city council meeting a regular meeting for april 5th if we could stand 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 under god indivisible with liberty and justice i'd like to welcome everyone uh this time jennifer take the role councilmember thorson here councilmember peterson here councilmember wong here councilmember cole is absent and mayor furlong here quorum is present this time a motion to adopt the agenda by council member thurson second by council member wang any discussion not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries we do have one presentation and it's a proclamation for fair fair housing month and we don't have anyone here from that so i'll i'll quick read the proclamation here whereas the fair housing act enacted on april 11 1968 enshrined in the federal law the goal of eliminating racial segregation and ending housing discrimination in the united states and whereas the fair housing act prohibits discrimination in housing based on race color religion sex familial status national origin and disability and commits recipients of federal funding to affirmatively further fair housing in their communities and whereas north st paul is committed to the mission and intent of congress to provide fair and equal housing opportunities for all and whereas our social fabric the economy health and environment are strengthened in diverse and inclusive communities and whereas more than 50 years after the passage of the fair housing act discrimination persists and many communities remain segregated and whereas acts of housing discrimination and barriers to equal housing opportunity are repugnant to a common sense of decency and fairness now therefore it be resolved that the city council of north st paul minnesota do hereby proclaim the month of april 2022 as fair housing month in north st paul and commend its observation observance to all citizens and north st paul is an inclusive community committed to fair housing into promoting appropriate activities by private and public entities to provide and advocate for equal housing opportunities for all residents and prospective residents of north saint paul signed this fifth day of april 2022 myself terrance j furlong the mayor so have that now we have the consent agenda and if city manager stark thank you mr mayor the consent agenda contains several separate items which are acted upon by the council in one motion once the consent agenda has been approved the individual items have also been approved and no further action is necessary any city council member may request an item be removed for further discussion tonight we have a fairly long list of topics on the consent agenda the minutes for the march 8th special joint workshop meeting the minutes for the march 15th city council workshop meeting the minutes for the march 15th regular city council meeting and the minutes from the march 15th closed session of the city council item e is general claims item f is hra claims item g is eda claims then we have a number of labor contracts item h is the contract with the public works employees teamsters local 320. item i is with afscme essential employees item j is with afscme non-essential employees item k is patrol officers local of the lels item l is the supervisory unit through the international brotherhood of the electrical workers then item m is the cola and wage adjustments for the non-union employees item n is a budget amendment to add a police officer and community development slash community services director to the complement of employees and i would just add on that one that that seems like a fairly big item to have on consent the reason it is is we had a pretty robust discussion at the march 15th workshop item o is the purchase of a 2024 mac plow truck item p is the declaration of equipment surplus item q is the 2022 sanitary sewer lining project an approval of the plans and specifications and authorized advertisement for bids and item r is the temporary on sale liquor license and charitable gambling application to the church of saint peter for their annual school gala event on may 7th and that concludes tonight's consent calendar so at this time if a council member would like to remove one of the items that can do so at this time if not i would city attorney so i would like to abstain from r which is a temporary on on sale liquor license should i remove that or can i just say i'm going to abstain or no i think if we want to move the slate of items a through r if we could just note that items a through q would pass four zero with a three zero and then one abstention on an item r i think that's fine that's why i traditionally see a consent calendar okay i will steam from item r i am on that board for for the gala that night uh so this time uh uh all's in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed the motion carries and i abstain from our i just want to say thank you to soren and city manager we need to make sure we just needed a motion and then a second oh i didn't do that oh all those in favor signify by saying aye no no we need a motion and then the second motion to accept it motion to accept the consent agenda yes is there a motion right here motion by council member peterson now second second by council member thorson sorry about that i'm trying to think ahead so if there's no other discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed the motion carries uh i want to say thank you to sauron and to city manager in regards to all the contract work that went on i don't know if anybody else was involved in that with the city jenny i know thank you also it's a big deal to to write a three three-year contract and to have them all together so we do have one outstanding contract that will hopefully bring back to the next regular meeting so i thank you almost all the way we have one more so but but do i do and the council does appreciate because it is a lot of hard work to get those together but we do have one more left so thank you uh at this time meeting open to the public uh we've got one john small welcome john you know the routine mayor council yes uh just two quick ones uh uh the uh agenda for this evening i took a look at one and the uh uh consent agenda because it said truck and truck sounded interesting so i read it and uh it says in