##VIDEO ID:ml7UrKIp1MA## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e good evening and welcome to the Newport city council meeting today is Tuesday November 19th we'll begin the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance IED aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and jce for will staff please call the role council member suner here council member chapalain here mayor Elliot here council member Taylor is absent and council member ingan is absent and on his way thank you um so we're meeting on a different night due to a conflict on Thursday evening uh which would have been our normal meeting night um the first item on our agenda this evening is to adopt this evening's agenda do we have any changes to the agenda hearing none I'll make a motion to adopt I'll second that so have a motion from council member chapalain and a second from council member suar any discussion all those in favor say I I those opposed the agenda is adopted next on our agenda is public comments this is for members of the public uh so they can address the council about any local government topic that is not on uh tonight's regular agenda this is limited to concerns relevant to the City of Newport Affairs policies or practices we ask ask that you come up to the podium and clearly state your name and address for the record and to limit your comments to about 3 minutes generally the council will not take any official action at this time but will refer matters to staff if appropriate is there anyone who would like to speak during public comments hearing seeing none uh we will move on to the consent agenda um the consent agenda all items are approved in a single motion and are considered to be routine by the city council there's no separate discussion unless a council member citizen or staff so requests in which case it will be removed from the consent agenda and considered after the consent agenda is approved is there anything to be removed from the consent agenda I'll move to adopt the consent agenda as published no second so have a motion from council member suar and a second from council member chapell any discussion all those in favor say I I those opposed the agenda is adopted next on our agenda is the Washington County Sheriff's Office report I see Sergeant harell was unable to attend this evening so we will move on to the fire chief's report and we have Chief Wy with us good evening mayor councel um just one item tonight um on December 1st Sunday couple weeks from now we'll be up at Newport Center holding our annual food and toy drive that benefits the friends in need food shelf um we'll be up there from 10:00 to 1 collecting food um toys or cash donations if you write a check please make the checks out to friends in need food shelf and as of today we have donation barrels in the North Pole restaurant and at Cloverleaf Bar and Grill so I'm sorry and what date was that Sunday December 1st from 10: to 1 December 1st okay thank you and that's all I had I'll stand for questions if any okay any questions okay thank you very much next we have the engineers's report is this anything that you want to wait till the hearing public hearing yeah I believe the the uh first item uh the sanitary sewer manhole and lateral uh replacement project will include the assessment hearing so we can uh we can open that at 6 p.m. um but just a quick update on our 2025 Street improvements project our our survey crews are are out in force picking up the uh topographical survey uh for the uh for that project so uh folks maybe seeing some guys in vests out with equipment doing survey work and we are going up the driveway a little ways to make sure that we uh are able to uh keep those driveways drained into the road so if folks see that that's uh likely our staff um you know working through those other than that I'm happy to stand for questions on anything else okay got a question will their vest have an identifier for your company or is it just a safety y they'll say they'll say MSA on the back and then they'll also be an MSA truck in the area Okay uh that they'll be able to see white trucks with uh gray lettering but having the name of the company does help people to know who who's on their property for sure and this is what areas the what we're looking at for the future for yep so this will be our 2025 at project so it'll be on Third Avenue from 21st down to 16th okay and then Second Avenue from 17th to 15th and then some additional work on 17th Street as well okay so South the city hall here this end of town correct okay that helps the citizens and residents yep that's all okay well thank you um we will return to you at 6:00 we have a um assessment hearing published for 6 P.M this evening and so we don't uh start that before the publish start time and um we'll continue with other City business until then um I see our superintendent of Public Works is not here did he have anything he wanted you to announce uh mayor members of the council just continued progress uh of course with the dog park uh but uh that's that's all he gave me before he took some some uh much deserved vacation time so okay well thank you and um do you have anything under your administrator's report other than the closed hearing I don't believe so mayor um but I'd be happy to stand for questions if there were uh questions for the council no questions so I am going to move on then to Mayor and counsel uh reports so just um I think uh two things one I saw that the Washington County um preliminary assessment notices are going out and so you'll be getting those um at our last