call the meeting to order ask you to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands nation under God indivisible with liberty and
justice tonight we have uh some presentations and words to give out on beh the city of wined we offer our congratulations as members of the wined volunteer fire department celebrate significant anniversaries with the city of winsteads congratulations on reaching
these important milestones we are pleased to honor your achievements and the part you play in maintaining your commitments to the citizens and businesses of Winstead please accept our heartfelt thanks and good wishes on the anniversary of your employment you are all valuable members of this team and we
look forward to you your ongoing cont contributions to the City of Winston is with great pride we present the awards to the following Jake Herzog for 10 years of service no Jake and also 40 years of
service for Jim got a plaque for your gy how many of those you have [Applause] here's a 40 more Jim make sure thank them on behal of
City we're not going to go into the conscent agenda first we're going to move all the way down to the um organization report because our youngster has a place he has to be shortly after we leave here so we'll put
them on first so winst the baseball association thank you for moving it I got my daughter's kindergarten round out so I'm Matt rogi Winston baseball association chairman of the board I help fund fund raise and help run the Winston Wildcats
organization uh right now the season started about a week ago two weeks ago uh we're we have a decent amount of players so we're good there uh they've won one game lost four or so but we got a young group so we're trying to build
some of that young group from Howard Lake and Lester Prairie School Districts to keep building that around them so uh in the past year we've de done some improvements to the field we just finished a putting up a batting cage got
to do some a little bit tidy up there and we're planting grass and making that all look good for the community to use along with our teams that respectively play there uh some teams that play there is the Howard Lake Waverly Winston School District both JV and varsity um
some Youth Baseball Association teams and Lester P Legion sometimes dabbles in that field too so any questions for me from me you guys did you ever apply for um Channel 9 to come out no we have
not okay NOP uh with that it takes a lot of help from the you know Community areas and with us just hosting regions we kind of were taking a step back a little bit on that but it's definitely if they keep doing it it's definitely something we could look into okay
so if you need any help Jeff will help okay get some fox9 connections or not that I'm aware of no they they do about five or six a year and there's there's a long waiting list I think so well it's a good
PR for the team and Community yep it's it's neat to see how much that field is used I mean was there something there last night uh maybe not last night there was there Sunday Sunday we had a town team game there you get great crowds H
yeah we've we played on it I coached high school at Howard Lake and we've played on it I would say eight nine times plus along with some practices there along with wild cats will have 910 games also I know there's some Youth Baseball there going to be about 9 10
games so there's some good good crowd Getters there and it's good to get some publicity out there for that so well you've done a lot to improve the park so congratulations thank you
yep how about your batting cage project yep talk about a little bit okay uh yeah so the old batting cage was kind of folding in so we completely with the help of the city we completely tore down that uh we graded out a an area where
there was some flooding issues so we graded that out and then um we had some help of some local guys to come and dig 7 foot holes in there to to put the post there and then and we bought a new batting C and then now this should be
good for 10 15 more years so and it'll be fully lined with Turf we have a pitching mountain in there Turf based you know some Turf platforms there also so any local businesses you might want to mention that yeah I would like to I'd
like to thank uh RAM buildings for helping us there uh some other local guys we'd like to thank you know the Winston Wildcats organization the board members on there um we'd also like to thank Luke long he was a big help there um Ben dusy was some notable help along
with his kids and I don't think I'm forgetting anyone else the City of Winston be good one too so how about where you were oh AWI yeah yeah sorry put me on the spot
here oh it's good to see the community helping out and Yeah well thank you for all you do yeah thanks man but you're not getting a raise I know that's okay any other
questions if not thanks thank you guys y good night make it thanks man I'm gonna make it hope you learn a lot yeah um just to go on a little bit for the Winsted youth baseball and then uh Rick Balman who has
done it for a number of years has passed that part on to the hlww Community Ed and so there is a transition period going on right now um they're adding programming in all three of the communities and we have I think we're
going to going to have four teams that will be playing for coach pitch in our community uh we have two teams that'll be two t-ball teams on Tuesdays and Thursdays most of the t-ball will be down at westgate's field the Machine Pitch we have two teams and those will
be for uh those will be on self viw and then the coach pitch is between South viiew and Barrett on Mondays and Wednesdays so you'll see a lot more activity going on in those fields here shortly we ended up as far as throughout
all three of our communities for the Laker baseball association we have excluding the teams that I just mentioned we have 12 other teams so typically two to three teams at each grade level and a lot of participation
