uh and you know i think the council was asking me for my immediate kind of like what are you seeing what do you think um and i shared that i thought that the staff was understaffed in a few key areas and the feedback i got was people saw that as well and also when i was going through the recruitment process several council members had expressed a willingness to add an additional position to the administration or community development department so i think i guess that's all to say i think we're all on the kind of the same page that there's a need overall the city eliminated 11 fte positions and added 6.25 positions most of which were at a lower pay grade for a net reduction of almost five positions from mid 2018 to the end of 2021 so in a two and a half year period uh that was a reduction of eight percent of the city staff and that's a sizeable reduction the workload didn't reduce by 8 percent over those same years and in a lot of ways the workload's gotten more complex we're adding a lot of households through redevelopment so there are more residents to serve so again i don't think i'm telling you anything you don't know that there's a need out there so the department directors and i we've had some really in-depth conversations about staffing needs and we all agree that there's a need to evaluate the long term and we don't want to be in a hurry to do that we want to take our time and make sure we're giving you some good proposals we also don't know exactly how we would fund some of those long term things so we want to wait until the 2023 budget discussion to talk about the longer term staffing needs but what we do want to talk about are some needs in 2022 or in the case of the finance department really a need in 2021 because it's been sitting out there as a unfilled position so the immediate needs are a reorganization of our finance department the addition of a police officer to meet needs arising from turnover and leaves a community development and or community services director and then evaluating a couple of positions to make sure we've got them properly placed in the pay scale in terms of the finance department the former accountant resigned from their position in november and so for those four or five months the finance department has been operating short staffed those are really a critical four or five months in terms of doing all the year-end work that needs to be done and so dan and his team have really stepped up and been working kind of over and above for sure and i think everybody recognizes that director winik evaluated his staff structure in the fall and based on the needs of the department and the recommendations of our auditors he's been advocating a restructuring since late last year uh you know i think even before i started uh director winnick was was telling me about you know what his ideas were and uh so this is something he's put a lot of thought into and he really wants to make sure that we're allowing for redundancies uh and cross-training and job responsibilities and dan said he wanted me to kind of take some of this on are you sure you want me to hand this off to you all right allowing for redundancies and cross-training and job responsibilities to better accommodate variances in the needs of the community to have adequate backup in the case of absences or staff turnover improving in accounting and financing processes and internal controls aiding in succession planning and helping to retain excellent staff that we have and better attract new employees so this year's approved budget does include the position of accountant director winnick believes that the needs of the organization and the community would be better served by expanding the roles of several existing positions instead of hiring a new accountant the recommendation is to reclassify two existing positions they're a g7 and a g8 a senior billing technician and a utility building coordinator as two g10 grade 10 finance accounting coordinator positions and when the employees currently filling those roles move up you know they leave vacancies behind them a couple people move up into those and they leave vacancies behind them and a couple and one person moves up into that and one would get filled externally so all of this would be able to be implemented without any increase to the net number of personnel or without any increases to the personal expenditures that were approved in the budget so it's an it's a budget neutral and maybe even a budget positive step that allows us to have the tools that that the finance department needs with the police department the city council did approve one additional sergeant and one additional part-time cso in 2021 but it's been nearly impossible to achieve actual staffing levels that were intended or that allow the police department to safely provide the level of service that's needed in the community and i think i keep walking by something that just reminds me of this over and over and over again right out on the wall there there's the pictures of all the police departments or police officers and there's frames for everybody we've never had pictures while i've been here in all those frames because of the turnover because of people out for various reasons and we want to make sure there's pictures in all the frames is kind of what it comes down to we've got the positions just by circumstances we're never able to fill them all and we by adding one additional police department we feel like we can we can get it fully staffed and um give me a second we can get fully staffed in a way that is we can accommodate in the budget there were budget savings in 2021 i don't like the word surplus but they're um that's the best that's the only word i can come up with at the time for 2021 there was a our expenditures were less than that we expected uh and our revenues were either uh greater than expected or or they offset in a way that um we came out ahead and so we are able to use 2021 savings to help fund this additional police officer i'm recommending that it be i'm calling it an augmentation of our police force um and that it would be in place for the entirety of 2022 and that we reevaluate it as part of the 2023 budget process it could be very well that we say let's keep doing this while there's funding available and while there's a need on the other hand the police department could completely stabilize we could get people in have them stay in place hopefully have fewer people out with injuries and stabilize the police department where the chief may feel more comfortable with the staffing levels so if we if we did conclude that we no longer needed the position for those reasons we would eliminate a position now we wouldn't eliminate this new hire we would eliminate a position through attrition meaning that in 2023 or beyond when a police officer were to retire on their own volition or resign and move to a different place we just wouldn't fill the position i think that that helps meet the needs that chief babenroth sees i don't think that it meets all of all of his hopes and goals and we did attach a study that the chief wanted to share with you and i don't know if you want to tag on to that a little bit about the future yeah just a couple a couple of things so one additional police officer would help in the immediate where we're hoping to have four officers on each shift on each on each team we currently don't