Okay. So, welcome everyone. We have a special guest with us tonight. I'm calling the meeting to order for the city of Minatrista. This is the regular city council meeting for May 4th, 2026. Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So again, welcome everyone. And yes, we do have a very special guest and I'm going to be introducing him in just a little bit. But first, I'm going to start out by introducing some other people that are here tonight. I'm Lisa Whan and I'm the mayor. And to my left are council members, Kathleen Mefkin. Um, Claudia Lesie, Brian Govern, and then on the end we have our city engineer, Allison Falski. And then Paula Bowman is our assistant administrator. And then to my right, I have our city administrator, Jasper Krugal. And um, David Ael is our community development director. And then on the end we have our chief of police Craig Squires. Uh we also have some people that are uh participating remotely. So we have I believe council member Peter Vickery and Annne Meerhoff is our city clerk. And then we have Gary Peters who is our public works director and then Sarah Sansala who is our city attorney. Did I get everyone? No. >> All right. So with that, um, I'm looking for approval of the agenda with one change. I'd like to add item number under consent. No, it would be consent agenda item number P. And that would be to add the settlement agreement. No, it's P. >> Element O. Element O P. It's either O or P. It's O. I have >> O. Yep. >> That's cuz I have the old agenda. Um, so it' be item number O and it would be to approve the settlement agreement uh between the city of Minatrista and 1205 and 1195 Sunnyfield Road North. Is there a motion to approve the agenda with that change? >> So moved. >> Thank you. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Govern. All those in favor signify. Now, is Peter with us? >> Peter is not here right now. >> Okay. So, >> um I would do a roll call just in case >> we're going to do a roll call just in case. Uh Brian, how do you vote? >> I >> and Claudia >> I. Kathleen >> I. >> And I vote I and motion would pass um four or five. So with that um tonight we have um a special presentation tonight and what we have is Elon Thailer is with us and what this is Elon participated in a statewide um essay contest and it was called a mayor of the day what he would do if he was mayor for the day. There were 540 essays submitted and out of those 540 Elon was one of the top four and he happens to be a Minatrista resident. So that's that's so exciting. And the other thing I have to say is you you did wonderful opening the meeting and I'm going to ask that you come to the podium over here and read your essay for us and welcome. Thank you for coming. >> Hi, my name is Elon and I live in Minatrista. If I were mayor for a day, I would work on city development. Minatrista used to have few people and was mainly farmland. Recently, more people are moving to Minatrista, and there aren't many restaurants, companies, and stores. I think it is important to have shops and stores because it drives better quality of living for everybody. With more shops and stores, we get even more people to live here and make menrist a better place to live. An idea for this is having a minrist in Main Street. We should have many stores. Steps for this project would be one, have meetings here ideas. I'd advertise this so we could have meetings on different days of the week. Two, find a strip of land in Ministrista. I'd go to locations, then take a vote to choose the best place. Three, build a main tree and sell stores. Have a committee to organize this idea and help maintain it. Four, have people enjoy a Men Trista Main Street collect and collect feedback to make it even better. Five, have events held at Men Trista Main Street monthly. Have events like watercolor painting, food tours, and book talks. If Mista built a Main Street, there'll be more shops in Menrista, which will lead to people coming, which will lead to a great big city. Since Mentrista is alongside a lake, that's something to take advantage of. The main interest in Main Street should be lakeside to attract more people to be able to com to attract more people and be able to compete with neighboring cities like Wakonia, Excelsia, and Wisetta. The city of Exalia has a down down downtown downtown street similar to the idea I'm proposing. They make $7 million yearly in tax, which is a lot of money to help the city thrive. In conclusion, this idea would get more people to live in Minitista, make money for the city of Minatrista, and have a convenient spot that has everything you need. >> Thank you. >> I like to compliment your very eloquent public speaking. That was very well done. >> Very good. >> Speaks better than I do. >> You have a ticket for you that you can keep for the rest of your life. You know what? Maybe someday I I think you will on the planning commission. >> We could assume St. Bonnie and then take over their downtown. >> That's what we >> was here to donate. Thank you so much for coming. >> Thank you. Thank