okay we'll call the March 24th uh 220 2025 meeting to order i'll stand for the pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one
nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all make a motion to approve tonight's agenda second a motion and a second mayor if I could and I appreciate you're moving pretty
quickly but I uh believe that we're looking at taking one of the consent agenda items 6H and moving it to uh 4C as an action item that is my understanding
okay with that if uh Council Member Mundle could move as amended I'll amend the motion to move uh consent agenda item 6H to
uh 4C under presentations and public hearings under the fire department monthly report second got a motion and a second any discussion hearing none all those in
favor i presentations the audit uh Mr mayor members of council thank you um the 2024 annual financial report has been prepared audited and is presented for review and approval for tonight's meeting abdo's Kelsey Larson
is here to present the audit report to council good evening everybody so my name is Kelsey Larson and I'll be going through the 2024 financial statement audit with you tonight um as you may notice you do not have the 2024 finalized audit with you
today uh we are still waiting on PAR to release the fire relief uh reports so we can make our final pension adjustment so once we get that done we will finalize the audit however it does not change any of the numbers that you're going to see today any questions on that
awesome um so we'll keep it brief tonight we're just going to go through your audit opinion responsibility we'll go through each of your funds and then also some key performance indicators as well so I do just like to start off reminding you that as auditors we are engaged to opine on your financial
statements on whether or not they're presented fairly and free from material misstatement we do this through a series of testing such as talking with your employees we sample your invoices we get confirmations from your banks um and the county really anything that we deem
necessary to form that opinion and like years past we did issue an unmodified opinion stating that your financial statements are presented fairly along with our regular audit testing we're also required to test the city's compliance on Minnesota statutes
and we had no instances of non-compliance noted there so digging into the numbers here uh this first chart is going to show you your general funds fund balance as a percentage of next year's budgeted expenses so you currently do have that
policy of 40% however um you're in that yellow line um that's above that 40% and the last three years you've really been able to increase that fund balance ending the year at 75% and then digging a little bit deeper into that increase in your fund balance
we have your general fund budget to actual so you had budgeted for a decrease in your fund balance of 225,000 however ended the year with an increase of just over 500,000 the main contributor there is going to be your revenues coming in over budget
by 460,000 this is mainly due to building permits and interest income coming in higher than you had anticipated for and then also your expenditures came in under budget by about 228,000 and that was due to public
safety personnel expenses um I know you had budgeted for a community outreach position however that was not fulfilled during the year uh contributing to that variance so overall ending the year with fund balances of 5.2 million then we can dig a little bit
deeper into your general fund revenues so overall a decrease in revenues of about 225,000 and that's going to come from that intergovernmental line as you would receive the public safety aid in 2023 um overall every other type stayed
pretty consistent a little bit of an increase in your property taxes um that's just going to be levy increases and then delinquent collections as well general fund expenditures increase about 290,000 throughout the year most of those departments stayed very
consistent from 23 to 24 the bigger variance coming from public safety as you had an increase in the police uh protection services um but you had budgeted for those um so they did not affect your year-end
increase next we have your capital project fund balances um so just listing all of those projects out there going through a few of the larger variances we have your street capital fund did have an increase of about 100,000 and that's mainly going to be some transfers in for
current and future costs we have your municipal state aid street improvement which decreased almost 200,000 and that's just going to be timing of expenses and then those state aid draws coming in some of your non- major funds um the park acquisition had
a pretty good increase of 154,000 that's going to be those park dedication fees coming in and then lastly that park capital fund decrease of about 80,000 and that's just due uh to some of those projects you had spending down that fund balance so I think you had a beach
project and then the Maynard Park as well and then that bottom chart just shows you where those uh fund balances are sitting so it really depends on the revenues that are coming in um such as like bonds would be restricted um like a transfer in that you assign for a
certain purpose would show up under assigned and then the unassigned fund balance is going to be any deficits you have so that's going to be that MSA fund and that 181st Street project those will be corrected with future draws on that state
aid next we have your special revenue fund balances so that's going to be recycling and your HA fund the HA fund did increase about 80,000 that's due to the fund receiving the local housing aid this year and all of that fund balance is sitting in
restricted next we have your governmental debt service fund so just the two bonds outstanding ending the year just under 15 million of a liability both of those mature in 2040 and then we also have your next 10 years of debt payments uh sitting around the 1
million to about 1.3 million for the next 10 years moving into our enterprise funds here the next couple of slides are going to look similar as we have the two similar chart types here so that first top chart is going to show you kind of what's coming in versus what's going out
so the left side being your operating receipts and the right side being your operating costs as an enterprise fund also known as a business type fund we do want to see these making money for the city as a lot of these funds pay for a lot of the improvements they have a lot
of equipment needed in these funds so they need that cash reserve to be able to pay for those things so looking at the water fund we do see positive margins with that left side being higher than the right overall operating costs
have been pretty consistent with even a decrease from 23 to 24 and then moving on to the bottom graph here we have your cash balance compared to our minimum target balance which we have as 50% of your operating costs so as you've been able to keep
those operating costs pretty low that minimum target balance is pretty low to the bottom there and then a pretty sharp increase each year um ending the year at a cash balance of 2.2 million the sewer fund um in 2024 looked
a little different as you had a higher debt payment on that reserve capacity loan um overall if we took that out you would have positive margins there as you've been able to keep those operating costs pretty consistent so I think as long as you have um a plan in order to
pay that debt I think this fund will do fine as we can see even with that larger debt payment your cash did increase um to 1.3 million at year end and is still meeting that target balance the Ice Arena fund is one that
kind of flip-flops with positive and negative margins i do know with 2024 you took those u management expenses in house i think as you kind of learn that you can hopefully find your sweet spot and those expenses hopefully be a little
bit lower i also know that rentals were down this year just with unfulfilled teams and teams practicing elsewhere so if we can get those revenues back up and then kind of find where our expenses need to be hopefully we can get that back up to positive margins
um with your cash that is trending downwards just with those negative margins um in your operating costs and receipts however still meeting that target balance then your internal service funds here we just have your cash balances
those are sitting right under 2.5 million for the year and most of that sitting in that equipment replacement fund and then we have your cash investment uh balances by fund type so ended the year with a $1.7 million increase in cash and
that's mainly going to be in those enterprise funds that we talked about with those large increases in cash next couple slides are going to be some key performance indicators i will just let you know the state hasn't released the 2023 data yet so we can only compare you to your peers from 2020
to 2022 the first couple here are going to be around your taxes so your tax rate has been trending down however stayed very consistent from 23 to 24 in that 31 percentile and you have been staying right at the top of the Anoka County
cities and then taxes per capita staying very consistent um right at the same level as the county and then your debt performance indicators overall very consistent as you have not released or issued any more
debt in these last 5 years um so debt per capita has stayed um right in that 1,200 range and then debt service expenditures as a percentage of current expenditures a little bit of a decrease from 21 to 22 and then they're on very
consistent and lastly we have some expenditures indicators the first one current expenditures per capita you've been able to keep that right at that $500 mark and you are well below uh the class 3 cities and then also Anoga County cities and lastly capital
expenditures per capita really hard to compare to cities uh just because the timing of projects is going to be varying from city to city while you have higher expenses um your peers might be having lower expenses so they kind of average out right at that 400 um but you
obviously in 2021 had a project or more equipment to buy um so you're seeing a higher year there and then 22 to 24 you've been able to keep it low and that is all I have for you guys unless there's any questions
i do have a couple of questions be and it's mostly because I didn't understand some of the verbiage on here for instance why are capital assets decreasing i you know and there was some places on here that had an increase and
