This transcript is from a **July 21, 2020** meeting. Please note that while your provided list contains the current council (e.g., Jeppesen, Johnson, Nobach), the transcript reflects the council members serving at that time (**Bringgold, Duncan, Gesme, Lundell, and Matson**). Similarly, the City Administrator at the time was **Neil Jensen**. [6:16] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** good evening everyone welcome to the tuesday july 21st meeting of the city council for the city of cannon falls we have roll call please [6:28] **Sara Peer (City Clerk):** bringgold (here) duncan (here) gesme (here) lindell (here) matson (here) montgomery (here) [6:45] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** although here would you rise for the pledge of allegiance please i pledge allegiance one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [7:05] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** okay approval agenda do a motion approve the agenda [7:12] **Duncan (Council Member):** so moved [7:14] **Lundell (Council Member):** second [7:15] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** motion by duncan a second by lundell to approve the agenda any discussion all in favor aye opposed carried okay consent agenda consent agenda items may be adopted under one motion as presented or may be removed for discussion and resolution as console business for you in the audience and at home i will go through the consent agenda item a just incorrect claims for the accounting period ending july 17th 2020 item b minute meetings for the july 7th 2020 city council meeting [7:52] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** item c bituminous crackling crack sealing proposal item d resolution 2492 approving an agreement for an electric vehicle charging station for the city of canon falls item e resolution 2493 accepting a monetary donation of 750 from country financial for the ambulance department and item f resolution 2494. [8:26] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** accepting a modern monetary donation of two hundred and fifty dollars from gemini for the ambulance department is there anything the council like to pull down [8:38] **Matson (Council Member):** i'd like to pull down item c the crack ceiling proposal [8:41] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** okay we'll put that under console business as item c the crack ceiling proposal is there anything else [8:46] **Lundell (Council Member):** d [8:47] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** d i am they'll go under console business as d and that's a resolution of proving an agreement for an electric vehicle charging station for the city of cannon falls [9:13] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** anything else do i have a motion to accept the consent agenda minus item c and d [9:20] **Matson (Council Member):** so move [9:22] **Gesme (Council Member):** a second [9:24] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** motion by mass in a second by gives me to approve the consent agenda minus item c and d any discussion all in favor posed carried okay council business item a resolution 2495 approving a conditional use permit for john anderson neil you want to take that [10:01] **Neil Jensen (City Administrator):** this resolution is for a variance conditional use permit for the height of a garage from 16 to 24 feet this went through the public hearing in planning and zoning and was approved it was actually went through uh uh council here a couple meetings ago also and and you unanimously approved it then too but based on uh uh publishing error we are bringing it back to you [10:35] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** okay is there a motion to approve the conditional use permit for john anderson [10:41] **Bringgold (Council Member):** so moved [10:42] **Duncan (Council Member):** second [10:43] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** that motion by bringing all the second by duncan to approve resolution 2495 conditional use principle conditional use permit for john anderson any discussion all in favor aye opposed carried okay item b resolution 2496 conditional use permit for the valley view recovery center before we get into this i i will accept some public input tonight but something maybe new to this we've been through this about two or three times now twice at the planning and once a council if there's anything new you would like to say tonight you'll have three minutes to say that tonight so if there's anybody would like to talk you got three minutes now for right now [11:54] **Bill Gorman (Public Speaker):** anybody mr mayor yes if possible if we could put some kind of uh a place for outside a way so people can't see you know how people smoke in that like uh screen or winter i don't i don't know something like that is one thing i would like to see a screening area yeah you know right and it's good for rains and all this and uh second thing would be and i know we can't do it with this but uh i've talked to a lot of people and a lot of people have asked if in the future that you could get that kitchen in as soon as possible [12:50] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** i think that's kind of delving into their business but well it is but i understand people had because i understand your question because i don't think that's what we're here to answer [13:03] **Bill Gorman (Public Speaker):** i know but it's just just let him know [13:06] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** do you want me to come up to be part of the conversation now or do you want to continue discussion what's up [13:16] **Jacob (Valley View Recovery Center):** good evening everyone i'm jacob uh owner ceo of valley v recovery center so here to answer all your questions like that for sure um the screen for the smoking in my business plan one of the last pages is additional information and it would regard things one of them is smoking out back on the west side of the facility is going to be the only exit that people can smoke out of other than being supervised i do plan on putting up a screen there on let's say the north side of the building from that corner there is a sidewalk that comes around that corner of the building so there will be a little bit of a gap but enough to block some