Call to order for the city of Cannon Falls city council meeting Tuesday, April 15th, 2025. If I could get a roll call, please. Diane Johnson. Here. Zimmerman. Here. Ed Johnson. Here. Jepson. Here. Nobach. He's online. You need to unmute and put your video on, Chris, if you can hear me. Ours are muted. And Cronenberger. Here. Montgomery. Here. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, another God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, if I could get a motion to approve tonight's agenda. I have a motion to approve. From Lisa, second from Diane. And Chris, seeing as how you are virtual, all votes tonight have to be roll call. If your audio works, awesome. If it doesn't, we will still probably call him and see if we can get it that way. Okay. So the motion was Lisa the second as Diane, so we'll go through a roll call to approve the agenda. Zimmerman? Yeah. Chad Johnson? Yeah. Jepson? Yeah. Noback? Thumbs up, thumbs down? Chris, if you can hear us, give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Okay. Cronenberger? Yes. Montgomery. Yes. All right. We can skip public input. Nobody signed up for that. So, we will go right into presentations. so our library director nicole miller will lead us off tonight she's got the library year in review and strategic plan all right i'll make it short and sweet all right um so i submitted the strategy um sorry first the annual report in march because it's due april first of every year to the state and i gave you the statistics so you don't have to do anything with it it's just so that you're aware that library use is still holding steady it's still being used very well and you see that, for example, Libby use increased by 14%. That's the downloadable books and whatnot and how people are using the library in various different ways. So I'm not going to bore you with the details because they're there for you to read. Do you have any questions about that? I got a question. I'm one of the people that just started using Libby. It's awesome. I think you guys should all check it out. um i don't where do you get the 36 602 visits like is that have door counters that's door counters yeah so anytime someone goes to a door okay yeah all right i didn't know if that was including your online piece of libby and no we count all of the metrics separately okay so the circulation we have a certain way to count that for visits we have door counters they're not even They're different technologies. They're not related to each other at all. When they check out a book, would that count as a book for one, the physical, and one for the audio? It depends. If you are checking out through Libby, that's our digital circulation, and that I have to go to the OverDrive website to get that data. But then if you're checking out a physical book, or audio book at the library, then we have all of that in our ILS. Okay. All right, good questions. That's just curious. Curiosity is good. Any other questions that anybody has for Nicole looking at either the stats from 2024 or the strategic plan? Oh, I haven't gone to the strategic plan yet. Okay. That's all right. And that'll be quick too. We did the strategic plan. We used SELCO to, as our consultants, to send out the survey and compile all of the data and run our stakeholders workshop in December. And based on all of that data, then what we pulled out was that there were four core areas that we wanted to focus on based on impact from input from the community. and stakeholders. And so those four focus areas are community, literacy, availability and accessibility, and programs and events. So over the next three years, we're gonna be focusing on these areas. These are our overall goals, and then library staff have specific tasks that we're gonna be doing to reach these goals and achieve these tasks. And so quarterly, library board and I go over Have we met these or haven't we? And it was kind of hard to do this one because we achieved everything in our last strategic plan. So then it's like we had a good one. Now we had to make it better and do more. So that's that. And again, it's all in writing for you. So I got a follow-up question. It just kind of spawned on me. Would that number be divided by two? So you're actually like $0.70? Yes. Or would it be the number? No, that's already the divided by two. It's the divided by two number? Oh, that's quite a bit. Okay. Yeah, it is. Okay. All right, so that's everything. And again, good question. Thanks. Anybody else have any questions, comments? Joe? Okay. All right. Thanks, Nicole. Yep. Thank you. All right. Next is our presentation from the Cannon Valley Senior Center. So you guys can go ahead and come up and take the podium. Do you need any digital hooked up to the, or physical copy? Okay. Okay. Hi, I'm Laura Bremer, the director of the Cannon Valley Senior Center. Some of you are new this year to the council. So we thought it would be nice to show our PowerPoint and it's updated from last year because we have added more programs. I think a misconception of senior is people sitting around and they're old and they're not doing anything, but it's totally the opposite. So we are very, very, a big part of this community and our PowerPoint will really show that I think. It's already switched to podium HDMI on this. Yep. So anyway, we just handed out a sheet of our activities that we do on a yearly basis. But a picture's worth a thousand words, so I think you'll enjoy our PowerPoint and see what we're up to. Thanks for having us. We put together about a ten minute slide series of what we do. I think after tonight you'll get an idea. If you don't have a perspective of what's going on down at the Senior Center, By the time you look at this, I think it is self-story of what is happening. So I hope you enjoy it. your support through