This transcript has been formatted with speaker names based on the provided context and common municipal roles. Please note that "Jack Griffin" is a frequent consultant engineer for Lake Elmo, and "Council Jackson/Jaguch" are identified as the most likely matches from your provided official list (Nick Dragisich and Nick Kragness). [00:00:00] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** guy sitting in the front rows. Uh, good evening. Going to call the Lake Elmo City Council meeting for Tuesday, July 1st, 2025 into order. Please stand with me for the pledge of allegiance. [00:00:15] **All:** I pledge allegiance 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 justice for all. [00:00:25] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Thank you. Um, first order business is uh approval of the agenda. Is everybody okay with the agenda? Anything add, take away? If not, I'll uh I'll uh entertain a motion. [00:00:35] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** Move to approve the agenda as written. [00:00:37] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Second. [00:00:38] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** All those in favor in approving of the agenda, uh please signify by saying I. [00:00:42] **Council Members:** I. [00:00:43] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Agenda is hereby approved. This evening, we'd like to uh celebrate uh firefighter Brian Johnson. If uh chief would go to the podium for presentation. [00:00:52] **Fire Chief Dustin Kalis:** Uh good evening, mayor and council. Tonight we get to celebrate Brian Johnson number 47 on retirement from the Lake Fire Department. Brian joined the department in December of 1992 and retired March 31st uh 2025. He served over 32 years with our organization and served the city um to the to the highest standards. He was a great ambassador for our fire department. Um he left a lasting impact on what we're doing in so many different aspects of our operations. Um his knowledge of our apparatus, fire oper fireground operations and uh pancake recipes has helped build this department throughout his entire career. [00:01:40] **Fire Chief Dustin Kalis:** He served as a firefighter, lieutenant, and last as our um basically our lead engineer of the department. Um this guy can run a truck out there um with his eyes closed and hands tied behind his back and and knows exactly what's going on with these things. Um, not only has our fire department benefited from Brian's guidance, um, his through his knowledge and passion for the fire service, but he's also left his mark on a generation of firefighters in the east metro through numerous trainings and, um, so much time spent on fire scenes just operating with these with these folks. [00:02:15] **Fire Chief Dustin Kalis:** Um, the contributions Brian's made uh to our fire department will never be forgotten. And this is definitely a well-earned retirement over over his time. And I'm really really happy. He's been a a huge uh kind of guiding um, you know, factor for me as a as a new chief here and just kind of filling me in on what the the history of the department and city and really helping me out as my time, too. So, I I definitely appreciate that as well. So with that, um, we honor Brian in appreciation and recognition for 32 years of dedicated service to the city of Lake Emo and the Lake Emo Fire Department. Congratulations. [Applause] [00:03:00] **Fire Chief Dustin Kalis:** Julie's here. We're gonna get some photos. [00:03:02] **Firefighter Brian Johnson:** I know. I know. I'm just gonna sit here quietly. I don't have any— [00:03:05] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Congratulations. [Applause] I always appreciated attending uh city events and uh Brian would be there and he'd smile and do a little chitchat with me so I didn't wander around what was going on. But so somebody else in the fire department's going to have to take up that mantle for you. [00:03:20] **Firefighter Brian Johnson:** All right, sounds good. Thanks. [00:03:22] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** All right. Next, we have public comments and inquiries. I don't think we've had anybody sign up for that. Okay. Approval of the minutes from June 17th, 2025. Um, I did notice one thing— [00:03:35] **City Clerk Julie Johnson:** Um in the um in the in the uh approve resolution number 2025-045. That motion passed on a 4 to one. I corrected that reached out and it's been swapped out. [00:03:45] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Okay. Thank you. appreciate it. Since that's been changed and there no alterations from my standpoint, anybody else got a anything? If not, I'll entertain a uh a motion to approve— [00:03:55] **Council Member Nick Kragness:** motion to approve the uh May 15th, 2025 minutes. [00:03:58] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Uh June 17th, uh June 17th, sorry. We are now in July those ones. [00:04:02] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** Can we do a friendly minute? Make that Jill June motion to approve the minutes from uh June 17th. [00:04:08] **Council Member Nick Dragisich:** Is there a second? Second. [00:04:10] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** We have a motion, a second for June 17th, 2025 regular and special meeting minutes. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. [00:04:18] **Council Members:** I. I. I. [00:04:20] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Okay. Big long consent agenda this evening is uh the agenda reads approve payment of dispersements and payroll. Uh, can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda? [00:04:30] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Move to approve the consent agenda. [00:04:32] **Council Member Nick Kragness:** Second. [00:04:33] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** We have a motion in a second. All those in favor of approving the con consent agenda item, please signify by saying I. [00:04:38] **Council Members:** I. I. I. [00:04:40] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Okay. Moving into our regular agenda audit presentation. I thought I had that up. That is your queue, sir. [00:04:45] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** All right. My name is Ryan Schmidt. I'm a partner with company. I'm going to walk us through the results of the 2024 audit. Am I navigating this myself as I go, I suppose? There we go. Okay. So, I always like to start out with a little bit of a reminder of what exactly the purpose of an audit is and what is it that we do during an audit. [00:05:05] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** So from a really high level, an audit consists of us obtaining your financial records and information from the past year 2024. And we perform a number of procedures over this information. So basically what we're doing is we're looking at the transactional data in your accounting system, the information that comes together to make the financial statements, and we're looking at support for those transactions. So, we look at invoices, we look at bank statements, we look at reports from the county and the state, all for the purpose of being able to express an opinion on whether or not we feel that your financial statements are accurate. And what we've given you this year is what's called an unmodified opinion. And that is a clean opinion and the same opinion you've received in prior years. [00:05:50] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** Next page here, uh, just kind of talks about how the audit went. So, if there were any difficulties during the audit as far as obtaining the information we needed or if we ran into significant delays or we had any, you know, unusual accounting policies or transactions we ran across, this is where we would tell you about it. But as you can see from the page here, nothing like that was identified. Everything went very smoothly. [00:06:15] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** Next page here, uh, talks about internal controls and compliance. So, as part of the audit process, you know, yes, we're looking at the numbers, but we're also looking at the processes and procedures that are behind the numbers. And then we also have to review certain areas for compliance with Minnesota statutes. So, just working my way left to right here, uh, starting with audit adjustments. You know, a lot of the cities we work with, we post a lot of audit adjustments. So what this means is that during the audit process as we come across errors or things that need corrections, things that were coded improperly, we help, we make an adjustment, we make these corrections. But as you can see, you actually didn't have any significant audit adjustments. None to the point where we would consider it to be a finding or a material issue. So that's