wind and some uh you know obvious that will be the boundary for where people would be able to smoke you know not out on the side of the building not out in front right i agree that's definitely a something that i've already been thinking of good the kitchen i do have plans i would love to have a kitchen in the facility when it comes to renovations and licensing getting the less amount of renovations in the middle of licensing process is usually ideal to continue licensing as quick as possible once i'm licensed i do have some plans with minnesota department of health to start updating more parts of the licensing or more parts of the kitchen area mainly the dishwashing and the cleanliness parts of uh you know going from a limited license you're you're you don't have all the amenities of a full kitchen so i would love to have a full kitchen in the facility in the future um part of that isn't be planning you know i'm not able to give a date or a time frame or not [15:11] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** any other questions for jacob hearing none is there any other discussion by the council hearing none is there a motion on resolution twenty four ninety six [15:43] **Matson (Council Member):** i move to approve resolution 2496 for the conditional use permit for valley view recovery center [15:52] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** do you want to add on the smoking area or uh [15:56] **Matson (Council Member):** yes as a as a condition as soon as possible to also fix that up [15:59] **Duncan (Council Member):** sure i'll second [16:01] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** okay there's a mush on the floor resolution 2496 for a conditional use permit or valley for the valley view recovery center with the condition of looking into that smoking area and screened off area at the on the property okay is there any other discussion let's take a vote i'd like a roll call vote on that [16:38] **Sara Peer (City Clerk):** bringgold (i) duncan (hi) guess me (hi) lindell (hi) matson (hi) montgomery (i) [16:55] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** okay by a vote of six to nothing there is a conditional use permit is granted for valley view recovery center thanks all for your time and consideration congratulations good luck okay item c the cracks crack ceiling proposal matt yeah uh when i saw that this was on the consent agenda i just wanted to bring it up [17:28] **Matson (Council Member):** excuse me matt [17:30] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** yes sir [17:31] **Matson (Council Member):** hey you guys got to stay for the whole thing this is this is so fun i wanted to pull this down just for discussion because um you know it's fifteen thousand dollars and it was never brought up in any public works uh and i'm wondering how we got to this because when i when i talked to the public works department i drove through that neighborhood those roads actually seem to be in pretty good shape compared to others i know we've got some neighborhoods picked out for the mill and overlay but even the ceiling and crack ceiling and that it just seems like how did we get to that neighborhood i'm just wondering for some clarification and to see if maybe we pull it and find a different neighborhood that might be in worse shape [18:07] **Neil Jensen (City Administrator):** well you have to sometimes in the near future we'll have to do a bituminous plan what we're trying to accomplish here is uh to keep the good streets in good condition so we can try and catch up with the worst streets um that take uh there's gonna be so a lot of mill and overlay going on in the near future but if we don't take care of the ones that are in marginal condition um with crack sealing or seal coating and and you know there's there's many thoughts out there in the public works world even with engineering on what is the best way of taking care of streets some people say crack sealing is is not a good thing to do some people say give them a mill an overlay as as a time wears on in 10 years and and some people say you got to keep their cracks filled even in the engineering field you're going to get different opinions from different people so with this we're trying to keep the the condition of them streets in in good condition so we can concentrate on our mills and overlays for uh um the future that 150 000 that we talked about at the work session can start to tackle some of them tougher streets that we have [19:28] **Matson (Council Member):** how much uh what's the timeline you think that the crack ceiling and steel coating does that buy you five years ten years more bang for your buck for 15 grand doing that instead of waiting to mill an overlay [19:38] **Neil Jensen (City Administrator):** well see there's uh there's that uh variance in people's opinion um there you know you'll get one that says that uh why bother and like i said some will say you can get 25 years if you continue with the practice um what's the right way of doing it let's see what the new engineering service says maybe the new public works director will have a different opinion so but we all i know is we have to continue to maintain uh the infrastructure that we have it was it was budgeted in the uh in the crack ceiling uh line item hence why you're seeing it today we can do other things with that we could probably do another block of mill and overlay if that's what you prefer we're getting two developments done with this project it's going to keep the water out of the sub base which is a big thing um but like i said there's there's differing opinions in in everybody's uh experience [20:47] **Matson (Council Member):** fair enough thank you [20:53] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** is there a motion to approve the crack ceiling proposal [21:00] **Duncan (Council Member):** so moved [21:01] **Lundell (Council Member):** second i'll second [21:03] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** motion by duncan a second by lundell to approve the cracks crack ceiling proposal any other discussion all in favor aye aye opposed carried okay item d was resolution 2492 approving an agreement for an electric vehicle charging station for the city can falls steve [21:36] **Steve Gesme (Council Member):** i'm not against anything except for the proposed