Okay. At this time, we'll call the uh April 27th, 2026 uh board of appeal appeals meeting to order. U Mr. Mayor and Council, annually, the city council sitting as a local board of appeal and equalization is required to hear residents concerns regarding
assessed valuations for properties in the city. Meeting has been set for today at 5:30. Purpose of the hearing is to determine whether taxable property in the city has been properly valued and classified by the assessor for the 2026 assessment for taxes payable in 2027 and
to provide a means for property owners with concerns to request an adjustment to their valuation and tax classification. Um the the property owners who believe that their value or classifications are not correct are encouraged to contact the city assessor. Some have already and
we have a list of those to discuss their concerns prior to the meeting. And if the property owner did not resolve the issues after the discussion with the assessor, they may appear before this board uh to show cause for making an assessment correction. And um and you
have the authority to do that. And uh uh essentially um we will go now to the adoption of the meeting and I will turn it back to you. >> Okay.
At this time I believe we need a roll call. So Council Member Urkl >> here. >> Council member Mundle. >> Yes. >> Mayor Anderson >> here. Council member Miller >> here. >> Council member Smith
>> here. >> All president accounted for. >> Um >> okay. Um next part of the meeting is just to read the official notice of the board of review. Uh the notice was uh given that the board of appeal and equalization for the city of East Bessel
shall meet today at 5:30 at the East Bethl City Hall. The purpose of this meeting is to determine whether taxable property in the jurisdiction has been properly valued and classified by the assessor as mentioned before and um property owners if they believe it's incorrect can contact again the
assessor's office and uh and try and get that uh ironed out and if not they can come here this evening to have this done and um and this was uh sent out uh on the 18th day of February 2026
and uh that will serve as the official reading of the um notice. >> Okay, down to 40. This is kind of some of the basic ground rules here. Uh the purpose of the meeting
uh is to remind owners that only appeals for the current year evaluations or classifications may be made. 2026 board is to review the assessment as January 2nd, 2026, which will be used to
compute the property taxes payable in 2027. Prior year's assessments or taxes are not within the jurisdiction of the board. The order of appellants by appointment first followed by
walk-ins on a first come basis. The board will also receive written appeals from the property owners. The secretary will record the required information, name, mailing address, telephone number, address of property. The expectations of
the appellent when presenting their appeal. The appeal must be substantiated by facts where the appellant would should attend or sit. The appellant should be prepared to answer questions posed by the board. There's time limits imposed.
The procedure of the board will follow or make any decisions. Will the board hear all appeals before making any decisions? Send a letter to the appellants to inform them of the decision. The board may correct any erroneous evaluations and add any
omission of properties or increase the value after due process. The total decrease of evaluation may not exceed 1% of the total valuation of the taxing district. With that, I'll turn it over to the
assessor, I believe. >> Yeah, Mr. Mayor, uh, council members, thank you. My name is Alex Guggenberger. I am the Anoka County Assessor. I've been county assessor for a little over 13 years now. Um, and we've had this contract here. is I believe is our kind of our first full year taking care of
the the assessment here. Um I'll give you I set an >> speaking into the mic because I'm having a little hearing you. >> Is that better? Yeah. >> Okay. Um I did put a presentation in front of you guys. Um and I'll kind of briefly run through that real quickly. Um and then we'll get to some of the appeals that we have here today. Okay.
>> Okay. >> Um the second page of the PowerPoint just lists out the staff that we have. Um myself there I have countywide oversight responsibilities regardless of how the contract situation is set up for each given city. U Jason Deastino is our reg is our residential supervisor. He's
the individual that's handled most of the calls this year. Our residential appraiser that's listed there is out on a leave. Um we also have Jeanie Brucead here who's uh h done most of the inspections for the residential properties. Uh and I've got Jim Hughes in the gray sweatshirt back there. he
does most of the commercial industrial work uh within the city as well. So, and I do have Lisa Schultz here too. She's our assessment support manager just kind of here to observe how the some of these meetings take place because not each city council operates slightly different um that hosts one of the city boards. U
the next piece on that spreadsheet is just a list of the different parcel breakdowns throughout the city. Um for a rural city like yours, it's not uncommon to have a very large proportion of of parcels being residential. Um the third page gives a breakdown of the assessment timeline. I just want to recap that we
reassess we reassess every property every single year in the state of Minnesota. That is based on data that we collect once every five years. So we're physically required to view all properties once every five years. That data is used then to revalue a property every single year. That's across the
state of Minnesota and it's set by statute. Uh we in an NOA County we send our value notices along with our tax statements to try to save money for the taxpayers. Those arrive usually around mid-March and that kicks off what we call our informal appeal time frame. Um
that's when that we encourage property owners to call us if they have questions about their property's market value. Um and it gives them essentially a year to appeal that value before they actually pay the tax on that value in the in the following year. The vast majority of calls are handled um at that point in
time. This year we had 39 residential calls that led to 19 inspections. Um we have four parcels today that where we've made changes within the last 10 days. Statute requires that if we make a change within 10 days, we bring it here for you guys to vote and approve on. Um
so those are essentially ones that we've worked with the property owners and they're they're set. But that was within the last 10 days. Um we have a couple then that'll read into the minutes here tonight and handle any additional walk-ins for tonight's meeting. If property owners do not appeal their property's value at this meeting here
tonight, their appeal options are done. Their informal appeal options are done. It's a little different in some of the other cities um that are considered open book. They have the the property owners or properties located in those cities can appeal all the way up until county board in June. So, it's a little
different from that standpoint. Um which is why it's important for us to read some of these parcels into the minutes if you're not going to make a decision tonight. It gives us the ability to work with those people up until June uh to establish a new market value.
Um the fourth page just shows an example of what the value notice looks like. Um sometimes we get comments from property owners that want us to add or change what what the what's on the notice. They want additional information or more information. That's a state der um
mandated form. So we have very little control over how the information is displayed, what types of information are included on that form. Um so the stuff that we have added is is the stuff that um is very limited. There's not a whole lot of of change there. Statewide that
form looks pretty consistent. The fifth page gives a just a very high level overview of the assessment process. Um our median ratio for residential properties this year was 90 essentially 95%. Uh the state requires that our median sales ratio fall between
90 and 105% and in Oka County we generally aim for 95%. The reason being that keep if you think of a normal bell curve that keeps most of the properties at or below their market value. Um, you don't want to aim at 90% in any given year just because once you get start factoring in things
like new construction and things like that, if you fall below that 90% at like 89% for example, uh, the state comes in after the normal appeal process and we'll raise it in 5% increments. So, if we missed that 90% in any given year and we fell at 89% for residential
property, they'd come around in June or July and raise all residential properties by an additional 5%. Um, and at that point, appeal options are limited. You don't have any appeal options at that point. So, it's important for us to do our job up front to make sure we fall within those those
guidelines. Uh, the sixth page just gives a little bit of an overview. The PDF version that we sent to the city of this link is active. Um, but it's a it's a new residential sales tool that allows property owners to go look at what properties have sold near them in their neighborhood. Um, so if you Google how
to appeal my value in no, you know, in an NOA County, it should bring you to a link at the bottom of that page. Gives a residential sales search tool. They can enter their address or their parcel number and it will zoom in and show them any of the residential sales that have sold within their with uh within their neighborhood or near their property over
the used establishment of our assess of our assessment. Uh the seventh page just gives a breakdown uh comparing the median assessed value divided or median assessed value compared to the median uh sales price. U it tracks very similarly
every given year given that we are required to be within 95% for the median. That wasn't always the case. In some prior years, well 10 years ago now um that looked a little different. It looked kind of jagged. Um in one year values might have gone up and the assessment would have gone down and the following year it's kind of like a
train. We were way further behind the market 10 years ago. Uh but the way the state operates currently, we are very very much in line with where median sale prices are in any given year. Uh the very last page just gives you a breakdown of value overall. These are
the estimated market values, not the taxable market values. Um but you can see for residential the uh average or the percent change an aggregate value for residential property types was 5.63% 63%. About 1% of that was due to new
construction. New construction is kind of a a misleading term. Sometimes people when they hear new construction, they think that's new homes. It doesn't. That's actually a combination of things. It's it's remodels or additions or any new improvements to existing properties as
well as new homes. The state just lumps those all into one category. So, it is a little bit different. we don't have a great way to break down what is new construction on existing properties versus true new builds. Um it's it lumps them all together. Um agricultural
properties also saw an increase of about 3%. Uh the biggest increase uh in East Bethl is going to be in the apartments. All the new town homes that are going in on the east side of 65 where Viking Meadows is there, those are owned under an LLC that's actually an apartment building. Um so that's classed as an
apartment. Um, so you can see the apartment values in the city increased about 36% with 24% of that increase being new construction. So that was the the largest increase in in the city. Uh, commercial industrial property saw an increase of about 4 and a.5% with about
one uh little shy of 1% of that being new construction. Are there any questions about the assessment and market values before we dive into appeals? Anybody? No.
>> Um, did you want to go through I don't know where that list if you want to start first on that list. Uh Bud Flagstate your name and address, please. >> Yeah, as he said, Bud Flagstead, 3200 229th Avenue Northeast.
No county. Um, yeah, I don't have too many questions except that uh my taxes are going up, but I've been fairly happy with my assessments over the years from 25 and 26, but now 27's
going up $3,000 for some reason on my assessment and my homestead's going down $3,000. on my house. But other than that, I I I'm upset that I live this long. You
know, I should have I should have died a long time ago. Then then I might have the money or my might have some money. Uh I should have moved out 15 years ago someplace else, but I couldn't. I got too deep a roots. I built my own house
to save money in 1972 out here. been in an Oakra County since ' 65, but I chose to build my own house, raise my kids there, and we just couldn't leave, you know, and uh moved to Tennessee or Texas or someplace
retirement wise. So, now we're stuck. And before I even turn my light switches out of my house, I got $7,000 worth of cost in taxes and insurance on my house. You know, that's that's tough when you're on a fixed income of $2,000 a
month. So, it's my own fault for hanging around too long. I'm 85 years old now. So, nobody's going to hire me. I wouldn't hire myself even. I get mad at myself more quite often.
But anyway, um, no, the, uh, the homestead for 27 and the $3,000, I think it's $3,000 increase in my taxable value or my or my uh,
estimated market value. You know, the whole tax system really is terrible, I think, for taxpayers. And you know, nobody's going to turn it around and fix it. You know, it's too it's gotten too big.
Government's gotten too crazy. And uh school boards have gotten crazy. My taxes went up $400, I believe, this year. Uh at least 300. Anyway, they went up and it's all from the school board mostly.