Workshop meeting the council uh approved a 5.5 uh Levy uh increase for 2025 we didn't actually approve it we recommended it it will be at a Our Truth and Taxation hearing at our next meeting um which will be in December that is less than we certified so it'll be less than what you're seeing on those Washington County notices and I think a couple of things to understand about that is an average home value in Newport is about $35,000 the 5 5% increase is about a $25 annual increase to uh that value home so just a little bit over uh $2 a month on that assessment um for a $250,000 home that assessment increase is $7 a year and so a little over was right around the 50 cents per month Mark um a $400,000 home you're going to see about $64 a year increase for the city portion of your total property taxes um that you see coming through and just note when you get those notices it's it includes the school district and it includes the county there's some special taxing districts along with the city as well but this just gives you a little bit of real numbers as to how that might affect um your home or your um escrow accounts uh for the coming year and again that'll be formally uh adopted by the council at the next meeting um the other announcement I have is we're still looking to collect ice skates for um our ice rink and our warming house we let people use those skates for free we do rely on people to donate use skates that they're no longer using or that no longer um fit their children if you're willing to do that please drop them off at City Hall we're open from 8:00 a.m. to 4 p.m. so thank you with that uh council member ingan do you have anything thank you council member Chapan nothing to add tonight mayor thank you council member suar yes once again I'll remind people that our library is going to have a celebration on November 20th acknowledging 135 years of existence of the library it was in fact one of the reasons that Newport Incorporated all those years ago and also there will be Thanksgiving crafts November 23rd through the 25th so those are things that are coming up at our Public Library and we look forward to seeing as many members of Newport Community as can show up for that that sounds 6:30 that sounds great yes you can do some Christmas shopping it sounds like maybe yep all right and make some things y yes wonderful um with that we have come to the end of our formal agenda until the public hearing which won't be for another 15 minutes so at this time I would like to make a motion to go into a brief recess I'll make that motion thank second so I have a motion from council member chapalain and a second from council member ingan to go into recess until 6: pm. that's approximately 15 minutes from now um all those in favor say I I those opposed we are in recess so at this e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e thank you it's now 6:00 and the um Newport city council meeting is back in session what we have at this time is a public hearing and I'm going to turn it over to our city engineer John hergan thank you mayor uh good evening good evening folks uh tonight we have an assessment hearing for the sanitary sewer manhole and lateral replacement project so this is the second uh public hearing we've had for this particular project we had an improvement hearing uh back last fall in 2023 prior to construction so this evening you've uh received a notice for the for the hearing uh identifying the assessment amount for your individual property uh but I have a short presentation to uh review the project uh normally we will run through the presentation we can address any uh questions from the the council and then we'll open up the hearing for public testimony uh happy to answer any questions at that time uh what if you do have uh questions or want to provide feedback please uh step up to the Podium uh state your name and address for the record and then uh we can uh receive those comments uh After we receive all the comments we will close the hearing uh the council uh can ask any final questions and then we can uh they will potentially consider uh adopting this assessment so uh with the presentation here uh City of Newport completed uh 41 uh lateral service line Replacements and 20 T6 manhole Replacements I know this is kind of a small exhibit I apologize uh but primarily the work was in and around the Cedar Lane and Second Avenue area uh this is the area closest to the river as everybody knows and is most susceptible to our or to groundwater infiltration into the sewer line forgive me I uh second oh it was my next slide sor sorry uh and then we had a couple Pockets up here north of uh 21st Street North of city hall here and then ironically a little area over here on uh tibits and Ninth so the reason that we're doing this work is because we have uh um old infrastructure particularly our sanitary sewer allows for groundwater infiltration into the sewer lines which uh increases the amount of Wastewater that we send for treatment at the regional treatment facility uh in St Paul the city in turn gets charged for that additional water uh that that is treated and that those charges are are reflected on on everyone's utility bills so as I mentioned that we have uh aging infrastructure and a couple pictures here on the on the right hand side of this slide show some water seeping down our manholes water coming in uh at reinstated service line connections in to the main and even in some cases uh coming in uh at right at the manhole connection under some pressure uh the city received uh a $2 million Grant from the state