This transcript features **Mayor Jim Michalski** presiding over the meeting, with **City Administrator Ellissa Owens** (referred to as "Katie" in the dialogue) providing most of the staff reports. **City Superintendent Phil Entner** covers Public Works, and **Carlton County Sheriff Kelly Lake** (serving as the Law Enforcement Lead) provides the police report. *** [0:03] Mayor Jim Michalski: I'd like to welcome everyone to the regular meeting with Moose Lake City Council for Wednesday, February 10, 2021, and I'd like to start with the Pledge of Allegiance, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [0:36] Mayor Jim Michalski: Moving on to the agenda, we do have one addition that I know of and I'll ask for others. This agenda would be under New Business Number 6, and it will be Q, and this is Resolution Number 21-20-03. [0:59] Walter Lower III: I had something I wanted to have for... I wanted to talk briefly on the page or a Facebook page for the park. [1:25] Mayor Jim Michalski: Okay, do you want to do it in New Business? So Business would be the park Facebook page. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, okay. Do you have any other additions or changes to the agenda, anyone? Do I have a motion to accept the agenda? [1:40] Doug Juntunen: So moved. [1:43] Lou Ohly: I'll second. [1:45] Mayor Jim Michalski: All in favor say aye. All: Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Moving on to Number 2, Consent Agenda. This is the minutes: 2.1 regular City Council meeting January 13, 2021; 2.2 organizational City Council meeting January 13, 2021; 2.3 the special City Council meeting January 28, 2021. Got any discussion or questions on the minutes? Hearing none, do I have a motion to accept the minutes? [2:12] Kris Huso: So moved. [2:14] Doug Juntunen: Second. [2:16] Mayor Jim Michalski: All in favor say aye. All: Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Under 2b, Financial Reports: 2b1, the City of Moose Lake accounts payable for January 2021; 2b2, City financial statements for January 2021; and 2b3, liquor store profit/loss statement for January 2021. Any questions or discussion on the financial reports? [3:14] Mayor Jim Michalski: There are none. Do I have a motion to accept? [3:18] Walter Lower III: So moved. [3:20] Lou Ohly: Second. [3:28] Mayor Jim Michalski: Moving on to Number 3, Public Comment. This time is reserved for comments from the public on matters not listed on the agenda. Please keep your comments for a few minutes. Appears that we have none, so move on to Number 4, Department Reports. The Police Chief Department report for January 2021. [3:55] Kelly Lake (Law Enforcement Lead): Mayor, members of Council, as you see the police report for January 2021, totaling 175 calls for service. Eight of those calls for service were to MSOP and one to DOC. In addition to those calls for service, we spent about 10 hours on MSOP calls and four hours for Department of Corrections. You'll see here under the self-initiated—now, when you notice for the last three months we've been spending more time at MSOP and some of the DOC, and then as our self-initiated activity for those three months had dropped off, again it's a clear representation this time. Now, when we're not obligated to those, the city portion of it is picked up. When you look at the extra patrol, you know, we've had 22 compared to 14 the month before. Our traffic stops were up from 26 to 41 this month. [4:41] Kelly Lake (Law Enforcement Lead): 18 community engagements, responded to 23 calls to assist other agencies, 66 calls for service, and 5 medicals totaling 175. I did have, like I told you last time, that I'd be meeting with Department of Corrections and have that same meeting that we had with the MSOP. Again, I got a big list of things for another ECRC meeting that I told them they're going to have to either start looking elsewhere for that. And my questions then was, what are you doing when I'm not available? And they go, "We just have somebody from our fugitive unit doing it." So if you have employees in your system that can do it, why aren't they doing it? Why are we? So that part, they're looking for alternatives right now to do something different. We still want to work with them on, you know, some of the issues coming up and that come from some other investigations. [5:27] Kelly Lake (Law Enforcement Lead): But they're going to be looking at some other alternatives as well. And part of it is, okay, we could look at maybe some kind of financing from the state to us, but then some of it too puts us in with a staffing level—let's say like we're running short right now. If I'm on or somebody else is tied up on something else and they've scheduled me to be on ECRC and I've spent two days the week before preparing for it and now I get called away on something, I can't be there. So that commitment can't be there for a regular thing like that. So some of those things I can see changing. Also, not sure if you guys have known this, but Carlton County was successful in getting a grant for a medical health professional, a clinician that they're advertising for right now that's going to be embedded in law enforcement. [6:13] Kelly Lake (Law Enforcement Lead): So they want, between the City of Cloquet, Moose Lake Police Department, Carlton County, they're going to have this psychotherapist that's going to be available to respond to calls like when we go. So they called the other day and we had a conversation about what would be the best times to see somebody like that out here and how that's going to be used. And we've got some more meetings coming up. They asked if I'd be interested in being on their interview panel for this position. And it sounds like, you know, for us, from what we've been dealing with lately, it definitely has some value. Part of their model, though, that they were looking at that I read prior to that is it wasn't supposed to be