the years very much so and we need to have your continued support so keep us in mind that we're doing a lot for the community thank you anyone have any questions just any questions from the council any questions we have a board of 18 people I don't know if that's on your handout that put all this together do you have you reached out to any veterans or like the Associations or things like that other senior things see if they would help out Yeah, yeah, we do get support in the VFW and the Lions and the Legion Okay, great. Yeah. Yeah, we do reach out to all kinds of people I bet a lot of things you guys are doing there. Yes Legion and VFW fund the book buddy program Yeah, and we just we did get a grant for that now also for book buddies and Book Buddies is a great program. We do have one activity come up. I thought I'd just plug a little bit. The Honor Society at the high school. We're going to have students come down to the Senior Center to work with seniors with cell phone problems. That's coming up here. That's one of our latest projects. That'll be fun. All right. 187 members. Is that right, Laura? Yes. I just wanted the council 187 members. I think 188. Oh, all right. And you guys are lowering the age to 50 to apply? 50, yes. Most of the senior centers in the area are at 50 years old. And a lot of pickleball players that want to come in, too. There you go. I think that's a big part of it, too. Awesome. Yeah. Any other questions? All right. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. That gets us to consent agenda. Consent agenda items may be adopted under one motion as presented or may be removed for discussion and resolution as council business. I'll go through them. Item A, just incorrect claims for the accounting period ending on April 9th, 2025. B, meeting minutes, April 1st, 2025 city council meeting. Item C, approve the sewer credit. I hate to mispronounce. Corrella? Corrella? Corrella, okay. Uh, item D approved the hire of Cooper Peterson for 2025 pool manager. Item E approved the ambulance remount project. Is there anything the council would like to have pulled down for discussion? I motion to approve. Uh, and it's just a question, not a, and I talked to Tim a little bit, um, with the ambulance remount, he said that the remote should make that ambulance good for another nine years. which would keep it in rotation. And I just wanted us to be aware of the fact that if it takes us three years to get a new ambulance, we might want to think of ordering one sooner rather than later. Get ahead of schedule? Pardon me? Get ahead of schedule? No, if we ordered one now, we'll get it for three years, which is the next time we need to replace something. So I just wanted us to keep that in mind. All right. But other than that, I have no problem. I believe then that Chad had the motion to approve the consent agenda. Do I have a second? Second. Second from Lisa. We'll go to a roll call vote. Zimmerman? Here. Yes. Yes. Yes. Chad Johnson? Approved. Dubsen? Yep. Noback? Try it. Thumbs up, thumbs down. There you go. Cronenberger? Mike, uh, Sorry, Diane Johnson. And passed. That gets us to Council Business. The only item on the agenda tonight, item A, final order for the Cannon Falls Industrial Development Alternative Urban Area-Wide Review. John. Thank you, Mayor. Tonight we have representatives from tract and Kimberly horn here with us if there's any additional questions, but Again, as a reminder, we talked we've talked about this a few times just in the calling in for the scoping document You know that period went by we had a few different comments that came in in the 38 comment period now this is taking those comments applying them into the the AUAR process to issue what we're calling the final order. So the final order is calling for the AUAR study to be conducted and completed. So that will be ongoing for the next 120 days. Within there, there's additional comment period. I believe once the final studies are completed and even when they're approved from us, they go through an agency, objection period that lasts 10 days at the end of the process. So there's still a lot more to address. But I think critically, it's important to know that this is looking at the use for this site likely in a technology center or a light industrial use that would also look like a data center or be used as a data center. So that's the kind of nature of what they're studying the land use for. And then Additionally, there's a whole separate process that'll talk about the land use permitting side that the city will be, you know, a part of. So we will have our planning commission and city council that will be addressing a lot of those things that will be related to the differing zonings and potential use for that development. Additionally, we'll be discussing, we've been having a number of meetings, so we'll be discussing terms related to development agreements that indicate how infrastructure will be brought to the site and how that intended to be paid for and then you know coming up very soon will be kind of the process related to the annexation of the property so that it can become become part of the city and then you know we would have our decision-making related to that so so while the AUAR is an important process that all going on there will be also these other things that will be happening simultaneously to review this this pretty large-scale project that we do I did ask them to attend so if there's any any questions that the council has or any additional comments that they want to make at this time regarding This part of the process, you know, I think this would be fair time to happen Questions comments concerns from the council Not not hearing any I would just gonna say it's a very impressive document and I appreciate all the comments at the end of it and