one of the bullet points the vehicle is used year-round and also as an ice control salt truck which causes rust and determination to wiring and many other mechanical parts probably should be deterioration to those parts for what it's worth second item was uh the mndot put out a message to all of us who sign up for notifications where there's going to be construction and one of them happened to be the highway 36 construction from here to stillwater and resources for businesses greater stillwater chamber of commerce st paul chamber of commerce why st paul i haven't got an idea oakdale chamber of commerce and uh twin cities north china chamber of commerce which has none of the cities that are on 36. except for roseville which isn't part of the project so what is what are the resources for north st paul businesses so that that general chamber of commerce all those ones i think one's up in white bear lane yeah it's not even part of this i don't know what that what that is but uh i just didn't see our fair city no no we have we have representation from our city not not from the chamber because we don't have a chamber at north st paul but but the business association that you know is part of the city but they didn't talk about us anyway yeah thank you yep uh anybody on zoom nobody on zoom uh we do have a public hearing i'll turn it over to city manager stark thank you mayor furlong and actually i'm going to ask that city engineer dolly i we hadn't planned ahead on this or sorry finance director winnick no i'm getting who's passed in the buck okay um if you bear with me for a minute i'm having some computer problems so i've got to do this off my phone so we do have the proposal to adopt a street reconstruction plan and the intent to issue general obligation street reconstruction bonds is that that is that is correct is that you yes okay uh we'll turn over to finance director yeah mayor uh council members if you remember when we approved the budget in december 7th of 2021 we also adopted a revised comprehensive capital improvement plan incorporated within that plan was the street reconstruction in addition to equipment and everything else that needs to be replaced within the the city over the next 10 years tonight what this item is about is according to statute minnesota statute 475.58 subdivision 3b we had to give public notice and then within 10 to 28 days from that public notice we need to hold a public hearing this starts the the clock it gives 30 days from today on for citizens of the city of north st paul if they have an objection to us going out for a general obligation bond um issuance um that if they got five percent um of the uh registered voters that this would end up having to go to to a vote with all of the residents of the city if after those 30 days it does not then we're able to go out and issue a bond if you can if you remember our engineer had presented what the plan um is what's attached here today is also a five-year plan incorporating what we're planning on doing for 2022 and going through 2026. we right now are um we've advertised and we have a maximum amount of the bond issuance at 12 million dollars that means that's the maximum amount that we could bond we definitely could bond lower than than that and it'll identify the projects that are to be included in that bond issuance some of which have already been awarded um bids awarded by the city council and there's been authorization to go out for bids we were anticipating is your mic on um supposed to be yeah can you hear me yes um so we're anticipating that if everything goes forward that we would be in receipt of the bond fund sometime in june of this year and if you remember incorporated in our budget for debt service we had an amount that we had already levied for so we're already ahead of where we're at so i do have a debt schedule that was prepared by baker tilly that would be able to be within that dollar amount it is not my anticipation it'll it'll it'll really depend on when bids come in it is not my intention to go for the full 12 million dollars i think we can be somewhere um about um 10 and a half million dollars for a bond issuance and we will not end up having to increase the debt service for the city in other words putting another burden in on the taxpayers in in the um in 2020 and pay 2023. so that's kind of where we're we're shooting at and we're kind of looking at again so much depends on when these bids come in um i'll be setting up a meeting with our engineer to make sure that my comfort level and that we've we've incorporated all of the costs that we've got our soft costs included in there and we've got contingencies to make sure um that the bond issuance will be enough to be able to to complete these these this work so if there's any questions from the public um definitely would would like to hear that and any concerns and i'm assuming class are off the charts right now sorry morgan i just it you know to me this time in our history is like everything's so inflated right now and you know do we i think sometimes you got to look at possibly two of holding off a project until inflation comes down or but i don't i don't think we're going to do that but sure mr mayor members of the council so to answer the original question we are seeing cost increases in some areas in the construction market you know and the construction market that we operate in is you know public utilities streets which might be a little different than the vertical market or you know quick trips and and housing development that sort of thing um right now you know the bids that we've received in north st paul have been favorable i'll be presenting you know on a project a little bit later here and the bids have been coming in good so far for us um in other areas we've seen increases around 10 percent um it's still early in the bidding season i think that you know we expect that as time goes on some of the prices will go up later me and my my staff have been trying to be strategic in terms of providing flexibilities for contractors where we can with respect to finishing projects so that they don't build the risk of not finishing on time into their bid and i guess you could call that artificially inflating the price of the project if the city's okay with that kind of flexibility