All right. Good evening everyone. It is 5:30 p.m. on June 23rd, 2025. I'm Mayor Shelley Carlson. Morid City Council welcomes public input on issues listed on the agenda or of general community interest, time and council permitting. Speakers are 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 our city clerk and we'll call you up during the citizens addressing 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 the record. For more information on participation, please visit the council meetings page on the city of Morhead website at morheadmn.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 who've
resided here for generations and recognize that the spirit of the Dakota Ojiway Matei and all indigenous communities permeates this land. With that, could I get a roll call, please? Ryan Nelson. Nicole Matson here. Heather Nissmeer here. Emily Moore here. Deb
White here. Lisa Borggan here. Sebastian McDougall here. Chuck Hendrickson present. Mayor Shelley Carlson here. And for those who are able, please stand for the pledge of allegiance. Are there any um agenda amendments? There are no amendments. to the agenda
tonight. Mayor, thank you. Um, whoever knew the pledge of allegiance could get, you know, get all choked up. Could I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second, Na mayor.
Motion and second. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. U. Any opposed? Motion carries. Um onto recognitions and presentations. Um the first is a recognition of the 2024 US Attorney's
Office Law Enforcement Award um for Detective Adam Torus. And I will turn this over to uh Lieutenant Mike Dlov. Good evening madame mayor, members of the city council, city manager. Um it's my honor to um tell you a little bit about an award that Detective Torerson
recently achieved. Um this started with a kidnapping case in Morehead where a gal was uh restrained at a house in South Morhead just south of MSUM. Um she was able to free herself escape. Um when
SWAT took our suspect into custody because Detective Toruson had treated him with respect the first time he put him in prison. He said, "I'm going to make this easy for you and I'm going to tell you everything you need to know." Continuing on with that case, um while
he was out on bail for the kidnapping, he wanted to make some money and was uh having large packages of meth methamphetamine, other drugs mailed to his residents or other residences. Um, so they called it Operation Nobody's
Home and working with the United States Postal Inspection Service, um, Klay County Sheriff's Office, Jeff Bachan is, uh, on the task force with them. They're able to build a case and, um, intercepted a package of nine nine and a half pounds of methamphetamine coming to
a Morhead address. We're able to arrest the people um, in that basically catch them red-handed. He built a great case. Not only did he know who it came from, um who was distributing it, all the players who was monaundering the money and stuff, uh he
built it, presented it to the US attorney's office out of Minneapolis. Um they agreed to prosecute the case, which is unusual for us. Um typically they don't take outstate cases, but in this case, they did. Due to his hard work, they were able to get a conviction of it
and they nominated him for an award. one of 18 people who were or 18 different cases that were recognized by the US attorney's office out of Minneapolis. So, it was an honor to be down there and uh see him uh get that award that he earned.
Thanks councel and mayor Carlson, city manager Molly, Lieutenant Detla, thanks for the kind words and just uh thank you for all the support and the time you're spending now just acknowledging the award that that they gave our group. Uh it's great to work here. It's it was a
great case like Lieutenant Lieutenant Dloff mentioned. A lot of these cases, a lot of crimes happen because of drugs. This case was no exception. This was a kidnapping that spiraled into a drug case. But drugs are at the center of a lot of issues, a lot of crimes that we investigate. So when I get involved with
with a case or any case, um it's it's uh the root of it, that drug angle is is really apparent and just focusing on the people bringing those those drugs here. Um and seeing success through prosecution and the relationships that we build, the relationships are everything. This case wouldn't have gone
to the US attorney's office without making some connections and showing them that that we do good work out here in Morehead and and in Klay County. So they see that and and those relationships will continue to build. So I just thank everyone for the the time and and the recognition.
Oh, you Well, Detective Torres, um we're so proud of you and proud for the work that you do on behalf of the city of Morehead. The work you do is uh very dangerous. Um, I think we all recognize
and are aware of the situation that happened uh just a week ago and there are a lot of law enforcement that were involved in apprehending the individual who um murdered uh Senator Hortman and her wife and attempted to murder Senator Hoffman and his wife. Um
just thank you on behalf of uh myself and the council and the the 45,000 people that live in the city of Morehead. Um, I think it's incredible that you were recognized for your exemplary work. Um, and I know that you
had said that this was the first time in 17 years that the US Attorney's Office has taken a case from our uh our area and now you already have a second one. So it is about building those relationships and demonstrating that the work done by our police department is is
stellar and exemplary and um really uh incredible. So thank you and thank you all um within the police department who came to support uh Detective Vison and his family and um to your mom and dad.
Thank you. And to your wife and daughter, thank you very much. We'll be looking for the award to be uh probably blown up in in your parents' garage overite night. So, thank you
again. Join me in thanking them. Um we have uh our next presentation tonight is the 2024 annual comprehensive financial report and audit by ID Bailey. And I will turn this over to Megan. Uh good evening, mayor and council members. Uh my name is Megan Zaradka and
I'm a finance manager here at the city. I'm pleased to announce that last week the finance department successfully completed the 2024 audit and prepared the 2024 annual comprehensive financial report or aer. Uh this report prepared annually by our
city finance staff provides the financial results for all funds and accounts of the city. Tonight we are requesting that the mayor and council formally receive and file the 2024 aer. Uh we once again worked with the audit firm ID Bailey to complete the annual
audit. I'd like to extend my gratitude to ID Bailey and our entire city of Morehead finance department um for their dedication and coordination on this critical project. I am incredibly proud of our team and the work that we do to get this project done. Uh joining us
remotely tonight is Jamie Fay. She's a partner with ID Bailey um who will provide an executive summary highlighting the audit results. With that, I'll turn things over to you Jamie. Thank you, Megan. Good evening. Um can someone confirm that you can hear me?
Okay. Yes, we can hear you. Excellent. Okay. So, I am sharing my screen. Um, and I have this executive summary up on the screen. So, that is what we're going to be working through. So, I appreciate Megan for Thank you for the introduction. Um, as Megan said, I'm Jamie Fay. I am an audit partner with ID
Bailey. I have been working closely with the city of Morhead for many years. Um, and we got your ACT for done, signed, sealed, delivered. Um, and it's it's ready to be presented. So, when we're talking through information tonight, we're talking about the year ended December 31st, 2024. And I just like to
point that out because sometimes we're in budgets of the next year and talking about prior year and talking about current year. Um, so when I say this year, I just mean the year of 2024. So, what we're going to do tonight is just step through a few slides that bring your financial information to more of a high level. We put some colors, some
graphs, some information in here. Um, hopefully that gives you value and and what you want to see in here. Um, so we'll step through the first question that we get asked is about audit results. So when you hire ID Bailey to come in and do an audit of your financial statements, you hire us to give an opinion on if the financial
statements are materially accurate or not. The city received an unmodified opinion. Sometimes that is dubbed a clean opinion. That's what you want. That's what you've want what you've received in the past as well. So what that means is we came in and we tested a sample of transactions. We recalculated
some things. We did not look at every single transaction. We did not recalculate things to the penny. We instead did enough that we felt comfortable that the financial statements are materially accurate. Um so we gave that opinion and there also is an opinion on what we call the
federal single audit. So, anytime an entity spends more than $750,000 of federal money, you get a financial statement audit over kind of your regular operations and then a a separate federal audit that really focuses on compliance with certain programs and did
they do the reporting right? Did they spend the money right? This year we tested the the CO 19 corona virus state and local fiscal recovery funds. Um, so we tested that program specifically. um and you received an unmodified opinion on that as well. So of the the city
spent about 7 million in total federal dollars in 2024. Um so because of that we tested that that one program. So with the opinions clean out opinions that's what you want that's what you've received. The other question I always get asked is what do we have for
findings? What can you tell us? What do we need to change or modify um in our procedures or what did you find? So for audit findings, I am happy to report that the city didn't have any findings in any of the categories. So in the financial statements, the federal awards or the Minnesota legal compliance, there
were no findings to report. Um Minnesota legal compliance is a piece of our audit. The state auditor has said, "Hey, here's a number of different state statutes that we need our governments to comply with. So as auditors, you need to test for these as well." Now, when I say no findings, uh what that means is we
don't have anything that rose to the level of significant deficiency or material weakness that we needed to report through the process. There's always questions that we ask that were like, hey, this can you explain this to me or maybe this doesn't make sense or maybe I don't see this backup. But the city was always able to work through all of that with us as they've done in the
past. Um so there's no findings to report which is great news and that's what like I said what you want and what you've received too. So, now we'll talk about a few of the numbers, graphs, historical information. So, first and foremost, we're talking about cash and investments. So, here's a 10-year look at cash and investments for
the city. Um, this is excluding dollars related to the capital projects funds, and we take that out because those dollars are specifically set aside for capital related projects. Um, so you can see it it is a little bit of a decrease from last year, but cash and investments really can fluctuate depending on do you
have a lot of receivables at year end? Do you have a lot of payables at year end? Um, so it's not a where do you need to be. This is just a good sna snapshot to show you where you've been compared to where you are in 2024. The next piece that we're going to look at is specifically for the general fund.