that's a good thing. That's better than a lot of the cities that we work with. [00:07:05] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** Now, the next item here, uh, internal controls. Here we have a lack of segregation of duties. So this is one that's very common. Um you've you've seen it in the past. We've reported it in prior years. Basically this is saying that your accounting functions aren't segregated to the extent that's considered ideal. You do have decent segregation of duties. You do have checks and balances and oversight and controls in place, but there are still certain people who have pretty full access to the accounting system and we want you to be aware of that. And then the last item on here, our review of your compliance with Minnesota statutes. Essentially, the state gives us checklists every year that go over various areas. You know, how did you go about contracting and bidding? How do you pay and approve your bills? Where do you keep your investments and cash, etc. And we didn't find any in any instances of non-compliance there. Everything looked good. [00:08:00] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** With that, we'll move into the numbers. Uh going to start out by looking at the general fund and a little bit of a historical big picture trend analysis here. Um so we have the general fund here 2020 through 2024 and then the budget on the right hand side there as well. So just really big picture revenues did exceed budgeted amounts by about $1,7,000 and expenditures were below budgeted amounts in the general fund by about $378,000. So overall you had budgeted for a slight decrease in your fund balance about 43,000. Your actual increase was about 1.4 million. [00:08:40] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** Now the next couple pages break down these same revenues and expenditures into greater detail. We'll kind of look at where those differences were. So this next page here shows the general fund's revenues um broken down into smaller categories. You can see taxes and assessments. is of course the largest revenue category for the general fund. And here you were basically right on budget. That was that was about as close as it gets. Um all of these all the the remainders were slightly overbudget. Um the largest being your investment gains and losses that was over budget about uh $364,000 of additional investment earnings. um intergovernmental which is essentially your state aid your state funding over there by about 267,000 and then charges for services you know zoning plan check fees etc over budget there by about 140,000. [00:09:30] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** Next page, same layout but looking at expenditures broken down into greater detail. um almost every category here you were under budget Um the largest being under public safety here you were under budget by about 264,000 that was driven almost entirely in fact more more than entirely by building inspection costs. So that was the driving factor there for that budget budgetary difference on the left hand side. The other one that stands out just slightly is the general government category. There you were under budget about $90,000. The rest were pretty close. [00:10:05] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** Next page. Still looking at just the general fund, we have the unassigned fund balance at the end of the year as a percentage of next year's budgeted expenditures. So you have a policy in place to set a target floor or minimum fund balance here for approximately 50 to 60% of the following year's budgeted expenditures. You can see you did have an increase this year and you're up to about 130%. And then the next page just shows the cash over the past five years, which this fluctuates a little bit just based on the timing of when you pay your bills and, you know, what kind of payables and receivables you have and, you know, the timing of when that comes in. So, but that uh held pretty steady compared to last year. [00:10:45] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** All right, with that, we'll move away from the general fund, take a quick look at a a couple of your other funds kind of lumped together in larger categories here. So you have you have numerous funds in in your full financial statements, but we're going to look at all of your debt service funds in aggregate as well as your capital project funds in aggregate. Debt service activity here was pretty typical, pretty much what you would expect. Revenues from taxes and assessments. Expenditures are your principal and interest payments on your debt. Overall, an increase in fund balance there of about 651,000 for the year. [00:11:20] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** Capital project funds. This fluctuates a lot more from year to year just based on the nature of the funds, whatever projects you have going on. The revenues here consist primarily of state funding and about a million dollars of park dedication fees are wrapped in there as well. Expenditures for that's your capital projects that the costs for whatever projects you had going on. That's 7.1 million. That was mostly the 2024 street utility project and the Hudson Boulevard improvements along with various other projects. Then the other sources you see there of about 5.5 million that's the 2024A bond issuance and some transfers from other funds. So overall an increase in that category of about 1.6 million. And then the next page just shows the cash in both of those categories over the past five years. Debt service doesn't fluctuate a whole lot. That's basically what we would expect to see. and capital projects that jumps around a little bit based on the timing of when bond proceeds come through and then when those you know the cash is actually spent. Uh there you had an increase of about 2.9 million for the year. [00:12:30] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** With that we'll move into your enterprise funds, your water fund, sewer fund and storm sewer fund. Uh the first slide here looking at your water fund the graph focuses just on operations. um so this does not include uh some significant revenues from connection fees and any state grants etc. This is basically just charges for usage and then the operating expenses. um so operating revenues went down by about 415,000. You can see 2023 was a little bit of a spike and that decrease was mostly due to changes in consumption water usage. Operating expenses also went down just slightly about 22,000. [00:13:10] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** And then the nonoperating items that you see there that nonoperating revenue of 8.4 million a good chunk of that about 3.6 is developer contributions. So what this means is that when a development in the city is completed, the developer turns over the asset to the city and you recognize that as city infrastructure as an as an asset. And when you put that on the books, you have to recognize a corresponding revenue. So it doesn't represent cash flows, but it does increase the net position of the fund. So you'll see that later when we look at the cash for each of these funds that even though you had an overall increase in net position here of 6 million that's not representative of an increase in your cash. [00:13:55] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** Next page here, same layout for the sewer fund. Here we had an increase in operating revenues of about 108,000. Operating expenses also increased about 499,000. And then once again the operating non-operating revenues down at the bottom of about 5.5 million. A good portion of that is again developer contributions along with connection fees, some other items. Overall an increase there of 3.4 for your net position. [00:14:25] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** And the next page, same layout again for the storm super fund. um increase in operating revenues here of about 76,000. operating expenses up about 103 133,000 and then that non-operating revenues it's almost entirely developer contributions and then for each of those three funds we have the cash balances over the past five years and as I mentioned despite the increases in overall net position because of those assets that were recognized your cash itself actually held pretty steady slight increase in the sewer and storm sewer funds and water utility actually decreased due to some of the outlay for capital projects. [00:15:05] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** And then we have just a few slides here that look at everything really big picture wrapped together for the city as a whole. So this is the citywide assets, blue being current assets, you know, cash receivables, things that are more short-term, and then red being your capital assets. And really the biggest change here is just