This transcript features the Moose Lake City Council meeting from November 13, 2019. Based on the context provided and the content of the dialogue, here are the speaker assignments. [0:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Thank you. I call the order to the regular meeting Moose Lake City Council for Wednesday, November 13th, 2019. [0:28] **[Music]** [0:44] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Okay, the first step—the second item on the agenda is the agenda itself. Do we have any changes or additions? [0:53] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: Yes, we can under new business, we say okay. [1:08] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Any other additions or changes? Do I have a motion to accept the agenda? [1:15] **Council Member Walter Lower III**: So moved. [1:16] **Council Member Lou Ohly**: Second. [1:17] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: All in favor say aye. (Aye). Opposed same. Motion carried. Number two of the consent agenda. Under eight minutes, we have the October 9, 2019 City Council regular meeting minutes. Do we have any questions there, discussions? (Pause). A motion to accept? [1:48] **Council Member Kris Huso**: Motion. [1:49] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen**: Second. [1:53] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: All in favor say aye. (Aye). Opposed same. Motion carried. Under 2B, financial reports. We have the City Council panel for November 2019, number two of the city financial statements for October 2019, and number three, the liquor store profit loss statement for October 2019. Any discussions or questions? [2:27] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Done. Do I have a motion to accept financial reports? [2:31] **Council Member Walter Lower III**: I'll make a motion. [2:32] **Council Member Kris Huso**: Second. [2:33] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: All in favor say aye. (Aye). Opposed same. Motion carried. Under number three, public comment. This time is reserved for comments from the public on matters not listed on the agenda. Please keep comments to three minutes. [2:59] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Number four, departmental reports. 4A to the police chief. Department report for October 2019. [3:14] **Kelly Lake (Law Enforcement Lead)**: Evening, Mayor, Council. As you see, we have attached calls for October 1st through October 31st. A lot of those calls, we also had four hours as well as two hours for PCRC and additional hour for other GOC calls. Our Tahoe is at Colder Chevrolet; the transmission started slipping on it and then it stopped moving all together. I was able to get it moving again, but it is covered underneath the powertrain warranty. It’s been up there now for going on three weeks because the GM stretch that was just so and they're backlogged about making parts and stuff, so they're trying to expedite it, but it's taking a long time. That's where that's at. That is covered under the powertrain warranty still, so there's no cost to see the drug take-back program. They just did another turn-in there, and Moose Lake had 253.6 pounds of prescription medicine returned and will be the most in the county again—pretty much our favorite time, so we're getting well on that. We also sent off the letters to all of the businesses for the tobacco compliance. We're gonna be doing that here again in the near future. There’s all of this as far as community engagements; we did that trunk-or-treat out at the park which was really enjoyable. There was a lot of kids there, it’s a good showing, pictures with them. And then we also did a set-up for the football team which was really nice; there's a lot of people that showed up to get them onto them, as I see. [5:42] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Anything else? Thank you, I appreciate it. Public Works Superintendent Phil Entner. [6:00] **Phil Entner (City Superintendent)**: Mr. Mayor, members of Council. Busy but quick fall. And now we all look outside and it’s no longer in our own hands, it’s colder. So, it amazes me every year how much cleanup there is in this town. Every year it just—it's just crazy. I mean just the entire city-wide, it's unbelievable. Anyway, water department: we distributed 3.1 million gallons of water in the month of October. For the sewer department—this is the big one I want to touch on, I always do when I play a whole bunch of numbers every month—collection system: we had nine and a half inches of rainfall in the month of October. We collected 27 million gallons of wastewater. So, 27 million gallons wastewater came through the lift station that went out to the wastewater treatment rate. Now in October, we also did a discharge which is basically the way we eliminate the storage in our ponds. We get rid of the water after we treat it. That discharge was worth 40.8 million gallons of water. So, if you think about it just in the month of October, what we took in... if you think about the volume, sixty-eight percent of what we talked about in October was what we put out in our discharge. That is crazy. I&I issue—I'm glad we're addressing it because it is a huge problem here. Street department: pothole filling is probably going to come to a screaming halt with the snow, but we'll do that corner in spring. Blacktop patches were completed last week, believe it or not, so everything's all up for winter. Right of way clearing, trees and brush