agents like to welcome everyone jenny if you could take the role council member thorson councilmember peterson council member wong here council member cole here mayor furlong here quorum is present this time motion to adopt the agenda so moved your honor by council member peterson second second by council member thorson any discussion not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries we have no presentations and we have the consent agenda and i'll turn it over to uh city manager start thank you mayor furlong and city council members for the audience here or watching at home the consent agenda contains several separate items which are acted upon by the city council in one motion once the consent agenda has been approved the individual items and the recommended actions will have also been approved and no further action is necessary any city council member may request an item be removed from the consent agenda and place on the regular agenda for further discussion tonight we have nine items on the consent agenda item a is the may 3rd 2022 regular meeting minutes item b is general claims of the city item c is acceptance of the 2021 financial report with the city's audit firm of uh and and you'll have to forgive me if i mispronounced some of these molloy montague karnowski radosevich and company or i should have just said mmkr item d is a charitable gambling permit for north metro flex academy located at 2350 helen street north item e is an approval of an on sale and sunday liquor license for nsp hospitality doing business as max diner and this is something that was a minor revision from a liquor license that was approved two weeks ago item f is a resolution approving acceptance of donations received in april 2022 item g is the building permit report for april of 2022 item h is the approval of a new arts and culture commission members item i is the lease in premises agreement with her with hillary's father's club and that concludes the consent agenda at this time any council member would like to pull an item at this time they can if not uh motion to approve the consent agenda so moved move by council member call second second by councilmember wong any discussion if not all of us in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed is approved uh at this time the meeting is open to the public and we have three people uh sean welcome sean sean rivet 24 83 i can't even remember my address right off the top my head whatever y'all know where i live um in the waterhole the your pond didn't help my street one bit my neighbor almost lost his car i almost lost my truck again out in my out up above my waist again on the street i don't know what else to do i can't i have a guy coming to help help me with my yard the yard ain't going to help nothing it comes from your street there's no way i can the only thing i can do is put raise my house up six feet or something at the rate this is going i can't keep dealing with this and you know you had the opportunity to help out my street and you guys denied me or said no i understand that's you don't want to start setting precedences please set a precedence to help your residents and help fix my street then so i can sleep easy i haven't slept since thursday night i had to call in sick on monday because i was sick i didn't get to go to work because i'm getting so sick from this these rains and these storms and stuff and you guys i can't do nothing to your street you want me to i'll bring a bobcat in and i'll fix them you know myself but i'm pretty sure i'll get in trouble so you guys i i'm asking you for help once again i'm back here asking for help this has been 12 years going on 12 years now still haven't seen it i'd like to see her here councilmember's lungs data that she gave me as her no or a council member's call for his and all what i i still don't understand your guys's reasoning i haven't even watched this council i didn't watch that meeting that i was supposed to watch i was so mad and so upset but the two people that actually voted yes for me has been to my house and actually walked around with me and actually sent some time with me neither one of you i've offered everybody to come over at any point in time and walk around with me see what i'm going through maybe you guys would have had a little bit of better information instead of just going off from your data or whatever that's obviously wrong because it's still happening i'm i'm sorry man i just something needs to be done down there nothing we can uh we'll talk to some city manager but right now yes we voted you know not to have the dnr take over that property yeah uh we have had significant rainfalls again again i understand we're talking a major major rainfall i got pictures of other neighborhoods very similar to yours mine's reoccurring though it doesn't even need to storm like that it doesn't have to storm like that if it's just a prolonged rain it just fills up down there my neighbors are like what is going on down here they had no clue when they moved in you know they're confused he'd be here but he freaking works weird hours so he can't so you know it's it's not fun down there man i haven't slept since thursday okay thank you sean uh john small evening mayor council uh last time i was up here i said something about where do you find the plan for ariel you said something to the effect it'll be on the website there's nothing on the website so you know where the plan what does it look like you know when you guys even asked when morgan was here you know what do you have up here to show how this thing is supposed to look and morgan didn't have anything so is there something where the sidewalk how far does the sidewalk go a plan you know you can look at say is there a plan i understand okay yeah there's a plan there's got to be a plan and i don't know the answer the question i had i'd have to go back to the minutes of the last time we discussed this i had hoped i would get a a phone call or something but i don't know and i don't know if our communications person knows um i don't have a good answer for you time is a wasting here it's just why do you want to see the plan yeah i'd like to see the plan where does the sidewalk go does it go all the way up the hill does go door you know it's a week i'll ask our engineer morgan if you can i'd like to see you see it john needs to see some i'm a visual person that he needs to touch and look at a visual person hi how are you doing mayor members of the council so i'd be happy to email mr smalls the the plan set if i can get the full copy from the city of maplewood or the pertinent plan sheets specific to ariel north st paul and the sidewalk um morgan was an idea at the last meeting i understand that that visuals help we had a technical glitch at the last meeting but just to answer the question the sidewalk will be constructed within that striped shoulder on the east side of the road uh from uh from 9th avenue up to 17th avenue is the extension down north depends on your context there but yes so that's a general location but i'll get mr schmalz's email address and and why not all the way to the uh apartments i mean it just blows my mind that it doesn't continue all the way to the cul-de-sac where the apartments people from the apartments can walk out their door and get on the sidewalk and walk down the hill so the extents of the sidewalk was based on actual observations of pedestrian use in the area walking on the side of the road they levitate in conjunction with the comprehensive plan in terms of what was planned you don't really like to engage but john anyway and okay that's that part of it and the other thing is uh your module uh in opengov uh dealing with zoning permits and the ability to file a complaint and you can do it in the system but you got to be taught by kerry how to do it because it's not easy because i walk in with my phone and first of all she says why do you have are you doing this on the phone well the pictures are on the phone that's why i'm doing it on the phone and so she goes well here this is the way you do it zip zip keep no no keep going keep going keep going until you get to the spot at the very end of the keep going that you can tap on it to go to the module and so you can process was for me to file a complaint because there is there's a violation and so i like doing that because it's you know it's available do it and so i filed a complaint and i filled in well i couldn't fill in the right things kerry had to change the module in order to include zoning as one of the things you could actually complain about so that's in there so yesterday i was able to input it and today a question in these three people that have an email conversation the one person asked me well is your name uh covered up in this complaint and i said i don't know see you know you think you'd be able to make a complaint anonymously wouldn't you you you know good thing to have complaintants be anonymous well you are not the only record for that address is under the name of guess who me right there for god and everyone to see you would think that it would be anonymous that it ain't or there should be a warning by the way if you put your name down on here it's open for everyone to see do you really want to proceed anyway last item is is the wonderful cc and the community center oh okay and the drop in value from two million five to two million one and i thought that's interesting ramsey county two million five two million one for the record for this year so hey that's interesting let's dial up ramsey county they don't like talking to citizens they do not like talking to citizens anyway bottom line is it was supposed to be reviewed this