location or the alternate location i think that i i'm not understanding why these are the only two options [21:51] **Laura Qualey (Community Development):** well we did go down we did take a walk down to the city parking lot and we figured that during the week and i guess i live here and i frequent downtown quite a bit um and those parking spots that i have as the first proposed location seem to be the last spots used in the parking lot which is weird because that's shaded i would rather park my car where it's shaded than any place else but that way it would keep um you know someone that is coming to charge their car isn't going to be leaving it there all day so that's why we didn't want to take up spaces that would be closer to the gazebo where like the trailhead would be um the zeph company that is would be um taking care of you know that we're entering an agreement with they ask that it be in a spot that's easily you know able to be found um there's already power down there because we did consider the overflow parking where like the park and ride would be or the other thing is that where the other overflow is that would be west of the park and ride in the winter time that's where they usually dump the snow so they're in there plus there's not power there so there would have to be power around there which wouldn't necessarily be an expense to us as the city but it's not a paid lot and they do require a paid lot and so that's what um neil and the mayor and i went down just kind of like trying to figure out what would be the best spots downtown in the city parking lot and that's what we determined so the the second proposed or alternative spots are actually owned by eltof and so that would have to be there would have be some type of agreement or something that would have to take place in order for us to use that as our secondary option [23:57] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** when this when this uh ze first came to town it was probably a year ago or more i think it was a couple years ago actually maybe it was they wanted to put it at casey's you know i i argued that i thought i thought they said casey's or super america originally well they wanted casey's for sure but i argue that why not put it downtown i mean they gotta charge for at least 30 minutes probably an hour i mean brings people downtown to look around i guess so that's why we argued for downtown [24:34] **Laura Qualey (Community Development):** yep completely unrelated but the giant powers board of the trail they approved electric charging stations at the station in welch was it two or was it four i think it was two chargers with two chargers with four possibilities which is similar i think the exact same what we have here uh and they did a quick little study of how many electric vehicles parked there and so not just the location of instead of a gas station but the people who bring their bikes down here or their canoes or whatever to use that parking lot so they can charge while they go out and ride so i think it's a big deal [25:12] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** yeah just for general information this isn't costing us anything no this all came from a lawsuit against volkswagen when that emissions thing a couple years ago and this is part of a grant we got all we got to do is provide the location [25:25] **Lundell (Council Member):** right how do people with electric cars find out about the location are there signs or [25:28] **Laura Qualey (Community Development):** there's actually an app um this does it too on some cars it'll say it'll have a plug but there's actually um plug i i forget what the actual app is called um rate no not rate plug that's a mortgage thing um my banking brain is coming out anyway there is an app that um does highlight where the different charging stations are around the nation it's not just for minnesota or whatnot um and i think that this is really like i said it's not a moneymaker for the city but it certainly is a great way to pull people off of 52 for 30 40 minutes and you know they're right smack dab in the middle of downtown if we were ever to consider doing a charging station in the future it would be out of our pocket so i think that i don't know why we're one of one each one of 22 cities in minnesota selected and i think that um it's certainly a great opportunity for us to do that [26:14] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** yeah i agree there aren't many around and we've got an opportunity between the cities and rochester we're going to be it [26:19] **Laura Qualey (Community Development):** yep and even coming from northfield to red wing i mean people coming through that corridor i think again it's another it's a reason for people to stop [26:28] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** other questions [26:33] **Lundell (Council Member):** that's great [26:34] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** not a question but location where do you want it tell you after the meaning um oh my gosh the uh [26:47] **Steve Gesme (Council Member):** we've discussed this this area before in the past and um i i just feel it's too congested right there plus you're gonna have the people that are plugging in there aren't going to be from town they're going to you already said they're probably going to be visitors yep so they're going to be a little bit iffy on how that little parking lot system works there and i would sure like to see it straight west of the eltof option on that row right down on the end [27:17] **Laura Qualey (Community Development):** we do need to have a handicap accessible space so that again is why we also chose the the first location that we did um because they need to have make it so that it's ada compliant for a van so even if it's not a handicapped spot there are extra lines to the right of that first spot when you enter in that so it would be kind of it would be kind of like the lines to the left of the last slot on the alternate look so that would um that would qualify because they said either five spots if you didn't have a handicap accessible otherwise four spots with um the extension like those lines for an ada accessible van and again you know charging station i mean a car is going to be there for 30 minutes it's not going to they're not going to be parked