You can go down there and juggle numbers all over. you spoke about a lot of numbers and bell curves and everything else and we're in with the state and the state fraud lines and all that stuff the state does with their money but uh I'm paying more to the county than I'm
paying to the state on my income on my social security income. So, but can you answer me why it would go up $3,000 in value? >> Yep. So your I can address a couple different things. So your your assessed
value is going to be based on recent sales of of neighboring properties. I know you had reached out to Jason I believe Jason Dustinino. Um just having your parcel read here at the minute. So if you want us to continue taking a look at your property, you just have to have one of us come out. Um I know I think
Jeannie had tried to come out to take a look at the property. >> Same house I've had for >> Yep. years. We still have to take a look at it and statute requires that we are able to take a look at it before we can make an adjustment to value. It's hard to value a property if you don't have the ability to look at it and see the
quality and condition that's in the property. Um, but as your home value increases in the state of Minnesota, the homestead exclusion decreases. So, this board doesn't have any control over the homestead exclusion. That's just a function of the tax. So, we this board here can only look at the estimated
market value. They don't have any control over the taxable market value. >> I homesteaded it. Why can't I cap the same homestead amount that I've always had? >> It's It's still homesteaded. It's just the amount of exclusion decreases as your property value. >> I get richer.
>> Well, as your home value increases. It has nothing. It's not tied It's not tied to property. Your personal income. >> Okay. >> It must get richer someplace along the line to pay the bills. I mean, the government's going to get their money either way. They're going to say, "We
need this. We need this. We need this." Now, how can we get it? You know, pretty soon they'll pack paper boxes out in front of your house or something. But this is ridiculous. I mean, I know you need the money. I need snowflakes maybe to show up after the crime and
whatever. >> So, it it is important to note, too, the assessor's value doesn't dictate how much property tax that the city's going to collect in any given year. The assessment determines who pays what portion of your of the tax. The city has a levy, the county has a levy, the
school district has a levy. They're going to collect the same amount of money >> every year regardless of what individual home values are. So reduction in one value here today doesn't mean that the city is going to collect less in tax next year. It just means that other people are going to pay a bigger piece
of that pie. So the the values itself, it's it's that's why it's important for our assessed values to be reflect market value and be supported by sales and everything else to make sure that everyone pays their fair share. Um, a lot of times people assume that if we increase the assessed value, the city's
going to collect more tax. It doesn't necessarily mean they're going to collect more tax overall. It just means that one person's going to pay more, that individual might pay more of a share compared to other people. But does the mill rate change when the when the evaluations go up >> in Minnesota's not on a mill rate system?
>> Well, whatever. >> So, it's however you tax us, >> right? >> Whether it's mill rate or whatever it is, it's you somehow say you need this amount of money, you got to, you know, take all this evaluation that we got out here and how much money can we get from
all these different evaluations, right? >> Well, so and that that's where it's that's where the the misconception comes. You know, we could take the values and cut them in half. I could cut all the values in half. >> Yep. >> Your taxes are still going to do what they're going to do next year >> because the city's going to levy a certain dollar amount. The countyy's
going to levy a dollar amount. The assessed and a lot of states operate different too. Some states you establish your market value and your taxable a third of that. It's the same same thing. They're just shrinking the pie and increasing the tax rate. So, it's um the process here for tonight's meeting is all about what is your market value and
could you sell your property for that amount? If you don't think you could, we would love to come take a look at your property and we can put together a review and determine whether or not we think that value is accurate or not. >> Yeah, you're raising my market value quite a bit. >> Yeah. So, so we can certainly come take a look. Um, like I said, you're meeting,
you're here already and your parcel's been heard to the minutes. >> Why did you raise my market value without looking at it? >> So, we that's why I said we collect data once every five years. And a lot of times that's from the outside. The the system itself is very much a garbage in garbage out approach. If we don't have accurate data, it's not going to lead as
accurate the accurate of values on the back end. So, we're collecting the same physical set of data for all properties by type. Single family homes, that's going to be size, style, actual age, quality, and condition of the property.
All of those factors get fed into our our our model to value property. The more unique the property, the harder it is for that model to establish an accurate value. So if you're in an Orn Thompson Rambler that was built in the 60s and there's a bazillion sales down
in Blaine, the model's really accurate. It's easy, very easy for the model to develop sales. The more unique your property, if it's lakeshore, um if you got a lot of acreage, if you have 120 some acres, it might be more difficult. >> Um the model might not be as accurate. But that's where through this process
here, we have the the ability to take a look at your individual property. We essentially take our assessor hat off instead of collecting the same set of physical data. And just like you've had an appraisal for any mortgage lending situation or estate purposes, we will take a look at your specific property
and go find what we feel are the best sales comparables. And if we look at those sales comparables and adjust them and we think the value that the system is generating isn't right, we have the ability to change it. >> So yeah, but you raised my value without a proper assessment already. So now I
have to come in and ask you why you did it and you have no answer why except that you have to reassess me or come out and do another reassessment >> because properties can change over time. If we haven't been in your property in years, which is likely the case in East Bethl given we just picked the contract
up. If we haven't been there, the data may be wrong. We don't know what's on the inside of your home. >> But you had a guy come out and run around my building. >> Mhm. >> And he must have measured it or something that he was doing. >> Mhm. I can't believe he was doing an assessment. I He must have been doing
something. So, he must know what my square footage is. >> Yes. Yeah. We We likely have a lot of the external data. We saw half of the city half of the residential properties in East Buffalo were seen last year. Um, and we did that to make sure that the data was more accurate this year, but we still don't know what's on the inside of
every property. Sometimes properties look just fine on the outside and they're in way worse condition when you get on the inside, or vice versa. Sometimes they can look rough on the outside and they're better on the inside, but we need them. >> They're nice on the inside. >> That will allow us to pull and adjust
sales comparables in an appropriate manner. The same >> my taxes. If I have a talking toilet and a ceramic floors throughout the whole house >> if that's the market for that type of home, we're going to look for sales comparables that are also have also been improved, if that makes sense. So, we're
not going to compare your property to million-dollar homes down in Edina or anything like that. We're going to we're going to compare neighboring property sales, but we don't know that what your property looks like, and we can't do a proper evaluation, and this board can't
make a decision on that if we're not allowed into the property. >> Okay. I mean, I just don't like the I haven't changed anything except maybe got some new sighting. I got a building permit for that, but that shouldn't change the value of my house. The same, you know, the siding might have been a
little faded or something like that. But now I got some unfaded sighting, which will fade in a while, but you're not going to lower the value of my house as my sighting fades. So, you know, here again, it's just I don't see the need to come inside
uh a person's house because they got the same square foot that you measured on the outside. So, uh, inside, you know, the value of the house will determine if somebody wants to buy that house. That value is going to, you know, it's going to be determined what's on
the inside probably, >> right? And that's why we would want to see what's inside. You know, it's it's if someone, no one's going to buy the property without looking at the inside either because they don't know what's inside. They don't know if looking at five other houses, that one's going to look like that in the inside or not. That's a big risk to take. So, we want
to make sure the data we have on file is right. If I have carpeting throughout the whole house instead of hardwood, my valuation, is that going to drop? >> It's going to depend on what the other comparable sales look like for your style of property. >> Yeah.
>> So, if all the other sales have carpet, that would be a standard adjustment. if they're gonna if all those other houses like yours have all brand new hardwoods and everything else and yours is carpet that's 20 years old, we know we need to take those sale prices of those sales comparables and lower the value of those
sales to account for the fact that your property has carpet and the other properties have all been updated. So, we make just like an appraiser does when you've had those other appraisals, we make those types of adjustments to account for differences between your property and others. >> So, if I want a nicer inside of my
house, it's going to cost me more in taxes. It's going to increase your market value of your home. >> Well, yeah, but it's going to raise my taxable value too at the same time. >> It would. Yes. >> So, you know, it's doesn't make any
sense if a person wants to have something nice and uh it's going to cost them more money to have something nice than it is not something. >> Yeah. And like I said, we're >> that's not right. I mean, >> yeah, we're more than willing to come
take a look. Um, but we have to be able to take a look at it the right way. >> Ask me whatever you want. What happens happens I guess and uh I see no reason why you have to come inside to see if I have pretty nice inside,
you know, and paying somebody $20 an hour to come work out my yard for me. So that looks nice attached on what I'm trying to keep nice outside. So just you know the county and the state's going to get the money they
want no matter what. So and I understand that. Now my last question is why does homestead go down as my as I get richer in value on my house? >> So the the homestead changed years ago
probably 15 years ago. It used to be a homestead credit. So if you owned a property and it was homestead, you got a certain dollar amount that was taken out. >> So when the state didn't have money to reimburse counties for that homestead credit, instead of keeping a reserve amount and crediting all the counties
for that homestead amount, they said instead of doing that, we're just not going to collect that tax and we're going to change it to an exclusion. The program itself is the same. You get the same amount basically. It's just now as your value increases, that amount decreases. So the legislature did change
it. It used to Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, you have Jason's number or Jeannie can give you her card, too, if you decide you do want us to come out. Um, you have until June if you want us to take >> Okay. Okay. >> Thanks. Thanks, bud.
>> Rita Hows, you got two properties on here. Listen, >> please come up to the mic, please. >> All these young people came along. I went home. So, yeah, I'm ready to Howls. Um, I've
got a couple properties, but um, >> can you move the mic to your mouth, please? >> Yeah. Can you hear me? Okay, now. >> Yes. >> Okay. So, um, couple questions. You said the average rate of increases was 5 point something percent. >> Uh, that's the aggregate value increase
in in by by property type is what that was. So, it wasn't an average. That's just the the residential property value bucket in total went up 5%. That doesn't mean everyone's property value went up 5%. >> So, what is the Can you give us an average of the property residential
property increase? >> Yep. Give me just a second here. and my property at uh 4462 Cho Lane, you know, it wasn't too bad, but last year while you're looking that up, we had a $60,000 increase on our
property. It was over 16% and this year it went up over 7.7%. In the last five years, it went up $660. At this rate, by this next year, it'll be a $1,000 increase in our property taxes.