year it's coming up for its review but they changed the value last year why did you change that don't know guy who did it no longer here it is just crazy but he's the guy i talked to mike i only got his first name said the change was because it has been changed from classification as a library to a racquetball court and racquetball courts are valued differently than a library cheaper who knows who knows anybody here know that it's it's now a racquetball court nope oh you do know no it's a racquetball court thank you thank you lawrence welcome mr lawrence thank you mayor city council so my name is bob lawrence i'm a woodbury resident i'm currently the okay i i apologize i i snuck in um i'm currently the president of hillary fathers club and i just wanted to thank you and tell you how excited we are to partner with the city and with max and looking forward to a good long-term relationship well i'm glad you're here and uh i'm glad you guys are able to get in the max i think it's going to be a real good real good deal for you guys it'll be good so thank you very much i don't have anything to complain about well i appreciate it you guys are doing a wonderful job thank you appreciate it uh is there anybody on zoom okay so at this time city business action items and recommendations i'll turn it over to uh city manager stark yes and this is going to be a continuation of the workshop in that it's going to be at least for this portion that the finance director dan winnick show so i would turn this over to mr winnick thank you city city manager again i don't do this alone so i have a supporting cast that i'll introduce here in a second but um we're here to award the sale of the nearly 10 million dollar general obligation bonds series series 2022 a if you can remember back last year in december 7th we approved uh the current and final plan right now the of the capital improvement plan or 10-year capital improvement plan incorporated into there are these items that we turned into a street reconstruction plan we held a public hearing on april 5th of this year the reconstruction plan includes a number of areas and projects one we which we heard today about the ariel street with maplewood on april 19th the city council adopted a resolution authorizing baker tilly to proceed with negotiation of a sale of bonds of approximately 10 million dollars we'll be utilizing in addition to the bond sale we'll be using our arpa funds which is a little over 1.3 million dollars and then we'll also have some some city funds um part of these projects include the annual maintenance amount that we budget for for street maintenance that was also included in these project bids so we'll be using those funds for the total project the total project um you know in addition to the 10 million dollars we'll come up to about um just under 12 million dollars of total project worth these bonds of approximately 10 million approximately 4.6 million dollars is street reconstruction bonds the remaining 5.4 million dollars is backed their revenue bonds backed by our and with that i am going to turn it over to michaela hewitt from baker tilly to kind of talk to us about the results of the sales of those bonds today welcome michaela it's awfully quiet sorry i'm having technical is it ticking i can't hear that we're all done i'm kidding um good evening members of the council again michaela hewitt with bakers hilly municipal advisors i'm here to provide a short presentation on the results of the city's competitive bond sale as well as the results of the credit rating related to the bond there we go so this the first slide before you um this is providing kind of the the one of the main municipal indices that we look at when understanding the trends and interest rates and you'll see here it's reflecting the activities over the last five years and we'll see where we are currently there's been a steep inc steep incline over the last um i'd say six seven-ish months um to where we are today but again this is just to give an average that we're still if you look at over the five-year period we're still in probably i would say average rates of what we've seen over that period even though we're experiencing a kind of a sharp increase right now so again as dan had introduced this topic the city is issued 9.995 of general obligation improvement bonds and the proceeds of the bond issue is to be used to finance various utility improvements and street reconstruction projects within the city and they were identified within the city's street reconstruction project we did include a 20-year term for the repayment debt service on the bonds and the estimated true interest cost or the tick as it's referred that we were looking at and updating our finance the structures from last thursday and friday we're about 3.43 so in uh part of our role in working with the city is to facilitate the the um sale of the bonds and we're proud to announce that there were five bids that were received so it was a very um competitive sale the lowest bid was received from northland securities inc and the actual results of their sale was 3.41 it's actually 3.419 so they initially provided the bid of 3.415 however with some of the um a little bit of resizing on the bonds level debt service the actual rate is now 3.419 so still very close and you'll see the the range of the five bids were between 3.415 and up to 3.664 so they were all very competitive bids these i'll just point out these were issued as bank qualified since they were less than 10 million and that does reflect um about a 20 to 30 basis points savings on the interest rate so by following that method we were able to result in the 3.4 of the true interest cost so with the bond issue there was an updated credit rating for the city and what does that mean we work through standard and poor's and it is really a measure of the city's financial strength and the ability to make the debt service payments in a timely fashion the the results of it indicate that the higher the rating the less likely there would be a default and the less likely that there is the chance for a default the lower that the interest rate is that the investors are willing to accept so the higher the rating typically the lower the interest rate and the less in total debt service that you'll pay you'll see here the city was reaffirmed their credit rating of a double a through s p and this is just showing the overall rates of for all the different rating agencies so there are comments in the updated rating report for the city and they reflect all positive comments the strong economy growing market value and continued residential development both in the city and the surrounding metro area strong management and that's reflected through good financial management practices and policies strong budgetary performance and with consistent operating surpluses in the annual budget a very strong budget flexibility meaning strong available reserves and a very strong that reflects again relates to the very strong liquidity and finally uh weak debt um and that's that's pretty consistent with the way that um we're the in minnesota but with the long-term planning and rapid amortization of the debt those are all positive attributes of the city's overall credit rating so we always like to look at what are possible ways to increase the rating and you'll see here the upside scenario is that they would consider raising the rates if the economic growth or other factors that ultimately lead to the city's wealth and income metrics materially improve and if the city's debt burden moderates despite the future borrowing plans and again that's following the the five-year street reconstruction plan downside scenario we always have to look at it although it's unexpected is that you could look at a reduced lower rating if the city's operating results weaken on a sustained basis or if any of the economic metrics that are currently viewed as strong would materially weaken so with that um i said it's a short and sweet presentation but i'd be happy to address any questions any questions for michaela city attorney [Music] uh if not uh his motion to approve to prove the uh sale of nine million nine hundred nine hundred and ninety five thousand dollars general obligation bonds series 2022-a so moved moved by council member thorson taken by councilmember peterson any discussion if not all of us in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries and i would just add you know this was a short presentation but the amount of time that finance director wenick and the folks at baker tilley have put into this uh has been just amazing um you know i've been a small part of that but i know that they have just done great work so thank you so much thank you michaela ollie does a good job always doing a good job so thank you i'll second that okay good city manager stark thank you michaela the next item is the 2022 sanitary sewer lining project to receive bids and award contract and i would turn this over to city engineer dali you know it's kind of funny you're i can't see you over that computer screen there when you're sitting down over there and i and i thought you had laughs dude i was hiding thank you city manager stark mr mayor members of the council uh the item before you here tonight is to consider bids received on the 2022 sanitary sewer lining project as you just heard this is one of the improvement projects considered within the capital improvement plan and the bond sale that you just approved we did solicit bids from contractors with should be on my screen there in the areas shown on your screen generally this is cured in place pipe lining for sanitary sewer pipes which actually