removal—you'll be seeing that all winter. We'll be doing that in our downtime and just clean things up. The addition to the parking lot stored area behind the shop took place here last week or two. Cemeteries are all buttoned up for the winter; we're all done they're all winterized. A couple extra things: I attended the MID-MOR (Mid-Minnesota Regional) meeting in St. Leo. There was some good discussion of us also possibly housing an incident response trailer motor pump. This is the same style of pump that we seem to rent one or two times every two years for three to four thousand dollars a crack. So, for us to be willing—and I talked to them about this—possibly storing that here, we would have it at our fingertips if we need it. That would be huge. And then the second thing, I actually got asked by the MPCA (Minnesota Pollution Control Agency) to help them as a presenter at their annual conference in March. I'm going to be on a six or eight person question-answer group for the audience. I asked them why they wanted me and it's because they look at Moose Lake and they see all the issues we've had in the past and the way we have come through these things—the way we've come back from some of these disasters and the stuff we've learned just in the last three years. So they asked me to be a part of that. A couple things we're going to talk about are the impacts of I&I to your wastewater plant, success and strategies for identifying and reducing I&I, and the struggles and failures. It's really neat that we went from almost being a target for the PCA because of our violations and now we're getting asked to go help them do stuff for their own conferences. It's really cool. March 26th. [10:39] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Any questions? [11:09] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Floor C, Technology/Library report. [11:15] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: I don't have anything for technology library. The entry is $1,500 at the fall book sale. We have recently purchased a new computer. Thank you, good job. [11:47] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Number 4D, City Engineer. [11:55] **City Engineer (SEH)**: On page 33, one of the big things is myself, MnDOT is gonna have a couple people, and then Carlton County are all gonna sit down and go over the trail project—the route of it as well as tying into the roundabout just to make sure that everyone's on the same page for funding. Once that is complete, we should have a project number kind of be on our way towards designing the project if we're gonna find a budget together. We're still a good year, year and a half before we need to start looking at bids. This is pretty well in advance, we have quite a bit of time, but we want to get together and make sure that we're all on the same page. Another thing that we've talked about with the well house: some of the site plans, putting together the layout of the building a little bit with Phil, making sure that everything fits as well as making sure that any changes that come in the future we can try to accommodate. And then finally, we've been talking a little bit about the campground sewer system. Somewhere has a leak, and we thought that it would be simple to find and it turned out not to be. But I think Phil and I feel pretty confident that we found where it's leaking in the dump station for the RV. It wasn’t holding pressure, so we're pretty sure that that's one area. And then finally, we have to do a bit of work on the bathhouse; when we do some of the work there we're going to be able to take a look at that line as well. That's the update. [14:14] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen**: Just a question of property with the park. Okay, we did get that piece of land from the developer, and then when we talk about the tennis courts—I'm not interested in the tennis courts themselves. Right now the cost is because we're not going to refurbish the tennis courts. We have far more important areas we need money for. [15:15] **Council Member Walter Lower III**: For like expanding or what? [15:18] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen**: Yes, I was working with the plan. [15:54] **City Engineer (SEH)**: There's a couple things that go into this. One is I think we're not talking about just the purchase price here; you're talking about the cost of removing or maintaining it. The second thing is I would very much suggest that if any expansion to the campground happens, it would be into the baseball field and not that way. If we expanded the campground towards the tennis courts, frankly we would just be moving sites closer to a parking lot. Also, it would be hard to start looping water mains and sewer mains back into an area where they're not. We would be sending water and sewer for only a couple sites when we could go towards the baseball field and actually loop a whole other section that's equal to the same size as what we have now. Also, it would be easier for our water and sewer to be tied in in that area and we would remove a baseball field that floods quite often and move the baseball field to another location. That seems to make more sense to me. I think the tennis courts were looked at as maybe a benefit to the new school property owners that they might be able to utilize that as some sort of recreation. I don't know that it's worth the cost of buying the land just so that we can tear it out. [18:13] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen**: I would like to see it. [19:18] **City Engineer (SEH)**: Absolutely. I think if the answer is that we want to see the campground expand, the first thing that we need to look at doing is—we have an area that we know we could double the size of the campground without spending a ton of money on utilities. The first thing that we need to do is just figure out how to get the baseball field somewhere else. Once we do that, expanding the campground is very quick. The baseball field is what we need to work on. I can spend the next month figuring out what the cost of a baseball field would be and maybe talking with the school about locating a baseball field out there. I'm sure they would welcome the idea. That seems to me to be the first step in that. [20:16] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen**: I'm just curious what they would stay for the tennis courts. I would like to just know what they would do in the land to the west of it and to the east of it and the south. We absolutely don't have to accept it if it's ridiculous. [21:31] **City Administrator Ellissa Owens**: I’m fine with what you're talking about with expansion. One of the other things that comes with it: I think we should look at the position down in the campground to be maybe larger than it is and maybe have more responsibilities with more pay, or more of a full-time position quite frankly, where we could have somebody down there taking care of that. [22:17] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: All right, we got to 4E, Chamber of Commerce updates. (Pause). We got to five, public hearing and second reading. This is 5A: the city Moose Lake lodging tax ordinance 165. I’ll open the public hearing. [22:56] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: I have not received any comments from the public other than from the Chamber, which is obviously for it. They talked about it at their last several meetings. One of the people that was at the meeting this past month was Tim—I forget his last name—but one of the things that he keeps explaining over and over again is how hotels always look at this as a benefit to them rather than just a tax. It's something that gets added on to the bill that visitors are coming and it's money that just goes back into the community to try to reinvest so that more will continue to come. So that's really the only public comment that we've received. The Chamber didn’t speak with Redfox Campground because it does affect them also, however, we haven’t heard anything back. We have no new information, no negative or positive. [24:53] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Any questions, Council? We have nothing here from the public. I’ll make a motion to close the public hearing. [25:05] **Council Member Walter Lower III**: I'll make it. [25:06] **Council Member Lou Ohly**: Second. [25:07] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: All in favor say aye. (Aye). The public hearing is now closed and open for discussion by the Council. [25:21] **Council Member Kris Huso**: This helps tourism that helps us support our community. And as discussed in prior months, other communities have already been doing this. So it's just like a leg up for us. [25:46] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Just to be clear, the City of Moose Lake would receive the funds, we would keep five percent as an administrative fee. The other 95 percent would be sent to the Chamber to continue on with bringing more people to our area. [25:56] **Ryan McKeon (Finance Director)**: It could be—the basic premise of it is that the money goes towards reinvesting into events that draw people to your community. I would say that the person that works there is a huge asset to those events. I would say that it could be used for pretty much anything that the Chamber does, but they're already able to pay for what they have, so this is just additional funds. So my hope would be that it would be to expand on anything that they're doing—to draw more people into those hotels, motels, and campgrounds. [27:27] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen**: I think it would be reasonable for the City Council to request a report... what is the lodging tax money used for, have they seen additional people coming in, are there new events? [28:14] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: The only example that I can give you is when I was in Proctor; we kept the funds within the city because we had an event coordinator as a part of the city. Here, we're going to be transferring it to the Chamber, which is exclusively what these funds are for anyways. [29:30] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Questions? Comments? Motion? [29:40] **Council Member Walter Lower III**: I'll make a motion we pass ordinance number 165. [29:48] **Council Member Kris Huso**: Second. [29:49] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Any other questions? Is everybody okay with the January first start date? (All agree). Motion carried. Number six, previously discussed business. 