like associated with law enforcement and had kind of a negative tone, and I wasn't going to be part of something like that if this is the direction it was going. So I was assured that it's not and that it is going to be working closely with law enforcement. [6:59] Kelly Lake (Law Enforcement Lead): So it seems like it's going to be a good program. And it's kind of one of those things right now—we've had some pretty big time commitments with some of the people that have some of the mental health issues in our city and we've had to do a lot of the follow-up on the social work part of it to get anything done. And now when we go to these calls and we call them, it's going to be the handoff for them to take care of that portion of it. So that's in the works; they're advertising for now and it's scheduled for one year, but they expect it to be more of a permanent type position. And I think as far as the other incident with the power outage, are you going to address some of that later? So other than that, I really don't have anything else from the city. We're still going to continue talks like so with MSOP and DOC, but everything else seems to be moving along. [7:46] Mayor Jim Michalski: Thank you, yeah. Thanks to the crew. I'm going to get department reports for the Public Works Superintendent report. [7:53] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): Mayor Michalski, members of the Council. Busy, busy month. A lot going on for the winter. We're just moving on. We're waiting for spring like everybody else, especially after this last week, right? It's that kind of reality check. All right, water department, we'll start there. Distributed 4.0 million gallons of drinking water in the month of January. I did complete all our EMPOWER reporting, and what that is, it is a portal through the Department of Health that I log into and report all our water usage for the year of 2020. Um, it's a lot of pages, there's a lot to it. The nuts and bolts of it really gets you down to finding out what our unaccounted-for water loss is. We are doing very well. Our unaccounted water loss is about five percent, which is very good. The Department of Health wants to see us 10 percent or lower, so I would say that that is pretty good. That is down from our high in 2015 of 29 percent. [9:11] Kris Huso: Is that like water breaks? [9:15] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): Well, no, because it's accounted for. We can—it's just it's unaccounted-for water. So we don't know where it's going. We're pumping it, we're putting it out, we don't know where it's going. So we're making good headway there. That's really good. Well, it was coming along. I did get this update from the wheelhouse crew this late, actually about half an hour ago. It's moving right along. Hunt is still doing the electrical stuff. Fireproof from the interior walls is going. The shop guards are being looked at right now. The fluoride equipment is about 85 percent complete. And just some attic access, insulation, that kind of stuff. Flow meters are looks like they're on order right now. And that's about it in a nutshell there with the water department. [10:06] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): I do want to stress it's really cold, everybody knows that. So it's a good time to look at our frozen water. It's really on policy, like you've heard me say it for the last three months—no one likes frozen water, and no one likes frozen sewer. We have a very nice, easily spelled-out policy on our website. I might be on our Facebook page; if not, I know it's on our website. Perfect. I have copies of it for people who don't understand it. Please call, just call the shop, call the Public Works Department. If you get a hold of my cell phone, call me. Call City Hall; they'll get in touch with me. Just be proactive instead of reactive. That's—nobody likes that, especially not me. So it's just good. I mean, we can do this, we can do it together. I know we can. Right now, we do have four services that are currently running just to prevent freezing. That's down—it's down by about another four from this time last year. We had eight running, so so far we're sitting pretty good. [10:59] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): On the 21st of January, I had the worst water break in my career I've ever seen. Kind of a wake-up call, it was a really good one. Had a hydrant literally pushed right off the end of the main out by the corner by 73 right away and we lost 418,000 gallons of water. [11:27] Mayor Jim Michalski: Was it frost related or just material? [11:32] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): Maybe a little both. There is a couple pieces of infrastructure I did that showed Katie that's the acidic soil that's in clay soil. You see that a lot. It's starting to wear and tear on some of that already. It's only 30 years old. [11:51] Walter Lower III: Hold on, 73 right in front of a Kwik Trip? [11:55] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): Yeah. [11:57] Walter Lower III: It's only 30 years old? [11:59] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): Sorry, McDonald's, all those places were without water. It was probably, I don't know, half a day. [12:05] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): Well, it was more. The high school too. [12:10] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): So they shut them off at midnight. It was probably back on by 12 hours. Yeah. So just keep in mind when we're looking at road projects or we're doing utility upgrades or we're looking to put money into our infrastructure, it's huge because this is our "new" infrastructure and it's not new anymore. So it has some age on it. Anyway, it's fixed, everything's good, everybody's happy. [12:35] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): Sewer department: collected 9.5 million gallons of wastewater in the month of December. The