provides structural integrity also seals against inflow and infiltration issues that we do experience within north st paul in our sewer system so that helps save the public and met council some additional clean water that does not need to be treated and ultimately saves everybody money so that investment in our infrastructure not only saves us from future cave-ins or sinkholes or street repairs that might happen from old sewers collapsing but also prevents kind of intrusion of water that does not need to be treated downstream from a wastewater standpoint so different areas including casey lake which earlier in the year you may recall we did have some issues and problems and we're anticipating that this sewer lining will help alleviate some of those concerns in that area by sealing the pipes against root intrusion that's another benefit that i didn't mention previously but that's some of the problems that we have in that area are tree roots actually growing into our sanitary sewing sewer system searching out the water and causing issues occasionally so again this improvement will also minimize maintenance and minimize some of the risks along those lines within our sewer system so casey lake we have some areas up and around uh uh i'm sorry the high school is inset map one on the figure there inset map two uh is down in around uh uh seventh avenue south of seventh avenue around helen and east of helen and then inset map 3 is another area of sewer that is just south of 7th avenue kind of west of the new development area in between margaret and helen so those are all areas in need and a lot of those are identified in conjunction with either planned future pavement investment improvements or current existing ones again trying to protect that underground infrastructure given the investment or planned future investment on the roadways up above we received two bids and uh pleased to report that the low bid of just over three hundred and two thousand dollars came in very close to the estimate at three hundred and two thousand three hundred sixty five the bid was actually 302 525 and 50 cents i may have never gotten so close to the low bid with an estimate thus far so that is certainly good news um the contractor is hydro clean we have worked with or i'm sorry visa sewer sorry about that we've worked with them as well too within the city of north st paul um so i don't have any hesitations recommending the city council that you receive all bids and award a contract to the apparent little bitter of visja sewer uh in the amount of three hundred two thousand five hundred and twenty five dollars and fifty cents you do have a resolution in your packet considering that uh receipt of uh bids and a word of contract and i'll stand for any questions the council might have any questions for morgan we have no questions i'm looking for the resolution uh should be there out of here got it here good thank you uh so the motion is for resolution accepting bids and awarding uh construction contract for the 2022 sanitary sewer lining project city project number 22-06 is there a motion so moved around here by councilmember peterson second second by council member thorson any questions not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries uh city engineer morgan okay if i proceed sure thank you mr mayor members of the council the next item for consideration here is receipt of um um bids and consideration of a ward of contract however we do have uh slightly different circumstances with this particular project this is for the seventh avenue street and utility improvement project which is on your screen right now the area generally confined by a mid-block between on 7th avenue mid-block between helen and margaret and then west to 1st street also including including portions of helen street on either side of 7th avenue the intersection with sepala 4th avenue east some portion of the remaining alley which is yet to be improved and also the intersection of 4th avenue and margaret and extending north kind of to where the 2020 pavement was left off on margaret street a much more complex project involving many different types of construction activity concrete paving on 7th avenue for example a lot of different utility work including water main sanitary sewer some very large trunk storm sewer on helen avenue which is old and in need of replacement as we discussed at the last council meeting i think the mayor asked some questions we are living within a period of volatility within the heavy construction industry right now um spike in diesel prices uh up 20 to 40 percent in the last couple few months supply chain issues materials supply with respect to precast concrete iron and steel products and just general concerns over labor uh and trucking and that sort of thing so as we discussed last time with the council at that time the information was that there wasn't anything compelling to cut scope at that time we did try some strategies with respect to allowing the contractor more time to construct the project thinking that that might give some allowances and some flexibility unfortunately the low bid that was received was approximately twenty percent uh over the estimate so the estimate was just over five million dollars our low bidder uh which is a good contractor uh is just uh about six million dollars so a premium of about twenty percent that's not including any sort of contingencies as you heard with the sale of the bonds we do have a capped funding availability program with which to work with for these planned improvements that we have that have not yet bid we're very fortunate that up to this point our projects have come in on budget or slightly underestimate and so again with some contingencies moving forward we're very confident that we'll have good success in terms of completing those projects within budget again knowing that they're capped within the bond program and for this capital improvement program but when you get into this situation with something that is this much you know 20 percent overestimate and then knowing that there may still be some unknowns with supply chain issues it is of concern and so we took a very uh very very close look at this trying to make a determination of whether it might be worth moving forward trying to absorb some contingencies would there be room under the bond program in other areas and frankly i just didn't feel comfortable moving forward after consultation with director of public works richie and finance director winik my recommendation to council at this time is to receive the bids however reject them at this time and consider repackaging this for a bid and construction in 2023. there's a couple different things that we can try to reap the benefit of in this certain situation number one is that we know how three good contractors within the working within the community have priced this out at this time so that gives us a much more accurate indication and up to the minute indication in terms of how suppliers are pricing things like precast concrete structures or pipe it also allows us to then evaluate the future rebid on this project and build in some flexibility like alternates for example the main priority here has always been 7th avenue 4th avenue and the intersection of margaret i would call secondary priorities and if we can package those in a re-bid scenario such that if the bids come in similar and i think within the industry and there was an article in finance and commerce that just came out monday of this week the industry is saying that 18 to 24 months is probably to be expected in terms of these types of issues with pricing inflationary measures concerns over volatility and frankly also it's important to note that you know this is not a greed thing by contractors i think within the industry we recognize that contractors are bidding defensively okay so they're trying to protect themselves against fluctuations and on their hard costs that they have no control on either and they certainly don't want to be put in a situation where they're going to lose money or not be profitable to the point where it's going to hurt their business so it's a very tentative situation a repackage and a rebid and a delay of the project in my mind october is a good time to think about knowing that lead time on precast right now is 20 to 28 weeks if we were able to rebid this and find a point within the capped finance constraints for this particular project which is just over 6.8 million dollars and that's total project for everything contingencies and indirect soft costs knowing that we will be able to either award alternates or subtract alternates to be able to find that sweet spot from a funding standpoint we'll be in a much more comfortable position financially there'll be less risk for the city and again knowing that there's a hard cap there i think that's really a really important consideration and something that i don't feel should be taken lightly and certainly not something that i'm going to risk uh recommending moving forward on just without very strong consideration here which is why i'm kind of explaining all these things in addition i think that uh you know we took again another real tight look at every single line item how all the different contractors bid um i think you know i found one item that could have been estimated slightly stronger again when we estimate more quantity we re reduce or remove risk that there might be additional costs on a project so again that repackaging will allow us to even tighten things up further minimize the risk for the project overall and again try to hit that 6.8 million dollars for a total project cost without consideration of um trying