All right. Good evening, everyone. It is August 11th, 2025 at 5:30 p.m. I am Mayor Shelley Carlson. The Mor City Council welcomes public input on issues listed on the agenda or of general community interest, time and council
permitting. Speakers will be limited to three minutes each. If you would like to address the council during the meeting, you'll need to fill out a form provided by the city clerk and we will call you up during the citizens to address the council item on the agenda. You'll need to state your name and if you are a Morhead resident. If comments were
submitted to the clerk prior to the meeting via email or phone, those comments will be entered into record. For more information on participation, please visit the council meetings page on the city of Morhead website at moreheadm.gov. We the Morhead City Council collectively and with gratitude acknowledge the sacred land the city of Morhead is built
upon. We acknowledge the people have resided here for generations and recognize that the spirit of the Dakota Ajiway Mati and all indigenous communities permeate this land. With that, could I get a roll call, please? Ryan Nelson here. Nicole Matson here. Heather Nissa Meyer here. Emily Moore
here. Deb White here. Lisa Borggan here. Sebastian McDougall here. Chuck Hendrickson here. Mayor Shelley Carlson here. And for those who are able, please stand for the pledge of allegiance. All right. And city manager Molly, do we have any amendments?
There are no amendments to the agenda tonight, mayor. Okay. Moving on to the consent agenda. I have a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Na mayor. Borggan and the niece mayor. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I.
Any opposed? That motion carries. Moving on to recognitions and presentations. The first is our Moreheart recognition of Ashley Anderson. And I will have Lisa Bod come up and tell us a little bit more. Thank you, Mayor Carlson. Members of the
city council, the Moreheart Selection Committee is recommending that tonight you recognize Ashley Anderson for her courageous act and composure in crisis. Um, Kelly, do you want me to do something with
Oh, okay. Okay. Excuse me. Um, on the So, I'm going to tell you the story about this one. Um, because it's it's about one really special act of of of c courageousness and composure in a
crisis situation. Um Ashley was nominated by Sean Brandenburgg, our director of parks and recreation. And um the the reason for the nomination is that on the afternoon of Saturday, June 21st, Morehead resident Azere uh Bartat
and her friend Denise were chatting about the hot weather. After a stressful morning, Denise offered to give Azere some muchneeded mom by taking her children, including 11-year-old JC, to the neighborhood water uh waiting pool a
few blocks away. That day, Ashley Anderson also brought her daughter to that same pool. A while later, Azer received a call. She later said she knew something was wrong even before answering the phone. While playing in
the waiting pool, JC had a seizure. What was initially thought to be him playing underwater was him unconscious. As Denise noticed this, she screamed and got JC out of the water. Ashley came
running over and gave CPR while 911 was called. Azare on her way to the pool saw the ambulance, followed them to the hospital, connecting with officers and letting them know that her son was in the ambulance. She met her husband at Essentia and JC
was later transferred to Sanford Hospital. On Sunday, as JC was being discharged, Azie received a phone call from the responding officer informing her that Ashley had offered to share contact information if the family wanted to connect. Azer Azeret immediately
responded, "Absolutely." After exchanging a few texts, Azere and Ashley and their families were able to meet up. They hit it off instantly and have since been arranging sleepovers and hanging out together. As Azie said, "This is the
best possible thing I could ever ask of someone." Ashley is not just a friend, she is now family. So Azerie shared that what could have been a tragedy has become a beautiful outcome and a great start to a relationship with Ashley and her family.
Shawn Brandenburgg wrote in Ashley's nomination, "Ashley's ability to recognize the emergency, take immediate action, and perform life-saving measures exemplifies remarkable bravery and presence of mind. Her quick thinking, calm demeter, demeanor, and willingness
to act in a critical moment directly contributed to a positive outcome in what could have been a tragic situation. Because of Ashley's heroic response, this story has a happy ending. Her actions serve as a powerful reminder of the impact one individual can have, and
we are so fortunate to have individuals like her in our Morehead community. So, um, with that, Mayor Carlson, would you like to present the Morheart Award? Ashley, do you want to come forward? Sorry, very emotional. Um, I just want
to say I'm I'm really honored to receive this um to receive this award. It means a lot to me. Um, and I also have a sense of that I shouldn't be recognized for this. It was just something um hard to explain, but I
am so grateful and just really grateful for the outcome and that JC is okay and to have such a connection now with him that I'll have um for the rest of my life and with the family. So, um it's
changed my life forever and I'm just so happy the outcome was the way it was. So, thank you so much That is such a beautiful story and I was so happy that I could meet you guys at the safe cities event and and really hear all of the details about what
happened that day and so glad that you were there Ashley and that you guys have come together as two families now. So congratulations again. Next on the agenda is our swearing in and badge pinning for Morhead police officers. I will turn this over to Chief
Helmick. Good evening, mayor, council members. Uh first of all, I just want to thank you all for allowing us the time and the space this evening to hold this swearing in ceremony. Uh it's an important moment not just for the officers taking their oath, but uh also for their families,
their loved ones, the department, and the whole community of Morhead. Um these ceremonies are more than just tradition. They are a public affirmation of service, integrity, and commitment for these officers. And sharing this moment with all of you and the community reinforces the transparency and the
trust that are essential to our work. Uh the good news is in the coming weeks at the next two council meetings after this uh we're going to continue to welcome new officers to the department. Um at the next meeting we'll welcome assistant chief Alfelt and then the
meeting after that we will have another group of officers that are currently going through our new officermies. So uh that's pretty exciting and we also anticipate having another group in November. Um, so with all those multiple events coming up, uh, I think this
signals that the momentum is building and that our department has turned a corner when it comes to staffing and our hiring efforts. And with that, I'd like to recognize Sergeant Joe Brandon, uh, who's really been the force behind that and, uh, he has been working tirelessly to get people in the door and find us
good candidates. So, thank you, Joe, for all that you do. Um, with that too, we have high hopes that hopefully over the next year we will actually reach or be close to full staff. And, uh, that is definitely a a change in tone from when I was standing
up here in April talking about taking over this role. So, uh, again, Sergeant Brandon is the, uh, the main person to get the credit for that. Um, but with that, we aren't letting up either. uh just because we are hoping to be there uh we still want to make sure that we
keep our foot on the pedal and uh but it definitely signal signals that we're on the right track and reaching that goal is really going to strengthen our ability to serve the community of Morehead. So tonight we're going to present to you six officers. Uh three of these officers recently completed their
field training, but they haven't had the opportunity to have a public swearing in or a badge pinning uh opportunity. Uh we also have two other officers that are currently in the training program and we have one officer who's joining us for the first time tonight. So as I name the
individual officers, what we're going to have them do is come in one at a time and then they'll invite their friend or family member up to pin the badge on and then we'll have the officer step aside and once we get the entire group up here, we'll have the mayor swear them in. Uh for the families and and friends
that are here, if you would like to come up and take some photos while they're getting their badge pinned, you are certainly welcome to do that. Uh we know this is a big opportunity. We'll be taking photos as well, but uh certainly feel free and don't think you're getting in the way. This is this opportunity is for you. So uh do what you like to to
get some photos. And uh once we're done here, we'll also bring the officers next door to uh have an opportunity to take some more formal photos and uh give you some more opportunity for that. So, and Chief Helm, just interrupt, there are um more seats to those in the back.
If you want to move forward, um feel free to come and take those chairs so you can see a little bit better. You don't have to if you don't want to though. We won't bite. Okay. Well, with that, uh, we'll start
off with Officer Jake Olsen. We're good. Officer Bethany Led Better have Officer Erica Broer, who just graduated from her field training. yesterday. So, have officer Cam Schlutting. I'm going in, coach.
We'll start telling the new recruits to pre-poke some holes in there. So, uh, Officer Will Casease And finally, Officer Gage Miller. All right, if we could have the officers line up in front here and then the mayor
would like to say something. Well, first of all, congratulations to all of you and I'm so happy that so many of your friends and family could be here for this very monumental occasion. Um, obviously you've all reached the qualifications of being a peace officer
in the state of Minnesota in the city of Morehead, but there's some other job qualifications of a police officer that um I don't think everyone is always fully aware of. My husband was a law enforcement officer for about 14 years
and at least 11 to 12 of them he served with the Ward Police Department. So, I want your friends and family to know that we um take the the mental health and and physical health of our officers very seriously. Um it's something that friends and family are very fully aware
of the challenges that each of these men and women have um to deal with on a daily basis. So, there are some additional qualifications. Um, contrary to what Sergeant Brandon says, I have made it through this before without uh getting emotional because it
brings back a lot of memories of um having my own husband out uh patrolling when maybe situations aren't the the best. Um so I'm going to try to make it through the second time because it has been at least once. Um but I apologize
in advance if I do get a little emotional. So, job qualifications of a police officer. A police officer has to be able to run miles through alleys in the dark, scale walls, and enter homes a health inspector wouldn't go into. All way all
while wearing 20 plus pounds of equipment, which my understanding is as you get older, the belt becomes a little bit lighter because you realize maybe you don't, but I'll let you guys deal with that. The officer must be able to sit in a car during surveillance all day, cover a
homicide scene that night, canvas a neighborhood for witnesses, and be able to show up in court the next day to testify in a year old case. Remembering all of those details on little or no sleep. A police officer must be in top physical condition on black coffee, Mountain Dew, or energy drinks and
halfeaten meals frequently consumed in their squad car in less than 5 minutes. Police officer needs to have three pairs of eyes. One that sees through a bulge in a coat pocket before asking, "May I see what's in there?" already knowing what's in there and wishing they would have taken that accounting job. A second
pair of eyes on either side of their head to look out for his or her partner's safety. And a third pair of eyes in front to be able to look reassuringly at a bleeding victim and say, "You're going to be okay, even when they know it's not true." A police officer must be able to talk a
250lb intoxicated and combative individual into a squad car without incident and raise a family on a civil service paycheck. The officer must be able to tell you the elements of a hundred different crimes. Recite the Miranda warning in their sleep. detain,
investigate, search, and arrest a criminal on the street in less time than it takes five learning judges to debate the legality of the arrest and somehow keep a positive outlook and maintain a sense of humor. A police officer must have phenomenal personal control.