have that with the addition of one police officer we'd be able to have four across the board so all all days and nights we have four on each team so that's three officers and one sergeant to make up that four we currently don't in our staffing model i don't know if you saw that staffing breakdown that i included in my not so short write-up for everyone but one would get us so 19 authorized would give us four in each team day and night and then i would also hope that uh looking forward we have uh two more additional officers one for uh one as a a a backup to our current one investigator because they're currently operating where we're seeing increase of caseloads that they've got since 2016 and at the end of the day if there's only one person in that position that means that that one investigator has a tough time taking a vacation because the work doesn't go away when they're on vacation it just piles up so they know that they can't truly enjoy their time away knowing that it works to their benefit to get back sooner so they don't have a growing pile of work to do and the caseload that they're that the our investigator is seeing being increasing for the past couple years it makes sense for us to be able to take a more proactive approach on the investigation side by having a second investigator third one that i would hope to bring on eventually is a community service officer a dedicated police officer that is their their sole responsibility and is getting out into the community and doing presentations for crime prevention and then also helping us out for vacation relief on the street to reduce overtime but those are the the hopefully not too long term of goals that i would have so three is really the total number but one in the immediate as city manager stark said if we had one more we'd be able to round out each team at four officers days and nights i'm kind of hearing conflicting uh so in the near future i mean for we'd hire one correct for the 2022 yep but in the future you're thinking hiring two more two more would be twenty in a great three places budget and i think that's discussion that we would have yep or whatever but for the for right now we're looking at the the one position correct and then discussion this summer with the budget you'll be recommending possibly two correct okay yeah and like i said the department directors we we sat down and discussed this as a group and i think there are going to be needs everywhere and i'm sure they're going to have to be compromises you know you can't always get what you want as they say hopefully we can it'd be nice if we could but we would like to come to you kind of in a in a more holistic way later in the year and say here are the the longer term needs and the resources we would need to fill those so we'll get there and that's why the other department of directors are here is to kind of support that um that they are um fine with having a more limited discussion tonight about 2022 but they're looking forward to having a broader discussion about the future years the other piece in the police department we do have a position currently i think the title is police administrative assistant but they manage and administer all of the records and it's a really sought after position by police forces all over the metro and they're we believe they're performing job functions that exceed the job specification the job description so we'd like to bring in we'd like to review the job description review the pay for that and we would look to kind of an outside consultant to help us look at that to make sure it's appropriately placed we want to retain we want we want to be paying the right prices for the right services and retain our employees so that's something we would look at in terms of community development or community services since 2018 the combined staffing for community development and administration has been cut by nearly 50 percent the positions which were completely eliminated include a community development director a community services director and a parks and recreation coordinator the responsibilities of some other positions which were eliminated during the past four years have been outsourced to consultants including a our building inspector a planning technician and our communications coordinator the result of the staff elimination and contraction is that the city manager is now effectively the department director of administration community development and community services and i don't feel like i can adequately manage all those functions and in that many direct reports i currently have nine direct reports in a manner that allows the community to grow and evolve in the ways that i'm hearing that you and the community members envision so i'm proposing that we add the position of community development or community services director among the responsibilities of the position would be to supervise the community development staff which is planning zoning and building inspections to manage long-range planning in conjunction with our wsb planning staff to assist the eda executive director in managing redevelopment projects in business assistance programming to assist the hra executive director and so just be clear the eda and hra executive director is me to assist in creating and managing housing programming and to assist the city manager and community development staff in creating implementing and managing recreation programs kind of in the near term we'll address the the far term again when we talk about the budget several of our peer cities with population counts close to ours do have a community development director including little canada mounds view and vadness heights my recommendation would be that the position be at a grade 18. currently our department directors vary from grade 18 to grade 23 with a starting salary range of 102 to 112 000 plus benefits since the position would do work associated with the city planning zoning and business inspections the eda and the hra the recommendations the funding would generally be a 50 eda 30 city and 20 hra i would also recommend increasing the percentage of my time that's allocated to the eda the current allocation is 10 percent and i would anticipate anticipate spending more time on eda activities so i would probably look at it bumping mine up to more like 15 going toward the eda which would free up some of the general fund money that's spent on me the eda's been anticipating the addition of staff with unallocated funds of 107 000 in their 2022 budget and the hra budgeted approximately 47 000 for an unfilled position in the 2022 budget an ongoing funding commitment from the general fund to cover the 30 percent of the employees salary and benefits would need to be addressed as part of the future budget and levy considerations we don't think that that 30 would be burdensome enough to be a concern uh when i talk about this position you'll note i keep saying community development slash community services and not one or the other i'd want to have some flexibility in the naming of the position and the job responsibilities and the reason for that is um you know every candidate has a different skill set and i'd want to make sure whoever we hire we're kind of capitalizing on their on their best skills so if somebody came to us with more a little more parks and recreation experience we might tweak it a little bit or if they come to