to find other sources of revenue which aren't there right now right we're working within the confines of a bond sale that has said this is what we have for street improvements for water for sewer that sort of thing so we want to be very respectful of that one additional benefit is that it will help the car show i think in this year in 2022 by being able to fully access margaret street and 7th avenue through the season while we focus on existing contractual obligations and construction in the surface parking lot which is ongoing right now off of 6th south south of 7th also work over by the high school and in addition on ariel street as we just discussed earlier so we do have plenty of things to be working on and concentrating to make sure that the contractors do a good job again i think that it's fully reasonable that substantially the work would be completed in 2023 which is not much different than what we talked about in this bid solicitation it would just be tightened up we would have some work that would occur in 2024 in terms of a final lift of asphalt paving and that sort of thing but again the goal would be to complete the work on in these areas to the greatest extent within the financial constraints that we have in calendar 2023 and coordinate with folks like the car show and other people public downtown separately and importantly on this this project alone without other kind of overlapping concerns such as the parking lot which is in fairly near proximity so with that the resolution that i've prepared in your packet is not for award of contract but for receipt of the bids and rejecting the bids with consideration for future rebid again my plan would be in an october time frame with that 28 week lead time on precast concrete and some ductile products like fittings and hydrants and that sort of thing if we have a contractor under contract in october for example they can lock in their pricing they can set their orders we can even pay them materials on hand and they can store that through the winter so that we capture the pricing at that time if it does move forward and up between october and 2023 and then they can pull that stuff out and build it in 2023 and we'll have a known cost at that time so that's the approach um i i think it's a good recommendation giving all the different scenarios that we're dealing with and the volatility of the market right now and i'll stand for any questions that the council might have any questions for morgan councilmember thurston so we're delaying the project because we're over budget is what you're saying that would be and scaling back potentially won't help getting it done this year as planned like do we have to do fourth avenue and margaret a part of this i mean i it's just i mean i i get what you're saying but it's frustrating because you know we're trying to stay in this this schedule because there's so much of the city that needs to get done i mean back in 2018 or i believe it was 2019 it was gerald shawnee chippewa avenue around casey casey park and then that got delayed because of the downtown you know and then this is taking precedent over that area and there's other areas that continue to get worse and worse and so now it's i'm hearing we're not we're just not gonna even we're doing aerial but it's not a full reconstruct we're kind of getting off of that schedule and we're falling further behind and the problems are just gonna continue to compound and get worse when we delay these road projects so i mean i guess i'm a little i don't know i mean i i don't know what to say i mean it seems like there should be an option that you know i suppose it's too far late now to look at another area of the city that needs to get done but just the whole idea of just putting it off for a year and not doing anything else kind of doesn't sit well with me but i don't know that's my thoughts councilmember wong thank you morgan for your analysis um you know i'm i'm just wondering in terms of funding so if if we were not to reject it where would you get the funding from um so a large portion of the overage if you want to call that in terms of exceedance of estimate is in the s some some of it is in the streets some of it is across the board in the utilities but a major portion of it is in the streets so the streets as you know are funded i mean not only with the bond funds but that impacts the general tax levy as opposed to um you know enterprise funds for like surface water or water utility or for sanitary sewer so it would have to be a combination across the board with which to make up that difference based on you know just rough projections in terms of if we awarded the contract as is right now the planned total project cost is 6.8 million within the bond sale and within the capital improvement plan we would be at at or slightly over 8 million dollars i mean so that that's uh you know over a million dollars uh 1.2 million dollars let's say approximately that some portion of that would have to be made up by the general tax levy which would affect the general taxes for the public some portion of that would need to be made up with unidentified as of right now sources within the utility enterprise funds as well too which would impact or affect rates more so than is currently planned or projected i guess for the foreseeable future knowing that there's been a deep financial analysis on the capital improvement plan as it stands today and also the bond sale as it stands to fund these particular projects right now so i can't answer specifically where it would come from but those are the the typical sources that you know if we were to move forward today that that's where it would have to be made up um again you know if it's five percent or you know um you know it's a lot of money no matter how you look at it but if it's an overage that's slightly less and we've navigated that before uh and it's something that from a staff standpoint there's some level of comfort that we can you know make that up or we can absorb that those are the conversations that i was having last week after bids were opened and you know do we think that that's reasonable at a 1.2 million dollar premium that just seems too strong to be able to try to power through in my opinion yeah thank you for considering all the different contributions of you know different pockets of money as we look at the infrastructure funding coming from the federal government do you know of any you know allocations or priorities that that money is going to be allocated to here on the more local level so it's coming there's still information that we don't have yet in terms of where how that's going to be coming down for example our understanding is that for drinking water for clean water that's going to be distributed through basically the same accounts or i guess vehicles by which they distribute the legacy funds and so you know this project hasn't been you know earmarked or identified specifically for those funds but certainly i think there's opportunities moving forward for future projects whether that is within this bond program or future projects for example you know the next ones that are on the docket are up by casey lake in terms of streets and utilities in terms of a two-phased approach to address those areas so that could be a category but we won't know if that will be surface water specific only or a combination of surface water and water utility meaning drinking water those are two main components and there may be some available for reconstruction of local streets as well too but we won't know specifically until we have more information available with which to identify those priority projects you know make applications and our understanding is that those are all going to be competitive as well too so there will be a lot of other local agencies applying for the same dollars thank you do you have a timeline in which that may or may not come maybe michaela's still here i'm hoping that sometime soon here that you know the the federal government has identified the funds we know um we know that it's coming we know it's been authorized by um the federal government but it does take some time to actually allocate and get those dollars to the states and the states are responsible then either through dot programs or otherwise to be able to distribute those down unknown whether or not some of those will be prioritized for example to state aid streets which 7th avenue is a state aid street but mesabi avenue for example in the casey lake area is not right so there may be some qualifications that we're going to need to pay close attention to i would anticipate that in the coming months we should get some more information but there's been no guarantees or qualifications in terms of when we're going to hear exactly and what but it will be highly followed by all engineers especially at the local level all right thank you morgan are there any maintenance we can do in the meantime between now and then that council member thorson said there are a lot of needs and i notice even my neighborhood's not even on here and it's it is really bad uh the casey lake area is getting really bad is there anything we can do that so leave yeah in these um in the bond identified projects there are some areas that are identified and these were gone through by public works last year actually and identified in terms of first tier second tier i think there always has to be care when a project area is identified for significant investment or reconstruction because if you're going to place a band-aid on something you know you don't want it to cost too much because then that's going to be undone and redone on the flip side that can also