this conference will now be recorded I got to shut up I got six o'clock we'll call the meet in order we'll start with the pledge allegiance Al to flag the United States of America to the repblic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible
Justice I just need approval of the agenda I'll make a motion to the agenda second discussions all in favor all oppose passes 500 accounts payable Fred you review the account the accounts payable you're on
there well here they are Bob do you want to take com pable quick yeah just page two and and look at them Fred yeah so um I would just highlight a couple of them one was for the new flooring um for $2,621
40 um we had cameras that we approved uh for $2,273 um we also uh another one was for safe built for two months for fees 7,788 66 and the other one to note would be the fireboard uh for State um or for fire of 888634
14 I believe everything else was pretty normal we also did have that new pump um for the sewer for 9,858 186 which I think was discussed last meeting or last month yeah I would uh make a motion to approve the
accounts payable for $15,512.71 Bob um public comments uh individuals
will open the public comment portion individuals uh May address the city council about any item of concern speakers must State their name and limit the remarks to five minutes Greg hey well my name is Greg Mor I live here in Zoda um I just wanted to bring up an idea and a kind of a concern that uh me and a handful of other people have had um looking at a intersection on West Avenue and Fifth Street um I gave you a little packet there if you want to just kind of follow along as a kind of go through this I'll go through it real quick but in general um you know as we
all know cars and pedestrians don't don't work out very well sometimes um and looking at around school you know between 7 and 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 to 4: p.m. um Crossing is obviously the most dangerous and if you look at through the some of the statistics lately too um you know we're seeing 39% of high school students are reporting texting and emailing while driving in the past month uh they do it a lot right after school too you know their first kind of time of Independence they're getting in their car and they're driv driving along but it's not just the uh um drivers that are
having issues with paying attention to if you look at page three there you know one in four high school students were observed to be distracted Walkers one in six middle schoolers were observed to be uh distracted worker uh Walkers 80% of all students were observed crossing the street in an unsafe manner so it's just kind of this recipe for disaster um and I'm looking at uh um you know the School boundaries and the and the student crosswalks that are around the area right now uh I think the School boundary I don't know what the the specifics are for zro but in general it looks like
it's about 200 feet and then you know we reduce speed limits and so forth around it but on Fifth Street there um there is no school speed limit area and it's not designated as a specific uh um school route um so if you kind of move on to kind of those pictures there that West Avenue and Fifth Street kind of looking uh East on from West Fifth Street what you'll notice and I didn't really appreciate this till I kind of started looking into this more is that the street actually widens out right there so you know if you're thinking of your peripheral driving down that road now
there's this bigger area I mean even on this picture if you kind of study it it's kind of hard to tell if there's even a pedestrian standing there next to uh where that Jimmy's Pizza used to be so um it's not a great spot there's not a lot of visibility for for students that are crossing there there's a handful of students that do cross for dance um I don't have the exact numbers in front of me but it was it was averaged around maybe up to 100 per week that are are traveling Just For Dance um I know that you know there's a lot of other people that just come home that way too so um just kind of sitting there
and watching a few times I've seen a handful of times that Cars R are speeding a little too fast down there um kids are you know really just not watching very well and it's just it scares me and and kind of looking at what what what can be done about it so um I know this was brought up in the past I don't remember how long ago it was but um I guess you know the the the comment was you know why don't they cross one of the crosswalks um and if you look at L of the new school design over where the buses are and stuff now the kids are getting out in the back of the school they used to get out in the front of the school so it used to be
kind of easier to just kind of walk along that mid Street and you could cross the The Fifth Street there uh where there is a crosswalk and stop signs but now that the kid schools the kids are getting out at the uh at the bus stop in the back you know the straight kind of easy pathway is right down the the West Avenue so if kids were told that they can't go that way anymore and they need to cross at a crosswalk you know looking at this first picture um it add kind of four to five minutes of time to have to go all the way up to the front of the school um there's another alter or they could cut through that new parking lot but then it's kind of a recipe for disaster because the
kids are walking through a parking lot with a bunch of kids too so that didn't seem very good um if they kind of have to go up to Main Street that's an extra 600 feet you know another three minutes of time uh if they go down towards the crosswalk by the nursing home that's another four to five minutes of time too so you know if it's me and it's a day like this windy and cold I'm not going to walk an extra four or five minutes outside I'm going to want to just get across the street and I think a lot of kids are probably going to do the same thing regardless of what what you tell them to do um so you know the current