treatment facility right now is winterized and shut down for winter. It's just 11 ponds sitting out in the middle of nowhere just hanging out. You guys received an email a week or two ago from Katie. I did put a handout on every one of your tables. What that is, it's a flow comparison from 2020 to 2021. I apologize yours are not colored, mine are. But there is—if we look at them, and I know it's really small too, I apologize about that. From the 10th to the end of the month, that's what we want to look at. We want to compare January 2020 to January 2021. And it looks like a whole bunch of numbers, and that's exactly what it is. And these are the sheets that I send off to the PCA every month. And this is part of our actual DMR report to the state. [13:17] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): If you just do some quick figuring—you want to go ahead and check my math—but if you add it all up and look at what our total flows were in January 2020, we've got 13.5 million gallons of wastewater collected in that month. Figures out to an average of 437,000 gallons a day, right? So we go to 2021 and our total flow is 9.56 million gallons for the month, which figures out to be 308,000 gallons a day. So these numbers are reported in millions of gallons, so you'll see 0.308 whatever—what's 308,000. So what that tells me? A little bit of math: we are down 29 percent of a flow drop from this time last year to this time this year. The only thing we did was line that section by Glass on there. Everything else is the same, the flows are the same. [14:15] Doug Juntunen: So, I don't think we're asking for it tonight, but I'm sure it will be... [14:24] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): No, we're going to try it. We have talked about the second lining project, which will be this summer. But it sounds like the City of Duluth is going to also be doing a large lining project, and we're waiting for them to post so that, hoping that that drives the price down and we can maybe get another section of pipe done. So it is coming. We have not forgot about it, but we're trying to be strategic. [14:52] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): I forgot all about that. That's right. I thought we talked and we did talk and then that's right, we got that info. Anyway, we'll be looking at another lining project hopefully for approval in a couple months. So if you look at this, just do some rough numbers: 29 percent flow drop in 600 feet. We have like nine and a half miles of pipe in town. Just come on guys, I think we don't see the writing on the wall. [15:33] Mayor Jim Michalski: What does that... is there any way of figuring out, okay, drop that many gallons of water? That means we don't have to treat that many gallons of water. So is there any way of putting dollars and cents into what we see for the purpose of treatment? [16:02] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): So there is. Now, we can look at that at a very small scale or we look at a very large scale as far as pumping all that additional water, the whole nine yards. We will—I am not your guy for that. That I can't figure out. I don't figure out a lot of stuff, but I want to... I think that would be more of a question for an engineer to be honest with you. [16:15] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): We did talk about this. It's hard to put a dollar amount that we're saving. I think we're going to see this over, like Phil said, a longer-term savings versus "one year we're going to save X." I don't think that's how you're going to see this one go. [16:48] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): Well, I mean, I believe the engineers can sit down and tell you that. They can tell you how much it costs per thousand gallons to treat and so on. But I can tell you this, really simple, one page to the next: our flow dropped 29 percent. I know it's a lot, but that's all I got for right now. If we want hard numbers, I'm sure we can get them. [17:15] Kris Huso: Phil, info... would chemical readings be higher because we would have less water mixing in with sewer instead? I'm just curious. [17:28] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): Yep, nope, great question. So, you take the water out of the equation, you're still left with the bad stuff. So our concentration does go up. We are seeing that already this summer. However, we typically run on discharges—we do five discharges a year. If you do this math alone over the course of a year, it's about one and a quarter discharges of what we're saving. So now I stand up here a couple times a year and ask for four or five grand for a tanker load of ferric chloride acid, which is to treat phosphorus at the pond. One and a quarter less discharges? That's one and a quarter less loads they'll have to buy, and each one of them loads are between four and five thousand bucks-ish, depending on where the price is. So I know it's not a whole lot, but it's good. We're going the right direction. I can tell you we're saving money, I can't tell you how much, but I can tell you we're moving in the right direction. [18:05] Mayor Jim Michalski: But I also say the fact that when we get it down to the point where the number of gallons going to the ponds is lower, we can also add number of hookups as far as for development. So that's the beauty in this. This allows our capacity to now start crawling and going through the roof—not saying by 30 percent, but definitely a lot better than where we were sitting. So that's one good thing about that. So if anyone has any questions on that, I know it's a little confusing, give me a call. I can walk you through it, we can meet, whatever you want to do. [18:42] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): Street department: snow and ice removal. Everybody knows that, everybody sees us running around. Once again, you see a project go by, keep an eye on