you, Elon. It's very very good. Um just excellent to see young people be so excited and so engaged in local government. So with that um we don't have anybody signed up under persons to be heard. So we have a lengthy consent agenda and I will read those for you and uh are there any you wish to remove? All right. So they consist of a approve our work do I have a new one? Thank you. I mean um they A is approve our work session meeting minutes from April 20th 26. B is approve our city council regular meeting minutes from April 20th 2026. C is a resolution to approve claims. D is a resolution to um accept the task task order number 20 risk and resiliency easement. E is a resolution to accept and award the quote for spraylining 91 sanitary sewer manhole chimney structures. These are really exciting things, I got to tell you. Um, F is approve a conditional use permit for ground mounted solar at Gail Woods Farm. G is approve a comprehensive plan amendment at 2500 County Road 92 and authorize staff to submit the same to Metropolitan Council. H is an ordinance to reszone 2500 county road 92 from agricultural pres preserve or preservation to agriculture. and I is a resolution authorizing the publication of ordinance number 504 by title and summary. J is a resolution to approve a front yard setback variance at 8420 Oxoke Circle. K is a resolution to award an equipment CIP purchase of the leveling bar replacement. I is an ordinance for um number Oh, L. Yeah, I'm sorry. I can't even Yeah. L comes after K, doesn't it? Very good. Um, ordinance number 505, it's a fee schedule amendment to the 2026 fee schedule for the Minnesota Department of Health fee increase. And M is approve a liquor license renewals. And N is authorize staff to enter in into an agreement with GTEL Advisors LLC in partnership with the LMAC agencies. And then the last one is um approve oh approve the settlement agreement between the city of Minatrista and 1205 and 1195 Sunnyfield Road North. Is there a motion to approve all of those consent agenda items? >> So moved. >> Thank you, Miss Lacy. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Miss Revkin. Do we have Peter on the line? >> We we don't have them yet, but I still do a roll call on this. Okay, just in case we'll do a roll call. So Bian, how do you vote? >> I >> L Claudia I. >> Kathleen, >> I >> I Lisa, that's 40. Motion passes. So that concludes our consent agenda items. Our business items are Leave that to you. Hold on. >> Uh yes, Madame Mayor, members of city council, you'll have to excuse me. I had to use my personal computer for this uh video thing. We're running into some tech um challenges, but so I'll be looking at my phone, looking at this agenda item on my phone, but um approved the master services agreement with infoend for services related to monthly billing. So I think as everybody's aware, we're going to be transitioning to monthly billing for water accounts July 1. Um, one of the items we've talked about is uh outsourcing the sending of these utility bills and uh Brian Grim, who's who's not here tonight, um, and his team developed, uh, a process to to determine, um, who would we who we would use for that service. Um, I'll talk a little bit about what we currently do with our quarterly billings is we um, print these off in-house manually. They're the little postcards I think everybody's seen. We go through, we we they're perforated. We um I say we I've never done it. Um but um Darcy, Renee, and sometimes Ann will go through and uh break those up and then run them through the postage machine and then mail them off. Um being that this is that's we do that four times a year. Uh being that we're moving to monthly in July, that'll turn into 12 times a year. uh looking at uh the different groups. We reached out to four different groups to do this um exercise related to uh monthly billing. Um we got two quotes back from them. One from a local vendor and then this other one from Infosend. Brian and Renee uh really took the lead on this to determine um which one would be the better fit for the community. Um Infosend, which is in in your packet, they work with other communities in Minnesota um larger than ours. So they we we they do have experience. We think that they can do the work. Um essentially uh it's it's so I'll kind of break down some of the numbers that you you've seen in here. Uh the estimate for the total per year for all of the accounts to be sent. So that's 30,000 mailings um a year is estimated at $25,000. This the price for postage is a big component of that number. We have to do that no matter what. Um that's 59 cents uh per letter for bulk mail. Uh the remaining balance is for the printing and stuffing of the envelopes and um that's for one sheet of paper um an envelope and then you know the processing of that. That comes out to about um I think I'm going off memory here about $7,700 above what we currently pay. And that equates to about 26 cents per account every time we send it. So, for 26 cents per account every time we send it, you're going to get a an invoice or in the