[0:04] Jim Michalski, Mayor: All right, we'll start the meeting. I'd like to welcome everyone to the regular council meeting for Moose Lake City for Wednesday, April 12, 2023, and I'd like to start with a Pledge of Allegiance, please. [0:24] Jim Michalski, Mayor: ...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. Okay, to welcome Betty here, we have one visitor tonight. The next part of the agenda is approval of the agenda. I do have a change for the agenda; it's a presentation, and this is very cool. It should be on the agenda. I'm going to move her up right after public comment. [1:09] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Okay, and do we have any other changes or additions to the agenda? Hearing none, do I have a motion to accept the agenda? So moved. Do I have a second? Okay, all in favor say aye. All right, opposed? Motion carries. Moving into the consent agenda, 2a1 is the minutes for the regular city council meeting for March 8, 2023. If you have any discussion or questions on the minutes? Hearing none, we have a motion to accept the minutes. Do you have a second? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. [1:57] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Moving on to 2B Financial reports. B1 is the city accounts payable for March 2023, number two is the city financial statement for March 2023, and number three is the liquor store profit-loss statement for March 2023. Any questions or discussion on financial reports? None? Second? All in favor say aye. All right, opposed? Motion carries. Next item is public comment. We'll be right after this... your particular... we have no one here for the public comments, so we move on right at 2:30. If you could come up to the podium, please. [2:57] Betty (Visitor): Sorry, this is handwritten, but I had it on my computer, and the... it was for a computer program. So anyway, I'm here to address an issue with the water runoff, and so I will go through this if you can read my handwriting. I have to do it quickly. Yesterday I attached my sump pump to try to alleviate the problem with help from Hopkins Ace. After hooking up, it began pumping out every 10 minutes or less, and I have a router to my front yard. Since this morning, it has been pumping; it reported to half an hour, and just before I left, it was spent every 10 minutes. My concern is the excess snowplow behind my garage that has melted into my garage over the years, and that it will be worse this year. Another issue is that the business parking lot is sloped to my backyard, and so if when it rains or snow melts, it enters my garage. Last year, I still had water run into my garage. This year, it's kind of coming up through the cracks right now. After the 2012 flood, I had my garage lifted and a new slab laid four inches higher than it was and the garage realigned. This year, I still had water run into my garage. A few years ago, I had about four inches of black dirt added to my backyard to help with water issues. I have also planted water-sucking plants to help with absorption, and the cedar trees also help. I ran into the business owner a few days ago to address the issues regarding the snow removal. He also stated that he was wondering about the city of Moose Lake's plans for the terrain of the FEMA lot—an empty FEMA lot—between my house and Lyndhurst and behind his business. He informed me that he was having a meeting soon and would bring this up. My concern is this: why should the city of Moose Lake have to pay for this when the property is owned by FEMA and the problem is due to runoff in the business owner's? Also, Lakeshore Drive... is higher than the sidewalk. The road is higher than the sidewalk, so when it rains and snow melts, it melts onto the sidewalk, turns into the snow on the ice and water puddles, and it has cracked my sidewalk. So I had to paint a yellow stripe on there so people can see that and not trip on it. Um, the walk on the road, which is not a recommendation... plus the parking is causing a hazard at the drive for people traveling on Lakeshore Drive and turning from Arrowhead Lane—you can't see where I'm at first. To sum it up, I've done everything in my power and finances to help prevent these issues. I am asking for feedback and proposals for prevention of further issues. Thank you. [6:16] Douglas Juntunen, Council Member: It's been a number of years that that... this has come up. I can't... how can we get into this as far as that ordinance goes? We would have to look at that possibly. Since it's affecting your property, we may have something that you can use to tell him he's got to prove that... move that snow. [6:45] Betty (Visitor): It's still on his property. [6:49] Douglas Juntunen, Council Member: Yes, very well. Yeah, and then you know when it rains it comes in too, right? Because the driveway is exhausted right into my area. [7:03] Walter Lower III, Council Member: I think, you know, we did have a full project for a rain garden. The vote by the council years ago was unanimous to spend the money, but I think we have to address it and look at it again because it hasn't stopped. I know that the economy moves things up on the roof to keep snow from ice, but still, we still have the same problem. Yes, we do have a museum back there which is... is that sewer or solar power? [7:46] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: Solar and power. [7:51] Walter Lower III, Council Member: So I think we have to re-address this seriously. I think as a council, we have to look at that to see if there can be a drainage put into that FEMA lot that... well, why does the city have to pay for that when it’s not... well, we own that now. Once it went through FEMA, FEMA paid for the demolishing of the cabin that was on it. Once that happened, you can never build on it again, and the land goes through the city; then we have to take care of that lot. We have to mow it, take care of it, whatever. I know at the time, putting in a pond there was not the best idea for either you or the landowner next door, but maybe we have to look at it a different way. I know we've done rock drainage ponds where you don't have sitting or standing water per se, but it has to drain. It will have to drain into the lake from there with the one-way valve. Seriously look at that again. So, I don't know if we can force that landowner to move the snow if it's still on his property, but when he piles it up tall like that and it affects yours, we'll have to look at that. Okay. [9:32] Lou Ohly, Council Member: I would say it's definitely a civil matter. It's something that... she's coming to ask for help from the city, but again, there needs to be... find out if there's any legal obligation that, like you said, the property owner has. She could always go to small claims court and say, "this is infringing on my property and here's what's happening," with the information that she has, and you can get something through the court if we do not have anything on the books that will help. Yeah, I understand your frustration; you've dealt with this for a long time. Every spring this is an issue for you. I understand that you've done everything that you can to alleviate the problem, so I think that you've gone above and beyond trying to take care of this situation itself. You can see how it can be rather concerning to you, especially in a bad winter like this year. But I agree, going with what Ted said there and what Doug said there, you know, I understand we should do what we can to look into the issue, that's for sure. [10:51] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: And then either myself or Superintendent Entner can be in contact with you regarding what we find. [11:04] Betty (Visitor): Good. Sorry about the handwriting, but I was in a hurry. [11:08] Jim Michalski, Mayor: No, that's already fine. [11:10] Betty (Visitor): It’s on the computer. Thank you. [11:13] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Thank you. You're welcome to stay or you can leave if you wish. Thank you. [11:21] Darren Chapman, Chief of Police: Chief of Police Department report for March 2023. Mayor, Council, Administrator Owens. In your packet, you'll see our Police Department report for March totaling 327 calls for service. 