also buy you a few years and save some money in terms of pothole patching and that sort of thing so um with respect to the casey lake neighborhood for example you know those roads are certainly beyond i would say expected ideal candidates for a maintenance overlay because they are ready for reconstruction right now however given you know the need and the concern for just the timing of everything and inflationary costs it may make be worth considering looking at where some of those other maintenance dollars were planned to be spent outside of these projects but just by public works in terms of you know doing maintenance overlays which is heavier duty than pothole patching but less duty than like a reconstruction for example but again that may buy us some time it's not going to when you overlay over a road that is maybe cracked or failed some of those cracks will come through and again that's the balancing act of not spending too much so maybe we don't do a full mill and overlay knowing that there's not much of a road left to mill but we certainly could look at potentially an overlay it will crack but it might save some time or give some time with respect to bridge that timeline from now until i don't know what's in the plan i believe it was 2024 for the first portion of casey lake right which is not included in in this bond sale that but that would have to be a consideration for a separate future bond sale for either one or both of the casey lake half and half projects which started out as one project but then based on the costs it was decided a few years ago to try to split that into two so would you take a reassessment i can in the meantime and take a look and see if there are areas i was just sharing a photo from a resident on i think it was wasabi or maybe gerald and i haven't talked to public works yet so i don't know what they've committed to where outside of these projects that i've been working on but we can see if it makes sense maybe not for the whole area but maybe the worst street or the worst streets again to try to get them addressed and covered up in a temporary fashion without too much of an investment to be able to get you know even one or two years would be helpful if we can get a couple few years in a little more comfort level and understanding from the public that you know we're trying to do the best we can until we can get there to fully reconstruct them it's certainly worth considering um given the fact that you know this the city public works does have kind of a set budgetary number year after year with which to work with so maybe this year if not this year maybe next year and i think we can certainly see how that works within a prioritization strategy i mean any plan is certainly subject to change and reevaluation based on whatever might happen at any given moment a series of water main breaks um you know we've had we actually did an overlay uh of uh um oh my gosh uh in 2016 it was it was at uh 18th 19th 19th it was so something where it was scheduled for work that year and that spring for whatever reason it kind of exploded and we had to do a block or a block and a half just to hold it together for a few months so what i'm thinking is you know this might be a re-prioritization that's a little more planned out than that that was kind of an emergency situation we couldn't have the road go to to gravel necessarily even though it was already you know planned for reconstruction you know we don't want people having difficulty driving through the area and every spring spring snow melt and thaw you know those potholes are kind of problematic and can be issues for public works to keep up with from a pothole patching standpoint so i will um convene with public works and we can see if from a funding standpoint from a reprioritization standpoint if some of those other areas might warrant being folded into the mix knowing that we have delayed some of the other project areas and also knowing that we've got some late-breaking concerns that are later information than we had last year when those maintenance areas were kind of identified so i think that's a fair effort the other questions for morgan uh councilmember thorson so this particular pod project they're coming in around 1.2 million over what your initial plan was is that correct for a total project cost that was okay that was the projection correct and uh how much was on ariel the addition of the sidewalks i tried pulling that up i couldn't find it what was that addition it was estimated at 275 the bids came in at about 225 for the sidewalk ad and the hope is that we delay this and then re-bid it later in october that at that time it's going to come in lower the projection within the industry is that the inflated prices and supply chain issues are expected to continue for the next 18 to 24 months with now not any significantly identified like relief right so the idea is to be able to re-bid to be able to find that spot within the project identified budget of 6.8 million dollars so that we can have an improvement area but not have a contractual obligation to complete something that we don't have the funding for so it would be rebidding but it would be scaled back right what so i'm looking at margaret part of that road is concrete part of its asphalt part of the concrete's been patched with asphalt sections of asphalt have been replaced with i mean it's just a hodgepodge from silver lake down to hallway is this section here that is highlighted is that a section that's currently concrete that's slated to be replaced with concrete it i think portions of it are asphalt but the original plan prepared under a previous city manager was for that concrete to come down up to and uh including the intersection of fourth avenue it doesn't have to be we certainly could stop the concrete where it is right now and continue from there on soon and obviously i know all the benefits of concrete versus asphalt so we don't need to get into that but you know if we're looking for cost savings you know why wouldn't we consider that i mean i don't you know is that section of margaret such a high traffic area that it merits having concrete versus other parts of the of the city that are possibly more traffic more you know that don't have as much i don't know what i'm trying to say here i mean i don't know what what are the criteria for having concrete on a road section and and is this one that falls into that and even if it is knowing that yes asphalt does not last as long in theory because there's all sorts of things that can cause concrete to fail earlier that we've seen in town but you know what is that being considered as well like maybe instead of using concrete in all these sections we we go to asphalt does that help us get under the you know the financial problem we're having here it certainly will help i mean so you know the life cycle cost for asphalt versus concrete over 60 years let's say is about the same but on concrete pavement you're upfronting all that cost and there's very little if any maintenance moving forward on asphalt you do have to kind of stay on top of it with ceiling cracks and overlays and that sort of thing so the initial capital investment would be lower for asphalt in my opinion there's no reason why you couldn't leave the extents or the limits of the concrete pavement where they are now and do the rest of this as asphalt we were simply following the plan as kind of originally conceived and i had assumed that that was maybe discussed with the council my understanding is that's more of a it was more of a aesthetic and gateway into downtown kind of approach so that at the intersection of fourth which is a transitionary place between the residential area coming north on margaret into what was the 2020 redevelopment area and then with the sentinel building and then ultimately to 7th avenue which has historically all been concrete and was thoroughly discussed by a council in terms of concrete versus asphalt and the decision at that time on 7th avenue was to keep the concrete areas of pavement concrete but certainly if council wanted to give that direction to staff and move forward with the you know the re-bid of the project on margaret street to keep that as asphalt that's an easy change and would be expected to maybe save for that segment of uh roadway uh potentially 20 to 30 percent um that's just off top my head 20 to 30 percent well okay on that area of roadway correct well i mean if we can do what we did on ariel request a bid with and without a sidewalk i don't see because to me from what i'm hearing is this this project is going to get delayed because of cost overages part of that is concrete in areas that again i know the in theory concrete lasts longer than asphalt but a main factor is aesthetics you know meanwhile the road is completely i mean when you're driving home tonight drive that section of margaret take that down to south avenue wherever you're going home and tell me that that road can be delayed because of aesthetics i mean it's again i just this doesn't sit well with me delaying a project area that needs to get done especially when we could have done another area that needs to get done so yeah hopefully we can you know sharpen our pencils and look at all the options and not just one because there's more than one way to pay the street is there a way to bid that out absolutely if council is okay with that being asphalt we can do it either or or just move to asphalt in entirety so it's whatever council's comfortable giving direction on i'd like to hear from the council in regards to or more discussion on it uh councilmember white just from a process standpoint morgan uh you talked about rebidding