there all day long so there's going to be a lot of in and out right there at the entrance and accident and i think it's going to cause an issue but that's just i'm one of six that's all i got [28:28] **Bringgold (Council Member):** how do they pay is it just like a gas station where they put in a card and [28:34] **Laura Qualey (Community Development):** yep and it's about five dollars i asked the um the guy from how much it costs and he says about five dollars which is a pretty typical rate and we will be provided reporting to show how often it's used and um according to the agreement zeff needs to keep those that charging station there for five years even if it's not getting any action um and it they will provide signage so that people are aware that it is a um a charging station if we're finding that you know regular driver irregular cars are parking there um you know it's something that maybe would have to look for in the future i was looking for jeff um you know if we have to pass an ordinance you know at some point that like we've got people that are taking up the spaces that aren't charging their vehicles you know are we going to ticket them that's something that we'd have to visit in the future but for right now i mean it's just kind of a good faith you know that people would you know not monopolize that parking space unless they actually are using it for its purpose [29:25] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** let's hope the parking lot's busy enough right so that we have the problem [29:28] **Laura Qualey (Community Development):** yep [29:30] **Gesme (Council Member):** i'm gonna talk to the other businesses along the main drive there to see if they cared which parking location [29:37] **Laura Qualey (Community Development):** um i did not talk to um like i didn't talk to sue's garage sale i didn't talk to them and as far as like i know some of the employees that work at family fair instead of taking up their parking they park on the other side they park on the west side of the city parking lot during the week [30:12] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** was there a motion to approve the charging station do you want to put in there where you want it how is it determined which spot will be picked do we pick [30:26] **Laura Qualey (Community Development):** well we own the part we own the part that i have as my first option the second the alternative option we'd have to make a deal with ltf hardware they'd probably just give it to us probably maintain it too don't you think [30:49] **Matson (Council Member):** i'll i'll make a motion to approve resolution 2492. with the primary site that laura has provided for us [31:02] **Duncan (Council Member):** i'll second that [31:04] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** okay there's been a motion and a second to approve the electric charging station with the original plot is there any discussion on that all in favor aye opposed no (one) one opposed passes five to one okay council committees and commissions chamber kyle called me she could not be here tonight from the chamber but she wanted me to report that the august 9th fun fest has been canceled and also that the chamber golf tournament has been cancelled so i hate to see that but they're going to try to have a fun fest in september she told me so okay the eda laura [31:51] **Laura Qualey (Community Development):** uh just a few updates um our eda we did approve a loan for seven thousand dollars to the land owner um that owns the spot in between the beacon and caldwell banker um there's some soil a final phase of the soil testing contamination that needs to be done before he can proceed with any type of plans so he has he will he does have an application that's been approved by the petrol fund which reimburses up to 90 percent of the cost of the borings that he needs to have done so the 7 000 that we made him is basically just to get the job done and then once he gets that reimbursement back from um back from the petrol fund then he will pay the ed eda off in that lump sum and we did have him put down 15 i believe to make sure that we covered our our end at least so that we would be able to get that back and it's a 12-month agreement is what that is but um i would think that that project will probably be done yet this year so i'm not sure how long the turnaround time to get reimbursed from the petrol fund is could be four to eight weeks i think is what he said from the last from the last phase that he had done so we're kind of basing it off of that timeline but it won't be more than 12 months canada valley senior center we did have i enlisted the help of dan bassett who is a local guy from ran alumni from randolph anyway he's a digital marketing web designer and he donated some of his time and then we also used some of our blandin dollars to get the canada valley senior center's website updated and rebranded and it's a little more responsive it'll be easy for their whether it is their own members or their eda or not their ed director um their senior center director to make some of those changes and update that so it'll be a little more user friendly for them because right now it's very outdated because nobody knows how to um to manage the content so that just launched a few weeks ago and like i said dan donated about half of his time which probably should have been about two thousand dollars to have that done and he donated like 750 dollars worth of his time toward that so i thought that was pretty good so um so that is that one i did apply for a smith small towns grant so it's a southern minnesota initiative foundation they are doing they were accepting applications through the 30th of this month for a ten thousand dollar grant to go towards cities to help offset any impacts from the coved pandemic so i submitted that grant last week and i probably we probably wouldn't hear back until end of august i would assume just because of the deadline being july 30th and with those funds my proposal was to use those dollars to help promote cannon falls and to drive tourism and business back into the community so with that i reached out to a digital marketing firm out of red wing who i've partnered with in a previous lifetime and they put together a proposal based on a five thousand dollar a ten thousand dollar and a twenty