--------- all right it is 7 o'clock so I'm going to start the meeting i'm going to call the meeting to order and first of all welcome everyone a friendly reminder if you have cell phones with you please turn them on silent or airplane mode so
they don't disrupt our meeting and second would you please join me in pledge of allegiance i pledge algiance 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 so um I'll start out with some introductions i'm Lisa and I'm the mayor and to my left are council members Kathleen Rekin Peter Vicky Claudia Lacy and Brian McGovern and at the end we
have our city engineer with the WSB Alison and then we also have um Emily Palus who is our assistant administrator and to my right we have our administrator Jasper and Brian Grim is our finance director and then sitting in
for our new police chief um is um Sergeant Brown and thank you for coming i say Sergeant Josh but okay sergeant Brown or just or just And then uh we also have
a couple of um staff members that are joining us via um internet or remote uh that is Ann Meerhoff our city clerk and David Ael who is our community development director and then if we have any um legal questions we have Sarah
Salo who is with Kennedy and Graven our city attorney so with that um I am looking for a motion to approve the agenda as presented otherwise are there any additions or changes thank you Min is there a second thank
you Mr govern any further questions hearing none all those in favor signify with I i all those opposed motion passes 5 so this evening uh we have two people with us first we're going to start out with Commissioner Anderson welcome um Mr
anderson commissioner Anderson thank you for taking time out i know you're very very busy visiting all of the cities and in your district and there are many so we really appreciate you taking time out and sharing um information with us absolutely thank you so much for the
opportunity it's great to be out here uh as you said I'm Kevin Anderson i'm the Henipin County Commissioner serving District 7 which includes 16 communities in the western suburbs including Vista and our neighboring communities up here i live in Maple Grove so It's always wonderful to make it out of the
park um I so last year I gave an update uh on the roles that Henman County plays and and the way different ways we show up in the community uh we have approximately about 20% of the population of Minitrista receives some
sort of support from Henipin County whether it's through food assistance rental assistance other ways that we show up and and help residents here in Henipin County in addition through the roads and bridges sheriff's department all the other things that is available
to every uh every community across Henipin County um I do want to Sorry I'm going to tell you presentation is wonderful it has a lot of really great information we'll try to kind of stick to the beginning parts of it but I'm
going to go off script tell you about right now so um don't try too hard to uh to follow along um I do want to just give an update we have a lot of road projects i'm the chair of the public works committee uh have been since I was elected uh five years ago um and
continue to serve in that capacity as the chair of the public forest um we have a lot of road projects happening mostly uh maintenance projects chip and seal some overlays um in Minetrista there's bridge some bridge work happening um I just wanted you to be
aware of it it's in the um we have some information here in the uh presentation that I provided you um additionally when we get on to the the next page here there's a lot of really good information about different opportunities that the
county has for partnering with cities especially around housing um we have I know right now cities are going to be working on their comprehensive plans and trying to make sure that you are meeting housing goals set forth by the council and in different ways um I want you to
know that Henipin County is here as a partner to try to help uh bridge some of those those gaps that might be presented to you if a housing developer comes and says "Hey we want to make something like this work that has some affordability component to it." Uh the county can be a
partner in in trying to make some of that map work outside of just tips which is generally what cities have at their disposal um the county is here to help with anything that might be uh available but here's where I'm going to go off so
um I've been spending a a bit of time recently um in my role as a board member for the Association of Minnesota Counties and as the uh I'm the vice chair of the health committee uh for the
the National Association of Counties and there are a lot of things happening both at the state level and at the national level that is going to very likely have a direct impact to counties and therefore the cities that are in um
specifically there are a lot of talks about how uh these the state and federal government is going to balance or or approach their budgets um and a lot of the cuts that they're uh talking about are not strictly cuts they're shift cost
shifts to counties and local governments uh specifically around Medicaid uh Medicare um we have approximately $800 million that comes from Medicaid uh that goes into caring for residents
including residents here in Christ if those cuts that are currently being talked about go through um we don't necessarily know how we would make out that difference because it doesn't change eligibility requirement so that would mean that we would have to find
some other ways of dealing with the the cost increases that would be shifted out to the county or we would have to uh accept lower levels of service that uh residents have come to expect or from counties in general um
either option ends up being a hit to res and I wanted to uh bring this up and kind of sound some of the alarm right now because um quite frankly because the the cuts or the cost shifts would likely end up
being a combination of both things it would be a raise in our property taxes which they really don't want to do um and a a decrease in the level of service that we provide to your res um both of those things seem really unacceptable to
me when we can uh find other ways to move all over the place uh I spent last week in DC talking to representatives and senators bill staff and committee staff and departments from the new
administration and I think we are on a good path of finding an understanding i have attended back from those meetings actually very hopeful um but I wanted to say that here that if there is an opportunity that you see um to partner
and have conversations with your either state representatives or federal representatives and just say um we understand that there's a budget crunch that we all have to address but shifting the costs on to local governments is not
the answer uh we need to find a better way of doing that and the more unified we can speak in that voice I think the better all our resident um so that's kind of my offscript thought uh because I really
don't want us to be in a position here at the end of the year trying to figure out how we're going to make up a uh potential many million dollar shortfall caused by cost shifts that
that the state or federal government so I'm happy to answer any questions we have a lot of really good information that's in the packet around housing uh and as well as other grants i know we've talked about youth sports grants um and um some other community
funding which we still have available um and I know that we've we've had conversations about uh different parks that uh that might be eligible for this we'll continue watching for those applications as well um so happy to talk
about whatever you would like to talk so um couple questions so around housing first of all as you know we don't have public transportation out here and so affordable housing out here is not you know and then um and especially
since and I mentioned this to um our state legisl representatives as well and they're aware of it but um the the problem that we have is cost and we don't have to and um so I'm not sure
that um housing affordable housing out here is really potential not that we don't want it it's not but we're saying no we don't want it it's it's just not um doable out here at this time um maybe when there's more
jobs out here maybe when there's public transportation out here um then I think we can get a little more serious about those and I did want to just say like affordable housing I know especially in county parliaments we often talk about
30% AMI or deeply affordable housing affordability has very widely uh start even some elements of like under market rate uh can potentially
qualify for an affordability um or some kind of partnership and we would look at that of course and so it's good to know and then the other thing I want to mention is uh and we have a couple of representatives from Lakeland Conservation District the LMZD
and I know they're looking for funding um from the head sheriff's department for more full-time water patrol on Lake Mitanka i really hope that you are in support of that because it's not just a 14 city issue it's a regional issue and
as for many many years we've said this needs to be more of a regional um issue and and the region needs to pay for it other than just the 14 cities that surround so um we really appreciate your support on that as well do you know do
you have to go and is this something that the board has to approve or is this just something that the sheriff would needs to approve in the budget so it would be something that the sheriff would would approve through their budget i know right now um the sheriff's budget
has been I mean they're very constrained uh especially with primarily finding people uh and and not necessarily in patrol division but in the jail we're we're really facing a period of big crunch in jail
uh workers who are working there and that's led to a a really challenging situation with the sheriff's budget uh their basic uh over time and we've certainly been supportive of the sheriff and we're uh about to be uh
supplementing uh her budget for her uh to make sure that they have enough resources to to do that but we've had uh a lot of challenges recently in getting personnel
and that too yep and so we're we're I have faith that the sheriff will will find the ways of doing that but it is great um any other questions or comments
um I appreciate your time again and um you have a lot of things to visit so I think it's the last evening from home i love being having the opportunity to come up here and and the invitation always stands i I offer it every year but uh if ever you want to sit down for