it. We do back up, make corners, we do all sorts of crazy stuff that someone would not think we do, but we do it. So just watch, keep an eye out. Frost depths currently 36 inches in the ground right now, which is still considerably less than where we were last year as well. Um, yeah, so everybody knows we burned the brush pile here weeks ago and everybody knows it's... yeah. Um, that was a bad experience. It went fine, I heard nothing like that, but we did get a phone call from our friends at the DNR. And we got a few phone calls from some other agencies around the area looking for solutions to fix the small smoke and the smoldering. That smolders for two weeks and there's just nothing we can do about it. Essentially, they want us to relocate the brush pile. [20:10] Kris Huso: How far out of town? Miles away? [20:13] Walter Lower III: Must give it to somebody else. Do they want to donate to help us pick it up and shred it so that you don't even have a burden? [20:18] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): I highly doubt it. [20:23] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): I don't think the phone call that was made to the DNR intended to be a complaint. I think it's very similar to if someone called me and just said, "Hey, heads up." But they have to deal with it as if it was a complaint. And so the DNR is just doing their job and following up on a call that they got concerning public health and whatever. The guy was decent, he was very good to work with. [20:56] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): Yep, the guy was great. And I think it's we're just to the point where we we don't know what to do, right? I love offering a brush pile for residents. I think it's a great... it's obviously used, people use it. And that's kind of... I'm going to just sorry but I'm going to cut you out for a second. It is used; it's abused. There's people that don't belong in there getting rid of stuff they're not supposed to get rid of in there. I don't know if you want to make a recommendation or me, but I will. There's a couple of options. The first option is not my preference, but it's just to shut the thing down. I don't like getting complaints every single time we burn it. It's frustrating for you, for me, for the DNR, for the residents. I get it. The other option would be to essentially have it open during our normal business hours and then on Saturdays when the recycling shed is open. Essentially, the recycle shed folks would unlock it and lock it back when they leave. [22:05] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): And I was looking at that a little more. With recycling hours being open Wednesday through Friday, you can take that 7:00 to 3:30 schedule. With the recycle center: Monday/Tuesday 3:30, Wednesday through Friday 6:00, Saturdays 9:00 to 1:00. [22:25] Mayor Jim Michalski: That would be my recommendation because we got to do something. We just need somebody to come and lock the thing up. We used to have the recycling shed up at the brush pile, right? And the person in the shed cleared the person coming in. At that time, we allowed only citizens or residents of Moose Lake into it. The townships had to do their own thing. Which, we're allowing anyone in essence to come in now. That did control it while they were there; they opened it when they left, they locked it. That's another thing we could possibly do to control that: close it for anyone outside the city limits, and the townships would have to establish their own burn piles. Or we could attempt to see if the Moose Lake Township has a site that both the city and the township could use. We haven't looked at it that way. It's always been looking at the city and not getting it out of town. [23:54] Lou Ohly: Didn't we talk about a burn like once a quarter instead of at the end of the year? But that may just make it worse and get more complaints. [24:05] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): I think that you'd get complaints four times a year versus right now. And I reached out to the fire department asking if they would want to take this over as like a controlled burn to do once a quarter, and they were not interested. I received complaints out of that day too. I think part of it was that we had the cold temps at that time too, so it was staying down. You'd almost have to come down to watching wind direction and when it's going west is when you burn, which doesn't allow you to really plan. And those cold temps held it all down and it was going right toward the hospital direction for a couple days. Have you had complaints every year? [24:55] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): Every single time. The only time we don't is if it goes west, which never happens. You're right, never happens. So I mean, even by using these hours, that's a lot of time. [25:11] Kris Huso: I do have a complaint on those hours. The weekend is when most people do their lawn work when they work Monday through Friday, and I think by not having it open later on Saturdays and Sundays is going to be huge. [25:28] Lou Ohly: Sure, yeah. That's what I was going to bring up. People are working during the day before. They're bringing stuff down in the evenings and then Saturday and Sunday. [25:45] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): We can take that recycling position for hours and shift it more to Saturday so it's more conducive for people on a weekend. You could still do it. Change the hours a little bit longer on the weekend. [26:02] Walter Lower III: Are there any areas that need fill that you could just throw the leaves in and you won't even necessarily have to burn it? [26:11] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): The problem with that is then it takes their time. Right now, we light it on fire and we monitor it, but we don't sit there all day. Hauling it with the wear and tear on our vehicle, manpower... [26:25] Mayor