this in october would um as part of that re-bidding process would you come back to the city council again or is this the kind of the opportunity no we can come back if we want more discussion on that that's up to the council yeah i'm perfectly comfortable with that if we want to have a deeper discussion on the scope and how we want to bid this i think that would be appropriate it doesn't have to at that time we would know what the cost savings would be councilmember white yeah can you speak to a little bit of the maintenance piece of asphalt by public works um what what that would kind of play out to be how kind of much regular maintenance life cycle of asphalt or what public works has currently been doing in terms of trying to address areas yeah just looking at whether you know if we were to look at an asphalt sidewalk what would the maintenance cost of that be compared to a concrete we were talking about street pavement i wouldn't necessarily recommend asphalt for sidewalks i mean for a couple of different reasons we need to control the grades and that's much more easy with concrete versus asphalt but in a general sense um asphalt is not jointed like concrete it's it's a flexible pavement it's designed to flex and it will crack at some point and in terms of the regular maintenance that the city has been really good about keeping up on in terms of the streets that we've reconstructed since 2014 is every three to five years to seal the cracks so you may have seen that around town where they kind of put the tar in the cracks and they put toilet paper and it looks a little silly for a little while until that wears off but that actually although it's not pretty to look at it does provide a great amount of benefit especially when we're sealing kind of the edges where the water runs that keeps the water out of the sub base underneath the pavement when you have cracks some of that runs in there if those cracks are left too long that can actually contaminate that sub grade the gravel underneath and sometimes you wind up with tenting which we've seen on helen avenue which we had to address in 2016 and i think 2017 we finished the rest of helen north of 36 and so by keeping the cracks sealed then the general kind of next thing that you would see at about 15 years plus or minus would be a mill an overlay that would be similar to some of these maintenance overlays these maintenance overlays are a little bit more simplistic than regular milan overlay but that's generally just grinding off the top portion of the project and resealing the top there's still some cracks underlying that will reflect through over time but again you stay on on top of those every three to five years generally on average about every 15 years you're overlaying while you're sealing cracks in between and by the time you get to year depending on a lot of different factors 60 plus or minus you've overlaid it a few times and enough times that it's generally a candidate for full reconstruction again if at any point in those maintenance areas we have things like a section of settled concrete curb and gutter or failed concrete or something we might replace that that was the general scope for ariel right a little bit more in depth in terms of reclamation rather than a mill an overlay but certainly not a full reconstruct so the goal again if you're staying on top of maintenance is to have an asphalt roadway that lasts 60 years or more before it needs to be fully reconstructed and with the concrete roadway again you're you have to do less in terms of that ongoing maintenance but you're on fr upfronting that cost it depends on who you're talking to a concrete supplier an asphalt supplier but in my opinion generally if you look at it through the life cycle of either kind of road it does come out about the same but again some of that's up front less maintenance which does have an impact on public works operations too if there's less maintenance involved there but in general um when you get southern minnesota close to iowa iowa a lot of iowa does a lot of concrete streets a lot more than you see in minnesota and in minnesota's twin cities it's kind of it's preference and a little bit of each i guess depending on the area as i recall with some of the discussions downtown again the the idea that the concrete reflects light at night kind of brightens up the downtown that was certainly a preference and that built off of the 1970 something initial reconstruction of 7th avenue that kind of set the standard in terms of concrete roadway pavement so that's the general asphalt program now those 15 every 15 years or three to five years that can flex different streets depending on whether they were built on swamps versus built on a gravel pit will last longer or less as long depending on and also depending on weather and the timing of free freeze thaw things that happen in the spring but that's the general approach some of what public works has been doing for the last few years i would say in terms of maintenance overlays which started up on 15th by the richardson school which is a very successful application of just a minimal mill on on the sides and then overlay just on top of the road with very little milling in the middle and filling patching and and kind of supporting where you needed to in the middle of the road that's performing really well um looks good uh you know it's not just a an overlay that we think will only get like one or two or three years out of and that road wasn't in great shape before that and so the hope is that for modest investment in that kind of an improvement that we can help make strides to be able to plan for the significant investments you know where it's needed most depending on all the factors that you know council has to consider with these things thank you is it the same is it different from a residential street to something more of a commercial street like this the asphalt are you laying heavier asphalt than uh which you normally would lay like on a on a side street yes residential street so that was one of the things i had to go to school for was actually a pavement design and it has to do with the thickness of the asphalt the thickness of the gravel underneath it um in areas of poor soil such as north saint paul where we have a lot of clays we generally have to provide a section of sand underneath that that can range from 18 inches in thickness to 24 or 36 inches depending on how bad the soils are underneath you know some of the areas that we reconstructed in 2014 and 2016 um were of very poor soils and some of those residential neighborhoods were actually built in areas where there are little ponds and ditches and and cricks and things like that right and so um we had to do a little more substantial section there it's not so much the asphalt but it's what's underneath the asphalt in terms of what you dig out and then build back up with sand and then gravel and then asphalt on top and concrete's similar but slightly different in that you know you still need a subsection underneath but that it's concrete pavement is not a flexible pavement it's rigid and so it's designed to flex at the joints that are provided within the concrete pour itself but it's not expected to kind of move as much as you would see on an asphalt roadway in residential areas i mean i i very rarely see concrete streets no i'm so is this different uh asphalt being laid than a residential street is it heavier is it a bigger thicker base is it in the commercial air so on on helen um and the approaches to seventh avenue that that would be a heavier duty pavement section than what we would see on fourth avenue so we do balance there is what we're putting whether it's kind of considered a collector roadway versus a residential street knowing that fourth avenue for example other than trash collectors and school buses maybe is not going to be carrying as much heavy truck traffic as helen street would for example right so those are two different pavement sections that would be planned out included in the same project and it's no problem for the contractor to switch back and forth but it doesn't make any sense to build a residential street you over build that right you build it appropriately to the amount of traffic and the type of traffic that it's expected to receive okay and i'm i'd like to maybe see asphalt see what that comes i mean that yeah that's easier if we can bid that and uh see where we come in because i agree we we need to get these projects done and council members out of curiosity i'm not trying to make this into asphalt versus concrete guy because i have no preference or investments or whatever but right how long have you done how long have you worked as an engineer for the city uh about 12 years okay how many miles of streets do we have do you know that enough to top your head i know the answer i'm looking at it yeah it's on our website yeah 43 miles i was going to say 40. so i i'm you can approximate but if not i don't know i'm not trying to give you an assignment that's going to cost the city a bunch of money but of the 43 miles what percentage would you say is concrete versus asphalt of our streets not including talking streets any you know county roads or anything like that just specifically limit to city streets i'd say uh 10 10 concrete versus 90 asphalt yeah plus or minus that's my approximation it's really limited to seventh avenue some consistency there yeah and i think the reasoning is i mean you know for whatever yeah and we talked about the aesthetics but you know i think a huge driver is that is cost right and you know you go to like a state like florida they have beautiful concrete highways that last