United States of America Republic one nation oh call please council member cool here council member schweer here council member Wong here council member nordby here mayor monkey here can I get the motion to adopt the agenda please so moved your honor school by council member Wong second second by council member Cole all those are all those in favor say aye aye thank you consent agenda today sorry thank you mayor all right uh Accenture item a March 21st 2023 uh Workshop minutes uh B March 21st 2023 regular meeting minutes item C General claims 674 182.97 hre claims of 3553.71 cents um we have a 2019 repair of a bobcat um and that is the extent of the consent agenda can I get a motion too consent agenda some move your honor second councilmember Norby I was in favor say aye aye thank you all right next I'm going to open up the meeting to the public 6 34. Mr Smalls got your three minutes sir first of all our mayor council John Schmall 2750 Chisholm Avenue just as a note went to the open book today and there was no one there all the assessors there had been 12 of them there was no one there everyone must be happy with their taxes cool take that for what it's worth anyway I was a uh for a week ago Friday at my cabin happened to be watching Almanac and they had when they had the political group they said that the legislature had taken up a subject of um the nursing homes and that if we don't do something about raising the wages of the people who work in nursing homes we're going to have in the next two years a shortage of eleven thousand beds and the comment was made that when that came out at the meeting or whatever you know the that they had on this subject that it took the air out of the room the response was like that and that leads up to me getting to the look at the newsletter this week from North St Paul and what are we doing and asking for money from the legislature we want to repair a broken down building we have our priorities in order thank you thank you John 's anything right you have zoom tonight or you have to worry about or anything like that right oh thank you all right all right the rest of the city business and action items or recommendation thank you mayor we have one item on the resolutions for this is going to be rescinding of an old resolution and uh looking for approval of the new one dealing with uh the meals per diem so kind of the background is the employee policy manual was updated in 2017 section H which deals with the travel meals per diem States employees and other City Representatives that are authorized for travel may receive a day allowance for meals per diem rates are established by city council resolution and may be amended from time to time last time the update was done for the actual meal per diem was May 7th of 2002. so quite a while ago we've made some comparisons with other cities and the rates that we're using are very much behind the times in looking at what other cities use for their policy they use the website the gsa.gov which kind of goes over meals and rates that make sense for that area so we have them like for us in Minnesota there are probably three or four different rates you have the Twin Cities area Hennepin Ramsey County you have Olmsted County for Rochester Duluth and then probably just Greater Minnesota depending on where you're eating and it makes more sense where you have more expensive meals they give a little bit more um so we are looking to rescind resolution number 2002-36 pertaining to the old meal per diem and looking at for a resolution to approve them the new meal per diem amount if we could please anybody have any Vinnies or comments on it it makes a lot of sense to have the GSA rates used especially because they're updated on a regular basis by the federal government it accounts for inflation so it makes a whole lot of sense to me there may just be a little bit of a administrative five minutes extra but overall it makes a lot of sense thank you second by council member Wong all those in favor say aye aye you know every 20 years it's okay to increase [Laughter] I think that's what brought this up you got a skinny mayor like like Terry it was so different all right thank you very much you can say what you were thinking that's right reports from city manager departments thank you bear uh we had staff meeting today got updated from the Departments um so we're dealing we got the new insurance we're going to have a meeting with Gary Insurance to deal with some of the seen some redundancies in there and maybe some other things that need to be updated on that um yeah so we talked to the electric Department today they we just saw we saw some power outages from the storm that came through there were actually only 20 residents that were affected for power outages 15 of them were for one fuse that blew that took out a single Transformer that had 15 customers on it that was out for an hour and a half the other five were individual house occurrences whether or not a brand trip service down or what have you but um that range anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours for the outage time that they were back on but nothing over um two hours so that was good to hear um just a side note on that one yeah I had some friends that family live in Lake Elmo and different places and they were out for almost a day so kudos to the department for keeping things trimmed and because that was a super wet heavy snow so nice work from the electric Department to be able to avoid stuff like that and once again for our Public Works and the snow removal um for sure they've just had a heck of a year I mean this this snow was so heavy that even the heavier equipment was having a hard time pushing some of this um they're going to do some more downtown cleanup hopefully this is the last time they probably brought a guest somewhere around a thousand loads down to McKnight for dumping all that snow down there um the update on the student built house so they have the electrical and plumbing done they're looking at doing insulation this week and hopefully starting drywall by Friday so they're moving along and of course they're doing a lot of Road patching by the line out in front of shift skis in the morning is long people are just dying to get these potholes fixed the brutal winner with the freeze thaw Cycles it's just so hard on the roads so they're out there doing their best to get the at least the tire