Okay, it's only going to be one time, Brandon. They must be able to deal with horrific graphic crime scenes, coach confessions from pedophiles, comfort a sexual assault victim, know the names and numbers and services of dozens of
community resources, and respond to chance encounters with the public with friendliness and a ready smile at all times. Remember that you are a member of an elite group of individuals who swear to honor, serve, and protect the citizens of Morehead. So Joe, Bethany, Erica,
Cam, Will, and Gage for all of these attributes and your willingness to serve. I thank you. The city council thanks you and the community of Morhead thanks you. You're deeply appreciated. I'm grateful for every one of you. So if you want to take your sheet out, we'll
get you sworn in. So I state your name. do solemnly swearly swear that I will support and comply with the Constitution of the United States of America,
the Constitution and Laws of the State of Minnesota. Constitution, the charter, laws, and ordinances of the city of Morhead, the policies and procedures of the Morhead Police Department,
and the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties as a police officer to the best of my ability. I further pledge that on my honor, I will never betray my badge,
my integrity, my character, or the public trust. I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions. I will always uphold my community
and the agency I serve. Welcome to Morehead. All right, congratulations again everyone. Our next presentation of the night um is a presentation by Rachel Abboa who is the
engagement director with resource connect. So Chelle if you there you are you want to come up to the podium and then you can start with the presentation. Good evening, um, city council and members of Morehead. Is
a pleasure to meet everyone, uh, this evening. I'm a bit nervous. I don't know why, but I am. Uh my name is Rachel and I am the engagement director at Resource Connect. Uh we are a small grassroot
nonprofit in the area that provides free transportation and work attires to those who needs it and are facing financial barriers. Um this evening we'll go through a slides of some of the services that we
offer, the people who are mostly impacted and um the work that we do within the Fargo Morehead area. I'm trying to figure out which one would be the best one for me to use. Um so our mission is to help provide
reliable transportation for those facing financial hardship. our main focus is um on the working class that is just needing a little bit of help pushing just to that next paycheck. Whether it's to help them fix their vehicle, get um
they just move here so they don't live close to the bus system or the bus don't go directly to their work um or just down on their luck for right now. um that is the people in which we seek to help.
Our impact is creating economical stability by providing or removing critical barriers um to a consistent employment. Some of the challenges we've seen the
Fargo Morehead um and why we came to be is limited public transportation. So those who are moving from uh bigger cities um or even here in Minneapolis uh they're coming from Minneapolis St. Paul area and coming down here to Morehead.
Um our bus system don't run as frequent or don't hit every location especially the industrial parks. Um so extending that um assistant or expenses.
So they have to decide if putting food on the table or having reliable transportation to get to work or just whether that's going to light bills or rent trying to figure out which one is important for that month. Um although we
love our wonderful weather here in the Fargo Morehead area but um sometimes it is even harsh to catch public transportation and then um language barriers to kind of figure out the resources on getting these transportation.
Our solution has been partnering up um with various organizations um operating a cargo vehicle to picking up people directly from their home and taking them to these work spaces.
Uh ride share and education. We provide things like bus passes, gas cards. We'll pick you up and drop you to work, pick you up and bring you home. um will also help fix your vehicle if it's something minor like a a tire or a brake pad,
anything to help you get to work. So far, our impact has been um we have helped about 150 um people and this is through our emergency ride share as well as our long-term ride share. So, our emergency
ride share is you woke up this morning, your car broke down, and you're like, "What am I going to do?" You can give us a call, we'll go pick you up and take you to work. Our long-term care goes from 3 weeks all the way to a month. It can be extended depending on how dire
need uh or your situation is at the moment. Um, with the bus passes is it varies just because even though we would love to do more bus passes, the limitation of how close people live to a bus route or
how close the bus route is to their work. Um, this is some of the people we have helped. Um, if there's really close, so Walmart on 13th Avenue has those apartment right behind it. Uh we provide
bikes so that way um you're close enough to even just ride a black bike in the summertime until you save enough to get a vehicle. Um on the right we helped one of our clients get his vehicle fixed. He just needed a new brake pad. The vehicle
was working perfectly. So success stories like that. Um some of the people in which um we really see majority is hardship um or immigrants that are migrating here to
our FM area um Native American and then just um rural community members. um we don't discriminate even though we say that it's hardship sometimes you have a really good paying jobs and life hits uh
and you just need that help for right now. Um some of the support we do ask from the community is spreading that word. Not a lot of people know that the service um is out to the community. So
maybe you may know a single mom or a family that's that needs something like this. We ask that you provide these services. Um let them know that we're here to help them. Uh the best type of promotion is word of mouth. Um some
other things is for our work attire. We do provide the work clothing. If you have anything that's gently used where you're like I could donate this, we do take donation. Um our office is right across the street next to the American Crystal Sugar building um next to Center
Mall. So we're always asking for donation in clothing, shoes, whatever you are able to get. Um and even in funds if you guys are able to donate um that is would be very appreciative. Um
our we're trying to expand. We've partnered up with people like uh Marvin Wendo and um Cardinal IG in providing a secondary bus for this upcoming winter. We do have a waiting list of people. Um
but because we don't have that bus, we have to first come first serve and dire needs and kind of play it by like who really needs it right now. Um, our location we pick up starting from Dillworth, we go to Harwood, we
Morehead, Fargo, West Fargo, and um, another place. I'm trying to think Harwood. Uh, Horus, that's the other place. So, we also go to Horus. Um, and then we are a strong volunteer base. So, also if you
want to volunteer, just throw that out there. We're a very strong volunteer base. um all of the people who drive are volunteering um to go ahead and pick up these people and drop them to work. So So that's how we're up and working right
now. Um our vision is just to basically help the community listen to needs, figure out what we can do to help those unfortunate. I've worked at the
Salvation Army. I've worked at um Churches United. I've worked at um um I JobCore, even though they're no no longer more, but I've been in situations
where you hear it times and times again. Someone gets a job and they last less than a month, two months, three months because of transportation need. I know that's not something we hear so much. We usually hear homelessness or food
outage, but transportation is so major in the area we are at. So, I want to tell everybody once again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to come and share this. I really appreciate it.
Relle, if you want to come back to the podium really quick. Um can you just tell um folks how people get connected with you? Do you have um a website? Do you have a phone number or you know what would be the the mechanism to do that?
Sorry for running off. I told you guys I was nervous. So the best way to reach us um our office address is 104th Street North Morehead, Minnesota 56560.
Our phone number is 701-540-3825. Um, if you are looking into volunteering or donating, you can visit our website and that is www.mmyresourceconnect.com or Facebook. Um, that's also resource connect. um try to put the Fargo cuz I
did realize there's another resource connect in Connecticut or somewhere like that. So just put Fargo. But those are the best ways to reach us if you are interested in donating, volunteering, or just stopping by to see the area or want
to refer someone that you think may benefit from this. Hey, thank you so much. No problem. Thank you guys. And considering that we frequently have uh conversations related to transportation and that's one of the challenges um with workforce
development, I'm really glad that your organization exists and it doesn't surprise me that you're already serving that many um individuals throughout the community. So, thank you. Moving on to the approval of the July 28th, 2025 meeting minutes. Do I have a
motion to approve the meeting minutes? So moved. Second. Have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? That motion carries. Um we have citizens to address the council. We
have a number of individuals that want to address um item 22A. Um, and I would just uh give those individuals just a heads up that it seems that it's all um the same. Um, so
instead of being here for 30 minutes and everybody says the same thing, um, if you want to maybe make sure that if um, the the comments or the statements that you are going to say um are the same, we don't need to have 10 people up here
repeating basically the same thing. Um, so for those of you who are here um about 22A if you want to just um be aware of that, but we do have somebody who would list to address the council um for an item that is not currently on the agenda and that's what number seven is
for. So if that individual would like to come up to the podium um this would be Steven Furnus. Um and Stephen um let you come up here. I don't know if you were here at the beginning, but how this works is there's this lovely contraption
here. When the light is green, that means your 3 minutes are still going. When it turns red, you'll need to wrap it up. Um, we have we just provide people with three minutes to address the council. It's not an opportunity to have um back and forth conversation. This is
your opportunity to give information to the council. They'll take it. if it's something that um there's a staff member here that can maybe meet with you afterwards um out in the the atrium area um I'll direct uh one of our staff to to
uh speak with you there. But with that, if you want to state your name and if you are a resident for Morehead and then there will be three minutes on the clock. Thank you, Mayor Carlson. I am a resident of Morehead and thank you members of the council uh for your time today. Uh, I'm here to speak about the camping ban, sorry, camping ban that is
currently active in Morehead. Um, houselessness is on the rise here in Minnesota. The National Alliance to End Homelessness reports that last year houselessness went up by about 22% in our state and this is a continuing trend going back to 2018. So, without some um immediate hard work in the immediate
future, we can expect another increase this year. And I wanted at this point to share some data from here in Morehead specifically. And I would like it if that data could be provided to me because I've been working this week to find it and I since since that have not found anything concrete
and I I just is this is this why we're not doing anything about it because the data is just not out there for you guys? I mean it's shocking to me that this could be hidden from you given what's going on in Fargo right now with the removal of the benches. We managed to get that pushed
out to September and I appreciate that. But this is a repeating pattern of trying to hide the homelessness issue from our citizens. And I don't know about you, but I'm not doing I'm not able to hide from this. Every time I go out into the city, I'm seeing the the
unhoused on our streets. They're doing their best. You know, they're trying to keep everything together, but they're not given many protections and they're allowed even fewer dignities. And with all that said, like knowing that this is going to be a continuing issue and knowing that it's going to keep getting worse, how can we justify such callous
work as maintaining this camping ban, is it really not hard enough for these folks fighting through every day falling further and further between the cracks of this city? Is all that really not hard enough that we need to take their tents away from them as well? Maybe I could forgive this if you provided adequate shelter for these people, but you know that we don't have that. Maybe
I could be convinced to permit it if you had delivered on housing first. We've all been waiting for it. hasn't happened yet. But no, instead we have this camping ban, restricting these poor folks very restrictive lives. This ban doesn't do our community any good. It only serves to hide our failures, just
as Fargo is attempting to do right now. And maybe that's why the Human Rights Commission failed to meet recently. Supposedly, they skipped out because there was nothing on the agenda. But if I could be so bold, housing is a human right. It ought to be guaranteed to all people. It ought to be fully protected.