probably five to six times longer than a concrete section of road like i'm thinking of 35 w up to duluth that gets torn up every five six years and you know concrete may be a superior product to asphalt but in this climate and weather i mean it's a crap shoot you're dealing with soil conditions and and weather conditions when it's being poured but same with asphalt that can fail like we've seen on helen so but you know i'll just again i i think you know i want to make it clear that i would like to see some cost comparisons for this project to try to get it done here without delaying it another year if i could ask a question um so let's say either through value engineering or through let's say somehow the market's changed and you thought prices were going to be better how quickly if we said oh things have changed our assumptions have changed something's changed how quickly could we get back out to bid well getting out to bid is one thing and that shouldn't take that long okay that's simply a matter of repackaging if we want to have a deeper discussion like at a workshop for example that might be appropriate i think right now it's the lead time on some of the things like pipe precast structures um some of the storm sewer pipe on helen street is like 84 inch custom made stuff that you know would be expected to take a significant amount of time for the manufacturer and supplier to be able to commit to providing to the city so for example even if we were awarding a contract here tonight it's a very good chance and understanding at least in terms of what i'm hearing from all the contractors that some portions of the project would not even be ready to be installed for several months which limits the amount of improvement that could happen in 2022 anyway at this time and that's a market condition thing that's independent of that's just the supply of materials at this time for example there's some suppliers for ductile iron fittings and hydrants that have stopped taking orders from contractors and they're limiting their inventory to like if a city needs to buy a hydrant for something like an emergency they want to have some on stock but they're not selling to contractors or they're only holding their prices for two weeks which is not really fair to the contractor if they're bidding and cities are holding their bids for 30 or 60 days with which to award and then get underway with a project right so we can certainly turn it around and bid it faster than october my thought on october is that that gives ample time for a six-month lead time for ordering of materials precast manholes whatever in october and it will be ready in may there's no reason why it shouldn't be right and we shouldn't have to face any delays knowing that they should be able to order their materials and it can other than maybe shut down over the holidays and deer hunting season which does occur in the construction industry but that's my thought on october we could bid it earlier and the con the earlier you bid it the contractors are going to be still potentially prone to defensive bidding knowing that they don't know exactly what the price of diesel fuel for example will be in may of next year sometimes there's quantity purchases by contractors or lock-in prices with respect to asphalt mix for example but we won't know exactly um what those will be or what they're going to be dealing with in august versus october so october i think is the latest time frame if we were going to do it before the holidays we certainly could try in january but again if we awarded a contract in january or early february which you might think would be a really great early and competitive time to bid a project if in fact these supply issues are continuing and we're looking at six months out for our precast structure structures well then they're not going to be able to start on work until june as opposed to when we would want them to start which is may 15th when road restrictions come off or earlier if they can get out there earlier so um that's kind of my estimation in terms of repackaging everything quickly and then when could a contractor get started and would it be possible to look at a project like this and know that and maybe this isn't the case it probably isn't that this portion of the project contains a lot of things that have these lead time issues this portion of the project doesn't have as many components that have these lead time issues and maybe we separate them out and have two different packages i can look at that and i have looked at a little bit unfortunately there's utilities under all of these roads and the pipes and utilities are what's unfortunately constraining things rather than the paving if this was just a simple road project without any storm sewer for example that might lend itself to that we can take a deep dive on that and we should probably pick a workshop date with which we can kind of unpeel all these things i can talk about that we can talk about some of the bid alternates and see how given the fact that we have the benefit of seeing how three contractors bid this project now and knowing that things will probably continue you know for the foreseeable future be able to see how we can project something that will either deliver something you know sooner rather than later if that's what the council wants to see even if that's a smaller portion of the project and then a bigger portion of the project later i mean i'm not opposed to any of that it's always important to remember that there are some economies of scale so the smaller portions of a project that you peel out might might not carry the benefit of volume pricing for example um and that goes to linear feet of pipe it also goes to number of tons of asphalt i mean you tend to get better pricing if it's a larger quantity of whatever it is so so what i'm hearing is that no matter what we do right now 2023 is going to be probably the project for the seventh street because of the lead time for a lot of this material that that you need so no matter what we decide tonight 7th street is probably put on hold for the summer we can look at options but again i have to always kind of think of and come to you all with conservative and i think safe if maybe the safe is not the right word but something that provides a little bit more expected return on your investment than speculation i do i'm terrible in las vegas gambling i don't like it that's just me personally um but uh yeah again that's my my estimation now not not saying that there aren't some things that we can think about and look at and potentially peel off i mean another thing i was thinking about is the landscaping and the older portion of of the new downtown which was peeled out of the last project and i know that there's some need for that landscaping in the near term you know landscaping and plant nurseries are maybe not immune for some of the issues that we're seeing out here but we certainly could try a smaller quote package at least for the landscaping in the older part of the 7th avenue project to see if we can't get that in the ground before the end of the year um and there may be other pieces too right so i i knowing that we just opened bids last week and we had to present them to here to you today this is um this is my recommendation at this time but we can have further conversation on it and whether we bid in october or july or september or january i mean we can have further discussion to get to a plan where you all are comfortable you like the different options available we're still i guess estimators our engineers and estimators are subject to the latest and most recent bid information that we have available we don't really know how contractors are going to price it until they actually do so there's still a little bit of a guessing game there but that's why you try to build in contingencies when bids come in overestimate to the extent that you've already burnt through your planned contingencies that's a red flag and that's what we're trying to avoid moving forward so i'm hearing from the council that we're not opposed to the asphalt so i could take that direction yeah that's not a problem okay uh boy any other questions for morgan and you got direction pretty do you have a resolution right here rejecting uh the bids received yep so the resolution is uh accepting bids received and rejecting all bids for the seventh avenue utility and street improvements uh city project number 2201 through a motion so moved by councilmember juan second second by councilmember thorson any other discussions all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries so we'll wait to see we will schedule a workshop item with the council here moving forward in the coming weeks to have further discussion on this particular project and bidding strategies and estimates on the options moving forward so would it be safe to uh tell the car show people that that'll be my next phone call i mean bob's not here so i was going to tell the right person but um i'll call him after i think the sooner the better the fact is too they need to know yeah we can put some communication out to the businesses as well through kerry uh we also have our uh construction our weekly construction meeting tomorrow and i think the car show folks have been attending that so if i if they come to that i can fill them in as well too so uh both bob and um mr fabio bruce bruce and others so uh so thank you all right morgan thank you uh city manager i do have a couple of things i'm gonna try to keep it brief just an update on the storms last week i know with the sunny weather we've had over the weekend it's easy to forget how stormy it was in the earlier part