This transcript features Mayor Wayne Boucher, City Administrator John Mulder, City Engineer David Bolf, and City Councilors Grant Hauschild and John Geissler. [0:13] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [0:37] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Good, yeah. All right, we're back. Councilor Geissler here, Councilor Hauschild here, Wayne Boucher here. And tonight, Councilors Nelson and Peterson are ill and unable to attend tonight's meeting. Do any councilors have announcements they'd like to make? A brief welcome. [1:24] **Grant Hauschild:** And I will just say, if I'm missing from any public meetings in the next two-ish weeks, it's because my wife and i are expecting our second child any day now. So we will see what that brings. [1:24] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Congratulations. Keep your phone handy. Yes, uh, we will move on to public hearing. We have a public hearing on Richard Avenue and Lindgren Road improvements. Mr. Mulder? [1:24] **John Mulder:** So, we have been talking about improvement to the Hermantown Marketplace and the roads there for a number of years, and it dates back to 2015. And so we initially ordered this project and we had the engineer start doing some work, but as we did some of that work, we looked at, you know, we didn't want to do just half the marketplace. We wanted to make sure that we did the entire marketplace and that we didn't have a stretch of old road in the marketplace next to a new one. So we had the engineers here take a look at that. And so we've then subsequently sent out public hearing notices to the affected property owners that would be assessed for this project in late December and had the public hearing notice also in the paper. And so tonight's that public hearing. As part of that, we would have the city engineer—David, if you would just kind of walk through the slides presentation in terms of exactly what we have planned there. [2:54] **David Bolf:** Okay, thank you, John, and Mayor and Council. So tonight, again, we're going to talk about the Richard Avenue, Lindgren Road, Sam's Way, and the frontage road project. We started this back in 2017; we did a feasibility study and at the time we didn't have a funding source for it, so that project kind of got tabled, sat for a couple years. We went through the financial management plan and identified, you know, this is a brilliant area we would like to make some improvements in. We then in 2021 applied for a grant through MnDOT and we received that $750,000 grant, so that was the trigger to initiate this project. We had our initial public meeting in August of 2021, a public information meeting similar to this meeting we have tonight. In this fall, staff and myself identified, as John mentioned, the need and desire to complete the Hermantown Marketplace. So we amended the feasibility study to include EB Drive, Sam's Way, the frontage road, and the southern half of Richard Avenue. So that brings us to our public meeting this evening. And we also—you can see on the slide here before you—the projected timeline for the remainder of this project. We're hoping to get bids out somewhere in March or April and then start construction in May or June of this year and have likely a two-year construction of this and wrap things up in 2023. [5:11] **David Bolf:** Next slide, please. So again, this kind of dates back to 2015 when we did a road inventory and we identified the roads that needed improvements, and then we came up with the financial management plan on how to make the improvements to those roads. These roads specifically, you know, we have added traffic from the businesses that are new to the marketplace. The age of the roadway, you know, it's 20-plus years old and it's starting to deteriorate. We have some heavy storm sewers, sidewalks are either non-existent or they're not ADA compliant, so I'd like to make some improvements there. And then there's a lack of pedestrian walkway, so we want to get some connectivity within the marketplace. [5:57] **David Bolf:** Here, this map shows the proposed improvement segments. We have six segments. I'll go quickly just through them and then we'll go into a little bit more detail. Segment one is on Richard Avenue, that's the mill and overlay, that's the existing piece. The second piece is a new piece of Richard Avenue that doesn't exist today. Segment three is Lindgren Road; we're proposing to improve that from a gravel road to a curb and gutter and pavement. Segment four is EB Drive. EB Drive is the one that has some failed and heavy storm sewer that we want to correct, and then we'd do a mill and overlay on that and then replace some sidewalk. Segment five is the short segment going over to Sam's Club called Sam's Way; we want to reclaim or mill and overlay that and then add sidewalk on the north side. And then the last segment is segment six, the frontage road that serves the Kwik Trip. [7:29] **David Bolf:** Here again, a little bit more detail. Segment one is the existing piece of Richard Avenue. So the plan there is mill and overlay that section. There's some spot curb and gutter that we're going to replace. Sidewalk replacement on the east side is four feet; we're going to replace it with five feet. And then on the west side, north of Sam's Way, we put new sidewalk there as well, and then ADA ramps as well. Segment two here, that's the piece of Richard Avenue that does