mail that's going to have some additional information on there like some graphs and things like that about your usage. So, a lot more information. We're going to have a medium that we can then put information on uh like the backside if you've looked at your your bill. We have a little bit of a blurb on the back that we have put like four sentences on there. Um, and then if we ever want to add an additional letter, so like what we've been doing with our um, water kind of updates that we've been doing, we've done one so far, but if we want to do anything like that, we could then easily add another sheet of paper to that mailing and and save on the postage. So, um, staffwise, doing this 12 times a year would be quite difficult. um from what what we've looked at and examined on it, it wouldn't it would be almost impossible for this to be successful to be able to do that. Um so that's that's why this is happening. So with that, what we have in front of you is is a master services agreement um with infosend. It's a three-year term, then it's a a yearly um update potentially after that um depending on if we want to renew with them or not. Um I think that's the the gist of it going off memory. >> So people would receive a bill and the pay it would be like a 8 by10 sheet. Y >> um kind of similar to what you get for from the electric gas or electric company similar to that. Correct. >> Okay. And so it'd be mailed and then we can have is there an additional charge to print anything else on there other than the bill? >> There is and I think that was the range that Brian put on there. I think the $6 to $10,000 if we want to add another page to it. I believe it's 29 cents. >> But to add something to the existing bill other than the bill itself, let's say on the back side, it wouldn't be that much more. >> Yeah. 29 cents. >> 29. >> Yep. Yeah. Which >> if we would do that separately on our own, the postage alone is 59 cents. So, >> so and it would be included. Okay. All right. Um, I know when I spoke with you, I said we should try out and see how staff does with monthly billing. So, when was it decided we were going to skip trying it out and just move forward to spend $25,000 on it? >> So, I think maybe I was confused by our conversation cuz when we were when we were talking about this in a personnel or I can't remember if it was personnel committ personnel committee. >> Yeah. Well, I don't think it's personnel related, but um so what we were talking about was adding a person, right? So, from about two years ago, we examined this. We said it would take about8 people to do this exercise. So that's what we determined in in house. From my conversation with you, it was that we were not going to propose a person for this. >> No, we were going to try it out with current staff to see how that worked. Those those were my exact words. >> So I misinterpreted that. I'm sorry about that. Um I was under the understanding that we weren't going to pursue another person. >> Okay. So, moving on from that, um, why didn't we look into other options such as just buying like a letter folding machine or something that can do all this on site, you know, print it out and then it folds it, stuffs it in the envelope. I know I Googled and found one. I know Brian searched and found some. So, let let's hold on just a second. Let's step back just real quick. It's not 25,000. It's an additional 7,000. Okay? Just to make it clear because we would have we would have the cost of mailing regardless. and we would have the cost of printing regardless. So I just want to be clear on what we're what we're looking at. So it's an additional roughly $7,000 to have this outsourced. So now to answer your question, um have we looked at mailing? I don't know if there's machines or whatever that can do this. >> We haven't. And I guess what I'm saying is that we don't have the staff to do this. So it we're setting us ourselves up for failure if we would pursue that. Now, we can look at it and we can examine it if if that's what you'd like. Um but that the current workload that our staff has that is in that department would not be able to take this on. >> Okay. >> Why can't they if there's a machine that does all the stuffing and putting it in the envelopes and everything? Well, we could look at we could look at that if if that if it's as easy as I guess I'm not familiar with that system. So, if it's that easy, we could look at it and if it's pretty automated, sure. Um, we could look at it. But the the cost, we'd have to look at that cuz as the mayor alluded, there's still the postage cost of 59, right? If we would print inhouse, we would also have those costs. Those that would come off that 7,000. I don't exactly know what that margin would be. >> How do you print it inhouse? What do you do? it just um >> just a copy machine, >> just a multi-function printer. We >> which we could print double-sided and add additional papers and all of that. So that wouldn't be >> But currently you're saying the postcards that are mailed out, those are printed in house. >> They are printed