the responses. Yeah, and again, I should just reassure, while there's the formal comment period, and then those comments that came in during that formal comment period became part of the scoping review, those got published, there'll be another formal comment period for the AUAR process. So, you know, people can make those comments. They do need to come in writing so that they could become a part of the official record. If there are questions, you know, or anything from residents, like please let us know. You can email me. My email is a part of the document. The links are on the website for that. My email address is there. So I will be the one kind of taking in all of that. I do then forward it to our consultants for their, you know, recording of this. And ultimately they can craft the responses if there are questions related specifically to the AUR. If there are questions that I can answer specific to the city's side of the process, we will do that. So I just don't wanna make it feel like, oh, there's a formal process. And I don't ask my question in that time of the formal process, it'll never get answered. That's not the case. I mean, we'll do our best to take in those comments and questions as they come. Just knowing that, you know, if you expected it to then become part of the final official record, if you didn't send it in the proper time, it may not be, but we do intend to take those comments and provide whatever answers that we can. We do want to ensure that we're encouraging the inquiries and information to be, to be out there. Anything else from the council? And I do believe Chris, I saw briefly your, your posting. So I don't know if your mics on working. So if you wanted to add, We can't hear you. Okay. I did see that. I did briefly see the comment. I think it was related to an FAQ for the website that I know there's information that's being drafted. Actually, I failed to mention and should that TRACT has plans for an upcoming meeting for the community on April 29th. And I believe we're meeting here at 6 p.m.? So for anybody, so they'll have representatives with kind of their different subject matter experts to answer any questions related to items for this project. So. Well, I've seen in the The beacon they've covered like in Hampton and Farmington things with data centers and a lot of big concerns been about if the city can handle the water, if it's going to deplete our aquifers. We have bill here and maybe he could put some of those the ease or at least clarify like do you know if we're able to handle all this. So so so thanks for the comment Chad. So one of the things if you remember here but you want to council meetings ago the council did direct your consultant city engineering our firm to look at the water and the sewer impacts of this that's what we've been working with the representatives from track and their consultants on is what the demands that they would have how is that impact on us ultimately we'll be coming back with a recommendation to the council saying this is the available water we know that we could supply to them taking into account things like city growth safety factors things like that so so far everything we've seen and we've reviewed again we're still through the process is we do not see any you know we see some things we need to work through but it everything appears to be on track that we would we'll be able to handle it in some form or another thank you thanks it's his mind Anything else? Comments, questions? If not, I would seek an approval of the final order of the Cannon Falls Industrial Development Alternative Urban Area-wide Review. So moved. Motion from Ryan, second by Diane. We'll take a roll call vote. Chad Johnson? Yes. Jepson? Yes. Noback? That's a yes. Thumbs up. Cronenberger? Yes. Diane Johnson? Yes. And Zimmerman. Yes. It's passed. All right. That gets us to reports. No Maggie here tonight. The EDA met on April 3rd. Laura, would you like to share any? You can take the podium mic if you like. Sorry if I'm putting you on the spot here. Yes, so we will be bringing our third subdivision preliminary plat to Planning Commission in May. And I know that we have a few new residents in Hardwood Estates that have actually moved in. There's more lots that have houses that have broken ground. Timber Ridge, I spoke with the realtor that's representing that development and they actually have two pending offers on one of the homes and a lot up there. So it's great to see that there's some movement happening up there. Let's see, I did hear back from the county regarding the grant application we put in for the way finding signage and we were approved for the $5,000 grant. However, because it's above their $3,000 threshold, we have to get approval from the state for our $5,000 ask. But it seemed like it was gonna be a yes, so I'm hoping that's gonna happen. We did not receive the Taylor Family Farm Foundation grant which was going to hopefully boost that way finding signage request to get us some more signage. But at least hopefully we have that 5,000 coming so we'll have some new signage coming. And then the housing initiative, that house that our construction students build, they'll be wrapping that up in the next month or so. So that It's on Minnesota Street, and that house will be coming up probably more likely in June that the housing initiative will be accepting applications for that home. If you don't already follow the Housing Initiative Facebook page, we'll be posting it on there. It won't go on the regular real estate listings because there's an application process for that because it is to go to a qualifying family or person because we're trying to we're going to be putting that house in the land trust, which will help reduce the cost of the home so that it makes it a little more affordable for a