not exist today. The city has right-of-way there, so we're going to put the road through the platted right-of-way. That will be again a 32-foot road to match the existing section and then, excuse me, five-foot walks on both sides and it'll have curb and gutter. Our next section is segment three, Lindgren Road. This currently is about 18 to 20 foot wide, mostly gravel, but the east end is pavement. That will be reconstructed to 32-foot wide with curb and gutter on both sides and sidewalk on the south side. The next segment is EB Drive. Again, we're going to mill and overlay that section, replace the four-foot walk with a five-foot walk, and then there's a segment where the sidewalk currently does not go all the way out to Haynes Road, so we're going to include that piece of sidewalk and then replace some catch basins and some storm sewer pipe. Segment five here, Sam's Way—again, that's going to be a mill and overlay with a five-foot walk on the north side. And the last segment here, segment six, is that the small frontage road that we inherited from the county. So we're going to make some improvements there, put some curb and gutter and improve some drainage in that section. [9:48] **David Bolf:** The next slide here has the cost for the projects and how we're going to fund it. So we have a construction cost of about 1.5 million. With all the soft costs, we're at about 2.1. And then the funding sources here—the big one is the LRIP, or the local road improvement grant, of $750,000. Then we have a water fund, the storm water fund, the sanitary fund, the street fund, assessments of $470,000, and then the balance is the general levy. That equates to the 2.1 million dollar cost of the project. And then that next slide here is the assessment total. So we've identified the parcels on the project that are being assessed: $30,000 per parcel with the exception of the Twin Ports Development LLC and the Kwik Trip parcel. And the reason those are smaller is that's the short piece of the frontage road that the cost is less, so that's why we programmed that for the assessment. So with that, it kind of concludes the presentation here today. So if you have any questions for me, I'm willing to answer those now. [11:19] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Any questions or comments from council? [11:19] **Grant Hauschild:** I have a quick question, and probably more for Mr. Mulder. Remind me how we got to the $30,000 for the assessment? [11:19] **John Mulder:** Well, we look at a couple of things. One is, in assessments, you always want to have some consistency amongst the property owners that are benefiting from it. So we did a per-parcel basis for those, and then we also looked at, again, balancing the cost of it and the benefit to the residents or to the property owners, and that's kind of how we decided what that was. This is very similar to the assessments that were made in the Hermantown Marketplace when we did the roads over by the Holiday Inn. Those were $25,000 for Subway, $25,000 for Dairy Queen, and then it was an additional $50,000 for the property owned by the—I think it's North Star Ford now, I don't know if that's the official owner—and then we reduced that one because then we had them take down the building. So that's kind of the process that we used. [12:05] **Grant Hauschild:** Okay, thanks. [12:05] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Anything else from council? Thank you. Anything else from Mr. Mulder? Now we will open this up to public discussion. Something I should have mentioned earlier under announcements: we have three different general areas of public discussion this evening. We will have a public discussion on this public hearing in a few moments. At the beginning of our agenda, we will have a time for general public discussion about items not on the agenda, and then each item that's on the agenda that will be voted on—that has the possibility of passing—will have a separate time for public discussion. So if an item is tabled, there won't be any public discussion on any tabled items. So we'll move now. Is there any public discussion on this public hearing at this time? If so, state your name and address for the record. If there's anyone in chambers, they can step forward to the podium, or anyone that's online can merely announce their name and address and start. Is there any public discussion on this public hearing for the road improvement project? [13:55] **John Mulder:** With no public discussion on this project, I would entertain a motion on this item, 2022-10. Well, just for the record, Mayor, we're recommending a motion to table. Because in order to proceed, you need a two-thirds vote. We don't have four members here in order to do that, so we're asking you to table this. [13:55] **Grant Hauschild:** Motion to table. [13:55] **John Geissler:** Second. [13:55] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Motion by Councilor Hauschild, second by Councilor Geissler. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Same sign. Next, Mr. Mulder, we have communications. Would you go over those? [14:41] **John Mulder:** Sure. There's just three items in there. The first one is regarding some conversations with the transit authority about potential bus stops in Hermantown and some of their ideas to improve bus service. And then two of them are just reports from Jim Ridge, the building official, regarding building permits in 2021. [15:05] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Thank you. And now we will move to public discussion of a general variety. Is there anyone that wishes to speak to the council about an item in general? If so, either step forward and state your name and address, or state your name and address on the online portion of the meeting. Go ahead. [15:05] **Chad Ronchetti:** Mayor Boucher, Councilors. My name is Chad Ronchetti. I live at 3758 Stebner Road here in Hermantown. I am also a HEDA commissioner. My day job, however, is Director of Project Planning and Development for Kraus-Anderson Construction. I attended earlier the pre-agenda meeting. I very much appreciated the conversation and the discussion around the arena and recreation initiative. I just wanted to come up and make a few clarifying comments, if I may. A big portion of what I do is educate individuals, potential clients, and others on the different delivery methods possible for delivering construction. I heard some conversation today during your discussion which involved the differences between Program Management, Construction Manager as Agent, and Construction Manager at Risk. I can appreciate that the complexities of the different delivery methods can be confusing, and I want you to know that there are experts within your community that can help to answer these questions around the delivery methods. [16:38] **Chad Ronchetti:** The couple of things that I would point out is that in the proposal from ICS, they propose to be Construction Management as Agent. The question came up on whether or not there would be a Guaranteed Maximum Price, also known as a GMP. With a Construction Management Agent, there is no GMP. Also, the owner, which in this case would be the City of Hermantown, would take on all the risk associated with the construction; that includes cost overruns and any other issues that arise during construction. Under the CM at Risk—the Construction Manager at Risk, which is what was delivered for the wellness center with our good friends over at McGough, a high-quality company that I would vouch for—in that model, a Guaranteed Maximum Price is provided and the contracts would fall under the Construction Manager at Risk. One other question that I will close on was whether or not sales tax as a city entity could be avoided. That can be avoided in both CMA and CMR (Construction Management Agent and Construction Manager at Risk). At Risk takes a little more legal documentation inside the subcontracts, but it can be avoided, so that would not be an issue. And lastly, I will close with: I am a firm believer in a competitive process. CMA can be procured via a professional services agreement, thereby being sole-sourced. A Construction Manager at Risk would be a construction contract and would need a competitive process. Seeing as state dollars would likely and may potentially be directed toward this project, I think it would behoove us as citizens and as a city entity to have the most competitive and transparent process possible, particularly if we're going to be getting a complicated financial stack that includes state funding. So thank you again for your service and I appreciate the time to speak today. [18:11] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Thank you. Is there anyone else that wishes to speak to the council about items in general not on the agenda? This is the last opportunity for public discussion about items not on the agenda. If you have something you'd like to discuss, please state your name and address. We'll close the public discussion and move on to the consent agenda. Do we have a motion for that agenda? [19:19] **John Geissler:** Motioned. [19:19] **Grant Hauschild:** Second. [19:19] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Motioned by Councilor Geissler, second by Councilor Hauschild. Roll call, please. [19:19] **Alissa McClure:** Councilor Hauschild? [19:19] **Grant Hauschild:** Aye. [19:19] **Alissa McClure:** Councilor Geissler? [19:19] **John Geissler:** Aye. [19:19] **Alissa McClure:** Mayor Boucher? [19:19] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Aye. [19:19] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Next we move to resolutions. Resolution 2021-11, resolution approving an amendment to the city handbook regarding city purchase policy. Do we have a motion? [20:04] **Grant Hauschild:** Motion to approve. [20:04] **John Geissler:** Second. [20:04] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Motion by Councilor Hauschild, second by Councilor Geissler. Mr. Mulder? [20:04] **John Mulder:** So, we are adding a more formal purchase policy to the city's handbook. The main thing that we wanted to do there was to just kind of clarify the levels of responsibility and authority for different types of purchases. So I included the chart in the memo just to kind of say, for purchases of this level, this is who would do that; if it's a purchase above this level, then it needs to go to City Council. And so we just kind of—we also talked about what that process would be. In some cases, it's a quote; other times, it's a sealed bid. So just to clarify that and to make sure that everybody's on the same page in terms of who has authority to do what. [20:52] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Thank you. Do you have any questions or comments from council? [20:52] **Grant Hauschild:** And did you