us with a little more redevelopment experience so i just want to be responsive to the people in the job market and then finally the deputy clerk and the city manager the deputy clerk slash city manager executive assistant position that position which is held by jenny cloos i've reviewed the responsibilities of that position and i've determined that it's been conducting job responsibilities that exceed those that are in the job description a lot of the responsibilities are human resources work and some things that which are otherwise reserved solely for department directors including routine policy level interaction with elected officials the ability to independently manage administrative items in the city council agenda the ability to independently approve invoices and a limited ability to take some disciplinary action the position is currently a grade 10 position i am recommending that the job description be updated to show actual duties performed plus some additional duties and reclassified somewhere between g12 and g15 the pay grade that is ultimately chosen would be so done so in consultation with the city attorney and with a human resources professional the main issue to determine is whether the responsibilities meet the fair labor standards act definition of an exempt or salaried employee currently the city's lowest exempt position is g15 and so sorin has some human resources background as well and he would help me with that exempt test you go through kind of a series of questions does the employee do this this this this and if the answer is yes to any of these then they're likely an exempt employee so that's a lot of talk about positions and i think i'm going to pause it there and give you a chance to ask questions about the positions we've been talking about let's go ahead and let's go back to the first one and that would be the immediate needs and i believe the first one is the police department finance was the first correct so the finance uh let's go ahead and talk about that first and then we'll just go down go down the list so any questions in regards to the finance council member call i i've got nothing at this point councilmember juan i have no questions councilmember thorson yeah i guess my question is that obviously we're in a pretty competitive job market and you were able to rely on your wife coming in and filling in this void that we've had is there any idea or like she may fill this role and be a full-time employee or is that council member uh thorson i know that's a very good question so um in all actuality i've utilized my wife in the accountant role basically for bank reconciliations so to date she started in december to date she's worked approximately 91 hours which has cost the city about 36 hundred dollars where we're saving approximately twelve thousand five hundred dollars a month without an accountant um what i see is my my immediate need for 2022 is um and then this means no disrespect for for people who who have been here in the city before is that i can fill that role of the accountant i just went through probably the toughest part that i'm going to and that is getting prepared for the audit and going through the audit and i think we've got one more day of that there'll be some follow-up questions but we've been very successful the team has really risen through that that time period what i can't endure is having some key personnel meaning our utility person barb or the person who's doing our payroll and accounts payable jackie to walk out the door we have no redundancies built to date and so what i'm doing is i'm for for me personally the easiest thing for me to do is to go out and hire an accountant right now that's something that i'll look you know maybe as we um look at our prioritizations in 2023 we have a request in there for that eventually it's something that is going to be necessary but i need to build redundancies on a day-in day-out basis to make sure that this city is in the best position that it possibly can be later on i need to build the redundancies on the top in succession planning for for for myself and and and to make sure that we're covering both ways from bottom to top um and making sure that how i look at it is that every job responsibility has a primary and secondary person and we don't have you know any gaps that are there in case something were to happen to an employee or they make a decision to to retire i think this is the best move right now where we're at and i've been adamantly kind of pushing it since the fall time of last year and i just think we have a very talented dedicated staff right now i want to keep them engaged i want to make sure that our positions are are being adequately compensated which i don't believe they are today and for me again from a very budgetary conservative way i didn't want to increase the levy of 2022 and so this will actually save money if an accountant is not if we're not able to get one in 2023 budget i may bring in an accountant on a temporary basis to help fill some of those gaps but i need to go through this process of building this redundancy do an assessment of how the staff is doing there's going to be some additional functions for for some of the individuals and making sure that they can handle those and build those redundancies by the you know by the time we're really into developing the 2023 budget i'll have a good gauge on on whether the existing staff will be able to to do that but right now i have been just utterly pleased and i think that the number of individuals have been under utilized and have not been given the opportunity to really get to their full potential but i have been seriously totally impressed with with staff and and not not to um you know not mention everybody's name but um you know to have barb and jackie raised their bar that much higher i it you know i put in a number of extra hours through the sodded period but i i could not have been as successful as i as i have and and and those comments have come back from our auditors um if it wasn't for the staff and and for their for their dedication um and so i think in 2022 this is the right move for us um down the road yes i'm gonna have to look for an accountant and i've talked to the city manager i i'm holding open that that caveat that if it doesn't happen in 2023 that we could bring back in a temporary account to help through some of the the busiest periods of the of the year um for that accountant who's been here even though i am related to that person i've never worked with that person before i was totally amazed with their capabilities um and has really been very helpful for the city um has really um engaged with existing staff very very well and so all in all coming in here um and through the turnover that had occurred and then losing a key component like the account we actually are doing pretty pretty well so um yeah i'm i'm very pleased well i'm glad to hear that there's a lot of you know thinking into the future and you know i think traditionally we've kind of been reactionary and it's good to good to see that we're planning ahead for the future like the things you're talking about building some redundancies in these positions and so that's good to hear and in part of that i'd like to also follow up is that i i don't want to jump ahead and add a an fte at this point in time because there may be some some ways that we can reduce some