a cup of coffee have a drink um I'm always happy to come out and connect and uh or have a phone call and just uh chat about what's on your mind and how best we can serve our residents so uh always here yeah thank you thank you very much
all right so um and next we have another special presentation and we have Angela with us this evening with the um Alston Bay uh Lake Improvement Association harrison Harrison thank you
welcome this is It's great to be here you're always really interesting so I'm Angela Astron and I with the Harrison Bay Association i'm also with the city of Madison partner city although I have to say when I come in here joy leading up to
these just a little bit more upbeat so I think that that's good um but just a quick update this is um I'm sorry otherwise we can get otherwise um yeah real quick uh so I am coming at
the rain barrel program so I am a Minnesota water steward and I um in 2023 became a water steward doing the rain barrel um project where where I think my idea is I am not an a city engineer
expert or devout you know save the waterways i'm just kind of an ordinary mound resident who wants to do something a little good and found that that um you know I love our lakes and love drinking water and it's just learned that it's just a very easy way for for people to
do individual residents do is to have a rain barrel on their property to collect storm water so the idea is that storm water is the number one pollute storm water is anything that comes off of forms off of the impervious surface and ends up in our waterway so it might go down the street down the driveway down
our roofs places where we didn't have if I didn't have my home there right the water would come and it would um absorb into the ground and would be purified by the deep roots um but because our roof's there all the water comes out of one
place the soil it carries pet waste and salt and sand and and whatever directly into our into our lakes so an easy way to combat this is a rain barrel um and this will be the third year that we've sold rain barrels the last two
partnership with moma um and we would signed up again to sell and distribute 72 rain barrels these 72 rain barrels save over 100,000 gallons of storm water a year and they
just keep getting used year after year so there really is a pretty a pretty easy Thank you i'm sorry well you know I didn't So no it was it was it was in a link and I didn't click the link right away so my
bad appreciate it um so the program has three goals the number one is to to reduce that storm water runoff the other one is then to engage city engage our community right in education and what we can do as individuals um and then number
three is to promote this to be used year after year um I do find it kind of inspirational that it's like the cost of going out to dinner right so we so generous contributions from city of bound and the city of Trista and and and
counterparts it's $70 and a whole 55gallon rain barrel to use here after um we will be distributing it again this year um out of the B parking garage so Saturday May 31st from 10 to
noon all of the rain barrels are pre-ordered um we have 72 this year and we sell 45 to go so I think one of the asks that I will will say is if we can hit your next newsletter or any email to to keep the
um the awareness out there having sold 140 something the first year and and again last year too at some point we're going to hit a little saturation point with the number of households that we can do but I'm hopefully we that we do another 72 this year
um the 72 is shared between the cities of Minusta and Mount and at the end I'll just comb through the addresses and and there's a $30 contribution generous contribution from the Trista for your residents and a $30 contribution from each resident so it'll
end up being you know under $1,000 for each each city engineering combo and just shows a lot of I think gives credence to the fact that this is a really good solution um acknowledges the fact that we do have have water issues out here we do have
and that and that together we can use less city water um along with this distribution uh we always have and again this year a setup um it's something that I think it's just really easy to see when you see how it's installed and how it comes off of the gutter it makes it
really easy for people to go home and install it so so that education and that demo will be there too um I have volunteers lined up for the event it should be fun i'm sure we'll have some donuts too so if you want to stop on that that'd be great um they
make great gifts mother's Day gifts Father's Day gifts right when is the event the 31st is amazing so you have to give it a little early for the mother but the ending for a little early for
sure um but people the the pickup has been smooth people just drive right in we load them straight into their trunks give them all the information they need to install them and and there we go save 100,000 gallons year after year um
the go to the Yeah that the last the next steps then would be um once it is done and I like I said I'll scrub the address total number of of residents who have requested the the discount
well thank you for doing this i bought three of them thank you i gave one to two of my sons and I brought one to the charity that I run cuz I thought I could bother i know I wouldn't have to try these out and I actually met with Jean
Anderson today this is hard to Yeah and she actually gave me the name of someone that would hook it up for $25 so my son's got theirs right away so I think it's wonderful and especially when we're trying to make a difference with you
know using water efficiently and and uh wonderful you can always reach out to me i will be doing that it's a little It's a little nerve-wracking to cut your G for the first time i'm like do I have to cut it better you want to know you want
to know you're doing it right yeah but I think it's I I can't believe you're only doing 70 i think you think you're twice as every single person that pays for city water well that I mean that is the other thing that it it should pay for
itself right if you plug in and use it it should not heavy to haul your hose out you can water your little tomatoes free better for the plants it keeps you from having a big pile of
earth that's you know washed away next to your foundation so it really is [Music] Thank you thanks for Thanks for Thank you appreciate it yeah good work really appreciate it um
so um nice to meet you participate and it was on the back of the water that just happened good all right and we can post something on the website too okay all right uh with that then um we have nobody signed up under persons to be
heard so we'll move on to consent agenda items are there any you wish to remove otherwise they consist of A approve the work session meeting minutes for March 17th 2025 b is approved city council regular meeting minutes from March 17
2025 c has approved the A2S task order number two for consulting services for replacing sanitary lift station controls and LS number four and LS number six ls stands for station come on um D is a resolution to
approve claims e is a resolution to approve the AR arbitrage services consulting agreement f is uh the 2025 payment maintenance project and approved plans and specifications and authorized advertisements for bid g is the
resolution to purchase to purchase a new confined space entry multi- gas detector and H is award agreement for sanitary sewer lift station cleaning sanitary sewer line jet cleaning and sanitary sewer line televising with overline suns
incorporated i is a resolution to approve the city policy for the disposal of obsolete or excess city p personal property and J is authorizing sale and disposal of surplus city
equipment is there a motion to approve consent agenda items A through J thank you Miss Lacy is there a second second thank you Mr vicky any further questions hearing none all those in favor signify i
I all those opposed motion passes by vote we have no public hearing so we'll move on to our business items and our first business item is to declare Game Farm Road and Blair Road as municipal state aid routes i believe this is Thank you Mayor thank you for being here this
evening i understand it's been a long day for you but it's enjoyable i went to the I knew I had worked ahead of time like oh I like this one so uh as we discussed at the last work session um
the city has some mileage available to designate new state aid routes and um we had a discussion at the last work session to include Blair Road and then farm Road from County Road 110 to Blair Road as state aid routes and then the
good news is um in doing so uh we would be able to use state construction funds for uh that portion medium farm next year um assuming we get all the council approvals in place so before you this evening is the official action to
designate those as a date routes um we do need to get this to MEDOT by the first so I wanted to be on the ball in case we needed to pivot and do something differently but um so included in your packet is a resolution to make those designations um we would start um
getting some more uh state aid construction funds by adding these to state a rout so um we have some good news on both fronts as far as financing goes for the city um as as we discussed at the work session we did a
preliminary review of the alignment um of Game Farm Road we didn't see anything any red flags as far as um that segment not meeting state standards but we'd certainly have to go through that in detail when the time comes for construction um there was one other
thing I wanted to mention um But I don't want that to to take away from this discussion um we'll still have additional state aid mileage left at the end of this um but we think this is this is a good discussion oh I remember what
it was uh we did talk to state aid staff and have um believe it's included in the packet um that they've yes it is in the packet that they've already um received this um and have given on a staff level um the nod to go ahead with this but we
um applying approval of of a resolution this evening we send that off and get the official notification from um the from Mindot from Mindot as far as getting it on yeah and then also because we have a
little more state aid roads miles wide then doesn't that also up our our formula we'll get a little bit more um in terms of state a dollar that's correct yeah um and you said we have what 1.4 or what do
we have in our current I think we had 1.85 yeah good for today so yeah so we have we have more than enough mileage available to cookies so we still have some some mileage left out there for the future um as development comes in more roads on the book that we can take