right but i think mr mayor you bring up a good point certainly the city always has the opportunity with continued review of the financial viability of any program or meaning a group of projects as a program the city has the opportunity to not award a contract for example if if bids come in too high or higher than a comfort level for an existing fundable construction program or which could be you know delay delay a project for a year or a couple years or something certainly this is a progressive effort that has been packaged together since last year you know approved by council in terms of a group of projects and so we're hopeful that we can continue with that uh dan and i are in close contact as the bids come in some of this amount has been put together and packaged as an estimate as opposed to knowing exactly what the construction contract amount is so there are some unknowns out there but as we move forward through the process staff will have to be advising council and council does have the opportunity or the option i guess for future consideration on projects to not award or delay and and not enter into a construction contract once you've entered into a construction contract that's a different situation it's difficult to more difficult to pause or stop an effort at that point but for some of these projects that are included in the program we haven't gotten there yet so there is some opportunity for that moving forward if things change or if you know prices uh increase substantially i mean the other thing we're seeing too that doesn't always affect prices uh is the availability of materials right now in north st paul we are we're we've moved more towards plastic water main pipe but as an example ductile iron water main pipe um is on a 28-week delay just for delivery and contractors are actually kind of hoarding part pipe themselves which is even further exacerbating the issue for supply of certain materials so those kinds of things you know you can't foresee they might continue to crop up unexpectedly as the season goes on we'll just have to adjust as intelligently and as economically smartly as we can moving forward to for the greatest benefit of the city okay any other questions for morgan or dan if not i'll open the public hearing portion uh open it up at 7 10. 6 50 or 7 10. you know it says 7 10. 6 50 6 50. wow wow is this one is this one of those nights jeez that is funny okay so i'll open it up actually i'll use my computer time here at 6 50. uh so open the public hearing at this time and i suppose we don't have anybody bob if you want to come up and talk about uh the street bonding no you're okay all right [Laughter] we have nobody on zoom uh i take it so we'll go ahead and close the public hearing at this time sounds good sounds good and i'm just looking is there a resolution or anything or is that there is a resolution okay i've got the resolution or the motion for resolution adopting a street reconstruction plan in approving the issuance of general obligation street reconstruction bonds is there a motion moved by council member peterson second second by council member wong any discussion if not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed the motion carries uh city manager stark thank you mary for long the next item is an ordinance revision related to wood boilers and other exterior heating devices so we had a recent inquiry as to whether the city of north st paul allows auxiliary auxiliary wood boilers and just to clarify the inquiry was not from a resident i believe it was from a organization that sells these devices trying to determine which cities do or don't allow them these devices are external to a structure but provide heat supplied by wood or pellets or other flammables through combustion and they supply heat to the structure either through duct work or more commonly through hot water piping upon review of the city ordinances it was determined that the city code is silent on this issue i inquired with the city attorney whether the other cities he serves allow such devices his response was that they do not allow such devices and he i think suggested that it might be a good for us to not as well uh he had some experiences i believe with stillwater township that maybe i'll let him speak to the reason that we're recommending against them is that the smoke created by the devices and the need for outdoor storage of wood or other combustible materials are inconsistent with a community with housing density as high as north saint paul's and that such devices are more appropriate for homes sitting on larger properties than exist here and so the attached ordnance was prepared by city attorney matic i will say that we did not do a great deal of our own you know primary research on this about you know how far the smoke carries or any of those kinds of things we really relied on what um what other cities that are similar to us have done because we i don't think we have any wood boilers we don't know of any um it's possible there are some out there that um you know didn't seek permits or any approvals but to to our knowledge we don't if if there are some out there and we adopt this what happens i suppose that goes grandfathered in their grandfather then okay that's that's what i have to to say city attorney do you have anything to add to that i think john covered it um you know candidly about i feel like some of these items come up and then i'll sit through them on various council items and this i think came up about 10 years ago when the product started getting marketed it you know it's not a anti-wood burning measure what it is is it's candidly what what these communities started to experience was the intensity with which that wood was burned was a lot greater than say like a fireplace or an occasional bonfire and so what you saw was as the primary source of heat the stacks aren't as tall as a chimney so it doesn't get kicked up and the smoke tended to just kind of collect in the neighborhood and then candidly it depends upon you know the right wood being burned anytime you put in wet wood or other things that that occasionally do creep in there um it creates more smoke too so it isn't a hey we're against burning wood just the intensity with which these are constantly burning during the minnesota winter