path is is more or less they get off the bus they go across the street there on on West AV and they walk into it's a straight shot over to this to the dance studio um and I think you know in terms of safety you know the desired path that these kids are taking kind of needs to be the the safest path that that that we can make for them so um I think there's a lot of other people that kind of you know there was a a petition I kind of started just to kind of get show that this not just me that's kind of thinking about this too and I think we've had over 170 people kind of say the same thing of you know hey this is this is
something to at least do a study on what can be done about it um and I just wanted to bring it to you guys to see you know is there a way to widen that street a little bit there for the for to make it more apparent like you guys did on uh on Mill Street in front of the school or can there be you know Flash and crosswalk things there or just something there to kind of just slow K slow the traffic down or make it more visible for the for uh students walking across so that's all I got one question I have for you Greg quick on page 12 we have a desired path needs
to be safest path I'm just trying to figure out what if that's somewhere is that just kind of an illustration no it's just just a path that you know you can design things and make people kind of you know want them to go a certain way but people are going to take the path to least resistance and um it's just a picture of you know people cutting through grass instead of taking a the longer sidewalk and I think when you talk about you know finding a crosswalk people aren't going to spend the extra four or five minutes to go all the way down the crosswalk they're going to cross cross the street where they came perfect um Brian made me aware of this
Tuesday that you had talked to Monday or Tuesday you had called so we have done some research um I think Fred talked to engineer a little bit about that topic am I correct on that Fred a little bit on that um I think we definitely need to do some studies some research I know there's some standards uh that we got to do on that my opinion I think stop signs or a four-way stop sign just is not practice iCal or good because it's so close to Main Street but I definitely
agree I know we had one of our officers sitting on there Wednesday I think Tony 2 sat out there just I was aware of it said hey we go sit here just to see what You observe so we've kind of been doing some activity on that research I just think we got to talk to the engineer a little bit more and there's some studies and some criteria to what takes so I do agree that I hate going by the dance studio even at 5:0 when I pick up the kids because there's kids running everywhere and the parents are dropping
them so I agree that we definitely need to look at it um I mean I guess that's my input on that and I think that's probably what we're g i mean I would like to do is direct the uh a city staff to do more research if it's the engineer if it's public works if it's Brian or all the above to do that so that's my opinion on that I don't know what other councils I mean Fred I think was talk a little more on that
yeah I can give you a few things that we that we do know as of right now because we did do a little bit of work on it I mentioned it to uh our city engineer and Fred and I sat with him today but we do what we do know is because we went and looked at the number of kids Tony Breck helped us with that U uh I believe uh SRO tan called up um the dance studio so uh Mondays they approximately 24 in dance Tuesdays approximately 27 and
Wednesdays approximately what 10 to 15 um total that would be coming from school and going there now very few of those walk um not to say it's not a dangerous intersection I walk that when we go on a walk in the evenings in the summer every night I walk that and you're right um so the three standards I won't go into those details of a bunch of acronyms but we did look at those a
little bit today as well and um stop signs don't they won't meet the requirements of of those standards which we which we should follow when we do that however uh some sort of a crosswalk configuration with u you know a painted crosswalk a couple of signs what type of signs is another thing you know rapid flashing beac are 50 to $60,000 uh which is a consideration um they're they're just the normal signs that we could put there um so there's a
number of ways to look at it we would meet the the criteria for for doing something like that the way it looks right now you know we've gotten into it a little bit but definitely need to to look at it some more and and uh make some proposals if the council wishes to see some things on okay these are some options bump outs are another tough one that's got to meet certain criteria for number of cars and all that good stuff too so um you know it's bump parts are they narrow the roadway so it's less
distance across they slow traffic down they're a real pain for plowing but when we're talking pedestrian safety it's something something we need to look at as well so at council's direction if you want us to pursue looking at a uh more of a study on that and what can be done there we're certainly willing keep going with that I think they be good so I think that'll be the recommendation just to have City staff uh Dev a little bit more and bring something back okay go
from there you bet thanks Greg thank youg any more public comments I will close the public comment portion and we'll run to consent agenda all items listed in the consent agenda are considered routine by city council and will approve by one motion there will be uh no separate discussion on these items unless council member requests in which the case the item will be removed from the consent agenda and be considered in its normal sequence of an agenda and the only thing