another look at another route great questions that makes perfect sense and uh the financial sense so uh I think we could go ahead and uh make that uh pass that resolution to designate Blair Road
as the minor collector and designated gate road from county road 110 to Blair Road um as state house thank you Miss Rein is our second thank you Mr bren no that's the other
Brian Brian sorry that is not Thank you very much um any other questions or comments all those in favor signify with I all those opposed motion passes 5 so that that's good news and
then I'm assuming we do still will go through the 429 for a few a couple of those properties I believe on road yes Mayor Will and that's what we discussed at the the last session so um I wanted to uh we just needed a little bit more
we needed to hone in on the scope of her per Saunders i just got the information back for that um so you should be seeing um a task order for the feasibility reporting services project within the
next month okay sounds good thank you um then we'll move on to our next business item and I believe that's a discussion or basically kind of a report isn't it or kind of an update on um what's
happening at the state legislature um so well supporting the the draft or the letter so Madame Mayor members of council uh before you is a resolution supporting the retention of city of city
zoning authority which is essentially establishing our desire um to maintain local control of our zoning um there's a there's a series of bills out there currently uh that Yeah so you probably have heard
them of the missing middle housing bill that was what it was called last year this year it's been brought back in um kind of a peace meal fashion i believe there were about seven or eight different bills that kind of were redundant in some senses right now
there's four of them out there that are still being considered by the by the Senate so it's important that we pass this because we we do want to maintain our local zoning authority um some of the bills that are out there right now uh and I had this pulled up and now I don't have sent some letters yeah
we've been we've been working on it um quite a bit um but there's there's four of them out there i'll see if I can go off memory one of them is related to aesthetics and and telling us that we can't have aesthetic standards which we we have a little bit of um one of them is related to parking and the ability to
to say "Yep you need if you have a commercial business you need this much parking or you have um an apartment complex you need this much parking." Um that's that's something that that we think is important um couple of them uh reduce our ability to say what is in
certain zoning districts so some of them make make you put additional like multifamily housing in like a residential or R1 district we'd have to allow it by statute and we won't have an authority to to say "Oh we
want R1 to be more lower density housing than R2 R3." Um so that's essentially what what a lot of these bills are they're still in the mix um there is bipartisan support some of these are authored by Republicans some of them are authored by Democrats some of them are
authored by both co-authored by both so it's uh in a in a legislature that is pretty tight as far as a majority goes or it's tied um you know some of these bills there's there's a risk of them passing because it's something that kind
of common ground so it's important and what this resolution shows is that we want to maintain that local zoning authority so um likely I think at the next meeting you'll probably see another uh resolution related to some of the uh abilities for cities to require HOAs in
like a PUD situation um there's bills that are trying to take that away from us and and get rid of the common area uh spaces so some of the HOAs I know some are familiar with with HOAs here um you know a lot of the HOAs have common areas that the HOAs have to maintain and
that's because you know somebody has to own it the city doesn't want to own it and and have maintenance costs for those some of those rights are are looking to be taken away so likely at the next meeting you'll have a resolution um saying that we want to you know we we're not in favor of that bill either so
there seems to be a lot of of bills out there right now that are eroding our our local authority that we want to you know obviously be against so and we've talked to um Representative Meyers and Senator Johnson Stewart about this and they understand our viewpoint on that and I
think they've been very receptive to a lot of the communities that they represent are in the same boat as us so I think they're getting hit with a lot of municipalities and their districts that oppose these bills so hopefully that resonates and and that can help them not pass but the other thing too that's important is let your neighbors
know and people that aren't mayors or council members they need to also express their concern regarding these bills because it really does strip local authority away from us and uh it can also undermine our compensate um to create so um this is all under the
premises that it's going to create affordable housing and it's it's not that's not the it's not going to create affordable housing and um so uh we're concerned about that we're concerned about
developers coming in and being able to do just about anything they want to do and we welcome developers and we even welcome affordable housing about we need to have some control over it and we need to be able to say you can do this but you can't do this or you can do this and
we'll work with you on this or work with you on that but with some of these bills it just would be pretty much they can do whatever you want so we're concerned about it um as Jaffer mentioned um we've been in meetings with our senators we've been in contact with um represent Myers
have been very um supportive so far so we hope that that will help but again you know one vote in the House and one vote in the Senate so we'll see when this goes we'll keep you posted yeah and just as a note the legislative
session is will wrap up in about six weeks so we still there's still a lot of time that they're working on things so you're going to see a lot of things kind of hot and heavy coming at you potentially so if there's things that maybe um you know I I think I have good good viewpoints from the the council I
might send a letter to um our senator or our representative based on our interest based on my you know kind of interpretation of what's going on here but a lot of them you know the zoning authority stuff is is quite important and as the mayor alluded you know there's already a process that is quite
you know labor intensive to to figure out what we're going to do in our city and how the infrastructure is going to grow um with the city a lot of these would would really throw a wrench in all those you know planning activities so we'll keep you posted but I guess too
um Jas kind of looking at is it okay if we send letters sometimes these things happen really quick and we have to react so You can say yes or no for both of those
[Music] oh absolutely well last year you posted something social media about this yeah that might be good to do again um just because I think if more people in like I said other than mayors and council members um
weigh in and contact their legislators uh so with that I would also say here's here's our senator here's our elected house representative and they're supportive but sometimes if they get letters um and emails from other residents they can go to their
counterparts say look here's it's not just the mayors it's not just the council members it's residents in my community that concern too okay that really came through when I was working on the 40 plan you know we did a survey of residents and the number one thing
was they wanted the rural character that was building this will just destroy them so I I think it would resonate with the president has some it like I said it it's falling under the
pretense um I want to say pretense um of being able to build affordable housing they're estimating that there's about 100,000 affordable units that are are needed in the state um but what they fail to do is they fail to say where
they're needed and they fail to say at what what um you know what cost u would they sell at and there's no parameters so in other words if they came in here and said well we're going to build this um and what if it ends up being that
they have to sell those units at $500,000 i mean that's not affordable you know so those are some of the things and that I see they're not even putting any kind of parameters or any kind of um requirements on so if you want to build
affordable housing and you want to come to Manchester hey come talk but then build affordable housing you know and and that won't happen it it can act um unless they get huge subsidies and then what are they going to do they can't afford our water bills i
mean we just we just talked about that and then I also I also mentioned in one of my emails and letters to the senators to the senators what how can we plan for water infrastructure sewer infrastructure how can we even um plan for fire and police protection i mean
it's hard enough to get more police officers you know on board all of a sudden we had you know so a lot more residents and now we don't have the fire protection because we don't have the water pressure that we need i mean there's all these other issues that um
that I don't think a lot of them even know about or think about and um how can they afford a house when when the sewer and water bills are going to be three $400 a month i mean it's it's it's real issues that I don't think that
is being considered long-term issues how can they afford to maintain their if it's a $500 $600 house even if it's if it's subsidized how can they afford to pay the property taxes how can they afford to pay insurance on it those are all things that really need to be
addressed before be before passing the bill but apparently there's a lot of state legislators don't understand that any bills so anyhow any other questions
um about this so are any other um staff reports then we'll go on to staff reports oh I'm sorry all right yeah all right then is there a motion to approve the resolution supporting retention of city's own
thank you Mr decree is there a second thank you all in favor i am i all opposed no one's opposed i didn't think so all right now we'll move on to staff report
yes um Madame Mayor me members of council we have a town hall event we've talked a little bit about it on the last couple meetings we've had on Monday April 14th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m here at in the city council chambers so um Mayor Whan will be kind of leading the charge