the recognition of additional assets, whether it be from developers or the amounts that you've actually invested into projects. Next page, same layout, but looking at the citywide liabilities. These have actually held very steady compared to the prior year. um, actually your debt balance decreased just slightly, um, which is just about the only change that's shown here. [00:15:50] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** And then on the following page, we have both of those uh shown in more of a linear fashion. And then the green is the net between the two. So you can kind of see on a net basis what's happening here. Now, of course, most of that upward trend you see in that green line is due to the capital assets and and not actual liquid cash that's available. And then finally, just two slides here that show your future debt payments uh based on debt that was outstanding at the end of the year. So this is really just formational for you. um so this isn't showing debt balances. This is showing the amount of principal and interest that's due each year until all of the debt is paid off. um so the first page here for governmental funds, this is debt that's being financed primarily by property taxes and special assessments. And then the next page is your proprietary fund debt, your water, sewer, storm sewer funds. Any questions? [00:16:45] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Questions? Yeah, Council Member Holtz. [00:16:47] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** Thank you, Ryan, for all of that. Question on the the water revenue side. I recall having this conversation before, but did you see something similar from other cities because of summer 24 being a wet summer, therefore people purchase less water? [00:17:00] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** Yeah, you know, the the decrease here was a little more significant than than what I saw at most cities. It fluctuates a lot from city to city, but um yeah, I would say it was a little more pronounced here, but I it did look like 2023 was a bit of a spike here compared to previous years. [00:17:18] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** And there's a dry—there's a dry summer. [00:17:20] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** Yeah. So, I don't know if it's the the billing structure, you know, some some cities, you know, kind of change the structure up with watering lawns and that sort of thing, or maybe for industries, they have, you know, for the businesses in town, they have a different rate structure. So, it's really hard to compare to different cities. um, but yeah. [00:17:40] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** All right. Thank you. [00:17:41] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** Yep. [00:17:42] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Anyone else? Thank you. [00:17:44] **Ryan Schmidt (Auditor):** Thank you. [00:17:45] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Uh, with that, I'll entertain a motion to accept the 2024 annual comprehensive financial report. [00:17:50] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** Move to accept the 2024 annual comprehensive financial report. [00:17:53] **Council Member Nick Kragness:** Support. [00:17:54] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Have a motion and a second. Discussion. Council Member Holtz. [00:17:57] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** Uh kudos to staff and for obviously Ryan and your and your staff for helping this. As much as it's annually required anyway by statute, it's it's something that residents do care about and they need to see this firsthand. This is several years in a row now where there's nothing being observed for a mistake intentional or otherwise. And that I mean that is the first expectation when it comes to our finance. So I'm glad to see that happening again. And just for all who are watching, yes, that second piece, the IC of duplication and segregation of duties, there is not a city in Minnesota of our size that doesn't have that happen. That is the norm and it will always happen for a city of our size. And I have full confidence that we do have the policies and procedures in place to make sure that it is a risk, but that doesn't cause any any harm. But uh thank you for that presentation. [00:18:45] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Any other discussion? All right. Uh there's a motion on the floor. Call the question. All those in favor of accepting the 2024 annual comprehensive financial report, please signify by saying I. [00:18:55] **Council Members:** I. I. I. [00:18:57] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Motion passes. Thank you very much. Next on the list is the I94 lift station enforcement improvements. Authorize purchase of new pumps. [00:19:05] **City Engineer Nate Stanley:** Good evening. Excuse me. Good evening, mayor and councel. um, so this item, uh, I've I've I've been before you with the the I94 lift station, um, enforcement improvements here a couple of times. Uh, last, uh, meeting when we authorized advertisement and approval. um there was a uh uh I did tease this item and uh the the issue was that when we started the process for the analysis of the lift station and the force man, we weren't sure if we were going to need new pumps or not. It was going to kind of depend on the uh size of the new force man. And through that analysis, it was determined that the city does indeed need new pumps for this lift station to operate with the force main out of the gate. [00:19:50] **City Engineer Nate Stanley:** Pardon me. So, uh, before you this evening is an item to authorize the purchase of these new pumps. Uh, just a little background again. The failing force main that runs up Hudson Boulevard across Inwood Avenue to connect to the Met Council uh, discharge location was analyzed uh, earlier this summer. It was it's been recommended that we upsize the floor man from an 8 in to a 16 in to accommodate the final ultimate discharge uh scenario and as a result of that we do need these three new pumps. [00:20:20] **City Engineer Nate Stanley:** So without spending a ton of time tonight going through everything um because we've been through this a couple of times uh we are asking that council authorize purchase of these new flight pumps. Uh, Flight is the uh the brand that public works has exclusively in town. They're what what we use. So, uh, with that, um, I'm asking council uh to approve a motion to authorize the purchase of three new flight pumps for the I94 lift station. Uh, we're estimating it's 175 or $170,000. [00:20:50] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Is that a not to exceed 170,000? [00:20:52] **City Engineer Nate Stanley:** um it uh yes yes yes we'll we'll go that route and if if for some reason we come in hire Mr. Mayor when when we need to do any sort of um installation or reprogramming then those costs will be brought to council. [00:21:05] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Okay Council Member Holtz. [00:21:07] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** What happens with the pumps after the project? Is there any utility for them for future purchasing as needed? Do we put them back on the market at a lower price or what do we do with them? [00:21:15] **City Engineer Nate Stanley:** the existing pumps you're talking about that are in the lift station today. [00:21:18] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** The three that are being purchased for— Oh, I I thought these were just being meant for some of the temporary. Okay. Dumb question. [00:21:23] **City Engineer Nate Stanley:** No, no, no, no. It's not a dumb question at all. There the the existing pumps will be—there is a salvage value that will that public works will take those pumps and and try to get something back for them. [00:21:35] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Any other questions? Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion. [00:21:40] **Council Member Nick Dragisich:** Motion to authorize a purchase of three flight pumps for the I94 lift station within the author authorized $170,000 project budget. [00:21:48] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Second. [00:21:50] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Hearing none. I'll call the question. All those in favor of the motion to authorize the purchase of three new flight pumps for the I94 lift station within the authorized $170,000 project budget. Please signify by saying I. [00:22:05] **Council Members:** I. [00:22:07] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Okay uh number five is the adoption of pavement management plan. [00:22:12] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** Good evening, uh, Mr. Mayor, council. um, here to present the pavement management plan, um, after as following up from the 2025 street ratings. So, we rerated the streets this year and then refreshed the pavement management plan that was last adopted in 2023. So, just quick history, we the city first rated all of the streets in 2012 using a a manual uh recording system and cardioraph. um, and then in 2016, we moved to Goodpoint Technology, which is more of a robotic uh uh camera van system that does the inventory of the entire street network. and rates the streets as we go through. um we then uh rated the streets in 2021 to to update those. um and then um following the 2021 street ratings. Then in 2023, we came back and that was the first time we actually formalized a pavement management plan around those ratings. [00:23:05] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** Staff had been obtaining these ratings and using that for our maintenance decisions and and data into that, but we didn't have a formalized PMP payment management plan. So that was first adopted by the council in 2023. um and one of the recommendations from the 2023 payment management plan was to identify um that we would reassess the the pavement conditions every four years. So that brings us here today. Uh we went out for proposals. We hired Goodpoint Technology again to rerate the streets. um and we just got those back and then with that we've updated the payment management plan. [00:23:45] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** So, I want to talk a few things about um the background and then I'll get into presenting the outcome of that. But um you want to keep in mind that ratings is a detailed surface condition assessment. So, it's really a visual of what's on the surface. So, there's a lot um it's just one data point and it's a it's a good data point to use in your pavement management, but it's just one. It doesn't tell you if the if the streets are draining well. It doesn't tell you if the underlying soil conditions are in good shape. There's a lot of things that it doesn't tell you, but it's a good starting place. It's a good measurement metric tool for the city to use to see how you're doing and and maintaining your pavements throughout the the network. [00:24:25] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** And so it's a pavement condition index. It's a scale of one to 100. Every street is is scored on that one to 100. um, and it's a widely accepted uh um methodology that's accepted by the American Public Works Association and American Society of uh testing and materials. um, so I always like whenever I'm talking about Lake Elmo Streets, I always like to show this slide. I started showing this years ago and um it's it's a good perspective slide and what it's telling you is um I'm looking at Lake Elmo in 2013 with a population of 8177 and you had 70 miles of street and so I just did simple metric of people per mile and you have 117 um people per street mile. [00:25:10] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um in 2025 I just updated that based on what I for your population and your miles of street we're at 97 now so you got 142 two people per street mile. um, and then I listed some of the surrounding communities and I did the same metric. Now, I didn't I did this in 2023. I didn't update the other communities. um, the exact numbers are really unimportant here. The important part is to show that it's part of the character of this community and that we have a large um mass of land that is rural in nature. So, we have a lot of large lots. [00:25:45] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** And so the whole point of this slide is just to show you that we're we have to pay to maintain these 97 miles of roadway and we have less people to pay for them. So you're you have about half you know you you have two times the the number of miles of road per person in your in your city. So that is something you know it it's not not saying it's bad or good. It's just a reality that that's good to keep in a perspective. [00:26:10] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um, and then I like to talk about the types of streets because we had sort of the pregrowth lake Elmo um when we did a lot of the OP uh developments and what the roads that were being built is the section that you're seeing here um where you had whatever width the road was, you're basically going in and building uh a say a 6 to 8 inch uh depth of roadway of gravel with batuminous through two to three inches of batuminous on top and using batuminous curb. What you have to understand is garbage trucks, the larger vehicles that pound those pavements at at sensitive times when you have moisture and freeze thaw going on in your roadways. [00:26:50] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** Those wheel impact loads push down three feet and so you only have, you know, less than a foot of pavement section. So, you're really relying on the underlying insitu soils to provide strength to support your roads. And because those soils were never disturbed or they're natural soils, they weren't engineered soils when they were first constructed, they tend to be much more variable. So that's why you'll see soft spots. You'll have some roads, parts of those roads that will fail, some hold up very well. And so it's really dependent on what those insitu soils are. [00:27:25] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** And so even today when we come back and we tell you we're doing a reclaim or a re a low co cost reclaim, we're still only cutting that top eight inches and putting a roadway back on there. Now over time hopefully the road is any movement in those roads are settling and and and stabilizing and hopefully they give you more life the second goound. um, but you still are susceptible to silts and clays in those soils. So if water gets into the surface, then when you get that freeze thaw action and you have a lot of silts in there, you'll have areas where you get a lot more movement and the road will crack and fail earlier. So that's just it's um it's not a wrong uh street design. It's just the way streets were designed back then. um, there's some cities that still design them that way. So it's um it's just the type of roads that we're dealing with. And so when you think about the OP rural areas, these are what your roads are mostly made of. And what we are doing is replacing the batuminous curve when we go in and do the reclaims today. [00:28:25] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** The other kind of road is what I call the new city standard. And and basically starting off with Savona in 2013, an all new development that that the city the the development standards we're giving the city is there's a much thicker road section. It's either a 12 to 24 inch sand section that we're putting in there below. It's an engineered soil. It's a uniform specified sand material that's a drainage layer. It provides structure. It it's siltfree. So if water gets in there, um, two things happen. One, it's less susceptible to freeze thaw and heaving. And then it's also we have drain tile on on the in the road beds. The water that would get in there gets to the sand layer, gets into the drain tile, and gets dispersed out. [00:29:10] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** So, um, these are a much more robust road. And these are the roads that I call the 50-year roads. These are these the the batuminous surface isn't going to give you 50 years by any means, but, um, the the underlying structure is going to be there for a long time, and you'll just have to deal with redoing the the top part or the batuminous part over time. So, we will be getting the the first Savona roads went in in 2012, 2013. When we get to that 20 25 year life cycle on those roads, we're going to get into a lot of just milling overlays or very thin reclaims that we have to do and we won't have to go down into that structure. So costs will uh improvements will are you'll see your CIP move to these types of overlays as sort of the the way to go. [00:29:55] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** So, on to where we at with our current payment condition report. I'm putting them side by side here. um, it was actually there's a little confusion in the 2021 2023 that I'm saying here. The ratings were done in 2021, but the icon software we use to manage that does project the roads forward. So, um, in some ways I call them, sometimes you'll see me catch catch me calling them the 2023 ratings, sometimes the 2021, but they're it's where we were at before. um and this is putting the roadways in the different buckets. [00:30:25] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** So we have these categories of the PCI category. Anything at 85 to 100 we call excellent. Anything from 70 to 84 we're calling good. um, and then we have a fair category