Oh, it sounds risky. Sounds risky, Josie. Just wait. It'll come. All right. It'll be there. It's just slow. We don't We don't need a new It's not It's It's the app that's the problem, not the iPads.
Maybe I should re download the app. Maybe it will fix a problem. You ready to go? All right. It is 7:02. We'll call this uh city council meeting to order. If we could all rise for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of
America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Doing roll call. All voting members are present. Uh, is there any public comment tonight? If there is, you're welcome to come up and just state your name and
address for the record. Hearing none, we will close the public comment. Next, we'll move on to adopting the agenda. Are there any changes tonight? Miss Wood? Yes. Good evening, Mayor, Council. We do have a late addition, and that is for business item K2, resolution to approve site plan review for gas station car
wash at 501 Heritage Boulevard Northeast. Sounds good. Any objections to that? Otherwise, motion to adopt with change. Second motion by council member Lundine, second by council member Peterson to adopt the agenda with the changes. All in favor
say I. I. Any opposed? A motion carries 5-0. Uh tonight we do have one proclamation for employer celebration day, which is July 23rd, 2025. uh whereas employers and employees are a dynamic part of the city of Eantes and
Minnesota's economy and whereas the promotion of our employers and their talented staff showcase the strength and success which is an integral part of the city of Eani's economic development strategy and whereas alli employers located within the city of Iani provide jobs which significantly contribute to
the city of standard of living and economic vitality and whereas the city of Iani has approximately 2,143 people that are employed within its corporate limits And whereas employees contribute to the economic success of Isani businesses by
buying local and supporting other Isanti businesses. And whereas the city EDA is sponsoring an appreciation lunchon to the employers and their employees on July 23rd, 2025 highlighting certain businesses with milestone anniversaries. Therefore, I, Luke Merrill, interim
mayor of the city of Isani, do hereby proclaim that the day of July 23rd, 2025 shall be observed as mayor's employer celebration day in the city of Isani on this 15th day of July 20, 2025. All right, so thank you everybody that
works in the city. Um, I know there's a lot of people that leave the city, but there's also a lot of great people that work in the city and keep the city pumping through the day. Uh, so announcements. H1, Parks and Recreation Board meeting, Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025 at 6 p.m. City Council's first budget
work session meeting, Tuesday, July 23rd. Uh, 2025 at 5:00 p.m. Uh, city council budget work session meeting Tuesday, July 30th, 2025 at 5:00 p.m. City Council meeting Wednesday, August 6th, 2025 at 7 p.m. Economic
Mayor, if I could, sorry. Uh, we had refreshed on the budget. U but those budget work sessions are both on Wednesdays. The date was correct, but I was reading that and I was thinking that. So, Wednesday's I'll just restart. City council budget work session meeting Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025 at 5. Uh, the
second budget meeting, Wednesday, July 30th, 2025 at 5:00 p.m. City Council meeting Wednesday, August 6th, 2025 at 7 p.m. Economic Development Authority, Wednesday, August 6, 2025, immediately following the city council meeting. Uh, there's a special election Tuesday,
August 12th, 2025 from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Committee of a whole meeting Tuesday, August 19th, 2025 at 5:00 p.m. Planning Commission meeting Tuesday, August 19th, 2025 at 6 p.m. City Council meeting, Tuesday, August 19th, 2025 at 7 p.m. And the canvasing board meeting
Thursday, August 21st, 2025 at 6 p.m. Are there any council committee reports? We missed G1. Yeah. What's We missed G1. The meeting minutes. Oh, yeah. We did. You're right. Uh, so we'll take a motion or any questions on the, uh, city council meeting minutes from July 1st.
Motion to approve. Approve. Second. Uh, motion to approve by council member Peterson, second by council member homegrren. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries 5-0. Uh, now we'll go on to council committee
reports. Sorry, there's a lot to read here tonight. That's a mouthful. So, I had a BMX uh meeting and wasn't a whole lot there. Just they were just doing their daily thing. So, not a whole lot of city stuff to talk about.
Were you able to ask them any questions about the skate park or was I didn't address that last time. That's right. Um so, yeah, they're more if we if we're not going to put invest the money into was it the pump track for a nice one? That's right. then they don't want to do
it. They want, you know, to do it really nice and make it last a long time. Otherwise, there's quite a few pickle ball players on that group. So, they were pushing the pickle ball courts. So, any other council committee reports?