and the smoke people with there were complaints with people who had you know who were healthy but even those who say had asthma or some respiratory issues these became a problem so i know a lot of communities when you're in close like john was talking about uh like in north st paul with your lot sizes did ban them what i can tell you is at that same time a community john mentioned it stillwater township that has larger lots five and ten acres said you know we think this is exactly what we do want people to be able to have and we have the acreage and i think it took about one year worth of burning and even at that lot size they re-examined that decision and they ultimately did ban them because of the the smoke and other kind of collateral or incident problems they had with the burning of them so when john came up i haven't studied the issue i can tell you what i've experienced just in representing communities and kind of dealing with these outdoor wood boilers and the smoke again that's a lot different than say a fireplace or just even some internal furnaces that burn you know we started looking at you know regular firewood and fuel oil and things like that it's a lot more intense and just a lot more smoky so that that's why it's there this was not i worked on it i gave john uh the language this was in my opinion a policy decision it wasn't a hey to be legally compliant you need to do this so i do think this is something for you to consider um and the the reasons i'm giving right now are kind of anecdotally what other communities have looked at and thought about in their rationale so with that i'd stand for any questions uh the only experience i had was it was a few years ago in regards to stillwater and again it was i think a 10 acre spot and people had a swimming pool and their neighbor had a wood boiler or whatever and their swimming pool would be soot be a film on there and they complain a lot about it so but i know that the boilers now are different than they were five years ago so uh any questions for city man or city manager or city attorney councilmember thorson yeah i just so those are some of the questions that i had when i was reading this you know what what was driving it how many people have these or businesses or residents it sounds like we don't know the fact that it was a business inquiring would lead me to believe that maybe they were asked to potentially install one and i'd be curious to hear what their take on it is because i'm just i'm not a fan of banning things and from my understanding the way our code is written if someone were to want to build this there's certain setback requirements and given the fact that a lot of our lots are smaller in size it would just disqualify itself from that aspect so i don't really i mean i don't really see the the reason to have to add it to the nuisance list and and not allow it but to be honest with you i don't don't know much about them and you know before i vote to ban something i'd like to have some time to do some more research and get some more feedback so i mean i would propose that we table this and for additional time to look into it so motion would be to table this item at this time and bring it back for further discussion i just want to make clarification so the business i believe was a if uh city manager if you can explain what business actually inquired i think it was a company that actually makes them to see if they're allowed in our city so it wasn't a business in our city that was yeah i so i did not speak with the um the caller but that's my understanding it was a it was a retailer that sells these not a not a manufacturer of the furnaces but a retailer it was somebody that is not located in north saint paul the way it was relayed to me is that they were checking around various communities just to find out where they were and were not allowed uh you know ostensibly so that if a customer called and said hey i'd like to install one of these and they would just say well what city do you live in well i'm in stillwater township nope they don't allow them i think that's that was the rationale that they just wanted to be able to save people some time if by knowing where they lived and whether they were permitted or not so we do have a motion for the table we would need a second for that that's correct is there a second for the table i'll second it there's a second for the table uh any other discussion if not uh all those in favor signify by saying aye aye i oppose uh so we'll table this until we'll just bring up the next next meeting it'll give us time to do a little research sure and if um if council members want to individually uh email me with some of the information that would be helpful in making a decision that would be good just don't email one another i'll turn it over to city manager stark thank you the next item is the anchor block commons final bmps to accept quotes and award construction contracts and i would ask the city engineer i know in my profession what bmps means i suspect it means the same in yours but if you could elaborate on the on the acronym sure my bad uh mr mayor members of the council so i'll start with that explaining bmps i should know if there's going to be an acronym i should probably spell it out at least once in the document it was a question i had too yeah i should know this uh to not get myself into this situation bmp is certainly a technical uh jargon if you will a very common practice which is why i missed spelling it out for you folks so i apologize on that but it means best management practices and in this instance it means water quality treatment device the item before you here tonight is the consideration of quotes received and potential award of a construction contract for improvements to storm water if you want to call them retention basins they're basically filtration basins that were constructed on the anchor block site uh on the north side of anchor drive so there are three basins that are storm water collection devices that treat the hardcover storm water runoff that comes out of the roadway on anchor drive jointly all of the hard cover parking lots in the development area there and then treats them before discharging clean water into the mndot ponds north of the site and eventually on downstream through