is the green category poor. and uh and failing are the red and blue. And so in 2023 you can see we had 78% in the good to excellent category which is a pretty good rating. A lot of cities strive for an average PCI in the 80s. Our average in 2023 was 83. And then and you had 78% of your roads in that category. And then you had a larger percent in the in the failing to pour, which really are the streets you don't want to do maintenance on anymore. Those are the ones you want to get into the CIP for reconstruction projects. The green categories are ones you can generally do a mill and overlay. we can do things to um continue to carry that pavement forward and renew it a little bit to defer that that reconstruction project. [00:31:20] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um and now you can see in 2025 88% of our roadways are in the good to excellent category. So on a map again I put the two maps side by side. um, it's a little maybe hard to read. hopefully um you can kind of the the red is designed to try to pop out to you as the the failing roads. um, but again, um it it doesn't do any good if you live on the failing roads to to see that the overall city's 88, right? So, it's a um if you're there's still a few neighborhoods that we need to get to. um you can see on the 2021 rating map over in the northeast corner, there was a lot more red. We've now done those projects. Those were our 2023 2024 street improvement projects. Those neighborhoods are now now been addressed. [00:32:05] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um I will say for the 2025 rating and the data we're presenting to you, we've already overrode the rating system for the 2025 project. So we put in here that the streets that we're doing today in 2025 are already improved. So that's the assumption in the in the data that we're presenting. um, the other thing that's notable that pops off here when I when I review these maps is um, again, this is a surface rating. So, this is a computerized system cameras looking at the surface of the road. And I'm going to call your attention to tapestry. [00:32:40] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** Yeah, tapestry. So, if you look at 2021, those roads looked in decent shape. They were between a 70 to 84 rating. um, and now, uh, you skip to 2025 and all of a sudden you see a failing road already. So, so what happened there? Sorry, I got these in the wrong order, but that didn't work. um, so what happened with Tapestry was you look back and we seal coated the road in 2020. So, the rating that happened in 2021 was being masked by that fresh seal coat that was being put on. It was only a year old. it was masking and hiding some of the the deficiencies and cracks in the road. So, it it came out with a higher rating than than what was really there. [00:33:25] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** And so, as soon as seal coat wears off, now the the the true colors of that road are shining through. And and that's telling us that that road was in a little worse shape than than we had been led to believe. So, that's why again I emphasize this is one data point in everything we have to use in analyzing the streets. On the flip side, if you look up at Sanctuary, um Sanctuary back in 2021 showed failing roads and roads in the lowest categories and now they actually look in not too bad a shape in 2025. Well, they just got a seal coat last year. So, they're now they're now being masked. So, you do have to look at other things like age of pavement. um and and so forth. So, the age of pavement in Tapestry was a 2005 construction. Sanctuary was a 2006 construction. They're both coming due um soon and and they'll they do show up in your CIP and so we'll probably discontinue doing future uh maintenance to them till we get to those uh reconstruction projects. [00:34:25] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** I think it also shows you that a little bit of the preventative maintenance that you do. It also buys you some time will buy you some time and extend the life of that pavement a little bit longer before you need to get into that. Correct. Mill and overlay. [00:34:40] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** Correct. So, you're not supposed to read this, but in this pavement management report that um we are publishing, there's an inventory. It's I think it's nine pages long. It's every street segment with the actual rating in there. So, that's part of the document that's being published. um, and then in that current condition report, we do a summary of the high level. [00:35:05] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** So, the average condition for today's streets is is a 88.6 6 or an 89. The overall rating was 83 in 2023. So you had a six-point increase in the overall rating of your average PCI. um, if you look at the historical right there, you can see we've gone from 73 in 2016 up to 89. So we're continuing to improve that number. um, and then other network PCI indicators, we do the same average PCI, but we break it down by street type a little bit for your benefit. And you can see the local streets, you know, went increased from 82 to 87. The collector MSA roadways increased from an 82 to a 90. um, and then we break it down by roads with curb and without curb. That also speaks to kind of where they are in the city for the rural nature or newer areas. And that's where you see the biggest the biggest change. You see the the roads with uh curb, which are your newer designs, have concrete curb, you're at a 96. in the roads with no curb mostly due to age are at a 74. [00:36:10] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um, this is just a summary. You've seen this one back in 2023, but in the report, the report talks about the different treatment uh strategies that we employ. So we employ crack sealing, we employ seal coating, mill and overlay, full depth reclamation, and reconstruction. And so the report has a write up on each of those of when we use them and why we use those. um, it also reports and we updated the average cost. So you can see um from a seal coat down to a reconstruction how the costs progressively get more expensive on a square foot basis and that's been republic that has been updated as well. [00:36:50] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** And then this is uh just this is straight out of mind manuals and things like that pavement life cycle. um that that talks about the importance of street maintenance and it really just shows you the life of a street over a 26-year period, how it's following a deterioration curve um and when that pavement needs to be renewed. If you don't do anything, this is what happens to your pavement. It just deteriorates to 18 19 years and and then needs to be reconstructed. [00:37:25] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um, and then this is that same curve if you are committed to a series of crack sealing seal coating and overlays on a periodic basis how you can extend that roadways roadways life. So that's the the whole purpose of of the whole pavement management plan and programming that we're that we're embarking on. [00:37:45] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** And then this is the maintenance schedule that we adopted in 2023. We did not change that um in this report. um, so it it starts with two that new street standard versus the the open space development roadway standard is a little bit different but you can see um it's crack sealing in year three once you have a new pavement surface and crack sealing and seal coating and then making sure you're crack sealing every three years. um, the one thing I will say is is the science around this is changing all the time. There's lots of cities experimenting with different things. We're continuing to watch and monitor what other people are doing, what kind of success they're having or not. [00:38:30] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um, and the one thing we find in Lake Elmo that we do often is even though it says seal coat every um every six years after that first one, the first one in three years and then it's every six years after that, it's actually quite frequently that we go out there and we drive those streets the year before it's due for the seal coat and we back off and we only crack seal. So, we we're seeing when you seal coat over a seal coat, we're seeing um less or diminished success. And sometimes it's just not needed. Sometimes that first seal coat is holding well and doesn't need uh doesn't need another one. And sometimes the other one can do more damage than good. um, and then other times we're seeing a lot of success out of doing that seal coat. So, we are we have this schedule that we're following, but that's when we're looking at uh we go to program that road, but then we do back off