Jim Michalski: I don't think there's an area... back in the day they used to dump stuff down by the old school by the old baseball field there, but they're getting away from dumping stuff like that. I just thought maybe in the county or in the township somewhere there would be some low area where they could just pile it in. [26:57] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): The township has one. I don't know if it's open like ours is. They gated that up now; you have to call a supervisor and they'll come down and lock it for you. I just think that we're one of the only sites that just is like wide open, not manned. Come and dump your refrigerator or whatever. I know the City of Carlton has theirs locked and it's open when the recycle shed is open. [27:42] Kris Huso: You don't burn the leaves in the ground? [27:46] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): No, these are grassroots recycled. That's just composting. The problem is it's all brush. You can see equipment trailer loads of brush that are strapped down. Now, if they're getting strapped down, they're not just coming from first street or second street. Because you know, 100 miles south of here, you have to pay to get rid of that. If you're coming up here, the gates are right open. I know a lot of that goes on. I know we got to do something other than what we're doing because what we're doing isn't working. [28:42] Mayor Jim Michalski: Thanks, guys. [28:44] Doug Juntunen: One question. Something I thought of: we got a strategic plan on the liner, waiting for Duluth to bid. Are there only a few contractors that do that lining? If Duluth grabs them, we may be waiting later in the year before we can use them. [29:05] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): No, I don't think so, because our project is relatively small in comparison to Duluth. It took one day of cleaning and one day of lining. They'll be in Duluth like all summer. They'll just send some guys down here for a couple days. [29:35] Mayor Jim Michalski: Okay, so the brush pile—think about it, we'll talk about it next month. Moving on to 4c, Technology and Library report. [30:00] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): The library minutes are in the packet from January 19th. I attended a meeting with CW just to check in. One of the things on the horizons that they're going to start looking into is the age of our server. It will need to be replaced in 2022. I asked them to look into merging ours and Moose Lake Water and Light's together because it doesn't make sense to me that we have two separate servers. The other thing with the Library Board: the Director position was closed on Friday. The library board looked at the applicants on Monday. I hope to get to scheduling interviews by the end of the week. There were three applicants. One of the only other things we discussed was the book sale. They're going to have that at the Historical Society on June 4th and 5th this year because of COVID. [31:48] Rory (Technology/Broadcast): Did you have anything for technology other than the electrical issues? It did a little bit of a number on Mediacom equipment on the building up there. We were down one channel up until just before I came for the meeting. Both channels are up, but our live broadcast is still going to be an issue. It could extend into the weekend of the churches not being able to live broadcast also. They're going to see if they've got a piece of used equipment that'll replace what went down. They're running into an issue where the equipment they're using is starting to become obsolete. We're capable now of pushing out a high-definition picture with the equipment that we upgraded to, but they're not high-definition right now. So it might be a good time to push them towards that. I didn't realize we were down until I came this morning to set up. So it's in the works. [33:21] Mayor Jim Michalski: Thank you. 4d, City Engineer. [33:26] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): A couple things we're going to talk about later on, but I just wanted to touch on the Trunk Highway 73 Phase 1 trail. We had a meeting with Carlton County yesterday. I would have liked to see it in this council packet for approval to go out for bid, but they're still working through some design issues trying to get the state's approval. I'm hoping April. The other thing was the Soo Line Trail. We received that $150,000 from the DNR. Because that didn't happen last year, they asked Northland what their price would be for this year and it increased about $8,000. SEH is going to talk to them about trying to get that reduced, but I don't want to re-bid it. It's going to cost more to re-bid it. And then the other thing is the lining project. We're just waiting for Duluth to open up for bids on that, which sounds like it'll be March or April. We didn't forget about any of this stuff. [35:42] Mayor Jim Michalski: Lots of moving parts with engineering. And I know they'll learn the deadlines with those grants so they have to line everything up so you don't lose any of the money. Chamber of Commerce updates? Did you, Katie? [36:20] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): I did. The biggest piece of news is they are having their Bocce on the 20th. I think it's the only event that they have for sure planned for 2021; everything else is tentative. It sounds like it's already almost full; there's a cap of 24 teams and they already have 22 signed up. [37:10] Mayor Jim Michalski: You doing it? I volunteered you guys. I missed that at the last meeting. Moving on to previously discussed business, we have nothing. On Number 6, New Business: 6a, Lakehead Constructors pay application Number 3. This one looks like it's through the end of January for $114,095. Do you have any questions before I ask for a motion? [38:15] Doug Juntunen: I'll make the motion. [38:17] Walter Lower III: I'll