And until it is, we shouldn't have commissions sherking their duty. And until housing is a guaranteed right enjoyed by all of our citizens, camping bans like the one currently active in Morehead belong in a waste bin and not in our city code. And as long as I have your attention, I'd also like to speak briefly about how we have no solid
guarantees that there will be warming centers this winter for the unhoused population. It is going to get very cold and it's going to keep getting more and more cold every year as we continue to see the effects of climate change. We have to have warming centers available for these people so they don't freeze on
the streets. Thank you, council. I yield the rest of my time. Thank you, Mr. Furnace. Okay. Okay. For um maybe for those who are in the audience who haven't attended a Morhead City Council meeting, um we
don't allow interactions like that. So if um just to be aware of that um if that does happen, we'll take a brief recess and then we'll come back. This is an opportunity. This is a a business meeting. This is opportunity for us to
hear it. It's not necessarily audience participation kind of a a meeting. So um and just to address you, Mr. Furnace, um I do appreciate your comments. Um I do agree that you know being able to be housed is a human right. It is something
that we've been working on for years um in the city of Morehead and and a number of uh the council members and myself have participated on the FM coalition for homelessness which does have a lot of that data that um you likely are looking for. Um the camping ban that has
been in Morehead for a number of years. Um we work very diligently with CAPLP. Um it's it's not anything that we um address as something that is a criminal behavior. It's something that we work
with CAPLP. They have community organizers that they get connected with so that they um are treated with dignity and respect and connected to services and connected with uh the different types of housing that they might be eligible for through a section 8 voucher
or something like that. Um the other thing that I would just mention is that there was um an opening recently of um shelter for individuals who are 55 and older who are homeless. That is Silver Linings and that's with connections with um Churches United. So that is going to
provide I don't even remember the number of beds that are going to be available for those individuals because there's been an increase in older adults who have become homeless. So, and um I believe it was the last council meeting there or one before that we also awarded a number of contracts with entities are
going to be building um low-income and affordable housing for for um folks. Um unfortunately, it's not something that we can solve in just a few weeks time. It's something that's um something we've been working on diligently for several years. So, hope that address hopefully
that addresses some of the questions that you had. So, moving on to um number 9A, this public hearing. Um and I will turn this item over to Mr. Mike Grez, our
assistant city attorney. I will need a motion to open the public hearing for an ordinance granting a fiber optic franchise to Gateway Infrastructure. So, move to approve or open. Sorry. Is there a second? Second. Okay. There's a motion to open the
public hearing and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? Okay, the public hearing is open. I'll turn it over to you, Mr. Reeds. Okay. Thank you, Mayor, uh, city council. Um, uh, tonight we're
conducting a public hearing to consider approval of an ordinance granting a non-exclusive fiber optic ordinance to Gateway Infrastructure. uh they uh plan to uh install and operate uh a fiber optic network uh
within the city rightway. Um the city charter requires uh that uh companies be issued a franchise in order to conduct that sort of activity within our right of way. Um this is one the first step in a in a several step
process. Uh tonight we'll hold the public hearing and we'll have first reading on the amendments to uh uh the ordinance uh for the uh um to to grant the uh franchise agreement uh franchise
and and then at our next meeting on the 25th, we'll have the second reading of the ordinance and uh the council will also consider the granting of the franchise agreement with with that with that company. Uh Derek Lefort uh who is representing
Gateway I believe is here this evening. Um yep he is. He's coming from the back. Okay. Uh to uh answer any questions that uh that you might have about their company and and their plans. All right. So this is a public hearing
portion of this item. Are there any members of the public who wish to come and speak on this agenda item? Again, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? If not, I would be looking for a motion to close the public hearing portion of
this item. So, I'll move Nissa Meyer. Second. Um, I have Nissa Meyer with the second. I also heard Moore and McDougall in unison. So, you can flip a heads or tails, just pick one. Um, but a motion
and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Any opposed? All right. The public hearing is closed. Um council members, do you have any questions um of this agenda item?
And if there are none, um I would be looking for a motion to approve the first reading of this ordinance. So move De White. Second, Nissa Meyer. A motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I.
I. Any opposed? That motion carries. No questions for you. Thank you very much and congratulations. Okay. Next on the agenda would be mayor and council reports. Are the members of the council have reports
from boards or committees? Council member Ner. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, I wanted to note that um the solid waste advisory committee um is continuing to uh meet and uh increase education uh across the
county about ways for people to responsibly reuse um and uh recycle good uh items. The resource recovery center is a wonderful opportunity. They have a reuse room. Um it has been highlighted recently in the news and so I wanted to
highlight it here again. So if you are looking for something for your home apartment um please check there first as an opportunity to reuse good products um that are available at no cost. There is a limit to the reuse room to five items
per day. So um please feel free to bring in and remove things that you have of need. Um, I also want to mention that Greater Morehead Days are coming up and there are a number of um, events uh, associated with Greater Morehead Days. We've got a parade on Friday, September
5th. And the reason I want to mention it now so early and in advance is that we've got a lot of opportunity to have people participate in parades. And so if that moves you, your organization, um, please uh, I encourage you to get signed up. uh support is being offered by a
wonderful group um reigned in by uh inclusive Morhead. And so if you need some support um for participating in the parade, please reach out. Uh there's also a gathering after the parade for all of Morehead to attend. It is roughly
at 6:00ish, depending on how long the parade goes, at MState. And so I want to appreciate our host site, uh MState this year, um for allowing us to gather there again after the parade. I look forward to many conversations. The flyin is September 6th. It's Saturday from 8:00
a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and it's a uh free event. There are pancakes and uh plane rides for kiddos, um tattoos, bubbles, stickers, tours of planes that are in pieces as well as put together. Uh helicopters to check out. Lots of very
cool things. And so, um, I encourage you to bring your neighbors and bring the whole family out to the flyin. Um, and on Saturday, September 6th at our very fantastic Morehead Airport, which will be celebrating its 30th year as well.
The last um, Greater Morehead Days and Welcome Week and fabulous event I'd like to mention is the Longest Table. Uh the longest table has run in our community for a number of years and it is scheduled for September 18th and it will be held at Trinity Lutheran. We are
still looking for volunteers, table hosts, a variety of things or if you just want to come and enjoy conversations and a great free meal. Please um register. All of that information is available online if you check out social media. You can find the longest table event in Morehead and
Dworth and reach out to me if you can't find any information. I'd love to share it with you. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Thank you. Other members of the council who have reports. Council member White. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, first I wanted to thank the staff and uh who put together
night and all of the hosts who put together for their neighborhoods. And obviously the weather didn't cooperate like we wish, but um I know some of us still went out anyway and uh it was nice. I had some baked goods that weren't going to be that good the next day and so it was nice to still get out
there and visit with some hosts. Um and it's always such a great community organizing event and I love that we have such a huge presence with that that I think we had over 60 what was it 61 different neighborhoods that were hosting them. And not to brag, but a
third of them were in Ward three. So, um, I also wanted to thank the organizers of the People's Pride event that took place on Saturday in Gooseberry Park. It was a fun and inclusive event and I really appreciated the invitation. And then I just wanted
to um send my condolences to the family and friends of Diane Ray Williams. Um Diane was one of my first council members when I moved here to Morehead and um she was also the person who got me on planning commission which was my
sort of the gate a great a great friend and a mentor. I loved working with her on the um the historical and cultural society of Klay County and um sad to see her past and um her legacy will live on. Thank you. All
right, other council member uh Matson. Um I have just one quick uh road construction update from W one, but I did want to say one thing about Diane Ray Williams. Um a lot has been said about her work in the community, but I just wanted to say she was so much fun. Um I think anybody who knew her, she was
just such a firecracker. I never saw her in a bad mood, always had a smile on her face and just had absolute delight at all times. So she will be missed. Um, regarding road construction in Ward One, which I'm sure she would be happy to give, let me give take this moment to
also give an update. Um, First Avenue, you can sign up. Mindot has a a mailing list and you can sign up for underpass project updates. I have done that. Um, and there is a slight delay on reopening Main Avenue. So, it was supposed to be in August, but because of the rain, um,
we're now delayed. We're hoping for midepptember is what Midot says. And the reason I'm sharing this is because I had shared earlier that the original plan was uh the end of August and we were on track until I got this email today.
Thank you. Any other council members? All right. Um see none uh for my reports. Um since the last county or since the last council meeting um I've had about 12 to 13 different meetings that I've attended. Um some some of the
the ones that I think are not noteworthy. Um I was asked by the League of Minnesota women league of Minnesota or League of Women Voters um to speak at an event of the Badass Grammars of Democracy. So that was a really fun event. Um
also met with the coordinators of the All African Festival that is coming up the last two weekends in August. So you'll just need to Google uh the All African um festival. and I was asked to be a judge in their all African Fargo
Morehead pageant. So that will be a first for me to judge a pageant. Um attended uh a board orientation and my first meeting for the League of Minnesota um League of Minnesota Cities uh down in St. Paul about two weeks ago.
Um and then I also wanted to just give a shout out to Trollwood for another successful production. Um they did Mamma Mia this year to multitude of soldout crowds and a particular um congratulations to council member Hendrickson because his son was in the
production. Another huge milestone which has been also circulating is that the um metrof flood diversion authority did reroute the red um which was a huge milestone in this six to sevenyear project that we've been working on since
essentially 2009. Uh there was a number of dignitaries that attended the event. Uh North Dakota Governor Armstrong was there, Senators Hovind, Clolobashar, and Smith. Um representatives from the Minnesota and North Dakota DNR, uh Mayor Mahoney, um and myself, and the current
chair of the flood diversion, Cass County Commissioner, Tony Grinberg. The chair rotates between the mayor of Morhead, the mayor of Fargo, and the Cass County Commissioner. So you had the you always have the past, the current and the the future uh chair of the diversion always circulating. Um this
was extremely monumental because it's the last control structure that the US Army Corps of Engineers is building and it will be turned over um in the next few weeks to the diversion which will be um the one monitoring it and and making sure that it operates at at what
operates the way it should um in in the future. Um, I just want to extend again a a huge uh message of appreciation and gratitude to the dozens and dozens and dozens of
people that started meeting probably in 2009 um when Mayor Voxlin was here at the podium or at the dis um when uh Mory Lanning was a representative down in St. Paul. Um, so many people came together
to put this joint powers agreement in place in 2016 to make sure that Morehead and Fargo someday in the future have permanent, reliable flood protection and can save us millions of dollars um, in homeowners flood insurance and to have
us safe. Um so just want to give gratitude to all of the federal um representatives, the state representatives, all of our local leaders um who have just went above and beyond and really became and are
continue to be a ma a model for not just um North Dakota, Minnesota, but for the United States as the way that you can work not just across uh two states, but across the river, across multitude of jurisdictions. Um, and all of the
funding that went through and came from our federal partners, from our state partners, the state of Minnesota contributed, I think over 110 million. We still have about 60 million to go, but um, over hund00 million has been contributed by the state of Minnesota. Um, and, you know, 750 million from the
state of North Dakota, 450 million from um, our federal counterparts and all the local option sales tax that's on the North Dakota side. $3 billion, 3.2 2 billion is a lot of money to raise to to make sure that we have permanent reliable flood protection, but it's because there's so many people committed
to doing it. Um, and we're continuing to work together and look forward to when we have a ribbon cutting hopefully next year sometime in October where it will be um operational. So, we have one more spring to get through. So, fingers
crossed that we can get there that uh city banner, do you have any reports? Uh, yes, Mayor. Well, a lot of my well, my reports were kind of covered, but as we prepare for this next item on the agenda, I just I can't help um but um
uh so Diane, our friend, died and um she left us with a clear idea of who she really was. I can say just um on behalf of all of the staff that worked and people all across Morehead that she had a lot of fun with life, no doubt about that. She taught, she gave a lot, she
was smart and wise, and she learned to love. And um she did the best with what she was given. And um you know, I think all of us in Morehead really, I mean, it's really been something in the last week recognizing her for what she really was, which was a gift. And so um I think this
is like, you know, truly represents the character of Morehead and what we can do together. All right. Thank you for that. Um, we do not have an executive session tonight. Um, we did have an item that was placed on the agenda on Friday under new business, a request by council
members Matson and Borggan to discuss Aerial Sprain. We do have 10 um requests to speak forms. I am anticipating again that these are individuals who will all say the same thing. So, I'm going to call them up in the order that this
stack of stack was given to me. So there it's very random. Um, and what you'll need to do is you'll need to come to the podium. You'll need to state your name. If you are a resident of Morehead, you will have three minutes to speak. If I
call your name up and somebody before you has already addressed all your talking points, please just defer um and and acknowledge that um what you wanted to say has already been said. We don't need to kind of repeat the same thing over and over again. So, the first on my
stack here is um Lonus Pacquin Lewis. I should probably have put my uh cheater glasses on. All right. I'm Morehead resident all all my life. Uh 17th Street South 2000
block. I just wanted to, you know, I haven't done this before, so rather than, you know, I have some data, but I know that it was put out on social media about the delay and then it was never
there was ne never any followup about when or why. And I know there was a lot of comments on I think it's pthine um looking at the harmful effects of the of the chemical
and I know we have $387,000 in the budget for mosquito spraying and there's also the other flip side of that coin is the uh West Nile virus. It said there was a higher incidence but we didn't see any data on what that means.
