This transcript appears to be from a Faribault City Council meeting. Please note that while your context list identifies Thomas J. Spooner as Mayor, the audio/transcript clearly indicates that **Kevin Voracek** was presiding as Mayor at the time of this specific recording, with Thomas J. Spooner serving as a Council Member. [0:49] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** We'll call the Tuesday June 25th 2024 meeting to order, we'll start with the roll call. Council member Caron. here. Doumbouya. here. Ross. here. van Sluis. Spooner. here. Thiele. here. Mayor Voracek. here. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. [1:06] **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. [1:23] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Thank you. Welcome to our first meeting in the newly remodeled council chambers, forgive us for any technology hiccups that we have but I'm I'm hoping Heather will have them all seamless. I need a motion and a second to approve tonight's agenda. [1:39] **Council Member Royal Ross:** So moved. [1:40] **Council Member Adama Youhn Doumbouya:** Second. [1:41] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Motion by council member Ross, second by Council member Doumbouya. All in favor say aye. [1:47] **Council Members:** Aye. [1:48] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Opposed? It passes. We have no presentations or introductions tonight, we'll move on to approving the minutes of the June 11th 2024 city council meeting. Anybody have any changes or corrections that need to be made? Seeing none I would take a motion and a second to approve. [2:07] **Council Member Chuck Thiele:** So moved. [2:08] **Council Member Thomas J. Spooner:** Second. [2:09] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Motion by council member Thiele, second by council member Spooner. All in favor say Aye. [2:15] **Council Members:** Aye. [2:16] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Opposed? That passes. Looking around the room we have no request to be heard tonight, we move to consent agenda items 6A through 6L. Do you have anything they want pulled for discussion on those items? Seeing none I would take a motion in and a second to approve. [2:36] **Council Member Royal Ross:** Mayor Voracek, I make a motion to approve the consent agenda from A to L. [2:41] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** And I got a second by council member Caron, all in favor say aye. [2:44] **Council Members:** Aye. [2:45] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Opposed? We have no public hearings tonight, we move on to items for discussion resolution 2024-25 authorized an internal loan for the design construction and equipping of Viaduct Park, over to administrator Kinser. [3:00] **Jessica Kinser (City Administrator):** Yes uh thank you uh mayor Voracek. At the last council meeting you approved the contracts for bid packages one and two, which is really the starting point for us to move forward with getting the documents in place for us to authorize the internal loan from the Wastewater fund to fund 404 (the Park Improvement fund) for the design equipping and construction related to this first phase of the park. One of the things to point out is this resolution is crafted in a way where it is designed to be amended when we are ready to amend it for any of the ice design fees and construction costs when those will be known at a future date. The interest rate is 5% which is what we are seeing on our investments so the rate payers of the sewer fund will still be seeing the same return on the investment and the repayment source will be franchise fees in the park land dedication fund—most of which will be coming from Gas and Electric but a small amount coming from water and sewer. And then as this will very much be a revolving sort of loan document, as donations come in (I think it's June and December, or it'll be November and May) from the Foundation remitting payments to us twice annually, then that will sort of readjust the schedule each time to reduce that principal balance. So this will be very much a living document once we get things moving forward and essentially as soon as we start incurring construction costs is when we'll start to see that first transfer. [4:38] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Okay questions. Council member Ross? [4:39] **Council Member Royal Ross:** Thank you mayor. How often is the—I guess the interest rate renewed? It's not going to be a loan renewal but how often is the interest rate reviewed? Is it yearly or? [4:56] **Jessica Kinser:** Well I'm going to figure that out very soon as I start to take over the investment management here in the interim period with no Finance Director. But yeah we'll be reviewing that and I think that's something that we want to balance: the interest of making sure that the sewer rate payers see a fair return on investment, but we don't want to hold it at 5% if that's not what the rest of our investments are. So we'll be reviewing that periodically throughout the year. We're scheduled to have quarterly payments and so that's where I think it's really going to be adjusting, but sticking at 5% until we see something that would happen either way in the market to probably move things a percentage point. [5:36] **Council Member Royal Ross:** Okay thank you. Yeah it is something I'd like to see kept track of because hopefully the interest rates will go down. I do understand