tasks um we've looked in the past of the possibility of like contracting out for like our payroll services um you know that's a very time sensitive um time consuming process that may be something that we decide hey you know we we feel comfortable there's we've already looked at a number of different systems that may be something that we seriously want to move into instead of you know adding the staff components to it but i think this this reconfiguration will also give us an opportunity to develop a little bit more segregation of duties um and and tighten up our internal controls a little bit more where i think that we've been you know just because of the pure size that we haven't had in the past you got g7 and g8 they're going to be stepping up to g10 those are the two positions are they trained to be the g10s or that you're gonna need more training for these two individuals uh more schooling are they already doing the work that a g10 is is doing um yes one of the positions the who oversees utilities actually in the marketplace is quite a bit under market rate if that individual were to retire we would have a tough time hiring somebody at that at that rate that that individual is may is is doing they currently are really overseeing supervising two individuals um they you know i mean our utilities are generating approximately 16 million dollars a year we have had no significant issues in a number of years they've done an excellent job as far as necessarily the education background i think they make up for that just because of all the years of experience um and and they've done a superb job on the other side to it um the person who who um would have that other position is actually doing 85 percent of the finance coordinators position to date um the biggest component that they're not doing is the bank reconciliations um which um can't get that person there because they have too much on their plate i need to to to build um another person who uh right now um her name is angie who started in the city approximately a year ago as we're already training her into doing accounts payable we now with this approval we can get the full push and then that'll unload some some of the job responsibilities that that go along with that so then yeah we can get her fully not having the accountant person who's doing those duties is it are they taking responsibility of off the some of the accountant or is that totally falling on you it's kind of a split um they'll take a number of responsibilities um actually through the added part to it i've taken on more of the the journal entering um part to it they review and and approve on the system so we have you know the segregation of the duties um you know to me i'm very comfortable not not forever and that's where eventually after we've done an assessment of all this comes there may be a need for for uh you know an accountant and definitely for succession planning purposes um it sounds like the accountant was kind of a during that during the uh audit cycle is kind of when they're needed the most it sounded like or ab absolutely um maybe there is something that yeah yeah i mean it would be a temporary or and that's really where you know and that and that's where you know i had come in i think it was in december and talked to the city council about my you know kind of a temporary plan and trying to get the support um that's what i had seen was that the push is going to come through this audit you know finishing up all the the year end and then there's quite a few work papers that we need to prepare for the audit auditors and the auditors are really kind of an extension of the city they're our team too um and so they've been fantastic to to work with but to be able to do that and to make that push you know i needed to have some pieces that that i could rely on somebody that had the knowledge skills and abilities and had been there done that and that i truly trusted to be able to take that so then it would allow me the time to to to really delve into you know the accounting part which has benefited the city greatly because i know just about everything that's going on inside the financial world of the cities and i had to learn on a crash course so um yeah so it's been so actually it is fit very well for my own learning style and i think it's benefited the city greatly okay good any other questions for finance director not good job thank you we'll move on to the police department and uh any questions for chief beverath councilmember cole no questions um from what was presented just a follow-up question to how the hiring is going for the open positions are you getting anywhere uh it's it's a struggle um you know or every agency across the state and country is is seeing the depleted applicant pool so the numbers are down we we have uh three awesome folks that just started a week and a half ago now so we were able to find three quality applicants and then we are our pool is still open so we're getting there they're increasing from the last round so that's what we like to see well and having a famous police chief doesn't hurt right right appreciate it councilmember why um as for the short term i think that makes a lot of sense i also appreciate some of the data and the information that you had included in there for the long term i think that helps frame it up and you know for us to consider when we come to budget so i have no questions i know it's been a tough tough year a tough year and a half for for police uh councilmember thurston yeah just some comments i mean i you know like i support what you're proposing i think you know we need to acknowledge that you know society is changing it always is i mean at some one point in time i think we only had one or two officers in our saint paul because it's all we needed but it was a long time ago and different times and you know we want to make sure that you know in reading your narrative that you shared with us you know it it it's not good to hear people wanting to move out of town because of increasing crime and and you know there's not a simple solution hiring three four five more officers isn't going to change that it's a bigger issue but to ensure that our officers here can provide services to our residents and business owners in that you know safety and is the utmost concern that you know re investing more in the police department and public safety is kind of a no-brainer how we finance that and pay for that i think you know i've kind of touched on that in the past and comments i've made when it comes to public safety and some of the things our fire department does in the police department there's potentially some crossover there but you know that's another discussion we can have at another time but as far as hiring more officers go i've shared that same frustration and the fact that we've had 17 sworn officers approved we've just never been able to hit that and it's for a lot of different reasons and it just is getting harder and harder now with the last two three years that's gone on that you know wants to be a police officer kind of idea if you're coming out of high school you know it's kind of a it's it's not as a popular field choice as it once was back in the you know several years ago but um personally i support what you're proposing and you know we'll trust in the city manager and finance to to make it happen thank you i think the uh the newspaper