second. [38:19] Mayor Jim Michalski: All in favor say aye. All: Aye. [38:22] Phil Entner (City Superintendent): On the Lakehead, we are still missing a transformer. Do we have a date now? [38:44] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): Essentially right now they're kind of waiting. Work is not stopped, but we're waiting for that transformer that's on order and has been on order for quite some time. [39:19] Mayor Jim Michalski: Moving on to 6b, water tower painting. [39:24] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): Part of the engineering meeting was talking about colors and logos. They did say it costs a little bit more to put our city logo on, and I think our city logo is a little bit too intricate to put on the water tower. So do we care about colors? Should I just say stick with kind of the same what we have, or does somebody want to volunteer to pick colors? [40:04] Walter Lower III: Maybe a darker color with white writing. What color is it now? It's like a blue-ish ring. A darker color would keep that water warmer and keep it from freezing as easy. And it wouldn't show the mold as much. [40:50] Kris Huso: Yeah, dark color. [41:03] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): This needs to go out for bid hopefully next month. But they asked me about colors and logos. [41:15] Mayor Jim Michalski: Just the writing that we have on there. It doesn't have to be fancy. Just the name and the year. [41:49] Walter Lower III: "Welcome to Moose Lake." Since you see it on our way forward. "Welcome to Moose Lake. Brush pile this way." No, I'm just kidding. [42:10] Mayor Jim Michalski: Okay, I think it actually says "Welcome to Moose Lake" now. That's all I needed for that. Thank you. 6c, Teamster Local Number 320 MOU, Court Time. [42:58] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): We approved the union agreement last month. There were two changes—the union edited the contract and did not include these changes in what they sent me, and I did not catch them. In order to solve the problem, we issued MOUs. This one here is for court time. Essentially, if court gets canceled within 24 hours, they will get three hours of overtime. We did agree to this; it just didn't make it into the final draft. [43:35] Mayor Jim Michalski: I need a motion. [43:38] Doug Juntunen: Motion. [43:40] Lou Ohly: Second. [43:42] Mayor Jim Michalski: All in favor say aye. All: Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. 6d, Teamster Local Number 320 MOU, Sergeant's Pay. [44:03] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): This one is for if the Sergeant position ever is vacant and we decide to refill it, we will negotiate the wage of Sergeant. [44:18] Walter Lower III: Motion. [44:20] Doug Juntunen: Second. [44:22] Mayor Jim Michalski: All in favor say aye. All: Aye. 6e, Resolution 21-02-01, Northern Pine Riders Grant Support. [44:33] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): The Northern Pine Riders snowmobile club sent this to me requesting support for a grant they're going for to review part of the Soo Line Trail. [45:17] Doug Juntunen: Is this ATV or snowmobile? [45:22] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): Snowmobile. I'm assuming near Willow River because they're going with the City of Willow River for this grant. [45:30] Walter Lower III: I'll motion to approve. [45:35] Lou Ohly: Second. [46:00] Mayor Jim Michalski: All in favor say aye. All: Aye. Motion carried. 6f, Resolution 21-02-02, Local Road Improvement Program (L-RIP). [46:15] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): This is for the grant to resurface a road through the state. I've met with our engineers. We both agreed that 2nd Street is the best option for this particular grant. This grant needs to improve some type of heavily used transportation. Part of the story that we're going to be telling in the grant is the proximity to the boat launch—it goes right into the boat launch—and then it also connects to the parks and the campground. Second Street is right across the highway from the Willard Munger parking lot. There are two estimates behind the resolution. One is the entire cost of Second Street, which includes all of everything that we would ever want—worst-case scenario. It costs $2.5 million to do Second Street from Arrowhead to Birch. [48:10] Mayor Jim Michalski: How much was that? 2.5? And what does that include? [48:15] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): That includes all the infrastructure: water, wastewater, storm sewer, lights, sidewalks, the road itself. The grant only covers the road resurfacing, curb and gutter. It does not cover the infrastructure. So the max we can ask for is $1.2 million from L-RIP. If we get the full $1.2, we still have to come up with $1.37 million. Now, do I think L-RIP is going to give us the whole 1.2? Probably not. So I also have them come up with a secondary option, which is Elm to Birch. I still think we should go for the entire Second Street because if we are even given $600,000, we can still adjust the project to make it work for our budget. [50:20] Walter Lower III: Do we have to come up with... okay, say we cut it back to one block. Can we do that? We still have to get in the ground and do everything underneath before we can do the surfacing. [50:28] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): Yep. It is expensive. But when are we ever going to get even $600,000 to pay for the road? [51:15] Kris Huso: How much of Second Street was already done? There was water done and sewer done down where it floods, that last block before Birch. [52:05] Mayor Jim Michalski: After the flood, there was some more work done. They did do the sewer, but I thought they did all the water too down the street. The problem was that we have the storm water between Cedar and Birch that floods because it's a low spot. The way that boat launch was designed decades