So the general fund is really the main operating fund of the city. Um, that's what we spend a lot of time talking about. So the first um slide I have in relation to the general fund is the budget to actual. So there's a lot of numbers here but very high level total revenues were about 27.3 million um
which was overbudget by about 2.8% and then total expenditures were about 34.4 million which was under budget by about 1.8 million. Now when I say those numbers those are really big numbers but in terms of percentages basically think
about it like this. The city took in about 2.8% 8% more than they expected and the city spent about 5% less than expected. That is indicative of conservative budgeting. Just being conscious of, hey, some of these numbers, you know, there was a lot of um and I see this in all of my governments
a lot of times. Hey, I w we weren't sure if we were going to get this grant or we weren't sure if we were going to have to spend the money here, so we didn't budget for the grant, but we spent we budgeted for the expense to make sure that we could cover that if we needed to. Then at the end of the day after some other financing sources and uses
and transfers um the ending fund balance is about $24.9 million in the general fund. You can see there is a negative change in the net fund balance net change in the fund balance of about 1.6 million. If you go up a couple lines from there's a
transfer out for about 4 million. That specifically was approved in 2023 happened in 2024. It was for that Romy Park project. So that was a very conscious use of some of those dollars. So this was an expected change um net change in a decrease in the fund
balance. So when we talk about fund balance, that's a really big number. But what does that really mean? How do you analyze that? Um and going from there. So positive fund balance really contributes to a favorable bond rating. It produces investment income. And
third, and I would argue probably most importantly, it offers a cushion for unexpected expenditures or revenue shortfalls, something like a global pandemic or um something like that. So, fund balance is broken out into a number of categories, and I'm not going to go through all of them in detail, but if you have questions about what they are,
this is breaks it out very much. Um really the one number you want to look at is the unassigned because that is the number that we really look at in terms of what is the kind of number that they look at um for what the city has available. So here's a look at the last
10 years in color for the different categories for the city. So that unassigned number is the green one. That is the biggest which is very common. That is what you would normally expect to see um for the general fund. So in terms of how do you analyze that?
That's a big number. This slide is really what I want to point you to. And I specifically want to point you to the city's policy at the bottom. So the city has a goal to maintain a minimum unrestricted general fund balance of 60% of their operating budget excluding some of these other things. So really a
minimum of 40, maximum of 60 is kind of what the policy says. And there's some nuances in there, but high level that's what it is. Um that policy is approved by the city um and it can be it's reviewed regularly and make sure that's still applicable. So when we look at that number, this is what it really
looks like. So 2024, you can see that unrestricted and unassigned number are within that 40 to 60 range. And you can see many of the years have been um that is not something that you're required to be there. That is just the city's policy. So like I said, you can review
that and update that if you think it needs to be updated. Uh but this is just showing you kind of where you've been compared to where you are now. So you're right in the middle of that kind of target range that the city has set. So now moving on from the general fund, we'll look at some of the other funds of
the city. So the first other fund is the debt service fund. So this fund, the primary purpose of this one is for bringing in property tax levies and specials to meet debt service payments. So making sure that do we have enough money that we can pay our debts. That includes principal and interest. And the
nature of this fund balance is that typically it grows and then if you pay off debt, it will it will decrease quite a bit and then it will grow a little bit more because in the way that property tax levies and debt service requirements are, you kind of tend to grow a little
bit and make sure that you can cover some of those payments. The next graph, and there's going to be a few graphs that look like this. This is for the electric fund. So this is breaking out operating revenues, expenses, and income. And you can see these are all pretty consistent from
last year to this year. So operating income dropped just a little bit uh from 23 to 24, but really pretty consistent right in that same range really as it's been since 2017. And then the next graph is going to be the same look and feel. This one's for the water fund. So this is the water
fund over the last 10 years. Same thing, operating revenues, operating expenses, operating income. This one did have a little bit more of a jump in the operating expenses. So that operating income did drop a little bit more uh but nothing out of the realm of of something we couldn't work through. And so it's just to show you kind of the trajectory
of where you have been to where you are now. The next fund is the wastewater treatment fund. So this fund is again the same look and feel. Operating revenues, operating expenses, and then operating income. This one also saw a little bit of an increase in that
operating expense number. Um so that operating income did drop a little bit more um compared to last year. So 22 to 23 compared to 23 24 uh but kind of all in the ballpark of where it's been for the last 10 years as well.
So the next fund and this again is the same look and feel. This one is the storm water fund. So only looking at that storm water system. Same look and feel operating revenues, expenses and operating income loss. And this one was really pretty consistent as a bottom line number. So you can see revenues and expenses did both go up, but that
operating income number is pretty level from 23 to 24. And then the next one, we're not going to this one is quite a few different funds in one. So I'm going to I'm going to kind of talk you through what each color means. So this is all of the net position for the enterprise funds. So
net position is what is the ending balance in these funds. It is electric, water, wastewater treatment, storm water. So those are all their own columns. And then non- major utilities and non- major non-utilities are broken out a little separately so that you can kind of see a good idea of what these
look like. So these are pretty directly related to those operating income graphs that we looked at before. Um but again, these are kind of all pretty this pretty much the same as well. So you can see a little bit of a growth kind of in all of them. Um but pretty consistent over the 10-year mark that we're looking at.
And then the next graph, this this looks very much the same. It is the same breakouts. This one is about cash and investments for those enterprise funds. So what is that ending cash balance broken out specifically for those enterprise funds. Um and you can see this one did dip a little bit in most of
those fund categories. Again, this number varies very much based on if there's accounts payable or accounts receivable at year end. Um but this is just to give you a look and feel of what it has been compared to what it is now. And with that, that is the only um
content that I have prepared. So, if there are any questions, I'm happy to take those. Otherwise, as you work through um if you review the financial statements in their entirety, if you do have questions, uh my contact information is at the end as well. So, I'll take any questions. All right. Thank you so much. Are there any questions from council
or either Megan or Jamie? Right. We do not have any questions. So, thank you so much, Jamie, for presenting that information to us. And Megan, uh, kudos to you and the rest of the finance department for always doing such an exceptional job. Um, this is my going on
my seventh year, um, on being part of the council and I don't think we've ever had a year that has brought us any surprises and just thank you to you and the rest of the department for doing such a great job. You and thank you guys for all your support and everything. Thank you.