67 of those are proactive patrol, 116 traffic stops, 52 community engagements, 12 assists to other agencies, 76 calls for service, and four medicals. So again, if you look at your pie chart, the whole objective is to shrink that yellow portion of responding to calls. So now we're down probably a quarter or less, 25 percent of actual responding, more proactive again. So we'll try to keep that trend moving. Things have been going really well, so I don't really have a lot to report. We're working on a couple of grants for some different equipment things all along. We'll see how those go—favorable. Other than that, we're looking at getting a couple of speed signs up at the school that actually flash and show your speed when you come through there. Water and Light has agreed to pay for those since they're solar, so we'll be getting those ordered and going in there. So you can type in whatever you want the comments to be, like "good job" or "slow down." If you're going over, it'll be red; if you're following the speed limit, it'll be green. Then it comes with a software program that records all the speeds coming through there so we can see how many were over the speed limit. Talked to MnDOT here just a little while ago—again, since it's not County Road 10, but the state still has control over it. So we've talked to the County Commissioners about it and sent us up to the state to really dictate what the speed is even though it's a county road. So I know the guys have their sign department, so I'll get a hold of him and work through that. And then we've also got the okay to go ahead with a flashing pedestrian sign there because it's a line across to the hill. So when somebody comes up to that crosswalk, they can hit a button and the sign will flash, and again, that's going to be paid for. [13:26] Jim Michalski, Mayor: One thing I was wondering, since we tried to do an initiative of a district, is it possible to break down how many responses you went to the townships where you went and how many times you didn't report? [13:40] Darren Chapman, Chief of Police: Yeah, we can. And one of our guys I had going through and looked out after the Sheriff presented to the township those numbers and said that we only responded like 20. We took 146 calls for the Sheriff's department last year, so those numbers were way off, which I expected. I wasn't at that meeting. So yeah, they're not accurate, but yeah, we can try and pull whatever numbers we want. [14:09] Jim Michalski, Mayor: I think it would be good for us to start building a record because I think we were probably going in another direction here. Okay. Are those calls basically in the township, or are there other areas that you go to besides the township? [14:26] Darren Chapman, Chief of Police: Well, it goes outside of even this township. I mean, we've had some where they try to send us almost 30 miles away—18 miles into Split Rock Township or down into Pine as far as Finlayson or wherever... Barnum, you know, if they're not close, they prefer to try to send our people to it. And unless we have an MOU with an agreement on us responding to those, we're probably not going to be... the township as well. So, thank you, I appreciate it. [15:10] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Thank you very much. City Superintendent Department report for March 2023. [15:15] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, Administrator Owens. The Water Department distributed 6.1 million gallons of drinking water in the month of March. Hydrant flushing will be happening at the end of this month, so we will see flyers and notifications for that kind of thing. We'll have some stuff out on Facebook and the website, paper, all that stuff. So that'll be good. Um, still waiting to hear back on the Minnesota Department of Health regarding our protection grant I applied for for lining up at the 7th lift station. We should remember that here, I would assume, in the next couple of weeks. So hopefully that goes through, and we'll be in good shape there. The Sewer Department collected 11.1 million gallons of wastewater in the month of March. We're in the assembling process to get that process taken care of. Still working on some of the random wastewater sampling that we have to do for our mercury minimization plan. Those sorts of things we're working with the engineers to take care of. Also, still waiting for that grant opportunity from the Minnesota Rural Water Association regarding pond optimization program, which will install some key pieces of infrastructure and basically monitoring and control boxes to be able to monitor those ponds at a better rate than we are. There's nothing wrong per se with how we're doing it, and we are in compliance, but this is going to offer a lot better opportunities for us as operators to try to put water where we need it instead of where we kind of have to put it. Those grant opportunities are looking like somewhere between 12 and 20,000 a piece with multiple of them going essentially to multiple different cities. So we're going to jump on that bandwagon because everyone's heard me say we don't have any money, and we really need that. So when that comes up, we'll have more to share of that. We did our sanitary sewer cleaning program. This is now the fifth year we've done this, and we're back to what was actually the target we've done before—it was just under 25,000 feet. We finished that last week and a couple of days before that as well. So the last 10 days we've been working on that pretty good. We have some real infrastructure needs. So when I start talking about infrastructure upgrades and spending money, I mean it, and it's tough. So, you know, definitely from a street standpoint, which we'll talk about here in a minute, the stuff you can't see—the sanitary sewer and the water—is tough. It's really tough. We're holding it together, but we're really going to have to rethink a few things. With that being said, we had manhole number 95, which is on Ironwood Avenue, completely collapse and launch out a big section of the road. On Monday the third, when we were actually doing that process, there was a huge hole in the road. So we ended