ago was not good. We try to use that lot where we tore the house down after the flood as a collecting point, but it isn't designed the best way to hold all that water. [53:57] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): I think if we can have a better chance at getting a grant for Second Street, we should go for it. If we don't have whatever we need to come up with on our end in our sales tax fund, we can bond for this. We did actually bond for the Kenwood and 3rd Street. [55:20] Kris Huso: If we get the 1.2, then we have to spend the 2.5? [55:24] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): 2.5 is the total project cost. If we get 1.2, we have to cover the 1.37. It's essentially half off an entire road. [56:15] Kris Huso: My personal preference was 4th Street because that was number one on our CAP list. [56:20] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): Their argument is that it's hard access; it's narrow one-ways. Second Street just made most sense to the engineers from the requirements of the grant. [57:21] Doug Juntunen: If we do this, we're putting all our eggs into one basket. When will we be able to do another street after you do this? [57:40] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): We have $600,000 something in the fund right now. If we bonded for half a million, that would be about $100,000 a year, and I think I budget for $225,000 a year for the fund. So we still can do some other things. [58:54] Kris Huso: I'm just thinking of 73 to Elm on 1st Street. I mean, you wreck your struts going down that. Now everybody's rerouting to 2nd Street because that road is almost impossible to use. It's even bad when you fill it. [59:43] Kris Huso: To me, some of those blocks should be a grind and overlay, which would last 10 years and only cost 20 to 30 thousand. 6th Street West is almost worse than 1st Street. [1:01:13] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): I think we could make an argument for every single road, but we got to start somewhere. Our chances are highest with this L-RIP grant for 2nd Street. [1:05:04] Walter Lower III: Can we negotiate with the bidder to say, while they're doing surfacing, how much would it be for them to add another two blocks? [1:05:14] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): We can add alternate projects onto it and request bids for it. Usually, you can get a better deal because they're already there. [1:06:12] Mayor Jim Michalski: Do I have a motion to move ahead with applying for the grant? [1:06:18] Walter Lower III: Motion. [1:06:20] Doug Juntunen: Second. [1:06:22] Mayor Jim Michalski: All in favor say aye. All: Aye. Motion carried. 6g, Fingerprint Fee amendment. [1:06:39] Kelly Lake (Law Enforcement Lead): Currently we charge $20 per card for fingerprints. We want to increase that to $30. The cost of wages to do it and the supplies have increased. There are very few agencies doing it. I myself the other day did six of them. There's anywhere from up to $50 a card elsewhere. [1:07:35] Doug Juntunen: Motion. [1:07:38] Walter Lower III: Second. [1:07:40] Mayor Jim Michalski: All in favor say aye. All: Aye. 6h, Moose Lake Chamber donation request. [1:08:11] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): This one's for ice bocce, and they are requesting $150. [1:08:35] Lou Ohly: Is this held at the same time as the ice fishing contest? [1:08:42] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): It is this year, yes. Down at the park. [1:08:52] Doug Juntunen: Motion. [1:08:54] Kris Huso: Second. [1:08:57] Mayor Jim Michalski: All in favor say aye. All: Aye. 6i, the 2019 and 2020 MLWSSD overage bills. [1:09:12] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): This is informational only at this time. We will be probably calling a special meeting on this. Take a look at the data and contact me if you have any questions. [1:10:29] Mayor Jim Michalski: Jay, the MLWSSD rate adjustment. [1:10:35] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): Each year we adjust the rates for our city sewer customers. 2017 was the last time. Would it make sense to just let them know now that their rates are going to increase two percent? Because that's what we did for our residents. [1:12:02] Mayor Jim Michalski: Any questions about that? Thank you. Moving on to 6k, Local Board of Appeals and Equalization meeting, April 28, 2021, at 10:00 AM. [1:12:15] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): We need a quorum for that. I need for sure you [Mayor] and Doug. [1:12:51] Walter Lower III: I'll be here. [1:13:14] Mayor Jim Michalski: 6l, liability coverage waiver, League of Minnesota Cities. Do you have a motion? [1:13:28] Doug Juntunen: Motion. [1:13:30] Kris Huso: Second. [1:13:40] Mayor Jim Michalski: 6m, Moose Lake Beverage Company temporary off-sale liquor license for the ice fishing contest. Motion? [1:14:05] Lou Ohly: Motion. [1:14:07] Kris Huso: Second. [1:14:15] Mayor Jim Michalski: 6n, Sturgeon Lake Lions off-sale gambling application for a meat raffle. [1:14:30] Walter Lower III: Motion. [1:14:32] Doug Juntunen: Second. [1:14:40] Mayor Jim Michalski: 6p, Highway 73 Trail Phase 2. [1:14:45] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): I just got an email today from Jenny from the county saying that we did get awarded the Phase 2 grant for $300,000. That's huge. That means Katie's hitting 100 percent on grant applications! Now we have to figure out exactly which route we want to build the trail on. [1:16:14] Mayor Jim Michalski: Excellent. Just a little update from Harlan: he just heard that the transformer and regulators will be here Wednesday or Thursday next week. They'll start that installation at the north substation right away. [1:16:50] Mayor Jim Michalski: Now for the power outage update. [1:16:59] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): At about 7:15 Monday night, dispatch got a call