article was a big a big deal uh you know changing the narrative and i think that's kind of what we're trying to accomplish here is change the narrative and it is good to be a police officer and it's good to be a community you know community officer and i think nurse saint paul you know we we have a lot to offer here we got a great chief we got a great uh police force so i hope uh we have you know 100 applicants rather than a handful so i mean i agree with with the narrative here with council member thorson said also that uh but i do look forward to you know discussion you know this summer in regards to the next budget cycle in regards to what are those needs you know how do we how do we even help you even more if we can if we can appreciate it so thank you anything else for chief if not we'll move on to the community development and community service director you know go to council member cole at this point i have no questions i think i'll have a lot come summer um uh you're you're no matter what their needs my opinion is you're still understaffed with only adding one position and my assumption is coming forward with the ask that is put forth is that the current budget can't afford to bring on an additional person correct okay so it's a band-aid but we're not so okay baby steps this may be a good way of saying it councilmember wang i have no questions councilmember thorson yeah you know this is something i think you know we're all aware of that one person can't do the job of three four five six people i mean it's setting that person up to fail and it's setting our organization up to fail um you know the the community development community service director position i mean i guess my concern is that in the past when we've had these individuals in these roles it's real kind of focused on just one area you know we used to have a eda director and they only did eda types of things whereas you know their need here is to to do those things but also community development types of things i think that actually the last person we had that's their title switched from just exclusively being eda involved in the eda paid out the eda to a community development type person that was involved in other things but they may not have had that experience so maybe it was the wrong person that we had to fill that role but so you know i like the idea of keeping it open and kind of that dual role and kind of refining it based on the applicants but you know i don't know how uh you know we're talking about succession planning and what's gone on the last year and a half i think we've seen you know maybe at some point we need to talk you know sooner than later is is a role of an assistant city manager appropriate and and what roles would that individual fill kind of you know i'm sure eda community development those sorts of things maybe that's a better solution and again that's a different type of candidate a different person different pay raise or pay scale but you know i'm open to you know suggestions and discussion but you know what you're proposing here i'm perfectly comfortable with and supporting so uh i would agree that uh you know this is definitely a need because you can only do so much but uh one area that i know we've talked about it is the parks and rec area that i think we really are short on and if there's a way that one of these positions you know can take on more of that role i'm not i see that you know part of it is but i i think that our our residents are crying for some sort of what do you call it programming out there within our parks i don't know if the schools are up to par with that yet or not i'm not sure as we get out of kovid and as we get into uh the kids getting out into the public and into the parks and you know programming and that type of thing it would be nice to have that type of position and also as we look into the future of the community center too as part of that discussion and i do think a parks and recreation person is a huge need based on what i've heard from the community i just don't have a good funding source for it right now okay so we'll move on unless there's anything else on that to move to the deputy clerk and if she can leave the building while we talk about her that'd be great i'm just kidding [Laughter] uh we'll talk about that position uh council member cole i support i have nothing councilmember why same council member thorson yeah it makes sense and i'm supportive of it yup and i'm in the same and she's got the the best smell in her in her office she's got one of those what do you call it uh free breeze air fresheners and it's like oh my gosh so and again i think this is something that you know is coming out of covet coming out of you know things that uh the job duty is more than what uh what has been uh what what you uh signed up for i think there is more than what what there is there so when finance director winik talked about some of his employees and their and their potential um in this case i i again um since the deputy clerk can't leave the room i'll she has to just be embarrassed um you know i do believe that the individual has a great deal of potential and has identified a lot of uh future career steps uh you know quite frankly at an age where a lot of people are comfortable staying put or a place in her career that where a lot of people are comfortable saying put she does have a lot of interest in getting certifications in both city clerk kinds of things and in human resources kinds of things and so i'm so supportive of that and you know my hope is that as as the deputy clerk grows professionally we can always accommodate her her here so that she doesn't have to move on to practice those skills somewhere else is there more training involved i'm assuming that well there's more training involved in future steps i think to take the step i'm talking about today again i i'll know more when i talk with a human i've talked to one human resources consultant already and based on you know hour-long conversation their conclusion was yeah this position's a place too low in the pay scale and without any changes in training or job description or anything they they ought to be it ought to be higher but i'll continue to have those conversations with the um with the hr consultant to get this kind of dialed in right and and get some outside perspective you know where um it gets harder to be objective as you get closer to our organization of the people inside so to have an outside set of eyes take a look at things too and again all this fits into our 2022 it does so it's a good thing all right so just to continue on um i wanted to just um make sure we're kind of on the same page in terms of um who has authority to do what or what what my authority city manager is the state statutes and city codes city code makes some of our roles for city staffing very clear it's clear that the council's role is to approve a levy in a budget that includes expenditures on personnel it's very clear that anything related to the individual filling that position hiring supervision discipline falls under the authority of the city manager there are a lot of responsibilities though that are really undefined in the state statutes or city code you know past practice of the city council is to identify the size and titles of the staff of each department i would anticipate we'd continue with that practice on the titles in the future