some of them and don't don't do the second seal code if it's not needed not being based on a visual inspection at that time. [00:39:35] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** this question. Uh, I know one thing that something in the industry is looking at is u pavement rejuvenators that get done like the same year or the fall of the workhorse. um, just in the advent of construction of the the pavement and the heat of it that comes out burns off some of the emulsion from it or at least that's that's the theory in place. And then the rejuvenator is supposed to insert that back into the pavement. um, and I know that there's been some research on that, but it would be nice to see if that's if that actually—I have done the research on it, but if that actually does help. I know that there are some—I think Woodberry's maybe done a little bit of it. I I know I saw a street being done in Edina with it. um like be nice to see if there's any you know in in place of the crack sealing in the third year if that gives us any life expend or the the seal coating in the third year gives us any extra life on that would be— [00:40:25] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** and there's and there's several of those different techniques that are being tried. We're trying to give it some time to watch how they perform over the next several years after we we're aware of some of the communities that are doing some of this stuff. So, I think we're letting them be the guinea pig. [00:40:40] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** That's prudent, but yeah, just something to look at. [00:40:42] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** Yeah. We we also found that we're having more success with our seal coats than some of our neighbors. And I I think part of that is that trap rock we use instead of the P rock. And um it's just a good spec that seems to hold up. So, we're not seeing we're seeing some of the same stuff other communities are that are backing away from it, but not to the degree to the degree they are. We're still seeing more benefit out of the seal coat than than others. [00:41:05] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um, so payment management, uh, you look at your maintenance, but it also rolls into your CIP. Uh, so published in this payment management plan is also the the 10-year CIP. This is not an adopted document by any means, but this is the 2026 to 2035 CIP that we've turned in for this year um for council review. You'll see the presentation on that next uh workshop. [00:41:30] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um but we did do some adjustments based on getting the the data back just last month for the 2025 street uh tapestry being an example of of that. So there are some there was some shifting of priorities a little bit. We sat down with public works and we looked at where we were at and and moved things around a little bit. And so we break it down into three categories. The light blue is your basically your neighborhood streets. Uh the orange color is the collector MSA streets. And then the green is not our streets. It's county cost participation. So that's that's just us paying our share of whatever the county is doing. [00:42:10] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** And in the lower right hand or lower left hand side, that's the summary of the numbers. So the total 10-year cost that we turned in now is 47.6 million. Two years ago, that was 61.5 million. So it's coming down a little bit with less projects projected in the next 10 years. um, and then you can see it broken down by that local street, the collector street, and the county cost participation categories. um, so they're all down a little bit from what they were two years ago. um, and then we have the estimated MSA funding over the next 10 years is about 12 million. And the estimated assessment revenue on those residential street projects would be 8 million. So you're looking at 47.6 million in total costs over the next 10 years. And you're looking at 20 million in revenue—on not revenue, but assessment revenue and MSA uh revenue sources. So, um, you're looking at 20, you know, 2.7 million per year on average over the 10 years. [00:43:10] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um, but this is the street capital improvement plan map. We mapped uh where those improvements are by year over the the new payment rating map. And then on the right hand side, you have the previous payment map. And all those hexagons with "done" in it are all the projects you took on. and just the 20 2023 2024 and 2025. So it shows you that there's a a lot of neighborhoods we attacked. Several of those were uh funded through the grant funds as we were putting water in neighborhoods and Still Water Lane and so forth. So a lot of projects were taken care of in the last three three years. [00:43:55] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** So, the findings of the report, you currently have 97 98 miles of roadway, um 27 miles of new street since 2013. Your average PCI rating has gone up to 89. Uh it represents a street network that's in good excellent condition. um, the PCI rating falls to 74.7 for those streets with no curb. So those show up in your CIP is the streets that we'll be addressing there. 88% of the streets are in good or excellent ca uh category. That's up from 78%. [00:44:30] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** And then you have 6.5% of the streets in the fair category. um, those are streets those are opportunities that we can look closer at and maybe do millaning overlays and continue to defer maintenance on those roadways another 8 to 10 12 years. uh 5.5% of the streets are in port of failing categories. um, and then the later year uh years of the CIP are based on pavement aging and reflect streets that are in currently good condition. [00:45:00] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** And what I mean by that is uh on the CIP in year 2035, that last year out there, we have Deontraville Highlands area programmed for CIP. If you look on the map up there, the map is in the best category. It's in a good category. um, if you look in the 2023, it looks like they were ma the ratings are masked a little bit by a seal coat, but they still were in good shape then. So, we're we're asked to do a 10-year CIP and we're just programming that based on those that roadway was done back in 2011 and by the time you get to 2035, you're probably going to be seeing that deteriorated. So, it's done by aging, not by your PCI. [00:45:45] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Well, you could look at that from a potential degradation curve, right? [00:45:48] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** Yeah. And I just wanted to point that out because if you're just looking at the map, you'll—why why is that in the CIP when it showing that the road's in good shape? Uh so the recommendations are to implement the street maintenance and rehabilitation in accordance with our general life cycle maintenance and uh rehabilitation schedule. Continue to rate our streets every four years. So the next time would be 2029. [00:46:10] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um we continue to maintain an annualized street maintenance budget in the amount of 600,000 over the next 10 years. That's for seal coating, crack sealing, and mill and overlays. We do uh every year it might be 400,000 one year and 800,000 the next year. It's never going to be 600,000. So we tried to create that street fund so that we can balance that and make the right decisions rather than try to back into a budget. [00:46:35] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um we're as I mentioned before, we're continuing to investigate alternative maintenance treatments and replace the multiple seal coat treatments. So we're watching carefully what our neighbors are doing in some of the trials. uh implement the street capital improvement plan to address the 5% plus streets that are remain in poor con condition and to anticipate the continued failing pavements by aging. [00:47:05] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um continue to use the full depth reclamations with new concrete curb and gutter. uh when we address those streets they're in the fair category or or below and when the soil underlying soils support that. um, and then as the number six is is talking about that future where we the full depth reclamations without having to do concrete curb and gutter and doing a or doing a mill and overlay is going to be it's a technique we're not using yet that we will be using when we get to those new streets in about 20 years. So um and I think we'll see annualized costs going down in today's class. With that, I will stand for any questions. [00:47:45] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Questions