say earlier, Mr. Mulder, that we would be getting some ordinance amendments in relation to this, so that the ordinances would line up with this policy? [20:52] **John Mulder:** Yeah, so we'll present an ordinance in at the next meeting that would—assuming this passes—clarify or clean up the city administrator's level, because currently it's at $10,000. This would put it at $25,000. [21:39] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Thank you. Any other questions from council? Is there any public input on this matter? Any discussion or questions from members of the public? If so, please state your name and address for the record. Any public input on resolution 2022-11? With no public input, I would ask for a roll call. [21:48] **Alissa McClure:** Councilor Hauschild? [21:48] **Grant Hauschild:** Aye. [21:48] **Alissa McClure:** Councilor Geissler? [21:48] **John Geissler:** Aye. [21:48] **Alissa McClure:** Mayor Boucher? [21:48] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Aye. [21:48] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Resolution 2022-12, resolution receiving bids and awarding contract for Highway 53 water tower reconditioning to Osseo Construction Company in the amount of $455,500. Do we have a motion? [21:48] **Grant Hauschild:** Motion to approve. [21:48] **John Geissler:** Second. [21:48] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Motion by Councilor Hauschild, second by Councilor Geissler. Mr. Mulder, do we want our city engineer to address this? [22:33] **John Mulder:** Sure, he can do that. Mr. Bolf? [22:33] **David Bolf:** Yeah, thank you, Mayor and Council. So, last—I believe I guess it was a week and a half ago now—we opened bids for the water tower reconditioning of the large water tower off of Highway 53. We received five bids on time. The low bid was Osseo Construction Company at $455,500. The engineer's estimate was at $645,000. We had our consulting engineer, Bolton & Menk, review the bids for completeness and accuracy, and that's their recommendation. Osseo Construction Company—they have worked with them on multiple water towers over the last number of years, so they had a comfort level that they would deliver a quality project to the City of Hermantown. So that's their recommendation, to award to Osseo. [23:18] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Thank you. Do you have any questions or comments from the council? [23:18] **Grant Hauschild:** I'm just curious, I mean, is that a pretty normal difference between the estimate and the cost? It just seems pretty—I mean, that's a lot of money. [23:18] **David Bolf:** You never know what to expect till bid day. Yeah, sometimes you can have five bids that are tight, and in this case, we had five bids that—you know, there was over a $200,000 difference. What we saw, in my opinion, was the benefit of getting a project on the street early before a contractor's schedules are booked up. So you got some aggressive pricing on the front end. And, you know, the high bid was the bidder that did our previous water tower, and maybe he learned some things from that project that others maybe didn't see. [24:04] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Thank you. Any other questions? Is there any public input on this resolution? If so, please state your name and address for the record. Is there any public input on resolution 2022-12? Roll call, please. [24:30] **Alissa McClure:** Councilor Geissler? [24:30] **John Geissler:** Aye. [24:30] **Alissa McClure:** Councilor Hauschild? [24:30] **Grant Hauschild:** Aye. [24:30] **Alissa McClure:** Mayor Boucher? [24:30] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Aye. [24:39] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Resolution 2022-13, resolution authorizing and directing the Mayor and City Clerk to execute and deliver the police enterprise record management system access agreement with the City of Duluth on behalf of its police department. Do we have a motion to approve? [24:39] **John Geissler:** Motion. [24:39] **Grant Hauschild:** Second. [24:39] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Motion by Councilor Geissler, second by Councilor Hauschild. Mr. Mulder, can you explain this as best as you can without the Chief here? [25:24] **John Mulder:** Sure. This is just an agreement between the City of Duluth and the City of Hermantown regarding the police record systems. It allows Duluth and the City of Hermantown to share information about police records, and it's worked well in the past. This is kind of a new system with the City of Duluth, and so that's why we recommend it. [25:24] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Thank you. Any questions or comments from council? [25:24] **Grant Hauschild:** I'll just add that I'd heard that the previous system that we're leaving behind is not working well for us and that we're moving to this because of that. [25:24] **John Mulder:** There were five agencies involved in the current system, and two of them might still be out there involved in the old system, but this will help our department function a lot better. [26:12] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Any other comments from council? Is there any public input on this resolution? If so, please state your name and address for the record. Calling for public input on resolution 2022-13. Roll call, please. [26:21] **Alissa McClure:** Councilor