Thank you. All right, the time is 6:30 and with us tonight is Gavin Kio the attorney, Craig Shely, Ben Peters, Bill Loves, myself, Michael Gary, and Mike Roth. There's no one else on the line,
right? That's it. >> Okay, very good. So, we will begin. Um, is anyone here for open forum this evening? >> I think I am that right. Do I >> chair in the center with a nice mic?
>> Do I just read the letter? >> You can read the letter or say it. However you like. >> Just say it. >> Yeah, sure. Whatever. >> Fancy. >> The only thing is introduce yourself. >> Okay. Hi, I'm Katherine Ramberg and I live at
509 4th Avenue West. Um, I was a teacher here for a long time and now I work at the Angry Trout and I live on um the dirt road which was calcium chlorideed today. How's that for timing? Very exciting. But I live on the road
that um goes up from Fifth Street straight up past the current recycling center. And um I've watched the traffic increase, both foot traffic and
pedestrian traffic. And I've tried to put up signs and it's just me and one neighbor. So there's not a lot of um people signing petitions or anything like that, but I don't think anybody would disagree. There's a lot of
increased traffic there. I feel like some of the traffic was found when we did all the construction or up the um Fifth Avenue West by the hospital there. There weren't any signs to show that that wasn't a detour. So, a lot of
people took that road and now they still think, "Oh, we can avoid a stop sign or something." So, yeah. So, a lot more traffic that way. And people go so fast. And I know there's a sign above the mailboxes there by the community center that says I think 20, but nobody goes 20
and some people go really fast. Um, there have been potholes which have been really helpful, but you guys smoothed them out and for people to slow down and there's so many pedestrians. I'm concerned. We have
people going back and forth for the um little league um ball field right there. All kinds of people. We have people going back and forth from um the community gardens that are right there. We have, of course, the farmers
markets on Thursdays, all kinds of other fabulous community gatherings, dance classes for youth, um kids camp for youth right there. And then there's just a lot of kids on like scooters and stuff
right at the corner there. um or cutting through the parking lot going from wherever they live at the up at the other side of town. Um oftentimes pedestrians will cut through
kind of up and behind the um fire hall there. So there's people coming that way too. Just people that might, you know, might be potentially hit by a car or something like that. Um, also with the gunflint view, there's quite a
bit more people now walking on foot there. And um, and there potentially will be even more traffic when Sarah I don't know the official name of what it's called, but when Sarah Hamilton's going to put in those few houses up at the corner there on the Gun Trail and
Fourth Avenue West where they intersect. Um, so yeah, as the community advocate, although my neighbor would agree, he's just not the email writing kind of guy. Um cuz he has the signs too. I was trying to think over all the years. I
mean this is nothing new. Uh we cut back the trees so people could see this sign for the speed. We put up signs and I just don't see the traffic slowing down. People come by so quickly. So as much as we all love speed bumps, that was the
idea I had like a summertime thing to put a speed bump there. I figured it would be movable and it wouldn't cost a terrible amount of money and I'm here to answer questions
if anybody needs to ask any. >> Well, thank you. It's good to know what's going on. Um I think that was something we identified in in other streets as well and um we'll look at some possibilities and talk about this,
but I want to make sure council had an opportunity to be aware and hear about this. Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Is anyone else here for open form this evening? >> All right. With that, we'll move on to
the consent agenda if there's any amendments to that or questions, concerns. Otherwise, a motion for the consent agenda. >> Motion. I'll second. All right. Um, did everyone notice the new hire park hires?
>> All right. Any other? >> Yes. >> All right. Uh, all in favor for the consent agenda? >> I >> I Okay, that's everybody. We'll move on
to new business. Resolution 2026-04 Smith setback varants. >> Yes. Michael. Yeah. Well, it's not a big one. That's not always what's important. But if you
looked at it, you could see that there's I mean, it is just three people. And but really looking at where it's positioned on the lot relative to the houses around it. Um, and also
just just the way the neighborhoods basically have it. It's like I don't think it's those three feet was funny in my mind. I always thought there was a push there
just stop by and have a look pretty straightforward. Okay. Anyone have any questions or comments? Motion to approve uh resolution 2026-04. That
>> all right. Any comments, questions? Okay. All in favor of resolution 2026-04 Smith setback variance. >> I believe that was everyone. Thank you. >> Great. Very good. Thank you.
>> Thank you. >> Let me just Oh. I can't remember if those are touch screens or not. >> All right. >> Okay. Big moment in our meeting. We have applicants for both the planning
commission and the state. >> Wonderful. Have a chance to read through that. >> Can we do them together? might have it. Okay. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. It's really nice. Um, all right.