our storm sewer system there's a requirement of the watershed district's uh approvals on the development and approval on the hard cover contemplated with the with the sites with quick trip self storage and with the apartments that are still under construction i also should note for the council that the this particular city effort this city project finishes up the ponds which were started on the north side of anchor drive there is a fourth pond that's on the south side of anchor drive which for site flexibility reasons is being constructed by the developer or by the the contractor that's building the apartments is that behind the building or it's actually right between the road and the garage the line of garage is there so it's a fairly skinny pond there but that that area is all going to work together eventually when they're done constructing it the city will own and operate and maintain that pond just like it will the other three that we're talking about here tonight but for this particular award of contract we're just working on the north side again they chose to take that on themselves but essentially they're all identical in terms of design function purpose they'll all work together and ultimately they will all be the responsibility of the city to to maintain moving forward as public works knows um so the uh the reason why we're doing this kind of after the fact is if we had installed all of this filtration stuff in the bottom of the ponds while those sites were all being constructed we would have had some runoff during rain events that would have actually silted in the bottom of the pond and plugged it up and that would have cost a lot of money to actually dig that up and replace it and do it over again so the engineering world has learned that it's very smart to delay this portion of the thing until after all of the sites are done you know parking lots are done the sod is in there's no further risk of erosion or sedimentation so this is the last thing that has to happen with these ponds before they're turned over to perpetual maintenance and we satisfy the terms of the watershed district uh permit for the site the bids or the i'm sorry quotes uh were very good and competitive we had 10 quotes from different contractors doing the work and came in slightly under bid i think uh about 10 15 000 under what we were estimating um for a final estimate for the project and so the low quote is windberg companies which i'm presenting and recommending here for a word of contract to the city council in the amount of 113 890 and 25 cents um windberg has not done work in the city of north st paul before but i did check into them last year as recently as last year and working with wsb they completed a similar project for a series of ponds within the city of i think it was brooklyn center not brooklyn park but they did a really good job they finished on time under budget um so i can recommend them even though they're a new contractor within the city with that i'll stand for any questions council might have so you always vet the business if i haven't heard of them before certainly i've never worked with them or references or i'll ask around wsb sometimes we actually request written references from other cities that may have worked with a contractor it's not rare but it's not very often that i come across a contractor i've never heard of before but new new contractors are formed and um you know spin off of other contractors right so but it's always good to check to make sure that someone has worked with them before and had a favorable experience versus a negative one and in this instance it was a it was a very successful project okay good any questions for uh morgan councilmember thurston yeah they're just kind of general questions since we're on the topic so down there you know there's still construction going on with the apartment building and m i homes and there's a lot of silt fencing and then those socks but on the portions that are on the other side of anchor drive so where a quick trip is and uh extra space storage i mean that's pretty much done but those silt fencing and the socks have kind of gotten pushed up from the plows and stuff they're still sitting there when are they are those going to get picked up and cleaned up like after this project is done or yes councilman thor mr mayor members of the council um that would be an ideal opportune time for if it could be pulled for our contractor to do that there some of those devices might be the responsibility of quick trip or whatever we could take a look at it in a you know i guess last case scenario public works might be able to pick some of them up but technically we can't remove them until all of the work is done and we've got sufficient vegetation growth kind of going on in around the area so right now some of what's in there in place will actually come in handy for this work because it will still need to be protected but anything that we can pull we can certainly take a look at and either in coordination with those folks that are responsible for maintenance on that's the private sites right now or with public works we can get that cleaned up at the appropriate time i would imagine that either by the end of this season or if we've we need a little bit more growth certainly in 2023 would be the last that we need any of that and we'd be pulling that out of there as best we could yeah that was just my question like whose responsibility is it is it the cities is it the contractors is it the land owners and then another question just an observation that i noticed i think it was two years ago now basically when that m i site started we had a pretty heavy rainfall i think it was in fourth of july weekend or before that or right after and there was a massive failure in the silt fence and you could see all that clay water very clearly running down the curb line because before it was just rain water and then you could see where all this runoff was coming down meeting that and it was just that clay-ish brown color going straight into the city sewer and i snapped a couple pictures at the time sent it to the city manager and he was he contacted some contractor that went up there and fixed it now i don't i didn't follow up and go back but forever how long that ran it filled in and i don't