we might give it a little some of the titles a little more ambiguity so we have a little more ability to be nimble as hiring needs come up but we'll talk about that when the time comes there are some things you know i've spoken with a lot of my peers and a couple of mentors about these roles and i just give a bullet four bullets here of things which are typically granted to a city manager and i want to make sure that that those are roles you feel comfortable me fulfilling one is drafting and editing the responsibilities contained within a position's job description two would be filling an approved position with a lower graded position if the situation warrants or in order to give an almost qualified employee a chance to grow into the approved position that last piece is something i really believe in is allowing employees an opportunity to grow a lot of times if we do have a position that's a a g whatever you know let's say it's a g10 if we can find a qualified g8 person that can come in and learn the position there and grow into it that just in my experience works out really well three the designation of working out a class where appropriate or required by labor contracts most of our labor contracts discuss this i i they might all um but at least three out of the five do that if a person's doing the responsibilities of a higher position that they should be recognized for that at least on a temporary basis and it doesn't say this in here but the nature of working out class is that it's meant to be temporary typically a year or less and so you would either have to address it in a budget make it permanent or find some other way of reducing that employees responsibilities to make sure that you're not asking them to do more than you're paying them to do and then finally the hiring of temporary employees or contract employees as long as it's within my spending authority which is currently 25 000 so if these are roles you feel comfortable me having that kind of dictates what next steps are do you still do job reviews i mean are we doing those is it is this no part of that we have not been in the organization um one of the so we've talked about that department director's meeting one of the long-term employees indicated that he believes maybe he's had one in 20 years and i think there are varying opinions on performance evaluations whatever you want to call them i have my personal opinion i i think that they're a good tool when they're done right um if it's something an employee dreads if it's like oh my gosh my annual review's coming up this is the worst day of the year then one of two things is happening either you're not doing performance evaluations the right way or there have been unaddressed problems for the prior 364 days that it should have been addressed along the way and so my goal would be to make sure a if there are performance or discipline issues that they're addressed when they happen and not at the performance evaluation and that b a performance evaluation is a positive tool for the for both people involved when i do performance evaluations for my employees in the past it's a it's a two-way thing they evaluate me as a supervisor i evaluate them and it's it's not really about them it's about the position whether they have the tools that they need the resources that they need to do their job what's going well what's not going well so i think what we agreed to as department directors as a starting point is in 2022 exempt employees and there are only eight exempt employees in the organization we'll be doing an annual review and then kind of um getting back together and talking about how those reviews went whether we thought that it was a good tool how we could do it differently so that we i want all the department directors to feel like they're good tools that they can get behind and so you know it's not a democracy but i i would i hope we can get to where everybody is on the same page and i think we can i think a job review is different from a like a one year two year three year employee oh i'm sorry you're talking about the job maybe i took us on a different road than you had meant to go down uh like the job description reviewing that on a regular basis something similar yep yeah and i believe that a major evaluation was done in north st paul somewhere in the neighborhood of 2017 um where they went through and looked at job descriptions went through and looked at people's places in the pay scale made some adjustments we do have we're an unusual organization in that we have like 55 full-time employees only three of whom are not represented by a union the unions do a pretty good job of letting us know when their employees aren't being recognized for the work that they're doing and so at least that direction if we're under um under recognizing what an employee is doing in terms of their job description we hear about it um in terms of systematically going through like i said the last time that happened was 2017 that can be an expensive process so at some point time i can get a an idea of what the expense is and and we can get on a schedule maybe to do it um not as a an entire organization all in one year but to have it rolling where each department goes once a year and every five years then every department gets looked at i think we did just talked about two different things here yep so i was trying i did first the first one i'm still was on that one uh just that you know someone a new person coming in you know a one-year review you know is different than someone like ron who's been here what 40 years 50 years i think that it's a little different type of review because they've been here for so long and someone new coming in i think needs more of a in-depth review 100 agree that it's different i've personally i believe they're both important i would like to sit down with ron and talk about what's what's working great for him how i can help him better um all of those things so uh i think um all of the above is the answer yep i would agree with talking yeah i you know i respect your opinion on that my personal opinion on these you know whether you call them performance reviews or annual reviews or whatever is that they've never happened here and they need to happen and the reason why i say that is because in the last two years maybe even going back three years we've had several employees that have left that have came forward with a lawsuit and you know we can talk about not the specifics but the fact that it happened and some of the things were that it was difficult to proceed with a lawsuit because there was nothing in the file about you know anything in the past even though there potentially were issues but they were not documented you know and i think you shared an example of the business association that you know you walked around half the day with spinach in your teeth and no one told you and you know when you have spinach in your teeth you want someone to say something it this isn't in it to me i don't look at it as well look you know i'm the boss here everyone answers to me and every year we have a performance evaluation i'm going to tell you everything you're doing wrong that's not it at all but if you have an employee who's got spinach in your teeth someone needs to say something and if that employee is purposely putting the spinach in their teeth you need to tell them to stop and you need to document it