that the power plant exploded. It did not. It was a regulator that ended up exploding, which caused some damage to the transformer, which caused that whole north substation to shut down. They tried to fire up the generators; they had some problems with one of them. Ended up getting it up at 1:45 AM. We kind of started coordinating an emergency plan. Billy Joe offered the school as a warming shelter. We had transportation plans in place. We didn't have to use it, but we had it ready. The generators are currently powering the city. [1:18:31] Mayor Jim Michalski: It's the north substation and the old part of the city. Phil was in and had to check all our pumps to make sure things were not backing up. He got a generator from Carlton on hand just in case. Kirk York was in from the commission. Besides the regulator, the new generator safety switch for the fan on the roof failed. That's why we lost power again. We were really close to calling the bus drivers to move people. [1:20:27] Kelly Lake (Law Enforcement Lead): Red Cross was activated just in a holding pattern. Everything was ready to go. [1:21:13] Mayor Jim Michalski: We've got some things already in the back of our minds that we need to change—some phone numbers we need to add to the response book. It's fully operational, it just needs to be updated. It brought to our attention that we need to work with the fire department and the county. I think it actually went pretty smooth. [1:22:20] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): Ralph Sandberg, the Ziegler mechanic that lives in town here, he was there. Ralph fixed the bypass for the switch on the roof. Without Ralph, we would still not have power. [1:22:50] Mayor Jim Michalski: A big kudos for him. We're going to generate a thank you letter for him and to Ziegler. It was really nice to see everybody working together. Marlin, the Carlton County Emergency Coordinator, drove all the way here. [1:24:16] Mayor Jim Michalski: And that brings us to 6q, which is Resolution Number 21-20-03. I did call an emergency situation and made the call to the Minnesota Duty Officer. I can do that for three days, but after that, it has to be approved by the council. I'd like to keep it active until the equipment is installed and tested. This allows any expenditures we have during this time to be tracked and submitted to the state for reimbursement. [1:27:54] Walter Lower III: How many households are affected? [1:28:00] Mayor Jim Michalski: It was about 400 or 450 households. [1:28:04] Walter Lower III: My concern is: if we lose the power and we move people, we're going to have 450 skating rinks in these houses. Are we notifying the homeowners or shutting off water to their services? They might lose stuff in the house, but they won't come back to a flooded basement. [1:28:40] Mayor Jim Michalski: Safety's number one. The idea was to activate the fire department immediately and go door-to-door to tell people to go to the school. [1:30:12] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): The county has Everbridge, which is a mass notification. I think it's worth looking into especially for things like this, or a water break, or snow removal. [1:31:45] Mayor Jim Michalski: Someone in Montana called their parents in Moose Lake and told them the power was out because they saw it on our Facebook page before the parents even knew what was happening! [1:32:30] Kelly Lake (Law Enforcement Lead): I'll be going around to Hillside Manor to see what backup they have for people on oxygen. We need to check what facilities have generators and what don't, because that'll be how we respond on high-risk levels first. [1:34:50] Mayor Jim Michalski: I'd suggest extending this resolution until February 28th to give us time for the install and testing. [1:35:15] Doug Juntunen: Could we do it until the next city council meeting? March 10th. [1:35:40] Mayor Jim Michalski: Council, do I have a motion for the resolution? [1:35:48] Doug Juntunen: Motion. [1:35:50] Kris Huso: Second. [1:36:18] Mayor Jim Michalski: Moving on to reports and correspondence. [1:36:25] Walter Lower III: At the last Park Board meeting, I brought up some ideas on how to advertise the park for free. I've been working with Rory on getting some pictures up on Channel 7. I was also thinking of a Facebook site through the city that would cover the park, campground, and trails. The campground did have a page called "Campers of the Campground," but it wasn't official and people were airing dirty laundry on there. If the city started one, we could pick administrators from the Park Board to manage it. I would volunteer to do that. [1:40:59] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): I think it's a fabulous idea. We obviously have the city Facebook page also. There are really weird rules and laws with social media in regards to city stuff. Handing over the keys to a Facebook page to somebody else makes me a little bit nervous. I think we should just utilize our current city Facebook page. [1:42:30] Kelly Lake (Law Enforcement Lead): If I can jump in—we don't allow anybody to post on our police site because that's when you get that negativity. As long as you limit it to city personnel doing it. [1:43:17] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): Our city site already has a lot of followers. If you want to send me stuff, I can post it. It takes 30 seconds. [1:44:03] Walter Lower III: That may make better sense. I just didn't want to take up all your time. [1:44:15] Ellissa Owens (City Administrator): Send me photos and we can get those posted. [1:46:10] Mayor Jim Michalski: Thank you. Number 8, Committee and Board meeting minutes. Under 9, Announcements. Regular Moose Lake City Council meeting Wednesday, March 10th. The emergency team will be meeting at 9:00 AM tomorrow morning and Friday. We'll determine if we need to continue daily. Meeting adjourned. [1:48:29] (End of Transcript)