new construction home. So anyway, so there is a process that people will have to go through. So when we are ready to do that, then it will actually, we'll release that information to a lot of the employers in town so that they can share that with their employees so that maybe if there's people that are commuting to town It'll give them an opera. We try to give it to our employers first and the school as well to try to get someone into the community that maybe isn't already living here. But I think that is, that's what I have for today. Thank you. Thank you, Laura. Appreciate that. Thank you. And then Public Works and Park Board also met on April 3rd. Who's gonna field that one? It was brief. Brief. Two items on the consent agenda. Perfect. Finance Committee met on April 7th. We were also the presentation from the Senior Center. And then we also talked about the historical society, I guess, or the city museum. The roof is in rough shape and so are some of the windows. So we've talked about what we can do to try to make that better. So we will probably see something regarding that on a future agenda. Correct. No actionable items at this time. All right. We'll go around the horn. Jed. It is not going to snow tonight. Sweet. How long has it been since we've had to, yeah. It seemed like every Wednesday we had a storm storm. Public Works is gearing up for spring. We're going around cleaning up all the parks and whatnot, getting the pool ready. We're doing interviews for people. employees and just getting ready for summer. So perfect I saw the hydrants being flushed. Yep hydrants will be wrapped up this Friday. Perfect. Bill how are you? I'm doing great thanks Mayor. Thanks for being here anything new and exciting? Waiting for you know some road limits to come off and construction to start you know our two main projects from last year we are at the what we call the punchless phase or the wrapping it up phase so once the weather gets a little nicer here we'll be wrapping them up and moving forward with some other things so. Awesome. Uh, unless there's any questions, uh, nothing further, mayor. I think we're good. Tim, how are you? Good mayor. Um, thank you for approving that remount. It'll be our first remount we've ever done. So it'll be interesting to see how that goes. Uh, the timeframe is at least palpable. Um, and I talked to Diane and it is a three year period for any new construction of any ambulance. So. John and I will have to work through that and try to figure out logistically because it's essentially you kind of agree on a cost today, but they don't give you actually the final cost, which is kind of scary when you look at all the increases in materials and everything else. So I just don't have a good sense where that's going to lead, but we'll work through that. The EMT class is finishing up on the 28th of April. We still have 18 students and they've done a lot of hard work and we've just been gearing them up for all the testing that comes after that, which is They have to do a bunch of hands-on stuff and then they have to do a big written test. So hopefully they're set up for success and they do well. So, awesome. Other than that, we've just been working through just summer stuff and getting things ready to go. Yeah. Nice. Nicole, anything in addition to your presentation before? Yes. I just want to remind everybody that our data migration is this month. So... the 28th through the 30th that's coming up in less than two weeks we cannot check anything in so please don't return anything to any library in the selco region because we can't really do anything with it during those three days and we also have all due dates turned off for those three days so nothing should be due at any silco library on those three days um and so we can check things out we just the the um database is going to be turned off so we can't do any searches. We can't check things in. We can't make any requests. That app will not be usable. If anybody has their library card saved in their app, there is the capability of saving it to your phone wallet. So then you can use your library card in your phone wallet or find that physical library card because we also will not be able to look you up. in the computer just for those three days. And then we are going to be going live with the new ILS on Thursday, May 1st. And we will be opening at noon because we're going to need that extra time in the morning to get the computers completely up and running. So, yeah, that's what we've got. All right. Thanks, Nicole. Chief. Well, Jet is guaranteed no more snow. So... We are starting to work on our summer events, street closures, so you'll be seeing that memo coming forward. Where are we at? Probably first meeting in May. And for new council members, it's just something that's done annually. There's quite a number of events that require street closing, parking restrictions, that type of thing. We prep it up ahead of time so we don't have to keep coming back to you so that these organizations can make their plans, do their advertising, and know everything's already and good to go. I know Maggie's not here tonight, but it used to be FunFest, first Thursdays. They're doing one event. She's shot me at her dates. Okay. Sounds like they're only doing one event this year. I don't want to pick it down to a specific date because I don't recall. Okay. But I think that's the direction they're going. Okay. All right. Thanks, Chief. Sarah. Just a quick brief update next week is our audit We're ready for it to be done. Um, and so but so next week's the audit and then They'll come probably early June to give you guys an update see where we're at All right. Thank you John. Thank you Chris is unable to speak. So he texted, messaged me a couple of things. He wanted to make sure that because Maggie