that you know we told him that this is an acceptable behavior and then that follows along where if in the future it progresses to a termination and we've seen it can happen they turn around and sue and then we're left with well we've got noah's case here because even though this employee was doing these things we haven't documented it so to me it seems like it's just more of a function of necessity and that you know i think naturally people are just going to be afraid of a performance evaluation anyway but like you say you can run it any way you want it shouldn't be a negative thing it should be a positive thing um and that it's just as simple as you know going over your strengths and weaknesses and things you can work on and you know and like you say it's it's you do treat an employee who's been here for one two three years maybe you treat everyone the same but you treat the questioning or the evaluation criteria a little differently than someone who's been here for 40 years but maybe it's some of that stuff that they've been here for so long they're not they're not doing the little things again they just need a friendly reminder so that's where i see these things as a valuable tool and that's something that traditionally has not gone on here for whatever reason that needs to needs to start and we'll just trust your judgment on how you're going to implement that well thank you and my goal is that we're going to have let's say we have 60 ftes here that we're going to have 60 absolutely awesome employees and i believe that right now to be the case and when we have annual talks with employees to tell them how awesome they are my goal is that they're going to say can we do this monthly and that's where i'd like to get to and we'll see [Laughter] so everybody kind of agree with the the approvals for and implementation of personal changes for the city manager council member cole wang yes yes thorson kate and from that i think we're on our next topic but i'll just go through the recommended action really quick um you know if you're okay with my role we can implement the finance department um reorganization tomorrow morning as far as i know or the next pay period because all of those things fall within what what we've agreed kind of as the city manager role and then we'll come back as soon as possible probably in the first meeting in april i can't see why it wouldn't be to amend the 2021 budget uh it's it's going to be a short staff report to include kind of this augmented position um 2022 thank you budget the current year budget for this and then i'm going to bring aboard a consultant to help us look at a couple of existing positions and determine whether they're appropriately placed in the pay scale and then at the same time or as we come back with the police position um or maybe two weeks later depending on the timing i'll come back with a revision to the 2022 budget if needed for the community development director to add that position in and then we'll get we'll get rock and rolling on advertising and you need to tucked around sooner than later all right okay well thank you for your support on this the next item i think we're going to ask city engineer dolly to walk us through welcome morgan welcome mr mayor members of the council i think it's appropriate i was with one of your colleagues the other day at uh the league of or not the the regional of mayors you had we had eric there was talk he did a presentation he needed a presentation he did an okay job did a good job okay good uh so this item before you at the workshop level here and i think it's appropriate that i'm sitting at uh finance director winnick's table um it's not necessarily a joint item i certainly will be presenting it uh but does relate to things that that he is looking at with respect to preparing for bonding for capital improvement projects and this is a good opportunity for staff to because this is a comprehensive year with multiple projects normally we would report back to council as we're going out for bids for example here's the latest cost estimate or here are the bids and they were good bids etc we've got multiple projects with multiple moving pieces so this is a good important time to take a look at the entire picture there's some ups there's some downs i'll explain that and certainly hopefully we have a little bit of time for questions maybe some direction from council maybe dan's got something to add we didn't rehearse this so um but what i would like to uh point your attention to would be the table that i included in the packet here it's just very simple this is an internal tool that dan and i have been using in public works as well to just kind of track the different funding categories knowing that we've got cip or streets dollars that would that impact the general levy we've got other enterprise funds such as sanitary sewer water surface water utility funds which pay for portions of projects we also on this particular year have some [Music] project costs that are incurred that are specific to street maintenance so public works's maintenance overlay budget is something that's being brought to bear here and as you may recall last time we discussed this series of 2022 capital improvements that was about september october time frame we were looking at uh cip estimates which are more high level estimates we're looking at a map of the whole city we're measuring these projects on the basis of length and width and approximate general costs knowing what at a high level we're looking at with respect to streets and utilities and sometimes we try to build in contingencies or additional amounts to take into account the fact that we don't know all the information at that time but we as we do dig into things we do find some additional information or sometimes there's outside influences that change things which i'll get into it so the first item that i'll point out is certainly a positive outcome and that is that for the first project and that that's the general project that we're calling 2022 street and utility improvement project we did take bids on that that is actually in front of the council on the regular agenda tonight here for consideration of a ward of contract but the bids did come in favorably and basically if you look at the second to last column in the table that is it's labeled delta from cip so that's kind of trying to track on what has changed since last fall that were about 10 uh to the to the green i guess in terms of what we were projecting and that is what we strive to do right we strive to have our estimates be conservative such that when we do take bids hopefully if the market cooperates with us the numbers are going down that's the idea now if you keep moving down in the column there the next project that is identified is the cooperative venture with the city of maplewood where they're doing most of their project and we're going to be participating just on aerial street there which is jointly road a jointly owned road between north st paul and maplewood as you may recall as a past discussion regarding potential pedestrian facilities on that street council direction was to consider an alternate so it's not uh for sure that the council has accepted that alternate or has directed that that sidewalk be constructed right but i've included that on as an additional potential cost i guess for future consideration so that is certainly