Um, when you're doing the assessments, the proposed, you're not giving us the increase in taxes. Are you able to do that? How much? >> No, we So, we set the values right now. The city will start doing their budgeting process here probably in June
Julyish time frame or maybe they've started already and then the county will do the same thing June July. So we don't know what the tax rates are. >> We also have legislative impacts that can happen all the way through May. Um so there there we don't necessarily know exactly what things are going to do in
any given year um in the following year. So we don't have a a good process the state does not have a good process for determining what your taxes will do the following year. Um, and I'll use >> I can basically use the past as kind of a ballpark. Um, it looks like it's going
to go up another $400. So, I say $1,000 and there's been absolutely no improvement to this property at all. It looks like when you walk inside looks like 1963 in A-frame. Now, the land went up quite a bit. Um, the house itself did
not go up as much. So, that one's, you know, not the worst case. Um, I have this uh in uh Lake Beach, there's a lot of issues over there with septics and all that kind of stuff. How do you know when
you're looking at a property? How do you know if they've got a septic system, a holding tank, or something at all that you cannot that's that doesn't meet the new code that needs to be replaced? That's $30,000. >> Yeah, Lake Beach is a unique area
within the county that is very very difficult to to make those determinations. So, we do the best we can with what we have. I want to say 30 years ago, we had a lot of that mapped on each individual property. We kind of knew where wells and septics and stuff were. We lost a lot of that over the
last 30 years. We're trying to figure out some of that information, but if if we make an assumption as to what we think might be buildable or not buildable or what's going to meet setbacks, if we don't know that information, we want property owners to call us and let us know. So, we haven't had a chance to work with you yet. But
if you want to call, if if we read your parcel in the minutes and we come out and take a look and we look at your specific property and we know, okay, this person's well in septics here. If we work with the city and we know, okay, this parcel is not going to meet setbacks, that's going to change the value and we'll reduce the value. That's not
I honestly don't care what what taxes or levies do or anything like that. I want to make sure that your your value is valued appropriately in any given year. Um, so it's a it's a challenge. I can't say that we know without a doubt in Lake Beach where things are all at because those parcels have changed so
dramatically since they've were first created as 30 foot lots back. I can 20 foot lots >> or 20. Yeah, 20 foot lots. >> So, the previous assessor I think did a really good job. He was pretty consistent. I think it was really fair. Last year since you guys have taken over, I think you guys were playing
catchup. I think you don't know the area. Lake. It's like you're a little bit aware of that. But, um, a couple things I think um, couple of points is it was never really based on sales, what you could sell your house for.
It was always quite a bit lower, 20 25%. I'm a real estate agent. I've seen thousands of homes. The assessed value has always been quite a bit less than sales, what you could sell your house for. For this gentleman, it's not really fair. He's not planning on selling his house. He wants to live there.
>> And and that's where >> when did that change? When did >> the ketchup >> that that should have always been the case that your home >> been that way in Minnesota? It's been that way since the 50s in the stat state statutes regardless of where you've been in the state. That should have been the
requirement within the state of Minnesota. The last 30 years in East Bethl where we had a lot of that mis mismatch where property owners were undervalued, other property owners were paying more in tax. So the whole goal through this process has been to equalize and make sure that those market
values are supportable by sales. So if if if we look at your property, if you're you said you're a real estate agent, if you're we come and take a look at your property and we don't think the assessed value we you couldn't sell your property for that amount, that's when we'd change it. That's always been the case. >> Can you tell me when you came out to
Lake Beach? >> I don't know if we've been in Lake Beach yet. We started on the north half of Lake or sorry, the north half of East Bethl. Um like I said earlier, it's statute requires a minimum of once every five years. when we picked the contract
up because we've not been through many of the homes in East Bethl for 30 years. Um we wanted to make sure that through our first contract cycle we at least got our stuff out there because we had so many parcels with data issues as far as the wrong style of home, the wrong size
of homes, missing additions, missing buildings. Sometimes buildings that existed 15 years ago that got removed 10 years ago were still on the record. So we did a lot of cleanup, but we can't we couldn't see every parcel in one year. So, we saw the north half of the of the city last year.
>> Do you have a Do you have a map to show whether you've come and looked at people's houses or not? >> Yep. Yep. So, that information is out on our website. Um, you can go look and see in the quintile map in any given year. I can pull up >> if you can kind of tell us about the link on that. And then also, is it going
to tell you said that it was based on sales in that in the neighborhood? Are we going to be able to see the property that they were compared to that you specifically compared our property to? >> Uh, so the the sales the sales tool does not show exactly the exact sales when
you call us. Like so when we come out take a look. We'll take a look and then we'll go pull sales comparables and we'll send them to you and say >> I'd like to know what you've already done and not what you're going to do. I'd like to see where what homes you have compared our homes to. >> Yep. >> Like his without going inside. How could you? Because you're when you get a sales
house, 90% of those houses are going to be in pristine. People put a lot of money into it because they were going to expect it to get a lot more. So that means the houses that you haven't been to are not going to be in that kind of condition. So if you're comparing them to sales that are have happened out
there already, that's kind of unfair without being in without you automatically coming inside. I understand that you want to do that. This gentleman along with most people don't want the government in their house. So I'd like to know if you can give me an idea of the houses that you
can use as comparisons in the past, not what you're going to do in the future. >> So if your properties on water, the state will look at offwater and on water differently. So we have two different studies for the on for you know so if you're are you on the water >> um or one is and and and
one's in Lake Beach. It's not on water. >> So I'll use the one that's on water for example. So if if your propertyy's on water, your property, again, we're going to collect the same physical set of data for all property, whether they sell or not, we're collecting that physical data that stays consistent over the 5-year
period. We then look at sales. So your sales can change in any given study period. That runs from October 1st to September 30th of any given year is the is the the window, the sales window that we >> So you're going from September to October >> for Yes. So the last 3 months of a year
and that's not something we decide that's statute driven. We don't have control over that particular window. So they're looking at those sales from a mass appraisal perspective. Assessment is mass appraisal. Appraisal is individual appraisal. Um we're looking at all of those sales. So we're going to
look at all of the onwater sales and those are going to be arms length transactions. So things like bank sales, foreclosures, sales to your cousin, those types of things when we're doing our sales verification would not get included in that study process. And that's the again, these are the same set
of rules statewide and they've not changed for many, many, many years. Once we take a look at those sales, we then ratio we so we array all of our assessed values compared to the sale prices in between that array. the med the
median or so the midpoint has to fall between 90 and 105%. So each lake can be slightly different. Like I said on water is much more difficult. They look at and compare things like the lakes area in Blaine which are little man-made lakes that you can't have a boat. They compare they
call those lakes but it's not the same as Lake where you can put a boat and take the kids tubing. Um, we then have to go in in to the assessment process and look at the sales on the individual lake and say, "Okay, does this make sense for this type of property? We have sales that we can show
you on the lake." Um, but for yours, >> that's what I'm asking for. >> Yes. And we can certainly do that. And you can see some of those sales. So, can I have control of the screen at all? I can kind of show >> Is that something that I can Yes. look up at home and look those over. >> Absolutely. Okay.
I mean, everybody should be able to do that with their property, too. >> Okay, let me see. Okay, so oops, sorry, I'm controlling not on my screen here. Um, okay, so these are going to be the
sales that are in the mass appraisal approach or mass appraisal, the study period. Um, when you call for your individual review, we have more freedom once we're in this process to look at sales outside. So there might have been sales that happened in October, November, December that are not included in the study period, but for our review
purposes, we can absolutely take a look at them and and review and adjust them. So as you zoom in here, you can click on any of these particular properties. Um I just since you're in Lake Beach here, I'll click on let's click on this one here. So when
you click on that, it'll tell you the parcel number, the address, the city, shows you the sale date, the sale price, the assessed market value for 2026, and then if you want individual specifics about that parcel, you can link out to the state's ECRV data, and you can scroll down and see who bought the
property, you can see the parcels, if there's multiple pins, it'll be involved in here, too. So you can go look up some of that information um on your own to see kind of what properties might have sold for near you. doesn't necessarily give you it's more of the mass view of that approach. Um, but from an
individual approach, you can certainly go look at it. If you call us, we will go look at our own at all the sales and we usually provide a little, you know, here's what your property is. Here's what we think are the most comparable sales and here's why we think this value is accurate or why it's not accurate.
We've got a lot of times where we make adjustments to properties based on individual review of sales. More so with Lakeshore than anything else, I would say just because they are each one can be so unique as far as what the inside looks like, what are the setbacks, um is
there excess land that you can add a garage to or not? Um all that type of type of stuff. Okay. >> Okay. So the link on that is that um I did see a link online and looked at it. I didn't get to that point. Is there
>> a step f that we can follow through to make sure we can get get to that. Do you have some printable something or >> um I don't have it printable. Um I can if you have your email >> I mean a printable link or something. Yeah, if you can send >> Yeah, if you have your if you have an email, we'll send you an email tomorrow. >> That would be we can take and then if you want to set up a time to um for one
of our staff members to come out, we can certainly do that. Um, and like I said, we'll we'll go through and pull sales using the MLS just like you're used to looking at and that type of thing. Um, and making adjustments as needed. >> Okay. So, since you've not been So,
you'll come up with a map that we can look at the map to see what you've done and you're going to do the second half, which probably including um, Lake Beach this next year. >> Yes. I don't believe so. I can try to
get out to this So this is another this is this has not been updated for this calendar year yet I don't think but this will show you kind of what we looked at in East Bethl last year. So everything in orange up there is what we would have done would
have seen last year. So anything to the south here. So Lake Beach would not have been done last year. So we will be out there this year at some point in time. >> So it looks like you haven't done the majority right around the lake either. >> Right. Right. A lot of the stuff along the lake, we tried to go through and do the best we can. Like I said, there's a
lot of properties where we knew the styles were wrong, where there were missing additions and some of those types of things. We tried to pick up what we could. Um, but all the properties that have that are not marked on this list yet, um, we'll get a notice in the mail two to three weeks before our staff come out in the come out in
the field. Um, it kind of provides an outline of what that review looks like and what it entails. It also provides a picture of like what the county car looks like, what our badges look like, what our door tags looks like, so people know that we are who we say we are. U but it also gives the property owners the ability to deny access to the
property if they don't want us out there on their property. >> Right. Okay. >> Okay. >> Okay. Um I guess I just want to kind of end it at um in the last six years um one of my properties increased taxes by
80%. With no improvements. In fact, if you actually went out to take a look at it, you can see it's one of those cabins that's in pretty bad shape. Um, it has been climbing pretty slowly, but this last year with using your the comparables that you're saying, you went
it went from 77 to $102,000 just the land alone. And that's without even going out and taking a look at it. That's substantial. And so we're um like I u I think it's I think it's we feel like it you're
playing feel like you're behind. You're playing more catch-up um this last year since uh your group took over. Um and it's really putting a lot of hard strain and stress on homeowners, renters. I think it all gets
passed down and we just like would like to see more specifically why this each of our properties is. So, we'll we'll do our research. If you can send me the links, I'll send give you an email address. Yep.