6A is electric pilot negotiation. [30:45] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: Well, first off, I haven’t discussed this with the Utility Commission yet, but my suggestion is that under new business 7F on tonight's agenda is setting up a joint meeting. My thought would be that at next week's Commission meeting, we ask that they join us to discuss 7F as well as dialogue about the pilot that we have in place. [31:38] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: 6B, tobacco 21 month ordinance. [31:45] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: I met with Fond du Lac and quite a few people from Carlton County about the Tobacco 21 ordinance. It sounds like Carlton County is going to at least attempt to pass it with all of the restrictions in place. It will still be up to the City of Cloquet and the City of Moose Lake whether or not they want to follow suit with all of the restrictions. I don’t know necessarily what you want to do with it yet. They were looking to try to get it done by the 1st of the year, but there was this delay. So I'm thinking January, February, for sure by March. If I was a retailer, I would come here and say that all those same things would go against their business. [34:01] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Moving on to seven, new business. 7A is the 2020 budget TNT (Truth in Taxation) meeting. [34:10] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: Just a reminder that our Truth in Taxation meeting is in December. Public hearing, that we will be here late. We will likely take a break and then we will open up that Truth in Taxation meeting at 6:00 or 6:30. It’s on everyone's tax statements. [35:14] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: 7B, Lawful gambling permit for the society bingo. Any questions? (None). All in favor say aye. (Aye). Motion carried. We have a 7C, temporary alcohol promotion contest. Any questions? (None). All in favor say aye. (Aye). 7D, Campground inspection. [36:31] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: Before the end of the camping season, we had a surprise inspection done at the campground. They inspected the old bathhouse, and this is a list of projects that we need to have done and there's "comply by" dates. Many of them are next year. I think that Phil is really good on lists; he just knocks things out of the park. I just want to make you aware that there will be some additional costs prior to opening up the campground. They are very small—repair leaks, some lighting is insufficient, we need to reseal some concrete. It’s not a huge deal, but there will be some costs associated with these items. [38:37] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen**: I think a really, really good idea would be to tear down both of the bathhouses that are up there, put a brand-new, much larger facility in there that can handle the beach and all of those kinds of things. We have two problematic bathrooms that we could solve at one time. What was the cost of the bathhouse? 500,000? 750? That bathhouse has served its purpose; its age is showing. [39:46] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: When we issue a bond for a road project, those are backed by property taxes. When we look at doing something with the campground, we would issue what's called a revenue bond, which basically projects any revenue that would come from something like this—like an electric utility or water sewer. Those don’t go against our general obligation debt. They actually are really, really good benefits to communities like ours. So it is something that we could certainly look at doing both of those projects at the same time: expanding a bathhouse, projecting out incomes, all of that. [41:36] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: 7E, resolution 2019-11. [41:45] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: This we need to do this each year. This is Katie’s one resolution that she puts together each year. All we are doing is designating this room as the polling place. [42:16] **Council Member Lou Ohly**: Motion. [42:17] **Council Member Kris Huso**: Second. [42:18] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: All in favor say aye. (Aye). 7F, the Joint Commission meeting schedule. [42:27] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: My suggestion would be either the January meeting or the February meeting, before or after our regularly scheduled meeting. [43:40] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen**: I would suggest January at least just to get it started. 6:30? [44:05] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Okay, we'll email everybody just to make sure that that works. 7G, sanitary sewer lining project. [44:20] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: In the sewer budget for 2020 is $100,000 for lining the sewer main in the downtown. On page 59 is a letter from SEH that outlines where the project will be, the size of it, the cost of it. It also talks about why we would line it rather than replace it entirely and the cost savings. I will say that it lasts as long as we need it to and certainly the pipe is big enough for us to line it. [45:53] **City Engineer (SEH)**: It’s a 24-inch pipe. Each time that we line it, it’s between a half and three-quarters of an inch thick. So you can line on top of your lining. [46:39] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: This is just informational because we're gonna do that in December. [47:25] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: 7H, Economic Development Authority resignations. [47:28] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: Tia is going to resign from the EDA. We wanted to tie the Chamber to the EDA. My suggestion right now is that tomorrow at the Chamber meeting, we request a nomination from them. Not accept applications from the public as a whole, but try to get somebody from the Chamber. [48:29] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: 7I, open police officer position. [48:33] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: It is our recommendation that we fill an open police officer position with Ray. He’s been a part-time officer, he's already trained with our police department. He’s currently the police officer with Fond du Lac. He would be able to fit right in. That is my recommendation. [49:14] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Motion? [49:15] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen**: Motion. [49:16] **Council Member Walter Lower III**: Second. [49:17] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: All in favor say aye. (Aye). 