thousand dollar grant proposal based on what we end up receiving we may not get the whole 10 000 it might be up to that but i figure why not be prepared to spend those dollars if we get it we could implement that right away you approve my charging station thank you very much um the eda and the eic subcommittee met uh just yesterday well it seems like a long time ago already um just to talk about the future of the cannonball site once it's cleaned up they did get the guts of it cleaned out last week so the building should be coming down shortly but we just kind of wanted to have a game plan you know different connections network that we have to see what would best fit that site what are our marketing plans for that in the future so we all kind of had our action items so that we can proceed with that as that building comes down and the site gets cleaned up we're ready to ready to roll and get something back on it um the cares act fund um this is something that uh the mayor and i have kind of taken this under our wing as far as trying to learn the guts of the new cares act funding that the city received um it was just a little over three hundred thousand is that correct three or three hundred and ten yeah three hundred ten thousand dollars that we somehow can put back into our city and community to help offset some of the costs that were incurred because of the pandemic so another one of those government programs they toss out there without any rules so we have to kind of fumble around but they're becoming more defined day by day so hopefully by the next um council meeting we'll have some ideas as to how we can maybe split that up and how we can maybe do some there's been some um some things that have happened here at you know like with the dmv putting up the glass the protective glass maybe it's redesigning something so that you know we can have safe social distancing but it can also be uh we can also do some small business grants back to our businesses to help offset some of the costs that they incurred either because they were closed or um you know business obviously isn't back at 100 capacity so anything that's unbudgeted and obviously due to a loss we can we'll create some type of program to help out our small businesses and i did find out today too that we are also able to if necessary um you know we'll talk with superintendent sampson but uh we are able to transfer some of that money to another government agency such as the school if they've exhausted their funds that they've received um that's also another option but that's for another day to discuss but um anyway but we have until november 15th to spend that money or it goes back to the county which then goes back to the state which then goes back to the fed switch so i think we don't want that so i think that we just need to you know get creative within the boundaries um that are allowed and like i said new rules are coming out daily but i think that if we start you know planning for how we can put that and reinvest it back into our community is going to be the best use of those funds [38:32] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** yeah i think we'll have more guidelines by say our next meeting august 4th and then maybe we should have a special meeting in the council just to discuss where to because there will be reporting features even if we give it back to businesses you know we can't just cut a check and spread it around evenly businesses have to be able to prove that they have um that they have expenses that are outstanding from the pandemic so if we give someone five thousand dollars but they really only have twenty five hundred dollars in expenses then what i mean we have to document all of that so that business wouldn't qualify for five thousand dollars they qualify for 2500 so that's what we would figure out so but it's a daily it's an ever-changing change in the program so um and then john you had mentioned or mr mayor sorry uh you had mentioned that uh chamber has a couple events canceled [39:24] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** yes [39:26] **Laura Qualey (Community Development):** but kyle did reach out to me because she was going to be gone tonight and she did say that they'd like to have some type of summer sizzling days in i think it's the last friday in august where businesses can um you know have a table out front you know whether it's selling items or that kind of thing kind of a flashback to the old crazy days so it it would also give businesses an opportunity like maybe some of our fun fest vendors or something that would maybe be set up you know if we close down that since we're not having that maybe set up in front of some of the businesses that don't have a retail front you know like our insurance agencies or our realtors or something like that um so her question something to think about is if she would need to have any type of permit to have that type of event um and i guess i don't know if we go back to crazy days if that was if there was ever a permit pulled for that type of thing no streets will be blocked off she just wanted to make sure that it was okay to proceed with that event um without any type of closure or restriction so like i said there won't be any streets closed like fun fest it would just be people on the street or on the sidewalk i'm sorry [40:48] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** well we never had a permit in the past [40:50] **Laura Qualey (Community Development):** i didn't think so but i i was a child when we didn't used to be able to get a lot for 50 cents grab bags so but that is that is all i have for eda [41:03] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** okay okay thank you planning commission i've just mentioned that the two items that were the planning commission were the two items we had in the console business tonight i will mention the planning commission's next meeting will be in august 17th because of the elections and getting ready for the elections we moved it down down a week so will there be a meeting for sure yeah yeah august 17th uh library board nicole anything [41:38] **Nicole Miller (Library Director):** yeah um i just wanted to give you an update of what's going on at the library um we have actually been pretty busy with our browsing and computer appointments and with curbside