>> To the maps and the comparables and that sort of stuff. So, thank you for your time. >> Thank you. >> I think $50,000. >> Yep. We certainly can do that. We have no
>> $50,000. >> Yeah. And like I said, the the process is not meant to be contentious. We if our value is wrong based on what the system or the data that's in there and we think it's not accurate, we have no problem changing and adjusting the value. Um so we want to come out and take a look if you don't think you could
sell your drag me out. So just get a card or should I just call the office? She can Jeie Genie will give you a card here. Um Rita, so if um I just Googled how to appeal your value in Oka County. So if you scroll down at the
bottom of this page, there's information for property owners and there's a residential sales tool. So that's the tool that I clicked on to get out there. But we um when we're working with you individually, we will send you um additional sales and things like that that are more specific. What
was that guy doing running around >> when uh was that this year or was that >> last year? >> So last year we would have been doing our annual our quintile. So we >> Yep. So we would have been looking at that would have that was us seeing all properties once every five years only we
saw the a half of the city last year. So that was us doing our our normal annual review process so to speak. So we knock on all the doors. We try to get in what we can. Um, and you know, we get into a certain number of homes every year through that process, but not all of them. So, we do our best
to get as much information as we can. Um, and then if property owners feel their value is wrong, that's what this process is for. >> Well, I'm not saying you're not doing a good job. You're just juggling all these numbers like you're supposed to. >> Not your fault, but they hired you for the numbers
together and come up with something else. Yeah, we will uh but we'll be in touch. We'll be in touch to make sure that we get out and take a look >> for me to say, "Hey, why $50,000 all of a sudden between this year and >> Yeah, absolutely." And we and >> not even looking at my house except for
running around the outside. >> All right. Uh Jeff, >> state your name and address, please. Hi, my name is Jeff Craig. I'm the treasur of Beaverbrook Sportsman's Club. We're a 501c7 social club. Got 150 acres
over at 20500 Palisade Street. Uh and we own six different parcels and I think there's two different issues here. But the first question was we got uh one parcel here in particular that uh the uh taxable market value increased from
92,500 to 412,800. So it was more than quadrupled uh and kind of got my attention. Looks like the uh taxable, you know, the uh class, yeah, the classification of the property has been changed. Uh I think a
classification property has been changed on all of these uh all six of these. And then uh that was a big thing. And then the other thing is we've got one property where the uh taxes uh the estimated market value in the last two years has gone up $81,000.
and uh just questioning that and I wasn't able to get apparently the answer was difficult and I didn't get any answers from the uh yeah >> the assessor's office. >> Yeah. So we can explain. So uh sportsman's clubs, golf courses, um
frisbee golf courses technically too um they could qualify for a program that's called open space. So, this board does not have the ability to grant or approve special use programs like greenacres, rural preserve. Um, in this particular case, open space requires an annual
application 60 days before January 2nd of each year. Um, we send an application out each year. So, we will be working to send you an application this year. In the past, we've had our sportsman's clubs, um, Beaverbrook, Ham Lake sportsman's, um, Minnetonka Game and
Fish. There's a couple different ones that we've had um classed incorrectly. We had them out there as golf courses. Golf courses have a separate they qualify for open space and they have their own separate unique classification purely for golf courses. Um the sportsman's clubs don't qualify for that. So all of our sportsman's clubs we
put back to the classification they're supposed to have which is in your case um I think most of them are rural vacant land. Um >> commercial rural land egg non homesteaded commercial. >> Yeah. So, they're going to be they're going to be the classifications that they're supposed to be because they
don't they're not golf courses. They don't qualify as a golf course. They still will qualify for open space, though. So, that's where the big taxable market value change will be. Once we get that application, we will add those those value and uses back on and your taxable market value will drop again.
Um, so there's really nothing this board can do about that application itself, but we will work and um, get you through that process here this week or next week yet. For sure. >> Okay. >> Okay. Um, can you read I know you have your
value notices there. Can you just read the parcel numbers into the minutes just so that we can make sure that we have I I have them on a spreadsheet, but for this meeting purpose, I want to make sure they're all heard on the minutes just so that the state has a record of them. The first one is 21-33-23-13-00001. Parcel 20 21-33-23-12-00001
Parcel 21-33-23-11-00002 parcel 6-33-23-43-00001 parcel 21-33-23-11-00001 and parcel 16-33-23-34-00001 Perfect. Thank you. >> Okay, we'll be in touch. >> Yes, I'll I'll reach out to you tomorrow. Um, and we can get the application from you early um and then
we'll go through and add all those different use values back on there and I can send you a revised value notice that shows you this is what your market values are and then this is what your taxable market values are because your parcel's been hurt here. If you disagree with your market values at that point in time, we can then go back and forth and
talk about your market values. >> Okay. Yep. All right, that all I haven't got any more on the list. So, um I do have a couple parcels that I just want to read into the minutes that you guys will have to to vote on here. Um I've got another one that just like I said, they reached
out at about 4:30 today. They weren't able to make it here, so we have an appointment to go look at it tomorrow. >> Um so, we just want to enter this one into the minutes um just so they can continue their appeal options. The parcel number is 243323 23004.
Um that address is 2020 205 Frasier Street Northeast. Um and then I do have like I said four parcels where we made an adjustment within the last 10 days. So um I can read all of those um changes together if you guys want to make it in one motion or do you guys
want that in separate motions? >> We could probably just do one motion. >> Okay. All right. I'll read them here and then if you guys have questions just >> and so by not evaluating evaluating them at tonight's meeting will they their appeal
continue on with the county and so we can close >> Yep. Yes. So you'll be able to close this meeting tonight. Um, and then if the council wants to know um, the results of any of these options, we'll we can certainly keep you or keep Matt in the loop and then Matt can inform you guys as far as what we did on each one
of the ones that you heard tonight. >> Okay. Like >> I just want to make sure that we can close the meeting without having >> Yep. This will allow us to close the meeting. >> Okay. >> Okay. Um, so the first parcel is 05 33 23 220010.
The property owners are Glenn and Sandra Jax. Uh the original market value was $469,500 and we reduced the value to $450,000. Uh the next parcel was 01 332342006
and that owner's name is Torlof Clyde. Uh the original market value was 830,400 and the revised value was 666,200. So a bigger change there. Um, the next parcel was 1933
23420000004. That property owner's name is John King and the market value went from 359,600 to 274,400. Uh, the last one on the list is 36 33 23
21316. The property owner's name is Heidi Meerly. The original EMV was 66,300 and the revised EMV is $558,400. Um I think you guys would just have to make a motion um and and approve those.
>> How many properties is that? >> That's four parcels. >> Four parcels. >> I'll make a motion to approve the county's recommendations of the four parcels read by Mr. Goonberg. I'll second.
Um, any discussion on it? >> I don't have a discussion on that, but I do have a question. a property owner um approached me and said she and I don't I'm wondering first if this property
owner talked to you and it could be one of those because I don't remember their name but she said that she sold half of her property to her son and so thinking her property taxes would go
down and they continued to increase in a large amount And so the because she was paying taxes on the combined property and now she has half of that property and her property
tax is still escalated to the percentage like we've been hearing tonight. So has anybody called you on an issue like that and asked you to come and look at it or anything like that? Because I told her to come here tonight but she's not here. >> Not me specifically. I don't know if
it's this one on Frasier Street or not. Um, I don't know if that rings a bell for you at all, Jeanie. Um, I'm not certain. I've not been aware. I was not aware of that. Depending on what happened with that particular parcel, if it was a larger tract of land in a house, if they sold it and then split
the parcel and you now have two separate buildable lots, that that would change the market value of of the property itself or could change the market value itself depending on how big that residue parcel is. Um, but without knowing the exact details, I'm not sure. But if you
if you end up with her contact info, if you want to reach, you know, send them my way, I can I'm certainly um willing to answer any of the questions that she might have about. >> Okay. Absolutely. Thank you. >> Okay. >> Any other discussion? >> Have a motion and a second. All in favor? >> Opposed? None heard.
>> Uh then I think you just need to make a motion to close. >> Okay. I'll need a motion to close the meeting. >> I'll make a motion to close the meeting. >> Second. Have a motion and a second. All those in favor? I opposed. Meeting's closed.
>> Thank you, Alex. >> Um, I do need your guys' signatures real quick. >> Everybody wants to sign our life away. Yeah, if you want to be at the podium. You >> know which one it was here?
>> You want me to click present? Right. >> I'm sorry. Columbus right away. Take a while. This was 25 minutes ago. Goddamn lemon drops out. bucket of them.
>> How much shoulders? >> A lot. >> There's um water in the back in the fridge. If you want some bring your crowbar, in the fridge there's uh sparkling water. sparkly
carbonated cans of water. >> Bring your own sparkles when you drink it. >> Make your sparkly Yep. >> Start it. Go ahead and go.
This time we'll uh entertain the uh April 27th, 19 2026. I mean, uh work meeting to order. >> Mr. Mr. Mayor, Council, we have uh ICS Wald here this evening to uh bring us up
to speed on the facility needs study and a PowerPoint presentation. We had an hour aotted for them, so we're we're giving them a half hour because the other meeting kind of ran longer. But at any rate, I think they can probably navigate within that time frame and and walk us through some of the information
they found. >> Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council. I'm Joel Dunning with W Architects and Engineers. >> I'm Chris ICS. >> So, we're going to start off with a um a review of the process that uh we've gone
through and um this was covered at previous council update, but just a very quick update so that everyone's on the same page. Um we'll go through a space program and then the big uh key today is to discuss the options and the
recommended option and uh then talk through next steps. So >> overall process, this is kind of a flowchart that um we started off organizing. Um we figured out what the
city needed in the blue, defined what you have, looked at facility conditions, looked at how the city's departments operate, uh looked at some of the de demographics of the city moving forward. The yellow section in the middle um was we we determined the needs
um related to uh what sort of spaces could support that potential future changes in operations, potential changes in uh um staffing that might be needed for the um um future growth of the of the city. Um we're really in the red
section there that's right behind me. Identify your options. Uh we've spent a lot of time working with the core group. Um just as a reminder, there is a core group that uh city staff and a couple of the folks here in council attend. Uh we've gone through several different
iterations, refined options, and um have a recommended option to present to you tonight. Uh next slide is the guiding principles. Uh again, we start off every process by just understanding uh what the overall goals that we're
trying to achieve are. And these become the the yard stick that we measure to make sure that we are achieving those goals due to time. I I won't go through and read them all, but those were always present thinking through um what are what are we trying to achieve for the city of East Bethl.