a decrease and that didn't make sense but on page 21 it showed our capital assets decreasing and I thought capital assets were more permanent so can you explain that to me yeah so capital assets um we capitalize something to spread costs across um like 10 15 years
as they're they're a big expense so instead of expensing that right away showing the decrease in your um fund balances we spread that cost across 101 15 years so what you're seeing each year is there's a chunk of each asset getting depreciated and so we're showing that
expense each year all right and so I don't know if you can answer this but the ice arena operating expenses have increased i thought when the city took it over it would decrease so can you tell me where that increase
occurred or was it in Yeah I can't off the top of my mind i don't know Mike if you know of anything um yeah for the for the most part the reason for the increase in expenses is there was um we obviously overlapped a little bit with the Gibson management contract and then when we transition to you know
internally running it so there's a little bit of overlap there to get the operation back to the city running it the main reason where the why the cash actually decreased by that by that amount this year is because we bought a a scoreboard at the beginning in 2024
again that's just a one-time uh expenditure so moving forward into 2025 depending upon what the needs are obviously I don't think we're going to be buying a scoreboard again but in order to kind of get those operating revenues back in line with expenses we bumped up the um the prime time ICE
rental fee from 192 per hour to $210 per hour so with that along with um again some of those one-time expenditures kind of going away where we're looking at getting those uh revenues back in line with the expenditures thank you yep and
then I really hate asking dumb questions but I don't know what it means what is a overexpenditure an overexpendure yes i've I saw that in a couple different places what is overexpenditure what does that mean i just need to define I think it's when
your expenditures are over your revenues if you're looking at the financial statements i would have to see exactly where you're talking about to make sure that's correct okay well it's on page 26 but anyways that that makes more sense it I didn't know if it had to do with
we're spending more money than we're supposed to or if it's over the revenue or if it's over what we're supposed to spend i didn't understand what it meant then can you explain the or somebody explain the antenna leases because I didn't
understand that whole page because there's they mature and I just didn't understand what that was talking about yeah so you are renting antenna space on your water towers and you're getting money in for that so it is a new Gazsby standard i think it was two or three
years ago where we had to record those on your books to show um the live or actually your um a receivable because you're receiving the money um so they're really long leases usually and they have a lot of um extension periods so
basically what that's doing is we're taking what we assume you're going to get so if we say the latest maturity is 2040 say we're going to say you're receiving this much money we're going to give it a present value calculation and then we're going to put that on your
books as a receivable so for the future years those are estimations then and not Yeah because they do sometimes the interest rates changing or the monthly amount is changing so it is a little bit of an
estimate um but it should be hopefully pretty accurate to the present value of those that money all right and then my final question is you have some places in the same column it had an increase and then it
also had a decrease and that's on page one an example is on page 57 and I think I saw it on a couple different charts but do you know how does that work where you can have an increase and a decrease simultaneously do you know what you were looking at um
let me go back to the get out of this is it capital S yeah I think it's this line here probably construction in progress okay so construction in progress so you're increasing so you're um putting money towards a project and then once that project is done we
capitalize it so that's when it's decreased from construction in progress so if something's decreased from construction in progress then it's getting added as a capital assets being depreciated down below okay yeah construction yeah a lot of and then like
a capital asset being being depreciated if you buy um like a machinery or equipment position that's going to be in the increases but if you sell something that's going to be in the decreases so we don't show it net we show kind of what you added and also what you
disposed of right okay thank you for this specific line item this is all with your street projects so as your street projects are kind of going um this construction progress is utilized this line item so if they're not done at the end of the year we increase that amount
and if they are completed at the year end then we take them off this construction progress and actually move them to a fixed asset got it thank you yeah anything else so overall how does the city look financially i think it looks really well i think um as you can
see your fund balance in the general fund has been increasing exponentially i think especially with you guys being able to keep your costs pretty low i think with inflation and everything that we've been seeing that's been pretty rare so for you guys have been able to keep that consistent um even decreasing
in some areas and then uh a $500,000 increase in your fund balance um you're sitting you're sitting good thank you Mike so any other discussion on this i need a motion to uh accept the audit
i'll make a motion to approve uh resolution number 2025-15 accepting and adopting the 2024 city of East Bethl annual financial report second we have a motion and a second any further discussion on that
none heard all in favor i I opposed motion passes thank you guys thank you thank you sheriff's report good evening mayor and members of city council february we had a total of 318 calls for service which was down from
the 368 that we had uh the month prior we handled two thefts two assaults and responded to 23 traffic crashes of varying severity made a total of 15 arrests for miscellaneous violations uh we conducted 183 traffic stops in the city which resulted in the issuance of
29 separate traffic citations couple of our notable calls this past month uh occurred on the 7th of February at 9:08 p.m deputy Martinez stopped a vehicle in the 20500 block of Highway 65 Northeast for some driving conduct while speaking
with the driver Deputy Martinez noted the order of an alcoholic beverage and observed the driver to be displaying signs consistent with alcohol impairment deputy Martinez had the driver step out of the vehicle and perform standardized field sobriety testing the driver initially refused but eventually did get
out of the car the driver refused any additional testing was transported to jail and booked on um the DWI test refusal on the 11th of February uh at 1:21 p.m Deputy Maten was dispatched to an address in the 20900 block of Okinawa
Street on a motor vehicle theft report the reporting party reported that their vehicle had been stolen by one of their family members deputy Mo Bratton collected the necessary information on that vehicle entered it as stolen uh with our dispatch center approximately two hours later the vehicle was
recovered in Max County and the suspect was arrested the suspect was transported to Lo's detention facility and was released to staff there and then finally on the 27th of February at 9:12 p.m Deputy Martinez stopped a vehicle in the 18700 block of Sand Hill Parkway
Northeast for another equipment violation deputy Martinez spoke with the driver who provided an ID which clearly wasn't uh who they say they were deputy Martinez questioned the driver and noted inconsistencies in their story while trying to explain exactly who they were
he later learned that the driver had an active warrant out of Mer County for their arrest he arrested the driver at the stop location for the outstanding warrant and false information the driver was transported to jail where they were released to staff without incident so a little bit lower on calls this month but
again we saw an uptick in self-initiated field activity which is good to see especially with the warmer weather right around the corner um and if there's no questions if I can't answer anything I'd like to introduce my partners here i have the distinct pleasure of uh having
nine of our deputies here accompany me this evening now everyone these are the deputies that serve you in your city these are the deputies that are assigned the East Bethle contract in one way shape or form so Uh this year is going to be a little bit different in years past uh I've read their bios i I've
called them up one at a time and read their bios but this year we're going to change it up and we're going to have them say a few words about themselves i think it's it's a nice change of pace and you guys can put a name to a face a little bit easier um when they're up here rather than listening to me gab like you do once a month so uh Raleigh
Sornson come on up and join me good evening Mr mayor Councel i'm Deputy Raleigh Senson i've been with the sheriff's office 22 years 28 years total in law enforcement um done a numer numerous assignments with the county
from um FTO and a fraud investigator court working in courts i was explorer for 15 years prior to that I was in the army for nine years so I've been for the last since 2012 minus three
years I was in investigations i enjoy it out here i I grew up in Hamlet grew up in the county so and I we're supposed to say a fun fact about myself i just realized tonight that I've been doing the job longer than half my partners alive so kind of makes me feel old it is
what it is it's It's a fun group out here derek Lean come on up i like it better when I sit there awkwardly um I'm investigator Lean um I sit behind a desk while they do all the real work um I've been with the county
for a little over eight years april 1 be 10 years total law enforcement experience um I did two years in Willist North Dakota just right after college at the office like I said investigations i'm a firearms use of
force active shooter instructor um new on the dive team or the marine unit haven't done anything to the pool but carried a lot of rope around about a year interesting fact I'm part of a thousand pound club as of last