up with an emergency repair that's back together in one piece. Laptop and back here within the next month or so will be my guess as soon as the hot mix plants open. The station cleaning and service checks happened yesterday on all seven of our lift stations. We'll have those reports to you guys in the next meeting with probably some prices for some new equipment that we're going to need. Over the last three years now, we've had this company make full service reports that you can constantly see some of that equipment just so... it's been coming. I don't think we're going to be able to do any of those in 2023, but we'll be budgeting for them in '24 or '25. Street Department: I know I've heard it all week long for potholes; they're getting filled. Not to mention, we're ready to jump out of something else if there's an emergency somewhere else. We're moving right along there. Storm cleanup is still underway; kind of something that's just fill-in work as we get time. I think we're going to start at the cemeteries; most of downtown is done to a certain extent. We'll have a little bit left to do, but obviously the big stuff's taken care of. The 2023-2024 winter salt required amount is submitted. I submitted that a couple of weeks ago for 100 tons of road salt. The cemeteries, cemetery parking, campground... those water systems will be firing up here in the next two to three weeks when I feel like it's not going to freeze again, and we'll be in good shape. Those will be opened up and then totally cleaned up. With that being said, I think the rest we're going to talk about at the engineering portion. So I think that's all I got. Any questions? [21:00] Walter Lower III, Council Member: Your maintenance program, you said this is... now we're starting to cycle through the maintenance what you've seen before we started it to where the program is now? [21:11] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: Our goal is five years for back-to-back solution. When I started here, we were at three a month. [21:15] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Anything else? Very good. Flood watch? [21:16] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: Yes, absolutely. [21:18] Walter Lower III, Council Member: Is it raising on the North End where Bob Hoppy is? That corner is not raising yet? [21:24] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: Not yet, no. And I imagine you can't even get to that one-way valve because of the snow depth. And you mentioned one-way valves earlier, and a one-way valve in the plumbing world is called a check valve. And those types of valves on steel components of infrastructure don't work very well. What we use is called an "inlet valve," which is a temporary plug that we put into waterways. I did purchase one of those four or five years ago, and we have it. I did just see it the other day; I know where it is. If we have to, we can put the waders on and jump in. So we can eliminate that from happening. The last time that happened, there was a joint in that reinforced concrete pipe that failed and it still ended up flooding out because the pipe failed. Well, that pipe is also MnDOT's; it's not ours. It was never repaired? Yes, the road actually was repaired, and the valve was repaired as well, but there's no gasket and there's no way to seat the valve, so it doesn't actually work. It slows water down, but it doesn't shut it off like a check valve. This is where it flows into the Moosehorn River there. [22:42] Walter Lower III, Council Member: I'm just wondering... along the Lakeshore, I kind of watched you. I haven't seen any of the knees really high yet. It's up, but when it does, it goes so fast. [22:52] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: It does, yeah. It went up two feet today. Well, we're not up north, but we know it all... from Cromwell down. When it hits, it'll just have to be ready. So you guys know, I sit on that board for regional warnings as well, and that takes care of region number two here, which is from Pine County to Canada. There hasn't been any activations yet. There is some talk about somewhere north of Virginia... they're starting to get a little excited and they have some higher levels up there, but nothing's getting activated, nothing's getting deployed. We're just going forward. I'm watching; my colleague in Carlton is watching. So we're just kind of waiting. And that's all part of the membership of Minnesota Go-Live as well. [24:00] Walter Lower III, Council Member: One other quick question, and that is: I know we've talked about this so many times, that the sidewalk at Betty's—we are lower. What happens if we try to raise that whole thing up? We'd have to do the sidewalk and the boulevard, but if we go too high, then we're going to flood into Betty's land too, aren't we? [24:23] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: One thing I was thinking about with that when Betty was talking about her concern there was... this is no different than the Bob Hoppy situation. It's the same concept that floods when the river level comes up. Betty, part of it's runoff, right? But if that lake level comes up, it's going to come back at you again. It's going to come back the same way. So essentially we're going to have the same problem backwards, right? It's going to be... the initial drainage will be one issue, but then if the lake level gets high enough, it'll start pushing back on that outlet. We're going to have the same exact problem. In fact, it would even be worse. It may need some type of backflow prevention device. [25:38] Walter Lower III, Council Member: How about the engineering of that sidewalk? Is there any easy way to solve that problem? [25:44] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: I really think... because I've heard so many stories about that road, I don't know how much we own. It's not a normal right-of-way there; it's not a 60-foot right-of-way. If you extend the blacktop each way, it's not 30 feet like it normally is on an everyday street. I want to say it was just edge of blacktop to edge of blacktop, and that's what I've always followed. That's why you see all the dock sections laying three feet off the edge of the blacktop on the lake side. There's going to be an issue when a plow hooks one. I can't get a straight answer. So I think what we should do first is I should reach out to the local surveyor, see if we can find the plans on that road and see exactly what we own before we start looking at what we can and what we can't do. [26:35] Douglas Juntunen, Council Member: Let's do that. [26:38] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: I'll reach out tomorrow. [26:41] Jim Michalski, Mayor: I think that's just somewhere to start. At least we don't want to start reinventing the wheel. All right, anything else? Thank you very much, Phil, appreciate it. Municipal Liquor Store Department report for March 2023. [26:53] Ryan McKeon, Finance Director: Hello Mr. Mayor. Not a whole lot from this month or the previous month. I continue to check in with Mari, and I know I said last month she's doing a great job keeping us going down there. I would say we had a recent request from the Moose Lake Area Hockey