So, I think people get a one-sided view of, hey, we've got a chemical. It's bad. I know I got lambasted because I want to see the mosquitoes get sprayed. The reality of it is I did look at the rate
of 00035 pounds per acre because I was told I should drink some. I actually can and I'd be fine at that rate. So, what I guess I'd look to the council and everything, what I'd
like to see as a resident is a little bit more data that tells both sides of the story. I also think that Cass County or is it Cass vector control? You have they have some pretty good information on their
website. It does address the dangers or actually lack of danger to humans and animals. What it doesn't address that I read quite a bit on social media was how it might affect bees and butterflies. I
do know the threshold for butterflies is higher than it is for for mosquitoes. Um I'd like to see some data on that that would say yeah that's accurate and that's how we're spraying. you know, the lack of
the lack of text that actually discussed frequency application rates, um, weather. I know bees is another one that'll probably get brought up tonight. Totally legit, right? And the biggest thing that I read was timing, but
there's also I can't find anything for e efficacy. If there's alternatives, I've heard people saying release bats, which I don't want to see. I've seen people release more dragonflies. What's the efficacy? And then let's counter
that with the efficacy of of uh the chemical spraying. And then finally, if we have $387,000 and we're not going to do it, I want to know where I can go pick up my chemical to do my yard. That's what I've got. Thanks.
Thank you. Uh, the next individual is Mavis and I'm not going to try to say your last name. Spelled TJ O N
Tone. So, Mavis, if you want to come up to the podium and state your name and if you are a resident of Morehead and you'll have three minutes on the clock. My name is Mavis Chon. Um, some of the family says t John, but uh we do live in
Morehead and I be very brief. I appreciate all the scientific information, concern for environment and all of those things. I also am very empathetic to people who have lost loved on loved ones to Nile virus. Uh it is a
virus. There's no cure. So even if it's survivable, there will never be healthy again. People who are diabetic, which I am one, uh have a greater possibility of getting West Nile. There is also quality
of life issue. Um we live in the wintertime and we don't go out a lot. Summer is our time to be outdoors. I had my first mosquito bite 10 days ago and within two days I was on antibiotics. I
had two visits to the doctor. Um, and I've now got several more just from walking out the door of our house. So, after spending winter indoors, I'm a prisoner of mosquitoes. And so, I think we should consider also the human side
of being able to enjoy the short summers that we have. And with the invasion of mosquitoes, that's really difficult to do for those of us who are reactive to it. So I respectfully ask that you consider quality of life issues along with the other things that you have to
look at for this and hopefully figure out that we could do some springing. Thank you. Thank you. The next um individual that I have is Joseph Allen. I too am I'm Joseph Allen. I live in
Morehead. I do live in Morehead. Um I am a representative of the high-risisk group. I'm 74 years old. Uh we are subject to far greater risk of just about everything. Uh contracting every
disease that you could imagine. So when I look at something like the West Nile virus, rather than listen to anecdotes about somebody's experience with a relative or someone that they knew, one individual, I think we need for public health, we
need to look at the information that's available that's very clear about Westnile virus. Of the people that contract Westnile virus, 80% of them have no symptoms whatsoever.
The additional 20% most of them have mild symptoms. There is a very small segment of less than 1% that develop severe symptoms and certainly those are the people that we're concerned about.
So you look at these numbers and you you say, "Well, my chances as a 74 year old guy are about 99.3% in my favor." And I would take those odds just about any day. Uh there are
things that are far worse for the high-risk group. Number one is heart disease. Number two is cancer. Number three is accidents. you can imagine, you know, driving to the grocery store. Uh, and those are the
top three. If you go all the way down to number eight or so, you you hit today's CO, which is, as you know, far milder than uh the previous CO that was significantly uh uh harming the
population. People don't worry about CO too much anymore except for some of the immunosuppressed. Farther down the list, not even on the top 10 list is Westnile virus. And you can imagine the fatality rate of
Westnile virus is very very low. It's it's in the single digits. So it doesn't even begin to compare to my risk of getting cancer from various carcinogens that are in our environment and we keep adding more.
Uh so why do we want to add another carcinogen whether it's considered to be mild or not to our entire city in a as a response to mosquitoes west potentially West Nile virus?
Why can't we use a more measured approach where people take a little more responsibility or a lot more responsibility if they're in the high-risisk group? I can put on insect repellent. I can wear long long
pants, long sleeves. I can stay in at dawn and dusk. So, I'll wrap it up. Yes, I understand. Thank you. So, so that's my that's my recommendation. Thank you. Uh, the next um
individual is Elizabeth Schwank and I apologize if I mispronounce your last name, but if you can state your name if you're a resident of Morehead. My name is Libby Sternhagen Schwank. I'm a resident of Morehead and I'm a trained ecologist. I've spent this summer
visiting all of Morehead's prairie plantings and pollinator pockets. It's taken all summer because, as I've discovered, there are a lot of them. I know that the diligent efforts of this council have been key to this success. Morehead's comprehensive plan states that Morhead seeks to pursue strategies
to increase the number of eco-friendly, pollinator friendly plantings on public and private land. The dozens of native plantings I've visited around town are filled with bees, butterflies, and dragonflies, which are a natural predator of mosquitoes. And that shows me that our attempts to
help pollinators and other beneficial insects are working. Thus, you can likely understand my distress when I learned last week that Morehead, after a five-year streak of no aerial insecticide spraying, was planning to spray poison from the sky. I remember vividly the monarch massacre of 2020
when hundreds of butterflies died after insecticide flyover. In this moment of uncertainty, I went to the data. I found that peer-reviewed articles show inconsistent evidence for to support adulticides as an effective method of decreasing mosquito population
numbers and West Nile cases. Additionally, the looming threat of insecttoide resistance means the more mosquitoes are sprayed, the more likely they are to become resistant to control measures. Meanwhile, pollinators and other beneficial insects whose populations are are already dwindling
due to disease, extreme habitat loss, and yes, pesticide exposure are killed in the crossfire when we rely on aerial pesticide applications. In Morehead, we we work to create habitat for bees, butterflies, and beneficials. But when we apply aerial
pesticides, the habitats we built become death traps. Morehead's comprehensive plan seeks to increase pollinator friendly plantings, but the approach is not friendly if the insects are attracted to the good habitat just to die when they get there from an insecticide that wasn't even
meant for them at all. This is especially important right now in the month of August when monarch butterflies are visiting our town in their migration south. I applaud the city for the work that has been done to improve Morehead's approach to to mosquito control. But we can go
further. Instead of resorting to aerial spraying, let's use the city's risk matrix to increase public awareness of West Nile transmission and the steps people can take to protect themselves. We can use the money set aside for an airplane flight to instead educate the public, hand out bug spray, and provide
homeowners with backyard mosquito buckets. These are just a few of the many alternatives available to us. By saying no to aerial spraying, we can provide pollinators and ourselves with a safe place to exist away from the threat of poison. I am willing to be part of a
better solution, and I hope you are, too. Thank you. Next uh individual I have is Martha Wheeler. Thank you, mayor and city council. My name is Martha Wheeler. I live in Morehead. Protecting invertebrates is
protecting humanity. The food web depends on insects without which there are no people. Morehead has taken good steps to support pollinators and other crucial insects by installing native habitat. But it makes no sense to spray per permine on this habitat. Beneficial
insect habitat has plunged in recent decades due to human habitation development and agricultural product practices. Aerial spraying of adulticides like peromethine to kill mosquitoes also kills bees, moths and butterflies as well as being a threat to
human health, especially among children and elders. We can make a paradigm shift to provide to to provide and protect wildlife and human habitat in urban settings. A few facts from the
pollinator partnership, the Xerxes society and Ottabon. Monarch butterfly population has declined by more than 80% since the 1990s from the central Mexico from central Mexico where the eastern population over winters and by more than
95% since the 1980s in coastal California where the western population over winters. Native bumblebees have exhibited declines in geographic range in the last 20 years, and their populations have declined by over 90%.
The number of managed honeybee colonies in the United States has dropped from 5 million in the 1940s to approximately 2.68 million in 2023, according to the USD Animal and Plant Health Inspection
Service. The 2025 US state of the birds reports reveals continued widespread declines in American bird populations across all mainland and marine habitats with 229 species requiring urgent
conservation action. The report comes five years after the landmark 2019 study that documented the loss of three billion birds in North America over 50 years.
The Xerxes Society says it's understandable why in the face of mounting a mounting health crisis, communities and health organizations scramble to prevent mosquito-born disease outbreaks by any means necessary. Spraying may seem like a quick way to soothe the public's nerves,
but as a strategy for controlling mosquitoes, it's a blunt and ineffective tool. Widespread application of adulticides creates a false sense of security while causing many unintended and far-reaching consequences. Through the application of common sense
protocols and proactive planning, effective mosquito management that limits impacts on the environment is possible. Thank you, Miss Wheeler. Your three minutes are up. Next is Marie Risdall.