that they could go the other way too so thank you. [5:45] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Any other questions? Lots of controversy about this park out there; a lot of people that want it, there's a lot of people that think it's a waste of taxpayer money. We always say if everybody was happy we did something wrong. With that I don't need to take it out to the public so I will take a motion and a second to approve the resolution if that is the will. [6:09] **Council Member Royal Ross:** Mayor Voracek, I'll make a motion to approve resolution 2024-124. [6:13] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** I got a motion by councilman Ross second by council member Doumbouya, all in favor say Aye. [6:21] **Council Members:** Aye. [6:22] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Opposed? Moving on to zoning text amendment to allow laundry services in C1 zoning first reading over to director Wanberg. [6:23] **David Wanberg (Community & Economic Development Director):** Thank you Mr. Mayor and the council. The applicant JC and Lonnie Ahlers are asking for a zoning text amendment to allow laundromats in the C1 neighborhood commercial zoning District. The intent of the C1 district is really to provide the establishment of local centers for convenience office retail or service outlets that serve the neighborhood, as opposed to the C2 our Highway commercial or our C3 which is our regional commercial. The C1 really is intended to serve the residents of the community and specifically that neighborhood area. Current uses that are allowed in the C1 District include General retail and Sale Services—these are outright permitted uses by-right—so things like auto parts and accessories, bakery, catering, drugstores, pharmacies. Dry cleaning is outright permitted right now although I will point out that self-service laundry laundromats are not outright permitted in the district but dry cleaning is. Office schools supplies those kinds of things, so a lot of different things that are currently allowed in the C1 District. Conditional uses in the C1 District include convenience gas station stores. At one time we had the four Kwik Trips in town, we're down to three now; three of those four were in the C1 district and we do not have that many other C1 locations. We do have the Central Avenue wash laundromat that's in the C1 district, Glenn's is in the C1 District, but as I mentioned the other Kwik Trips on the east side—the one we had on the South Side—that was in the C1 District. So that's mostly the types of things that we've had, but other additional uses would be shopping center, restaurant, library; a place of assembly would be allowed in that. Our city planner Harry Davis did a deep dive into what other cities are doing particularly our peer cities and you can see that virtually all of them allow laundromats by-right or outright permitted—no performance standards—just in a C1 District a laundromat is allowed. Dry cleaning in most of the places, just like the city of Faribault, it is outright allowed in the district. This is really clarifying that laundromats would also be in the C1 District. The Planning Commission did have a fair amount of discussion on this. Ultimately the Planning Commission with a 4 to 1 vote recommended approval of the ordinance that you have before you tonight that would allow laundry services as a by-right use in the C1 District. There was one descending vote on that; they supported the idea of laundry services as a conditional use and the philosophy behind that was if it's a conditional use then you can start putting some conditions on there related to hours of operation or whatever else you might want to put on there that relates specifically to that. But again the Planning Commission did recommend with a 4 to 1 vote that you do similar to our peer cities and just allow laundromats outright. With that I will say that the recommendation that you have before you tonight is to approve the first reading of the ordinance 2024-10 that allows it as an outright use and the applicant is available tonight if you do have any questions about the ordinance or what his intent is. With that I'll turn it back to the mayor. [10:23] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Thank you director Wanberg, any questions on this item? Seems pretty straightforward that most of the other cities have got it and I'm sure a laundry's going to be better business at a gas station next. With that I would take a motion and second to approve if that is the will. [10:43] **Council Member Thomas J. Spooner:** So moved. [10:44] **Council Member Chuck Thiele:** Second. [10:45] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** I got a motion by Councilmember Spooner second by council member Thiele, all in favor say Aye. [10:53] **Council Members:** Aye. [11:16] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** All right that one passes first reading it'll be back in two weeks. Resolution 2024-132 declaring a local state of emergency for the city of Faribault Minnesota over to director Kinser. [11:29] **Jessica Kinser:** Um yes I'm actually going to turn this over to Chief Dienst as well to just provide a general update, but this is the resolution that allows the council to adopt the proclamation that the mayor signed on Saturday related to the flood event and so I'll turn it over to Chief Dienst to provide an update. [11:57] **Dustin Dienst (Fire Chief / Emergency Management Director):** Oh