we'll be talking about the fire partnership discussions we've been having and then also kind of a continuation of the discussion that we had about the the water treatment plant that we're proposing to build so hopefully we can get some people attend and give us some input um I'm guessing mostly about the water treatment plant
but really just to kind of get more information out to the public about why we're doing it you know how much it's going to cost how we're going to potentially maybe bill um the residents and see if we get some input which we likely will so and on that note too I
can give a little bonding update because there's been a little bit of movement um I think two Fridays ago I got a message from um Senator Johnson Stewart and she's kind of selecting our our project along with another project to kind of move try to move forward um in the
Senate side uh what that means is maybe it's unknown uh because there's there's conflicting uh reports on how much of a bonding bill each the Senate and the House want to do and they're talking about maybe doing a split bill a little bit this year and a little bit next year
or all of it next year um and the direction that I've kind of given the the senator and the uh representative is we want it this year uh because next year we won't have projects so we'll see it doesn't sound like much it looks like the Senate's looking at about 700
million um in 2025 potentially and what that means is about 500 of that is tied up into state projects like um University of Minnesota and MDOT those types of things to fund those things so there's really only
about 200 million to play with for lo local municipalities um there's I want to say 2 point I'm going off of memory $2.6 billion dollar of water infrastructure requests and over8 billion dollars of requests overall so you know you have $200
million trying to fit that in you know that's a just a drop in the bucket so it's not you know that optimistic but we really appreciate the senator bringing forward our project along you know whittling it down to just two in
her district so um and the same with uh I I spoke with Representative Meyers this afternoon too and he said he's going to he's going to try to get move our project along but he's talking maybe each representative might have access to you know a million a million five so
we'll have to do an evaluation if we are if we do get in there for a million million five to see what that actually does to our project cost because I think you remember talking about the PFA piece and or the the congressionally directed spending piece which we looked at if we get a million dollars that might drive
the project cost up more than what we get you know on a $22 million project so we'll have to do that evaluation um the other things that they're considering is you know there's a $ 1.5 million um project budget is it is it better to allocate that to a smaller project
because you can actually do it and you have more of an impact or to some of these larger infrastructure project so those are the things that the our representatives are kind of dealing with right now hopefully you know things can kind of shift i know there's been some economic things occurring in the last
week or so that maybe aren't favorable for passing a bonding bill too so there's all these other inputs that are occurring that um you know maybe aren't as uh timely as they should be so we'll see i'll continue to provide updates as they come in but we're still in the
running um and uh as I said before we have about six weeks uh before the session ends they could extend it if they need to but we'll we'll see and follow it closely that's all I have questions um any other staff reports i do think we
need a um representative for the planning commission last fourth Monday who might be a law who hasn't done it yet uh I will actually
I might Okay well here I'm happy to go okay and then I'll just Okay so for now Claudia um she'll let you know and if not more in Australia
all right um any other staff reports hearing none um just a um I'll do a quick report and then we'll go on to other committees so um the fire partnership meeting went well uh went better than previous meetings because we
actually made a little bit of headway um so we talked more about the uh joint powers agreement itself i won't go into all those details but um we sort of semi decided or agreed that um M would
get two votes would get two votes and St bonnie and Spring Park and this is kind of preliminary will each get one vote it's based on contributions and so since mom and Mr will be the biggest uh contributors financial contributors um
it was decided that we would each get two and it's kind of based on percentage of contribution and it was capped at 49% so in other words if Bena ever were to become more than a 50% contributor we
would still be capped at 49% in terms of goals uh however we also capped it at um some of the smaller cities were concerned about annual budget increases and we talked about well if the budget ever were to be
approved with more than 4% increase to the fire budget that it would have to be a super majority in other words we would need one of the smaller cities to agree as well and we looked back past um in you know um budgets and how much they
have been increased and really it's very very seldom if ever it's been increased by more than 4% and then the other thing we talked about trying to remember what else did we talk about um voting oh and
then we didn't get to the formula so the formula um there was some very little discussion on that uh mom wasn't prepared to have that discuss but we will be talking about it at this upcoming because uh that's a
very important part of the of the joint powers agreement and then um I believe Kathleen and myself and Jasper will be meeting um with one of the cities um Wednesday morning and Jasper and myself Edwards St bonnie um regarding the
formula of it that there were there's like three or four different scenarios and they were on board with any one of them because they're not impacted very much and um I think our most impact would be what two and a half%
yeah that'd be the most right now i think we were planning on three as a planning number um but it's going to be less than that that's would be to our overall landing that would be the man of someone and so that's the other reason we wanted to have the um town hall meeting invite residents in let them
know what's happening why it's happening and um what potential financial impacts does it move to the city and we'll go over all of that meetings there and uh and then um also I um I was that fall's
retirement um event which was very very well attended i I think Ally said I mean it was there was a lot of people a lot of people here lot of police officers from all different um
organizations so it was a real testament to uh Paul's um work here and commitment not only to our city but just as a as a police um officer too and uh so it was a it was really a great event very very well attended and um I think it meant a
lot to our chief falls so and then um like I said we also uh when we had our meeting with St bonnie we kind of touched on and this is maybe another thing we'll add to our work session um we kind of touched on the water situation and um so I'm not going to go
into a lot of detail tonight but I asked uh Jasper if he would put that on a work session because I think we're making some good strides there um with the the mayor he was very interested in talking to us he talked about interconnects and there's three more interconnects that we
do and and is kind of a preliminary proposal um he's very interested in that so we'll talk about that in a future work session um that's and then I'll be going to the northwest lead NYC that's it so
um no people have been on vacation but anything and then the next fire is the ship is April 15th tax day by the way okay you've been on vacation too something like Philadelphia i will just say that they
are having their 25th anniversary gala coming up in October so ways away mark your calendars uh October 25th celebrating the 25th okay all right okay great well thank you very
much great meeting uh staff and council really appreciate it um appreciate Sergeant Brown stepping in so um for that is there a motion for Thank you M is there a second thank you Mr vicky
mick signify I I motion passes by we'll see you again in a couple weeks well next week next week on the 14th Part: 2
and this is the uh city work's work session of April 7th 2025 uh this evening present are myself the mayor Lisa Williams and council members present are Kathy Webkin Peter Vicky Claudia Lacy and Brian Gmer and then
staff present we have our city engineer Alowski public works director uh Gary Peters uh city assistant administrator Emily Palos Jasper Krugal is our administrator Brian Govern our finance director and then sitting in for our
police of uh chief this evening is Brown josh officer Brown thank you very much J um we have two items on our agenda for discussion uh for a work session we have the wooden cove crosswalk discussion and then we're going to also talk about
water rate discussions uh just kind of for your information our work session is not it's an open public meeting thank you for coming you are welcome to listen in i'm not taking comments this evening from the public we have your emails we
have your um uh discussion items are presented before to the council so we're well aware of of all of that we've read those emails we've heard your comments and taken those um um not lightly so with that I'm going to start out and
hopefully make this a rather quick brief discussion um I would like to see us install um at least one crosswalk by the um Fox box glove um by the Fox hold on just a second i'm getting
there getting there fox Glove Drive intersection and I've looked at this i actually went out there today i took a look at it um I even talked uh briefly with our new chief of police Craig Squires and our new deputy chief um
Patrick Cummings just briefly at our work at the retirement event and their comment was "Well what is the bad what is the downside to this?" and they couldn't
really come up with a downside um so I know we've talked about safety issues and I also had Jasper look up what is the um current state statute regarding crosswalks and pedestrians in
streets and actually um if a pedestrian steps into the street and starts to walk as long as there's ample time for a car to stop the pedestrian does have the right of way um I think a crosswalk insignia or striping on the road would