in house on the postcard. I'm not sure what is it through it's through the uh what system do they use to print it? Like my question is if we >> or something like that and it's just like it's just a simple program. >> Yeah. So, if we would do um this new program, like would we be able to do that even or would there >> if we would do it in house, there could be a way to do it. Um I'm we could crunch the numbers. I'd have, you know, Brian and Renee crunch the numbers to do that for whatever it would look like, but we would still have So, we lease our printer, our multi-function. So, we don't we don't pay for it, but we pay per copy. If it's color, it's a certain price. If it's black and white, it's a certain price. So, we'd have to add that on to the the total cost. Um, but I mean, if that's something that city council wants us to look at, I mean, we can we can definitely do that. >> What I'm hearing from my staff is that they would not be able to take this on under its current form >> because it's on monthly basis and it's pretty time consuming. ripping postit postage the postage stamp cards takes an enormous amount of time and everything but I mean like if there's ways to do it and print it in house and I don't see why we wouldn't try that would have to be printed in house and then it would have to be folded >> mechan mechanically and are there also machines that mechanically then stamp it or is that something >> we would likely run it through our postage machine that we Okay. >> And then I don't know of a machine that would put the paper inside the envelope. So that would be staff time. >> No, you can. There's some online like I know Brian found one. I found one on Amazon. Like there's there's plenty that load the envelopes with the paper. >> Okay. >> Yeah. So the margin right now without even taking into account paper >> um or staff time is like 26 cents per envelope. >> Yeah. >> Right now. we start buying stuff and having to maintain things and >> so we'd have to Okay, so let me ask another question. So we'd have to but to print postcards like we currently have, we wouldn't need envelopes or paper then, right? Then it would just be that. So how how so I'm trying to figure this out. If you have if if the machines don't do that automatically, then what do we have to do? >> I I guess I don't know the process completely. Um but I know you know Renee does this. She prints it off. She organizes everything. It takes her a day to set everything up between all of her other job duties. So it takes a full day for setup. Um then she'll print everything. That can take a full day to print. And then it takes two staff people to um set up the postcards after they're printed to rip them and to get them in the mail. So um >> so then we would have to go to like a paper uh fold envelope kind of thing, we would >> I mean if you wanted it to be more automated, >> correct? >> Okay. >> Yep. >> Okay. >> This is a dumb question. Everything I've been a part of in the last 20 years says they want to go paperless and they want to send you emails. I think people have to be proactive if they want information. And I I I hate getting stuff in the mail. I I would go on the minute Can't we find some way to put some like our Lady of the Lake kind of digital sign out there that says sign up to our website to get current important information. >> Well, we can't force them to do that. That's >> then they can't come in, you know. >> No, no, no. This is for the billing. have people be able to opt into getting their bills online just like with or centerpoint or anyone else. So, >> they do right now and and on all of the utility postcards that we get, there is a website there to log into to do >> um to sign up for >> I would assume once it switches to monthly, more people will do that, >> right? >> We hope. >> Yeah, we hope so. >> Ideally, everybody would sign up for paperless. >> Yeah. Right. >> But so again, >> and and be proactive to know what's going on in their city. I don't think we have to bang them on the head. >> So, here's letters, >> right? So, here but Well, it wouldn't. This is a bill. It's not a letter. It's a bill. Yeah. >> But, so here's a question. Would this organization that we got this quote from, would they be willing to do it for on a let's say quotes trial basis so that we can because here's the thing. We need to get this up and running by July. And what I'm concerned about is staff time and are they going to be able to do this July, August, September, October, November. Um, and being that it's new. So, and also fielding all these calls that we may be getting. So, what I'd like to suggest is at the very least, let's just do this on a trial basis with them for maybe four or five months, 6 months, >> staff, and see how they handle it. I mean, just what we're hearing from staff that they don't have the time, >> but they haven't done it. They have they they have done it. >> No, they haven't done it. If you buy a machine that folds it and puts it in an envelope and mails it. They've done the postit the post cards, which I