Uh, would anyone like to make a motion for seeing David Kelly to the planning commission? >> I'll make that motion. >> Any second for that? >> Yeah, I'll second that. >> Okay. Anyone have any questions or
comments? >> All right. All in favor of seeing David Kelly on the planning commission? >> I All right. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, David. And then next, the Public Utilities
Commission. Uh, Gregory Pierce. Um, Craig, is that something you're >> Oh, okay. Sure. Um, would anyone like to make a motion for seeing Gregory Pierce to the Public
Utilities Commission? >> Yeah, I'll make that motion. >> Second. >> I'll second. >> Okay. Any questions or comments? All right. And with that, all in favor of seeing Gregory Pierce to the Public Utilities Commission.
>> All right. Very good. All right. That is worth a little bit of celebrating just to have two board seats. >> Yeah, that felt that's great. >> Good, too. >> All right. And final
uh back to old business. So, the boulevard mowing these. Um, I don't know how many of you saw remember if we passed that around last time, but what what they sent out for
the survey. Um, and oh, you got eight responses out of 43. Um, and five of the five of those are the people who do. So the Mike the three
that are not maintained are they in this list of the eight? >> I guess no. Yeah, because everyone else is doing something in that answer. >> Um
that we're just in the downtown. Is that includ is it three roughly three properties that are under virtually no maintenance? >> Yeah. >> Is that okay?
>> Um that though, and this isn't the biggest item to it, but one of the reasons we talked about having this the same business do it was just consistency. You you kind of don't keep that. You may
think they aren't being taken care of if you just depends on what day who's had a chance to take care, you know, mullet or whatever, but it so that seems like a lesser to find out there's only three of them that are not
maintained at all. It feels like a smaller priority to a first comment I made. If we only have three, we have to That's my first reaction to this. I thought there was going to be more. But maybe it's just the fact that those three have larger I don't know who they
are but have larger strips >> of land and some of it I know is over on the east side. What do you guys think? It's also very noticeable when three of 43 don't, right? Potentially 43, right?
Everybody's cutting the grass and whoa. And I agree it's it's not not attractive. Um Craig had made the suggestion last time or maybe Mike did but you know you just do it and they get
>> build in our zoning or is it our ordinances? I mean it's the I mean it's their responsibility is that that's the I don't see any reason why that would be What's not in the ordinance is a
standard. So, it's not clear to what standard they need to keep the grass. >> We don't have a rule about it. Is that worth looking at planning level or having conversation
about expanding the language in that ordinance? probably not for this issue since we're focusing on a specific area. >> Gota other tools we can use like what we're
talking about now. So is is that then potentially a direct communication that suggests here many of your business neighbors are using this service you might be interested in this or if not the city will do this and if
you will be bound for idea just say like here's we'd like you to do your property and if you're not going to do we'll do it in the opportunity to do something.
>> And I think one thing that that I don't remember being highlighted in that communication was that we have made an effort after our highway 61 redo that that's sort of a centerpiece area for our downtown. And um I don't want to say
higher standards, but I don't know how else to frame it, but we want that, too. >> Yeah. And and I think we're also be treating it in a similar way to you know, if it was garbage, right? Or if it was um you know, vehicles parked
overnight for extended periods of time or you know, something along that effect, right? Maybe they're going to get a a letter or a notice or knock on your window or whatever and it's like, "Hey, are you aware that we have these?"
>> Oh, you're not. >> Yeah, there is that too. lack of awareness possibly just >> I don't know you know once again I don't know who these property owners are but um >> yeah I can't stateate that part of it
too in the communication of the three there's one I fully expect to mow the asphage >> when we went by none of their grass was mowed spruce was nicely Same boat, same owner, same operation.
So, it could have been timing, but it was very tall, so hard to tell. >> Oh, I see. I mean, see, there we go. There's so that whatever day you happen to get out your door, >> right? >> Could make a difference. >> They typically kept their property very nice.
>> Yeah. >> Okay. I know the motel. We've got I mean we have the same contractor that does across the street and they do the post office and they do ours and I think they might even do some little bit of work
around Johnson's or whatever. So because usually in the same time frame because why would you want to mobilize three different times on three different days, right? So >> yeah, that's why we thought if we if we worked with them it would do just that. >> Yeah.
>> And they do other people down the street as well um close to well the Dairy Queen around there too. So that might be a bad day potentially. You'd think that would be a consistent thing that leads
to larger course. We only heard from eight people. Maybe one thing if we heard from Nora just to confirm what they're doing that would have been nicer too. >> We did hear from
Saffron as well that she has a lot of these contracts already. >> There's also a number of properties that probably don't have any boulevard to maintain that would have noticed. Oh, how we distinguish.