just make it a little more visible and a little more um alerting drivers as well as pedestrians that this is um an area that is safer to cross and I know we said well it's not as safe but it is as
safe and I haven't had a chance to do any kind of de you know data searches but um I don't think that anybody would dispute that if there's a crosswalk here and it's used correctly that it's less safe than not having a crosswalk i also
think um it's also good for the city council kind of too if this is a simple fix an easy fix not very expensive why not do it that would be the question what is it fixing i mean I've taken it almost every day since March when this
first came up i have never seen an issue with someone not be able to cross or with a huge influx of cars and I'm not saying it's different not saying it's not different than obvious but what is this fixing and then what standards are we using to put this in instead of putting it everywhere else residents
want one because whatever we do here is going to set a precedent and we have to be able to duplicate duplicate it again so the the issue here is one what we're fixing is concerns of our residents that's what we're fixing they're concerned and they brought their
concerns forward they've stated why they're concerned and and so on so our what we're fixing is some concerns and safety issues that they have that's what we're fixing the other thing is in this particular case and this is why I'm
saying box drive only not um not the other one that they're requesting because the other one that they're requesting is in the middle of a lock basically but this one is a four-way intersection and this one is direct access to the park which is just beyond
this picture in our packet and so there's there's a destination if you will but there's a pedestrian trail crossing right down the street that is clear yep and but it's not here oh I
think I think that so many shows that they were visibly concerned about perception and I think we perhaps I
um my comment would be I'm not against there being a crosswalk i think that's um wonderful i think they should have a crosswalk well the question comes down to who should pay for it because um and I said to one of the residents the more
people that come and talk to us about it the more like Peter is like we listen to you um but I'm a I'm in a place throughout the month where I see a lot of people in our community and there's
always something somebody wants in their neighborhood sure and on the street I live on we have a beautiful new tennis court off of County Road 44 the G Leonard Park and that's a destination that we go to
and we cross 44 um it's a yes we stay on there and we wait to cross county road or to get to a destination city park so I'm I'm just trying to be fair because you know I had 11 residents
on Loring Drive say "We would like the city to come back and build out the staircase that's at the end of Lauren Drive that goes up to Woodland." Um sorry Maple Crest yes Maple Crest and you know
that affects history and um I'm not saying that this you know I don't know how many people would be using this every day but I think we need to think about there are many many roads and many
projects people in Medista would want so I think we should discuss maybe we pay to put it in that they maintain it from then on and we are never called to maintain it we have to have this discussion well the only issue um is
that um it's a city road and then um it would actually Fox Club is not on the um south side that's a private road once it hits the south side but the crosswalks are going across the city and so um it then you run into issues with um it
would actually cost us more to work up an agreement and to work sign into an agreement to maintain a crosswalk than it would maintain it because it's like you know maybe not even $500 a year or or less to maintain it um but I I
understand what you're saying and I think that each request we can look at individually and um that's why I'm saying I don't think we need to do the Princeville one because it's in the middle of the of the block that's on the
southern side and it's not going to a destination plus if people want to and I don't know even why there's that access there but anyhow it is um and those people could actually walk over to Fox Club and then cross to go down to the
park what's the What's the cost to put in the about,000 the initial cost I think Gary got some numbers recently last week end of last week about $1,000 per crosswalk and that's mostly the setup cost to get it
all lined up and stencil and then moving forward it'd be about 500 bucks for the intersection each year if even I mean it would be a nominal cost and like I said um well a lot of people want the cost
well what okay one we have to set a precedent of what we're going to do so if 40 people come in and say they want something we're going to put a crosswalk everywhere they want one not necessarily well then because this is a this is a I'm going to ask you to
please be quiet because we're having a discussion and it's interrupting um so one of the things is this is Woodland Cole so it's the major major street in Woodland Cove if somebody came and said
they want a crosswalk let's say across um some other side street I think we could say no because it's not the major thorough fair this is the major thoroughare through Woodland Cole and there's
another striped crosswalk right the block down i understand that so to your point of the people on Cranesville who just walk down to Fox Globe to cross why can't the people on Fox Globe walk down to the trail crossing and the people from Princeville would have to walk they'd have Yeah they'd have to go even
further so it's just another another opportunity for people to get to that part when they were developing this community did someone do like who plans this did Did they come up and someone
must have decided they did not need Sure I can jump in um thank you for the question i wasn't involved with the the initial review of this but um typically when you have a development come in and the the developer installs sidewalks um
we don't usually have uh side crosswalks placed on on these roadways um we usually hold those conversations when you're looking at more of a collector load um so that's why there's no sidewalk or pardon me crosswalks um
straight to these roads i think this is going to get bigger too as they build out the rest of Woodliff Cove because it's going to be the main thoroughare to get out of Cove to the grocery store so it's it is going to be
well it's called the boulevard and I think for good reason it is going to be the main road out there there'll be more and more houses right uh I've gone back and forth on this on one hand I don't want crosswalks to be a
virtue of signal virtue signaling exercise um where we just put all crosswalks in care however I was looking at the state guidelines for it and honestly I don't think that they apply to a exurban city like ours um so really
I I think I'm in for it but what I'd like to be is a learning opportunity so I would like the I'm going to cut the email address folks that wrote in we'd like some feedback maybe three months from now so that we have the next request we can go into it with a little
more data that is um interestentric and not just right that's a good state yeah right you're correct has their standards but I don't think they always apply to city streets or to our community in
particular but as we know because a lot of times their standards are so egregious that we can't meet those standards but um so here's what what um I'm going to suggest we do we don't need to bring this back
to a regular council meeting because of the cost to install it i would just say if we're if we have a majority um to give staff direction that we're okay to have a crossroad installed at Fox Club is sad i just want to ask one more okay sure um
yes it is a city road but we can't ask that plan development association to pay for it we can allow it and then let them pay for it we can't do that we could but like I said by the time So what you would have to do is you have to enter
into a an agreement we need a lawyer to write that kind of a lawyer what by the time you by the time you do that and then here's the other issue then not only by the time you do that and then they have to um sign lean waiverss and
they have to um there's all kinds of other issues surrounding that but then the other thing is then we would have to make sure that they do what they're supposed to do so and then do they do it or do we do it and then build them so
those would be questions that we have to figure out so for $500 a year is is it worth it i mean that's the hope that's my my question but I understand where you're coming from well like what Brian says
about watching this and see you know if we make everyone in the community happy it's a wonderful thing we feel safer it works great um I have a question fox Club on the south side's a private road do we strike private roads
we don't we don't what's that fox live on the south side is a private road correct so we're going to put crosswalks on the private road it's going to be a wooden so it's just going the across it's not It's not a four-way crosswalk it's just crosswalk
yeah if I may I'm I'm looking at the map right now and sometimes these lines aren't exact but the pedestrian ramps look to be entirely in the rightway of Woodland Cove um Boulevard so if we would do four they would all be in the
rightway not on the private side so yeah so that's I guess my point is all four of the head ramps are within the rightway so are we doing one are we doing two one four how many How many crossets are we putting
just one on the one intersection one on both sides how many putting off that is totally up to the group as far as discussion go i think there's been one on the west side that's been discussed um north and south would there
be any reason why we have to do two i'll defer to Gary i don't know what the statute is on yeah I I don't know that there's really any guidance that the the council could draw from i think if we look at um
there's where the sidewalk connections are on Box Club they are on the west side so if the council wanted to look at one crosswalk across Woodland Boulevard that would be a suggestion is to do it on the west side because they have
sidewalk coming right on both sides yeah i think just I think to kind of Brian's point let's do one u monitor it see how it goes and uh and kind of take note and from from that if you
will but I think one is sufficient okay and then if I may um you mentioned something about a 30 day three month followup um is it three months is that what I heard or was it 30 days three months we put out Yeah like midsummer