7J, Police Department discussion. [50:20] **Council Member Walter Lower III**: We are trying to make some savings here. We have an opportunity to try to look at the Police Department to try to save the taxpayers some money. One thing I had brought up was possibly looking at going back and hiring a working police chief over a managing police chief, and then have that police chief patrolling and get rid of one patrol officer. There is also some discussion about possibly looking at Carlton County taking over. It would be interesting to see what the figures would be on these ideas. For 2020, there is supposed to be an increase of $67,000 roughly over 2019. The budget would be $657,000. That’s a hundred and ten thousand dollar increase over 2016. Right now we're bringing in property taxes total of $567,000 for year 2020, and the police department itself will cost $657,000. That’s $90,000 more than what we are taking in total property taxes. That seems to be a problem to me. We are in such dire need to fix our infrastructure—sewer lines, water lines, roads. If it keeps going the way it is, we won't have any money to put back into the roads. Other towns the size of Moose Lake have no police department at all, like Hinckley for example. I’m just trying to start a discussion. [58:07] **Council Member Kris Huso**: I wish I had these figures before the meeting. We should be looking at how we can best serve the community and be good stewards. I know the discussion was brought up of a working Chief; that's a great idea, I think that would save $75,000 right there. [59:18] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen**: Thompson Township has one officer. I thought it was around $110,000 for that one squad, and that's only eight hours a day. I guess I would like time to look at this. [1:00:21] **Council Member Walter Lower III**: One thing is the prison is a cost to the small town of Moose Lake. If the Sheriff's Department was a possibility, then the cost would be distributed possibly through the whole county instead of just the people who sleep in Moose Lake. [1:01:53] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen**: We should say to the state facilities: if you desire to have a local police department, the taxpayers of the state should be paying since we're housing their people. They’re the state's prisoners, they're not Moose Lake's prisoners. [1:03:19] **Council Member Kris Huso**: We did talk to them to get funding for the patrolling and response to the two facilities, and they did agree to that, but the final result was that the money was sent to the county for legal fees rather than the police. We increased to 24 hours because the increase in crime with the opening of MSOP and with more prisoners coming in. There was more robberies and incidents; they seemed to occur when our police went off-duty. That's why we went to 24-hour. I am not against a working chief, but I think that's a good first step. [1:05:38] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Just so we're clear: if the police department dissolves, the county has to take over. I personally am not in support of that. With the police presence here, it deters a lot of issues. [1:07:22] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: I don't think that anybody is proposing that any specific thing is done; it's more so an open discussion of options. If Carlton County would agree to provide 24-hour coverage and take all the staff... at a certain point, it becomes a tipping point to whether it's a larger benefit to investment areas like roads. Let’s have a discussion about all the options. [1:11:15] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator)**: The reason that we look at a contract rather than dissolving it is that things like coverage and keeping an office down here are non-negotiable. Is there an actual savings if it looks the way that we want it to still look like? [1:12:45] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Okay, I think we have a consensus to look into this. [1:14:22] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Any other questions? Thank you. Number eight, reports of correspondence. Number nine, committee and board meeting minutes. You have in your package Moose Lake Power, Library, and Parks and Rec minutes. [1:20:44] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: Number ten, regular Moose Lake City Council meeting is Wednesday, December 11th, at 4:00 PM. We have all the other various board meetings listed. Do I have a motion to adjourn? [1:21:26] **Council Member Lou Ohly**: Motion. [1:21:27] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen**: Second. [1:21:28] **Mayor Jim Michalski**: All in favor say aye. (Aye). Motion carried. Thank you.