This transcript features the **Moose Lake City Council** meeting from September 8, 2021. Based on the context provided and the dialogue within the meeting, I have identified the speakers, including the Mayor, City Staff, and members of the public. *** [0:04] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** I'd like to welcome everyone to the regular meeting of the City Council for Wednesday, September 8th, 2021. Let's start with the Pledge of Allegiance please. 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. [0:38] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** First item is the agenda. Do you have any additions or changes to the agenda? There are none. Do we have a motion to accept the agenda? [0:48] **Douglas Juntunen, Council Member:** So move. [0:50] **Lou Ohly, Council Member:** I'll second. [0:52] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** All in favor say aye. (Group: Aye). Opposed? Motion carried. Number two, the consent agenda. We have the minutes for the regular City Council meeting for August 11, 2021, the special City Council meeting for August 26, 2021, and the special City Council meeting on September 1st, 2021. [1:21] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Do we have any questions or discussion on the minutes? [1:24] **Walter Lower III, Council Member:** I got one question. I didn't find it here. [1:37] **Walter Lower III, Council Member:** Do you know what date? Yeah, it was on the 4th Street and in the trees. The motion that we passed didn’t have anything in it about planting new trees. Did we discuss what was going to happen when all trees would be coming down—if we were going to be putting in some new trees? [1:55] **Ellissa Owens, City Administrator:** Or we did not discuss planting any new trees, but my understanding is that we would replace some of them with some with shallower root systems. I don't know the exact kind, but that was my understanding. [2:17] **Walter Lower III, Council Member:** Okay, that answers my question. [2:19] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Any other questions? I’ll entertain a motion to accept the minutes. [2:30] **Kris Huso, Council Member:** Motion. [2:32] **Douglas Juntunen, Council Member:** Second. [2:42] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** 2b, the financial reports for City Council payable for August 2021, city financial statements for August 2021, and the liquor store profit/loss statements for August 2021. Any questions or discussion? [3:06] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Do you have a motion to accept the financial reports? [3:09] **Lou Ohly, Council Member:** Motion. [3:11] **Walter Lower III, Council Member:** I second. [3:13] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** All in favor say aye. (Group: Aye). Opposed? Motion carried. On to number three. This time is reserved for comments from the public on matters not listed on the agenda, and we ask you please keep your comments to three minutes. Wayne, do you want to come up to the podium here? [3:50] **Wayne (Public Speaker):** Yes sir. Okay, I went down about a week ago or so and I was going to dump down at the leaf and grass dump down there and it was locked up. Phil said that somebody had set a fire in there and the DNR closed it. And then I went up to the City and asked if they opened it up and they couldn't because they didn't have the authority. I guess my point—I just really hope that there's something that can be done. Pretty soon the leaves are going to fall and man oh man, some of us, we need a place. I mean, I can drive all the way out to my hunting land which is 14 miles away and dump, or I could do like Walt allowed me to do all the time when we were working at the drive-in, dump out at his farm. But a whole bunch of people on our block don't have that privilege. We're going to be throwing away plants and stuff like that, and what I'm really afraid is going to happen is that they're going to start dumping on the hiking trail, snowmobile trail, or in the state forest. A lot of people think, "Gee, if I just dump this in the ditch it doesn't hurt anything because it's going to rot away," but that's not quite true because all of us have these flower gardens and believe me, there are some invasive species in there that if they get away from you, they just work like crazy. I'm really upset about this dump being shut. And then I want to say the good things that come from there: it keeps our town clean. And then all that nice dirt—when Scott and Phil and the guys turn over all that compost, we go down there and get that compost for our flower beds. Even my next-door neighbor goes down there and saws up wood when Phil and the guys cut these trees. I know there's problems too—I've gone down there and I've cut open many plastic bags