Excellent. And I just want to share a little kudos. Um the Morhead team is always great to work with. We have worked with them, like I said, for many years. So, appreciate Megan and Jennica and their whole team. Joel, um the audit, we come in and we kind of shake things up a little bit. We know you have full-time jobs to do normally. So, just another um expression of gratitude for
their hard work and getting us through. Right. Thank you. All right. Moving on to the approval of the June 9th, 2025 meeting minutes. I have a motion to approve with minutes. So move Deb White. Second Madson. Motion
and second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? That motion carries. U. Moving on to citizens addressing the council. Um, I have two that were provided to me. Um, one is Anita.
I'm not sure how to say the last name. Disass Dis. And I am not sure if she's here or just submitted uh via email. Right. Um she's not here. So um moving on to the second individual who
submitted uh Jerry um Jeremy Lafrombles. All right, Jeremy, if you want to come up and I'll kind of explain how this works. Um, during this item on the agenda, you'll
have uh three minutes to present um this very fancy non super technology technologically savvy uh piece of equipment. Um when it's green, that means your three minutes are going on. When it is red, you'll need to wrap it
up. Um, and if you go much over the three minutes, I will just ask you to um to finish up. Um, this isn't necessarily an opportunity for uh a Q&A or question and answer back and forth with any of the council members or myself. This is
just an opportunity for you to provide information to the council and um we'll take the information in and if there's somebody that we can direct you to visit with um after you're done speaking, I'll I'll do that. Um, and then they would meet you in the kind of the lobby area
out there. So, with that, um, I'll need you to state your name and if you are a resident of the city of Morehead and then your three minutes will start. Uh, my name is Jeremboys and yes, I'm a resident of Morehead. Good evening, council members. My name is Jeremboy. I'm here as both a grieving
brother and a member of the community. I speak for my brother Joel, a 17-year-old Native American whose life was was cut short here in Morehead. And I speak for every family member who has waited for justice but never came. For 16 years, my family has carried the pain of losing
Joel. But what happens what deepens our grief is when the the way the city has failed him. How the city closed ranks on itself and shut us out. I'm not here to sensationalize tragedy. I'm here because the truth matters and the people of Morhead deserve to hear the truth.
So, let's be honest about what happened with my brother. Joel was unarmed, defenseless, intoxicated, and was shot and killed by Vernon Allen. Uh the shooter called 911 and used a racial slur to misidentify my brother's race. The medical examiner found no evidence of a struggle, no defense wounds, and no
reason for justifiable for no use for deadly force. There was no evidence of a close-range firing, which the person claimed. Under uh Mor Police Department under Detective Ryan Nelson um violated my
family's rights by uh several means. The harmfulness injustice is not just confined to the past. To this day, my nieces and nephews, children who never got to know their uncles, sit in Morhead public schools to hear their uncle's name brought up in lessons about uh justifiable use of force. They are
forced to relive the the pain and shame of his death without even hearing the false truth of seeing justice done. Our family's loss is used as a cautionary tale, but never as a lesson in accountability, fairness, and respect for native lives. Instead of pursuing
justice, law enforcement and the county attorney office uh closed the case in record time. Evidence went missing. Forensic findings and even autopsy pages were withheld. Years later, I discovered the shooter was under the influence of ambient, a fact that the county attorney, Brandon
Melton, M Police Department under Chief Ibing, kept from us intentionally. What's even more troubling is the official responsible for this failures, those who threaten my family and suppress evidence, still hold public offices in position of trust in the
city. So I ask you directly, how does Vernon Allen being high on a scheduled four narcotic fit into your definition of reasonable force? Why did it take me to have sacrificed my health and become obsessed from my brother's death only to go pursue an education to find out that you guys were
wrong? Would you guys have looked away if this person was white? I ask you to consider your answers honestly. Council members, the reputation of the city and the promise of equal justice under law depending on is depending upon what you do next. This is not about one
family. It is about whether Morid is willing to confront its past and choose a better future. Therefore, I call on the council to acknowledge publicly the failures of the role of racial bias in his case, support independent investigation into the conduct of every agency and official
involved, implement a true civilian oversight and use of force cases, and then refer all suppressed evidence to the state and federal authorities for full review. You were elected to serve everyone in the city, not just the powerful, not just those with connections. I ask you to do what is
right, not as easy. The people of Morhead are watching, history's watching, and I urge you, don't let injustice stand. Thank you. Um, and because of uh I I was a aware a little bit about what you were going to
be speaking with tonight and um our chief of police is here. um he just started so I don't know if he's fully um aware of your u brother's situation. I I do want to extend my condolences for your loss. I too have lost a brother so
I understand your pain um in that way. But I would encourage you to u meet with our chief of police and allow him to gather some more information from you and you can communicate with him. Thank you. Thank you. There any other citizens who wish to
address the council at this time? Right. Seeing none, we do have a public hearing. Um, if I could get a motion to open the public hearing regarding the request of Steenerson's Holding LLC. Move to approve. Nissa Meyer. Second.
McDougall. Have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? That motion carries. We are in public hearing. So I will turn this over to uh Mr. Derek Le Point. Thank you, Madame Mayor, members of the council. Um
here tonight is Aaron Seerson with uh the project. So if uh if you have any further questions about the project or uh any other details that I may miss, uh Aaron is present here to discuss. Uh I I will start by saying this is exactly why we kind of establish our commercial
industrial property tax incentive. This uh project that remodeling by Foss Inc. is doing is looking at uh constructing a new headquarters uh in Morehead uh consolidating multiple locations into one uh in our original industrial park. The building would be about 60 by 120 ft
with reception areas, office, conference room, bathroom, wash bays, etc. Uh they would be retaining 11 full-time employees that are paying more than $20 per hour. Uh there is some existing land value on the property. And again, just as a reminder, land is still taxable
when we we grant these exemptions. And based on the preliminary plans that were submitted by the application, the city assessor is estimating that the new building value would be about approximately 645,000. Uh per our policy, that would uh qualify
for a three-year property tax incentive on that new value that's created. Uh if approved here today, construction uh would begin in August of 25 uh with the estimate completion of November of 2025. So uh this is an a a light industrial
zoned area, so it does meet all zoning qualifications and uh really glad that this group is considering Morhead to kind of consolidate and and continue to do their work. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions the council may have. Thank you, Mr. Le Point. Are there any members of the
audience who wish to speak during the public hearing portion item of this agenda? See no members of the public who wish to speak on this item. I would entertain a motion to close the public hearing portion of this agenda item. So move Borggan second. Motion and second. Any
discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? That motion carries. Um and we are out of public hearing. Council members, do you have any questions uh for Mr. Le Point or Mr. Cerson?
And if you don't, I would entertain a motion to um approve the property tax exemption for Senior Holdings. Move to approve. Nisser White second. Okay. I got a motion, I believe, by um Council Member Nisser, a second by Council
Member White. I know there were a couple people talking. Is that okay with everybody? All right. Uh, any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? That motion carries. So, um, congratulations. Your
property tax exemption um has passed. And I just echo what Mr. Le Point says that really appreciate and are grateful that you have chosen Morehead. Um the next um is a public hearing regarding the wastewater deatering phosphorus facility and lift station
facility plan. Do I have a motion to approve um uh to open the public hearing portion of this item? So move De White second. McDougall motion and a second. Uh any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I.