Association; they want to hold an event July 1st at the arena as a fundraising event for compressors, but they also want to partner with the brewery and the Muni. They asked also that we don't have entertainment that night, so that'll be like a July 4th weekend. So I'm working with Mari through that. And then we do have a couple more applications that came in, so I'm looking forward to reviewing those and getting interviews on the docket. [27:54] Jim Michalski, Mayor: It's good, appreciate it very much. Thank you. Greg, did you have your hand up? Okay. Thank you very much, appreciate it. [28:16] Kris Huso, Council Member: I've got a couple of things on the library. In front of the library, they had some good turnout here on the 10th; they had 54 people come in in the first two hours. So that was really good to see. And then on the 6th, they had 81 people come in. So the count has been going up; that's good news. The book sale is going to be on June 16th and the 17th, and they're discussing adding craft vendors to it for twenty dollars a table. The first third of the arena would be for the book sale, and the rest would be used for the craft vendors. It's not a for-sure thing yet; they're looking in to see both volunteers and seeing who they can get. And they had a free movie here a couple of weeks ago and it did fairly well; they had six kids with their families show up. So the numbers of people coming in to the library have been going up as spring has been approaching. [29:10] Jim Michalski, Mayor: It's very good. IT? [29:25] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: IT, really good stuff. A couple of things: we recently had the DMV and the PD workstations swapped out. It's just a normal thing we do yearly, so it's budgeted for and planned in advance. It sounds like the PD one went fairly smooth. You can still find stuff. And the DMV one—I know Karen's here—was a complete nightmare. He was here probably a good three or four days in total just to swap out their workstation. He had left at one point and said, "I'm just out of time" and just left. They weren't able to do any transactions. So with that being said, I think just in my experience working with CW now, VZ3, it's just been a long time since they've really actually fixed something or devoted people to the city here. So I'm not sure how you guys feel, but I would recommend an RFP process at some point to see who else is out there. At the very least, it might wake them up a little bit. Another item that's come up is we used to have a customer client manager assigned to just us, and I was emailing and emailing and emailing and he just never got back, and then literally a month and a half later they said, "Oh, well, this guy doesn't work here anymore." So it's just a little bit of history with those guys. [31:05] Douglas Juntunen, Council Member: I agree. I have a second about it. We've had nothing but issues and things have come up that we've had to fix ourselves. [31:14] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: It's to the point where, at least in the building here, I ask that if somebody has a problem, let me come and look at it first just to see, because otherwise, it's going to take a really long time to get them to fulfill and fix it. [31:26] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Rory, you got anything with CW? [31:29] Rory (IT/Media): Yeah, I mean, a couple of issues that I've had, they've taken care of. But I'm not having to contact them very often. [31:48] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: I guess what I would do is come up with a big questionnaire of what we would ask all these companies and maybe submit it to you guys so you can take a look at it too, and then you guys can decide if that's something you want to do. Honestly, it's probably good to do these types of things every few years just to keep other companies and third-party sources honest. [32:27] Walter Lower III, Council Member: We have so much we had to put in. We've got the whole system in here, the DMV system is different... [32:44] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: Yeah, but the video stuff we would probably go through Cablecast or somebody that was part of the installation because it's a little bit more specialized for what they're doing. If we had some internet connection issues, that would be a CW thing, but as far as the equipment itself, it would be probably past where they would do, you know. And I'm not sure how much CW crosses over with Rory so much, but definitely a lot of other areas. [33:14] Jim Michalski, Mayor: I would say yes, we start with the questionnaire. You got consensus? [33:23] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: Yeah, I think we should then. This plays into my next thing too: fixing the camera workstation at the liquor store. It was after that we discovered... Officer Surety came up and said the video recording program couldn't be found anymore. So I had to dive into that. I really wasn't sure... Aaron helped me with what the name of the program is. So I was able to do that. And then again, then we're playing this back-and-forth game with VZ3—"did the new workstation cause this?" Back and forth, back and forth. It turns out we don't believe the new workstation did actually cause it because they ended up having me go into the server room and take a look at the video storage server. That actually powers and controls and records and stores everything from all the cameras. So that was not even lit up. So that was our problem right off the bat. I did have them... anyway, I troubleshooted that with them, got it working. They did send someone down, I think the very next day, to take a look at stuff. That actually turned out beneficial because he was able to give Darren and me some more information, stuff that I'm going to put in an IT binder. So in case I'm ever hit by a bus, somebody doesn't have to go looking for these things. Stuff like, you know, how many days does it store things for each camera set, where is the power button, everything. He was able to get that up and running. I did have him put the program on another one of the workstations at the liquor store. Darren has been tracking it for the last week and he said everything was good. They did close out the ticket for it today, so for that, I'm happy. I did ask him, when such a thing happens, whether it's Darren or myself, somebody should get some kind of alert when it's something like that actually crashes and goes down, like "Hey, it's not recording anymore." So he's going to look into that and get back to me. [36:45] Jim Michalski, Mayor: We had no idea how long it was out of service? [36:49] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: We don't. He said it was quite a while. [36:52] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Appreciate your work on that. Thank you. [37:06] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Before we go on, communication that we got from Bill Carlson on the Broadband Initiative. I did pass it on to Ryan, Ellissa, and Rory, so we're all looking at that right now. I just wanted to mention that to you, that we're comparing where we're at and looking at where we're going from