probably like a July maybe check in and I I'm assuming too then there would be signs posted prior to those um pedestrians as well as vehicular travel that there's a crosswalk ahead i mean is that's that standard
right alison I guess that would be an Alison question i think with that would be a prudent thing to do to alert the drivers if there's one cross so I think sidewalks or car signs are usually
running about 300 when you get the post well Okay so another 500 for each sign so be another $1,000 so you're looking at $2,000,000 for the striking a,000 for the signs are they
going to be related signs like on Kings Point Road or just regular ones just regular okay are we in agreement because um Jasper has the authority to spend up to a certain amount so we're guessing it's going to be around with the signage
around 2,000 so if we're in agreement we can just give direction for him to do that gary I just want to read something sure pedestrian
may must not enter a crosswalk if the vehicle is approaching there is no defined distance that pedestrian must abide by before entering a crosswalk but common sense should prevail the law states "No pedestrian shall suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and block or run into a path of vehicle
which is close that is that is impossible for the driver to yield crosswalk does not have to be marked to be covered by this law at an intersection a crosswalk exists from sidewalk to sidewalk even if lines are not being on the street and the only So I mean
technically basically Josh could see somebody you know in the crosswalk beer at them you give them a ticket first a you know gee you know it doesn't happen anymore so I'm just throwing it out there i don't care one way or the other let me
know what you want us to do we could add it to the list of the mark that's that's kind of what I was Yeah that's kind of what I was saying earlier that um a pedestrian runs in the roadway and if a vehicle has an opportunity to stop they have the right of way the crosswalk all
it does is add an extra visual so that cars are alerted that there's a possible crosswalk and pedestrians ahead so it just adds a little more safety that's all so all right um any other comments
questions if not do you have enough direction i believe so thank you very much so now very important discussion is not that that wasn't but this is also very important is our water rate discussion as you know we're going to
have a town hall meeting next Monday and before that meeting it would be nice to have some things possibilities and options of the board so that's we're not making any decisions tonight but we want to hear staff's ideas if you have ideas
um so that we can present these ideas at the town hall meeting and get some feedback from our residents so with that yeah Madame Mayor members of council um as you can see in the staff report uh we're talking about building a plant that's about $22 million uh the bond
payment for that plant using kind of an estimated 4% interest and a 20-year bond uh period would cost about it cost the city roughly like $1.62 million a year in in a bond payment so that's essentially what we're talking about
having to make up in our our current revenue stream for water right now and I'm going off memory correct me if I'm wrong Brian but we're at about 1.7 million in total revenue for a good year for a for a good year for a dry year probably like year is probably 1.2
1.3 so it fluctuates quite a bit so um depending on that that we have to come up with that much money each year so if we build the plant we we have to raise rates significantly um and this is something that can be done over a year
or two if we want to um just knowing that your end product will likely be higher if you kind of extend it over a couple years but we have to we have to make up some um some revenue and I guess the goal tonight isn't really to come up with exactly how we want to do it but to
talk about just some options as the mayor alluded to uh a couple things that we've talked about in the past uh one of our neighboring communities Minnotonka Beach I think they're the only ones that that I could find that do it this way they have a separate charge just for um
water treatment so they they they they built recently at I think believe it was around a $10.5 million plant um and I haven't been able to confirm this yet but they currently have a $335 per quarter charge um and just talking to
the mayor in passing a couple weeks ago they're actually adding some onto that that exact amount i don't know what it is i believe it was around 150 or 160 more dollars per quarter um so they're probably looking at about they only have 200 resident yeah so
200 panic yet they're they're a little little bit different um than us as far as the ratio goes the other option is you know we have a current kind of conservation um rate tier system where we have um three different tiers one that goes from 0 to 25,000 25,000 to
65,000 then over 65,000 gallons um the way that we could look at this is is adjusting those rates upward um so that they can accumulate enough revenue to pay that bond payment along with all the other um water related charges that we have um one thing if you note um if we
would go with just using the um usage charges one one note that AE2s our water engineer group mentioned was that we should probably evaluate the ratio between each of the tiers um generally they they say rule of thumb is like 2 to
one so let's say our first tier is $5 um our next one should be 10 and the next one should be 20 right now we're a little bit low probably on the top tier if we follow that rule so if we would work it into usage um we probably look at re-evaluating the tiers which can be
um if you remember uh I know that our staff do from the last time we adjusted the the tiers or you know can be problematic because people get high bills on Q3 um so those are kind of the two options I think are viable there is an option to do an assessment so um
follow the 429 process and assess property owners um it that is problematic because you're kind of locking in the cost of this plant to the existing user base and not sharing that cost with future users um it's an option
i would recommend against it i just it's not equitable at all uh to be able to to do that but it is an option um some communities that are completely built out have done that i know for for things like specifically for wastewater but you could do it for water as well but so I
think really what we're looking at doing is looking at evaluating are the um the the fee the single fee for water treatment fee you call it or something like that or adjusting the user rates to generate enough revenue um to make our payments well we have we have two other
buckets though for revenue we have connection fees and we have area charges for when a development comes in so um and I think every year we need to be looking at those fees as well um to subsidize water infrastructure yes that
is also true and you I know we looked at it last year and made some pretty substantial increases to those i think um as far as a strategy moving forward we should just look at those make sure that we don't price ourselves out of the development game and make sure that we're because we're a growing community we should probably have some of the
higher water access charge and and area charges for water just to make sure but we don't get those unless we build houses or land is developed so there's kind of a double-edged sword but those are two things that we can and and likely will adjust and we'll look at um during that process when we set the fee
schedule and the escrow the money ahead of when we issue the bonds so say we start collecting fees now can we kind of put that aside or plan absolutely yeah yeah and a lot of
communities choose to do that proactively where they try to accumulate funds for a big project and then maybe use some cash to buy it down we're not I don't think in that position right now um generally our water fund has I think roughly about a million dollar or a
little bit more um fund balance so which is probably something we're going to have to look at when we start taking on more debt because we want to make sure if you know something happens we'll be able to pay that so I don't we we don't have a lot of cash but if we would have been saying 10 years ago 20 years ago
and that was the strategy was to accumulate some more cash beforehand we could have done that but that was the strategy the problem is is this this project is like nearly doubled from what we thought it would be so um yeah so one
of the options too that maybe came up was to make a midyear adjustment for rates um that's something that you could consider it would almost be cleaner to do it at the beginning of the year like we we have done in the past but if you'd like to try to get ahead of it a little bit more you could think about that um
it's probably you want to do it until like Q4 or something because well depending what option we do if we do the fee we could just start fee for the issue is if we just raise the rates if
it's a really bad summer we're not going to make enough money to pay that so you know unless we want to set the base rate ridiculously high so no matter what we have I would be a proponent of doing the water treatment fee just so residents have a line item and then it's
more move in the water system we can they can also start paying the fee immediately and it's not tied to their water uses per se just that they're using the water yeah and I I think we'll be able to dive into all the different options i think we're we're
looking for tonight is just what what do we feel comfortable as a group throwing out there to the town hall we'll do a deep dive into this don't worry um especially if we get to the point where we bid and award the contract like we're going to have to figure this out um during the budget process but really I
mean if there's other ideas you can blend the two ideas too you could have half of the you know call it the base rate you could you could you could throw some more at the base rate and then you wouldn't have to raise rates as much then you get like like uh council member Ruffkin is saying guaranteed revenue i
think that's the risk of putting it all into um the usage fees if we have a wet summer you know our revenues go down by 20% potentially maybe more uh but if we have a dry summer it goes up you know they go up so it es and flows based on that weather pattern
do we have any I was just looking at the tier cities around us and most of them are bottom tier is about a third of what our bottom tier is is so you price bottle for price so like most of them