know what that does to you know i know when clay gets super wet i've had to experience flooding in my own house where it comes in and then it dries and then you got this thick base letter of clay in your home and i'd imagine that if it dries it stays in our city pipes or it all runs into those holding ponds and just sediment builds up and that's what this project is designed to do to remove that type of sediment yeah sediment and also uh nutrients like phosphorus or other things that might be coming in from fertilizers i mean those are some of the biggest pollutants that we see in our water bodies whether it's wetlands or streams or lakes or whatever so yes when we when i say water quality i mean that the water exiting these devices are going to have less phosphorus less nutrients and less solids i would consider kind of those suspended clay particles that make it look like chocolate milk that's those are solids technically even though they're very small so that's exactly the types of things that these devices are going to do and we have a series of them all through the city all cities do even down to you know residential rain gardens that we have kind of our voluntary rain garden program for uh individual residential folks that they can uh be a part of uh those all all do similar things and provide similar benefits for storm water runoff and so on a project like that i mean it's kind of a larger area but it's contained to you know you can kind of grid it out and suppose too with our infrastructure is there some process like before that project took place did did public works or the contractor hire a subcontractor where they go in and kind of inspect the city lines and stuff and then after they go in and look and see like well you know we it's fine and good to require you to put a silt fence in but if it fails and then how do you measure that to say okay well here's our inspection record before the project started here's it after look at all this filtration you know in you know whatever the terminology is all the sediment that came in here clearly you could tie it to or i mean it seems like it would make sense to say yes your project a responsibility fence was not sufficient and it's not cheap to go in and and clear those lines and clear that was done because of that work so is there i mean i'm just imagining this in my head how it works but maybe that's not how it works at all is there so my i guess my question or concern is how do we ensure that a project like what's gone on doesn't have negative impacts into our infrastructure like that sure so actually the point you bring up is a good one and um you don't want me to talk all night about this there's certainly a lot of detail here but what i can tell you is that it's actually very highly regulated um at the in the projects that we the city do and the projects that private individuals do like let's say quick trip or anyone developing within the city and sometimes depending on how big of an area that you are impacting it could be a residential project or a residential area but there are permits and requirements that are um set up at the state level at the local level our city ordinance controls some of these things and also at the watershed district level so there's rules and laws that need to be followed there so with respect to you know where and how much silt fence or other type of protective bmps if i can use that technical term again are required on any particular site that's required and the people that design those have to be certified the people that inspect those have to be certified um you know we have to have the contractors that work on city projects have to have people on their staff that are trained and certified to be able to inspect and install and correct and repair and that sort of thing and it's all documented again within the permitting process so for that particular instance that you're talking about at mi homes and that's a privately constructed effort so that contractor that's working for that developer was responsible for that activity and held that permit and they did have a discharge during a heavy rain event and the watershed district was aware of it the city was made aware of it i was made aware of it and they took corrective measures to address that under the terms of the watershed rules and the expectations of the permit that they were holding with the watershed district so you know and [Music] a weather event or a rain event is sometimes sometimes can exceed those protections that might be on a construction project when that happens that doesn't always mean that there needs to be activity downstream to start digging into a you know a wetland or a pond or something like that that's sometimes that creates more problems than good actually but certainly the the effort immediately when that sort of thing happens is to address the problem if a silt fence has broken repair that get things back into compliance and in that instance and several others that you know whether it's a city project or a private project everybody's collaborating working together trying to you know make sure that we don't have any issues downstream because it is an environmental concern and again it is regulated at several different levels okay well it's good to hear that because you know again i'm just a latent person happy to be driving by saw it and then after i started to think because you know being on the council we see all the stuff and the watershed districts and all these permits and things and then you think we go through all that and then this happens i mean it's obviously not good and then i just was you know [Music] forget about it and move on but now that we're talking about it again it kind of that's what spurred me to ask about that but i'm glad to hear that there's you know there's some sort of procedures in place to where when something fails those who are responsible for held accountable and it's not just a feel-good exercise and oh no and signing paperwork and stamping stuff and then jamming stakes in the ground and then that's it but i mean driving by that too recently that i thought about that too it's like well what are these silk fences do they just stay there and and eventually the forgotten about i mean it's a good point because they things tend