Any opposed? That motion carries. We are in public hearing and I'm going to first turn it over to city manager Molly. Thank you, Mayor. Before we hand it over to Andy Bradshaw, I thought maybe I'd interrupt um to do a little translating. So, what we're going to hear over the next number of motions and in Andy's
presentation is um you know, you know, very complicated. A lot of us won't know what things like point source implementation is, dewatering, phosphorus, um any number of engineering uh firms that and uh planners and people that that make this stuff happen, all
the all the great work that they do. But I want to say that at its at the at the basis of what we're talking about here is how we're going to flush in 2040. It's really important stuff. And there are people here that that think about that that plan for it and that know that know what they're doing that carry a
great level of knowledge and expertise. And so I just wanted to recognize and thank the team and let the folks at home know when they hear all this stuff if it gets very confusing. It's about something that's very um you know that we that that is just a it's just a wonderful thing that we do in
communities. So I'll hand it over to you Andy. Okay. Uh and I want to be clear. I did that to you on purpose. Talk about flushing. Uh thank you mayor and council members for your time here tonight. Uh, I'll try
to be as fairly brief as I can. Um, and just a little background. I'm going the wrong way. There we go. Okay. Um, so we're here to talk about our facility plan. Uh, and just a little background of what a facility plan is. It's just a
document that we prepare. Really gives us kind of a a snapshot of where we are, uh, where we're going as facility. uh what's coming down the road in terms of flow, loading, lutonent limits, changes like that. And it's a document that we are required to submit to the state
whenever we're looking for things like grants or low uh low interest loans and so on. And it just kind of shows that we did our due diligence to the state in in our planning and our project development and things like that. Uh so without getting too much into that, just few
highlights. Um you know like I said it kind of documents our existing conditions and needs. Uh and just a little background also uh the wastewater treatment facility was constructed in 1983. So there's a lot of original systems still there. We have done some upgrades through the years and we have
shown that we have sufficient capacity as it stands for normal or typical growth through to about 2040. Um we do have a major anticipated project around that 2040 time frame related to uh expansion and potential
for nitrogen limits and that could be quite a large project that would uh entail some major modifications to the treatment process and so you see that big price tag there of potentially $100 million plus at that at that time. Uh so from now until then we're just looking
to try to maintain the function of the facility, maintain service to the residents. Um and we've developed a project as as part of preparing this facility plan and there was a few drivers in that project. Among them aging infrastructure uh just how it sounds. Uh but we did do a big risk risk
assessment of uh a lot of our assets over 600 assets and looked at risk and consequences of failure things like that. Uh some aspects of this uh potential project include uh addressing health and safety concerns, especially with some of the hazardous chemicals on
site. Uh also uh you know, of course, healthy environment uh looking at potential for new pollutant limits, specifically phosphorus here, uh to meet Minnesota nutrient goals and potential uh permit limits. And then also capacity. Capacity is always a big one.
Um but specifically for this project, we're looking more at capacity for part of the process. uh related to storing our bioolids which are the solids that we remove and or create during the treatment that we treat those and then store those and our capacity there is
pretty strained. So for those that aren't familiar uh just a little bit about the facility or the wastewater utility um of course there's the plant itself. We have about 45 lift stations scattered throughout the city that uh transport the wastewater to the facility. Uh, and
that's via about 190 miles of sewer manes as well as thousands and thousands of manholes out there as you can imagine if you look at the streets. And we'd like to think of it as a resource recovery facility which is kind of a a common way to look at it in this industry. Uh, you know, we we reclaim
waste water that is then returned to the the Red River. uh we land apply those bioolids after treatment for fertilizer value agonomic benefit and then we also recover uh gas that's created during the treatment of the solids and that's what
used for energy specifically heating the plant and heating some of the treatment processes. So, getting into what we've uh excuse me, getting into what we've uh developed in the facility plan as far as what we would like to have in a
potential project. I'll just get into a few of those things without getting into too much detail. And here's one of the items. Uh this is the influent wet well. This is basically where all the pipes that come into the plant combine. Water flows up and and flows into the head of the plant as influent. Uh and this
structure was put in about 2005. and it condition isn't isn't so bad on it, but it has had some settling issues where it's pulling away from from the building. Uh you can kind of see in the photo on the right where you can see the uh that gap there where it's widening out uh at the at the joint. Uh and the
other issue with that is it's kind of a it's a confined space and it's very difficult to clean. It builds up solids and the problem with trying to clean it is um can't just do it when all the flow is going through. you have to shut down a lot of lift stations in town and and and get in to clean it and a lot of
times that takes a few cycles of shutting down and so on. Um so it's it's been kind of a problem when so whenever you're talking about a facility plan there's a few things you have to address and one of those is getting into the the different alternatives uh and what the
recommendation is uh by staff and the engineer. Uh, and that's something we showed at MPC to show that we, you know, consider all these things. And usually the base alternative is a do nothing alternative, which for the most part isn't a very good alternative. Uh, and
this, uh, picture kind of shows what we're intending for the uh, that part of the or that structure. We're looking to extend the pipes up and then fill the space around the pipes and then that'll keep debris from filling up in there and then uh also fix the the settling by
anchoring it to the to the facility better. And there's an engineer estimate shown at the bottom uh of about $22,000 for that work. Another part of the project uh is addressing the corrosion in our equalization basin. the equalization
basin. Uh, as flow comes into the plant, a certain amount of that flow during higher flow time spills over to the equalization basin or the EQ basin and we store it there all day and then at night we pump it back to the plant. That just evens out flow throughout the day, makes treatment more efficient. It's
really just a corrosion issue in here. This was put in 20 years ago and it's a harsh environment. You can see in the photo the corrosion on the columns uh threatening the structural integrity of the structure. Uh so we're looking to basically clean that up and and recote
the the liner inside that structure. Another uh item here is uh our main compressor that feeds uh air to our process that generates oxygen which is fed into our main biological treatment process. Uh this compressor is over 20 years old uh and it's been just having a
lot of ongoing repairs and maintenance issues. And the other issue is that we don't have a redundant compressor. So, we're looking at replacing it, but also probably keeping this compressor as a backup uh so we can have some redundancy. Um, and again, you can see
the estimate about 458,000. Another item here, this is uh so as a backup to that oxygen system, uh we have a liquid oxygen storage tank at the plant. uh and that liquid oxygen is fed into a warm water bath where it vaporizes into uh a gas and then that's
fed in as oxygen to the process. Uh there's a few options for what you can replace this with. Again, it's you know it's just mainly a condition issue. Um and we're looking at an estimate there of about $172,000. And this is just like I said a backup
system. Uh this picture shows our main electrical feed coming into the plant. Uh there's the where all the electricity of course comes into the plant. There's also there's two feeds and there's a switch gear. So we have kind of like a backup basically for our incoming
electricity. And this equipment is original. It's been kind of troublesome. Uh it's a confined area. Builds up a lot of heat. Uh and it's hard to get parts and things like that. Also in the same general area is the HVAC for a chunk of the plant. And that uh HVAC is also at
the end of its useful life. So this is just looking at an inind replacement of all that equipment as well as moving the transformer outdoors which would help with the heat generation. Uh and there we're looking at 1.77 million.
Getting to uh when I mentioned the hazardous chemicals. So for disinfection of the waste water prior to discharge, we add chlorine which we store as a gas and then uh dissolve into a liquid stream and and inject into the effluent.