Nick, I'll just say again, I did meet with the uh the school board or not the school board, the finance director and the superintendent of the schools and we talked about that apartment uh potentially and we also talked about the referendum and some specifics on it. Uh they're planning to have their website
live by Friday. Um so people can look at all the specifics of the referendum and then if you need more information, reach out to the superintendent or myself um and we can get you all the information. I hope there's a lot of information. Everybody can sort of digest it and make their decision.
Any other council committee reports? All right. Then we will move on to business item K1, resolution to consider approving change order number one for the Heritage Boulevard intersection Improvements Project. Mr. Cook. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council. So, um, in evaluating the the
project and with how good of bids we got in, um, and the available funding that, uh, the county had budgeted for and our our funding sources, um, I worked with the the county engineer to determine what other kind of improvements within the footprint of this project uh, we
should be doing to fully get the value and the life out of this street uh, that goes with the roundabout. Uh originally we were only trying to be as restrictive as we could. So we were only going to restripe uh the street from the railroad
tracks to the roundabout. Uh but given the available funding um we created this change order to actually reconstruct that whole road with the roundabout. Uh that'll just get its life expectancy to reach the same as the rest of the
corridor. Um and then we also were going to just an overlay from the roundabout to Highway 65. And now with this change order, we would replace the full 6 inch pavement section instead of just that resurface. And again, to try and get
that life expectancy to be one uniform thing, so we don't have to get back in there and patch in different phases and break that up in the future. Essentially, we'd be fully complete from the railroad tracks to 65. Um, with that said, the the county board has
already reviewed this and has identified the funding sources for this. So, there wouldn't be any cost to the city even. It's just to get this done with this project. Um, it doesn't extend the the deadline even. It would still be anticipated to be done this year. And we
recommend awarding or approving the change order. The only thing I got to say on that is we really got to be cautious with the businesses that are there going to be affected by this. Um, I spoke with him at the hardware store this weekend and he was rather
upset what how it was going to affect getting in and out just the roundabout. You know, you're going to bring that all the way up past him. We got to really figure out how we can make this work so that we're not affecting, you know, Johnson's decorating building, the subway, all
that in there, you know, the rendevous, you know, even even federated, you know, that's going to affect all these businesses, even the other one across the street where the laundromat is and that, you know, that's going to affect a
lot of those businesses, right? So, so the the full closure um was anticipated to only be like after West Duel Boulevard to Credit Union Drive, like fully locking down the actual roundabout construction. Um but there will be moments, you know, when
the legs are being built. It would have been either way with or without this change order. Um but yeah, the the intent is to maintain traffic flow to businesses uh during construction. that segment that I'm talking about actually doesn't have access points aside from um
the the strip mall there and so maintaining that access was going to be really the only thing that was going to be kind of into our project you know closure and then the other phases that are going to be closed um you know we'll
have to have that open to local you know to traffic or you know business access only kind of signs um we have the the main detour that's already been part of the plan for the county to stay on county roads for through traffic, but we also have uh the contractor will be
giving us their local business access detour plans for how everybody's going to be able to get to the businesses during construction. Um they haven't submitted that plan yet, but um we laid out concepts for them and then depending on how they want to phase, we let them
kind of dictate when they do which half and things like that. But, uh, we'll be getting that in and that's one of the main things we'll be looking for is to keep that I mean, I'm all I'm all for doing this. It's just we got to keep them people in mind.