curbside service is very very very popular and we're happy to do it and also our mystery grab bags are just as popular people are now catching on that we're happy to pick out books or movies for you all you have to do is say i'm interested in this can you give me like five movies or can you pick out 10 books for me like children's books or like three or four adult books and we're happy to to pick them out and check them out to you and bring them for curbside but then again people are still welcome to come in for a half hour appointment for browsing and a 45 minute appointment for using computers we do like to do the um the appointments because that is really good for contact tracing just in case heaven forbid there is any kind of infection even though we're doing everything we can to sanitize and put protective measures in everywhere we go um i we are still doing some programming i have story time in the park it had been at riverside park but i've moved it to east side park on mondays at 10 a.m and doing tai chi in the park on fridays at noon at eastside park also so if anybody is interested in coming to that we've got three more weeks of that and i believe three more weeks of story time and then we will be working on fall programming don't know yet if it's gonna be outside hybrid online or what we are doing our book clubs with zoom so if you don't have an internet access you can still call in and participate and i have a program coming up this is going to be an experiment but i it should be a fun one it's called watercolors for peace so i picked out five really nice quotes about peace and love and people can pick out which quote they want which font they want it in we can print it out on watercolor paper and i have some images that then you can transfer and then the program is going to be you in your own home and me via zoom teaching you how to do this craft but you would just need to provide your own sharpie and pencil and scissors and watercolor paints all of which really is not expensive and um i'm sad to say that cindy zierden our children's librarian of 15 plus years is retiring and we have hired a replacement alexa otaki who is from canon falls as our children's librarian and i believe it's going to be a fabulous match and she's going to do wonderful things with our children and right now i'm working with cindy on some kind of a drive-by goodbye and so that people can say goodbye and thank you for all of her years of service and then finally laura didn't touch on this but she and i have been trying working together trying to find ways that the library can get more hot spots to loan we currently have three and they are very popular and we we really can't keep one in the library for longer than a day or two so it there's definitely a need for more library or for more hot spots to loan out and i anticipate that if the schools end up going online this year that we'll need that students and families will need more hot spots so we're working on on finding ways to to use some some grant money and possibly bland and money if we can make that work to secure some more hotspots for the library and that is everything that i have planned do you have any questions for me [45:54] **Matson (Council Member):** that's a valid question i'm wondering you know we were just talking about the cares money from the from the state that we'd have to get back to the county to the st you know laura went through the whole wonderful thing i wonder if hot spots would be a legitimate purchase certainly something really good technologically they're not terribly expensive i mean we're talking about putting a few in the parks maybe we could put them in all the parks you know [46:21] **Nicole Miller (Library Director):** and i got an email today from techsoup for the mobile beacon hotspots which are if we pay up front if they require it up front it's 120 per hot spot for the year so we could potentially buy a few and it wouldn't be expensive and the service is good [46:42] **Matson (Council Member):** well yeah and the the thing with having that hot spot is you know you just add that much more bandwidth to the household and we're going to have we're going to have more working from home we're going to have a lot more distance learning it's just it's going to be the way things are for a while and this might be a really good way to bridge that gap between those of us in town with all our great internet service and the people out in the rural areas who may not have as much i don't know i think it's a thought [47:11] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** yeah that's a good thought thank you for bringing it up yeah anything else for nicole thank you nicole thanks uh park board matt you got something [47:20] **Matson (Council Member):** yeah the park board discussed where we're at with the pool they had an inspector come and i believe the pump got a passing grade and now the next step is to look at the lines to see how the pipes where they're fractured how bad they are and if if they're okay to run as is or if they need to be replaced in whichever way we would have to uh replace them but that's that's the next step in um in the pool uh study to see what our next step is gonna be uh in the future uh we also talked about uh we've invited the school to have a representative at our park board meeting in august to discuss the tennis courts and hopefully to create a relationship between the city and the school board dividing up the cost of the tennis courts because we've had this discussion but uh there is nothing written down um if the tennis courts belong to the school if they belong to the city because they're the only tennis courts in town the old tennis courts that by the pool are no more so we've invited the school to open up that dialogue and then also the hot spots in the park we talked about that if we can get some of those hot spots and we approved the use of east side hannah's bend and riverside and we talked about the how far out the services to see if riverside how far that would reach if that would reach veterans memorial as well maybe even don mensing across the river and just to see what kind of service that would get so that when people are you know letting their kids play in the parks they can be on their phone and use not have to use data and instead use the hot spots