are around 8,000 8 to 9,000 gallons um for the bottom tier it just feels like that might run the base a little bit more than trying to count everything on these top water users pay for it well quarterly or
monthly because ours are extra money that is a good suggest i mean some cities do do like you know four or five tiers you know and and try to to get a little more at those lower levels and well and really you should only have to use I mean our bill at our house is
4,000 a month usually 12,000 a quarter i mean our 0 to 25 is probably a little you know high where we which we'd want to do like as you know whether you do quarterly or monthly however you slice it but if you do a zero to 12 is the first tier and then you do 12 to 25 and
25 to 50 50 to 75 and or 65 whatever you know something that would guarantee a little more revenue by and I think even the DNR and stuff in the past has said you know our tiers are definitely not the most restrictive by any means I mean we used to have really unrestrictive tiers I mean I think the mayor can
number and stuff yeah we didn't have tiers and when we did we had really loose tiers and then so there is I mean you know whether you know three is the right way to split it we could do four or five tiers that would you know guarantee a little more revenue based on not having to hit some
of those thresholds well then those people that don't use a lot kind of get you know they don't have to pay as much either um I think um so then the other thing to consider is if you do a let's call it a treatment plant
fee then as we get more homes online it would then stand a reason that that fee would go down so you be making that adjustment every year you know so and I was talking with Jasper you know we're
seeing approximately a 4% growth it would it would be a solver for every hundred homes that we would add to the system it would drop the that fee at 80 $186 a quarter by 4%
is what it would go down so every hundred homes would make it go down to 4% if that's the number that it's set at you know so if it's set at 200 it'd be it still be 4% but um and we can we can look at it every year i mean you'd want to look at it every year to make sure
that um not only is our is our debt payment covered but our operational um expenses are covered as well so it may or may not go down i I don't want to promise that it's going to go down but it would stand a reason that it would pay off sooner it depends on the bond
yeah but I mean I wish that would happen i don't envision that happening in many scenarios i'm more worried about more of a negative revenue stream or balance or what do you want to call it income statement and you know we're kind of jumping into the more budget discussion
but you know if we do change the tiers up there's going to be some unknowns on how that'll affect the behavior so we won't know exactly what the revenue will be so it'll have to be a moving target and generally you try to at that first year is overestimate a little bit just to give yourself a little bit of room
and then that second year or third year then you can make it the adjustments hopefully um but that's one thing you don't want to do is is sell yourself short and then all of a sudden you make these big changes and then you didn't do enough and then you're coming back to the public and saying oh gez we didn't charge you enough we need to actually
you know instead of going up a normal 5% we need to go up another 15 the second year so um there's a bunch of different ways to approach but yeah really what we're looking at if there's any other ideas from city council on how to approach this um kind of revenue challenge um that we're going to likely
see if we build this plant um you know the the fee the single fee or the usage or some blended um so we're talking about okay so we're talking about adding a potentially adding a um we're calling a treatment plant fee and everybody pays
the same and then um and then we're talking about maybe raising the base rate maybe at least a little we'd have to figure out how much that would be and then we're talking about um maybe adjusting the tiers and maybe taking some obviously some adjustments upward
for the rates or some or if you did I guess we'd have to almost maybe the public would want to know well what does this look like on my bill you know what what what does if you adjusted the base rate and adjusted the tiers how much would you have to adjust to make that up
and what would it cost me I mean I think that would be a question that they right right now I think I mean obviously the biggest thing we want to be honest and transparent with our residents what we all want to be is I mean right now someone that's probably paying water you know a reasonable user is probably
paying $1,000 for the year you know or whatever you know probably whether that's you know 80 bucks a month 250 bucks a quarter or whatever but in order to pay for if this project moves forward at 22 million if that's the right number I mean before we were looking at doing
on a $15 million project like 13 to 15% increases for several years yeah i mean now you're I mean when Jasper says it's going to double if you used to pay $1,000 for water you're now probably going to be paying in within three to five years you're going to be paying 2,000 a year for water and three to five
yeah yeah i mean to be honest with everybody I guess or it's I don't see any way around it i mean people's bills that they pay on the year going to have to probably double i mean how long you split it or fee or depending on the other option is uh you don't build a
treatment plant and people have water sometimes they have yellow water or higher maganesees and and you have to alert them that you know there's some health issues if if that's what they where they
want to go i also sound like the commercial rates and the residential rates are the same is there enough commercial usage to that option not yet no not really so there's I mean
the school was our big commercial user technically um they've since went basically all off all off of our water and onto their own irrigation system for irrigation for irrigation so they they still have a base amount that they use but they used to use a lot of water um
in the summer for irrigation um until we get more commercial that you know we could adjust those rates with the the revenue impacts lower than what our residential is so we're like 93 94% residential for our water revenue or you know somewhere north of 90% yeah so and
one thing I looked into a little bit today because I think the mayor brought it up was you know we have one apartment complex and we went through an exercise last year to figure out how we're going to charge them um and the way it works is they get charged the base fee but then they get charged the residential
rate so one base fee residential rates for their whole complex not the commercial rate so we I remember doing an analysis and it was kind of a wash between the two but that's how we handle apartments and you know their bill is like four 4,000 a month right now and
then I also asked Jasm so if we get a fee let's just say we have to talk about is that fair to charge an apartment unit which is 148 units the same as a residential
property and when you think about it some of the apartments that they have are about the same size as some of the town homes that we have so then we have to we'll have to discuss that commercial fee yeah we'll have to make some kind of
adjustment there so um yeah we'll have to talk about that as well if that's the route we want to go i like the idea of a spreadsheet i think we should include the connection charges development charges and
maybe we could see all parts and what if we change this how it affect those things that would be really helpful right yeah and I think we talked about um doing that for the town hall meeting so people can actually see how we're paying
for everything because there are three or four different well right now there's three different buckets user fees and then um the development fees and then connection charges yeah and and for you know we talked about doing a maybe eventually once we
figure out what we're going to do a calculator or a set of tables that people can kind of match up their 2025 usage and then then compared to the 2026 whatever we settle in on so they can kind of see the difference between the rates too
so but yeah as Brian alluded to um you know it's going to not be a good fun conversation i mean things are going to essentially double or need to double plus plus all the other additional water stuff that we have going on too like just ongoing
maintenance and um you know Gary's Gary and I had a conversation today about required testing um that they're really making us ramp up on and so there's it's coming in at all angles on this yeah some people don't bat an eye at
paying 2,2500 for a year for water and some people do you know or whatever you know and some of those people that you know they water their lawn a lot and you know if they have the reasonable expectations and if to them it's but for some people for their bill going from 2,000 for a moderate user or whatever you know or to 5,000 might get people
for the year the other thing is Brian and I agree with that especially for senior citizens that are on you know social security and all of that i won't mention um no I mean you're you know you
taking a thousand additional hit is is big for some people um but I think if you can if we put it into let's say a monthly perspective what does that be $90 basically is858 a month and I think that comes
back to your comment um Kathleen about um going to monthly billing and I was talking to Jasper saying because of all these other things that we have to add next year not not water-wise but otherwise um maybe we don't want to do it next year but maybe we do
what's implement or Right we need to start launching the money sooner rather than later so maybe if if we zero in and decide on a water
treatment plant feed maybe we do that starting this year but then maybe we do the increase next year and then we start doing um monthly billing starting Q2 of next year something like that
you know that might also help stagger things because keep in mind if you add monthly billings it's going to add more cost we offer budget billing where people pay a flat rate throughout the year we don't
yet but that's something we've talked about um offering i think we did a little examination vanyionary utility billing software is can do that um but we just we haven't offered it so but I think that would be be something to help normalize the costs over either