Good point if we didn't. Um, I certainly did up this street. I know once we went anything past 8, I noticed too didn't have any grass. Um,
uh, so then a kindly reminder letter with the things you just mentioned goes out to Well, we still really, you know, we're only hearing from four people. We haven't really Or is that because you also did visual and saw that they
weren't just knee high weeds? >> Yeah. >> Okay. It's some like farther up the hill that are clearly neglected. You can tell it's like jungle probably some ty for which
I'm the weed control person. >> Somebody has to do it. >> Oh, okay. So, maybe just another little letter and then right now with all those pieces to it. Well, I can likely hear from me again. I've mowed mine and weed
whipped it four times since the last time we met and I've gone a fair distance further because it looks like it's mine, but it isn't. But to make it match and look decent. But to me, the eyesore is you can't see the boulevard
for all the cars that are almost permanently parked along the curb. And now food truck advertisement signs and popup weekend sale signs and traffic congestion signs ahead on
the other side of the road. Those aren't real sharp looking objects either. And I don't know if people can place their signs between the curb and the sidewalk without your permission. >> I didn't think so.
Oh, I had an interaction. >> So, to me that water looks worse than a little bit of grass and shady, but I know there are some that are are pretty long. But I don't mind doing what I've been
doing. I like to keep it neat. I was up there killing Tanzy. >> There you go. >> And if I could overseed it somehow, I would like to do that, too. It's mostly weeds. >> Yeah, I would love to find something different besides grass that we could
have in there and just and if I had it do over again or I guess I wasn't direct there for all of it. Boy, I wish they never been allowed to even create those grass strips on it. But see, they're neither here nor there
now because they are there. Um, all right. So, we'll we'll go to a letter and that's a good point about signage, but it sounds like that's going to be >> Yeah, there's been there's been one in particular that's been popping up with
regularity before the weekend. >> Huh. >> So, that gets us close to the new gun, you mean? >> Mhm. >> Yeah. >> Can imagine. That's interesting. I better brought a
driver on more than just be on fun. Take a look >> because last time I I did move it. I didn't remove it and get rid of it. I moved it and leaned it so I could retrieve it, but I wanted to complete my mowing and beat and it was not making it
possible. >> Sure. Okay. The the semi still semi-permanented parking over in your general area. However, we did not completely manage to tackle that with
our last piece. So, that might be an item for further discussion. I would definitely agree with that. And we've heard from other business owners in the area, too. >> So, maybe that's something we need to jot down
for more thought around that. So, good. Thank you. All right, we're on to administrative reports. Is that possible? >> Pass. >> You're going to pass because he's been really busy making sure this works. Um,
council reports >> planning and zoning also had a library meeting where we worked on the county budget. I believe we're already doing that, but we're working on next year's budget which will come to you guys
next time. Yeah, you you guys are the early birds, right? >> Yeah. >> The animal rescue people. Our next meeting is on the 16th, the most recent one. I think you could fairly say that
they're they're pleased and excited with the uh prospect of having a a place to call home and they are actively uh coming up with some fundraising ideas with a a target number of you know exceeding or meeting and exceeding that
match amount just because they're aware that they're going to need more money to do interior as well. That's my main take away. >> Oh, that's positive. >> Yeah, >> that's nice. See the future. Great.
>> Nothing. >> Okay. >> Um, we were going to have PC today, but we're waiting on some review of contracts right now that will
be talked about tomorrow. Yes. Um, so with that review, um,
I guess I'd like to talk about what's on my mind, um, with uh, germination of the the uh, water where the acceptage with
the with ponds that G&G were were hauling. We suspended that back in um oh what date what May something. Um, and so we've been kind of trying to
get things together with uh a testing schedule, testing plan, um, industrial use contracts, and um,
my my uh, goal would be to try to get this process back on track again. I feel that we as a city have made a pretty good stride, a pretty good attempt to
implement a testing schedule that is far above than what we were doing or than what we actually technically need to do to monitor mercury. And um
with the testing that industrial users already do, if if their testing is is increased, I'm not sure how many more tests that they're going to be doing on those contracts because I haven't read the contract. But I think
that we're making good steps in good faith to handle this product. um the best that we can with the equipment that we have and do it within the realm of what's
acceptable by the rules and regulations that we have to follow that we have been following. And um this is like something this isn't something new that we're taking on that we're doing. It's something we've been doing for 20 years.
So, I hate to get wrapped up into the political aspect of all of this, but I think under the scientific aspect of what we're doing. Um, I don't think we have problems with the MPCA, they haven't been relayed to us. Um, I would
like to speed this up as fast as we can. We have issues that we've caused a private business person who lives in our community has been for many years and also
it interrupts the business that is at hand for the city as far as um our hauling sludge and income the other product.
Um, I think I think mercury was the big driver of this, but after studying a lot of this and talking with Scott at the plant, I think we've taken steps to mitigate that. And I think our steps are proper.