Uh and of course as you can imagine chlorine gas is a very highly hazardous chemical. uh we have to go through quite a bit of hoops and requirements as far as uh risk for uh management for off-site consequences and also uh staff
safety and things like that. Um and we've been looking to get away from using these this gas for a long time. In addition to the chlorine, we add sulfur dioxide after it's gone through uh treatment in a contact basin. And that sulfur dioxide removes any residual
chlorine. As you can imagine, you don't want to be putting chlorine in the river. it's harmful to to uh aquatic life and that uh contact basin where the chlorine is allowed time to react is undersized and it creates a kind of a constriction where when we have high
flows it's hard to get all the flow through there and and it causes us some problems. So besides a safety issue there's a actual flow issue there. So, what we're looking to do uh as far as uh an alternative to get away from using those harmful
chemicals is switching over to a UV disinfection system. More or less like putting a tanning bed in the waste water, I guess you could think of it. Um so that ultraviolet light will kill any potential pathogens in the wastewater pri prior to discharge. Um, and then we
would repurpose a building that houses the the chlorine system uh for a lot of the electrical and controls for this. A little higher price tag here. You can see uh a little over 5.2 million. Moving on uh to uh an environment or or
pollutant limits. Uh we're looking at installing phosphorus reduction at the plant. As it stands, we do remove a fair amount of uh phosphorus at the plant and that's mostly done in the collection system. We add a chemical uh ferrris chloride in the collection system and
that's for odor and corrosion control, but it has a secondary benefit where it will combine with uh phosphorus and precipitate it out and we do get some removal there. But there's really no phosphorus removal designed into the processes at the plant. Now, and Minnesota does have a goal to reduce
phosphorus at Lake Winnipeg. You guys have probably heard about that issue, spoken before. Um, and that's actually written into our current permit as well to participate in an effort to look at uh the contributions of phosphorus to the basin and ways to reduce it uh perhaps on the
landscape where you think of like a project like stream make uh restoration or cover crops or uh wetland uh enhancements, things like that. So most likely our next discharge permit will have a one if and if that uh
process does not work or we decide that's not a good alternative we would our next alternative is to go with treatment at the plant. Um and that would mean having a 1.0 millgram per liter limit on total phosphorus. And just for reference our current discharge
is 1.6 milligrams per liter. So we don't have real far to go to meet a potential limit. So how would we do that? Uh there's a couple ways you can do it. One is to biologically treat. Uh you basically alter your process to generate uh
microorganisms that have a tendency to suck up a lot of phosphorus and remove it out through the process. And then another way is chemical removal which we already somewhat are doing in the collection system like I mentioned. So this picture here shows uh one of the
chemical systems in the in our collection system and it would be a real similar process at the plant similar chemical uh and that would address phosphorus uh in our discharge. You can see here's picture of Lake Winnipeg and that's the big driver for for this
and an estimate for that uh is 928,000 which would be a fair amount cheaper than trying to do that uh biologically. Also looking at uh our bioolids handling disposal. Uh the photo on the left is our underground bioolid storage tank. That's three and a half million gallons
of liquid storage. On the right, you can see where our land application operation. We haul it out to farm fields. Land applied. It's just like any manure operation for liquid manure. It's a liquid manure uh spreader. Uh the biggest issue here is our tanks are are
und sized uh to meet the current and future generation of solids at the plant and also it's just a lot of a lot of liquid uh volume, a lot of loads to haul out. It takes a lot of time uh a lot of staff time. So we're looking to reduce
that labor and time and and increase our storage capacity. And the other issue is if we remove more phosphorus, but we will also generate additional solids. So we're looking to do additional dewatering. And instead of having a
liquid bioolids, we would dewater that into a cake. Uh it's kind of like the consistency of maybe like a you know, think of like a a soil bag you'd buy at Menard's or something like that. So we would uh put in a dewatering unit to thicken those bioolids as well as a cake
storage facility which is very similar to uh like you think of like a salt storage building or something like that out at Joint Public Works. And then equipment to land applied as well. You can see a photo of both of those things there. There's an estimate for 11 well
11,384,000 for the actual deatering which I'll talk about in the next slide. Um as well as 5.2 2 million for a storage facility for the cake and just additional uh spreading equipment that we don't have now. We would switch it like it like it
shows to a different style of spreading. There's a number of different options as far as dewatering. Uh not to get too deep into technologies. There's belt filter presses, screw presses, centrifuges. They all kind of do what the name sounds like. Uh and in addition to that, we would have to feed these
units from the existing liquid storage or directly from the plant. But what our intent is to do is in one uh part of that underground liquid storage is install a large bubble mixing system. That's that photo on the top left. It's
a grid of uh air uh nozzles, if you want to call them that, on the bottom or diffusers. And it just kind of alternates. There's a control and a compressor fed and it just generates these large bubbles that mix the tank. Uh, and it's a very energyefficient process and would actually qualify us
for uh, green project reserve funding potentially. All right, that's in a nutshell everything that has to do with the facility itself or the plant itself. There's also a few lift station upgrades uh, included in this project. Uh, sanitary lift stations 11, 12, 38, and
39. And they're all pretty large lift stations that uh in fact 38 and 30 I mean number 39 actually feeds directly to the head of the plant. It's one of our main lift stations. And this is uh nothing too complicated. It's just more condition and some upgrades needed uh due to aging uh and uh corrosion,
different things like that. Uh pumps that need replacement and so on. Um each lift station has kind of a little different set of issues, but they're all pretty similar. So, we could either replace the lift stations, which would be pretty high cost, but since the most of the lift stations and structures are in okay
shape, it's more of just an upgrade. And you can see the cost of those upgrades there for 11, 12, 38, and 39. Uh 1.6 million for number 11, 1.1 for number 12, uh about 2.7 for number 38, and 2.5
or just under that for number 39. So, here's a summary of all those costs that I just went through. Um, you can see all the items as you go down related to the plant. Uh, and then it gets down to there's some engineering, legal, admin, construction contingencies,
things like that adds to the cost. And then all the lift station costs are that last line item there. And those already do include the those items as far as engineering and contingencies. and it comes up with a pretty big number, 41,237,000
for completing this project. So, looking at our budget, uh, in terms of paying for the for a loan or however we would pay for this project, uh, I'm not going to get in any details here, but the one big item to note here in that box in the middle is, as you all
know, Bush Egg closed in December of 24, and that was our biggest industrial, our biggest wastewater customer period. Uh, the last year of operation, we gener we had about 1.2 2 million in service charges for that facility. A couple
years before that, we're closer to 1.4. And we do save some money by not having all that flow and loading from the from the malt plant, but it's not near the uh expenses or the revenue that we we lost. So you can see here about 100,000 or so
uh in expense reduction but losing that million plus in revenue which is about 10% of our wastewater budget. So how do we pay for this? Looking at funding options uh the default option is
always you know a city issued bond. Uh but that's usually a little bit higher interest rate. It's kind of our least desirable option. Um, and so we're looking into things like a clean water revolving fund loan. That's a loan from the state uh administered by the public facilities authority. And
that's a interest discount uh compared to bonding of about 1 to one and a half%. And on a project this size, that's over $5 million in savings on a 20-year repayment period. And and and this also ties into why we're here with the facility plan. You
can't apply for these loans or these different grants without completing a facility plan first. Um, another look option is more on the grant side. Uh, we can apply for uh an MPCA point source implementation grant. Uh,
and that's a fancy name for uh we will give you grant funding if you accept a limit or improve uh pollutant discharge specifically here for uh total phosphorus. So, we would have to accept a total phosphorous limit in our permit. And that grant will cover up to 80% of
the total phosphorus related improvements or up to $12 million. Uh, as you recall, we only had about a million for the chemical addition for phosphorus removal, but a lot of the cost is tied up in the additional generation of solids. So, a lot of the cost for the cake storage and dewatering
and all that could be covered by this grant. Like I said, you must accept the phosphorus limit of one in in our case. Uh there's some other possible grant funds out there. Uh we did uh submit a request for 4 million in con federal
congressionally directed spending uh recently. And also uh and this addresses one of the uh action items tonight is a 10 million uh Minnesota capital investment request. And like I said with the loss of Bush Egg, you know, that big revenue hit the
finding this extra grant funding is very critical for us. This is pretty small print on some of this, but the bottom line is this is looking at the the blue bars are is our reserve balance. Uh we try to maintain a 25% operating budget uh reserve and
that's the green line. That's the 25% line. Uh and in the top line, the orange line, that's the rate increases going back a few years and looking into the future, what we expect. And you can see in order to fund this project, I highlighted those in red and made them a little bigger. Uh we would be looking at
some pretty significant rate increases, eight and a half, sixes, uh in order to fund this project. Um and that's assuming getting some of that grant funding even. Uh and you can see a couple other items on here looking out out ahead like the potential nitrogen
improvements and so on. And we the intent is to try to build up that reserve balance to help uh soften any rate increases in the future for some of those major improvements as well. I don't I don't show it here, but uh had Bush Egg stayed around uh those
increases would probably be more around the 3% range. This is next steps. Uh I'm not going to get too detailed here, but just looking ahead, we're already into this. Uh we've submitted the facility plan to PCA. where we've already started some of the design. Um we have in the middle here
the darker uh rectangles that's we'll be renewing our permit in this timeline. Uh there's some the grant applications in there for PIG. Uh and we would be as it stands looking to bid and award bids uh next fall and start construction. This
timeline is not set in stone but that's uh where we're at and and where we're looking at. So, uh, in closing, uh, we're looking for three resolutions tonight. Uh, as you are aware, uh, one is to approve the facility plan. Uh, we have to have that
facility plan approved in order to move forward with any of the funding options. Uh, authorize an application for a point source implementation grant, and uh, approve a budget adjustment and task orders for final design. None of these
steps should require, you know, action on rates or things like that or or any commitment on the project scope or what we will do at some point. There'd be plenty follow up on that and council actions as well. That's where we stand. Thank you. Thank you so much, Andy.