of last week but on on monday a tree fell over during the storm on a van and power lines to a home and access across the uh the power lines in the alley and fire crews secured that area advised the electric department and um remain on the scene until they were until the electric uh crew got the scene safe then on wednesday at almost 11 pm the fire department responded to a report of smell of smoke when crews arrived they upgraded the call to a first alarm that included maplewood and oakdale fire departments the fire was in the attic it was a my understanding is the type of attic and the dimensions of it were a little challenging crews were on the scenes for seen for two hours i believe it included about 25 fire personnel from north st paul and from other groups ultimately there were no injuries reported and the the damage was fairly minimal in terms of the public works crews they spent quite a bit of time clearing debris from all the catch basins around town in anticipation of the storm so that there wouldn't be localized flooding and they did have a lot of tree limbs including one that councilmember thorson sent me some pictures of them cleaning up so they did a great job they spent some time pumping water off of the ball fields to make them playable for the games and then finally the electric utilities crew responded to a power outage due to the storms on wednesday night the power outages affected about 135 households and four linesmen were able to respond troubleshoot the problem and even enduring heavy winds and heavy rain they had the power restored in just over an hour i wanted to give you a brief personnel update since march four police officers have been hired one police officer is in the final process of being hired as well with that the police will be at their full compliment and then one finance clerk starts monday and we've talked about the um the benefits of that in terms of coverage um and overlap and then the posting closed on our community development director on friday we had 15 applicants um there are i feel pretty good about um a handful of them and we'll move forward with interviews probably in about 10 days two weeks maybe so that's my reports for the night very good thank you uh reports of council commissions committees uh council member cole with respect to time i'll keep them very short the economic development authority met on 5 10. primary topic was the lot improvement at uh 2579 7th street the eda was very impressed with the way that it looks but a little less robust as to the enthusiasm that they had with the price tag that came in on it so the ada asked that the space be taken a look at and see if they can come up with a better space cost balance initiative to to move forward with developing that land next eda meeting will be june 14th to three o'clock here in city hall uh following that there was an eda planning commission meeting that was that took place at five o'clock um three primary topics sign ordinance as we talked to earlier tonight basically to simplify and streamline the ordinance a little conversation around the lilly building and again the conversation around 2579 7th street and again the primary reason for the eda and planning commission isn't is is more of a the ability to keep both commissioned the commission and the authority um apprises to what's going on and not having um a lot of overlay here or in keeping conversation topics alive um and we were all in attendance so i'm sure you'll each have your own piece to take away from that next meeting july 21st and lastly the park and rec meeting uh this month scheduled the 25th at 6 30 here at city hall and after that we're moving outside perfect and it's been beautiful out councilmember wang yeah so the planning commission had just met as you've seen the sign ordinance so i won't repeat that again but a lot of hard work did go into that so i do want to thank our city planner and lisa richie and the planning commission for doing a lot of work and long nights to to streamline that as for the planning commission we're fully staff fully commissioned now so thank you for that approval um i believe the redevelopment master plan will be going to the planning commission here soon for review as for the arts and culture commission we did have a resignation due to personal matters and family matters but we were able to fill both spots actually we had a lot of great candidates and thank you for approving those commissioners as well [Music] in terms of projects we have the downtown banner draft that's been proposed as well as to council member thorson's concern regarding logos were in compliance or within the guidelines of that and then let's see our next meeting is the first of first wednesday and first thursday first thursday for planning first wednesday for the arts and culture commission and we had some special guests in our last meeting too from the rotary club and they had discussed a potential rotary clock as a potential project in the future all right that's it thanks councilmember peterson yeah last week at the business association luncheon we had roger fink he's um the owner of anchor view apartments and he was very complimentary of our city and our staff how it works very seamlessly because he's developed polar ridge so he's familiar with north st paul so that was good to hear and the 19th avenue student built house is really coming together again the siding is almost on the roof shingles are on inside the cabinets and countertops are being installed and it's really shaping up i took a little tour of it so it's pretty impressive that's all i have nice have you set a price yet no but it looks like july it'll be ready councilmember thurston i have nothing uh general business council member cole i have nothing council member wine nothing to add thank you council member i want to thank the high school for their day of service i saw many students out there with trash bags and they covered the whole city and kudos to them so that helps our public works and they get something out of it so thanks again for that and the mac home here the veterans house there's a been a family in there since christmas so i called them up and i said what's up and they're you know they decide on so many families or whatever so there'll be somebody in there but i was kind of wondering i thought i haven't seen any action and our church wanted to do something special during christmas time and i said there's nobody in there so i thought that was kind of odd there's someone in there now i don't know is it now yeah okay i believe so i don't haven't seen any action but okay that's good then you shouldn't be peeking at people's windows i don't do that if i see lights on i know uh because i heard there's a code enforcement somebody from there was parking in front of one of the residents okay it was from the house there okay that's all i have i know councilmember thorson yeah just very brief since it was brought up landscaping downtown for the project i mean i i don't even remember the part of that getting pulled but i mean it we got to put something together and get something going we can't wait to plant stuff until the end of the year i mean and and i don't see that as something that's breaking the bank unless it's because we're trying to route irrigation or something again and there's these costs that drive things up that delay stuff it just is becoming extremely frustrating for me and others because i know i get asked about that all the time about what's going on downtown with the landscaping so that would be nice to move that up the list and and get something going i don't think it needs to take council action unless it's over a dollar amount but i don't know so maybe we can move that up on the priority list and then you know as you know we're getting overwhelmed here with numbers tonight and uh good presentations but as we were you know hearing from baker tilly and in particular ways to increase our bond rating i couldn't help but think there's a quick and easy solution to that to improve our city finances and that would be to sell the community center i don't know i don't care who we sell it to but if we were to sell that that would improve our finances without a doubt and we could use that money to help finance things like landscaping for downtown or put it towards a road project that's 20 over or you know all sorts of different things so i hope that we can have continued discussion uh on that idea um or at least continue discussion on the plan for that facility because you know we had a workshop on that a month ago and uh we need to keep going with that so that's all i have and i got uh we had the air force rotc the other day uh did the baton death march uh did a uh just a memorial of all the people that did that uh or went through that uh but there's about 30 kids that actually did it they walked 14 miles and uh we had a good turnout there of people to cheer them on so it was real nice of them to do that and i hear the program is kind of uh in jeopardy because they only have so many people so many kids in the program so it's nice to be able to support them and and try to promote that that program over there because i think it's very important for for the school to have that uh program over there other than that i think that's it and uh if there's anything else it's a reminder that after the city council meeting we have a hra meeting just make sure uh so motion to adjourn moved by councilmember peterson second by council member cole any discussion but all those in favor signify by saying aye opposed motion carries and now we'll go into unless you want to take a two minute break we can go into our hre meeting you