year so I deadlift 435 pounds my bench 275 and uh my squat was 325 over a,000 pounds so it's my big boy Matt [Laughter]
Badson uh my name is Matthew Madson i've been with County Sheriff's Office since November of 2014 i started in our jail division as a detention deputy so from November 2014 to April
2017 uh that was when I got hired on patrol um so I've been a deputy for just about eight years now um some of my specialties include uh I'm a part of our North Command mobile field force unit and recently as
a good training officer as well um well interesting fact about me I guess uh my wife is actually on the East Buffalo Fire Department loving it um and I grew up here in East so the first 25
years of my life here so definitely holds a special place in my heart happy to serve you guys tyler Borgerson thank you sir um mayor council members um my name is Tyler Gorgesen i've been with the sheriff's office for just over
four years now like my previous partner I started out in the jail um worked one year there before transferring and getting hired on to the uh patrol division this will be my second year uh now serving the East Bethl power shift
which is a 2:30 p.m to 2:30 a.m uh shift um and like again my previous partner I am also part of the North Command mobile field unit um I was in the Army beforehand as a paratrooper for four and
a half years um and an interesting fact about myself is last year I woke with my wife to the island of Bora Bora in French Polynesia and we did not tell our family or friends i think we have a couple more left tell
them to move up would you i can't see them michael Seafolk hi I'm Deputy Mike Seafol i've been with the sheriff's office going on three years this summer been a sworn peace officer in Minnesota for a little over six years now with the agency before
here i'm happy to call you know county sheriff's office home uh currently I'm a field training officer force instructor on the mobile field force team and then a drone pilot as well an interesting fact about me is that I am quite the cribage player
thanks Mike Gio i'm Giovanni Martinez i've been with the sheriff's office for been a deputy for about nine months now i've been a cso before that for two years i don't have any cool specialties yet since I'm still pretty new but um I'm hoping one day for
a K9er squad and then the fun fact is I before any of this I went to high school and was a police explorer down in Arizona about two or three years or so thanks sergeant Justin Nelson
good evening ladies and gentlemen sergeant Justin Nelson with the Noa County Sheriff's Office i've been with the Ina County Sheriff's Office now for just over 13 years uh the last three of which I've been patrol sergeant prior to that I spent several years as the uh of the East public contract deputies this
was always my favorite contract to serve um I've been a total licensed law enforcement for 18 years prior to this I was with Max County for five years i'm a firearms instructor use a sports instructor used to be a diver on the dive team and I'm a former
FTO fun fact about me is I raise chickens on the side um so to come full circle that's our working staff uh these men and women here are are uh of the highest quality um they serve
with passion and um truly care about the citizens of East Bethl and those of our surrounding communities so um we appreciate the time allowing us to uh I guess introduce ourselves so thank you everyone last but not definitely last but not least uh our boss Chief Deputy
Bill Jacobson would like to say a few words thanks Elsie good evening members of the council uh mayor citizens of uh East Bethl it's good to be with you tonight i'll be respectful of your time again my name is Bill Jacobson i serve as the chief deputy for the Ina County Sheriff's
Office i've been serving in that capacity until just after uh Brad Weise joined us as our sheriff for Inoka County and uh I just wanted to stop out tonight and um and thank uh the city of East Bethl for your your long-standing partnership with the Inova County
Sheriff's Office i think that that partnership has been um beneficial for both the city and for our for our deputies because it brings highly trained and professional deputies in to your community to protect and serve the folks that live and work here and um
I've been a police officer for approximately 20 years and I tell you one thing it does go by pretty quick and I will say I'm very proud of the folks that uh that serve your community and serve across Ina County and um again thankful for your long-standing partnership with us with that I'm happy
to stand for any questions what's your fun fact fun fact let's go with I actually uh huge I'm huge dog guy we have two dogs we have a great Dane and he's over 100 pounds and then we have a four-pound
Chihuahua any guesses who runs the show at the house the Chihuahua it's the four-pound Chihuahua absolutely um so that's pretty fun I guess with that thank you any questions from the public
thank you deputies if you don't mind coming back in please thank [Applause]
you thank you all very much we appreciate your support more than you know thank you oh thank you thank you okay fire report good evening mayor city council and community my name is Jerry Strike i'm
assisting with administrating the fire department uh fire officers and I are working closely together to uh keep the fire department moving forward i want to take a moment uh you see in the report you see the uh February
uh report regarding the call volume that we have uh the fire department continues to go to all types of of incidents so I thought mayor if I could I would first go through a list of things uh talking about your great fire department so in
the state of Minnesota there's approximately 20,000 firefighters and uh in 735 fire departments across this great state protecting 5.3 million citizens not to mention those that travel abroad
and uh come and visit and spend their cabin time and so on in uh with our Great Lakes of the amount of firefighters that are in this state there's only about 2500 of them that do it as a career the firefighters in this state
are what we call volunteers so the state has two definitions that represent a firefighter they're either a career firefighter those 2500 or they're a volunteer which means it's not their career the East
Bethl Fire Department established 1959 has been a volunteer department so they're commi they're community responders they're citizen responders people just like you and I who have a job and go to soccer and go to football
and karate and have to mow the lawn and do all that stuff but in the event of an emergency they carry either a pager or they have an app on their phone that's directly connected to the 911 center and when you when someone in this community calls 911 they tone out the appropriate
response for that type of emergency whether it be uh someone that fell down to a crash to uh shooting whatever it may be um the citizens come together in three stations in this community because
this community is broken into two geographical areas uh it doesn't come with a ton of pay and it doesn't come with a lot of um I'd say gratitude meaning uh sometimes it's it's a lonely job right but most of the
people in my experience are doing it because they want to serve their community and they want to gain extra skills I too was one of those people I graduated from high school I went into the army and served as a combat medic I came out at the age 19 I was fortunate
enough to get a job as a firefighter and in order to become a career firefighter it's almost like signing a professional football contract because they're hard to find but I spent my entire life in the fire service moving up the ranks
i've held every title that this county would recognize i grew up in this county i live 11 miles from here i spent 32 years in the fire service with approximately 15 of the those years as a chief officer meaning I've at my first
chief's job at 37 I managed the largest fire district in the state of Minnesota multi-ity district and then I went to the city of Andover to help them get through some things and I retired at at uh 32 years and I moved into the private
sector and since then January 31st of 2020 20 we all know what happened then right the pandemic everything I was planning to do stopped but I'm happy to say today I've worked with over 30
communities since I've retired from everything from starting a fire department from scratch in the city of Adiggo to helping Delano get through some challenges and hire a new chief to uh to Circle Pine Centerville and more
anywhere from starting a station to designing a brand new fire station I've done it not only that when I was a chief I've never had a recruitment problem i've focused heavily on recruitment and made sure that we could
balance the time of the firefighters so that they could enjoy their time with us i started the Anoka County Fire Investigation Team and I spent many years as an investigator decades as an investigator trained by the the National
Fire Academy the ATF in fact just three weeks ago I got back from investigating the Capitol insurrection in Liberia Africa i'm very well experienced in this field
i started the In Noa County Fire Training Academy and the EMS Academy that every new recruit goes to in this county we're on class 26 i sat on the board of directors for the state fire chiefs association i was on the executive committee i sat on the board
of directors for the Minnesota Fire Investigators i work across USA Africa uh and and and this is not the first time I've been in the position I'm in i need to make that clear because there's a lot of misinformation that's out there
and I want to settle some of that one I came here about a year ago at the request of the city administrator who wanted to follow us the request of the council and I was told at the time it was to ensure our firefighters had what
they needed understand the fire service better and then help them even do it better and during that time even though the paper recently wrote that I only met with or I only did the assessment I actually met with every council member i
met with 10 firefighters in PE in in person we had 85% of them take the survey and uh I met with the chief and I offered my mentorship to the chief
so when you say that um no one knew what was going on in the department the data was collected based off uh a whole whole bunch of people um the community is no longer safe it's just not true the community is