we have is the council meeting minutes from January 23rd I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda I'll second that any further discussions all in favor all right oppose passes 500 let's jump down to new business 88 resolution 2025 06 recognizing donations of the news zro
pool fundraising campaign Brian uh yes I've been work with our City attorney Mike flarity and wording for this um we have to accept by resolution all the the donations um and uh starting with the 2024 donations uh so this is a list of names and amounts donated uh in 2024 um that we have this is money that came in actual money is in an account a
separate account we will be sending letters to each one of these uh individuals and businesses as well stating that we've received and accepted the dollars for the specific purpose and it'll be held in a separate account uh until we build the pool um this does not include those that purchase bricks yet we'll do one for that still working on the wording that's a little bit different than than this one um or the pledges as the pledges come in uh we'll do resolutions um and from here on out we will do a resolution on each
individual big you know $50,000 donation or the big ones we'll do separate resolutions as they come in so you'll start seeing these um probably well hopefully at each council meeting hopefully we have a bunch of those those big ones to to accept but uh this is the start um just looking for approval I'll make motion any further discussions all in
favor what roll call oh yeah God good job Sarah I mean Bob Bob Bob all right Joan hi Kevin hi Fred and I I passes 5 z z good cat uh let's jump to report Brian uh yeah Sanitary District we are to schedule meetings with uh bonding committee members Senate bonding
committee members and we'll start that next week heading up to the capital I think we've got oh I think one next week and one the week after so far but they tend to fill in so we have you know three or four every day or not every day every day we're up there once a week typically maybe twice a week depending on when we can get into those offices so um continue to design on that um we're just uh need to work with the legislature to to get more funding and keep it moving um we have a pool committee meeting
again Monday here at City Hall at 6 PM we've raised just over $56,000 now that includes the bricks and the pledges so that's that's all total um and that's that's where we're at with with those things don't think I have anything else perfect you want to wait for okay uh Curtis nothing tonight uh Tony uh the police department
remodels underway uh we've got the new flooring looks like about 50% or better complete as well as some of the painting uh the hope is that it'll be wrapped up tomorrow then we move all our stuff back in help the moving company and getting it set back up so we can open for business Monday perfect I'm guessing the furniture movers will be back about noon or 1 tomorrow take them an hour hour and a half and and then you can reset put everything back and hopefully it fires up perfect
hopefully all the technology fires up yes thanks guys we've had uh hostile event response training uh in goodu which was a joint training with Southeast uh Minnesota agencies that went well a lot of other training coming up for folks this month as well uh we expect to have officer Kurtis on leave but we' got his shifts uh taken care of between myself and our part Tim so we'll be at strength we will be having to go
down with staff perfect thanks Tony thanks ctis Kimberly tonight Mike just thinking back a little bit on sanary District they got W yes and their staff put that together that's is really user friendly from what we saw and I think there'll be more information coming you guys on
that putting together quotes now cing the entire system sewer system in town last time that was done was4 gets to be while Rec what years we clean some of the ponds out We R the got way out the hand and that's just part of it think
we're going to have some dredging of those I have two things what's wsn Smith they're the engineer engan district isine has their engine okay perfect and the dredging you guys
can do yourself or is that something we got to hire out shoe markers probably perfect okay thanks are all these P are responsibility there some that are and the other ones that aren't a responsibility do they just automatically clean them or we have perfect thanks Mike I just have one
quick thing uh first of all I want to thank uh Brian Hogan and Elizabeth City administrator from Pine Island and then Bob and I and Kim and Brian we did uh interviews today uh the deputy City administrator we had 12 applications we were going to interview six and four of them accepted the interviews we interviewed those today and we're calling back to uh miles Rob
he's an administrative intern in Shaka currently and then Renee while she's a a deputy clerk in or was a deputy clerk in oronoko now in Yoda so we're doing a second interview with those on Tuesday because we have two great candidates there so we just uh just do a little more casual interview and just ask a couple questions to see if we can uh make a decision so it was a long day and I want to thank the two Outsiders
that came and helped that with Brian hog and Elizabeth that's all I got nothing tonight Jo nothing tonight Kevin just an update on the the ambulance um the receptor of that grant money for 165 it hadn't been delegated yet um but um it's usually a portion to can go to things like equipment um especially a new rig um in our case our area ambulance is very financially
responsible they've already got their money put aside for that so the use of it is going to go towards the payroll to just it can be applied to that instead so just uh flaud the ambulance for getting the Grant and as well as already being fiscally conservative as it is so perfect that it Kevin that's thank you Brad welome meeting adour is that the fastest one maybe the
fastest one close close