Absolutely. I mean, 100% keep that those businesses in mind. How many how many days are you projecting that we could have a traffic flow problem in that area? Well, I mean, if we look
at the full project length, um, right now the contractors sounding like they're coming mid to later August and they still plan to be done by early November. So, the full thing is going to be less than three months, more like two and a half months. Okay. um you know with hopefully that
means only the middle half is you know the fully locked down and you know different portions will be closed on either end of that or however that phases. So you're hoping to keep one side or the other open for local businesses
not at the roundabout intersection. Okay. It'll be that'll have to have minor detours to get around it. It's the the before and after access like up to West Duel Boulevard. Um you know, trying to keep that local access getting in there
so they can get up and around. Yep. But as soon as we do have um a complete schedule of when we meet with the contractor, we will be notifying the businesses. I've already contacted the school and let them know so they can reach out to their busing services
because this is going to impact them right off the get-go for the school year. So I also did invite them to attend our precon meeting so they can be there at the beginning stages and so we're in communication with them too. Sure. And when was the last time there was major construction like this down five
2004. It's due by a long time. Yeah. So but it's just you're having rope construction in a main artery of the city. Businesses are going to be affected. But at least we waited till the second half of summer and so you
know it is what it is. You just got to update your infrastructure and this has been in the docks for quite a while. So so I I did meet with Jason briefly and we had a couple geometric um I guess discussions and one of them was uh if you look at your guys's visual there it
shows the MCO drive that there's not like a a turn lane out of Minco Drive to the right. Um, I'm hoping that Jason can can figure that so that there's a dedicated right-hand turn lane out onto Heritage so it's not a bottleneck. Um, I think he might be able to do something with that. And then another thing that I
noticed, and I know we we touched on it at one point, but that was more when we talked about the surmountable or or mini roundabout. Um, right now it's designed for a concrete center median. Um, but at the time we had discussed that Jason uh had said that if people can't see into
oncoming traffic, the roundabout works significantly better because otherwise it can slow down traffic. When you can see that there's someone ahead of you coming, you're less likely to go out and it slows down traffic significantly. Um, and I noticed that was concrete in there and I I would like to uh discuss doing
some sort of um like a a mound type center system and I did do some research um and talk to the county parks board director. Um I'm the on the county parks board right now. We do a lot of prairie restoration. Um so he had sent me uh his recommendation on the least maintenance
uh prairie grass mix. Uh he recommended 2 lbs of prairie grass mix from Prairie Restoration uh which is roughly $80. Um you need to let's see it should be mowed once or twice to 6 in high the first couple years to keep weeds from growing
to seed until prey grasses become established. then your only maintenance is burning uh or mowing once every 3 to 5 years. So, we would have basically ver virtually zero maintenance cost and it's going to look like a a natural prairie like you'd see in the county park. Um
and it's they're anywhere from 3 to 8t high depending on the seed mix and that would provide you with um a better functioning roundabout and also look better than concrete um for you know 100 bucks and then basically no maintenance. So, I don't know if that was something
you guys wanted to consider or if Jason had any input on that that he wanted to add or and it would save money on concrete. I mean, that's a sizable amount of concrete. So, maybe that concrete savings could be used somewhere else. Another street light put in down further on Heritage or whatever.
Yeah. Um, you know, it's a technically it' be more or less a county roundabout. So, we'd need to run that by them to to verify if they're okay with that and whether they'd be the ones taking on that maintenance or not. Um, if we were going to want to
pursue that. So, we could certainly ask. Um, we kind of have a little time to be able to work that out. So, so if that is the direction that you want me to go talk to the county and see if they are open to that, I can. Um, you know, right now we just had it designed as it does
function with concrete and then there isn't maintenance. Um, but yeah, there are benefits of that visual block of a higher center. So, I drove in one last week. It was down in the cities and they they had what we had designed here and there were two lanes
of traffic coming each other and nobody would go until the other person was all the way around because you can see that person. So, you're planning too far ahead and it there was it was a huge traffic jam backed up and we don't want stacking. I already worry about that with two into one lanes the way it is. So I I mean you have a point for people
that are are not familiar with roundabouts, but people that that use them all the time. I I see it as an asset to be able to see the oncoming traffic from all three directions and to be able to time better to get into it. But um I mean
I'd prefer a flat one if it was me, but okay. It would look better with the grass. It would. And it's a natural prairie. Literally, we have uh most of our fields we in the county we have to burn every 3 to 5 years. That's the only maintenance. That's it. You don't have to you don't