for Jack? Council Member Hirn. [00:47:47] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Yes. Back to the last slide. So, with the the maintenance budget of that 600,000, is there any type of modeling that can be done where if we say, you know, if we actually would increase that budget item to 1 million versus 600,000 that— [00:48:00] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** Yeah. [00:48:01] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Even though we're spending more on budget of maintenance, long-term capital projects, we're spending less. Is that is that possible to model that out or how— [00:48:09] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** The icon program does that and and in 2023 we ran that model um and that's where we came up with the 600,000 and it showed in 2023 that over 10 years if we spend the 600,000 the ratings will drop from 83 to 80. So you—not dropping much at all. [00:48:25] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Sure. [00:48:26] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** And that's where you're you're looking at that. If you if you drop that number to 400,000, it might show your average index dropping into the 70s or something like that. If you spent a million, it might show you going into the 90s. And so that model does exist. We haven't ran the model based on the 2025 ratings because we just got those back, but it is something we still intend to do as a followup and on a on a check on that. [00:48:50] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Okay, that's good to know. Thank you. [00:48:52] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Anyone else? Yeah, council— [00:48:55] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** in looking to approve this payment mention we're not actually approving a CIP here. That will be done at a future meeting. [00:49:00] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Yes. [00:49:01] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** This is just the CIP that develops from the plan and we'll be discussing it in detail on our CIP. [00:49:05] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Yes. Thank you. Just one more question. Go for— [00:49:10] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Um, and you mentioned it about, you know, like your comment of, you know, if the citywide average is 88 or 89, that doesn't really mean a lot to the person who has the rating of 10 on their street. And then I know you have this the stat of I think it was about 6% are in that the the poor condition. As far as for um maybe comparables to other cities or standards, I don't I feel like we had this discussion, but I don't know if we have anything in the management plan of where we want to make sure that we're not allowing that number to get above a certain threshold. [00:49:45] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um, I don't know if there's comparables to other cities that you're aware of—of— [00:49:50] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** there are because a lot of cities do this, but some use different rating systems too. So, um, but in general, like I said, the the typical cities are targeting an average PCI in somewhere between 80 and 90. That's where most of them are going to be. And we're we're well within that. I don't I don't know that they have targets for every category. [00:50:10] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Okay. [00:50:11] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** um because the categories you choose can vary, too. So, just something to be mindful of. [00:50:15] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Yeah. Okay. [00:50:16] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** It's a it's really a tool to understand where you're at and where you need to prioritize. um you on those lower rating streets, you want to use that as an indicator not to go spend your maintenance dollars unless you think you have a technique that can extend the life of that and defer that that asset. But um once they get into that poor failing condition, that's where the reconstruction is needed. And you you want to stop spending the maintenance dollars. You want to spend the maintenance dollars keeping the good payments good because that'll give you a longer life on those. Defer the construction on that. [00:50:50] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Okay. [00:50:51] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** All right. With that, I'll entertain a motion. [00:50:53] **Council Member Nick Dragisich:** Motion to approve of the pavement management plan update dated July 2025. [00:50:57] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** Support. [00:50:58] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** You have a motion and a second. Just a couple of comments. I think getting back to Council Member Hirn's question, if you just look at—uh was that—is that Highland Estates that we're doing next year? What's the one across from near the Tablin area off of uh Heights? [00:51:15] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** Lake Elmo Heights. [00:51:16] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Lake Heights shows that that's really falling apart, right? So, that's on on the list to bring that back up and then next year it'll show good. And I don't know that cities generally say we don't want to be above something. they they don't want to be below, you know, 75 or something like that. And it all depends on—that's that's really a policy decision that the council can take up to and say, you know, we're okay with 75, 80, 85, whatever. [00:51:40] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** So, um, just a note, you know, that $600,000 over the next 10 years, that's generated based off what we have today. When Northstar development comes in, that adds another two miles. When Limick comes in, that adds another two miles. When pieces of other development come in, you're just adding mileage. So based on, you know, the formula that they're looking at, that $600,000 might go to, say, $700,000 based on your increase in mileage within that 10-ear span. um, just to maintain the roadways that you have on an overall uh infrastructure piece. [00:52:15] **Council Member Nick Kragness:** That's a good point, Mayor. um, in terms of the maintenance of the streets, if you look forward and having just a little experience, not as much as Jack, of course, but you find out the $600,000 is the best money we will ever spend. It saves millions and millions of dollars. Do nothing, let it go to heck, as the graph showed. Now you can spend $200,000 a block fixing it up as opposed to $10,000 a block maintaining it every so many years. So that's money well spent. If our road mileage goes up and our program says we should up our our maintenance um levy to 700,000, we'd be crazy not to do that because it's the best interest of our residents and businesses and saves them money. [00:53:00] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** I think also when we look at the Northstar, some of the development in the Musa area where it is labeled medium density, high density, right? So, that people per mile should get better and better as time goes on, right? We're not going to really see that in our more rural areas. That should stay the same. But in the in the area that's that's deemed by the comp plan to to grow, we'll we'll have more people and it'll be uh it'll be more people per mile that way. It'll it'll bring the metric down. [00:53:30] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** Yeah, it'll bring the metric down. [00:53:31] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** So, um, I think that's a good thing in our favor with regards to the pavement management plan as well. Council Member Holtz. [00:53:38] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** I think this remains one of the one of the best things that's happened with this city the last couple years that that we've been on council between making the CIP 10 years, uh, being able to get the 3M dollars out. This—I mean this is such a a long-term value gain to have this program to be able to show the numbers in objective way to know that the dollars are being used to save money in the long term and to have objective information we can tell residents here is how those dollars are used and why in a sequential formula yearbyear—I mean that the fact that it wasn't happening before that's another story but it's happening now and it is good so thank you for this. [00:54:20] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Any other discussion? [00:54:22] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Yeah, this is I think this is great. You know, maybe my question I didn't I wasn't trying to say that. I