this is—testing—all right I like being a guinea pig. So as you all know it's an even year so that's why we're doing what we're doing. Of course on Friday we saw what was coming—not to the level that it ended up being—but we were in anticipation of flooding happening at some level. So City staff was preparing for this: they were doing some sandbagging and or filling sandbags and getting ready for this. Also sand and bags were made available for the public in case we got to that level which of course we did. The Police Department did start taping off hazardous areas as the water came up, mostly around the Woolen Mills Dam, and then of course it kept coming up and kept coming up. We were monitoring all along. One thing I really want to stress in this event that has been different than other events—and one reason is because we've had other events and we're getting better at it unfortunately or fortunately—but we've had great coordination between admin, our partners at the county, having Brad [Phenow], Suzy [from the county]... a lot of coordination has happened this time that hasn't happened in the past and it's making it a better process. Even though some might not think so out there, but in the long run it will be a very good process of common messaging: County, City, we're using common language and it's a lot less confusing—not totally un-confusing. We also been in contact with the public sector where we need to: the Cheese Caves, the Woolen Mills. Thankfully a lot of the mitigation that they've done since our last flooding has helped them out amazingly. The Woolen Mills, you could walk around in the basement in flip-flops and not get wet. As you know we declared with the paperwork on Saturday at about around 5:30—this is making it official—but in coordination with the county and seeing what was coming we thought it would be a good idea to get that happening as soon as possible. On Sunday if any of you were out and about, this was a very, very busy city; there was people everywhere. There was multiple reasons, I believe the flood was probably one of them, but that made for some challenges that we haven't had to deal with in the past. The Police Department was overwhelmed with the amount of people that needed to be standing in the river to get a good picture is I guess a way I can put it; they were not obeying tape or barricades. So we pulled out some more resources to bring them in, assist with monitoring of intersections and trying to keep people back. And also we filled 500 plus sandbags at the Public Works building with Streets and Parks in anticipation of some utilities on the west side not knowing what lift stations or how they were going to be affected, because truly this is a different flood. Like they all are different, but we've never dealt with carp on 7th Street or Baker Trail or Western, so this is a little bit different flood than we're used to. Good, bad or otherwise we can't stop the water but we're dealing with it. We've been monitoring gauges. I'm happy to report that the Cannon River at Morristown is down 1.2 inches—I just got a text from the Morristown fire chief, another example of the coordination that we have with all of our County partners. We're continuing to bypass pump—utilities—where it is necessary and and we're still keeping track of the businesses that are being or could be affected if things go south or if they had problems with their mitigation projects that they had in the past. Yesterday as some of you already know, calls started coming in about volunteering and wanting to help and kind of the timing was good for us, also getting some calls on people that needed help. So that is a huge effort to put that together on not just a citywide process but we want to do it as a countywide and we actually invited Le Sueur County to be a part of this so that we could have all of our teams going wherever they are needed. So that really came to fruition this afternoon. Brad has been very integral in getting this process lined up on the website so we can take volunteers and we can get people that are in need and coordinate those. We also—well I won't get ahead of myself—also what happened yesterday was we got a request from the Red Cross to open up a shelter for Waterville Le Sueur County residents who didn't have a big enough shelter over there for the number. So of course we said yes; we have a sheltering agreement and a plan out at the National Guard Armory. So we got that rolling yesterday and the Red Cross is set up and that opened at about 4:00 p.m. At 4:00 p.m. we did have one family check in right away. We really don't have an idea how many people there will be; they were expecting 50 to 70 from Le Sueur County and of course Rice County—I haven't had anybody outright reach out to say "I need sheltering" but I think once it's available they might take advantage of that. Along with that sheltering is resources: mental health, how to deal with insurance companies, how to fill out paperwork for FEMA if we were to get individual assistance. Had a meeting today with HSEM [Homeland Security and Emergency Management]. The state hasn't put in the paperwork yet for a federal declaration, but Cook, Minnesota alone is estimating $50 million—that puts us over our threshold. So we will get to our threshold and I can confidently say that it will be a federally declared disaster. So that's good; that opens up purse strings from the federal government to help out, although we all know that individual