have to weed it anything because the natural if you get the na natural seed, it basically weeds out all the the nasty stuff and you burn it to kill anything that might survive and then it it just it works better. Didn't we go over about plowing that roundabout and it would be easier if it was flat to be able to keep
the snow off it or are they going to pile it in the middle anyway or uh with the with the full roundabout they wouldn't need to plow out that middle that was that primarily the topic of the the mini roundabout the first one we discussed. Okay. Um and that is how this kind of evolved
from that topic of you know maintenance ownership. you know, a mini is solid concrete. And once we went to the smallest full roundabout really is what we got now, um, you know, my traffic engineers confirmed it doesn't need the the mound in the in the visual block and
that's why we ended up this way because the direction generally is the way I took it was least amount of maintenance. But, um, you know, it's certainly on the table as an option. Yeah. And I think a lot of a lot of cities get overzealous with it. you
know, they do mulch and trees and plantings and they got to constantly maintenance it. But this would look like a like a county park field and just in a small little area, nothing for maintenance. But I don't know what you guys thought on that. That was my only I guess concern about it. I I think
stacking is going to be an issue there. And if we stack the odds in our favor that it's going to work better with that type of a setup, I think it's good. But I'll refer to the expert. What What would you do if you had a choice? Once it from the engineering
perspective, once it works, it it's really just what you guys want to see. You know, I don't know if prairie grass is pretty or not. And I don't know if uh you know, concrete without weeds is nice. You know, that's where you guys get to prairie grass, you wouldn't really see
the weeds in it. But if you if you if you concrete it, you got more water run off. If it's if it's pra if it's if it's grass or sod or prairie grass, whatever, it's going to, you know, water will
eventually go down. And I and I I kind of agree with Mayor Merrill is anything you put in there to less maintenance is better for everybody. If it's something you're going to plant in there and then just let it go and
maybe once a year go down and weed whip it down at the end of the season in the fall, whatever, that's one thing. But if you don't want to have somebody have to go out and maintain that thing all summer long, it's just going to cause a cluster in that. That's where the concrete, like he said,
it's there, it's done, but then you got your offset of water runoff cost. I don't I don't really don't I I think in a project this size that minimal cost of concrete is is is it's one extra
truck for the state for one day to come in and pour it. But it it's like I said people do maintenancefree on their houses for a reason. They don't want to maintain it. They don't want to paint it. They don't want to scrape it. They don't want to,
you know, whatever. So, I mean, there's there's that side of it. So, if you were to put something in there, I'd say prairie grass, native grasses, or whatever. Uh, you know, then that fits in the realm of our
MS4. Well, that just like those holding ponds or whatever, runoff gardens, you know, it sit kind of to me that would fit in the same realm. But I guess that's
sounds like this should have been brought up a while ago. Yeah. I didn't realize there was concrete in there. It would be easy to or fine to change now. We never really had exact final like all this. I think the county does though. It's their road. Sure.
So bring it up to the county board. Yep. Yeah, I guess that if that's your direction that you would like to see the prairie grass and it's still kind of up to the county, I can bring that to the county and say, "Are you guys okay with
prairie grass?" And I guess the other piece that I'd need to bring to them is do you guys want to citywise maintain that or tell the county it would be their problem? So, it would take two mowings in the first year and then all you have to do is burn it once every three to five years. So, I mean, as far as I'm
concerned, if the city staff has to do that once every five years, that's nothing to burn that stuff. It isn't going to be that big. So, 50 ft roughly diameter. Yeah. So, it's 50 by 50. That's 2500 square feet. That's going to
Yeah. But then again, if it's concrete and somebody does end up bailing over the top of that thing, they're not going to get hung up on something. I mean there's it where do you and there is a 15oot truck lane built in basically a sidewalk
15 ft wide all the way around. Correct. That's the trailer is the tail over on and then there's another curb and then we're talking the center of that correct inner center not where the trucks trailer. Yeah. So there's still 15 feet for a truck layover which is more than enough. Your average truck is going to use seven
or eight tops. Yeah. I guess I don't know what the specific is labeled on there for the diameter. Thoughts? Any other questions on See what the county says. Okay. How about on the rest of the project? Any other questions or issues with the change order? I say proceed with it. It's not going to
cost taxpayers any money. Let's get it done. And that's one section of road that we don't have to deal with anymore. Yep. They got lighting. What's that? They got lighting all the way down the between the roundabout and 65, right? It's going to be added in so we don't have to Yep.
Yep. And then that's that is actually probably one of the worst part of the roads from railroad up to correct. So I I motion that we go ahead with it and we'll slash out the center of that
thing as county input on it, whatever. Okay, that's my motion. Second motion by council member Lindine, second by council member Peterson. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries 5-0. Good job, Jason.