that's it [49:15] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** is there any status on the west side park yet [49:17] **Matson (Council Member):** west side park has been approved uh when they're gonna start no no dates set on uh construction but it is approved and green lit we're we're just waiting [49:24] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** okay let's go around chief you got something [49:28] **Jeff McCormick (Police Chief):** david anything nothing thank you [49:33] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** yeah neil [49:34] **Neil Jensen (City Administrator):** we've got a couple items you asked about the west side park they're actually going to get started next wednesday that came in uh unexpectedly today so they're going to get it ready and they're showing up so you'll see some activity so the second thing i'm going to uh probably want to talk about is the cares funding and how we had a good you county meeting with the administrators and the county administrative staff today and they discussed many items of what their thoughts are and how they're going to spend some of their money so it was a great meeting and i can bring that to the council you know some of the things they were talking about is uh uh updating the the technology in here if we're gonna be in this zoom stuff for a long time um maybe uh mike could help us out and and see if there's some updates that uh if if somebody's talking over there we can get a camera that can point i was on the zoom meeting last uh planning commission i couldn't see that portion of the council chambers and maybe we could get some stuff a lot of things that that was discussed and i can share that with you we're going to have a design review meeting for the trail grant that we got that's coming up in the next week or so and you'll be seeing that on the second meeting of august and then we'll for approval and we'll go out for bids on that and hopefully we can get that thing put in yet this year tomorrow night we've got public works uh director position interviews uh steve mayer we're going to be doing them at i believe five o'clock so we'll probably have some information at the next council meeting on that position and you mentioned the planning and zoning meeting has changed so i got you got that covered so that's all i have for today [51:40] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** okay well let's go around the horn here at the console morris you got anything nope mary jill matt steve [51:53] **Steve Gesme (Council Member):** uh just one thing for jeff um i've been approached by a couple residents in cannon falls and i've witnessed it myself that this seems to have created another lane at the top of the stop lights again seems to be a lot of abuse there again if any [52:12] **Jeff McCormick (Police Chief):** we've noticed an uptick in the number of vehicles using that as a turn lane only so i'm going to visit with the mndot people again and then we're also trying to get the beacon to run another story uh and then do some educational traffic stops probably [52:32] **Steve Gesme (Council Member):** yeah because the the street crossers you know they get complacent when we're all following the rules except for a few of them yeah i've heard from a couple of residents uh specifically on the the pedestrian use and people not paying attention to them so yeah he had a car just zoom in right to the right of me the other day and it's like whoa it's a good thing i know what i'm doing because this could have been an accident because i was turning that's all i have [53:14] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** derek the only thing i've got is i i should probably mention something about the downtown parking lot all the trees came down there the other day and i got a lot of emails and a lot of calls you know at the last meeting we approved tree replacement down there i guess we should have probably had a motion or something to take down the trees because we took down some pretty big trees but the idea being that the trees had matured to the fact that they were starting to make the concrete eve and the pavement so they really had to be replaced and we approved you know the replacement of those trees at the last meeting so he was hiring everybody was everybody was emailing me and calling me but that was the reason for it so just so everybody's aware of it so that's all i got so we'll get right into public input citizens may speak to issues not on the agenda before speaking please give your name and address for the record and kindly limit your comments to three minutes public comments may be must be respectful pertinent to city business and adhere to applicable data privacy rules the city council will not take action on any issue raised by the public but maybe may choose to schedule consideration of the item on a future agenda i'll open the public input [54:39] **Bill Gorman (Public Speaker):** babel gorman um i have been wanting to talk to you matt but this is good as any um i was at the park board meeting and it seemed to me as though quite a few people members of the park board were concerned about the tennis courts being locked and it's good that you're getting together with the school and going to get an agreement um this kind of happened with john burge park too i don't think there's ever been an agreement made and see it's real hard for you to own a tennis court on the school's property now i know that you gave money it's good that you'd have an agreement but it appeared as though there was a lot of discussion about the school not maintaining those tennis courts well i kind of waited for somebody to say something and nobody ever did that's what's going on down to our swimming pool and you guys chose to just lock the pool the pool has not been maintained properly and it's obvious i happen to be in somewhat of an expert in cement and we heard the song and dance about the three to four weeks of the public works crew and i brought that up was going to take them to get it ready well we found out it was only one person we found out that person wasn't patching the pool that person isn't painting the pool it's all done by others not the public works crew and it's just odd to me that we sit here and publicly announce rumor and things that are less than factual and we should