people left behind and dumped them, then taken the plastic bags to my own garbage. [7:28] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Yes, that is an agenda item tonight. We are going to discuss when we're going to reopen it. We do understand all the problems and we appreciate you coming and speaking. [7:42] **Wayne (Public Speaker):** Do you think they're going to do something? [7:45] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Yes, we'll discuss that tonight. Thank you very much, appreciate you coming. Did we have anyone else want to speak? Okay. Moving on to number four, departmental reports. The Police Chief. This is for August 2021. [8:06] **Daren Guttman, Police Chief:** Members of the council, for August you'll see on the sheet we had 251 calls for service. Even though we're still not really handling much of MSOP anymore, we still had about 25 hours into them on wrapping up one of our investigations that's pretty lengthy. I know we've been working with the County Attorney's office on where that's going to go. For self-initiated, we had 88 extra patrols, 39 traffic stops, and 27 community engagements. We responded to 73 calls for service, 23 assists to other agencies, and one medical. If you look at the pie chart, we've reached a point now where we've spent almost 70% on proactive work versus just reactive. ATV trail update: Phil and his crew have been knocking it out of the park. That section of trail behind the hockey arena and public works going all the way to Industrial is just about done. They put the bridge into place this week and the gravel work. We're getting really close to keeping them off the state highway altogether. We're getting closer to getting some kind of funding for a bridge over the Moosehorn River on the opposite side of the walking bridge. Phil and his guys got this thing done already this year and it looks really good. Huge thank you to those guys and Greg Bernu from the County. All the materials were pretty much donated through Carlton County. One thing going around is there's been a lot of car problems and businesses broken into—Route 61, I think, and Matterhorn Tavern. Just to everybody watching: make sure you're not leaving valuables in plain view. Lock your cars. We have one possible suspect in a silver hatchback type vehicle. Report anything you see. Other than that, I think that's all I have unless you guys have questions. [12:12] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Thanks a lot, Daren. Thank you to the guys, too. Phil, Superintendent report. [12:24] **Phil Entner, City Superintendent:** Members of the Council, yeah, busy month. Like Daren said, we put a lot of time in on that trail. That should be done tomorrow. In the Water Department, we distributed 14.0 million gallons of water in August. Once again, another month we're way up through the roof. That's normal because we have our water tower down and we are painting it, so we are wasting a lot of water to keep the pressure up. That should be wrapped up Thursday or Friday next week. The water tower is just about done. Sewer department collected 9.8 million gallons of wastewater. Usually, in September, I’m yacking about how we gotta hurry up and discharge the ponds because we’re full, but we're not even close to full. That lining project did something huge. I might be looking at only one discharge this fall where we usually did three, which is about 40 million gallons. We're saving a lot of money on treatment chemicals. Sanitary sewer cleaning for Year Two wrapped up. That was about 19,000 lineal feet. Street department: pothole filling is normal. If you see a bad spot, call us. Road patching: we have some 20-25 ton patches starting next week. Campsites and cemeteries are running fine. That’s all I got. [17:15] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Thanks, Phil. Appreciate this. Technology and Library—anybody on the committee have anything? [17:28] **Kris Huso, Council Member:** We haven't had our library meeting yet. [17:34] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Liquor store report? [17:36] **Ellissa Owens, City Administrator:** Elaine is on vacation and she didn't get anything to me before she went, so I don't have anything. [17:46] **Walter Lower III, Council Member:** We're still waiting to purchase the ice machines before the end of the year. [17:51] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Moving on to 4d, City Engineer. [18:03] **City Engineer (SEH):** I just have a couple of things. The Trunk Highway 73 trail project Phase One is starting next week. They’re going to focus on the County Road 10 portion and finish that up with pavement before the snow flies. The other thing was the lining project Phil mentioned—they had some staffing issues, so we gave them a substantial completion date of 