agree with. We should switch from. But why would we automatically outsource staff duties instead of trying it in-house and seeing how staff handles it if we get them the right equipment to do it? >> Maybe they work all day Friday. I mean, I just I'm not disputing it's going to be more work, but shouldn't we see how much more work it is before we outsource their job duties? I I if I if I may, I think we're trying to set this whole monthly billing up for success. What I would hate to see is that we go down the path of staff doing it, staff getting burnt out, staff leaving, then then we're stuck for a while. Um cuz that's a possibility. I'm just I'm telling you this right now. Um >> so if they have to do this for two months on a trial basis, they're going to quit. >> I don't know. >> Well, I mean then that's >> I I'm just saying it's it's it's we're not set up right now for it. Um we'd have to dig into it. If council wants us to dig into an alternative um method where we can do it in house, we can definitely do that and we can crunch the numbers. I'm telling you that the margin between what this proposal is and what we can do it inhouse, even if we discount our staff time to zero, right? Let's just say that that's free. It's going to be probably less than 10 cents of actual cost per mailing. Now, is that worth it? We're going to have to we're going to have to maintain a folding machine. I don't know. I mean, I don't know anything about this stuff, so we'd have to look into it. So, we're gonna we want to uh start implementing this July 1st, right? >> So, the first bill would go out July. >> I'm talking I'm talking I I'm talking I I'm going to finish my sentence. Hold on just a second. Um so, we want this to go out July 1st. So, why don't you find out what a folding machine would cost, what envelopes would cost, what paper would cost. Um kind of see if other communities do this um on their own. What are they talking in terms of timing? because even if even if there's self-folding, you know, that kind of thing, there's still staff time involved in that. >> So, let's see what let's research it a little bit more. Bring it back to the May 18th meeting. Is that do you think possible? >> It is. It is. I mean, um >> I just want to make sure that we're ready to go July 1st. >> Well, we don't have to be ready to go July 1st. The first billing would go out presumably sometime the first week of August because it's starting with July 1st. Water usage. >> No, it goes out July 1st, I believe. No, the first the first bill, just so we're clear, would go out um likely before August 1st. It would be due 19th of August. So, we'd have to get it set up. There's a lot to get set up. Um so, we would need to know, I would say, what direction we're going with this by June 1st. >> Okay. >> So, if we if we have another meeting where we can bring something back, um kind of a work session where we can have more formal >> hypothetically speaking, I know I'm beating a dead horse. Hypothetically speaking, if half the people in Minista opt to get their bill electronically, then it's half as much being mailed out, right? >> Absolutely. Yeah. >> So, why don't we do a huge Facebook put? It costs nothing to have the city of Minatrista pay a what do they call it? A booster fee and then it goes out. It just pummels everyone with a Facebook ad, you know, in this community. Wouldn't you like to save your city some money, you know, contact, if you live in Minista, contact us now and sign up for paperless billing. >> Why don't we try something like that? Well, we can do that, but that's not going to help us necessarily in in the immediate because we don't know how many people are going to sign up by June 1st. That's that's it's the timing issue, >> right? But we have a month to see three and a half weeks. >> We can certainly do that. We can do on go on Facebook and say, "Hey, we're going to go to monthly billing. Um, think about signing up for >> save your city, save your city some money." >> Yeah. And we can do that. That's not a bad idea. >> I'll sign up right now. >> Okay. >> It is. >> You're not on city water. You don't get monthly bill. >> Please go sign up signing up tonight. Um and certainly we do want to encourage people to do go to paperless billing so that it does save money but um so let's uh let's try that number one but also simultaneously let's find out what the costs are for doing it inhouse and how that would work. >> Sure. And there's 2500 people and wouldn't and >> 2500 accounts. Yeah. >> I imagine if it wouldn't be hard to get those people to do it. Well, Kathleen would for sure walk up and down the street. >> Jasper, >> she does not like this idea and she would walk and I would go with her. >> I think I think Peter's raising his hand. There he was. >> Peter. Okay. >> Hi, Peter. >> Uh, Jasper, I have a question. if um which by the way I think it's a great idea to get everybody online but um if if we do uh or is the bid from this company dependent on getting at least 2500 accounts or you know say we get that down to 1500 or something