assistance sometimes is not that easy to get. But we will have resources at the National Guard Armory to help fill out that paperwork. We have County employees out there from Mental Health, from Social Services to help people that come out there whether they stay at the shelter or not. So it's a big effort that came together in about a day and a half but it will serve our citizens better than doing it on islands. The water still is flowing across Baker Trail although it has gone down. I think some of us had went out there and there's a few more carp being stranded because the water is getting shallower. That is something that we're going to hear about here shortly: "what are we going to do with these fish that are now stranded in my backyard?" Don't have an answer yet but we'll figure something out—we always do. I did get a call today and I think it has—I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the Rapidan Dam and how that failed—that we do have water flowing around the spillway at the Woolen Mills. So we went and looked at it; director Duchene and Travis Block went out to check that out. No real big concerns there, is that correct? It's a different dam than that's down there [Rapidan], it's a more mellow flow, not as deep. So we will continue to monitor that to make sure that we don't—not that we can do much about it—but we can surely monitor what's happening. We did send firefighters over to Morristown on Saturday night because they were worried about that dam. People were tapped out and tired so we gave our guys over there on the overnight watch. That's a real quick summary of a lot of things that have been going on. [20:33] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Questions for chief? Ross. [20:34] **Council Member Royal Ross:** Thank you mayor. Wastewater treatment plant still operating as it should? [20:38] **Dustin Dienst:** It is. And Travis and his crews have been watching that. To pick out some bright things in this situation: the mitigation efforts that we as a city have done in the past have also made this a different situation where we don't have to get everybody and their brother out to the treatment plant and take care of that. Travis's crews and Henry and those guys out there were doing their thing and they were maxed out and water going through there, but it was at a lot lower on the priority list this year because of the mitigation efforts that we put in place over the last few years. [21:19] **Council Member Royal Ross:** Good to hear. I see this emergency expires the end of the day on June 30th. Does the mayor have the unilateral ability to extend it or does he have to create a new emergency if something were to happen and we're going to extend past June 30th? [21:46] **Jessica Kinser:** Yeah so we were contemplating that we have a planned work session on July 2nd. And so if we still have water in places where we haven't been able to uncover damages and things at that point, or if there's additional rain that causes things to increase, we would be coming back on July 2nd with a special council meeting for that purpose in addition to the work session. [22:20] **Council Member Royal Ross:** Okay thank you. [22:25] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Councilmember Spooner? [22:26] **Council Member Thomas J. Spooner:** Is there anything that can be done—specifically three young gentlemen in bathing suits walking deep into the water? This is at a point where they're just not—you know, they get swept away, it could be bad. [22:38] **Dustin Dienst:** We're doing our best to get the word out with Brad and Suzy to make an awareness of how dangerous not only the current is but what's in that water is. So we're doing public awareness. Truly that was our biggest headache over the weekend: that we had to deal with the water, but dealing with the public was worse and people just don't know. Every person that I told that was standing in their Crocs in the water—when I told them what was in that water—they ran out of there pretty quickly. But others... I had one gentleman tell me that "I'm not worried about raw sewage." So we kind of by the end of the day we were—I called Chief Sherwin—we can't man this for the duration. We got to let the barricades do the talking. And if they go in there, we don't have the resources to patrol people's backyards along the river. The roads, yeah, we were chasing people around on our UTVs. We were getting reports of people in the water and we'd go there and they'd take off running. I think public awareness is all we can do and I know we can't be out there all the time and tell them. I wish there was a way to, and I hope nobody gets sick or gets hurt from that, but we don't know what to do. [24:12] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Councilmember Doumbouya? [24:13] **Council Member Adama Youhn Doumbouya:** Is there any way you can—for the benefit of those who probably listen to this or watch this—can you give a brief summary of areas that where city and also city infrastructure that is still being affected? [24:26] **Dustin Dienst:** I'm not hearing you real well. [24:32] **Council Member Adama Youhn Doumbouya:** I was wondering for the benefit of the public if you could just give a little update of areas, maybe streets that are currently closed or areas people shouldn't go around or something like that. [24:43] **Dustin Dienst:** So right now we were able to open up Second Avenue yesterday and so that took some pressure