Thank you. Uh, next we have K2, site plan review for gas station and car wash at 501 Heritage Boulevard Northeast. Good evening, mayor and council. Um, Iani Gas, Inc. has submitted an application for a site plan review for changes to the retail gas station and
car wash at 501 Heritage Boulevard Northeast. The current phase of the project will involve remodeling the existing building and adding a detached car wash. The site plan review application is for phase one only and does not include the additional diesel um fueling area um that will be required
for a phase 2 site plan application. A public hearing was called at the July 15, 2025 planning commission meeting and recommended for approval with no public comment. Um they did reach out to Iani County and um they notified them that
the increase in the number of vehicles per day was significantly under the 2500 um additional vehicles that would require changes to the ingress egress to the property from county road 5. Um staff recommends approval of the project with the following stipulation or
conditions. um verifica verification that the proposal meets MIDOT setback requirements for Highway 65, which I believe has already been accomplished. Um the completion of a wetland delineation and approval from the Department of Labor and Industry. A motion to approve with the conditions
as stated. I'll second. Second by council member Lendine. Uh or first motion by council member Lendine, second by council member Heman. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Uh motion carries 5. And then we did have a I would just like to
get a point of clarification um from city staff. Can you uh explain the difference between an RFP and a and just a conventional bid process? Um how we do that and how that works? So the bid process is um a process that
is outlined by state statute and as a government we are required to follow the guidelines that are um laid out by them and that is for projects over $175,000. So that typically ends up being um a lot of our engineering projects and some of
our others um when that is required um for you said bid right bid RFP quote so there's three differences so bid is the 175 and above and then we have to have certain uh documents we have to have certain opening um we do a bid we
do public notices all those requirements are listed within statute an RFP is a request for proposals uh that can be for professional services. It can be for um other things uh like the community center where we typically put together a
scope of work um a scope of services we're looking for and we're asking them to give us pricing on that that we can compare with others. That doesn't have any specific statute tied to it other than um we try to have things be publicly noticed. Um but there's no
rules hard and fast rules on that. um that can be for any professional service or uh scope of work that we're doing under 175,000. And then uh quotes are where we can request uh call contractors request for
quotes for projects. Again, I recommend that we have a scope of work um specifications. So, we're asking people to quote the same. Sometimes we end up like if we need a furnace, we might go with one contractor and then we black out everything because we're trying to compare quotes against other um quotes.
So we don't show them what they're bidding for the cost, but we want them to be apples to apples. Again, there's no specific state statute requirement for those. Um but per our policy, so we do have a purchasing policy that states depending
on how much it is, how many quotes we need to get or attempt to get Can you can you explain to what access council has to any of those bids beforehand before we see them on our pads or before they're presented to
us before a council meeting? Uh so if we do them if we have a bid an a bid opening which is open to the public um a lot of times Jason will do that either at his office and publicly notice that or he'll do it here in council chambers for a lot of those street projects and
they are public information as soon as the bid documents are open which has a specified time and location with that. Uh otherwise um when we bring in quotes or requests for proposals, requests for proposals aren't public documents until we put them in the packet. Uh quotes are
could be publicly requested anytime we get a quote in. I think that clarifies it pretty good. Okay, sounds good. Thank you. I can also we do have uh there's a really good League of Minnesota cities um handbook section on those things
specifically and I'll send that out to council. Sounds good. Thank you for the clarification. I know there's always questions about that. So yeah, is it possible to post that on our website too anywhere? Thank you. All right, next we'll move on to the
consent agenda. Do you guys have any questions on there? I do have one. All right. So, my question is on L2. So, it says that our water supply plan was submitted to the DNR in 2018 and they just recently approved them. So, it took them seven years to approve our water
plan. Is that am I reading that right or is that a typo? I'd love to say it's a typo, but no, that is 100% correct. And actually, I did that and I was really hopeful um that they did not ask me how I calculated everything because I was like I hope I don't have to remember eight
years later how I did the math. Um, so yes, those that plan was uh submitted in 2018. It's every 10 years. I don't have information if it's going to be due 10 years from 2018 or 10 years from now. Not sure. I do wonder, but I'm not going
to ask, I don't think. Um, I figure they'll send me a notice. But yeah, they were really behind. I I know that um when I had worked with some of the other DNR staff that just the hydraologists and stuff were behind. Um, but there's no penalty for them or us or anything
like that. It's just that now that plan is approved and good to go. That's why it's better to have local control over things versus as soon as it's kicked to the state, everything is so much more inefficient, so much more expensive. It's just a perfect example of that. But I didn't see any problems
with that. I mean, I think our water supply plan has changed significantly since 2018. And I don't know what we have to do for the future, but I guess keep us in the loop on that. And this plan was good for how long? They're a 10-year plan. Okay. Yeah.
Any other questions on the consent agenda? Motion to approve. Second. Motion to approve by Council Member Lundine. Second by Council Member Homegrren. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. 5-0. Any other questions about the other communications?
Otherwise, I'll take a motion to go into close session for union negotiations. Motion to go into close session. Second. Motion by council member Lundine. Second by uh council member Peterson. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries 5-0. Therefore, we go into close session.
Mary, if you could read the statute of why we are going into close session, please. Yep. Close session pursuant to attorney client privilege Minnesota statute 13D.05 subdivision 3B regarding union negotiations. Thank you. Thanks everybody for coming
in.