safe the firefighters are continued to respond uh hiring me as the interim doesn't make sense i think it makes perfect sense i'm 11 miles away i had time i conducted a study i know the area i've lived here my whole life and uh
it's almost like the plumber you get a you get a uh a soft water system in it doesn't work later who are you going to call again you're going to call the plumber that you worked with so they called me and I I happen to have enough time to do it uh but only until June
because in June I have other contracts I need to pay attention to [Music] um there's uh been discussion about medical related incidents and that I want to cut out all medical rel uh incidents i want you to know this i have
no authority to do anything this is the governing body not me so I have no authority to do that however we go to a lot of calls that statistics show and research show don't provide a lot of benefit what can a firefighter do with a
bleeding tattoo scab what can a firefighter do with someone who has a pain in their foot when they're volunteers at 2 in the morning so when we look at providing services we look at balancing out the service to make sure that we can
maintain the volunteer model so the fire department report right now we have 29 firefighters i will say we lost one just this week um we've recently concluded all the policies and procedures we're going to
talk about the emergency operations plan um spring is coming so training's picking up they have training tonight they're doing water rescue with the sheriff's office uh I've worked with the sheriff's office for years i love the sheriff's office they're great people
we've uh we've dug a lot of scenes in this town i've actually investigated many fires in East Bethl including fire fatalities uh and uh they're just great people to work with spring is near disasters could come with tornadoes so
we're working on the emergency operation plan uh and we'll talk about that in a minute but this week we had a fire caused by uh a recreational fire so they left their recreational fire to burn overnight it ended up catching the yard
on fire which eventually burned the garage down and that's the second one that's occurred recently in East Bethville so we have to be you have to make sure that your recreational fire is put out because it can smolder for a week so put it out rake it out and make
sure it doesn't it doesn't burn any longer so uh mayor the emergency operation plan is on the agenda to to be uh approved tonight the emergency operation plan is required by state law
uh there is no law that requires a fire department to exist but there is a law that requires an emergency plan exist and the purpose of that is to make sure we have a game plan when a disaster strikes and uh we're going to provide training
to the department heads soon i'll provide training to the city council so they know their role and then to the firefighters uh in the packet you received portions of the emergency operation plan yes the community didn't
because that's like the Vikings giving their game plan to the Green Bay Packers and uh it's a it's it's a protected plan and we want to make sure it stays that way it really talks about what essential function all of us play when there is a
disaster everything from a school shooting to a tornado we have to we have to we have to talk about it the plan is one thing and the plan can be done and sitting on the shelf but if the plan is an exercise it's not a plan so we're
going to work on training hard and in my time here will be posting the position which is really why I'm here is to help uh use my experience and the staff that's there to continue to administrate
the organization to keep it going and you know when when I wrote that report obviously there was a lot I didn't know i didn't know what I didn't know and I'm told that whatever was occurring at time was going on a year and a half before I wrote the report and that re that report
is a a little snapshot in time of what was going on uh but it it provided some really good feedback right firefighters said um the number one thing to focus on is not a six-wheel ATV it's not two more
dollars an hour it's not it's holding people accountable right um you know we had the 80% say there is a bully in the organization that's a concern that's an organizational threat if you want to lose volunteers create a reality TV show
they'll go away overnight um and we want to make sure that we're consistently looking at all of our organizations and I'm the outside view i come in peace um I'm the outside view when I got here I knew nobody i didn't know the chief i didn't know the city
administrator i knew none of the council members of course I'm sorry Arty i know Arty from a long time ago because him and I served this county for a long time um and uh Council Member Urkel you and I should have coffee together i'd like to talk to you because you're the only one
I haven't personally met with absolutely so I'd love to do that before I leave and and I'm here for I don't know maybe 60 days but I want to make an impact and I want to make sure that when the new person comes in the organization is set in stone all of our assets are protected
our inventories done our policies are in place our EOP is done and we can start to move forward um and and uh continue to serve as we have since 1959 it's a great department it really is there's a lot to do and I think people uh we're
we're going to be doing a recruitment campaign soon you're starting to see signs around the neighborhood and um I just want to tame down the social media a little bit because all of those posts that go out have an impact when someone searches and and they say I want to be
an East Bethl firefighter and they see those social media posts um it just doesn't look good and I would appreciate personally this is my business and I know nobody in this room but they're saying things about me personally and my
company uh could it's just not it's it's not nice and and some of it is defaming but mayor um I need to ask for you to authorize uh or uh approve review approve and adopt the
emergency operation plan for the city of East Bethl we'll have the mayor the city administrator the fire chief and the city attorney review it once it's approved uh they can adopt it and we'll use that as the plan to move forward with our training any questions or comments
well I have a question what if because we haven't seen the whole thing what if there's something in there that we totally disagree with that thinks that we think this should not be in something for East Bethl because we're more rural we're more whatever reason you know what if something like that happens do we
bring it back and we just say "Okay we want to take this out or how will that work?" Yep ideally the the emergency operation plans are pretty standard from the state level down to the county down to the community most of the front end of those plans are very similar like if
there what is a disaster and it defines what a disaster is but when we get into the bones of it and the meat of it it's it's what the essential function is for each one of of you compared to the department heads you're the policy
makers you may for example have to use the ice arena for something you may have to dig up the park you spent millions of dollars in to to get dirt to bring somewhere those are the things that you need to you know are going to stay on a high level on where
the firefighters and I told them that I was a little late getting here because I was meeting with the officers but their essential function is not medical calls when there's a disaster it's rescue and fire and keep in mind they're the only ones that can wear an air pack in this
community and enter what we call an IDH environment immediately dangerous to life and health and when when we're we're we're focusing on balance if they're doing too much of one thing they lose the skill on what we really need
those people to do when the call comes out so uh to to answer your question it's the last few pages of that where you'll see what the council members role your name may even be in it that says what our role is but if you're not uh
comfortable with it you'd call me and we'll work it out thank you i'll go through it with you paper piece by piece if you'd like anyone else so you need from me the pool yep i I need uh someone to go ahead uh mayor
council members uh yeah we'll need a uh motion and a second to uh authorize approval of the emergency operating uh procedure uh plan subject to uh review approval and adoption by the mayor the
city administrator the interim fire chief any other applicable law enforcement and city attorney understand I I hope the public understands that uh the crisis management plan or the emergency operating plan whether it be state down to local level in order to
make sure that bad actors and so forth aren't able to use that as a tool against public safety against our own security and so forth uh we need to keep it confidential at the same time to make sure that it's actually implemented those individuals I just mentioned as
well as the city councils through the training and so forth need to be apprised of what that plan is And as council member Urkl has aptly indicated make sure it's something that works for each one because when and if and hopefully it doesn't happen a crisis or
emergency occurs and all hands are on deck every hand knows what they're supposed to do um because when you have a crisis emergency you have to act you can't pause okay do we have a motion i'll make a
motion to approve the emergency what's it called the e operating procedure emergency operating procedure subject to the approval of East Bethl leadership to include the attorney city administrator and mayor
second that i have a motion a second any further discussion not hearing none all in favor i I opposed and unheard motion passes
thank you Mr mayor i just want to conclude in saying that the East Bethl Fire Department is actively doing doing a great job i've witnessed a lot of really good people uh doing good things uh we have members on the team who have been here for 44 years all the way down
to three months um actually the year the last time I looked the average tenure of this organization was almost 12 years which is almost unheard of nowadays so the b the the purpose as I said in my report we have to find
balance so people can live their life and this doesn't become their life uh a medical call uh as much as I've I've been on thousands of calls in my career um but there's a lot of research that says only 2% of all medicals in this