would they charge more per u mailing >> I I don't believe so we we would have to ask and we were we were working with what current numbers are with the 30 around estimated 30,000 mailings a year. >> So we could ask them if it if it would go up. You're saying if there's a quantity discount right now at 30,000 if it would go to 15 maybe it'd be >> higher per mailing or per item you know instead of 29 cents might be 35 or something. >> Right. Right. No, good question. All right. So you'll find that out. Okay. And then we're going to you're going to come back with some more dollar or some more um yeah options for in-house and and we're going to do a Facebook page um email blast. Sign up for paperless billing. It'll save you money. It'll save the city money. It won't necessarily save them money, but >> save trees, too. >> All right. >> Any any other comments or suggestions? All right. So we'll come back with that on the 18th. We'll have to if we want to do it before May June 1st. >> All right. >> All right. So with that, we'll move on to uh reports. We have staff reports. I'll start with Jasper. Anything? >> I don't have anything other I think you can talk about Trrista Day in the state of the city. >> Yep. Okay. I'll I'll let Craig talk about Trista Day. >> Yeah. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Uh council members, Trista Day. Uh May 13th, it's uh Wednesday night. Um starting at 4:30 going to around 7:00. We're going to have a lot of good stuff there, including free food. I repeat, free food, hot dogs, chips, brz, water. Um going to have some food trucks there for desserts, uh donuts, and ice cream and whatnot. Uh Lifel helicopter will be flying in. Uh we'll have K9 demonstrations, um free balloon animals, uh face painting, bounce house, penning zoo, pony rides, and a lot more. So please come on out. It's free. >> Thanks, David. Anything? >> There will be a May planning commission meeting. >> Okay. And that is Tuesday the 26th. >> 6th. Anybody available that day? >> No, I'm not. >> Okay, Kathleen will do it. Thank you. Great. Um, any other staff reports? >> No. >> Okay. Um, council reports. Brian, anything? >> N Claudia? Nothing. Kathleen? >> Um, you and I attended a meeting with um the mayor and the fire chief of St. Bonafacious um just to discuss fire services. And then um there is a mound fire meeting on Thursday, but I cannot go to a but Jasper will be there. >> Okay. >> And there should be a St. Bonnie fire meeting hopefully on May 14th, but I haven't heard confirm that date yet, but if it is, I will be there. >> Okay. >> So, um let's see. I was at the uh planning commission meeting and um you saw those in our consent agenda items and then um I will be at Trista Day and then I have to leave a little bit earlier because it's also the same night as Northwest League and I have to be at that because we're going to be hosting the um what five or six candidates at least five of the of the six I think candidates that are um vying for the um Henipin County Um, sheriff, no, >> attorney. >> Attorney. Thank you. Um, prosecuting prosecuting attorney. So, um, that'll be interesting. And, um, let's see what else. And then, of course, tomorrow night we have the state of the city address. Uh, doors open at 5:30. We'll probably start um around 6ish or so. And hope you can all make it. It'll be a fun event. Um I just asked Elon if he would be there and he's going to be there reading his his um u essay which will be um a lot of fun as well. And then um we also um myself as well as Jasper attended the Miniah Creek Watershed District's kickoff meeting for their um 2050 watershed plan. And so we'll be involved in that. And then also um the fire partnership meetings will be starting pretty soon now that we've had passed that resolution and we're going to be looking at um a fire district between Mound and uh between uh St. Bonnie and Minatrista. Um we'll bring you more information on that as we move along. And um anything else that you can think of? >> Does Peter have anything? >> Peter, do you have anything? Uh well, I did go to the recycling uh event. Uh got rid of some things that Chris has been asking me to get rid of for months and um I must say that it was packed. I was just all sorts of people there and it was so great to be able to get rid of these things. And uh so that I really my hats off to uh Darcy and the others that were there, you know, overseeing it because it it was a big deal. So So that was fun to see, too. Yep, it was. And it's a really good um event for for us as well as mound. I think it's a joint venture. So that's wonderful. All right, then. Uh with that, we can be adjourned if there's a motion. >> So moved. >> Thank you, Brian. Is there a second? >> Thank you, Kathleen. All those in favor signify with I. I'm going to start with Peter. >> I. >> Brian, >> I Claudia, >> I. >> Kathleen, >> I. Lisa I motion is adjourned. We are adjourned. Motion passes 5. >> We'll see you um some of you tomorrow and some of you on the 18th. >> Wonderful. >> Thank you. Go to >> Mayo tomorrow. >> Thank you.