Questions from council. Council member Nissar. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, I want to appreciate the team that who put together all of this, um, wonderful scientificy stuff. Um, I also want to appreciate city manager Molly's,
um, bringing it down to the real level. I think people often forget how um, Morehead Public Service does the water that comes out of your tap, but everything that co goes out and is waste is handled by the city. um and we are
team members in that water quest, but dealing with um solids that um benefit our agricultural um surroundings is really important. Um my questions are, you know, the chemical treatment um route when we're
looking at phosphorus um was the proposed in the um facility plan and you said that was because it was cheaper. Is there um additional opportunities with some of that federal and state grant funding that that could be um reviewed
or amended to help um increase the benefits to our environment? Uh yes. Um so like I said, there's kind of two main options there. There's altering the biological process to remove more phosphorus. The unfortunate part about that is it works really well.
It doesn't require chemical, but it it's big modifications to structures and concrete and things like that, and it gets very expensive very quick. Um, and since we've already removed so much phosphorus because of what we do in the collection system, we don't have very
far to go. So, it's a lot easier, simpler, cheaper to just make up that little bit of difference with chemical phosphorous removal. Excellent. Well, I also appreciate hearing that um to accept some of those funds um it would not only be beneficial to the
environment um for us agreeing to a lower uh phosphorus level, but uh a number of these improvements would help pay for our sort of long-term goals of having uh more cake uh to be able to dry it and store it well and as well as
share it with our community. Again, I'm speaking of the um agriculture members in our surrounding community really benefiting from all of the waste that we create in the city of Morehead, which sometimes people don't really like talking about waste, but I think it's
really important to um explore these in sort of real terms, right? It's not just the ability to flush, but it's where are things go when they flush and managing those systems well. As we are a fast growing city, it's going to um be tough
to raise taxes to do this. But I don't know that there is anybody who wants to have trouble with their lift stations um being able to handle the load. And so um even though there are only four lift stations in uh the immediate plan, it
would impact the entire city. Is that correct? Yes, it is. There's like I said 45 lift stations total. So we're always in a cycle of, you know, you, you know, a lift station doesn't go 45 years without needing upgrades. So we're every year typically it's done in the operating budget, but these are sign
significant enough that especially with the impact on rates that we look to do it in in a bigger project. I I appreciate you including that. Um I also wanted to um acknowledge you talked about Bush Egg. People may not know what Bush Egg is and it was the Budweiser
processing plant that um we have along Oh, I'm gonna get the road name. 27th 28 28th Street. What's the curvy road? We could just say north of I94. North of I94. Many people drive by it on their
way to Menard's, the Career Academy, many places, right? It's um in in our industrial uh district, but knowing that that big provider of revenue for our community is gone. Yes, it benefits that the um water usage isn't there, but the
revenue is really something, you know, maybe we could woo somebody to come and do something that would help benefit that. Um I think Derek left, but that is something to drop in the pan there. But I think being able to increase um
bioolid handling and do it in a safe and environmentally friendly way as well as show residents how the increase of um taxes could be just as a forward thinking. Right? It's 2040 I believe city manager Molly said as we're looking
at flushing in 2040 that will be here tomorrow before we know it. And so I again just want to sincerely appreciate you exploring the bubble mixer, exploring the um green project funds um that are available federally and state um because that is really what
Morehead's all about. We're about being um fabulous to um one another as well as the environment that we live in. So thank you very much for answering my questions this evening. Thank you. Uh Council Member Madson. Thank you, Madame Mayor. I would like to
not talk about waste. I'm good on that topic. I would like to talk about money, which is everyone else's other favorite topic. Um, I just want to make sure I understand what I'm voting on tonight. So, um, we're making this plan so that we can apply for the
PSIG grant. The plan itself with has a big price tag of $41 million, but we're not deciding today how we're going to get to $41 million. We're deciding today that we had to make a plan so that we can present that in our grant
application. Is that what is happening right now? Yes. And I think maybe to help help answer your question is it's important to note that uh what's in the facility plan if if if something is not included in the facility plan, we can't include it in the project at least as
far as the funding, grant funding and loan funding. We could add it but we'd have to pay for it separately. So we include as much as we can in the facility plan, identify all the needs. Doesn't mean that's everything that's going to be in the project. You know, things can scale back, things can delay, things like that. But that's where we're
moving and and we'll explore that as the process goes. Thank you. Uh, Council Member Hendrickson. Uh, thank you, M Carlson. Got a couple quick questions for you. with the dewatering. It's pretty big price tag on that. When
you do when we do install that, is it is it uh instantly or is it take is there a process of kind of just leading it in to take over? Well, it be the dewatering facility would be it would be a new building. There'd be the equipment installed inside and you know, all the everything you need to handle getting in
there, getting it out, getting over to the storage. Uh and those deatering units are are fairly expensive. And you know, you have to make a decision too. Do you buy one? Do you buy two? Do you consider you need that redundancy? Do you consider the the fact that we have all that liquid storage buys us some
time if there's a piece of equipment that goes down? And those are all decisions that we're also going to be working on as far as uh scoping out the project as well. And thank you for that. And then with the current, you know, the waste product or the cakes, do you is it
farm fields just in Klay County or is it around Morehead or where do you usually? Uh all the land that we land apply on is within 5 to 10 miles at the most from the plan. So it's all Clay County and it's shorter the distance the better for us. I mean it's you know 700 loads I think we send out right now in a given
year. So that's benefits us to not be too far away. That's a lot of stuff. It is. So we're trying to reduce those number of trips. Thank you. That's all I need. Any other council members have questions? If not, I would entertain a motion to
approve the facility plan. So move Nissa mayor. Second. Borggan motion. Mayor, I'm sorry. We do have to close the public public hearing. Oh, I kind of had forgotten that we were in a public hearing. So, okay. Uh, first of all, are there any members of the public who wish
to speak to this public hearing or speak to this item in a public hearing? Seeing none, I would entertain a motion to close the public hearing. Second, Borggan. Motion by Hendrickson,
second by Borggan. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? Motion is uh carries. Public hearing is closed. Rowdy did questions. And we had a motion and a second to approve the facility
plan. So, we'll go back to that. Uh any questions or comments? Seeing none, uh all those in favor to approve the facility plan signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? Right. That motion carries.
