uh you know just a few weeks later. What
that means is that the actual levy uh the water revenues and everything are you're going to need less revenues in order to pay off these bonds. Um and specifically about a 5% reduction to the levy amount that was anticipated. Uh so the we were assuming about
$385,000 per year as the average levy and now it'll be about 365,000. So, uh, almost $20,000 savings, uh, just from that rate from TD Securities. So, with that said, there is a resolution that was provided in the packet in draft form and then updated by
your bond attorneys this afternoon after we got the results of this sale and were able to populate it. Uh that resolution is 25-74 up for the council's consideration and again in a revised amount of $6,215,000 that will award the sale to
TD Securities as the low bidder and then uh we'll schedule the closing for June 26th uh which is when the funds from the sale will be forwarded to the uh city's accounts to reimburse what you've spent so far on the projects and then cover the remaining costs for those projects
as they are constructed. Awesome. Happy to stand for questions, but thank you. Okay. Any questions for Nick? Okay, Mr. Mayor, Council Member Carlson with the uh revision in that bond amount. I'd like to make a motion uh to
authorize a resolution 25-74 awarding the sale of $6,215,000 in general obligation improvement in water revenue bonds series 2025A fixing their form and specifications directing their execution and delivery and providing for their
payment. Second motion by Carlson a second by Armstrong. Is there discussion on this? excitement. That's a good one. Okay, good. Nice. The money's good, Mr. Mayor. Council Grisco, you if you
want some discussion, it's a short meeting. So, I'll just say um never really excited about borrowing so much money. I mean, year after year. So, uh obviously the the interest rate is favorable to us right now to get these projects on. We got to get them done. Uh, but I'd like to see us take a little
bit more aggressive stance and try to not borrow quite as much in bonding year-over-year for these street construction projects. Okay. All right. Any other discussion? All in favor signify by
saying I. I opposed. And that motion carries. Thanks, Nick. Thank you. Look at that. Look at the time. All right, we have item four to consider. Resolution 25-72 and
25-73 accepting the MPCA grant for a CCTV truck and approving the budget amendment. Uh, Mr. Hammer, are you doing this one? Yes, I am, Mr. Mayor. Council, as discussed with you briefly in work session a couple of weeks ago, uh we were
um successful in getting a grant from the MPCA for 225,000. There's a little bit of a city kicker in that. We're required to chip in about 25,000. When I spoke with you last time, I was expecting around 325, but there's some software we're going to need to integrate it into our GIS. So, I wanted
to incorporate that all in here. So, the total for that package is going to be 335,000. That's the budget amendment we're requesting. Um, with this comes our own ability to do in-house inspections. It helps with our televising. We control the schedule. We control the data. We're spending over
the last four years on average $100,000 a year contracting this work. Uh, I I don't want to give you the in the indication we're going to spend every save every nickel of that because there are still are some areas and wetlands and other places that we would still continue to contract that. But, um, it
gives us the control over this. It improves some of our insurance requirements. Um, so we've we've got a delta in here of about 110,000. We are currently in for the Creek wershed district to to match this. Um, and that would be 75,000. Their board meets on
that on June 9th. Um, so regardless irregardless of whether that occurs or not, the city has a has about a $35,000 minimum amount and $110,000 maximum amount if we're unsuccessful in getting that that watershed district. Uh
I believe that return comes around very quickly uh to pay ourselves back. It gives us a new piece of equipment to solve emergency issues as well as just annual maintenance pre pre-planning for our recon projects. Um it's a good deal for us. It's a good piece of equipment
to have in our arsenal. And so I'm happy to recommend moving forward with the budget amendment as well as approving the agreements. And I'm happy to answer any questions you might have on this. Nice. Any questions for Mr. Hammer? Mr. Mayor. Councilman Novc, Mr. Himemer, um I am all for getting this, but I'm just
curious. I know that uh police cars, fire trucks, other public works types of trucks that we have are set to a certain lifespan. Um I was just wondering, do we have any idea how long this piece of equipment is going to be lasting? Council member Novc, the the truck
itself and and kind of the camera equipment is probably a minimum of 10 years. Uh but there's some software things that will go into that as well. uh as I mentioned a little in the work session is um we've got a lot of this large diameter lining that we have. I don't know that this is a piece of
equipment we need forever necessarily. So uh we might get to that 7 to 10 year time frame as we start to look at is this a re replacement and we might determine yeah it is or it might be no that was good for the time that it lasted and it's it's no longer needed
for that purpose. So, I I'm cognizant of of those things, not to mention the place to park it and the insurance and putting someone's butt in the seat and all those other things. So, I I know the extra things that come with it. Um, I think for right now, for what we need, I think this is a really good solution for
us. Thank you. Any other questions for Mr. Hammer? Mr. Mayor, Council Member Gresco. Um, I kind of had the same question, too. So, I did a little bit of research and it looks like these units can run as last as long as 15 years. So, I think we're going to get a lot of life out of this.