to grow up around them and they're tough to get to and so it does take some intentional effort to make sure that you get them out of there and sometimes we're finding them in weird corners and realizing that you know public works or you know we need to get somebody out there sometimes it's a warranty item so all of our public projects typically have a two-year warranty if we find something that was left over we can make the contract or pull that out as a warranty item you know at no cost to the city so it's just something to stay on top of it's a good point okay thanks any other questions for morgan if not the motion is for resolution accepting quotes and awarding a construction contract for the anchor black commons final bmps is there a motion so moved moved by councilmember wang second second by council member thorson any discussion if not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries thank you morgan appreciate it city manager start thank you mayor furlong i wanted to give council members an update on the lilly building property how that's kind of evolved so if you remember we had a joint workshop on march 8th a workshop of the council and the chair and vice chairs of the eda and planning commission a couple of development teams made proposals uh for how they would like to redevelop the lilly property one was a a gentleman named john peacha and the other was a team of jim lavelle and basir tarim the the group the council and the others asked some really good questions one of the questions was whether the developers would be willing to purchase the property directly themselves at that point in time the eda had contemplated perhaps buying the property and then turning around later and selling it to a developer so both developers indicated that they would be willing and able and actually i think preferred to be the direct buyer rather than have the eda be an and at that meeting i i shared that you know one of the next steps in my opinion would be for the eda to select a developer to work with at some point in time you've just got to you know pick a horse as they say and move forward so at the march 23rd eda meeting the the commissioners did select the team of uh jim lavelle and um besier tarim what they had shown uh here i believe was a i'm trying to remember because i've seen a couple of iterations of the plan i believe it was a five-story building and they have indicated a willingness to cut it back to perhaps four stories so that's one change that i'm aware of but as i said the eda did select that team for a number of reasons i think the scope of the project and the tax revenues that it would generate was a big issue another big issue was it was more apartment units which means more residents in our downtown area to you know to add some vitality to our downtown so the the next steps then working with mr lavelle and mr tarim they are in negotiations with the lilly family to purchase the property directly that as of this afternoon both parties hadn't signed the purchase agreement my understanding is that they're close and that they anticipate that would happen probably this week and then the eda would likely enter into a preliminary development agreement with the development team where really the purpose of that is the eda says we're not going to work with other developers it's kind of exclusive rights and the developer and that the eda would use our legal counsel to work on future issues related to this we'd also use our financial analysts to help us with looking at tiff if that in the the developers did indicate that they thought tiff was likely to be needed so we would analyze that they in turn would agree to reimburse us for those costs so it kind of just lays out some of the roles and responsibilities and i i would anticipate that would go back to the eda maybe not next week the ada meeting is next wednesday we may not be ready for that then but um certainly soon so like i said i just wanted to update you on that and if folks have any questions i'd be happy to answer them any questions for senior manager not any any other updates yeah just a quick one the so in 2017 the city council approved an employee policy manual and that includes the ability for employees to have flexible scheduling with some kind of rules around that and it also includes the ability for employees to do remote work and so as a staff we are looking to implement some of those policies where possible you know if differing employee groups have a differing ability to do this you know emergency personnel you know have a different need and maybe can't participate in these in the same way the reason i'm telling you this is it might come back to you because it's in the employee manual as it is it wouldn't need to come back to you except for the fact that some of our collective bargaining um contracts some of the provisions are a little different than what those agreements would say and so we may need to come back with a memorandum of understanding with the labor unions saying basically it would say we the labor union agree that this is a this is a benefit to us our members don't have to participate if they choose to participate and there's some contradictory language with our with our agreement that either our member would choose not to participate or would forgo challenging that so i just want to make you aware in case when that comes back you'll you'll be have an understanding of why we're doing that that's all i've got good any other questions for student manager if not reports of council and commissions committees council member one yeah i don't have anything new except the planning commission is going to meet this thursday here in the chambers at 6 30. the arts and culture commission is also meeting tomorrow in sandberg and i believe both commissions are still seeking applicants i think they close they're closed now okay they're closed now okay um and then as for the redevelopment master plan i was absent so i'll defer to council member thorson uh councilmember peterson yeah the nurse saint paul business association luncheon is next tuesday april 12th at noon at the legion and the speaker is our wsb [Music] engineer morgan dwelli correct that's not right is that wrong i'm sorry oh you're going to talk it's going to be a long meeting