11/1 with the understanding we will not extend that. [19:17] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Let's say they can't make that deadline—what are our steps? [19:22] **City Engineer (SEH):** We'll start assessing liquidated damages. [19:35] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Moving on to the Chamber of Commerce updates. [19:42] **Ellissa Owens, City Administrator:** They have the Brewfest and the annual raffle coming up at Campers on September 18th. Tickets are available. Everything else for the summer was a success. [20:41] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Moving on to 6a, the 2022 budget presentation and setting the initial levy. [20:54] **Ryan McKeon, Finance Director:** For the 2022 preliminary budget, starting with revenues: the property tax levy with a 0% rate increase increased about $30,000 due to capacity. The 2022 number is about $625,000 from property taxes. LGA is set to increase about $19,000. We saw a significant increase in campground revenue, so I bumped that to $130,000. For expenditures, elections budget was added back for 2022. Wage increases and a 7% health insurance estimate are included. General government increased $41,000 due to insurance figures. Police department increased about $19,000. Public Works was reduced by $20,000 because we no longer have an overlap of two full-time employees. The Library decreased $35,000 because we moved to a part-time librarian. Net effect is a $10,000 increase in expenditures overall. For Capital Improvement Projects (CIP): Public Works needs a new mower and harley rake. The Cemetery budget includes a columbarium (48 niches) costing about $34,000. Police already purchased their squad but it's budgeted for 2022. I'm recommending we put aside $125,000 into a general CIP fund to save for large road projects or plow trucks. Our property tax rate has stayed the same since 2019, though people see differences because of home valuations set by the County. For the Water Fund, I’m budgeting a 15% rate increase per the 2020 rate study to pay off the well house bond. That’s about a $3 to $17 per month increase depending on usage. For the Sewer Fund, I recommend a 2% increase (about 55 cents a month) to "stop the bleeding." [39:28] **Ryan McKeon, Finance Director:** Levy figures here—this is what we need to decide on tonight. Anything else can change until December, but I need an initial levy. I gave options from 0% to 5%. [40:17] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Any questions? I would suggest a motion of at least 2% as you can see, that would cover possibilities until December. We can always reduce it later. [40:48] **Walter Lower III, Council Member:** If we set it at 2%, we can't go up later, we can only go down? [40:55] **Ryan McKeon, Finance Director:** Correct. [41:09] **Douglas Juntunen, Council Member:** I'll make a motion to set the preliminary levy at 2%. [41:13] **Lou Ohly, Council Member:** I'll second. [41:32] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** All in favor say aye. (Group: Aye). Opposed? Motion carried. Moving on to 6b, Ordinance 81b, Minnesota Energy Resources natural gas franchise. [41:51] **Ellissa Owens, City Administrator:** This replaces Ordinance 81a. Our attorneys have been involved. The original was from the 70s and 90s. These are long-term (25 years). [43:16] **Kris Huso, Council Member:** Mayor, I went through it. I want to make sure we understand we can decide yearly how much we want to get from them for the franchise fee. The city should be taking in money from the gas company since 30% of these citizens are non-taxable. I want to review this every year. [44:13] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Do you want a month to look at this, or a motion? [44:26] **Douglas Juntunen, Council Member:** I'll make a motion to adopt the ordinance. [44:31] **Lou Ohly, Council Member:** Second. [44:49] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** All in favor say aye. (Group: Aye). Opposed? Motion carried. 6c, Traut Companies change order number two. [44:58] **Ryan McKeon, Finance Director:** This was for sealing the old wells. The actual cost was $26,314, which was under the estimate. I recommend approving. [45:31] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Motion? (Council Member: Motion. Second: Second). All in favor? (Group: Aye). 6d, Traut Companies Pay App Number 3 Final. [45:49] **Ryan McKeon, Finance Director:** This is the final payout of $32,733.65. [46:21] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** All in favor say aye. (Group: Aye). 6e, Northland Constructors Pay App Number 3. [46:33] **Ryan McKeon, Finance Director:** This is for the Soo Line Trail, final retainage of $926.95. [46:58] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Motion? (Council Member: Motion. Second: Second). All in favor? (Group: Aye). 