You state your name and if you're a Morehead resident. Marie Risdoll. And yes, I'm from Morehead. Um, we've actually lived here for gosh, almost 30 years, so I've seen a lot of different things over the years. Um, I am an avid gardener. I'm also highly reactive to
bug bites in general. I get the welts, I itch for days, things like that. Some things have already been talked about, so I'm not going to redo those. But some of those standard measures, the spraying yourselves, the wearing the clothes, the whatever it is, doesn't work. Doesn't work for everybody. It's not a
catch-all. It's not a fix it all. Um, we also, I think, need to look at different areas of the city and treating it differently. I live on the north side, the way north side, we have standing waters and ditches sometimes whether we're not far from the river. So, there's different standing water
different places. We've had um weather in the past years where we weren't sprayed. We weren't we didn't have the little granules put in our ditches that are standing full of water. And I had I finally called city manager, I think it was two or three years ago, and I said, "We've got standing water. Rest of Morehead didn't get anything. We got
three inches." And they went, "Oh." And we got treated because we asked for it. We needed something. We need to look at the city as different parts. There might be parts that are better, might be parts that are worse, but I think we also need to consider like has been talked about the health issues. It's not just a West
Nile thing. Some of us just get eaten alive no matter what we do. And it's hard. It's hard to be out in the summer. It's hard to be out with our families and our friends at these picnickness, the events and everything that happen in the city. It's hard to be at those because we're getting eaten alive. No matter what we put on, no
matter what we spray on ourselves, no matter what we wear, um there is a level of medium in there. I agree there's pollinators. They're great. The butterflies, I love them. I need them for my garden. I love them in my garden. However, I can't be in my garden if we don't do something to do some control. I
spray my yard. I spray myself. But there's got to be something that we need to consider overall when it comes to the whole city and also as good neighbors to whole the whole metro. I mean, we got the Fargo, Morehead, West Fargo, Dworth, Horus, Pickham. We're a whole community. And if only some of us do something to
do something about it. It's not going to help. It's not going to get us anywhere. So, I may have an unpopular opinion. I may not have the loudest voice. I'm on social media. I see the things. I see everybody. However, we need to consider not just who's being the loudest. we need to
consider the city as a whole and the things we need to do for not only our citizens but just as a as a community in general. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Jena. Hello. Thank you for Thank you for
listening to me. I'm Jen Walla. I am a resident of Marhead. Um I uh I'm coming. I I have a child care. My I have one family who requested that I post uh information more publicly about
it. I have families who came early uh to let me come to this meeting on time. Uh so so my my childcare families also share my sentiments. Um all of you received a letter from me uh just requesting postponement and and to
consider different options and list and listing some other options of spraying alternatives that are available. You've all read it. I don't need to take your time to look through all of that. Um a little bit of extra information, just a couple of things. I know Morehead didn't
do most of the spring. There was I there was some question with the vector control company also. I heard from from a few sources that there was spraying north and south on fifth fifth street, 9inth Street, 12th Street and uh and
some people said that over the event in North Morehead they got sprayed as well. Um so we would appreciate checking in with accountability for Cass County vector control since Morehead did request not to be not to be sprayed that
night and for postponement. Um, my childcare kids and I have a very small milkweed patch. Uh, um, I know that Morehead didn't do very much spraying, like didn't try to do any spraying. Um, but we haven't seen, we saw butterflies
for the first time the week before spring and three days in a row monarchs. We haven't seen any since then on my pollinator garden or the milkweed patch. Um, looking a little bit at uh the N National Pesticide Information Center, I
found that uh um that peromethine particularly on their fact page for that uh it lasts it's said to be effective for one to three weeks on the leaves, sometimes up to a month um in soil with plants planted in soil
that has peromethine in it um as it ran off after spraying. in in Fargo and West Fargo. Um, trace amounts of peromethine are found in in the roots, the leaves, the fruits of of food crops planted in
the soil 30 days after and 120 days after application. Um, which is our growing season. Like that's it's trace amounts, but people are eating that over and over and eating many amounts of it and and for years. And so while while
one spraying application doesn't impact like impact the insects and enough to like tear down the ner nervous systems and kill them um one spray probably doesn't have a whole lot of impact on us but over time there's it builds up. So
that's a thing to think consider. Thank you very much. Next is Noel Harden. I also did want to put the rumor to rest. Um, we did check with the aerial sprayer and the aerial sprayer did not
spray when the plane was flying over the city of Morehead. You probably I know that people saw the plane, but it's really hard to turn in in an airplane the way that they would need to do to need to do without crossing the river.
Um, and that is what people saw. So, we did double check that and there was no aerial spraying done. Um on the city of Morehead side there could have been drifting. Unfortunately, it's very windy where we live. Um wasn't really I don't know if it was windy the last couple
days, but All right. Thank you. All right. I'm Noel Harden and I do live in Morehead. Um I wanted to share a little bit of history around this issue. Um, in 2021 after the monarch massacre occurred, um, I joined the aerial
application advisory committee, I was invited to join that committee, um, because I have some knowledge through my work, through my background in agroecology about this issue. Um, I think that the public works director at that time, Steve Iverson, did a
wonderful job of convening the committee over the summer of 2021. We met several times. We poured over scientific data. We looked at vector control models being used around the country and best practices that would really balance the
public health risk of West Nile and other diseases with the equally important public health risk of losing our pollinators which are vital in our food system. Um, so I was concerned seeing the announcement of the aerial spray and being unable to find any
evidence on our city website that the recommendations that our committee worked hard on and was approved by the council in 2021 um could not find evidence that those were still being practiced. In particular, we looked at ways to mitigate the impact on
pollinators, such as spraying after sunset, such as using a reduced concentration of peromethine. We also committed to really ramping up the public communication about personal protection, and that is something I
really haven't seen this summer from the city. I know I spent t some time this weekend digging out the good bug bug spray from the back of my garage um and felt like the city fell short in reminding folks and following through on the commitment we previously made to
have robust communication well in advance of seeing the numbers that we are now. Aerial spraying is a very extreme and very expensive tool that loses its efficacy every single time
that you use it. We should only be spraying when there is a significant risk to public health. I don't know that there are any cases in Morehead or Klay County right now. I remember from serving on the committee a physician who came forward and explained that with
such a small number of cases of West Nile spread out over a large pretty um spread out population that it's very unlikely that aerial application will have any statistically significant impact on our local West Nile numbers.
The money that we're spending on vector control, I question its effectiveness given where we're at, but that's money that we're not spending on public safety. We're not spending it on new police officers. We're not spending it on affordable housing. I urge you to not
negate the hard work that was done and approved by the council in 2021 because of a hasty decision at the end of the summer. Thank you. Thank you. and thank you for doing that work um about four years ago. Um just so you're
aware, we are still following those guidelines and the policy that was uh approved in 2021. Um the reason the aerial spraying didn't occur is because we found out that they can't mix the 0007 and also have the 035.
So Fargo did theirs and then things weren't set up that we would be able to follow our matrix and do it the next day. So um everything has to be in place and that was um because we were following it that's why we did not end
up uh going forward with the spray. The next is Ellison Wallace. You can state your name or head resident. Hi, I'm Allison Wallace. Uh 1123 22nd Avenue South in Morehead.
And um let's see, I don't have a lot more to add. There's a lot of really good points. Um except for maybe a question. Um uh so it sounded like the uh um the decision matrix was calling for spraying the other day. Then it just
that it wasn't the right um uh con they didn't have the concentration that we had. Um the matrix calls for 00035 to be sprayed by aerial and if there is presence of West Nile virus in humans in
our metropolitan area. Okay. Yeah. because I was actually on that on that group a couple of years ago as well and um I didn't remember the details exactly but I'm pleased to find out that the city is still following that. Um I wasn't clear what indication
you were using to to call for the spray. Um but in any case I think it's really important just to go back to one of the gentlemen earlier about risk assessment. What are the relative risks? What are we looking at? And also what Noel just said about um public health being that top priority. So, I urge you all to think
about there's comfort, there's there's public health, and there's our our non-human environment. And to figure out what are those priorities and be clear and transparent about which ones we're following. Um, and also to check with
Cass County Vector Control to figure out um how transparent they are about what priorities they are following when they make these decisions. Um, I do know that sometimes there's there's a pressure to to do a quick solution that may or may
not actually have the the the impact that you you expect it to happen. And there also is the timing about when you have workers like college students who end up um having to go back to college and sometimes you have less people that are able to do some of this this
control. And so there's probably a lot of other factors that go into figuring out if there's aerial spraying or not, and we want to make sure that those are all transparent so we can agree that those are things that work with our Morhead values. Thank you. Thank you.
And then the last um sheet I have is uh Steve Lindas. Welcome back to Morehead. Hi, Mayor and Council. Steve Lindas, um, Morehead resident, um, formerly of Ward 4, now Ward two. Um, so, uh, I don't
really have anything to add. um as a council representative on the aerial advisory no area application advisory committee I will say that there was a lot of good work and hopefully one you can revisit some of what was done but potentially there's a need to actually
have that committee reconstituted so that we can actually keep evaluating the effectiveness um I will say that I was just visiting my daughter um who is in Norway right now and the Norwegians she said were complaining about mosquitoes
and it wasn't really mosquitoes that they were complaining about. They were really black flies because she was like, "There's no mosquitoes here." Um, and so when once she got the translation correct, she said, "Oh yeah, there are black flies." Um, but that brings up a point that we actually were looking at
pictures and our raspberry patch in our backyard. There are pictures of us in 200 early 2000, 2005, 2002 of in full mosquito bug nets. Um, because we couldn't go out and pick raspberries without getting swarmed. Um, and I don't
really have that. So, I mean, a little shout out to Cass County control. They're doing a lot. most of their work is actually done not on adult deciding but on the laral control and that's where most of our money and most of our time and attention should be spent and so you know I I know that we can do
better um and so I would basically just say let's think about that AAA committee you know thank you thank you um and somebody submitted online. Um, and we
didn't have the sheet here. So, Hillary Ray, thank you. Hillary Ray, I do live in Morehead and I wanted to thank you, Mayor Carlson, and other council members who have already responded to my email about this issue. Um, I apologize some
of this probably will be redundant. Um, I am also nurturing a small patch of native prairie plants in my backyard. Uh, one of my reasons for that was fatigue. I'm tired of fighting the weeds in my trashy turf lawn. I could contract
with the lawn service and have them put down multiple applications of Roundup every year. But while the association of glyphosate with cancer in humans remains unclear, it's known to be deadly to bees having contact with it.