breakers out of there and of course unfortunately I mean even with this cold weather you know you're putting it down sometimes on roads that are frozen you're just trying to get the big ones it's probably going to get plowed out if they hit it again but they'll be back there in the summer when they'll actually be able to attack it and do it right and it'll stick their further duration um we had the Community Development permit report from March we had 94 permits that were pulled Finance has their new employees starting on Monday the accountant we're looking forward to that she's going to be a good addition to the city she got really good rounded experience in the accounting um that's all I have for now all right we'll go on to reports from Council commissions and committees anything council member Norby the Planning Commission is this coming Thursday at 6 30 p.m great thank you councilmember one yeah and the arts and culture commission had their Paint and Sip event thank you to Carrie for highlighting that in the newsletter I think they had um five five or six attendees or so and um which is a good for our first first I would say um and then the subgroup is on the arts and culture commission is working on um utility box wraps so um they're currently deciding on what those images may be for about four boxes and then the community will take a vote on which boxes or which image they'd like to see on the utility wraps um and then their next meeting is tomorrow here in the chambers at 6 30 pm thank you I do not have an update I missed the last meeting Lauren was there he covered it for you there you go [Laughter] um next Ada meeting is a week from today April the 11th three o'clock here in council chambers General business councilmember nerby um I have two things um one week from today Ramsey County is holding their 24-25 biennial biennial thank you budget information and listing sessions scheduled for April 11th one week from today um and uh you can attend either in person or zoom and they are going to apparently have assessors there if you wish to discuss your evaluation for this tax season I know that's a big item for a lot of us so one week from today is a chance to have your voice heard and the second thing was I got a new telephone pole and I just wanted to give a huge shout out to our City Works they did a wonderful job mm-hmm I'll tell everyone yeah I just want to bring up maybe a little bit about the community center I think a few of you are there so I'll let you share what your experience was but Brian and Dr Waldron accompanied me and we went to the capital investment committee at the house and we pitched our bills around the community center and I think we got some questions which is a good thing they tend to be interested and I mean there were so many bills so I felt very fortunate we got heard and I'm just looking forward to it there's a lot of other community centers being proposed as well so we're certainly not out of the realm of of possibility of trying to reach those dollars for our community so yeah it's a good event you nothing all right council member Cole I've got a few I had the opportunity to attend the Silver Lake Improvement association annual meeting and I am happy to say that it has been officially turned over to Mayor monkey and it is green great hands as I step away from my to your commitment runaway yes as councilmember Wong addressed as well also had the privilege to present a funding request to the Minnesota state senate seeking funding for the North St Paul Multicultural Community Center we were not the only ones in the room asking for funding um and so fingers crossed that we'll be able to get something moving our direction we had great engagement from from the senate committee at the time and they had asked some some good questions and thank you Brian thank you Kerry for for your help with that as well and final uh final one I had I had the opportunity on Saturday to attend the grand opening of the newest addition to downtown the Hang Time Board Shop um what a what a fun place um it's it's been a long time since there's been anything youth oriented around um it was it was fun um had a had a great time two of the to the owners are North High grads and the other one is from Stillwater so looking forward to the ribbon cutting coming up sometime end of the month end of May okay we're gonna wait for all the snow to be gone right that's it for me well it's like councilmember Cole said I was at the Silver Lake it was a great meeting as far as where we're going with the lake and looking at the milfoil situation out there being able to address that as a maybe a big it's what they call it's a big treatment of it where it's treated in the fall and then in the spring again so what it does is when the when the natural plants go dormant then we put the they put the killer on it because the milfoil is still going and then the spring before the the vital native plants come out of dormancy they can hit it again so it was a great great group of people I was glad that we have a full for the first time they have a full board for the for the Lake Association and it's um it's looking looking promising to be able to get together I reached out to Maplewood mayor and so she's on the radar for that so this will be coming up more in just working forward to our wonderful Lake and being able to get that uh swimming area and be able to do a little bit more so it was a good meeting I also had the privilege with council member schweer and council member Cole to go to the Historical Society we had they had their uh about the newspapers they had the newspapers there Paul Anderson spoke it was a great event and it was uh it was it was a good time and also I was down at the Capitol first time going down there since grade school I think so it was I was down there for a different project it's the path going around Silver Lake to try to connect for a walking path going down Century from 19th to the bus stop up there on Joy so looking at different options to be able to complete that path so I think that's all I got all right if anybody has anything else we'll go ahead yeah happy Easter and happy Ramadan if you're if folks are celebrating yes that's good that's good thank you very much all right if there's nothing else I'll call for adjournment so move council member Cole second second council member Norby all those in favor say aye aye adjourned my white