legislature back in 2020 uh to repair some of these costs uh repair some of these deficiencies excuse me and the cost of the repair uh is largely being covered by this grant uh leaving about onethird of the cost of the uh of the correction to Property Owners we uh we certainly made a mess of the uh community over the last several months and so I thought perhaps just a few pictures to show some of the uh some of the work that was done and the challenges Associated would be would be helpful so this is our uh some of the manhole work uh so we did replace those manhole structures we uh we made a watertight seal uh between those structures and the and the main uh put new castings access castings on the tops of each manhole and then did some uh binous patching around the Disturbed area so kind of walking through these pictures from right to left uh this is the bottom of a uh of a manhole uh in the lower right hand corner here and the there's two pipes coming into this manhole so the manhole serves as an access point for uh for to get down and perform any kind of Maintenance work inside the sewer so the uh the new manholes are pre-cast concrete and they have gaskets on each of the uh of the barrel sections each of the round sections and then where the pipes come in these are rubber boots that create a watertight seal around the uh around the storm excuse me around the sanitary line and then we have the uh the light green uh pipe is new plastic pipe and then they connect to the existing line sewer pipe with another watertight connection uh often referred to as a as a fernco some of the challenges here are uh are kind of shown here in some of the other pictures we were down in some cases over 18 ft deep uh for reference this uh these pipes that are uh exposed and supported by an ibeam there those are about 7 ft deep and uh this gentleman is uh probably about my height and he is considerably lower than than those pipes so the uh there was some challenging digging very very close quarters you can see in the background that there's a lot of there's a lot of Bedrock which makes uh these uh construction projects um pretty difficult this picture here in the center shows where how close some of that water man was I think in this case I'm not sure I could squeeze my hand in between the uh the Water M and the and the new manhole that we put in so there's a lot of careful meticulous digging in this area uh in the upper Center picture here this is an example of where we put some additional um uh masking around the joints of the manhole as kind of a belt and suspenders approach to keep those uh keep water from uh from seeping in on those joints and then kind of moving into the uh uh left side here you can see not only were we contending with some water M these are all private utilities uh gas electri and some uh buried uh communication uh lines lastly once we get all the way up to the surface we are just uh getting ready to uh back fill with the gravel here you can see this black band wrapped around the top of the manhole that provides that seal between the access casting and the manhole this is kind of a tight stretched rubber uh material that uh uh it's often referred to as a chimney seal so this was a lot of the work that was done in the uh on the public right of way or within the public right of way and on public infrastructure so the grant that I mentioned previously the uh paid for 100% of these improvements and then moving on to the uh to the laterals I think these pictures are pretty telling of the conditions that the uh uh contractor was working in you can see in the center here how uh how the uh well I guess where the Bedrock was up to the surface and how challenging it was to expose these lines so what you see in the bottom of the trench here that's the sewer Main and then the uh the smaller pipe that's kind of extending upward is the lateral going to the house itself so this is uh this is a little bit deeper of a sewer and so this uh this piece is a vertical Riser maybe 3 to 4T tall and then it levels out uh and then is connected to the existing cast iron it's a little tough to see there they don't expose any more than they need to to make that watertight seal this uh picture in the upper right hand corner that that kind of is a little bit more zoomed in here but you can see how tight that trench is and again making a watertight seal on all three connection points in some cases we were able to use a saddle with a uh with an adhesive uh glue that we set onto the uh onto the main and so that's kind of a picture of what they were doing you can see the uh the lateral pipe here in the uh in the foreground of the picture that will eventually uh connect and then here's just another uh picture of of the uh the connection so the total costs of this Improvement and these are estimated because we haven't quite finished all the uh going through all the quantities yet we're a little north of 1.3 million uh about split half and half between the manhole replacement 26 of those and the lateral Replacements uh 44 of those laterals so each property connection uh is uh being assessed for $1,750 the remainder of that cost is either being paid through that Grant uh through the the state legislature and we also got a grant from Mech counil to do some of this work that helped keep these costs uh low uh I will mention that the uh one ,750 uh assessment does align with this uh with the project that we completed in 2023 which was a lining project where we didn't have to do any um any excavation work those costs were less expensive from an overall project