and I relish seeing all of the visitors that my common milkeed attracts. Most of us have noticed the drop in numbers of monarch butterflies, Martha referred to. But while monarchs are unusual in their beauty, their charisma, and their migration, they're not unique in their
vulnerability to pesticide and herbicide use. Their absence is one we notice. But what about all of the other insects disappearing, the ones we don't consider? Among the other creatures enjoying the milkweed nectar in my yard is a female
rubythroatated hummingbird. I see her so regularly that I suspect she's b raising a baby or two. And while we associate hummingbirds with nectar, they also require a lot of protein, especially as nestlings. And that
protein is derived from insects. I'm not quite old enough to remember the popularity of DDT. Originally hailed as a cheap and effective weapon to reduce the incidence of malaria and typhus, its use spread so widely that it nearly
wiped out our national symbol, the bald eagle. More concerningly, over time, mosquitoes developed resistance to it. So that in addition to being dangerous, it became simply ineffective. We seem to have developed an expectation
that our environment, the built environment, should be completely under our control and that we should feel free to manipulate it for our convenience and comfort. But I think it's past time that we acknowledge we're just one species among millions and that all of us
influence the others. Our actions don't occur don't occur in a vacuum. And just because you don't find dozens of humans lying dead on your sidewalk after aerial spraying of peromethines doesn't mean that those don't also affect us. Exposure to high levels has resulted in
headache, nausea, convulsions, and loss of consciousness. And just because we don't rely on one specific species of insect to pollinate a food crop doesn't mean that it's expendable. As I observed in my earlier messages to
council members, the city's own website offers sensible actions its residents can take to protect themselves from admittedly potentially dangerous illness. I would love, as Steve mentioned, uh to see the city address some of the
identified areas of standing water. Miss Ray, thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Um I appreciate everybody coming and speaking on this agenda item. Um, again, as I stated earlier during the meeting, um, when we have citizens come to speak,
this is an opportunity for us to hear the information that you're providing to us, but it's not, um, really a chance for you to engage in a back and forth type of a conversation or debate with any of the council members. So, um, the public hearing is the opportunity, I guess, for
individuals to address the council. Um, I don't have anybody else. So, with this, I will turn it over to I don't know if it's Council Member Matson or Borgan who wants to speak. Um, Council Member Borggan. Um, with that, I will Madame Mayor, I'm sorry to interrupt. I would like to speak after Council Member
Borgan, but she'd like I would like her to go first if you don't mind. Go ahead figure out how to make my microphone work. Okay. So, Council Member Matson and I maybe don't agree on a lot of things, but this wasn't a thing that we wanted to agree on that we had
heard so many comments through emails. And any of you out there who sent an email and I did not respond, I got too many emails to continue to respond. So, we determined that this should be something that we talk about in the council meeting for several reasons.
First of all, I want to thank everyone for being here. This is the biggest crowd we've had since I've been on the council since January. So, this is a topic that people are passionate about. And as an elected official, I think it's incumbent upon us to listen when our constituents are passionate about
something. That doesn't mean we're always going to agree with one side or the other, but we do have the obligation to listen. So, I think we as a council are doing that tonight. There are several very
um important issues to discuss and I think all of you folks that 11 of you that spoke did a great job in bringing up both sides of the issue and I appreciate that. I can't speak for everyone but I'm assuming that we all appreciate that. You know, it was
referenced that there was a monarch massacre in 2020. I'd lived in Morehead my whole life, so I clearly was here then. And I am a gardener, both flowers and vegetables. So, I am I am sensitive to
insects, both beneficial and the non-beneficial. They're just part of our ecosystem, right? And I think that it's worth saying that the city did a great job back in 2021 putting together this commission, having a policy, etc. But
you know some of us who are sitting on the council now were not part of that discussion. So we kind of got thrown into this kind of blind. And um we also had a an agenda item that
was on the consent agenda back in April which we all approved and it had to do with the vector control. I will own the fact that I did not have all the information about it, but I'm not going to say that I wouldn't have voted to continue it because it seemed like a
good policy. Now, with all of that said, I think there are some important things that we as a council need to discuss. I don't have um the authority as a single council member to, you know, bring it up
or, you know, make a decision. We all have to discuss it together. That's that's the beauty of the elected officials. And my suggestion first of all is that the current members should perhaps take some more time to
consider the policy that we already have and decide if we want to continue it or if we want to edit it. We can't do that at a council meeting. We would have to do it at our work one of our workshops. And many of you probably know we have workshops every month about medy issues and we have the discussion there and
then we bring the issue to the council. So us having that ability to do that I think would be beneficial. The second thing is you know there are good arguments on both sides of this issue. We all want to we all want to
enjoy our yards. We all want to be outside in the summer because our summers are fleeting. But then there's also the issue of the spraying for mosquitoes. And one of the things that we have is the truck spraying. And part of that truck spraying policy is if you want to opt
out of it, you can opt out of it. The issue is you can opt out of aerial spraying. If we're going to douse the whole city, the whole city is going to get it. So, I mean, I think that's an issue that we need to visit a little bit more about, get some more data, etc. And
then finally, it is a health concern for lots of people both on the on um like Mavis pointed out the West Nile risk. Is it really a risk? And it was Mr. Allen who gave us other
indications that it's maybe less than 1% of people who might get West Nile from a mosquito. I don't really know the answer to that, but I think it's something that we need to discuss and decide if we really want to treat everyone in the city of Morehead because there's one case of West Nile. I think we have to
have a more um thoughtful conversation about it. So, with that said, I'm going to turn it over to Council Member Matson, but my hope is that we as a council can take this matter into a workshop, discuss it, and come up with a
solution that we all will all agree on. We probably won't all agree, but that could pass could pass when we have our next meeting. So, with that said, Mayor, I will yield to Miss Madson. Yep. Go ahead, Council Member Madson. Thank you, Council Member Borgan and Madame Mayor. Um, I just want to just
give you a quick preview. We do have data coming, I think, from Council Member White specifically to the metro that I think is going to be really interesting for all us all all of us to hear about. But, um, we live in such a smart community, don't we? Aren't we all
so smart? And so, I have a lot of notes here and some printouts, but a lot of what I've said has been covered. And I and that's not to say that people on the other side of this issue are not smart as well. We're all We all are very concerned. We all have our point of view and we're all entitled to our our point of view, but I just want to go through
um just a few things quickly here. So, I I asked us to take a pause on Thursday when I saw the reaction to the announcement that we were going to do this aerial spraying. I said I asked, can we just take a second and just kind of think it through, discuss it a little bit? And so, um I just want to go over
three points tonight. Um the first thing is is our ecosystem. We've heard a lot about our ecosystem tonight and the uh importance of pollinators. Um, one thing I've learned in the last few days is that one out of every three bites of food we take comes to us thanks to a
pollinator. So, these are not just like butterflies that are cute in your garden. These are necessary for the for us to live. And in fact, uh, the US Forest Service says pollination is an essential ecological function. Without pollinators, the human race and all of
Earth's terrestrial ecom ecosystems would not survive. Over 80% of the world's flowering plants require a pollinator to reproduce. Animals that assist plants in their reproduction as pollinators include species of bats, butterflies, moths,
flies, birds, beetles, ants, and bees. So, one of the problem with air the aerial spraying of peromethine is that it is not targeted only to mosquitoes. As we heard before, it will kill any insect that that reaches it. So, it's not just about the bees and the butterflies and the mosquitoes. all it's
all the pollinators that aren't, you know, birds and bats that can get um can be killed by this aerial spraying and we need them. The other thing we haven't really talked a whole lot about is that I think Noel mentioned the more we spray the more likely it is that we are um
encouraging resistance to the pesticide among the mosquitoes. And I have here a um article from the USDA from 2019 about uh antibi or I'm sorry um insecticide resistance in Florida because they have a lot of mosquitoes in Florida. This was
2019 at the height of the Zika virus. And they found that among the populations of mosquitoes there that were already um had already become resistant to peromethine, they had to dose those mosquitoes with 60 times the dose to kill them. So that's it. you
know, that's not good. Okay, I think we can I think we can all agree that's not not ideal. Um, I do want to address a couple of public health um topics. So, I want to talk about Westnile virus. Again, I'm not a public health expert. These are just printouts from the CDC.
So, this is a map right here of the current outbreaks of Westnile virus in the United States. right now um year to date actually there are 140 cases in the United States there are have been reported so far nine
in North Dakota and five in Minnesota now August is the month where that you see the most westnile cases so that number will go up but so far this year we're talking about 140 people I don't want to minimize the experience that people have with
West Nile virus it's not a disease that I want to get but in terms of um the likelihood of any one of us getting it, it's pretty small. So if we take a look at um I think uh someone had already mentioned the um you know the eight and
10, this is again CDC got another CDC print out here. Um eight and 10 people infected with West Nile virus do not develop any symptoms. One in five people who are infected will develop some symptoms um can be a fever, headache, joint pains, etc. one in 150 people who
are infected will develop a severe illness. So um there you know it's not it's not nothing to get West Nile virus. It can cause some severe um illness but again we have to look at the scale of it. A couple of people who emailed mentioned they're concerned about
asthma. they have asthma or their child has asthma and they're worried that if we spray if we aerial spray peromethine they can't avoid it and they don't want to have an asthma attack triggered because of the aerial spray. I looked up some information about asthma on the CDC
website. Um almost 25 million Americans have asthma and every year about well I shouldn't say every year let's see 2021 the year that's printed on this sheet 2021 3517 people died of asthma. So if you compare
that to um in 2018 I looked at some historical West Nile virus data 2018 had a lot of cases and I was trying to look before COVID because COVID can kind of you know maybe someone died and they had CO and or West Nile. It's hard to say. So I looked at some years that were
before COVID. Um 2018 had a lot of West Nile virus cases compared to the years right before and after. There were 2,646 cases of West Nile virus that year and there were 167 deaths. Again, every
they're all tragic and I I don't want to get Westnile virus either. But if you just kind of compare that to another um disease that we've seen recently in 2021, there were 227 US deaths from Westnile virus and there were 460 513
deaths from COVID. So we have to kind of think about how do we a what are the most effective ways that we can avoid West Nile virus without causing other harm like for example triggering asthma attacks in people.