so we should see a lot of action around here this summer the uh individual that does our city mowing is he aware of the schedule so that he can make sure the fields are mowed uh yes he is now yes okay he
knows anything else no I don't have anything unless you guys have questions on the youth baseball stuff for me questions on the blue leaks though nope okay then we'll move on to the consent agenda night's consent agenda consists of the following items item a approve the minutes of the following city
council work session April 16 city council regular meeting April 16th Item B authorize advertising for bidding for the well number five project contingent upon receiving approval from the Minnesota Department of Health item C approve the pledge Securities that the
Security Bank and Trust company has purchased for the city of Winsted for the month of April 2024 item D approved the building permit report for the month of April 2024 item e approved the financial report for the month of March 2024 last item is claims approved claims
list for May 21st 2024 that's the consent agenda I'm looking for a motion Mr Mayor a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented I abstain from voting on item C we have a motion do we have a second I'll second have a motion
a second all in favor opposed motion carried no old business but we have a number of things for new business and the first item is a city council appointment and oath of office for Mr Tim Fury so at our last council meeting we
had passed a resolution for um Mr Fury to take over council member Ebert's spot until the end of the year uh Mr Fury has participated on our Park commission he said for how many years 20 uh I think 14
or 15 14 years and then has also been on our our Planning Commission so making that next step he should fit right in here with the council for the next uh 6 months here or so so with that we're looking for a motion I'd make a motion to appoint Mr
Tim Fury an eligible city of winad Resident to fill a vacant City Council seat with a term expiring December 31st 2024 and authorize the city clerk Treasurer to conduct the oath of office for Mr Tim Fury we have a motion we have
a second second a motion second all in favor I opposed motion carried Tim you're up Tim United States and thetion of the State Minnesota and
congratulations Tim welcome board thank you uh next item we'll talk about ordinance 0 or 0- 24-02 map amendment to re Zone the recently annexed areas Neil yes so when
we annexed in these areas late last fall when they finally get their annexation approval all these areas come in zoned egg District um so this process here is just rezoning each of those Parcels to
be more conducive to what they will actually be used for I don't know I don't have anything else else with that um besides that it was all it was recommended at the Planning Commission um to go to a four nothing or was recommended with a form
or nothing vote to agree to the way that they are sitting up there right now counc have any questions or Neal no then we're looking for a motion um a motion to adopt ordinance 0- 24-02 recommending approval of map
amendments to the official zoning map of the city of Winstead as referenced in Chapter 15 Section 1 zoning ordinance Section 1 151 034 letter B of the Winstead Municipal
Code we have a motion do we have a second I'll second it all in favor I oppos motion carried next item resolution r- 24-16 minor subdivision 114 Lyndon Avenue East County Road 6
Neil yes uh a few months ago Mr Campbell had approached me with the idea of splitting off his lot that he owns at 114 Lyon Avenue into three lots making for a minor subdivision this will allow
us to have two more buildable Lots in the in uh the city and as you are well aware we are short on lots to be able to build into the city in order to do so we have to um get water and sewer to those
lots because there is not currently there and Mr Campbell has agreed to pay for the first $50,000 of those utilities and then we would be taking anything over the top of
that um it sounds like he has very high potential of having these sold very soon and actually being built on this year yet yes and I don't know if you want to say anything Jeff or you had anything to
add really that's perfect thank you so if you're looking here's the property uh right here and really the way he's got divided will come just straight across on both of these Lots so it matches up perfectly within the where
where does the surfaces come from surfes come from Hunter Circle so they'll be right there so that that route will be closed down for 2 and a half months based on the heral journal yeah it'll be a little bit different on this one this one won't be this is a more of an
arthroscopic surgery instead of the open there was some sarcasm in my statement I got it yes it'll be underground boring is what it'll be oh okay so minimal disruption to the road any questions for Neil or
Jeff no I can uh make a motion if you're good all right um consider a motion to adopt resolution r- 24-16 recommending approval of a minor subdivision a property located at 114
lyen Avenue East count Road 6 subject to conditions we have a motion do we have a second a second motion of second all in favor I I opposed motion carried Mr Mayor I'll
obstain okay get that MH okay next item is the Winston Police Department joint and Cooperative agreement Neil okay so as you you guys are aware we've been working on a few things here with the the police department and working with Lester Prairie on a
possible um joint department and uh last week it was in the paper a few things from that side so I thought well let's go ahead and just quickly go over uh where we were at and how how we got to this point and letting