think it should be less. If anything, I'm thinking if you know, potentially more for me. I see that graph being a non-engineer and to me it looks like well, why do we even stop the maintenance? You know, all of a sudden it drops like why do why do we stop there? um I'm sure there's an engineering reason when it gets to a certain point, you know, it's just it's going to exponentially drop. So that that was my comment on that is like you know you look at that graph it looks like we should maintain it beyond where it starts to get down into that little bit of— [00:55:00] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** red the answer is—that underlying structural support engineering—there's no—hearing—you can't see it but that that starts to degrade and then you got to reinforce it and then you bring it back to— [00:55:15] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** so I think that's great and I think just—I think you made a uh some really good points too I know we've had some of the conversations with some of the recent um road work of the the lifespan of the roads and you know yes like that the graph shows that if we don't do anything at all it'll last 26 years I'm guessing that's if we don't do anything on kind of like the newer standard road with curbs but that doesn't mean you know the road isn't completely beat up into that red zone that was showing that closer to the 16 to 17 years already right so I think that was something that really stood out to me and I think is important for people to see you as we're going through this and your point of this is just a data point. It's not everything. um but it's just it's one data piece that we can use to at least make some good um assessments as we look forward here. [00:56:05] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** I I think when you look at the assets of a city, we're taking care of one of the most expensive assets that a city can have. And my experience in looking around at other cities that implement a payment management plan, our numbers are really good overall, right? um, I think that to the to the layman that drives a car, like well the street's a street. When you let roads go to the place where you're dodging potholes with your vehicle, when you can maintain them to a level people are reducing the amount of of maintenance on their vehicles with, I don't know, brakes, shocks, tires, all those things. It's it's a little bit, right? But any little bit helps in in my in my estimation. So, I I this nice report, Jack. Thank you very much. This is great. [00:56:55] **Jack Griffin (Consultant Engineer):** Thank you. [00:56:56] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** All right. So, we have a motion uh to approve the payment management plan update dated July 2025. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. [00:57:05] **Council Members:** I. I. I. [00:57:06] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Project management plans adopted. Council reports. Council Member Dragisich. [00:57:12] **Council Member Nick Dragisich:** No report. [00:57:13] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Council Member Holtz. [00:57:14] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** the uh well July 4th kids parade, I'm sure you'll talk about as well, will be on July 4th. And I just wanted to mention that because this has been every year it's grown and growing just like light up Lake Elmo. But it needs to be known that those events do not happen without volunteers and Connect Lake Elmo is the reason along with our staff, with the fire department, along with public works, along with law enforcement, why these events happen. So please, when you see messages out there saying, "Hey, there's volunteer opportunities." Please read those. Please pass it on. There's o there's always going to be opportunities, whether it's for this event, whether it's for light up Lake Elmo, whether it's for other things as well. Please take the time to look at those messages because again these events will not happen without volunteers. So please don't presume that others will do it if you don't. Please take the time if you are able. [00:58:05] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Thanks for that. Last week I was able to attend League of Minnesota Cities with staff. It was well done. It was nice to uh hang out with with uh most of them. No, all of them. I'm just joking. um there was some some good uh lessons there and breakout sessions and it was good just uh to uh create some camaraderie amongst the the staff. [00:58:30] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** I did receive an email this afternoon from a scoutmaster. So I just wanted to give out a shout out to the fire department for hosting um Mr. Melender and his staff for showing them some first aid. Uh he thought they'd kind of get maybe, you know, a little bit of a dog and pony show. um but he said that the fireman um went beyond his expectations. He was very happy. And um I I think that sometimes those things go unnoticed to council and staff because we're not there. We we don't see that happening. And so I just wanted to give a special shout out based on the email from because we don't always get those emails that are are nice and complimentary, right? So So when we get them, I like to uh uh showcase that. Thank you very much. Council Member Hirn. [00:59:15] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** no report. [00:59:16] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** No report. Well, just staff. [00:59:18] **City Administrator Nicole Miller:** Yeah, just uh wanted to echo what the mayor said about attending the league conference. some. So, thank you to the council for, you know, investing in our professional development and thanks to the staff that went because while we are there, the work did not stop. So, I know they had um extra work when they got back. That's it. [00:59:35] **City Clerk Julie Johnson:** Julie, anything? No. [00:59:38] **Public Works Director Pete Tholen:** Director Powers. Uh, well, two is close. We're've had it on every day now. We just fine-tuning some hiccups. maybe tomorrow. [00:59:45] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Okay. [00:59:46] **Fire Chief Dustin Kalis:** Chief, uh we have just a few more days left of our paid on call recruitment. We hosted an info session tonight that was well attended. We had about 15 people um come by tonight. So, applications close uh next Monday the 7th. [01:00:00] **Sergeant Ty Jacobson:** No report. [01:00:01] **Clarissa Hadler:** No report. [01:00:02] **Jennifer Doyle:** No report. [01:00:03] **Nate Stanley:** No report. [01:00:04] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** So, the parade is—I just got asked the parade. Ah, you're putting me on the spot. Hang on a sec. [01:00:10] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** What time? [01:00:11] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Hang on. I I'd be in trouble with my wife since she's been putting a lot of time and effort into this. [01:00:16] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** You would so be in trouble. [01:00:18] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** The parade start time is is 10:00 a.m. And to Council Member Holtz's comment about volunteering, even if you can just give one or two hours, I know there's some setup on Thursday evening. And again, I know that uh Director Powers and Chief Kais and the sheriff's department have been involved to make sure that we have, you know, a safe route that we've got signs up for things that are closed. [01:00:40] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** We just uh I know that they need some face painting help otherwise kids won't get their face painted if somebody wants to volunteer for that. um and you think I'm an artist? Yeah. Yeah. Anybody can paint a kid's face. Well, maybe except for Council Member Hirn. [01:00:55] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** I I did do it last year and the elder line was significantly longer. [01:01:00] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** The parade activities are from 10:15 to 12:30. You know, there'll be some minnow races there. I think there's going to be a dunk tank there. You can come dunk the mayor and any other council members that want to get in the dunk tank. um fire department will be there. So, it's always a good time. The Rotary gives out free ice cream at the end of it, which is always yummy and tasty. So, I encourage you to attend and get a little Americana in you on the 4th of July. [01:01:30] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** So, with that, I'm going to adjourn this evening's meeting at 8:08. Well, Matt, what were you drawing? I thought I was doing a decent job. We just taking too long. You can do red, white, blue.