So the last thing I want to talk about is um just the the response that I've heard from people. Um one of the places where I've seen a lot of comments has been me me uh has been mentioned is social media. I took a look at the um
there was a post put up by the city I think on Wednesday announcing the aerial spray. You could see my little tally sheet here um on Saturday morning. These are the fun things I do on my weekend. I counted comments. I looked at just the top level like first response. So not
people's back and forth discussions but someone replied directly to the post. Um so there were a total of 408 comments on that post. If you follow the City of Morehead social media, I think we have uh Kelly and Lisa here. I'm going to guess that's probably outside of the
normal range of the number of comments that we get on Facebook. Um so, of those 408 comments, not all of those were the top level comments, but I counted the ones that had a pro or anti- kind of um uh message about spraying. 11 people
commented that they were for spraying. 95 people commented at the top level that they were against spraying. So that is about 8.6 times the number of people commented that they were against it rather than
for it since um July 31st. Not counting today. I got a couple more emails today, but I didn't count those in this um in this count because I was at work. So um since July 31st I have received 18 emails from 14 different people
regarding vector control and mosquitoes. One person was for aerial spraying and 14 people were against. So some people sent more than one emails but if you just count the number of people and not the number of emails it's one for aerial spraying 14 against. If you counted the
number of emails it would be I think 1 14 and 18 against. I keep track of all of my phone calls and emails that I get from people in Morhead, although I try really hard to do that. Um, since I started at this at the council in January, the most contact I've ever received on any one issue was
four emails about a lift station. So, before now, four emails was the high water mark and now we are up to, I think, 19 or 20 on one issue. Um, within those emails, people's primary concerns are for pollinators, but also for their own health and safety
and that of their pets. They don't want to breathe in the peromethine spray. They don't want it on their kids' toys. They don't want it on their pets skin and fur. Uh, as council member Borggan said, we all have many ways to avoid mosquito bites besides aerial spraying, and we've heard that too tonight.
There's lots of options that we all have to protect ourselves from mosquitoes. But if we move forward with aerial spraying, none of us has the ability to opt out of of the pesticide being rained down on us from the sky. So, uh, these are just my conclusions tonight. The
harm, I think, in indiscriminately killing pollinators does not outweigh the potential benefits of aerial spraying to reduce Westnile virus. Westnile virus is a serious but rare disease. We have many ways to avoid
getting infected. I got an email today from Barbara who um lives in Morehead and she suggests that we could do some better messaging around West Nile virus. I'm going to read just a small section of the email. Um people who live in Morehead could greatly benefit from
targeted messaging during Westnile virus season, particularly the people who are most vulnerable to severe outcomes if they should become infected. These individuals are likely already under the care of medical professionals, so they should already know that they are in the higher risk category. Most medical
professionals today are conscientious about telling people this. But what if the city of Morehead did more to inform people and increase awareness? What if a communications plan was established to enhance the health and safety of people in Morehead during Westnile virus season? I can even imagine free West
Nile virus kits being available at city hall or the library or at public events that would include the appropriate mosquito repellent tips for when to spend time outdoors etc. There's a lot that could be done to help people through West Nile virus season. I think that's an excellent suggestion. Um it
costs us I believe city manager Molly please correct me if I'm wrong but I believe it's $36,000 for every aerial spray. Is that correct? So, um, I went on the Shields website. You can get a can of 30% DE for $8.99. I believe that's a 6 can. You can also get, if you
don't like DE, you can get a small bottle of lemon eucalyptics tick and insect repellent for $9.99. So, even if we spent $15 per kit, we could buy and distribute 2400 insect repellent kits to
distribute throughout the city. And that would be for the cost of one aerial spray. So aerial spraying at this time is in my opinion literal overkill. Moreover, the people of Morehead who I have heard from have been very clear that you do not want your children, your
pets, your lawns and your gardens to be dowsted with aerial peromethine and I think we should listen. Thank you, Council Member Borggan and Council Member Matson. Um comments or anything else from council members?
Council member White. Thank you, mayor. Um, the if you want to grab it, I there's a handout in your packet um with some data that I've been collecting. When I heard this was going to be on the agenda, I thought this might be a good time to share the data
I've been collecting for the last couple of years. Um, some of you are probably going to say, Deb, you need more hobbies. So, but this is from uh as the other council members know, we get re regular reports from Cass County Vector Control on their trap count measures.
And what I've been doing since 2022 is um entering in a spreadsheet the average trap counts that they have broken down by four areas. Uh it's Morehead, West Fargo, South Fargo, and North Fargo. And
so I have all of that from 22 uh 2022 to to to now as well as some of the data from even going back to 2020. So I've got a pretty extensive amount of data um looking at the um you know the trap
count uh information and um I also you know part of this so I I am definitely a a data uh nerd. um my PhD uh one of my areas of specialization is in quantitative analysis. I've taught research methods and statistics for 35
years. So this is definitely in my wheelhouse. But also for me it is that as council members I really think it's important that we are making evidence-based datadriven decisions. And so um if anytime we're going if anytime we're investing city resources we should
be able to see that we are getting the intended outcome. And I think what the data shows is that's not the case. So one of the other interesting things with this is is that um we have set up really a nice quasi experimental design because
we have a control group Morehead that has not been spraying while they have been spraying on the other side of the river. So we can make some interesting comparisons to see how things change after spraying there compared to here when we haven't had it. So um before I
dive into it f first I just want to mention too that um overall one of the things that I caution people is to not look at individual numbers. So I hear sometimes people will say well I looked at the trap counts in Morehead was higher than the other communities. So
clearly we need to be doing we need to be spraying. And one of the things I didn't for brevity I didn't bring all of the data but you can see consistently across if you look at individual events if you look at mean trap counts by year and we're cumulative cumulatively over
all of the years I've gathered data that unfortunately Morehead tends to have whether we spray or don't spray Morehead and North Fargo have higher amounts of mosquitoes than what they have in um for the average trap counts for South Fargo
and West Fargo. And so, um, it's kind of outside of my, uh, you know, above my pay grade to speculate as to why, but, it's probably because we have a higher concentration of older neighborhoods with more trees. I think about I live near Concordia and we've got an old
there with a lot of areas that just don't drain well. So, the reality is whether we spray it or not, we're going to have higher mosquito counts in Morehead. So, you can't really look at one incident and see, well, more heads higher than other places. We're always higher. Same thing for North Fargo, too.
They're typically always higher than the other two areas that have that are much more open. And you think about, you know, all the new neighborhoods in West Fargo and South Fargo, they're more open. They have fewer trees, less of a mosquito breeding ground. So in order to get a better indicator of the effectiveness of spraying, what I did is
I looked at for each of those areas the changes between before and after the spraying occurred. So before spraying occurred in each of those in say North Fargo compared to after and then also did the same thing looking at the before
and after numbers for Morehead. And you would think that if spraying was very effective that you should consistently find that Morehead is worse off after aerial spraying than the other three areas that are spraying. And that's not
what we see. And so that's where I want to direct you to the data that I have here. Um, and I have two different tables here and they're colorcoded based on um, improvement after aerial spraying or change that we've seen after aerial spraying. green being the most improvement um followed by yellow,
orange, and then red being the least improvement. And the other thing that you can see, these are percent changes from again before and after spraying. Um if it's a positive number, that means that the trap count actually went up after spraying. Um and if it's a
negative number, it means that it went down. And you might be a little surprised. I know I was to see so many positive numbers that in many cases the trap counts are higher after spraying. Um you could argue that maybe they would have gone up even higher. Okay. Um but
more importantly it's just looking at that comparing regions before and after spring. So in the top table I have um in the day after the immediate day after spring comparing the numbers and what you can see is that again you know um in
two of those instances um or in only one of those instances that I have on here was Morehead worse off than the other three areas after spraying. Um and I actually didn't put it on here. I I realized I'd skipped last week, but last
week even after spraying um North Fargo had a 500% increase in their trap count. Um Fargo or South Fargo, West Fargo, they were better and then Morehead was right in the middle. Okay. So again, so for the four data points that I have for
the day after spring, um in one case we were the worst one. Um in three we weren't. In one case, we were the second best com of the area. So certainly not very compelling evidence that it had that great of an effect or the effect intended effect the day after. In the
chart below, I have the before and after going out a little bit further because as you've heard, there's a residual effect. It may take time for the spraying to kick in. So if I pick data points from 5 to 12 days afterwards, I don't have a lot of control over what we
get from Cass County or CS uh county vector control. And so I had to go with the distances they had. So um but even here you can see that there isn't a consistent trend where you see Morehead doing being worse off because we didn't spray compared to the other communities.
So um uh we had two instances where we were worse off um compared to the other communities. Uh one where we were second best, one where we were right in the middle or two where we were second best and one where we were right in the middle. Um if you look at the color
coding and one of the things I want to point out for instance is that if we look at the spring that occurred um this year in July 5 days after spraying we were the worst off compared to the other three regions. We had seen but we'd actually seen a de
decrease in our trap count. So, we saw a 25% decrease compared to anywhere from well, you can see there was a 58.75% decrease for um South Fargo, 64% for
North Fargo, and then West Fargo did the best. They saw a 78% increase. So, so at that point, 5 days out, um we had seen the uh we were in the had had the the least change, least improvement in our numbers. However, just go another week
after that after we've done truck spraying and now we moved up to second best. And so, um, we got out there and we did the truck the the targeted hot spots with the truck spraying and we actually moved ahead of both South Fargo and West Fargo and we saw an um then an
87.76% decrease in our trap count from before that aerial spraying had occurred. And so, um, again, nothing in here seems to indicate that we're seeing the results that we, um, intended to have that would
would seem to be intended from aerial spraying. And so, um, I wanted to point out that again because again, if we're spending thousands and thousands of dollars on something, um, we should be able to have evidence to back it up that
it's actually doing what it's supposed to do. Um I also along the same uh in that same vein um wanted to put into consideration the one of the issues that's brought been brought up tonight which is um
pesticide resistance. So the CDC has been raising alarms since 2023 about increased pesticide resistance among mosquitoes due to the overuse of mass spraying. So when they do um the stuff that you use at home doesn't increase
resistance. Um it really is just that sort of mass spraying. Um aerial spraying for nuisance mosquitoes when there's not a public health crisis will actually end up raising resistance and making pesticides less effective later should we really need them. And so
that's a concern that we should be taking seriously. The CDC, by contrast, recommends um first of all, regularly monitoring for pesticide resistance, which I don't know that Cass County Vector Control is doing that. We don't see any information from them about
testing for pesticide resistance. Um they recommend applying locally to treat hotspots and only using areawwide treatments during public health outbreaks. And that's what we have been doing in Morehead with the truck spring. Um they recommend less frequent
applications leaving generations, population segments or areas untreated. And they also recommend establishing a higher threshold for mosquito mitigation with insecticides. So um some of the things that again that we've already been talking about doing. The other
thing that I've been thinking about is is again we've talked about if there is a clear public health emergency or uh or crisis then we should be doing aerial spraying. Well, do we have a public health emergency right now in our
community? Um as you've heard according to Cass County Vector Control Cass County human cases um now include six with illnesses and two blood donors. Um, none have been reported in Clay County, just in Cass County. Um, as you know,
most people who get WestNile are asymptomatic and so we know that the numbers are certainly higher, but those people are also not at any elevated risk. Um, we don't know, as far as I'm sure, I'm not, as far as I understand, we don't know if those eight people were
even in the metro area. they were in Cass County, but Cass County is bigger than the state of Rhode Island. And so we could do aerial spraying every single day and not treat things that are happening outside of our metro where the
spraying isn't occurring. And so it's important that we know whether or not those cases actually occurred in our area. Um, and I'll just touch on again according to the CDC as you've heard the the risk is relatively low. Only 67% of
people one out of 150 people infected um develop severe illness. Among those with a severe illness, the fatality rate is between three and 15%. In other words, um that's between two 100ths of a percent to onetenth of a percent of the
people who contract Westnile virus um die as a result of it. So, uh as council member Matson pointed it pointed out, I mean, we should take this seriously, but we also shouldn't exaggerate the health risks of West Nile virus. Um, and so I
would just say my my preference would be um implementing procedures to access better data on public health risk in the metro so that we can know if the cases are actually occurring here. Um, following CDC guidelines on preventing
pesticide resistance, including treating hotspots with truck spray rather than the whole area as recommended by the CDC. um focus more on public education about personal protection and prevention particularly for high-risisk groups such
as elder the elderly um and also put a moratorum on aerial spraying unless there is a clear and compelling evidence of a significant outbreak of West Nile in our metro. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member White. Um, I also just wanted to clear up too that
the pause of aerial sprain was not um due to any request by a single council member. Um, as was stated earlier, um, we don't make policy outside of this council meeting. Um the pause was due to
the fact that we were not able to coordinate with the entity that was doing the aerial spraying in order to do it in um uh the 0.0035 per acre that our policy states we will
do um or at the time we our policy states. So we weren't able to be able to follow our policy. The we follow the policy. we don't go outside that um because policy is made by this council during council meetings. So you can
imagine the havoc that would create if just we had you know somebody say don't follow the policy today and now we want you to change this policy um in a myriad of things not just this. So that's how the process is. Um, I guess at this
point, um, hearing the the majority of what is being discussed, I would be looking for a motion to pause the aerial spray until the council can discuss at a further meeting um whether or not to keep our current policy or to edit the
current policy. This is not something that will be decided tonight. I don't want any motions for a policy to put forward tonight. um that's not uh the best process to utilize is something gets put on agenda on a Friday and we
make a policy 48 hours later. That's not good governance. Um but if the council is interested in pausing until we can discuss at a in more depth at a future meeting, I would entertain that motion. I move to put a moratorum on our current
aerial spraying policy until we have the opportunity to revisit our policy at a later date. Is there a second? Second, Mson. Any other discussion? Council member Nelson.