off of some of the other streets and moved traffic back to a little more normal pattern. But the King Mill Dam area is still going to be closed, I think for days. We don't know exactly when it's going to crest; they're not forecasting the crest because this has never happened and there's no models, there's no history here to go on to figure out a crest. So that's why there hasn't been one. Now if I look at the Morristown dam gauge for about the last 24 hours, it went steady to an inch and a half down just before the meeting started. That's a good sign. But King Mill Dam area, stay away from that area. And also it's not river flooding, but out by Faribault Foods and Sage Glass there's an area with that big wetland—the second time that road has been closed this year because of high water. So those are the only two closures right now. [26:00] **Council Member Adama Youhn Doumbouya:** Any other infrastructure issues, pumps that have gone down? [26:15] **Dustin Dienst:** I'll defer to director Block. [26:20] **Travis Block (Public Works Director):** Thank you mayor Voracek, members of the council, and the public. So for our infrastructure standpoint we've not had any compromises to any lift stations. We do have bypass pumping in the system as Chief Dienst mentioned; that mainly at this point is to prevent backups in homes. We have one pump in the system right now that's currently to provide a little bit of relief to the treatment plant because we pushed to 15 million gallons through in the peak there for a couple days, and just before the meeting it was down around 10 million gallons with the industries—with our two big wet industries running, being Faribault Foods and Jennie-O. So we're just going to be monitoring those distribution or collection system pumping just until that situation goes away. We are currently, excuse me, working on a sanitary repair out on along Highway 21 in the area of Green Street. It's still kind of in its exploratory phase but we're working on what the actual cause is there. But otherwise from an infrastructure [standpoint] at this point, nothing. [27:50] **Dustin Dienst:** Did that cover both of your questions? [27:53] **Council Member Adama Youhn Doumbouya:** Got two points in there okay. [27:56] **Travis Block:** Yep perfect okay. [28:02] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** All right any other questions? I just got one this morning: is this going to delay the pool? [28:13] **Dustin Dienst:** Paul's not here. [28:18] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** All right so I thought it was an oddball question but it's legitimate. So for updates and other things keep your eye on Facebook, Twitter and the city's website and Brad will keep pushing those out. So thank you Brad, you're earning your wages this week that's good. Anything else for the chief? [28:44] **Council Member Thomas J. Spooner:** Mr. Mayor, I make a motion to approve. [28:47] **Council Member Chuck Thiele:** Second. [28:48] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Motion by council member Spooner second by council member Thiele, all in favor say aye. [28:53] **Council Members:** Aye. [28:54] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Opposed? Resolution passes. We have no bids tonight so board commission reports, announcements, project updates. We just got our flood update, anything else going on? [28:55] **Council Member Royal Ross:** Mayor I think we should you know thank not only our staff because like Chief Dienst said we had firefighters go over and help Morristown. But I had some involvement over in the Waterville area which is quite devastating over there and I know there's a lot of Faribault residents, citizens, that went over there and helped. So I think we just deserve a thank you to not only our staff as a city but citizens that have helped out neighboring communities. [29:34] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Thank you to all the people that have volunteered in one way or another and help to step up and get things done. It's how we get through it as a city. Heritage Days was last week; the rain stopped just long enough out there it seems like. Okay administrator Kinser. [29:43] **Jessica Kinser:** Um the budget calendar is going to be changing as I mentioned and so we will have a meeting on July 2nd and we will be talking about new personnel requests as well as some other items that have come up that are not budget related. One thing I need to add is I thought we had Tuesday August 6th as a work session date but that is the Night to Unite. So unfortunately I need to claim that fifth Tuesday in July—July 30th—and make that a budget work session date. So I apologize in advance for the loss of the fifth Tuesday. I think we can blame the first loss of fifth Tuesday on Tim but this one's on me. But yeah so I'll update that on the calendar as I get that updated here hopefully by the end of the week or early next week as I kind of have a better idea of how things are going to flow. But please if you can put that on your calendar. [30:26] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Okay don't run away because we got a meeting after this. I'll take a motion and a second to adjourn. [30:52] **Council Member Royal Ross:** So moved. [30:53] **Council Member Adama Youhn Doumbouya:** Second. [30:54] **Mayor Kevin Voracek:** Okay motion by Councilmember Ross second by Councilmember Doumbouya. All in favor say Aye. [31:00] **Council Members:** Aye.