country are life-threatened 2% the rest of them will be picked up by an ambulance brought to a hospital and they'll sit and wait for a doctor to come to them just like the people in the waiting room will so this group will have to in the future discuss what is
important to this community it's the communities should be working your constituents be working through you to say what is important and in order to that do that we have to understand how that balances the life and and I'd like to tell people across the country that
uh our volunteers have an ATM card of time because since the pandemic time has become the new money and the fire chief has an automatic withdrawal authority to withdraw that time and if we consistently draw them
for things that don't have a lot of purpose and I don't mean that in any negative way uh such as uh maintenance and you know car washes and all that stuff compared to the types of calls that are really important we're going to have a really hard time uh finding the
staff that we need because we do need a lot of staff here in this community uh we have to really recruit and get people in the doors to keep to keep the stations going so thank you for your time go ahead you have a question if anyone in the community wants to talk to
me I have a phone feel free to call feel free to email me thank you thank you okay moving on 4 D thank you Mr mayor um the requirement of
a dog license was originally instituted to ensure that animals were vaccinated and could be easily reunited with their owners if lost out of 4,000 plus households only a few dozen residents have licenses social media and microchips combined to make a highly effective way to locate lost pets and
most pets are reunited with their owners before city staff is even notified for this reason a growing number of cities in the metro area are eliminating the requirements of obtaining dog licenses while applying for a dog license does require the owner to provide proof of a current rabies vaccination rabies are
far less common today than in the past owners already must present vet records to take out pet insurance or enroll in daycare when a dog bite is reported deputies go directly to the owner to ask about vaccinations rather than checking city records the city does not charge
for a dog license so there is no revenue generated from tracking and issuing licenses staff recommends that the city council o open the public hearing and at the conclusion review and consider approval of the proposed ordinance changes to amend article 2 dogs and
article 3 rabies control that remove the requirements for residents to register their dogs with the city and obtain city dog licenses effective January 1st 2026 do we have a motion um I think he can just open public
hearing first okay we'll open a public hearing i'm just here if you guys have any questions any questions public hearing on this hearing none we'll close the public hearing
do we have a motion make a motion to approve uh ordinance number 2025-02 um ordinance changes to amend article 2 dogs and article 3 rabies control that remove the requirements for
residents to register dogs with the city and obtain city dog licenses to be effective January January 1st 2026 second we have a motion and a second any further discussion none being
heard all those in favor say I i i i opposed none heard motion passes thank you carrie y consent agenda um public
forum public form oh excuse me i skipped that public forum um it's like we have three people um reminder that uh you're pretty much limited to three minutes public forum is limited for 15 minutes
as part of the meeting so with that said Mr lewis Thank you Mayor and Council um Jerry covered everything better than I could have uh but I really wanted to emphasize two
things regarding the fire chief emergency manager management director which is being advertised for it one one is that it's a big job a really big job it's one of the jobs that carries life and death consequences with it and that
leads me into the second thing and that's also why it pays very well too it takes me in the second thing and that is to encourage uh real due diligence this time around because last time it's been mentioned on
social media that there were unfair or good old boy kind of things going on well that's true last time when he was hired that's what was going on was people who were friends getting Mr san
the job uh when other people had applied for it who were much more qualified just in terms of their experience and that thus we wind up here two years later please do due diligence it's a really important
hire obviously I think Jerry made a good case about have his having experience uh there's a reason we chose him it came highly recommended and he didn't disappoint so uh just make it do it right this time those old timey good old
boy stuff those days are over just enough of that stuff all right that's all I have to say thank you Mr lewis thank you [Music] Chrison do I have to state my address
yes okay uh hi I'm Christon uh 2917 Sheldon Street i do live in Roseville um however I have lived in East Bethl for over 23 years as my I grew up here my family still lives here including my dad Fire Chief Rodney Sano first let me be
clear i'm not here to speak for Chief Sano over the past few months he has chosen to limit his statements to the public and attempt to remain professional something that I respect greatly in him and hope others do as well
i don't have anything to say about fire chiefs dedication and commitment to the community because if you haven't heard it already then you haven't been listening however I have very little time and there's a lot to say so I'm just going to say some facts so one
since being hired in 2022 Chief Sano only received one performance review most employers will perform at least annual performance reviews and it's very concerning especially if there are performance concerns there was only one performance review which occurred in
December 2024 there have been many false statements made about Chief Sano's qualifications according to the job description he was at the time of hire qualified and by most standards he is considered qualified it's one thing for
a community member to be misinformed but it's another entirely for members on the council to be it's equally concerning that one of the requirements of G sano's performance improvement plan was the completion of a certification he had already
completed three the capstone report inaccurately determined call volumes firefighters do not respond to 30% of every call the city gets they have to respond to 30% of all of the calls that occur during their
predetermined shifts so this means the report overestimated call volume and overestimated personnel needs this oversight is concerning as it could have been easily verified and the data being
used is impacting important decisions four findings from the report have been inappropriately skewed and positive outcomes have been ignored i agree with statements that have been made that I recommend council release the full
report on the 10th number five on the 10th fire chief Santa was given a two-hour notice that his review would be taking place that very night number six Chief Sano created a detailed report in response to his improvement
plan in respect to the new communication plan he sent it to the city administrator to be forwarded to the council mr look failed to share this report with the council prior to his review number seven Chief Sano was not given a reason for termination number
eight Chief Sano has the support and respect of the majority of the firefighters on East Bethl Fire Department this is evidenced by the 13 letter letters of support you all received number nine on my own accord I created a petition to have Chief Santa
reinstated i emailed this to you all this morning i hope you took the time to review it as of 6 p.m this evening over 500 members of the community have signed the petition council you were elected and took an oath to act in the best
interests of the community by terminating Chief Sano you failed to do so i ask that you issue a motion to reinstate Chief Sano listen to the firefighters all of the firefighters listen to the community all of the community members that
includes people who live here who work here who have family here who drive through here because this impacts everybody so mayor and council your community is watching and we all deserve better thank you
thank you for your comments sharon Metel what do I want to say it's kind of emotional for me i'm sorry i don't really know what's going on at all but all I want is peace in East Bethl
my grandpa Joe Anderson was the first mayor in 1957 and I want to just read a thing i've been looking at history this is Mayor Joe Anderson knew the village needed a fire protection and
with the aid of other safety and public um villagers a fire de fire department was organized May 7th in 1958 imagine that the firemen set to work building a
fire station at the work was done by volunteers the men worked in many ways to keep the money for the projects dances Fourth of July carnivals both races games food and
dancing the fireworks in the evening i remember going to all the events as a little girl because I am now 70 yeah my grandpa was everything to me um all money was raised to buy
equipment for the fire department it has now had three fire trucks and a rescue unit as well as trained crew volunteer firemen who answer distress calls day and night part of the fire station is
now used for town meetings and elections and um he helped the fire department my grandpa donated the the land that's on the fire department now where the fire department is the
ambulance that was my grandpa's land and I remember as a little girl there was ice skating rink even behind that they did you know and he had I think he had was a mayor three terms and do you know him already you probably
know yes I did you do remember and my um uncles were probably still in the fire department um Virgil Anderson is my uncle virgil and Wayne were both on when I joined okay and Wayne is my
godfather and I all I know is that they would peace i don't know really what's going on i left here um was on ninth grade and I graduated Morhead high i went to be a nurse my retired
nurse over 200 people died of me you know and life is short you guys life is short so you know with all all that stuff um and then
um I got married in 1976 i moved to Edgley North Dakota i was married to a farmer and I farmed over 9,000 acres plus I I was a nurse and