Thank you, Mayor. So, I'd just like to have a little more discussion with council discussions and then come forward to a council uh meeting in in the future whenever that whenever that is. But I think we can keep our current policy in
place in my in my in my opinion and then uh have those discussions instead of placing a hold on the short notice with all the I mean I I have comments about all the stuff too and the comments about the West Nile and the public health but there's also nuisance
issues and uh you know the other public health concerns than just West Nile and we had residents talk about having to get antibiotics for getting mosquito bites. Okay, we don't, you know, people build resistance to
antibiotics as well. So, I mean, we could go on and on and on tonight about the discussion, right? But I think we can hammer out a lot of that discussion in a in a workshop, just keep our current policy and then work out the
um work out the discussion and then come back with uh what we think as a as a council at a further meeting. But um I don't think we should change that tonight based on the on the information. Any other council um have a discussion? Council member Hendrickson.
Uh thank you, Mayor Carlson. I agree with um Council Member Nelson. I don't think we need to pause it. I'm up for redising it. Um, but but everything Ryan said, I mean, you know,
we can hammer this out with the next workshop hopefully. And I think when it good to have Ben Brather there, too, Cass County control director. So, I agree with Ryan. I'm going to vote against that. Pausing. Thanks.
Council member Matson. So, this policy, I believe, was developed in 2021, and um I believe that council member White cited some CDC research from 2023 about increasing um uh insecticide resistance in mosquitoes. So, you know, things have
changed since this policy was enacted. We've learned more and things are different now than they were then. And um I don't I don't think we should discount that part either. Council member Borggan, I I'm looking for clarification from
council member Nisser. When you said a moratorum on what are you talking about? Is that a just a pause on the aerial spraying and keeping the rest of the policy in place as it is? Correct. Um I believe um similarly to
many of the things that council member White had said about having evidence-based practice also um you and council member Matson had brought up a number of issues that were highlighted by residents but backed up by research and data. And I think what's really
important to consider is that we're not going to solve the mosquito um issue with one practice. I think we need to look at a multi-pronged approach and I believe some of our residents specifically um cited the good work that
we do with uh trapping larvae but it's not enough and so I think uh revisiting it and looking at uh other methods perhaps alternative um to aerial spraying. I sinc sincerely appreciated you noting how uh we have the option for
people to opt out of truck spraying but nobody can opt out of aerial spraying and so for me that as a diabetic as a person who suffers from asthma I fit into lots of these categories and um still I'm really concerned about um
choice and people being able to make choices uh for their business for um their home and for their neighborhoods. So, I really think that it's just stopping the aerial spraying part of our policy. So, we can revisit the policy as
a whole, but we are currently in the season where we may need some hotspot truck spraying. And so, that is why I did not include that in my motion, but thank you for the clarification, Council Member Borggan. So I'm going to ask if you would take a friendly amendment to
your motion in that we call it a pause because when you say moratorum it sounds like the decision has been made and we could never go back to it. So I think if we say we're going to pause aerial spraying until we have um a time to have a workshop and get more information
which I think we can do fairly quickly. Right Mr. Molly? Yes. Uh, the next workshop is August 19th, next Tuesday, a week from Tuesday. Okay. So, I think if you would take that friendly amendment, it might satisfy Mr.
Nelson. I'm not sure, but at least we're not saying we're canceling it forever because I I'm not comfortable with that. I need more information. I I agree. We do need more information. And I think looking at um new data that we have um there were some comments
about um having our triple AQMLP I can't remember the letters of the committee um revisited. I mean I think there were so many ideas that came out of this community engagement that we really have an opportunity here and so
if moratorum um can be replaced with pause Kelly I would appreciate that in my motion. So with the pause, we don't need a second or because a friendly amendment and she agreed. Okay. All right. Any further discussion?
I council member Moore. A few things to say. Um all right. So most of my life um I've been accused of being a tree hugger. I got my degree in environmental policy. Um, I have a pollinator garden and I did
the launch to legumes grant and have pollinator gardens going on. So, I love the birds. I love the bees. I love the butterflies. I'm all about it. Uh, I'm not going to I don't know. I think that this is alarming and it's concerning.
There is science behind this on both sides. So, I just need to speak to that for a moment because I feel like in a couple of places here I saw people not fully go into um information that we have. So,
for instance, the CDC does say that one out of 150 people develop a serious ill illness. It also states that it's fatal. So, uh to leave that part out is alarming. So, we're looking at possible
fatalities, just to put that out there. There is also no vaccine for West Nile. There is no medical, like no medicine to treat West Nile. Um, okay. So, on Friday, we all received
the same email from Cass County Vector Control. The last sentence of that email was they anticipate more cases, hospitalizations, and likely a fatality given the trajectory we are on. So
my concern is that this matrix was developed by uh PhD level scientists that care deeply about our ecosystems and they did it by trying to protect the environment as much as they possibly could. They did it by cutting
peromethine by 50%. They dictated that spray would occur after sundown when our pollinators would be most protected from impacts of peromethine. I I'm choosing to put my trust in the PhD scientists that developed this matrix and developed this policy. I I
don't have a PhD in this. I I think this is one of the toughest decisions uh and when we face really tough decisions that we believe science, we believe data and we believe the experts. They put this matrix together.
I and we have relied on it. I I can't personally I can't stomach a death in our community because we failed to take action and protect human health and safety. Any other discussion? Council member Hendrickson. I ask when we take the vote, we do a roll call
vote, please. Okay. Council member War. Council member White. Thank you. Uh I just wanted to um respond to Council Member Moore and I I want to tell you I I feel the same way
and so I wanted just to say this is when I say we need good datadriven decisions. We I don't want to underestimate the importance of protecting public health, but I also don't want to exaggerate it. And that's where and my concern was that
some of the data that we're getting like the statement that you read is not backed up. So saying that we anticipate someone to die in the next few weeks with the rates that we have it the data doesn't back that up and I don't that's not coming from the the folks that were
on the committee. And so I also don't want fear-mongering. So, um, but I think what I what I see the pause as the opportunity like even even I I understand for some of you um that are newly elected, you weren't here when we
developed the policy, but I was here and I would say even as we look at it now, I had questions that just didn't occur to me at the time like how do we operationalize public health risk and what does it mean? And that was where, you know, those questions about is it people that
are sick in our area or is it people that are sick, you know, miles and miles and miles away. So, it's more of having that conversation. I can tell you right now, I would not be in favor of a complete ban of closing the door completely, but I think being clear
about what it means, what a what what is clearly a public health risk. And so I would uh appre appreciate the opportunity to have that conversation about really what is that threshold where we know we need to be protecting the public and and um and so for me that
was that that pause would give us that chance to look at that more thoroughly because um I felt like there were things that I hadn't thought about before until we sort of this is the first time that we've come this close since we developed the policy you know um and so there were
things that came come up that I hadn't thought about earlier on, but otherwise I just wanted you to know that that I do think obviously we need to really be taking seriously um the public health risk, but just getting more nuanced idea of how we measure that. So, thank you.
Any other discussion? We've been talking about this for an hour and a half, I think. So, um there is a motion and a second on the table and a request has been made that uh that we do a roll call vote. So, with that,
could we get a roll call vote, please? Ryan Nelson. Sorry. No. Nicole Madson, yes. Heather Nissayer, yes. Emily Moore, no. Deb White, yes. Lisa Borggan,
yes. Sebastian McDougall, no. Chuck Hendrickson, no. Okay. And that is a four to four vote. So, um, I never get to vote except for when it's these really super fun tie
votes. Um, and because I'm looking at the weather ahead and I know that we cannot aerial spray when it's potentially raining. Um, and our next workshop is in seven days. I will be requesting that
this is a discussion that we'll be taking up at the next workshop and so I will be voting to pause for one week um and hopefully we can resolve this at the workshop and bring it to the next council meeting as far as um if there's going to be a change or if we're keeping
it if we're keeping it. Obviously we wouldn't be bringing it to the next council meeting because we already have a policy in place um that um took over a year and a half to put together. So um we will pause it for one week and uh
with that uh Morehead we are adjourned.