talk about the anchor view development and the parking lot behind i'm just kidding morgan i thought it was april fool's joke i guess not welcome it should be interesting the 19th avenue student built house it's got windows uh they started the sheetrock today insulation is in it's actually looking like a nice house so it's all getting buttoned down and those poor kids got bad weather though they're there every day i got to give them credit rain snow sleet but it's happening my minnesota woman's city government presents on the 22nd managing life and public service and that's going to be at 11 o'clock and um that's all i have thank you yeah that house over on 19th is looking really nice we did get a little tour the other day and it was they're working hard on that councilmember thurson excuse me the redevelopment master plan group met last monday we're continuing with updating and making revisions to that it's getting pretty close to being done to where it will go in front of the planning commission for review and comment the eda for review and comment and then we discussed the implementation rollout where we're going to have kind of a an open house i know i proposed possibly if there's a day or a meeting where there's kind of a light workshop or maybe not the need of a workshop that that open house could take place a workshop since we're already all going to be here for a meeting and staff will be here anyway so we're looking at that and then working at communicating with uh having a business association presentation getting feedback from those individuals and then kind of having a final plan that the council will eventually adopt and then rolling it out on our website in various ways so that's where we're at with that good uh general business council member wine um the food shelf is um working with uh fenn and the university of minnesota extension to um renovate and move into a new space and so i think it's coming along and they have three iterations of layouts and i think they finally are looking to propose one to the board so we should have something soon and they're moving pretty quickly all things considered so i hope that they'll probably move in in the next couple months i'd heard april 18th is kind of a soft move but might be sooner than a couple months i don't know we'll see we'll see we'll see we'll see so we got okay uh general business council member peterson yeah i just want to remind the general public that the cleanup day is april 30th we had a discussion at the workshop and that again is 8 2 11 is that right kerry and that'll be down at public works and they're going to have it really slick and so get all your stuff together and then the garage sale will be may 5th through the 7th and you can get a sign and your address posted for ten dollars so you can come down to city hall and see um somebody there and i want to just wish everybody happy easter thank you do we have a lot of people signed up for the garage sale seven okay uh councilmember thurston uh just a couple of quick observations along the lines of cleaning things up uh that little frontage road there's a charles it takes into burger king there seems to be an excessive amount of trash and garbage um i know we're kind of tailing the winter here and maybe they just haven't had a chance to see that since the snow has melted but it it looks pretty bad and you know i think code enforcement if they haven't already needs to go over there and look at that is it burger king well i think it's i don't know what the deal is with that little stretch if that's a private road or city road it's usually in pretty rough shape but it's that stretch of road and then on either sides it's private property and i don't think it's burger kings but there's tires and just garbage all over it and i noticed it because i ran the burger king quick for lunch and i thought oh my god you know i need to start taking pictures of this but just mention it i think it's still all there and probably getting worse but just worth noting i mean we gotta send a letter or something uh and then you know we've been talking about murals and the arts council and i noticed i think it's i don't know if the burwell is on that building or if it's uh is it cent or custom millwork but that large wall along next door to public works there's quite a bit of graffiti on there and i know they've had issues with that over time but if there's ever a candidate to work with the city and if i'm assuming that that's privately owned i don't know what what entity burwald's okay i mean that seems like a perfect canvas for a large mural that's highly visible from the highway from the frontage road and i'm sure they're sick of repainting that stuff not to say it's gonna stop but maybe if there's a nice mural there i think that's one of the candidates yeah okay so just wanted to bring that up as another area of kind of it's getting getting a little out of hand um so that's all i have and i have uh i invite the council uh this friday at three o'clock at the uh we have a ribbon cutting i think you all might have gotta invite it's the the business is our kids walk-in child care and that's at 24 70 mcknight and that's at friday at three o'clock we'll have a little red ribbon cutting also the business association's been invited and also the eda has been invited i would like to thank the rotary and business association and norma worms uh little elves helping they move the toy shelf this last saturday they moved it over to the new spot where the food shelf is going to be so normal is very happy at this time she's now in her new new spot and i think it's going to take her about a month to get it all situated there was a lot of stuff in that little building over there a lot of toys i was amazed and this last week was career day at north high i want to thank the public works the electric fire and police being at north high for career day at north high and with that i don't have anything else i'd like to wish everyone else a blessed easter also and if anybody has anything else before i close a meeting if you forgot anything otherwise the meeting ends at 7 6. if there's nothing else a motion to adjourn moved by council member peterson second taken by councilmember wong in your discussion post uh meeting is adjourned thank you everyone