stuff so anyway I I've never been to a meeting this is my first in my life this the first in my life but um what what I see and stuff I I don't like it and I live in trial circle and all I
know is that the firemen beat the ambulance i and when the ambulance comes or if I see if I see stuff I'm running out out of my house if somebody's a neighbor because our retired nurse run right to them and you the fire department's there before the ambulance
they are i'm just amazed i'm really amazed and um I know Maybe you don't know but my mom is Zardell Bolen my brother is Philip Bolson if that rings a bell that
is my that is my brother that's my mom and my mom was not doing well since July on and the first first people to the house was the
firefighters they were and they live real close and and then my mom was just "Oh God." You know whatever so that's all I have to say whatever but I am here for my
grandpa without him you wouldn't have a fire department at all and you wouldn't have you wouldn't have anything he donated everything in his time any questions all right that's all I have all right
thank you very much thank you that was beautiful thanks to your grand to your grand history all right moving on agenda uh consent agenda i'd make a motion to approve tonight's consent
agenda without item H being included and I would like to pull item F i'll second and I have some issues with item F as well okay we have a motion second uh anything
else mayor council members if you could also pull um 6C minutes March 10 2025 city council meeting i'll pull C okay that said I need a motion uh with
the amended uh ones being pulled uh yeah okay so all those in favor of uh A B D E G and I I say say I I I
opposed motion passes item C uh item C the city attorney uh drafted up some changes so I would
uh make motion to approve item C with these changes that uh shall be included in the minutes and our packets so for public perusal I'll second that i have a motion and a second
any more discussion mayor council members if I could just make it clear for the record that uh the changes to the minutes as proposed by by myself or just to clarify uh sometimes those summary minutes and so forth are a little fuzzy and I wanted to make sure
that the protocols that were read and provided by uh attorney Saf Safley to the mayor um that script was very very clear and precise and the minutes were just a summary and I wanted to make sure
that that script was in the minutes so that's all that's being done there okay any more discussion all those in favor i opposed none heard motion passes item F
item F let me scroll down to it here item F is the contract uh page 58 of our packet to be B payment 1A um work performed by the consultant will
be build to East Bethl at a rate of $10,500 per month um my my question is will Mr strike be working 40 hours a week the same as the previous fire
chief because this is supposed to reflect what uh the previous fire chief was making indication from Jerry want to come up yeah might as well address that yeah be happy to so mayor city council the
understanding was I would be working 40 hours a a week as any other department would be doing uh I'm willing to change that any direction you would like it to be used i will not be offended in any way
um typically in the front of these you need uh you need some leadership to get through you know the emotions and and reset the the train back on the ship if you will or on the tracks but I'm I'm
open to any the question is and the answer is yes 40 hours okay is there was a statement made the last meeting that it would work as much or as little as needed and you I want to make sure that
if you're going to be doing the same making the same as the last chief that you were there as much as the last chief and not just putting in 10 hour 10 hours a week for example no I understand
that the um it should be mentioned though that I will not be responding as a firefighter i am a consultant and I I am not uh part of the local government so I don't have the insurance protections that a fire chief would have if he
worked for the local government as an employee so uh for example the last uh fire that we had I uh stood next to the incident commander and said "I'm your senior adviser if you need you need anything I'm right here but as much as I
want to pull a line and go in and put the fire out I just can't do it because my insurance won't allow me." So you'd still be responding to calls but in the capacity of more or less an advisor you would not be doing hands-on i will be responding to major incidents in my
personal vehicle so if you need something different than that I can't provide that for you i can provide administrative leadership coaching mentoring i can look through everything that we talked about
a year ago for my report and really get into the crux of it which I have i can develop the best recruitment plan that you've ever seen and I can I can get people to come up here i can do a lot of things and it's really a discussion to
have with the new fire chief is uh should we spend 800 or our time going to 800 calls a year or should I take that 800 hours and put it to a 280 a year schedule focusing on
motivating mentoring budget meeting with you all and those kinds of things so um I think the fire chief my recommendation to the city administrator was I think the fire chief needs to look a little different yes they're speaking on behalf of the community when there's a an
emergency but I'll also tell you that I have lieutenants who live in the community who've been on three years that may manage the most critical incident in this community at any given time so it's uh the fire chief can't be
everywhere but the fire officers are in sync with one another of course as I mentioned they need training they need some good support um we need a straight chain of command uh we can't have people calling you all and decisions making at
the top and the bottom all those things I mentioned in my report but I want to be clear to the community that I will not be responding as a firefighter just a major calls as an adviser yes okay um Mike uh does this amount fall in line in
what Chief Snow was making yeah I went back and double checked to see to reconcile what uh former Chief Sano was making wasn't he making 5471 an hour yep um so essentially 515 5471 an hour
and then the cafeteria contribution roughly comes out to $10,300 again that's not doesn't take into his contribution for f FICA or Pera but it's roughly the same amount so
we're paying for the cafeteria plan on a non full-time job no that was a that was the comparison I ran okay yeah because that because 5471 I mean for a month's service only comes up to 8753
and then you would add in the 1475 for Rod's um cafeteria mode that's where my question is we're paying Mr strike cafeteria plan too that's that's where the 10,500 came from yep
total total compensation is what we're looking at so we're not paying that we're just paying cafeteria fund we're just paying an equal amount because that was a bonus to
the former chief and so right in lie of right to make an apples to apples comparison i wanted to take his or we took his complete compensation package minus that pairup and we just added up his hourly rate and what he received for cafeteria contribution that was
10,300 that was Rods and then this contract is 10,500 okay any other discussion um so is this you you said you'd only be available until June would this be
uh a monthly contract then yes is that what we're kind of looking at yes or until you tell me to go away so I'm open i'm open i'm in a period of time of where I've ended some contracts and I have new ones starting and
um and here I am so you tell me what works best for you and I'm flexible anything else mayor council members um on the two issues that council member Mundle had had raised um since I was involved in the drafting this contract I
just wanted to let you know that Mr strike and I did talk about those duties and responsibilities and wanted to make sure that he continued to essentially assume the role as interim fire chief as far as being a command central but understanding that uh as uh council
member Mundle had indicated he's not going to be able to pull lines and and so forth and actually be actively engaged in that respect but still needed to fulfill the role of being able to be that command individual that oversees such an event if necessary with respect
to the termination uh did not want to have a situation that either party uh all of a sudden especially Mr strike all of a sudden say uh you know I'm I'm no longer going to be your interim fire chief wanted to make sure there was sufficient notice and that's why the 30
days was put in place obviously if it's mutually agreed that less than 30 days is is is it is is acceptable that of course can be you know waved down the road but but by contract at least we know that Mr strike has to give us at least 30 days notice prior to a
termination so that we can make the adjustments as a city accordingly those were the two things that uh I I spent some time with Mr strike on there were others but those were the two that brought up here
suzanne did you have some questions i do and my questions are um based on the job description the changes in red that are on here um first I don't understand why they deleted are you in the application
the fire are you in the fire chief here in Yeah fire department fire chief city of East Bethl job description yeah wait there but this is the contract for the intro oh I thought
this was all part of it no no no two separate issues okay well then I will take that back and wait till we get to that part sorry well did did we pull that agenda item i don't think G was pulled you can go ahead and
I I guess I presume this was G what f was and G were I mean this was part of F is what I presumed so how do I re figure this out then the contract is the temporary guy the next one is the one you want to hire to
replace the temporary guy so uh can we hold okay i guess we'll just have to live with this then right um well I there's a Robert's rules of
order and then they're just making sure that we do good governance okay okay right so um so you do have some questions with respect to the uh fire chief emergency management director as as advertised um what I would suggest if
in order to have a discussion on that that there be a motion to uh uh pull uh the advertisement for fire chief emergency management director back onto the agenda for for discussion and
reauthorization if that motion is then made and seconded and then passed then of course it would be brought back to this agenda for discussion and then reapproval okay uh let's get let's finish with that first yeah all right so So you want to Yeah let's get this one