Um so a quick summary of square footages of the pro space programs. Um this is uh highlighting the public works fire station building um just east of here. Uh existing it's 14,325
square feet. Uh if we were to leave public works and the sheriff's support um uh the ina county sheriff's uh parking and office space and fire station 2 at that facility. If we correct for the deficiencies, the shortcomings that the facility has
today, that's some of the equipment parking outside, that's uh un improperly sized rooms and other things like that or rooms they need that are missing. Um and look at some of the future needs like um future uh support spaces for
fire long-term down the road. There might be a dormatory space needed um for public works. There might be more vehicles that are projected out in the future. So, we have that uh you know, existing baseline, short-term needs about 2030, mid-term needs about 2040,
and long-term needs, you know, um looking out to about 2050. Gets up to potentially eventually a 33,000t building. So, over double the current size. Uh the next slide is fire station one. Um 10,000 foot existing building.
Again, same process. um it was built much more recently and has a lot of the amenities that are needed. Um it doesn't have the dorm space. So when you when you look at that long-term need if the the city were to change operational model to more of a duty crew fire model
um or it's already kind of a hybrid in that but um there's no sleeping rooms there now. So, if you were to add sleeping rooms for firemen to stay there, um it' be 15,800 or so square feet.
Um this building, city hall senior center is the next next page. The um existing building is 13,600 gross square feet. Um we didn't look a lot at the the needs of the senior center. Didn't understand the there to be too many
needs out to the future. Uh so that square footage stays the same. Um there are some potential future growth in staffing um in once you get out to the long term. Um so some minor deficiencies that exist today that uh are also um
remedied in the short term as well. Minor growth up to about 15,000. And then finally the uh fire station number three is the last slide. The space it's existing 13,000 or 1300 foot building. um if you were to look at making it a uh
equivalent um less garage size um because of the fewer vehicles there, but if you were to put in some of the office space and some of the decontamination spaces that are so important um for today um and possibly add one vehicle um
then it would get up it about triple in size um in the long term. The most of that is shortterm just adding that decontamination space um so that firefighters coming back from a call have a chance to clean up and get healthy before they drag those
carcinogens home or through the rest of the facility. So that was a quick overview of the space needs that uh we determined by talking with um department staff looking at the existing facilities and uh projecting out. So next we get into the
options. Um the uh I'm going to breeze through quickly four different options. Um option A, this is just give gives you a flavor of of uh the approach. It included a new fire station 4 in the
short term and a city hall included as well located somewhere. When we say fire station 4, that's always meaning somewhere on the west side of Highway 65. Um it renovate fire station one and three. Um, fire station 2 would move
from uh the public works building into uh apparatus bay addition here but leverage the city hall building for existing or for uh some of the support spaces, sleeping spaces, things like that. And then public works expands into the old fire station too.
Um long term there'd be the potential of adding you know 20 years from now as uh the fire operations change and need sleeping rooms you could have add those to any of the particular buildings that might need that for fire and also as um the vehicle count grows for public works
there could be an addition to the public works to satisfy those needs. Uh this next slide option B highlighted uh I'll call this the new fire station number two model um because instead of building a new fire station on the west side. This would be a new fire station 2 on
the east side of 65, generally serving the uh um the the citizens and the parts of the city that fire station 2 um serves today. Um after it moves out, public works would expand into the fire station 2 space, fire station one,
three, and city hall would be renovated. And again, the same long-term options exist for adding dormatory space. Um, and also in this one, as the west side develops, there's the potential to do to add a fourth fire station on the west side of 65. Again, that's just long
term. Uh, option C on the next slide. Um, really looks at I'll call it the no new facilities option. Um, except for midterm four. Um, it we looked at how could we solve things by just adding on
to public works and fire station two. How could we renovate one fire station one three and city hall to address some of the maintenance needs eventually as fire station 4 would be needed on the west side that'd be your first new construction u but it handles everything kind of at
their existing locations um and I should mention all of these have downsides to them and we discussed them at great length at the core group and each one was a different iteration so uh the next slide is option D that is uh an option of do it all Now, it's kind
of the opposite of uh of holding back and doing just maintenance and and small additions. Um this does a new fire station 2 and a city hall as new construction. Then expands the public works into the old fire station 2 plus adds onto it for um long-term growth
needs of uh vehicles. Only renovates fire station one and three because all of the expanded space is covered by the new two. And then longterm again as the west side of the 65 is developed, the city could pursue a new fire station four on that side of 65.
So that gets through the different options that uh weren't favorable that had too many negatives along with them. And next um comes the recommended option uh which there's two subtle differences. Um so it's option E and then there's an
E2. But um this creates an addition for um to city hall to this building for fire station 2 um which maintains the coverage within the city. Um if you can click another I think there's an animation that's stuck
right now. Oh maybe it went through there. This is good. It creates an addition on the back side of this building for the apparatus bay and some of the support spaces for fire. Um, on the next slide, I think it uh goes into detail about that where uh we're
again doing some of the needs to to city hall, looking at expanding the kitchen, renovating the bathrooms, the public bathrooms for ADA, adding a small AV closet, adding a small election storage um vault, and then the red is an addition for fire that uh has all of the
decontamination spaces to clean up um for firefighters to clean themselves up. Has the CP SCPA filling the tool shop, a turnout gear room, um, and a a watch office break area, as well as the apparatus bay garage space for all of
the the fire station 2, um, vehicles. Um, we did look at how that could go on the front of the building. I think that's the next slide. Um, it's an option as well. Same square footage. Um, puts it, uh, a little bit more front and center. ruins. I don't want to say ruins
affects the traffic of of public and might um cause instead of building a large um apron and pad in the back on the northeast side of the city hall, some of that money for asphalt uh might instead go to reconfiguring the public
lot. And it utilizes that existing drive out to 221st is how um fire apparatus would exit out during an emergency. Next slide shows just a detailed plan of how that could work. Um the office space of city hall definitely is affected more
by the front edition um mass or blocks windows and exits and other things. So there potentially more inter internal remodeling to make this this option work. I'm going into some of the details at fire station one on the next slide. um
minor remodeling again for just to accommodate that decontamination process. Um it takes over the existing space that currently is Alina EMS uses as a waiting area. Uh creates a defined turnout gear room that could keep the
gear separate uh environmentally from the apparatus base so that diesel fumes aren't uh pouring out onto the apparatus or under the turnout gear of firefighters. um creates a decontamination and gear wash suite and then uh moves the SCPA
filling station down and then moves the tool shop up to the mezzanine. Um an existing office that's underutilized um would be where Alina would stage um between EMS calls over there on the left. Um the next slide shows how public works
would be repurposed. Again, the Anoka sheriff would still operate out of this building in this case. Um, they would keep their office space on the mezzanine office and storage space. Um, that's in green and kind of the top right and have a couple of parking stalls that they'd
utilize for squads and potentially personal vehicles. Um the big benefit here is that the existing uh fire station 2, which is the darker blue on the bottom right leg of the L, um that' be converted to
public workspace. So a maintenance um bay, a wash bay, um a new break room, parts storage would all be put into that old fire station, existing fire station, too. and then some reconfiguration of locker rooms, uh welding area, sto sign
storage, things like that in some of the existing space. So, um much needed um current needs for uh um expansion are are accommodated by taking over that fire station 2 space.
Um the next slide shows it's just a slight variation and the only difference on E2 is that uh um option E just considers the renovation at um fire station 3 minor renovation to accommodate decontamination.
Um, this would look at uh E2 looks at potentially um saying that the city is better off uh rebuilding fire station 3 instead of putting an addition on uh maybe the addition doesn't fit on the site or it's going to be too constrained where it can
fit. And so there the potential of uh building that new fire station 3 um in the Kon Lake Beach area. So I I know if you want to add anything, I ran through everything fairly quickly or if council has any question, but uh
um after that we kind of have next steps I guess cover. >> So Mr. Mayor, just want to kind of recap a little bit on how we got here. Um kind of first of all, a lot of interviews were done of city staff. Um
lots of uh future growth were taken into account. We're looking at um what that future growth has in terms of needs, public work needs. Um how do our firefighters respond to certain areas? I mean, a lot of thought has kind of gone into this. And one of the big items that
kind of kept coming back up was the firefighter decontamination issues that that's becoming a top priority issue now for uh firefighters that in instead of taking, you know, having subpar areas where they can clean their equipment,
there's there's more and better facilities for doing that. Um then the future model too as was indicated is um you know what happens when we can no longer find volunteer firefighters on call firefighters and we need to go to more of a full-time model and how does
that impact putting up spaces for them to to essentially live in the station while on duty um and how the current stations aren't really designed for that. Then we got to public works and we kind of looked at some of the shop space
they have in there and trying to work in tight constrained areas and and um and you know equipment, heavy dangerous equipment moving around when they really don't have the space to do it in there. Uh and so all of this kind of I liken it
to to dominoes a little bit. um that one domino hits the next and hits the next and hits the next. And the ultimate goal was to obviously utilize the facilities we have to the best ability that we can before we even start looking at any sort of new
facilities or anything of that nature down the road. And I think and I think um you know IC Wald has done a great job of of hearing that and uh coming up with this idea of um how do we maximize our facilities maybe put on some additions
so that we can utilize them to the full extent before we ultimately have to pull the trigger on on new facilities. But that keeping in mind um was if we are looking at new facilities down the road, the interesting number that always sticks out in my mind is 14 years. 14
years is a whatever you started with for the value today, 14 years, it's a 100% increase. And so if you're gonna if you're going to build new facilities or if you are have to build new facilities, keeping your um keeping your eye on that
call it uh construction inflation is an important concept because again if it's tough tough to afford X amount today, it's two times X amount tomorrow and that becomes a difficult thing to handle tomorrow as well. So, at any rate, um, a
lot of, you know, those that have participated, I know, uh, Council Member Smith and Council Miller and the mayor have participated in in this working group and, um, and there's been a lot batted around, shall we say. I mean,
lots of options taken into consideration and, um, and ultimately, I think um, the one thing that sticks out is maximizing what we have today. We have about 2.5 million, I think it came out, in deferred maintenance on facilities, boilers, roofs,
um, you know, bathrooms aren't ADA. Um, you know, parking lots, things of that nature. And one of the things that kind of also brought this out was, you know, we like to we like to budget for deferred maintenance or we like to budget by depreciating equipment. So, we
buy a road graater today. We know it's going to last x number of years. We put x number of dollars away so we can buy that new road grader when when the other one needs to be replaced. The unfortunate reality is we've not done that for deferred maintenance. So, we we've not uh had these accounts set up
for deferred maintenance saying that well that parking lot's only going to last 20 years or whatever the 15 years, whatever the time frame is, or a roof's only going to last so long. You need to be putting that money away so you can replace that. and we've not done that. So that's that also kind of this whole
exercise has kind of exposed some of that deficiency shall we say and uh and I think will be part of the budget discussions that we have moving forward here um coming up here shortly. Anyways, questions.