quarterly or monthly basis hard part to live with is you're always sort of chasing your tail because you're never totally balancing up you're always using it based on whatever historical from the past one two three years and some ways it's like it's already going to be hard enough to pay for this thing and then
you're you're delaying revenue potentially or but I don't know you know you're just not trueing up or whatever right away so why I don't maybe a monthly bill you are so what what are your thoughts i mean
I mean I've said it before I think is the most transparent and then everyone knows what it's going towards and then we don't have to rely on the rate usage to make payment yeah I like I like that idea too and it makes it you know broad base so it's it
spreads out pain yeah well everybody needs the water treatment plant um no matter how much water you use and I think that's kind of the idea behind it um so yeah every um and I know Jasper in his um in the
presentation here um was like 186 for three months so divide that up you know $62 would basically $65 and I'll put a big nuance on that that's an administrator calculation we'll have to definitely do a deep dive
with uh some of the utility billing stuff to kind of especially if we change some of the tiers and you know there's a lot of moving parts that's that's just a quick estimate if we have to double or we have to come up with $1.6 million right away
that's what it would be based on i think 1100 or 12 2241 or whatever users if um we add more tiers is that just like you click in the software and simple to Yeah that's not too bad yeah yeah if we do do the 100 or whatever it
ends up being 75 80 $100 a month uh fee the only request I would have is that everyone's all the council all the way down through every staff person's on board with it arie's willing to take more calls and Jasper because it it shouldn't shouldn't just be Darcy and Renee and Angie that gets hit by it have
to be a total team effort because I mean if it's you know there's there's getting slammed on the finance side and there's getting slammed on well the water quality isn't quite good enough so it should be a total team effort if ever they move somewhere that there are other communities that are charging about the
same as we do and their water they can't even drink their water yeah that's I think that there's and and this is the other reason we thought the town hall would be good too is just to let people know what we're doing and why we're doing it because you know when you see
your water rates go up you're like "What the heck?" You know why and so when we explain we're building another treatment plant and you're going to continue getting really good quality drinkable water and because our maganesees aside you know you give them all these all of
this information at least they know what they're paying for and it's not well I still have a terrible water so I mean that that if I was the resident of another community with brown water and I was being charged more and I didn't know
what their plan was and I you know I didn't know anything i would be pretty upset but maybe if we do this explanation we won't get humbled too hard well I'm assuming we do a mailer that would buy everyone of
the network they said they didn't know it was going on we'll exhaust you know communication efforts um but there will be no doubt that people some people might miss it they might not like it they might not realize it till they get their first
bill you know that in Q3 of 2026 that's when it'll hit and that's when we'll get all the calls so question comment um I was told that um the powers the be changed the level
of manganese from one level that's acceptable to a lower level correct so could it be that manganese is really not a big deal they just want to force us to I mean I grew up drinking that water
granted it's so much worse now i think I've seen pictures all over local not just our neighbor you can't really see me no but I'm saying our water looks clean and looks are gray um I I just wonder is it really in fact
because I don't want fluoride in my water that's a thing now where but so maganesees I mean apparently there's scientists and doctors and who knows what else that research this and and um
then come up with a a base you know that they say okay this is what we found through through tests and and whatever that it shouldn't surpass this because it's potentially dangerous so current currently they're saying that magnes
isn't necessarily dangerous for adults but it's for children and for pregnant um people women so senior citizens and oh and senior citizens too so maybe that's why I can't think
anymore yeah that is true true i mean that's that's one of the things that Mound ran into was they changed that healthbased standard three or four years ago and then that triggered them to not meet it and then they had to send out all these letters to everybody saying their
water's unsafe to drink and I think as we continue to blend our water a little bit more and we do every year a little bit but if we get to the point eventually we're going to have to send those letters out and that's kind of I think what the mayor is alluding to if we don't build the plant you will likely
have to send these letters out saying "Well be careful you know be at least know what you're drinking you know and and consider that before you drink it." Um respect to the rates what are you guys supposed to adding more tiers you
good with three tiers thoughts i think it's a good idea to raise more tiers and to still kind of focus on that higher usage to try to bring that down but I think that's going to have to be a combination of three
yeah and I do like I like the fee but let's see you know the treatment plant feed but um so here's here's the thing what we might get and I think some questions that might come up is we have two systems if you know it's the northern
system and the southern central system and so what people in the north are going to say is well why should we have to pay for the treatment plant in the south my answer to that is because the people in the south are paying for your um rehabilitation of a water tower and
they paid for they're paying for your treatment plan and they're also paying for all the water infrastructure that we recently did a couple years ago on morning view they're paying for that as well so it's it's a whole it's a system it's a whole system it's not like they're just paying for this it's it's
all this 2.6 whatever the 1.6 6 million we're still paying for the treatment plant in the north and the other treatment plant in the south so we're still paying for that um so it's not like we're not the people in the south aren't paying for the north it's we're
all paying together for everything so in case you're ask that just so you know it's just one system that would be my one system they're not connected but it is it is one one we utility take the money we
have the funds and allocated separately so when we do repair on the north side to sell people's money's in a separate account at which point we probably have way more money for the center people on the north
side because I think yeah we have what about 500 maybe no not even what in the north in the north like 4 500 400 whatever it is and in the south we have quite a bit the
Yeah 1700 right all right other questions comments and so next question i have a question how many people are going to be at the town hall meeting
okay okay so um should we put targets on i told Jasper "You guys don't have to worry probably they'll shoot target arrows some bows and arrows that Jasper and I can back and wave at us." I think we
have an opportunity to have this go well because our sister city you know our neighboring city has no names mentioned they've experienced you know what it's like to be a lot can't drink and it's not like
we have a choice we we need we need this it's a necessity exactly um it's not some luxury it's not a crazy expenditure it's something we need and how it costs done our due diligence and really done
our due diligence so um it's a it's expensive yeah it is good point all right so with that then um what's on our agenda for our next work session do you know can I bring something up we might
be the wrong place i'm sorry just be quick okay work session yeah can I talk about chickens no no but we can So our next work session do you want to talk about chickens um so we we actually have that slated i sent you an email today
june 16th that is a long way away it is i can see if I can I can see if I can move it up what I need to do is have the community development staff kind of develop what needs to change in our code i know exactly what needs to change it's very simple well not that simple but
it's very simple it a tiny little change code well if we So if we if we permit them that's a kind of a big step internally but Okay but we're going to bring it back i was just asking for um ideas what what's on the
agenda for the next one i'm pulling it up right now i know we have a couple things on here um uh we have a few minutes we have a closed session for active litigation okay so we're going to talk about some stuff there um and then
I have on here um code of conduct review that's I was going to bring that up regular meeting does so I don't know if you've seen in the paper lately but I know it's um oral has is creating a code of conduct and other and then I checked with other communities that already have
them and I thought you know since we're good we're good here no problems i'm not saying there are um but it's maybe a good idea to create one before it becomes a problem so um I just So that'll be um on our agenda or
discussion talk about chickens before June oh yeah i got it on so we'll try to balance them out may 5th is full um what else is on the It's the 21st just
those two items we just earlier and talk about chickens and get it over thank you there's a lot of people with chickens already that are outlawed you know and no one's complaining i mean
there's a lot of people with chickens so I just I I'm trying to appeal the people that want them do the right thing we'll talk later about chickens we're going to add that on the chicken in a row we're going to add that on the 21st
so um yes I will add that and then we'll start if need be if you think we need to start at 5 so starting at No I don't I don't think we we would i think 5:30 i think we're still good at 5:30 all right so those
will be the items on the 21st all right so with that is there a motion to adjourn the work session thank you Claudia is there a second second thank you Kathleen all those in favor signify by I all those opposed motion passes we are adjourned until 7 o'clock thank you
and there's food in the back social media post already we'll share them with staff that's usually the best way to do it