here on that. Just for information for everyone. Next: Motor Vehicle quarterly report. Karen? [37:46] Karen Johnson, Motor Vehicle: Good afternoon Council, Mayor. Well, our office has been real busy picking up with the weather. Everybody's thinking spring, so it's a ton of motorcycles, campers, boats, trailers, ATVs. You notice that people get their taxes done, please pick up your tabs. Buying more vehicles. Yeah, so we're glad about that; it feels good to be real busy. So we have been continuing there with our exams and we're increasing our testing in our office. As of January 1st, we've done 132 exams in our office, which I think is great. It's probably like 30 more than you did last year at this time. I think the word has gotten out quite a bit. Willow River School, they did their 30-hour training a couple of weeks ago, and we had kids that were coming in enrolled. It worked out great, and it was fun to see all those kids. Their parents get more excited than they do. But I have been thinking about it... I wanted to maybe send out a letter to some of the local schools, even Cloquet, because they don't do it anymore or they don't do any testing up there like our office does. So as of today, we've made over eighteen hundred dollars in reinstatement fees and selling manuals, so that has been more revenue for us also. And as Phil was saying, they hooked up the new computer for me while I was on vacation and when I came back, it was hard to do much work on it. That was kind of frustrating. I think I came back on a Tuesday, and I don't think it was until the next Tuesday that it was completely working. So I was on the phone every day with somebody. And I asked him to send me a list so this doesn't happen next time, but it was a very short list; it wasn't very detailed at all. So that worries me if they do it again. Yeah, so when they told the girls "do you want a new computer?" they said "no, we don't want to go through this." It was a challenge. There was a point where I could do all the applications, but then I couldn't scan them or send them or take money. So then I transferred them to them, but we made it work. Leanne has been here, our new employee, for six months. One of her things is a requirement that you take a title and certification class, which consists of vehicles, title and registration transfers, and sales tax. She did the training yesterday and it was from nine to three; she did very well. I got an email that she passed everything. She wasn't worried about it; she was pretty calm. She seems to be working really quickly and so far she's doing good. She's not afraid of the computer. Also, on March 23rd, we had five employees from the state come in for our plate and sticker inventory audit. So it was kind of chaotic in our office for a while, but what they check for is if we had any missing stickers or any missing plates or any title stock. We were all good, nothing was missing. Had they found anything, the state charges us 35 dollars per missing sticker. So that was nice. We're talking about our revenue; we have gone up quite a bit from '21 to '22, which is really good to see. It was up 92,000, and that includes our motor vehicle, DNR, all our filing fees, all the titles, registration. Everything has gone up. I'm really glad to hear that. I think a lot of that had to do with word-of-mouth. We always stress for people... they come in with their letter from the state saying "they didn't send me my tabs and they kept my money," and we have to fix it for them. We always encourage them: do not do it online or mail it in. Come in, because that's what keeps our office open. We want our revenues to go up; otherwise, it goes to the state. I talked to someone and she goes, "I haven't seen you for a long time; I don't come in anymore, I mail them." And I said, "No, oh, you can't do that. Because if you have a problem and we're not here anymore, you're going to travel quite a ways to solve your problem." We are celebrating National Donate Life Month this Friday in our office. That's kind of statewide with all the deputy registrars. We started decorating. On Friday, we're going to just have a celebration and give people who are donors something for adding that to their driver's license. We're getting cupcakes and cookies too. I just want to let you know how much I appreciate my staff; they're hard workers and I think we're doing a good job. Does anybody have any questions? [46:47] Jim Michalski, Mayor: It's always busy. Always people coming and going. Good job. [47:00] Karen Johnson, Motor Vehicle: Yeah, well, so you know, that stuff with the computer... a lot of it had to do with state programming. It seems like they never get it right. [47:20] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: Their workstations have to have access to existing scanners and multiple printers and copiers and all of that, so it just takes a ton of time. We take for granted we can walk up to the copier, hit a button, and it sends the file immediately to your computer. So all of that was taking time to establish as well. They did great troubleshooting and making our way through it. [48:04] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Absolutely. Engineering monthly report. [48:21] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: Our engineering meetings are staying busy. Just a couple of items that I feel are important to touch base on this particular month: Superintendent Entner and I have been meeting with the Sewer District and continuing to work through some challenges with them. One of the topics of conversation was discussing the need for a significant industrial user agreement. This is something that we've identified as a requirement of the PCA. With that, we are identifying all of our significant users with those standards and then having conversations with them about putting these agreements in place. These type of agreements can compensate for flow, load, all of those types of things; they can include billing metrics for those types of figures. It puts in some protection for the city as far as if increased capacity were to come into play, there would be monies available then and obligated to the city to help with infrastructure upgrades. In return, those type of agreements discuss capacity measures for each of our significant users. We've identified who those will be and we will continue to share information. It's not a quick process. We open that door with the district; there's a current contract in place right now, so it would be taking place of what's currently established but also expanding. [50:48] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: One thing I'll add to that is we're not running around picking up certain users; we actually have an ordinance that's in place that calls out who is and who is not. I just want that known. [51:00] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: In addition, the PCA provides guidance as far as whom qualifies and why. So we're using data from the PCA and our requirements from the PCA in addition to our city ordinance to make sure that those are the entities that have this agreement in place. [51:28] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Phil, the