I think Matt spelled it out pretty good there. I mean, like the deferred maintenance issues, that's just within a 5year period that 2.5 is coming at us. So, whether we get in front of it by moving forward on some of
this stuff or We're going to have to pay for it somewhere along the line here. So, >> was this sent to this um >> PowerPoint sent to us in email at all?
Because I couldn't I look for it. I'm like, where is it? >> Okay. Yeah, I forwarded it to everybody. But maybe >> you personally from like you do the Friday update. Okay. because I haven't seen it, but I'll look some more because
I do want to I haven't looked at it because I didn't know I had it. >> It came out at Friday 7:06. I can resend it to you. >> Okay. I mean, I got his email on Friday. I didn't see nothing was attached to it.
>> Sometimes the attachments hide. Okay. Mayor council members next steps would be plan on being pres on Wednesday. We have story boards prepared and we're ready to walk residents and everyone else would
like to join that day through the process again covering all the same topics that we discussed here and so we'll be available for questions. >> I think that would be excellent. I think that there will be uh some more conversations on this and hopefully more
more meetings with the public just for public input because this is bigger than any five of us. >> Yeah. Are you guys going to have all the numbers there too? So we can see the cost of all this stuff at least show the res. Those aren't present on the story,
but we do have the process that we identify. >> Excellent. >> Perfect. Thank you. >> And then shortly after that, the last bullet point there. It's our meeting.
discussing this having a little bit more feedback at that point. >> What's the date on that one? I don't think we established. >> We haven't established that. >> We'll send that. >> I think we get once we get see what
input we get on the town hall and input from Susan and Brian because we kind of know where things are at. But once we get input from you two and that then we can kind of move forward on what our possibilities or plans are
going to be. So, any other questions for these? >> No, just thanks for the presentation and all the work that you put in so far. It's really appreciated. >> Sorry for the compressed time. You did good. Thank you. Yes, you did excellent. >> Thank you for your time.
>> Thank you. >> Close meeting. >> Yeah. Need a motion to close the meeting. >> Make motion to adjourn. >> Second. >> Got a motion. Second. All in favor? >> I opposed. Unheard. Anybody
else need that? Miller, do you want a copy of this? >> What? >> Do you want to send to you again? >> Huh? >> No, I got >> No, you didn't. >> Just blocked. I'm losing part of my
This time I'll bring the uh April 27, 2026 council regular meeting to order. Please rise if you can for the pledgece 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. >> Make a motion to adopt tonight's agenda. >> I will second that. >> A motion and a second on adopting agenda. All in favor? I >> I opposed unheard presentations. East
Bethl Scholarship Program. >> Please come up to this mic here. >> State your name. >> Hello everybody. I am Ashley Norling. Um I'm actually covering for Heather Fischer today because she is sick. Um
but we're I'm so excited to meet you all because I live just right off Wiking Boulevard. So, it's nice to see who I voted for and to see um the faces that I did vote for. So, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity. Um but first, I'd like to say how excited I am about a program that we are representing for the
city of East Bethl. Um it's the East Bethl Royalty um Ambassador Program. It had ended back in CO just like many other programs did and we're trying to reestablish our connection with you
guys. Um we personally had a very strong relationship with the city and we want to continue that um through you guys um through the city. Um some of you may know our program is centered around developing young leaders, building
confidence and encouraging community involvement. These ambassadors represent city of East Buffalo local events and beyond and they truly care about giving back to the place. So, we're I guess we're looking for opportunities that we
can volunteer in our community that will represent um our city. Um we're going to go around different cities to represent us as well. Um we're also looking to strengthen relationships with our local businesses and organizations who may be
interested in supporting our program as well as financial or physical ways. Um she said, "I will some fun." She said we we've gotten some fundraising from flyers and information flyers behind um
those who would like one. So she said she said I could give like fundraising fire flyers if we'd like. Um but we're looking to um for candidates that are 16 to 21 and young candidates that are from 6 to 9. Um, we really appreciate your
time and we're so excited to get back in the groove to support our community in any way we can. I've personally supported our community. My name is Ashley Norling. You might have seen me on our Facebook pages where I would um look for donations for Christmas
presents for people that are in need. Um, I've been doing it for the last three years. um you might have seen me as well, but um giving back to our community is very important and we're really excited that we can maybe potentially support that in our future.
So um again, we thank you for your time. Um and that is all I had. >> All right. Thank you. >> Appreciate you. Thank you so much. >> I'm very glad that uh this is coming back. It's >> I know it's it's such a beautiful program and the girls love it. But
again, it's honestly super exciting for me to everybody that I have voted for um for the last you know six years. So um again my name is Ashley and I really appreciate you guys. >> Thank you. >> Oh can I ask you a question? Are you seeking donations from >> um the city?
>> If you if anybody would like to donate. I've got flyers and random things that I can leave with you if you would like to um support our program. Um, she did say like, you know, if there's a company that would like to um support one of our
candidates, it's like a $250 fee. Um, I have all of this available. Or if you'd like to donate a basket of something that we have in the future, that would be great, too. But if I could leave that with you guys, that would be awesome. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. And we're done. >> So, I How many do you want?
>> One for each. >> Awesome. We appreciate you guys so much. I hope that Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> I appreciate you. Thank you. >> Yep. >> Sheriff's Office. >> Mayor, council members, my name is Scott. I'm a sergeant with the
>> These are yours. >> No, >> probably not. Thank you. >> Oh, you're good. My name is Scott Whitland. I'm a sergeant with the patrol division as no county sheriff's office. So, thank you very much for having me. Uh, in March, the sheriff's office deputies responded to a total of about
349 calls for service, responded to six assaults, five theft reports, and one criminal sexual conduct report. There were no damage property calls in March. Deputies made a total of 18 arrests for miscellaneous offenses, and conducted 153 traffic stops, resulted in 27
traffic citations. Um, some notable calls from March, March 5th, the 21 2100 2100 600 block of Highway 65. There's a warrant in drug arrest. A deputy stopped driver almost colliding with another vehicle. Uh, driver was digging in the glove box. She was identified and had a
warrant. Um, and upon arrest while searching the vehicle prior to the towing, they found a huge amount of meth in the vehicle. Um, on March 6 at the 2700 block of Viking, uh, fourthderee DWI, a deputy was in the parking lot when a male pulled in the lot and stated
he was being chased by three men. Uh, the male was known to the deputy and had a history of hallucinations and meth use. The male stated he used meth four hours prior. Uh, deputy brought the male to the hospital, obtained a blood draw, and is arrested for DWI.
March 13th in the 900 block 189th at Nexus. Um assault report deputies survived the two of the clients fighting. One male and one female and the male was assault and the female. Deputies arrived and investigated and the male client was arrested and charged
with assault. The Holiday gas station on March 18th at 1300 block 187th Lane. Uh second degree DWI. A deputy was called to a vehicle. hit a pillar at the gas station and the mail appeared a little out of it. The deputy arrived and spoke to the driver
who stated he didn't hit anything even there was damage to his vehicle. When asked for proof insurance, the mail opened up and provided his Door Dash app. Fuel soriety test failed. He was arrested. His PBT was a 271 and a bottle
of Jack Daniels found in his pocket. The 1900 block is 65. On the 21st of March, fourth grade DWI, deputy stopped the vehicle for speeding on 65. Uh deputy made contact, driver appeared impaired, and state he consumed two bottles alcohol. Field field soriety
test, was arrested on 43 DWI charges, and had a PBT of.128. Also on March 21st at the Holiday Gas Station on 187th Lane, a warrant arrest. While at the gas station, a deputy observed a male that he knew had a warrant. Uh deputy made contact with the
mail, confirmed his identity through his driver's license again, and the male was arrested on his warrant. Thank you for the opportunity to provide a quick update regarding last month's activities. Any questions for me? >> I do. I have two questions. Um, one
question is when a juvenile is trespassed, what happens when they're repeat offenders for juveniles? >> When repeat offenders, >> juveniles is always tricky, right? Um, it all depends on what they're trespassed from and what the place wants to do about it.
>> So, if they if these um females wanted to go back in that place or did go back in that place and >> they could be charged with trespassing, arrested, and sometimes the stores are like, we just want them gone. We don't want them charged. So, it's going to be even though we trespass them and give
them a trespass form, if we can go remove them from the place at the business's request and it's up to the business then to say we want them charged or not. Um, so we'll we'll give like quick trip or holiday once they're trespass and they come back. If they say
we want them charged, um, we'll charge them with trespassing and depending on their history, maybe take a trip to Lino or maybe just go back home to their parents. All depends on their history. My other question is, how often do you guys patrol these small neighborhoods?
Because I see a lot of carts parked um you know, in different spots, parking lots, um side of the road, stuff for extended periods of time. But I'm wondering how often do you go through the all the different neighborhoods? Whispering Aspen, my neighborhood um
Lake, just drive up and down the streets, especially in the evenings and weekends when kids are out and um being kind of frivolous and frolicking around and riding bikes with the little electric bikes without
helmets and stuff. So, you can recommend that so the parents don't have >> Yep. Good question. So, many of our deputies here in East Bethl, they've worked the contract for several years. I worked East Bethl for a couple years. Um, it's my favorite contract in the county. I'm not just saying that because I'm up here right now. I love this city and the work up here. It is amazing. So,
we have a lot of our deputies that have worked up here for a lot of years. And because of that, they know all the problem areas. They know where they have to be closest to where most of the calls come out. So, unfortunately, they don't always patrol these smaller neighborhoods because those aren't the places we get a lot of calls in. They want to be in the areas that they know
they're going to be um going to throughout the night. Either could be the trailer parks, it could be around the quick trips. There's a couple places that we frequent and unsavory houses that we watch. Um so typically the without someone calling in for actual patrol request. Um we don't always make
it nightly to the little neighborhoods because we just don't have the calls for service there. Um we could be patrolling a little neighborhood up in the northeast corner. All of a sudden our problem areas are down south and take 15 minutes drive time to get to a call. So because of response times, everything else just law enforcement, we try to
stay close to the areas that we're getting the most calls from. Um, but if we get extra patrol requests, um, we'll make sure the deputies do cruise to those neighborhoods if there is a problem with kids in the bikes. Um, and we do get those from time to time and we'll have deputies patrol the areas. So, um, does that kind of answer the
question a little bit? >> It does. I just had somebody make a comment that, um, man, the police department, um, are getting all this money and I've and I'm paying them in my taxes and I've never seen them in my neighborhood. And I would say that's a
that's a benefit in a way saying that you have a quiet neighborhood where the police are are rarely called to um >> like if I saw I live in Andover and if I saw the sheriff's office drive by my house all the time I'd be worried be like why is there always a sheriff's office driving by my house and it makes me feel good that when I do see them
occasionally but no I will talk to deputies up here um and they'll be happy to cruise through the neighborhoods. If there's any specific ones you want us to go through on a regular basis, um, let us know and we'll be happy to go down there and it's easy for us. A lot of times we'll sit and watch houses, uh, sit and watch for traffic because that's
some of the best times we can get, you know, some of the people we're looking for, you know, so they see us sitting somewhere. We're usually watching something, waiting for a car to come or car to go for people that we know have warrants and stuff. >> Okay. Thank you. >> All right. I do have a question. >> Okay. uh reading through your reports on
uh year-to- date stuff, I noticed under the assaults year to date last year, we were at five assaults for the city. Right now, we're at 18. Is is there a specific reason for that or location for that or >> we don't know about?