Um, and with the new testing that we're going to be doing with it, we'll find out. But if we don't do anything, you know, I know it's a timing thing. It just seems like it's been dragging on for a long time and we we're close to get things
prepared for what we need. Um, but I'd like to see it move as fast as we could um to reimplement the uh or put back, you know, temp reinitiated
the the hauling of it. this is a temporary suspension and we've done a lot of work I think towards um establishing showing good faith that we can handle this
but that's how I feel about it so anybody else wants to talk about it I think eventually we will talk about it >> sounds like that's moving that direction contracts and >> yeah get the contracts Tomorrow we leave
it anyway. But that's where I'm at with it. Everything for you. >> Oh yeah. >> Okay. Let's see. We got Ramber. She sent an email. I'm not sure if it gone to everybody first.
Maybe. I'm gonna um send it out to Ben Halberg and ask him if he can put one of those speed. >> Oh yeah. Trailer. >> Yeah. For a little bit and just see that's always a good first start for
that. So it's really going up. Um we have um an H EA Okay. Yeah. And Mike and I um regarding the property of our of the cities with
the proposed apartment building earlier this week and um they are looking very seriously at the same developer who um did View Apartments. Um they have made
an interest to doing this apartment. Um and One thing I liked about it, we we'll see some concepts a little bit later. Um, so it's not the same look that we saw before and there's no side separate building if you remember that.
>> Um, but they had to act quickly. So not all the det, you know, they're still working out their details. Um but this would mean 11 out of the 16 units would be um income adjusted or we want to say
that but in the prior time it was eight configuration. So I like that is just a point. Um, one piece too in putting together the financing, not only would we get that very we have that very large grant from
the state, but um, other interested parties that would like to see this come to life is Boreal Waters and that of course is the old Doo Superior Community Foundation. They've renamed but so they do our current community fund. We're the ones
that manage that and they're interested in the St. Paul Minneapolis Foundation. Did I get hit that totally right? I think that's right. They also are interested in financially helping with
this project as well and others. So um the developer has a already has a pretty good timeline in mind even at the level talking about when to move work crews and I mean so there's a lot of seriousness here in their thoughts and
um so they're going to be um working forward at that there's some other important steps they have to fill out um a sheet to the state to show their ability with this project to um to make it. So they have some and there's a few
other important steps and and very shortly then we will be asked as well to do action steps um because of course we we have never formal trans for this property so they'll be a part for us as well. So that's an update on that. Um I
had a subgroup meeting with the EA for TAC cover this morning. We just wanted to review now the project is wrapped up what our next steps look our initial reaction. That was really pretty positive. Um, and we've got some good ideas and we realize this could be very
big and very long, but we have a better idea, I think, of how we can work with Minnesota Power. Probably not Cleveland Cliffs at any degree, but Minnesota Power in some other ways. It's this is the long game. Um, but that
good good first steps on that. And then I went to the conference last week. and I went to a lot of different sessions. Two of them were about um how to find dollars and move projects along
thinking of our wastewater treatment plan. And one of them was interesting because it was um hosted by Engineering and they brought in Floodwood as an example because they're guiding them through a really large project on
housing and they just talk through all the steps they had to do and all all the things and where they went for money. And so it's a good real life example. >> How big was >> um I forgot. I don't know how much they might be smaller than us. >> Okay. But there's been some some big
housing pieces and they got some they had an interesting story of how they got the land and just really using for once I really watched them use an engineering firm to give them guidance through all of it. You always hear about oh we'll
help you find money but that was a good example of how they along with everything else just prepping. And I went to another and once again learned about the importance of just the process that you need to go through in general to get ready and what you need to do
before you even ask for the money. What's what's actual steps you need to take when you're doing projects. So that was good. I went to a couple different mayor things. It's always interesting to hear their different problems and a
large theme continues every time we go to these about the difficulties people have in their communities with civil conversations, civil meetings, the in-your-face from residents and people all the time. And one little small
anecdote sitting with a newer mayor was, and they're a little bit bigger community than us, St. Francis. But what part of what led this is they have more rules and rags about their um what you
can do and not do in your yards, right? About, >> you know, like you can't park in your grass or whatever, right? That we don't really have. But listening to his story, I realized neighbors just use the city to do their own little tits and tats, right? It's it's really not the city,
but it's just the vehicle for bad neighbor conversations, but they get caught in some of that. Um, but it is kind of it's not really good to hear what other cities put frankly put up with. Um, so
that there are always a lot of sessions and workshops on that. And I did go to one um just it was themed about how to work within within council members and just in general when you're engaging with the community on projects and so that was good. There's a lot of work
sessions. to all the vendor people and talk to different vendors um and infrastructure projects. There's so there's so many sometimes it's really hard to know you miss out
like it was good you have more people go you can split up >> um and then boards dinner was very good >> and walking grants yeah I'll have if I when I have a moment or two get more things together I'll bring some stuff in
but yeah it was a good conference that's it for me which means I think we're How about that? Is that like record? >> Yeah.