6f, Central Tank Coatings Pay App Number 1. [47:50] **Ryan McKeon, Finance Director:** This is for the water tower painting, $69,904.50. [48:38] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Motion? (Council Member: Motion. Second: Second). All in favor? (Group: Aye). 6g, Lakehead Constructors Change Order Number 4. [48:51] **Ryan McKeon, Finance Director:** This includes several items: pressure valve delays, bad soil on Douglas Avenue, and extra bituminous. Total is $25,783.51. Our engineers have vetted these. [51:40] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Motion? (Council Member: Motion. Second: Second). All in favor? (Group: Aye). 6h, Lakehead Constructors Change Order Number 5. [51:52] **Ryan McKeon, Finance Director:** This is a *credit* of about $35,000 for things they did not do, like filling pits we wanted to keep. The net change on the $1.5 million project is less than 1%. [52:51] **Walter Lower III, Council Member:** I see things where they say they had to wait. Why do I care if they waited? [53:13] **Phil Entner, City Superintendent:** That was us trying to isolate valves to shut off the water. We’d cut a pipe, turn a valve, and the water wouldn't stop. We had to go further and further back. Our records were good, but the valves were old and didn't work. It was a learning experience—we now know the condition of those valves. [56:31] **Walter Lower III, Council Member:** A 1% overage on a $1.5 million project is outstanding. [57:07] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Motion on H? (Council Member: Motion. Second: Second). All in favor? (Group: Aye). 6i, Resolution 21-09 Surplus Property, a 1995 Dodge Ram. [57:35] **Ellissa Owens, City Administrator:** Phil's "antique" truck. It hasn't been used all summer. I recommend auctioning it. [58:25] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Motion? (Council Member: Motion. Second: Second). All in favor? (Group: Aye). 6j, Resolution 21-09-02 Surplus Fireworks Equipment. [58:55] **Ellissa Owens, City Administrator:** This is the equipment Todd used to use. We don't have anyone certified to shoot them off anymore, so we use a private company. [1:01:44] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** All in favor? (Group: Aye). 6k, Resolution 21-09-03 Charles Martin PERA approval. (Council Member: Motion. Second: Second). All in favor? (Group: Aye). 6l, Joint meeting with Moose Lake Windermere Sanitary Sewer District. [1:02:45] **Ellissa Owens, City Administrator:** They suggested October 12th at 5:30. [1:03:57] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Let’s try for October 12th. See if they can push it to 6:00 or 6:30. 6m, the brush pile. [1:04:45] **Ellissa Owens, City Administrator:** I'm not opposed to opening it back up. Phil, how many calls have you gotten? [1:05:25] **Phil Entner, City Superintendent:** Six or seven a day. A lot of them are contractors providing services *outside* of Moose Lake. We have people from the metro dumping here for free because they have cabins. It’s an expense to the city to burn and manage it. [1:07:56] **Kris Huso, Council Member:** Closing it during Public Works hours doesn't work because people do yard work on weekends and evenings. [1:09:44] **Douglas Juntunen, Council Member:** We used to have the recycling attendant monitor it, but it became too argumentative. [1:13:30] **Walter Lower III, Council Member:** I’d like to see it open every day and later in the evening, but we need a way to police it. [1:16:15] **Ted (Public Speaker):** Some people I’ve talked to don't want it closed on weekends. Maybe a security camera with high resolution to catch contractor license plates? If you pinch a couple of guys, word will spread. [1:18:12] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** I think we should open it like we have had it and then develop a policy. No contractors, and maybe residential only for city residents. [1:22:15] **Kris Huso, Council Member:** People pay taxes for this. Let's open it now and work on the ordinance and signage. [1:23:14] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Sounds like we have consensus. Open it up and develop the process. Number seven, Letter of Appreciation. (Reading) This is from Chief Guttman to Sarah Razak for National Night Out. "You single-handedly organized, fundraised, planned, and executed an event that was a huge success." Congratulations, Sarah. [1:25:07] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** Announcements. Regular meeting October 13th. Park Board walk-through on September 13th. Motion to adjourn? [1:26:00] **Lou Ohly, Council Member:** Motion. [1:26:02] **Douglas Juntunen, Council Member:** Second. [1:26:05] **Jim Michalski, Mayor:** All in favor? (Group: Aye). Adjourned.