Point of Sale ordinance—can you share a little bit on how that process is going? [51:41] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: It's going actually really well. Administrator Owens and myself... spreading that word out there to the community. We're going to get that word out. So far we've done a few of them; they've been just fine. Some pass, some fail, and there's plans on the books now to upgrade those ones that fail. This is all part of this whole thing that's going to essentially make your wastewater system better as a whole. [52:14] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: Absolutely. We will be utilizing our city website; we now have a page entirely dedicated to the I/I Point of Sale ordinance. Now that we have that page established, we will be making sure relevant entities like realtors and other establishments are aware of our page and that resource. That's our next step. In addition, I just wanted to communicate... I know we had touched base; there were some March deadlines for grant submissions. Grant submissions have taken place for a campground expansion and for phase two of the Highway 73 Trail. In addition, something that we worked on this past month is a lot of funding opportunities for the city. With that, we have submitted funding applications to Congressman Stauber's local community projects application process; we've submitted applications to the Smith-Klobuchar program for funding. We have worked with Representative Dotseth in order to submit information and applications for state funding for a joint project with the DOC (Department of Corrections) and Senator Rarick's office. Internally, we've had a lot going on in the background trying to maximize any avenue we possibly have at the state level. Our city engineers have been really helpful through those processes. [54:33] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: 2023 proposal lining project: that televising work was done last week. So it's done; waiting to get my hands on those miles yet. We'll get them off to the engineers so they can take a look at a few things, and then we're going to kind of sit in a holding pattern until we figure out what we're going to do—whether that project's going to happen down here or we're going to have to make some funding for that line for DOC. Those projects can be put together extremely fast. Meeting on Monday with the two contractors regarding City Hall roofs... total tear-off and total rebuild with all those additional minor repairs. The big portion of this is going to be meeting with them on Monday. Alyssa, I've told you this, we're going to set up a small bid opening in the office so it's at least public, with a bid deadline and time for those contractors to submit those bids. [56:22] Walter Lower III, Council Member: Alyssa, I've told you this—we're going to set up a... I just want to make sure the council knows that that money we submitted for in the Omnibus for that project with the state, that lining that was shelved... the Commissioner of DOC is working his funding budget to come up with the money within his department. I know that Omnibus is still... they're still actively working on it, but it sounds like they're not going to address that again as far as the state funding through the Omnibus, which is too bad because there's 19 billion dollars there. So the money will come out of the budget for DOC if he can come up with it. I think their portion is at 600 and some thousand. I just wanted the Council to be aware of that, that the Commissioner is trying to find that money; he knows the problem, they're serious about it, and they want to get that fixed. Hopefully they'll come up with it this year. [58:10] Douglas Juntunen, Council Member: Phil, do we have a sewer lining map that has the ones that we've done? Is that possible so we can see what needs to be done? It'd be nice to see how this process is and if there's ways to speed up the process. Maybe from sales tax or something else, you do a lump sum large project. [58:26] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: I can definitely do that. Do you want it brought back to the council for the next council meeting? We can show what needs to be done. We should have some information on the CIP plan. [59:11] Walter Lower III, Council Member: There's one more thing that I want to bring up to the whole council. We need to re-address where we are with road projects. We have almost closed out 4th Street. We need to start looking at what we're going to do next. I think you all know that I want to push some grind and overlay. I don't know if you want to do this by committee or set up a working council meeting where we look at this, because there should be some discussion on what direction we're going and how much money we are saving. [1:00:13] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: I would say if we're going to have that discussion on grind and overlay, then we need to have a very real discussion about lining a lot more than what we're doing. Because I think the two would work together. If we're saving a lot of money there, we should be able to do a lot more lining, which will then reduce or give us more capacity in the sewer ponds. The nice thing about that is if we ended up down the rabbit hole quick and we had to go overlay on this street, we can come through lining next year. [1:00:46] Douglas Juntunen, Council Member: I'm glad you brought that up, Ted. I actually have notes on that. I'd like to see us start moving on and see what we would like to do, come up with what kind of time frame. The last one took four years. I'd like to know what we're looking at for money and a time frame. I know the cost for a grind and overlay used to be very reasonable; it's not reasonable anymore. It's expensive because of the cost of oil, but I think it'd be a good discussion. [1:01:45] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: The one thing I want you guys to remember is a lot of your streets are not even candidates for overlay. As you walk around town and you see these big boulders pushing through the blacktop, that requires a reconstruct. You can't just grind that. [1:02:45] Walter Lower III, Council Member: Would that be a reclaim and overlay? No, that would be a reconstruction, very similar to what we did... Woodland Drive. That was reconstructed down to the sub-level. [1:03:08] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: I think at some point if we could talk about when that could fit into a working meeting. What's nice about waiting until June is that another item we'll talk about later is that we're going to have the results from our 2022 audit. With that, we can see real figures from the municipal liquor store, we can see what our total sales tax revenue was. We'll have a lot more financial data at that point to look at which would help in forecasting. [1:04:13] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Thank you. Chamber of Commerce updates? [1:04:22] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: There is the Moose Run that's going to take place on Saturday, May 6th. Start time for the youth run is 9:00 AM, and then the 5K/10K starts at 9:30. The location of that is