standpoint because we didn't have to do the digging but we uh the council had uh had decided to keep those assessments the same um since uh it was I guess no fault of the property owner that we had to do the excavation work for this particular Pro or for this particular service so as far as uh or payments on the assessment so there are three options for payment uh the first option is that assessment can be paid in full uh within 30 days of this hearing which will be December 19th uh and there will be no interest assessed to that uh to those payments if paid in full within 30 days the second option is to pay that assessment over time with your uh with your property taxes so by annually those are May and October I believe uh if uh this option is chosen uh they the payments can be made over a 10-year period with an interest rate of 4% the first payment due on the uh either on the first Monday in January 2026 or along with the first half property tax statement uh you should I should note that the interest will acre uh from the December uh 19th 30 days from today until the uh until you make that first payment interest will ACR for that period and lastly you can uh you can pay off that assessment at any time during that 10-year period uh there's no prepayment penalty but interest for that year uh will be um will be uh included with that um or for that pay or for that payoff the city council will consider deferment options upon written requests uh some of the qualifications would be persons over the age of 65 uh retire or uh persons that are retired uh due to permanent or total disability or military uh uh Personnel on active duty now the uh deferment is uh would become due if any of those uh three um three conditions are no longer met and that interest does accw while that uh while those assessments are deferred so as I mentioned this is a uh a public hearing uh so we are interested in your feedback so uh once we address Council questions uh if you are interested in providing that feedback please uh come up to the podium uh state your name and address and then the uh and then we can do our best to address your questions at the close of the uh hearing the council may consider that adopting this uh assessment role thank you John um before I open the hearing does the council have any questions on this at all I think the only significant thing of note is that staff did go out and receive a grant from the Met Council to lessen the property taxes to this $1,750 um and they allowed us to do that for this private work that is is uh being done correct thank you yes nod thank you um and so uh because we didn't want one neighbor having an assessment of 1750 and a neighbor next door having an assessment uh for a th000 or more dollars simply because their pipes were lined up like this and they had to dig down and get them aligned whereas your neighbors might have not been very misaligned and they could just run the fabric liner through it and that fabric liner would Harden in place so um when John talked about things being through no fault of the homeowner um we just felt like in essence you're getting your your pipes fixed and some of you had bigger problems and some people had lesser problems and we just felt cost-wise it should be similar within the neighborhood and and thus they got the Grant and thus um that is is helping people out so um with that it is the time is 6:14 and I will now open uh the public hearing so anyone who would like to speak to the council about your assessment um any questions you have on the process procedure work that was done um John is happy to answer those questions please step up to the podium and and I will mention if there if there are Project Specific questions maybe not associated with the assessment itself um I can uh leave some business cards here and if folks want to give a hold of me uh to make sure that uh to make sure that we get those specific questions answered we can um I may have heard a Boulevard restoration question which we got we got a little bit late in the year uh for Boulevard restoration they were working up until uh after Halloween uh so they we do have uh we we did do a dormant seating uh in the Boulevard and that uh we're we're hopeful that that will come in in the spring if it doesn't uh the the city holds retainage from the contractor to make sure they come up and dress up any of those uh areas that may not may not grow grass through the winter thank you so another chance anyone who would like to speak to this okay seeing no one um uh coming up to the podium the time is 6:16 and I will now close the assessment hearing uh with that uh the next item on our agenda is to adopt uh the resolution relating to this assessment mayor I'll make a motion that we accept resolution 202 24-8 for resolution adopting the assessment that was just been explained by our city engineer thank you I'll second that thank you any discussion all those in favor say I I those opposed and the resolution is adopted was there anything else you need us to make a motion on nothing mayor okay with that we um the next item on our agenda is to go into a closed session which means um people in the audience will need to move um out of the council chambers we do have an upper conference room that you can uh wait in during the Clos session and um we will call you back in I think we've got some people here on a workshop item and um let you know when the closed session is completed so I will just uh wait for a few minutes while we clear the council chambers it shouldn't take too long what the oh so he's part of the real e