Uh the motion was by Nissa Meyer. The second by Borggan on that one. Um next would be uh a motion to authorize the point source implementation of the grant application.
Henderson second. I gave the last one to Nisser. So I'm going to give this one to McDougall on the second. We both kind of said it at the same time. Motion by Hendrickson, second by McDougall. Any questions or comments in regards to the point source
source implementation grant application? Council member Nisser. Thank you, Madam Mayor. There was in the slide deck that we received in the packet um a question mark July 2020 um five. Are we uncertain if we will be applying for the grant or
is it like yes we're applying for the grant. We've got our ducks in a row and we're ready to rock it. We we are ready to apply for it. We attend that's the deadline is in July. Okay. Marvelous. Thank you. I'm assuming that you had to have authorization. This would be the motion to authorize you to move forward
and approve and the grant. So, all right. Any other questions or comments? See none. I have a motion and a second on the table. Um, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? That motion carries. And then last but not least, um would be looking for a
motion to approve the budget adjustments uh number 25-012 and task orders for the final design. So move. Second more motion and a second. Any other discussion or comments, questions?
Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? All right, that motion carries as well. Thank you, Andy, for coming and presenting this information. I will be looking forward to seeing the shirts that you have for your theme for 2040 and how to flush.
Thanks again. So appreciated. No pictures about our waist. Right. Um, moving on to number 18 under administration. Um, I will turn this over to Miss Lisa
Bod. Good evening, Mayor Carlson and members of the council. I'm here to kind of talk about that uncertain category of funding. Um, the Minnesota Management and Budget Office accepts applications
every other year in odd years for um projects which will be under consideration by the state of Minnesota legislature and the governor's office for um what is typically known as bonding um dollars. Um the
uh um the projects that we sub the project that we submitted last year was for flood mitigation and we understand the legislature has allocated $9 million statewide for um for flood mitigation.
We haven't heard yet if or what Morehead's portion of that um amount would be, but in any event, it's not enough to finish our flood mitigation. Um the request that we had last year was for $16 million with inflation if we um
this that same project is projected to cost $18.5 million. So this this um this application process through MMB gathers all the requests around the state and a report is generated for the legislators
and the governor to use as they go out and and review projects and um hold deliberations during the legislative session. The actual um due date for the applications was uh the 13th of June and
we did submit preliminary applications with the understanding that we would be bringing this to you for authorization and I'll submit the resolution after the meeting tonight. Um and you know so so that we'll have the council authorization and then the the state
also requires that we prioritize our requests. we have to have a number one um and a number two and um or you know as many projects as we do submit. So that's what I'm asking of you tonight. Um since our flood mitigation has been
ongoing since 2009 and we really have been working to finish it up. Staff is suggesting that flood mitigation remain the number one priority. Um but it's completely up to you. And then secondly would be the project that Andy just
explained to you on the bioolids. This would be one of those ways that we could reduce the cost for our um rate payers, our residents and businesses. Um so um both of those projects um are worthy and
eligible for um state bonding and um I would just ask for the council's consideration of um authorizing submission of those applications and the prioritization. Right. Thank you, Miss Bod. Any
questions um or comments from council? Council member Borggan. Yes. Thank you. So, is what would be number two? I mean, if we needed$ 18 million and they only gave nine million for the state overall, wouldn't we just have one priority? I
mean, we need that money for our flood mitigation. Does that make sense or how are you looking at it? So, the $9 million is a statewide appropriation. We don't know if we'll get any of that funding. That's what I'm saying. So, why say this is number one and this is number two? We
have one. That's it. Some years we've gotten more. And so by having and introducing that other project which might be funded in a in a different place, it's it's not it's not coming out of the same agency. It's
not coming out of the same um you know like we may have a member of our delegation that you know um pursues the wastewater project. We may have one that that pursues the flood mitigation. They're just asking if the city had to choose
which project would we choose and it's not a bad idea to have them both in there in my opinion, but um we don't know what we will we will get. We keep chipping away at the flood project, but it's not a bad idea necessarily to have legislators that are familiar with the
other needs that we have. Okay, that's my opinion. Thank you. Other questions or comments from council? I guess I would only have one comment that you know we've been working on this since 2009. Um
this is a project that we have to finish um through a a number of u agreements that we have through our joint pyros agreement that we've signed with the metr flood diversion authority um through some of the other uh like the wifia funding we're partner to that. Um,
additionally, you know, one of the things that we would talk about with the legislators when we were down in St. Paul is you you don't uh you don't almost get to the finish line. You cross the finish line. You finish the projects. You don't build a house and
not put the front door on. Um, you know, we're we're so close and every time we seem like we get a little bit closer, then the cost goes up and these costs are just going to continue to grow
to to um grow. Um, I would hate to see us get over 20 million again. Um, so hopefully we do get some of the 9 million um funding that was allocated. um and maybe this number could even be reduced.
Of course, we know that it won't be all finished. The other thing is we have to have these projects completed and done in order for FEMA to certify our area so that people aren't mandated to buy um flood insurance, which is something that a number of our residents um really
struggle and hope that they will someday in the future not be required to pay for. So, those would just be my comments. Um, if there aren't any other questions or comments, which there weren't before I talked, um, from the council, I would be looking for a motion to authorize and prioritize the
Minnesota capital investment funding. Second, McDougall. Motion and a second that the priority would be number one for Morehead would be the flood mitigation and uh, to authorize the funding application.
Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? That motion carries. Thank you. Keep our fingers crossed. And also, thank you, uh, Miss Bodie. I know that you were didn't make 20 trips
down to the legislature this year, but I know that you were down in St. Paul at least 20 days this legislative session. Um, if we get to any more, we might have to consider a short-term rental for you. So, um, moving on, next is mayor and
council reports. Are any council members who have reports on boards or committees? Council member Nisser. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um, I would like to report on the, um, solid waste advisory committee uh, meeting that we had on the morning of June 12th. Um,
there were some really great um, updates. uh the solar project um which is going to be po potentially placing um a solar farm on closed units at the Klay County um landfill is being um continued
uh to for exploration. Um some uh estimates and things are coming forward which is really great. Um additional education um materials are coming out from the county um on two elements. The first um is a result of the demo
landfill being closed uh after a visit from the MPCA. Um it was a surprise to our community but also yields some additional work for city and county workers um because the land the
demolition landfill is no longer accepting um dumps from uh local folks or uh non um contracted um places. So the city of Morehead can still dump um and the county can still
dump, but there is just the additional labor um required because of that fill. The other educational element is um on processing propane tanks that people want to bring in. There has been a number an increase of propane um um
items brought into uh the county and they are looking to share with residents of Klay County on how to help them dispose of them. The my one favorite update that I have is um really just singing the praises of the city of
Morhead staff who work at our resource recovery center. They have improved the handling of trash um from the city of Morehead and beyond to allow better hauls to uh the um incinerator in PUM, which really just has been able to
increase um the income for uh the county and the amount of trash that they are able to burn and make into ash. Now, I know some folks are really not um keen on incinerators, but I would like to highlight work that Ottertale County is
doing to create some um ash use for some new roads that they're laying as a test um site for being able to utilize some of the clean ash from the PUM facility. And people are like, "Gh, Heather, why are you talking about PUM?" But I think um PUM, Klay County, and the city really
work together to handle all of our um solid waste. And when I say solid waste after our conversation today, it makes me think that that's not it could be confusing, but all of the trash and recycling um that you um put out at the end of the your driveway or in the
dumpster at your business or home, it's really important how that uh process as a whole maintains um some sort of quality and sustainability. And I just want to highlight how being able to use ash on some test roads in Ottertale County really um is an opportunity for
us to reuse something that potentially would just sit there as waste. And so um we couldn't be really great partners with PUM if the city um staff didn't uh handle trash so well in our community. And so uh my props for that. I also want
to say thank you. Um it's been a very busy couple of weeks. I haven't been able to attend events, but I love seeing events come to Morehead because Morehead is the greatest place to be. So, I want to thank the organizations um the individuals at large uh for having a
number of events uh just a couple um uh Junth um last week as well as the um National Immigration Day or Immigrant Day um social. And so not all things are hosted in Morehead in the metro area, but I like having a welcoming community
here and would like to continue to support and uplift any of those Morehead events that we're having so everybody can participate and see what a great community we have. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Nismire. Uh other council members, Council Member
Moore. Um on June 10th, I attended the Jeremiah program policy event with you, Mayor Carlson, and Council Member Borgan. I just want to say how lovely that event was. Um, if you're not familiar with this program, they are disrupt
disrupting the cycle of poverty two generations at a time. It was inspirational and I look forward to continuing that relationship. On June 12th, we had the church's United Picnic with several of our council members here. We had uh Matson, McDougall, and
White. Uh, it was great to uplift that organization with our community. The June 17th was the Flutterfest and I know I had council member Matson in there with me to learn more about native plants and pollinators and do a lovely
tree walk-in talk. Uh last but not least had the Laurel board meeting on June 18th. They have asked for me to provide an update to the city that um they're concurrent they are currently unhappy with their proposed lease to move into
the new Morehead Library. They're willing to continue discussions uh but they are currently investigating other spaces to rent. I believe it would be a disservice to our community to lose the operational efficiencies and the synergies of the Laurel headquarters and
Morehead Library being colllocated. So I look forward to working on this and continuing to find a acceptable resolution. Thank you. Right. Other council members. Council member White. Thank you, Mayor. I just
um I also as I said June as you heard attended the churches united and Junth event and I wanted to in particular recognize the um uh award that was given to Dr. Ivon Condell. It was the um Destiny Holiday Community Champion award
by our human rights commission and I just can't think of someone more deserving. Um as a fellow faculty member at Minnesota State University Morehead I can just say that Dr. Dr. Condell had an indelible impact on all of the faculty, the students, and entire community. And
so I was so proud that she was selected. She was nominated and selected for that award. Also just wanted to mention that we've got the global market tomorrow. And then this will be interesting because we're now come we're having when the global market occurs every month, it'll be at the same time as our Morhead
farmers market. So it's an even bigger event and so I strongly encourage people to come down. There'll be um vendors both inside and outside now throughout the summer when we have both of these co-occurring events. So, it's really exciting to see folks collaborating on
that. Thanks, Council Member Borggan. Thank you, Mayor. I did attend several meetings with Morehead Public Service Commission and the Morehead Public Service Budget Committee. One thing I wanted to highlight was we had a citizen to be
heard here at the count at the council. She also then appeared in front of the Morid public service commission. Her name was Rose. I'm sure you guys remember. There has been a resolution made with her and the contractor and I think it was um satisfactory to both
sides. So that was good. And another thing that came out of those discussions were that some of the materials that are going out to the public before they get their meter changed out are going to be updated and giving them some information about something that could happen. If
you've been living in a house for 40 years and you've never had the pressure of your of your pipes stopped and then restarted, there could be some plaque in the pipes that can break loose, etc. So I think overall it was a good resolution for Rose and I think Mor public service
did a nice job on that as well. Um we are also as a commission we've met with the city to talk about um the rental agreement between Morhead public service and the new city hall and those discussions are ongoing and I think that
that'll be resolved shortly. I attended a uh public policy meeting that was a recap of the Minnesota legislative session. Some of the things that I noted that they brought to light were that there
were no new income tax increases that were passed. That's good. No business tax increases that were passed is also good. They gave a lot of credit to Senator Coopek for helping with the border city legislation. Unfortunately, it was not supported by our local
legislator. So, that was dropped. Um, there was $200,000 that was allocated for the Klay County new psychiatric center, juvenile psychiatric center. So, that's good. They also talked a lot about the $9 million flood mitigation or
that's been given statewide and we really needed 18 million. So, it's a problem that we need to get some funding for to finish the diversion. Um, the TIFF tax increment financing was extended for five from 5 years to 10 years, which benefits our downtown
project. So, that was a good win for us. And then the cultural mall did not get um support from our legislature legislature. So, she did get some funding though from the legacy fund. So, that's a positive thing for her as well.
So, those were the highlights that I took out of that public policy meeting. Um, the Jeremiah program was excellent. I enjoyed that. I also attended a youthworks leadership awards night with the mayor. There were three young people
from Morehead that got awards which was really really enlightening and just just so fantastic for those young people. I attended um a meeting at the agriculture summit event and then um the CGMC also was selecting a site for next summer's
conference and I was part of that committee and we did that today. So we're making a recommendation to the CGMC board. That's it. All right. Um any other council members?
Seeing seeing none um for uh my mayor updates and reports. So since June 9th, I'm not going to repeat the ones that people have already mentioned that um I participated in. Um but on June 10th, uh Mayor Mahoney Mayor Dardis and I met with the council general of Canada, Beth
Richardson. Um um the council general really emphasized the need to continue our relationships with our Canadian friends and neighbors. um she expressed uh the concern from our Canadian neighbors um of of um some of the things
that are currently being said um within our our um administration. Um uh the other mayors and I discussed um how vitally important it is to have our relationships with our Canadian uh neighbors. Um, some of us even have
Canadians that are in our families. Um, and and really talked about that it's the people-to-people relationships that is really vitally important. Um, on June 11th, I participated in uh helping to make a film for the 65th anniversary of
the FM area foundation. And then on June 19th, uh, read the proclamation at the Junth event in Concordia. uh wanted to extend my gratitude uh to Fed Edwards for organizing Junth in Morehead again and from Concordia and MSUM for helping
to sponsor the celebration. Um in addition to the events that I mentioned, I also had 12 additional meetings related to city issues, concerns andor economic development that um I participated in in the last two weeks. So, that um is what I've been doing the
last couple weeks. And also, happy World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, which in my day job, we had 425 people attend um from the tri-state area and Minnesota. So, thank you for that. I'll turn it over to you, city manager Molly. Perfect. Thank you, Mayor. Uh so, River
Arts is this Wednesday, uh June 25th. It's around the stage in Viking Ship Park. So, activities begin at 5:30 and the music starts at 6:00. It's the G um the Gina Powers band um this week. So, that's a lot of fun. Um it was the first time in this area behind the M comp a
few weeks ago and uh my a lot of people that bring chairs out and families and kids running around and pony rides and food and it was it was it was really neat to see. Um so, and last week on uh June 18th, Wednesday, over 300 people
attended u the first Safe Cities Night event. um of this summer. Um this is one of the activities that's sponsored by the Police Activities League along with a number of um community partners and a special thanks goes out to Sergeant Scott Castor who does so much um his
leadership coordinating the whole thing, their contests and interactive displays, pizzas, dilly bars, it's a helicopter, it's the works. Um so the next safe city nights event is July 2nd at Alen Hopkins Elementary from 5:30 to 7:30. Um, just
want to congratulate and thank Detective Adam Toruson again and his family and everybody that showed up. That was just a really remarkable story. Um, yeah, it is. And then lastly, U Madson Field groundbreaking is next Monday, June 30th at 6:30 and everyone is
intended invited. All right. Thank you, city manager Molly. And we do not have um an executive session tonight or any new business. So, it's 6:59 and we will adjourn. So, good night, Morehead.