>> So, if I had to give you an answer on that without looking at the numbers, I would say Nexus. >> Okay. >> Yeah, that's what I thought. >> Um we have well a lot of assaults there. Um, so and when I I work night shift um and I spend
a lot of the time in this city and I can tell you that salt stuff it's it's the primary reason. >> Okay. >> Any other questions? >> Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Have a good day.
>> Fire chief. Mayor, members of the council, thanks for having me up here uh for our monthly review. Uh since the last time we talked, uh we've done 63 calls. Uh the majority of them are are medicals.
Again, uh 13 difficulty breathing calls, six stroke, and five heart uh or chest pain calls. Uh some of the notable calls that we had um we had the um Pullbar fire that was
on the 4th just before uh Easter. Um at that fire we had nine different fire departments uh that provided mutual aid for us. Um Alina and uh the Ina County Sheriff's Office was also there helping us um with
multiple different tasks. Uh at that scene we did have two firefighters who had to be evaluated. one was transported and has since been released. Both have returned to full duty um shortly thereafter. Uh we've had one grass fire
uh that was I believe approximately a week ago. Uh we were actually doing a debrief on this pole barn fire. We had a bunch of people at the station so we were able to get a bunch of trucks on scene quickly and keep it contained to a small area. Um we've had one vehicle
fire uh multiple NBC's. I would just urge people to be careful on the roads. People seem to be driving faster and faster. Um but uh the the the crashes seem to be up a little bit. Um on uh the consent agenda tonight, we
do have a grant application. Um hopefully you've had a chance to review it. Um we're looking, it's a matching grant. We're looking to uh expand into some electric tools as well as electric lighting uh battery operated. So, it gives us some mobility.
Uh, and then the last thing I have um is our our probationary firefighters are doing well. They've uh completed hazmat and firefighter one. Um we're we're working through any of the hiccups that they might have had, but
they're all progressing well and nicely towards uh completing their probationary tasks. Uh which uh probation would be coming in the end of August, I believe. So, right on time. Um, and I would like to also mention that our mentors that we
have with each of our new firefighters are doing a great job as well. Um, with the institute of the mentor mentee program, uh, we did uh, we do evaluations on the new hires, the men uh, the mentees. Uh, but we've also
given the mentees a chance to evaluate their mentors. So, if there's an issue, we're able to head it off at the pass, but we're able to get a two-way street of feedback from both people and make sure that it's a good fit from the beginning, and we've been able to
maintain those good fits and get our people through. So, uh, yeah, just wanted to commend those mentors. >> Any questions for Chief? >> I do. Is there a cause for that fire in that pole bar established yet?
>> No. Uh it was undetermined. Uh AFIT came out and did the investigation. Uh it's labeled as undetermined. Um it was a total loss. There wasn't a whole lot left to base it off of or or try and say this
caused it. Um so >> okay. Thank you. >> Sorry. I wish I had a better better answer, but it's unable. >> Okay. I just cur like I saw it all over Facebook. So, I was very curious on what would have caused that.
>> I do know that there was a large fuel load in that entire building. Um, the report will show I believe there was 20 to 25 snowmobiles, uh, seven side by sides, two RVs, a boat
among various other things. The unfortunate part is when there's that much fuel load, it creates a lot of heat and it does a lot of destruction which gets rid of sometimes the sources that we might be able to point to. >> Wow. Thank you.
>> How's the uh grass fire grass season? >> A lot better after today. >> Okay. >> How's that shaping up? >> Um it's it's been okay for us. Um we've had a couple of smaller ones. Um, we've been able to contain the ones we've had.
Um, our neighbors have had their fair share of ones, but I haven't heard of any that have required mutual aid. So, that means they're they're all being handled, you know, in house. So, uh, after today, there should be uh less of
a risk. There's never no risk, but there should be less of a risk. Uh, if I remember correctly, last I looked, I think we're at 3/4 of an inch today. So, Good soaking. >> Yep. >> All right. Thank you, Chief.
>> Thank you, Chief. >> Thanks, Chief. >> Jacob, is there anybody on the list? >> Nobody's on the list. >> All right. Go to the consent agenda. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented.
>> I will second. And I am not pulling anything tonight. I >> want to pull C. Anybody else? Okay, we got a motion and a second
for the consent agenda as amended. All those in favor? >> I opposed. >> Unheard. Item C, Matt, just page 3641 says Miller asked
for the vote should say Smith asked. not make a motion content on that change. >> Okay, we'll make a motion to approve item C on the consent. >> Second. >> Have a motion, a second. Any further
discussion? None being heard. All in favor? >> I opposed. >> None heard. Okay, we go down to 8G city administration.
Okay, one second. Okay, Mr. Mayor and Council, before you this evening is consideration for the approval of the attorney contract. Um, the city of East Bethl's contract with Ecert Glammers for legal services set to expire May 31st. As uh at the January
26th council meeting, the council authorized staff to solicit requests for proposals for service. The city received two proposals from Ecert Glammers and Bergland Bombgartner and Glasser. Uh and uh at the March 9th city council
meeting, representatives from both firms were here. At the March 23rd meeting, city council um directed staff to negotiate a contract with let's just call them BBG uh LLC for consideration of approval. The attached prop uh contract is there
for a three-year time period convincing June 1st, 2026. At the last council meeting, there were a couple of issues that were raised. I believe we've had those ironed out and I have them here this evening to answer any additional questions that might arise. Otherwise, uh, council's request to review the
information and, uh, consider approval. >> I looked over both, um, agreements and they look identical to what I see and I know we tabled that on their
proposal page 10. I just want this in their uh, agreement that Mark Berglin will be our city attorney. council meetings and if we need them at other ones, I'd like to have that written in there. And I don't see that. So, it's on
page 10 of their proposal at the top. If we can put that in there, >> please state your name. >> Sure. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, Scott Bombgartner on behalf of Berlin, Bombgartner Glazer, BBG, uh, council
should have received a revised um, contract that had both redlinining and clean versions. Uh, under paragraph one, additional language was inserted that says Mark Bergman shall serve as the lead municipal services and prosecution
services attorney. That was included in there. Uh, I know there was also a question relative to fees. Let me start by apologizing. That was a mistake on my part. I know that our proposal did not encompass appellet costs and what was included in
in the contract that was sent over was a contract that we've utilized for many other jurisdictions. I missed that. I I'm at fault for that and I apologize. So, that was an error on my fault on my side. In the new contract, that has been removed. So, the langage that In
addition to the flat fee amount under section 4, hourly fees for services and handling, jury trials, criminal expenditures, that has all been omitted from the revised contract. And I do apologize. >> I have two of them here and they're the same. That's why I'm questioning it
because I don't have the revised one then. So, >> Mr. Mayor, I'm not sure how the same one got copied in there, but there was a revised. >> I get a printed out copy. So, maybe they just gave me both the same. I've got I've got a redline version. I don't know if you want to show it or
take a look at I've highlighted what's been changed. If I may approach you to take a look at it. >> Sure. >> I I know on this on mine the one that was sent to council here page 56 there it does show Mark Bergwin shall serve as
the legal and missile services. Page 56. >> So I'm wondering if the printed out copy got printed. That's That's what I'm thinking because I don't >> It's It's on It's on here. It has Burgl in there. >> Okay, that's fine. That's what I want to see. Thank you for doing that.
>> And if you can just, Mr. Mayor, if you can just kind of touch on the fees too for the uh BC BCA Sure. >> issue and kind of how you handle that with the cities you operate with. >> Sure. Uh Mr. Mayor, members of the
council, the BCA in order to have access to BCA databases for prosecution purposes such as e filing, e charging, uh crim criminal history, record checks, things like that, BCA does charge cities access fees. Now, they charge them to
the city through uh joint powers agreements with the city that then designates their prosecuting authority. Uh and typically, it's $600 per year per city. What I've done is I've negotiated with the BCA uh to include all of our
cities under one umbrella, per se, so that instead of all of the cities that we prosecute for being charged $600, um they allow us to split that $600 charge among all of our cities. So, for instance, and I brought a copy of our
our recent invoice, uh it's $600 for access and then three VPNs, which is a uh It's a network to log in a VPN that's not on the on the public network system. So, for instance, the annual invoice for
BCA access for all of our cities combined is $1,140. What that worked out to last year for our cities was $74. So, we're able to spread that cost among all of our jurisdictions to get that access uh and kind of pull the resources
rather than each city being charged individually. >> You don't control the BCA's. >> I wish I could. >> I do. Uh no, they they've been somewhat constant. Um and from what I understand in my my years of discussing this with
them, it's their method of recouping their costs, updating their software programs and everything else. So, uh, it doesn't usually fluctuate. It's been pretty consistent the last several years. Uh, but if they decide that they're going to need to charge more to cover their expenses, I don't know what
if any push back we can give them because we're essentially at their mercy by tying into their system. Any other questions? >> Mayor, I have a quick question if I may. Um, as part of the RFP, it uh was
established that appellet services were supposed to be free of charge and provided under the contract. You've deleted the language, but appellet services no longer appear in the contract. And so, it reads to me as though you will not be providing appellet services to the city. And if
you do that, they would be subject to other rates. >> Well, then you're reading into that something that isn't in there. >> Can you point to me where where it says the fees for appellet services? >> There would be no fees for appellet services is that is all pro included in this.