stick to the facts and there was a member of the public works staff that was at the meeting that mentioned that we already have 12 parks that we don't maintain all that well and one of them is hannah's been and there was a fence down for like six weeks down there the water just got turned on ironically the day that you held your park board meeting last thursday and i took my grandchildren canoeing this weekend the canoe rentals closed down which is their choice i went to hannah's ben the gate's locked so if you catch what i'm trying to tell you is that yes the school decided to close their tennis courts they're theirs they can do that but don't complain because you're closing the pool it affects many more people than use that tennis court and your closing hand is bent that's all i'm saying so get the facts straight maintain your own stuff and then get an agreement with the school because we haven't got one with john birch park yet to my knowledge i could be wrong [57:57] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** anybody else public input public input third and final call public input [58:19] **Tim Diemer (Public Speaker):** i hope i can get through this without i said it seems like i don't want to be the br always ending up not so positive note but um i'm tim diemer cannon falls 29-year resident so for so i think we bought i would like to just say that i'm like to see the demeanor of some of uh what was spoken tonight and how it was um makes a difference but i was i don't know if it seems like this is something that's i don't know if there's a statue of limitations in terms of stuff that's been going on um that that i've just been bottling up i guess you could say and has to do partly with customer service and one good thing about these masks you cannot don't have to shave and you still can i wasn't trying to make any but if i had somebody else speaking on my half just go that better um i don't know if anybody's familiar with this a pledge kind of nothing nothing like the pledge we say at the beginning of every meeting but it's a pledge to make it okay it's cards i've had for a while i would like to pass these out to the the council members and the mayor and police chief and whoever else but to say they're um just three steps to about learning more start talking and pass it on you can do the pledge online i guess i'm just reading this now i'm i haven't looked at these for quite some time but um there's one thing that the uh instructions i guess it's says here for the public input that the commission the mayor and the council members that are present will not take action on any issue raised by me or during public input but they may choose to schedule consideration of the item on future agendas so i'm asking i don't know how to put this in words but things that have been a a challenge uh frustration just because of how um no it's it just seems like somebody can it's okay for somebody to be a little somewhat disrespectful or be uh disturbing it has some of it has to do with being using the library and i asked them politely and there's no talking that was going on i asked if they could well i don't i don't want to take them all the time to explain the whole thing but i would like to um how do i i'd like to it's i don't know investigate or make uh just to be heard and and i don't know who or when or how to do it i'd like i'd like to like i said it's it's been something happened a couple weeks ago something really crazy happened to grocery store where i asked um the police about it and they went and looked at the video and somebody just completely kind of took me by surprise even i could you know going through the exit of a checkout lane and the guy just kept walking towards me a guy from town here and he just taken a step closer and closer and i was not sure what was going on i asked him ask him about you know give me six feet or whatever proper um you know whatever guidelines and he went so i started taking steps back to where i stepped all the way back out of the aisle he just pretty much just plowed through me and i i don't understand how i mean people just get and it kind of has to do with the model i don't know if you call it or the the the um i'm sorry i'm taking up a little more in three minutes and or the or the uh slogan that they have in the back of the the police i believe they still have it um about you know to to always do the right thing i don't know if i'm i'm kind of paraphrasing this to do what is right always there's there's a couple key words here always and the word right well if you ask about you know if you ask somebody what is right um i guess it's really it comes down to it's it it depends on who you ask and so i'm just oh i just keep putting people to sleep the more i talk so i'm just hoping for if you can put to take um to choose to schedule a consideration of i don't know what the item would be [1:04:19] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** if i could give some help we can't comment him but we'll look into it [1:04:31] **Tim Diemer (Public Speaker):** that's what you i've said it other ways before you keep saying that to look into it how you how so how are you going to look into it [1:04:46] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** i'm not allowed to comment so i don't know [1:04:54] **Tim Diemer (Public Speaker):** so you can but you may choose to schedule consideration anyway you're going over your three minutes [1:05:14] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** we'll talk about it when when yeah i can't comment on it so [1:05:17] **Tim Diemer (Public Speaker):** so you're choosing not to get it says you may choose to schedule a consideration of the item on a future agenda [1:05:24] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** okay anybody else public input don't have an answer don't have an answer so what does that mean that you ain't gonna choose then either way you don't wanna make a choice i have no comment i can't comment tim you've come i've heard plenty of comments both outside of i just need i'll make a motion to adjourn and maybe we can talk off camera [1:06:06] **Matson (Council Member):** second [1:06:08] **Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** okay motions are made by matt and a second by steve maybe maybe all in favor aye aye opposed adjourned