wasn't here, uh, the chamber sent out a email yesterday with the We've had a bunch of events, but two in particular I want to point out. The community Easter egg hunt this Saturday at St. Ansgar's starting at 10 a.m., rain or shine. We'll have our fire department there with the truck. And then speaking of the fire department, they have their pancake breakfast on April 26th from 7 to 10 a.m. at the Public Safety Building. Additionally, just... want to kind of share with you update. I was other staff to were at the League Safety and Loss Conference, always a good educational experience, kind of talks about some topics that every year that are kind of important to keeping our costs down relative to insurances and renewals. So we learned some interesting stuff on work comp that I didn't didn't know in my experience. So and then just timely because we just completed the renewal process. We actually did see our property liability rates go down just slightly, which is great. And work comp stayed pretty good. And we're actually just slightly on the positive side of the average for their experience modifications. So always a good experience. So anytime that those events come up, they're around the region, typically in April or March, There's only $20 and council members are always welcome to attend those too. They usually send out the, have the agendas in advance. So if you're looking for, you know, some more of those educational experiences that the league provides, they also have their conference coming up in June in Duluth. If you're interested in going, I suggest you talk to me very soon or secure your lodging very soon because they're already have most of the hotels are booked because I just booked mine last week and there was only like three left to pick from. So that's all I have for right now. All right. Thanks, John. And he's, I went to that, boy, it's probably at least four years ago, but it was a great event. You do learn a lot, all hosted at what, the deck, everything is walkable and the skyway, all that. Yeah. Duluth is always the highest attended one. And the, yeah, they host it down in the deck and canal park and it's always easy to, easy to kind of get around and, and they do a great job. Yeah. All right. Laura. Anything from you? Ryan. Yeah, I had somebody bring up Stripey at the winery, the EDA parking lot. Yeah, yeah. Something we could look into, possibly. We're going to have to look at probably the best way to maximize the spots and make it the most free-flowing traffic because there are different nights where it might be depends on who gets there first. Yeah. Yeah. So I see it, I see it quite frequently for where my apartment is. So yeah, now that we're getting into the season where things get busier. Yeah. Yep. Especially Saturday afternoons. Other than that, that's it. All right. Thank you. Diane, Lisa, Chad, good. Chris, I would ask you if you want a message street sweeping dates. It looks like you sent perfect. So Chuck has been street sweeping. Um, if there's someplace that got overlooked, I think he's about wrapped up. So, um, as far as I know, it should be wrapped up because we were trying to get it done before we did, uh, uh, hydrant flushing. So perfect. Perfect. Got a thumbs up. Uh, I'll try to be quick. Um, mayor for a day, uh, it was a write a letter to the league of Minnesota cities. It was published in their last quarterly, um, magazine and I know that there were some kids in the elementary and maybe even some sixth graders here in Cannon Falls that participated in that so that's that's awesome. Number two, John Birch Park. I got to be in there for the first time since we redid that wall and that project is fantastic. The seating area, everything looks so good. I can't wait for really spring and summer the grass to fill in there because you can see how much work went into that but I think that wall I hope that that is a century project. I hope it looks the same 100 years from now and then the the third base dugout side. They're still working on that. I saw they were putting some siding on that building. The game that was Saturday afternoon, people were asking like, oh, what's going to happen there? It's going to be a concession stand facing back to that platform, but it's also going to be a media stand so they can prepare for having more media there for the state tournament of amateur baseball in 2028. So really a lot of work, a lot of moving parts, a lot of things going on at John Birch Park, but it looks great. And it was really, I know it was a little breezy, but it was a good day to be out there for baseball. Last baseball thing. Congratulations to head coach Bucky Lindo. For those of you that know Bucky, baseball is his passion. John Birch Park is his passion. Down at the dumps, I mean, the man is, if it involves baseball and Cannon Falls, he's involved. Just the other night down in Goodhue, they got a win. It's his 400th win of his career. He is now the 33rd winningest coach in state history, according to Minnesota State High School League. He's the seventh winningest active coach. And there's a lot of people, you know, he hit the 400 club. There's a lot of people that are really close. So by the end of the season, he could climb those ranks, but 30 plus years of coaching here in Cannon Falls. So if you get a chance to congratulate Bucky, please do. And do that by coming down and enjoying some baseball there at John Birch Park. So you can see the park, brand new construction, all those projects and congratulate Bucky. So that's all I got. So I would take a motion to adjourn. Motion from Ryan. Second from Lisa. All those in favor? Does have to be a roll call. Jepsen. Yep. Novak. That's good. Cronenberger. Yes. Diane Johnson. Yes. Zimmerman. Yes. Chad Johnson. Yes. All right, we are adjourned. Thank you, everybody.