our residents know so the starting point uh we started by renewing the jpa we had to uh cancel the jpa for a little while when we were down to just two staff members as part of our department and um once we you know as
you are well aware we now have four four full-time officers and we're able to renew the joint Powers agreement for working on the weekends and that has worked out really well uh then we went into those discussions came into a possible expansion of the jpa so should
we be doing more and with the Le Prairie Police Chief set to retire November 2025 um talks had begun of maybe we should merge into one Department because they Lester knew it was going to be
difficult for them to replace a chief um in that in that spot and this might be the best for both communities so possible merger discussions I think it's really important to understand that the two becomes one it is one separate
Department um it is no longer the Winston Police Department it's no longer the police department is something completely different um and coming up I did a a draft agreement um just to try to
outline a few things and um we had a few meetings and hammered out a few different items in that draft agreement as how things might possibly go so why why should we merge number one
reason and I don't think this can be said enough is uh safety and resp response so for safety and response time this will and I have it down here but it will reduce call time and if you have an officer that's on
duty ready to go you have a much quicker response and with the number of medical calls that we're having now we can get somebody there and it literally is a matter of life and death for that person um scheduling this allows us to be a
little bit more flexible in our scheduling and how we can have our officers working at um particular times and and being on a schedule that is more conducive to them wanting to stay around again going back to reducing call time
that has been the number one reason that people would um that they say that they would search Elsewhere for different different employment we attract more officers and coming on and um if you
know or if you remember if you were here I guess at that time we had discussed having a fifth officer to fulfill our roster and this would re you know reduce that need for that fifth officer because now we'd be having a department of seven
officers some roadblocks so when I was researching police mergers and the number one thing that came up was choosing a chief and what that possible roadblock would would be that's why this felt like an opportune time for us to organize with the retirement of Chief
Carlson in 2025 our our chief is um fairly obvious I guess I would say so our chief Justin H would remain the chief of this new department so Crossing that off the list
but I want you to be aware of why we got to that point um some other roadblocks are the reorganization costs just like if you're merging businesses there's going to be some redundancy there's some overlap and you also have to make sure that we're using all the same equipment
and and who's bringing what to the table at that point what equipment are we going to use and how do we just standardize that for all of our officers and I think that's another possible roblock or hurdle is understanding that these are all
there's not Lester cops again I said it but I want to say it again not Lester prair cops there's not winad cops there's whatever our new department is and that's it so all of the officers will be working in both towns if that makes sense um money of course you know with
anything can be a roadblock initially that initial budget going through some of those pains of getting things set up and um finding out where we have some of those inefficiencies might take a year or so so trying to figure out how how
to what what those dollars are and it initially it might be a little bit more expensive for us I think in the long run we'll be able to reduce those inefficiencies and it will be better for everybody and then of course um how are
we going to split the cost we are a little bit larger town we tend to winad is a little bit larger City and we have um more calls typically so how are we going to split that cost with Lester
Prairie then our next steps narrowing down a budget uh if you read in the paper I threw out a a budget that was very high view of a 1.2 million which obviously is a very high number
um but that is where we were at at that cost um I'm going to meet with the L per city clerk hopefully next week and narrow that down a little bit closer to see how we can um move forward or separately and I
think it's important to note that if we can make this work I do think I truly believe it'll be the best for both communities but we have to understand that right now we're in a very good spot where we do have four full-time officers and we have
um a real dedicated team here right now that that hopefully we can keep together for a long time so we're not lacking services and actually we're ahead of a lot of communities as far as our police services but I don't think we should pass up on any opportunity to look to
make things better even if we can improve it marginally and and this I think it's going to be this would be a big Improvement as far as being able to respond again and having safety not just for our public
but really for our officers as well you know this should keep them fresh and uh ready to go the time so I just want to give you guys a quick update of kind of where we were you know after that it come out um I know a lot of our
calls are medical um do we know what their level of Medicals are no okay I do not I guess I haven't been in there the only reason I bring it up is if they're
we are discussing joint uh Department maybe there's some way of having a joint response for Medicals I think yeah I think that's a d you know a direction that we could go at