Hauschild? [26:21] **Grant Hauschild:** Aye. [26:21] **Alissa McClure:** Councilor Geissler? [26:21] **John Geissler:** Aye. [26:21] **Alissa McClure:** Mayor Boucher? [26:21] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Aye. [26:21] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Resolution 2022-14, resolution evolving the cable TV coordinator position to include a communications internship. Do I have a motion? [27:07] **Grant Hauschild:** So moved. [27:07] **John Geissler:** Second. [27:07] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Motion by Councilor Hauschild, second by Councilor Geissler. Mr. Mulder? [27:07] **John Mulder:** So for years we've had a cable TV coordinator; that was kind of a contracted position. And as we looked at that after a recent resignation of the cable TV coordinator, we looked at that and said, well, we could use that same kind of funding and provide a little more opportunity for more content development. So that's where we want to create this communications internship. [27:07] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Thank you. Any questions or comments from council? My only comment is I think it's a great kind of a path and a new direction here to help. We've never had great success with this since back when students used to do it, etc. So hopefully we'll get a college student involved. And Mr. Mulder, do we know the time frame of how long is it going to take to get somebody on board? [27:07] **John Mulder:** I believe that we have somebody lined up to take it, if necessary, if we're ready to go. [27:53] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Wow, that's great. That's great. [27:53] **Grant Hauschild:** And is the source of funding for this still the cable TV franchise fee? [27:53] **John Mulder:** Yes. Doesn't affect the general fund budget. [27:53] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** That does not. Any other questions or comments? Is there any public input on this resolution? If so, please state your name and address for the record. Is there any public hearing input on resolution 2022-14? Roll call, please. [28:16] **Alissa McClure:** Councilor Geissler? [28:16] **John Geissler:** Aye. [28:16] **Alissa McClure:** Councilor Hauschild? [28:16] **Grant Hauschild:** Aye. [28:16] **Alissa McClure:** Mayor Boucher? [28:16] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Aye. [28:16] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Resolution 2022-15, resolution approving the donation of easements to the City of Hermantown for the Uggstad Road and Arrowhead Road improvement. And we have a recommendation from staff to table this. Do we have a motion? [28:16] **John Geissler:** Motion. [28:16] **Grant Hauschild:** Second. [28:16] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Motion by Councilor Geissler, second by Councilor Hauschild to table. Roll call, please. [28:16] **Alissa McClure:** Councilor Hauschild? [28:16] **Grant Hauschild:** Aye. [28:16] **Alissa McClure:** Councilor Geissler? [28:16] **John Geissler:** Aye. [28:16] **Alissa McClure:** Mayor Boucher? [28:16] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Aye. [29:02] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Resolution 2022-16, resolution authorizing and directing Mayor and City Clerk to execute and deliver agreement for the use of the City of Hermantown athletic fields with Independent School District Number 700. Do we have a motion? [29:02] **Grant Hauschild:** So moved. [29:02] **John Geissler:** Second. [29:02] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Motion by Councilor Hauschild, second by Councilor Geissler. Mr. Mulder? [29:02] **John Mulder:** This is a continuation of the agreement that we've had with the school district for a number of years that allows them to use the Fichtner Field for their baseball season and Rose Road for their softball team. [29:02] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Thank you. Any comment from council? Nope. I'd like to add that besides just going along for quite a while, hopefully within a few years we can offer them a new and improved field to play on at Fichtner Field. Any other comments from council? Is there any public input on resolution 2022-16? If so, please state your name and address for the record. Is there any public input on this resolution? Roll call, please. [30:02] **Alissa McClure:** Councilor Hauschild? [30:02] **Grant Hauschild:** Aye. [30:02] **Alissa McClure:** Councilor Geissler? [30:02] **John Geissler:** Aye. [30:02] **Alissa McClure:** Mayor Boucher? [30:02] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Aye. [30:02] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** And next, we have a motion to close the meeting of the Hermantown City Council pursuant to Minnesota Statutes 13D.05, subdivision 3(c)(1) and 13D.05, subdivision 3(c)(3) to evaluate the asking price of naming rights associated with the proposed hockey arena located in the City of Hermantown and develop offers and counteroffers. Following this closed session, the council will reconvene in an open session. Do we have a motion? [30:02] **John Geissler:** So moved. [30:02] **Grant Hauschild:** I'll second. [30:47] **Mayor Wayne Boucher:** Motion by Councilor Geissler, second by Councilor Hauschild. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. We are now moving to closed session, so it'll just take a minute here. We're going...