the City Park. In addition, on May 6th, the Moose Lake Farmers Market will start back up as well. On May 6th, they will be at Arrowhead Adventures. The Chamber has a lot of information on their website. In addition, they're working on their new fee schedule and collecting membership dues. They're having discussions as far as increasing membership and participation. Those were the hot topics at today's meeting. [1:05:40] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Thank you very much. Questions? Okay, moving on to number five, previously discussed business: Moose Lake City Campground update. [1:06:07] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: So, the camping season is right around the corner. Our online software and reservation system has been smoother than it's ever been. In addition to that, we've had some input from our city auditors. The auditors have communicated that the process of having campground hosts in trade for seasonal sites is not something that they would recommend moving forward. We're going to kind of transition out of that. What we have to do is establish city employees, and if those hosts are seasonal campers, that's great. It's just going to have to change in that in coming seasons, they will have to pay for their site and then be reimbursed with a wage. As of this camping season, we have the approval to operate as we have in the past, but we're just kind of looking at it from a different perspective. We analyzed how the functionality went last year and identified that the host positions are tough because we can't mandate that they be there; everybody has personal lives. Transition: we knew we had to hire and budgeted for some wages—part-time wages in there. Phil, if you could share some of the updates regarding utilization of current staff. [1:08:15] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: For sure. So, our Arena Manager is also going to serve as our Campground Manager. As you saw that job description going out, but we're getting lots of applications like crazy. I don't know when that closes... this Friday. So we're going to kind of fill those roles and go from there. [1:08:52] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: Thank you. Applications for the part-time seasonal help in the office. We do have a couple of hosts that we have established who want to participate in a host capacity again this season but are going to be working through scheduling. The hosts have communicated a specific time frame of when they can and can't be available. So with that, there'll be a combined approach to staffing, utilizing campground hosts and city employees. This will be a transition year; next year, everybody will have to be on the city's payroll who is working. Any questions? Our revenue keeps increasing, and we want to make sure that we're watching that and be mindful of that and not eating away our progress with expense. City staff members who work in other capacities, for example, the recycle shed, transition into roles in the arena and now possibly transitioning from that to working in the campground part-time. [1:10:44] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: There was a little bit of flex between whether or not our Arena Supervisor was going to serve in the campground on behalf of the city or as a host. We were able to manage that flex and look forward to having him help us in both entities currently. [1:11:15] Jim Michalski, Mayor: A quick question on the arena: I know that it's closed, but it's in the park system. [1:11:24] Phil Entner, City Superintendent: It is. [1:11:26] Jim Michalski, Mayor: So we're done with the hockey season, ice is out, everything's cleaned up. And now we're starting to schedule events? [1:11:30] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: Yes, we're looking to schedule events. We did a walk-through within the past couple of weeks and we've identified ways that we can market the different spaces in there. We're going to look at marketing the upstairs in addition to the downstairs and what we can do on our website. [1:12:08] Jim Michalski, Mayor: All right, thank you very much, appreciate it. New business: I want to mention something that I didn't put on here but I want to give it out to the council because I was questioned on the hours of operation of our office and how the City Administrator's hours are handled. What we have done—as long as I've been here, and it existed before I came—the City Administrator has always been on a flex time between 6:00 and 10:00 every day, and it's up to them when they flex. The reason they did that back then, the council had meetings that could start at 7:00 in the morning or meetings at 7:00 at night. Being not salaried, you don't get overtime, so they did that flex time especially for the Administrator being the top executive position. Just so that everyone knows that. I really hope maybe they're not aware... it's been so long since that's been talked about. It's been ran like that for 19 years with me here. [1:14:30] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: My intention is to be as available as possible for any city council member, resident, or staff member. If anybody has any questions, feel free to contact me. Right now, we have a lot of our meetings during the day, but that depends on the members that are voted in. It could transition to the evenings. It's been a tough challenge as well. I do want to be mindful of overtime expense for the city, so it's a little bit of a transition period between flexing hours and when you're here late for a meeting. I will continue to be as available as possible. [1:16:15] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Moving on to new business, 6A: the 2023 City of Moose Lake annual appointments update. [1:16:26] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: We've had a couple of updates. We have City Councilor Doug Juntunen added to the Public Utilities Commission. We've confirmed Kris Huso's position with the library. We've added a Parks and Rec board seat with Jon Lund, and then got Becky Laukko re-approved for that particular position through the Park Board. Other additions: Ryan McKeon has been added to the Cable Television Public Access Coordinator role. We have added Chief Darren Chapman to the Active Living Coalition and City Councilor Doug Juntunen to the Minnesota Department of Corrections advisory committee. We also have Terry Byrne for the Economic Development Authority. [1:17:48] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Any questions on those appointments? Do you have a motion to approve? So moved. Second? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. [1:18:01] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: Moving on to the 2023 fee schedule. With the adoption of the new ordinance for pet licensing, we have added the kennel license amount on the new fee schedule. [1:18:25] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Do I have a motion? So moved. Second? All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Moving on to 6C: J&M Displays fireworks proposal. [1:18:48] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: Finance Director Ryan McKeon and myself have been looking for fireworks proposals. It is a tough market; the operator role within the fireworks industry is becoming more and more obsolete. I was able to get my hands on one proposal; this is the company that did our display last year. Last year, we utilized a budget of twelve thousand dollars. I requested a proposal at that same amount. We were unable to get anybody else to respond to us for a secondary proposal. [1:19:45] Ryan McKeon, Finance Director: I contacted others and they said no. [1:20:10] Walter Lower III, Council Member: Are we going to be asking for donations from people? [1:20:15] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: Yes, with approval from Council in order to do so. [1:20:32] Jim Michalski, Mayor: The donations would be subtracted from the 12,000 that the city would be paying for. Is there a motion? I'll make the motion to accept the J&M proposal for twelve thousand dollars and to seek donations. Motion carries. Great. 6D: Moose Lake Police Department taser quote. [1:21:33] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: Darren submitted this quote for the taser replacement. The budget was already approved; we're just bringing it forward for review. [1:21:44] Darren Chapman, Chief of Police: It did come up to 15,000; that's what was budgeted. From the quote we had at the end of last year, it had gone up, but they were able to match what we had. That's for five tasers with holsters, training cartridges, everything that we'll need. The ones we currently have are failing and half of them don't even work anymore. [1:22:43] Jim Michalski, Mayor: We have a second? All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. 6E: League of Minnesota Cities property casualty insurance analysis. [1:24:05] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: I will discuss E and F together; one is our property casualty and one is our workers' compensation member analysis. Superintendent Entner and I met with Troy Walsh with the League of Minnesota Cities. Our property casualty insurance annual expense is currently 83,000, and our workers' compensation insurance premium annually is 130,000. Large expenses for the city. What we're doing internally is utilizing our free resources through the League to analyze best practices—what policies can we put into play to protect the city? Good meetings, good information. [1:26:40] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: 6G: Minnesota Joint Powers Agreement with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Chief Chapman has identified agreements that were missing or expired. These next two line items are agreements we need to update to protect the process of the PD. [1:27:18] Douglas Juntunen, Council Member: Are these agreements that we're currently acting as if they are in place? [1:27:32] Darren Chapman, Chief of Police: Yeah, the one with the BCA is required in order to access any of their systems—databases, court activity. I contacted the BCA, and it's just something that has to be put into place. And the HDC (Human Development Center) one is another one that we've had in the past; it just needs to be renewed. Recently, they had an issue with Central Square, and the BCA had found them to be out of line, so the BCA had forced them into doing these changes. [1:28:38] Douglas Juntunen, Council Member: There is so much data that is so specific to police and court that I find myself depending on you telling me that this is in order. [1:29:25] Darren Chapman, Chief of Police: Yes, it is. [1:29:35] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Looking for a motion for approval. So moved. Second? All in favor say aye. All right, opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, Darren. Moving on to 6I: Arena compressors. [1:30:25] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: There have been discussions that predate some of us regarding the compressors at the arena. It's been identified that we're operating with a system that is now obsolete. In fact, there are regulations in play that if something happened, we would be forced to go to a new cooling system. Superintendent Entner got a current quote on what it would cost to replace our system, and that current amount is 557,270 dollars. We're looking at ways we can be creative as far as funding for that type of expense. [1:32:12] Walter Lower III, Council Member: There was a discussion about the possibility of a low-interest loan with Water and Light. They have the funds, but they also could provide us with a lower interest rate than anyone else. It's just an option in case it happens. [1:33:04] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Has there been discussions with the school district? This is used by the school district by contract. I think there should be discussion with the school district to say, "You have skin in the game; these are your students." I know budgets are tight everywhere, but if you get a piece from different people involved, it makes it a lot easier. [1:34:18] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: I can share that we have had some discussion. One obstacle is there was a five-year contract signed in 2020. [1:34:48] Walter Lower III, Council Member: Before we start looking at signing another contract, we really need to get all the players to the table. I don't want people to spend taxpayer money on something like that without discussion. [1:35:45] Douglas Juntunen, Council Member: I disagree that it would be part of their responsibility. It's owned by the city. [1:36:15] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Well, we don't have a responsibility to have it either. It's been in the community for so many years. I understand when you disagree, that's perfectly fine. I just want you to know where I stand. [1:37:06] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: One thing we discussed internally was potentially utilizing money Water and Light has set aside for energy-efficient projects. Also, the Hockey Association has been saving money for compressors. We will absolutely have more information to share. [1:38:13] Jim Michalski, Mayor: 6K: CliftonLarsonAllen 2022 audit exit presentation. [1:38:22] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: Our exit presentation happens in June. Our audit firm has a conflict with our current city council meeting date, so we've discussed having a special meeting. The dates are potentially Tuesday, June 6th, or Wednesday, June 7th. [1:39:31] Kris Huso, Council Member: I won't be here; I'll be in France. [1:40:00] Ellissa Owens, City Administrator: I will contact the council members directly as far as trying to come up with a date that works. [1:41:46] Jim Michalski, Mayor: Announcements: Regular Moose Lake City Council meeting, Wednesday, May 10, 2023, 4:00 PM right here. Economic Development Authority, Wednesday, May 17, 12:00 PM. Water and Light commission, Tuesday, April 18, 1:00 PM. Housing Redevelopment Authority, Monday, May 8, 11:00 AM. Fire District, Tuesday, May 9th, 6:30 PM. Park Board meeting, Monday, May 1st, 5:00 PM. Anything else? Being none, do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second? All in favor say aye. Aye. We are adjourned. Thank you.