done first the capstone and then we can go to that motion i thought it was all the same i'm sorry it's okay uh yeah I'm pulling let me get down there so uh right now you do have Capstone uh contract if there's not any further discussion I'll make a motion to
approve item F on the consent agenda second okay we have a motion and a second all those in favor i opposed none heard all right i'd like to make a motion to
repull item G of the consent agenda did I say that right that's fine that'll work i'll second okay we have a motion and a second to pull item G for reconsideration
for continuation okay any discussion or Yeah do we have All in favor i I none heard discussion all right my
discussion is first I don't understand why they changed it [Music] from US citizen to just legally employable in the United States and that's on page 65
legally authorized to work in the United States versus and they scratched US citizen i don't understand why that happened jerry that was you and Mr look at look did this i believe I had no involvement in that language change however I assume
there are people in in our country who have the right to work and I believe he's the way I read it he's trying to give opportunity to anyone to apply that has a right to work correct yeah technically we're following the language in the I-9 form that each employee is
required to fill out so it's not technically US citizen it is legally authorized to work in the United States all right and then my other question is um why they changed the residency
requirement of being in that area uh 30 minutes within the fire service area that that would be pretty much I think Jerry you'll confirm but that'd be pretty much you're going to eliminate your candidates yes and the League of Minnesota Cities
typically frowns from requiring someone to get a job by distance and time so the opportunity that we're going to be faced with is we have the city of Ednus Heights the city of Fidley now East
Bethl that are going to be posting at the exact same time and um this may on a scale probability scale this is probably going to be the lower salary than the three so opening it up so
people can apply the next question is a question I asked many years ago when I was told I had to live in the city to manage a three city fire district and my concern was if I if they're solely reliant on one person to manage the fire
department i'm not sure I want to be on the fire department so this position is more of an administrator ro role uh I I can almost guarantee you that you know I I'm promising to work 40 hours but I already know I'm working more than that
so this fire chief's job is um as we say in the field is is it's not for the the week these calls you get home at 5:00 and you can come back here at 6:30 to be on the job for eight hours um so we're trying to open it up so that everybody
can apply we'd love to see the 27 candidates that were once here back in the day uh I'm not sure how that's going to happen with all the movement in the county right now okay and the only reason I brought that up is because past
fire department personnel has spoken up here have said it's important to have them in close proximity to their fire station so that's why I brought that up i don't really have a problem with it especially with your explanation so thank you i I think the career chief
model is changing uh especially in you know believe it or not you're in the metro it's changing quite a bit and um this job this department is the largest department in the city there's more volunteers in this city than you have
full-time fire uh people it's a million dollar budget it's a $10 million of equipment in those stations and there's another $8 million in stations not only is this going to be a firefighter and a fire chief and by law the fire
investigator and the fire marshal by law he's now also going to be the emergency manager so it's a tough job it really is you have the weight of the shoulders on you from the time you get to work to the
time you wake up the next morning you're hoping the volunteers show up and I don't mean that to be sarcastic we don't know who's going to show up i can't tell you how many times we've sat on the scene and it felt like
hours and we're seeing it already here one one in route one person in route on a fire truck uh it's a tough job we need to open it up to people we need to have it ready for them we need to compensate them fairly and and and give them all
the tools to win and they're going to need every one of your support every one of yours to do their job well thank you and I I do agree with you about you not going on the fire calls i
think that if you are you could be the best worker in the world you could get awards left and right but if you get promoted into a CEO position and you come to work every day and do the job you were doing somebody is not doing
that CEO job and you have to do that so thank you for what you do thank you and with that I'll make a motion to approve item G on the consent agenda second for my mistake have a motion and a second any further discussion
none being heard all in favor i opposed none heard motion passes 7 A kendra i have a couple slides for you Mr mayor this is a variance for a second driveway
at 670 229th um the planning commission um did review this this the owner is asking for a second driveway for an accessory structure on this property that's guided R1 the city code only
allows one driveway and um uh we don't have a survey that wasn't provided with this application that should be standard operating procedure but this was something that came in during the interim in the planning department so we don't have a survey but it looks like the current drive is about 109 ft long
the uh planning commission reviewed this at their February 25th meeting and other than the applicant there was no one present to speak uh this is the uh location of the home and that driveway and the uh garage is planned generally in this location planning commission
voted 3 to one to recommend approval with the condition that the driveway with not exceed 12 feet in width there was I think a robust discussion about the variance standards at the planning commission meeting uh the burden of proof is on the applicant to show that they have a
practical difficulty that can only be remedied by the variance and that's where the conversation was is the request reasonable is it due to unique circumstances on the property things that don't exist on any other property in the city and will it not have a
negative impact on the neighborhood character so as we discussed uh uh some of the commissioners felt like there could be a second driveway uh coming off the main driveway this garage could be angled there were alternatives however the planning commission as a whole did
vote to recommend approval and so in front of you uh are two options a motion to adopt resolution 2518 approving the request for a variance as recommended by the planning commission with the standards and conditions in the draft resolution or
alternatively if you find that the variance standards have not been met there is a draft resolution for denial as well happy to answer any questions Mr may any questions i was out at the Well I'll make a motion to
approve this driveway second a motion and a second any further discussion i was out at the property this weekend and I took a look and it's full of trees big time everywhere and uh
it does make sense it's at a culde-sac it really doesn't interfere with anybody else's property in my opinion and if they were going to come across like had been noted before he'd be taking out more trees to try to create a
driveway where in my opinion I see nothing wrong with this that's it i agree with all that going across the front of your the front yard
it it just it not standard it no more discussion have a motion and a second all those in favor opposed none heard motion passes item
8A barnaminiums uh Mr mayor I don't have slides for this let me try to close these slides there we go uh I don't have any slides for this item uh in front of you though is a revised draft of the
barnaminium ordinance uh following our discussion at the last meeting um the changes uh do uh change the residential standard section of the ordinance to allow metal siding at our
last meeting the council generally felt like metal siding was an acceptable structure anywhere uh as long as they were not standing seam there was a comment that uh an alternate or a complimentary material should be
provided so on uh page 86 of the report is the draft language that allows metal siding and this is for all single family homes um provided it's not standing seam and that complimentary materials such as brick stone uh or wood cover at least
30% of the building's facade uh that's a number um that's based on some other ordinance standards so that's worth some disc other ordinances that we found so that's worth some discussion tonight and then the other changes uh that we made to the ordinance um allow barnuminiums
in the um as a permitted use in the A and the rural residential district um not in my staff report today was a conversation that I had with the building official who um I told him I would share that he remains concerned
about allowing barnaminiums um his two major concerns again paraphrasing for him um pole barns are a concrete slab and so I'm going to say this in
layman's terms these are not building code terms but it's a concrete slab and then you stick a wooden post in the ground in a footing and so his concern is that those wooden posts uh are not the same as a standard foundation they have a tendency in his opinion to rot
and therefore in terms of a long-term uh structural foundation it is not the same as the foundations we require under our code today and so this is a change from those concrete foundations around the perimeter of the building uh to allow
that so he has some concerns about that um uh what the code says today is it must be a solid uh per the foundation must be solid for the complete perimeter of the house and this would not be that
the second uh comment that I he asked that I share is that and we talked about this at our last two meetings there are energy code requirements with these barnaminiums and I think there's a sense from people who want to build these that this is a cheap way to build the house
but in fact it is not uh by the time you comply with the energy code it is really not significantly cheaper than a standard residential construction in the building officials opinion um