some point I think this can lead to definitely sharing more city services otherwise if we can come to an agreement I think that it it would be good so Chief help do you have anything to add that you would like to
or yeah I just think uh Neil's done a lot of work on this and these discussions have uh on the high end been happening for a couple years now even when City administrator burkels was here or ex City administrator burkels and ultimately it just comes on a service I believe we owe our communities 24-hour
coverage um and I think we can do that if we move to something similar to this and it's the people we work for so that's that's the goal so that's all I have to add I have a question Jus yeah um you have two officers yourself included in that that I first stage uh
myself and officer lers are EMTs and uh officer Moon and officer C are emergency responders do we know what Lester Prairie has uh I do not is that might be another Avenue to explore because they may want to right
just ask any other questions for Justin or police are always the first responder right and yeah generally when we're on duty we are the first ones there for a couple minutes um it can be even more than a couple minutes but typically we
are I Jim's here yet fire chief isn't but there's times when I'm on call I can still beat the fire department there too so depends how well I'm does Lester Prairie's fire department respond for Medicals yep yep [Music]
fire inad there's the automatic call that Wester Prairie is here the same thing over automatically get over there so in a sense you already have a joint Powers kind of arrangement yeah
any other questions for Justin so we can get up this time and St thank you I'll just stay here yeah sure that's fine thanks Justin any questions for Neil on
this if not we'll move on to the uh open Forum if anybody wants to address the council step up to the podium and name and address and have at it yep Cloud wall 3 21st Street North I
know I brought this up to the city administrator two months ago about getting some of the storm drains cleaned up I another the one across the street that's well I'd say 6 years one in front of a post office and the old hardware
store the other one at the other end of the block and or plugged up and don't drain and I just wondering if well get somebody to clean them out or yeah so we have talked with um I already have talked with Public Works about cleaning some of those out and some of
them are scheduled to be um you know jetted here soon so that's all I can tell you on that we've wonder I mean is it's going to be some type of a regular schedule then that's going to be done rather than in all honesty that's our goal for everything we're really pushing
to have a regular schedule on all of our stuff so I mean that's it's it's kind of a pain and then um I know up here the curb at the North had be the north side there of the
school is down in so all that water that would normally go into that drain doesn't it goes across the street and comes down my way to my drain which really can't handle the water now if there's something they could maybe make a
bigger uh put in take the water or bigger catch Basin or something cuz I just cleaned it out yesterday cuz a lot of the grass that was built up where it comes from I I mean I know they got a policy you're
supposed to not blow grass in the street but obviously people do it yeah yeah I think all those things help right and hopefully we'll be clean our streets more here and uh got to me not
so much cleaning the street it's a well it's keeping the debris out I mean that's the idea people that you know is there something you can do to these people that violate that cuz I mean you can see where it's getting done it isn't like they can hide it it's
right out in the street yeah I think uh probably Step One is education and maybe we start stop or start by stopping at their places and talking to them and and hopefully say hey we can't be doing that and then they
okay stop well no that's that's step one and then we'll see how that goes right all right thank you yeah thanks thanks anybody else Tom um I was contacted by a member
of the weinbeck family who had heard that we may be oops may be drilling a well in the weinbeck sports complex field and they were concerned about where it would be located and how big
the building would be so that it wouldn't deter in the future if there was a track built there or something so I think all they really are looking for is that when we identify where the well is going to be drilled and how big the
building is going to be that um they're informed okay and yeah as of right now there won't even be a building there um so it'll it'll be a very small footprint and if everything goes as planned or if
we can drill where we want to it'll be right of uh right field of the baseball field so it should be really out of the way okay so the northwest corner of the correct yep well just just to make sure that they're notified appreciate
that you have any announcements I have a couple uh we have our new street lights are finally getting put up and hopefully they will be lit up or at least the first section will be lit up by the end of the week here and uh just excited to see those
and long project uh that has taken our Public Works guys quite a bit of extra effort uh due to where wires were located and we've had to do a little bit of extra cutting and so there'll be a little more sidewalk out and a little
more sidewalk that needs to get repoured but exciting that it's finally getting done and then our Winston Police Department has the Bike Rodeo tomorrow at 6 p.m. at wnst elementary that's it that's all I have
Tim did you have anything no sir Tom no Jeff he look for a motion to adjourn I'd make a motion to adjourn have a motion do we have a second second all in favor I I
Clos meeting adjourned welcome