>> Where does it say that appellet services are services to be provided? Well, I guess if you wanted me to break down and include as far as prosecution that goes from the initial receipt signing of complaints all the way through court of appeals and and supreme
court, I can certainly do that. I would anticipate that would part of the criminal prosecution services. If council wants that language in there detailing every step we take, I can certainly do that. When I read jury trials and court trials and the other matters that are in here,
including hearings, pre-trials, omnibus hearings, I am surprised to see appellet services not included as appellet court practice is a distinctly different practice area than criminal prosecution at trial court level. >> Well, and I'm sure just like many of
your contracts with your cities, I don't know that you have it included in there yet as part of prosecution services because it starts as a prosecution case, criminal case. If it goes to a court of appeals, which you probably know is maybe one every two years to three years, I would assume that that would be
included in there. If the council wants me to identify each and every one of those and identify the court of appeals or any appellet work is included, I can certainly include that in the contract because it is our our intent that we handle the prosecution from start to finish whether that be at the court of
appeals or at the Minnesota Supreme Court. The RFP clearly stated appellet services and if it's not in the contract then it's arguably not in the contract not an obligation of the uh the vendor. Again, I'd be happy to include that. It was
never our intention not to have it included. >> I just assume that the prosecution work means prosecution work. >> Mr. Mayor, I think a motion contingent on that language is sufficient. >> Yes. It' be good just to be clear on
that. >> Any further discussion? We'll need a motion with the addition to the intent. I'll make a motion to approve the agreement with Bergwin Gardener and Glazier and add the language that we
were just talking about. >> Second. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? None being heard. All in favor? >> Opposed? None heard. Motion passes. >> Thank you.
>> Thank you very much. Uh staff reports. Mr. Mayor, just a couple of uh topics I want to update the council on this evening. First of all, um, thank you for participating in the local board of adjustment meeting. That can get a
little arduous at times with folks coming up and and Bud was a character for sure. Um, but I I I think um the the part that I want to continue to to um draw attention to and and reinforce over
and over and over is when folks say my taxes went up $600 or whatever the case is. They need to break it down to the city line, the county line, the school line, um 911 line, all those, you know, lines and see, okay, you're you're before the
city at this point. the city can only control the city and we had a very small increase in the last year and and we're working very hard to keep that increase small again this year. I think you guys have done a tremendous job of keeping a very tight budget uh for the residents
of of East Bethl. Um so at any rate I I will always harp on that and um and uh I I think the other notable thing is that um you know when it comes to assessing property values, people get upset that oh my my value is going up. I think the
the important thing to understand is if everybody's value got cut in half tomorrow, you'd still pay the same in taxes because the city the budget is the pie and everybody gets a piece of that pie. And um and so if everybody's property got cut in half, you know,
percentage- wise the same, you would still pay the same amount of taxes. And so it's less about what your property value has gone up um and um and more about what the budget is in the city. and and that's the part where you guys have kept a very tight line on. Uh the
other thing I wanted to report on is that the uh data conversion projects going well. We have we have um we're starting with large files right now which are the most difficult uh to scan. We have 133 files completed. We have about a thousand to go but um the
majority of those are uh property uh files or resident property files. So um some of them can be large, some of them can be small. We're hoping to move through some of those uh very quickly, but uh the large ones take the most amount of time and that's and that's
what we wanted to get done here first and it's been moving along very nicely. I checked in with Carrie today. You know, how do you feel it's going? She thinks it's going great. So, just wanted to report on that and uh we continue to make headway on on that large project
and um and we have her till October which would be the six months. Can I ask a question regarding that before you move on? when they scan them in um do they locate them to certain fi certain
domains on the computer like um I don't know varants request or you know horses or categorize them in certain ways while they're lo while they're scanning them in or are they just scanning it and then somebody else later will have to pluck
them out and put them where they belong? >> Good question. Good question. Um, we we initially looked at bulk scanning all the information which would create that kind of a backlog of where do these things go type of thing. We didn't want to do it that way. Uh, we scan in each property. So, it's under a property
address and whatever the variances are, whatever the well permits, what you know, all the different things are under that one property address. So, we have a realtor call up and say, I want to know when the septic system was pumped last. We're going to sell the property type of thing. we can go into that property
address, pull it up, have the date and provide it to them on the spot. Before it required somebody getting up from the desk, going over trying to find the file somewhere, dig through, you know, years and years and years of files to try and find it was a huge waste of time. Uh so being able to go and uh just locate it
by address, pull it up, should take five minutes to give them the information they're looking for and they can move on to something else in the day. So >> yeah. So can you create like data bases like how many variances for this thing were done in five years, how many
variances for that, how many well variances, how many septic is is that possible with the way it's being categorized or it's just being categorized by address? >> It's just being categorized by address, but I'm not sure if they can do a search
or query to pull up, you know, that type of information. Um, that's a good question, but I I don't know. I'm not a >> I'm not a computer guy from that standpoint. But, um, >> the again the important thing here was to um to get this stuff digitized so that
in the event of a fire or something like that, we don't lose all this information from all the years that they just been stacking up. So, >> Okay. Thank you. >> What are we doing with the files once they've been scanned? Um so the files that are scanned if they
are difficult to read we keep the originals. If they are not difficult to read we we look at the time frame and if it's allowed within a certain time frame we can destroy anything else that concludes my report unless there's questions. council reports.
>> I got one that I'm thinking about. I want to run it past the council. Uh residents have contacted me plus I've talked to other city officials about it. It's about our state flag and most of the cities around us, they've adopted it
that they're using the old flag from it was revised back in 1983. And my feeling is I agree with what they're saying. I believe that we should keep the same flag that we've had for many years. And that's my opinion. I
don't know what the rest of council thinks. >> I agree. I was going to actually bring that up, but then I saw that we have the old flag here, so I'm I guess we don't need to. >> No, I've drove around. All of our buildings have the US flag. The only
flag that only place that has the Minnesota flag is the ice arena and it's got the old one. >> Yeah. And I know other >> and I know I know St. Francis >> uh and over all them have now adopted into this >> river >> staying with the original flag and now
it's kind of making it to the legislation again. Yeah. >> So I agree with that. >> Yeah. I got no problem keeping the whole place. >> So do we need to make a motion on that Jacob >> or a resolution? >> The hard part is trying to find them.
>> I guess you can. Yeah, they're hard to find. I'll find the spot. >> Yeah, Mr. Mayor, Council Member Smith, um you know, if the city already has an existing policy about which flag to fly, then you're okay following the existing policy. But if you're changing policy or if you want to establish a policy, you can do that by motion and vote at this
time. >> How does council feel that we should make a motion? >> I think it should. >> I like your idea. Okay. >> With respect, I'll also say if you >> you can formalize it by tableabling this to be adopted at the next meeting and
have staff prepare a more formal resolution. >> Um that way it has a little more fit and polish to it. >> Rather do that. >> I would rather Tyler come through a resolution than >> Okay, let's do that. >> And uh if we need to change policy so staff can review policy.
>> Yep. >> Good. That's all I got. >> Good information. ready at the next meeting. >> Good. Thank you. >> Anybody else? >> Yep. I'm going to take a moment. Uh last uh park council meet or parks committee meeting, um we recognized uh Susan
Jefferson for 35 years of service to this city, uh as a parks committee member. Um that's dedication. Um she's done a great job through the years and our city parks show it. So if you see Susan out there, she's stepping down.
She's moving, but she's done a great job and uh I just feel that she should be recognized like she was that night. She was given a nice plaque and um she's done a great job for this city.
>> Okay. I have something. Um the first thing I want to do is uh make a request to the city um regarding that the next equalization meeting. in the past that the ones I've attended, we all had the list of everybody who was um appealing
or had an issue and I think only the mayor had a list tonight. So, I'd like that list so that I can look at it and I don't know, there's something about being able to see and the address and the prices in
on in writing versus somebody reading them to me. So, in the future, I'm just requesting that we all get the list of every person that's um appealing. >> Do you want that sent to you? >> No, I don't need it for this one, but in the future. >> Okay.
>> And um then I just want to say that the senior dance is next Friday. So, we hope people come out to it and dance. Um bring your loved one because it's a Mother's Day uh special. and I have
attended the airport aviation days meetings and we are still looking for volunteers. Uh if you know somebody who likes community um involvement, this would be a great thing, great time to meet new people um
all in the airfield industry are going to be doing it. And um I do have the planning commission and Wednesday I have another airport meeting. So, Wednesday's going to be really busy. And that's all I have because don't forget Wednesday's
our town hall. Everybody, >> Ryan, you got anything? >> Yes. Uh, uh, Mr. Look and I attended the meeting for the North Highway 65 corridor coalition.
Uh, we didn't have a meeting in almost a year, so it was good to reconvene. uh some details with that. Um for the big uh project on 65 down in Blaine from
99th Avenue to 117th, uh bids were opened and the estimated amounts came or the uh bids the low bid came out under the estimated amount. estimated amount was
about 181 million and the low bidder was 168.2 million. Uh they are anticipating a to start the first week of June. Uh this will be roughly a four to five year
project starting this year. Uh they figure this year will be a low impact. uh 27 28 29 will be a high impact years and 30 if there's anything left will be a low impact years. And with this
project they will be doing their best to keep two lanes open each direction during construction. So hopefully while uh there may be uh you know normal road
construction and some delays that uh hopefully the highway during these years still operates effectively. Um the next project after that is the
Bunker Lake Boulevard interchange. Uh they are anticipating a 2028 start on that. That is approximately a $43 million project and currently it is 60% funded.
And on 65 uh from Columbia Heights in Minneapolis to the intersection or to I694, they are looking at
uh reconstruction of that area uh with various roundabouts and other de deals. But uh they are conducting public meetings for that reconstruction currently and that would take place
during 2028 and 29. So there is a lot of road construction coming up on 65. Thankfully not right in East Bethl but
unfortunately a lot of us do commute and we'll have to deal with it. But uh if we can hold out and put up with it I think once it's completed it's going to be pretty amazing.
So that's all I have. >> Thank you. I happened to stop in here last Friday and uh public works was in installing a brand new balsam tree right out in front here that the lions had donated and
take a look at. It's pretty nice tree and >> was that that our new Christmas tree? >> Yep, that's the new Christmas tree. >> We'll be having a great Christmas tree lighting this year. >> So that's all I have. I'll take entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjurnn. >> Second.
>> Have a motion and a second. All in favor? I >> motion passes.