so I feel comfortable with the ordinance as drafted but I wanted to share those two concerns for the council to consider um I think there is a sense from staff that changing the ordinance isn't really going to allow for a lot of new barnaminiums because I think once people
look into what is actually required with the um structural code the energy code they're going to find that it's not as appealing as they once thought it was um but with that said uh I believe that the draft does reflect the direction
from the council and staff is uh um awaiting feedback on that draft ordinance uh should we be including something about the foundation and the energy code to address that in our ordinance
so uh in terms of the energy code that's required by the building code i I mention it because uh the building official uh has concerns that people who want to build the barnominium don't understand what that means that was in your packet in this attachment um but if
you don't know what the energy code actually means you might not understand the cost implications of that so I wouldn't suggest that we add that to our code because it's already part of the building code in terms of the foundation um that is something you could require
you could require that barnaminiums be constructed on a on a foundation that is solid for the complete perimeter of the house that definitely increases the cost uh that would be a standard typical foundation
um but from the building officials perspective from a um home value and long-term um uh I say this the foundation would be stable longer than the postframe
construction in terms of a living space so that is something that you certainly could modify and we could bring something back to you with his input well when discussing this that's what I kind of assumed would be
on a floating slab or monolithic slab or something to that effect that you'd have a slab in uh maybe one course block and then you'd start your wall construction so we've got Kenda's uh comments um I have a comment i want to bring up the
30% because I kind of disagree with that number as I looked at and relooked and relooked at the pictures of the barn dominiums the the examples that are in the packet I honestly didn't think that a lot of those had 30%
i think I don't even know why we just don't put a period after um stone and leave it up to I don't know add an I don't even know what to add to it
but I I think 30% is being too restrictive it could be 10% 25 20% those look like they had 10 to 20% u on them most of them some of them had 30% the really fancy ones look like they did but
the more basic ones look like they were 10 or 10 or 15% and I don't really want to restrict residents any more than what we absolutely have to i I'm more about freedom and letting them judge what's
appealing to their eye and not our eye so I have no problem changing that percentage to say 20 that's if that's something that needs to be done
and and I would like the uh building officials feedback on this as well if he has any input on this i talked to Nick earlier today prior to him talking to
Kendra and made sure that he went to Kendra and uh voiced his concerns just so everybody's on the same page and uh he basically told me the same thing he told Kendra
plus say when somebody goes to sell one of these buildings how is anybody going to know if that post is rotted or not when they go to sell this why are they buying you know he had concerns that way i don't know the life history of these
posts but I've seen where they brought it out but I don't know if you do Jim do you know anything about these no I've got a pretty old pole barn with and it's just fine i'm wondering where it's it's getting wet from and what kind of rot or
what's causing that which I would like to know be on the safe side rather than the other side i'm not worried about the green treated all the posts are green treated and it's no different if you build a slab on grade home and you use a green treated
plate on a block same concept if the stuff gets wet actually it's they claim it's supposed to be 40 years in water and it's not supposed to rot have I ever did it no but that's what I've heard so
I mean it's just like anything else like if you're going to sell something and something's hidden you're not going to know what it is either so yeah i mean I don't know i mean I I like the idea of it actually
myself but uh that's my opinion of it yeah i think Nick's referencing his previous employment over in Columbus their city hall is a pole building and they had to issue a post around the post that's what I think that depends on what
they use for wood right that's what he's referencing I think do the codes call for them to use green treated now in those buildings or not i am not certain i'll have to check with the building official but I do think
they have to be treated i do think they have to be treated i will have to double check with Nick though when I built my 2015 is required any further discussion send send it back to staff have a come
back to us next meeting or Yeah I mean I'm happy to check uh chat with uh the building official and come back uh to address his concerns better in this draft um is I I just want to make sure there's a sense that we
still want some uh complimentary material but something less than 30 is that where the council's at sure yeah can we get a range is there a range that's available between 10 and 30% or something like that a range like comparing to other cities well just a
range for our you know for us so we have the ability to to choose what we want up front while still gaining that extra aesthetics so that you can make a decision i mean there's no magic well the Well the people could make a decision when they're building it not say we want 30%
or 20% and you can't do anymore yeah you'd want to have a minimum so if if you felt like you know we want something on all sides I would go towards the 10% side if it's only important to you to have it on the front you could say only on the front and then I'd start with a minimum of whatever you think is the
minimum acceptable right so I'd say on the front elevation only don't force them to do the sides or anything like that it's just appearance from the road usually you have street facing that's what they require with any garages or anything
additional buildings you're putting on you have to have two windows and awning or something like that some decorative item okay yep we will bring that back we'll give you another um version at your next meeting to take
a look at that'll include uh the building officials recommendation on the foundation uh for you to consider again um the building code allows the whole barn i keep saying foundation but it's
not a foundation slab with posts and our building official has concerns and would prefer that it be on a foundation but I will bring that back for you with a little more information at the next time I come back yeah because I'm not into construction very much and I I don't really know what a difference is between
a slab and a foundation because I mean most houses have basements and to me that's the foundation so I don't even know i'd like more i'll try to bring some visuals yes thank you those are pretty much the last two things we need to worry about on that
one correct yeah I think so the only other thing I was going to mention and I forgot um is that we do not have a minimum lot size one of the other things uh the building official just questioned was you know why don't we say it has to
be on five acres or more and I feel like we did talk about that with you and you were comfortable just saying in the rural residential and egg district and not having a minimum lot size in those districts yeah I wouldn't be for that i mean it's no different if you go into a
neighborhood that has a couple ramblers then you got to split and stuff like that i mean the homeowner should have their own choice of what the house looks like and we shouldn't be deciding for them saying "No you can't put that We
don't like if they like it it's their deal i don't want a minimum or a maximum max minimum lot size at all that's my opinion and I did notice that where it I can't
find it right now but where it said the RR or egg district it was just a and not a G so that's there's kind of a G missing in that particular area i'll double check that there's a mistake
between the zoning map and the and the zoning ordinance so um I I think it's egg in the zoning ordinance but I'll check and bring that back thank you all right that it let's move on 9a staff report
mr mr mayor I have nothing further okay 9b council reports none tim no i had written up some stuff tonight but this meeting was very informative very civil got a lot of stuff done and uh I'm just going to
leave it at that suzanne uh I just have some announcements regarding the seniors um they do meet every third Thursday so if you're over 55 and want to become a member please do but that
being said uh April 26 there's going to be a craft vendor sale over there at the um community center we are still accepting vendors so contact me if you're interested and we would like the city to put that information on the
reader board so if you could pass that on I'd appreciate it um and May 3rd there's going to be a fix it clinic over there so if you have small appliances vacuums anything that you can carry microwave bring it on up and there
going to be people over there fixing stuff for you so that's all I have small engines i don't think maybe maybe a lawn mower right uh we had a booster day meeting uh
July 19th is a booster day or party in the park at Booster Park uh the committee urges the council members to save the date uh the parade will be back which is fantastic if there are any
local organizations or businesses that are interested in being in the parade visit eastbloosterdays.com volunteers are needed it could be just for one hour or the whole day if you like um it could be for setup to help
set up the day before or for a take down that evening um if anyone's interested in volunteering uh there is a volunteer page on eastbizards.com and uh we are looking for
applications that are being accepted for vendors artists and crafters so if you have something to sell you want a booth want a space there at East Bethle Booster Days please visit the website and there are applications there
uh tomorrow evening there is a planning and zoning meeting that I'll be attending that's it okay i'll entertain a motion to adjurnn make a motion to adjurnn second have a
motion and second all in favor i meetings adjourned