My question to Mr. Heamer, though, is with our new policy, our recent policy of offering our residents a scan of their lines when we do road construction, will is this piece of equipment set up for that kind of work as well, or is it just the big mainline
stuff? Council member, there there's an attachment. It's it's kind of a lateral fire, so you can go down and you can shoot it up the laterals. That's since we don't own those, that wasn't something I I necessarily wanted to start investigating because I think once
you go down that, you're probably stuck in that. So, ownership of the resident is from their home all the way out to the main. Uh if if there's some desire from the council that it I want to say it's like a 20 or $25,000 attachment that would do that for us. But for
$225 a piece to have a contractor go do that from the inside out, then we can see it from both sides. Um, I just didn't think we were ready necessarily ready for it or needed that for our service lines. Okay. Well, yeah, thanks for answering that. I was I was just wondering. I mean, obviously, we're
going to save quite a bit year-over-year just having this piece of equipment. So, I think it makes sense. Good job getting the grant and everything like that. And I also, you know, did some research on these trucks when I first saw the price tag on this thing. saying, "Wow, what are what are we getting for all this money?" Uh, but they range from maybe
$100,000 all the way up to like close to $500,000. So, appreciate you, you know, spending the taxpayer money wisely and getting what we need, getting the grant money in place, and hopefully we can get the Creek Wershed District's uh donation in on this as well. I I
don't know if we talked about that yet. It'll probably be on a future agenda, maybe two weeks from now, to consider that. Either way, you'll get an update on it in two weeks. All right. All right. Any uh any other questions for Mr. Hammer? Mr. Mayor Council
Butler, I move that we adopt resolution number 25-72 accepting the MPCA grant in authorized staff to execute the associated agreement and to adopt resolution number 25-73 amending the 2025 sewer fund budget. Second motion by Butler and a
second by Novak. Is there further discussion on this? Mr. Mayor, council member Scoiac, was there any uh budgeted amount in the 2025 budget for this? Uh, council member Scoak, thank you. I failed to mention that piece. There was
nothing for this. This wasn't anything we had applied for, I think, in February when we applied for this. Um, but again, it is out of the storm water sanitary utility fund. Uh, and if you recall, we had a $2.5 million budget for our lining that came in at one.5 million. So there
was savings there. I think there was a couple hundred,000 under our estimate on the recon project. So there's there's surplus I I guess I shouldn't call it surplus necessarily, but there are budgeted capital funds that are already in the budget for this. So this isn't
necessarily new money. It's just repurposing some existing money. Okay, makes sense. Thanks for the explanation. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. I opposed. And that
motion carries. And we're up to open mic public comment. Anybody here for open mic this evening. This now is the time. All right. Let me just get my uh little introduction here. Open mic provides an opportunity for the public
to address the city council on subjects that are not part of the regular meeting agenda. and the public is invited to express any concerns they may have which are relevant to the affairs, policies or practices of the city of Rapids. Remarks will be limited to three minutes. You're already at the podium.
Please just give us your name and address and then you get three minutes. Jim Hutchinson, uh 2908 109th Avenue Northwest. And I just This isn't really a complaint. I wanted to say what a nice presentation the public works building
had. We went up there. We didn't know what to expect. I was impressed with what I saw and uh it was pretty well handled and looked like everybody had a good time. Nice. Excellent. People don't always come to complain, you know. So, this is
okay. I just wish I had a little more time so I could have told my neighbors, "Hey, get up there. Get Get We're there every year. Once a year, right? If you want something special, give me a call. going to be nice like that for the
public works. There's favors. It I thought it was I thought it was pretty well done, though. It was It was a nice nice facility. I didn't realize it was so damn big. Yeah. It's nice to see where all your tax dollars are going, isn't it? Or Oh, geez. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody
else here for uh open mic? All right, then we'll close that. I don't have any other reports on previous open mics and we're up to other business. Thank you, Mr. Right. Anybody got any think for other business? Mr. Mayor, council member Carlson, first
concert in the park is this Thursday, 7 o'clock. Church of Cash. Thank you. Tribute to Johnny Cash at 7:00. Um the county parks, you know, wave they they waved the uh fee to get in for parking
on those nights. So, uh, by all mean by all, uh, by all means, u, you know, grab a couple lawn chairs, grab a blanket, go hang out. It's always wonderful. Um, and you can include dinner if you plan on getting there early. Concessions, concessions at 5:30 by the
Northstar Lions Club and that's just a very nice time. Yeah. And right now the the the concert series is being displayed, so it's nice. Is that it? That's it, Mr. Mayor. Nice. Anything else for other business?
Mr. Stew, it might also be worth mentioning the summer in the city meeting series is starting next week. So, we'll be out at Thor Park from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. All the various city departments are there. Elected officials. We'll have entertainment for the kids, ice cream, water, a brief
presentation, um several other things. It's it's really worth attending, especially if you're just an interested resident, but also bring children along, too, because we'll have police vehicles, fire vehicles, dump trucks, things like that. So, it's a good time. We'll have three of those this summer. Next one will be on June 24th at Lions Queen
Creek, and the last one this summer, July 22nd, at Parkside Park. Yeah. Come on down. The fire department will have ice cream treats and there'll be cold water and and uh yeah, it's it's if you have any questions about anything in the city, it's just about everybody is
there. Somebody there, somebody can find the answer. That's right. Other business. Motion to adjurnn. Second. Motion by Carlson, a second by Butler to adjurnn. All in favor signify by saying I. We're
adjourned.