part of the overall puzzle or equation that we're trying to track on here i think that the next one down is probably the most impactful the next one down is the 7th avenue project and so that is basically from where the 7th avenue improvements project left off in 2020 and then moving west to 1st street which is approximately where the other project left off so in effect filling that gap with the street reconstruction of concrete pavement on 7th avenue but also you know when the original map was kind of delineated with some past staff we had included or the idea was to include part of 4th avenue between helen street and margaret and part of the alleyway there too as well and so as you can see it's a fairly substantial increase in our estimate based on really diving in and trying to pull at all of the things that are underground there frankly one driver on that cost increase is concrete pavement so the pavement on 7th avenue is certainly increased in price uh in terms of more recent cost estimates or what we're seeing in the market right now than in the past we've also included that portion of margaret street where the 2020 project left off mid-block and we've brought that concrete all the way down to the intersection of 4th and margaret in this current estimate we also have a 1960s 88 inch arch corrugated metal culvert which has never been maintained which again high level estimate versus digging into the details these are the things that we find out um and that is a very expensive i mean that's a pipe that you can almost drive through you could certainly walk through it but it's a very big pipe that conveys a large portion of storm water under 7th avenue and it's in helen street so that is a big driver of cost as i mentioned in the notes on the table there you know this is a it was started out as a big scope that scope can be reduced there's options out there it's not too late to consider those it also says something about valley value options with respect to rehab the storm sewer rather than reconstruct since this was written i've been talking to public works about it we're probably a little uncomfortable with the risk that even if that corrugated metal pipe was rehabbed since its 1960s vintage there's very likely holes in that pipe that have just rusted through so if we were to do that that might add a little more risk to the city than staff might be comfortable with but again by reducing scope you know it may be possible to reduce this down by a million dollars potentially but you know that's we're not saying that we have to do that but again that's um an alternative that is out there certainly for consideration um and then the next big one is something that's outside forces out of our control to a certain extent so um that project is the mcknight water main so we talked about uh in advance of ramsey county overlaying mcknight road taking care of the city's water main which lies underneath the county road which has been prone to breaks and as you can see in the map which is also in the packet and the original cip based on past conversations with ramsey county staff we had identified that stretch of road on mcknight from beam all the way up to county road d which is actually mostly if not all in the city of maplewood but as you know the city of north st paul does supply portions of maple wood with drinking water and so that is our water main there so that was the original cip estimate so since then and certainly it's their right to do so but ramsey county has expanded the scope of their overlay project to be from county road d on the north end all the way down to 11th avenue so that essentially doubles the length of their overlay project and if the city were to take care of all the water main under that section that certainly doubles or more than doubles just because it's a little bit longer than half the length of the cost of that project so that's certainly a changing factor now ramsey county has they listened to our requests previously by pushing the overlay back they were originally going to do that in 2022 they said they would push it back to 2023 they would probably be open to hearing from the city if we wanted to push it back back further but bottom line in talking to public works that section from 11th avenue north to beam avenue is actually worse with respect to past history of water main breaks and of greater concern so if we were to for example just take care of the part that we were originally taking care of on the north end from beam to county road d and you know decided we wanted to live with the rest risk and just leave that section from 11th to beam as is and the county overlaid the road uh public works staff and myself feel that very likely we would certainly experience some water main breaks there and have to dig up the county road to fix them which would not be ideal after the county's investment in overlaying that roadway pavement so those are the major the other changes are relatively minor but it is a significant number we've separated that out so that dan can see what those look like with respect to the different funding sources dan has also had meetings with the bonding consultant i haven't been a part of those so there may be some information there but certainly with that we have certainly ample time for questions so i'll stand for any questions council might have at this time so that column delta for cip that's the increase of the projects yeah it's so it's showing a 8.7 uh an aggregate increase that we we did have some decreases but you add it all together it's an aggregate increase correct so if we were to do all the projects that's the increase from what was presented before correct included in the uh fall of 2021 cip estimate okay any questions for morgan councilmember cole maybe not so much questions as clarification um the sidewalk along ariel i believe you said you were bidding out did we agree on what to do with 13th did we agree to have that bid out as we is a major east-west i think we had there's an alternative so the overlay of 13th is actually included in the maintenance overlays i remember correctly but it was we had a whole lot of sidewalk conversations oh at night and i've just tried to i'm just trying to remember what what we had talked about um and what i have right now is no because that was an overlay and not something that we're kind of doing a little bit more on moving the curb or getting into the curb line for example no pedestrian facilities on 13th at this time okay um i mean does it hurt to ask for bids are the bids already gone out um and if if i if i'm a soul one up here then that's then that's fine we can move on so it's an important so bids have gone out okay the that contract is in front of the council for award um it's certainly something that staff can continue to look at to see if there's a cost-effective way to retrofit that in and then same with that's just an overlay on 13th right but nothing will be done for another 20 years so i don't necessarily i'm not necessarily aligned with the city's city's direction on you know when when we have conversations on sidewalks or not um that's that's why i'm asking because it'll be it could be another 20 to 30 years before anything is done on that stretch so that's why i want to bring it up now uh also same question exists on 7th uh i closed my eyes and i can't remember what it looks like up there is there sidewalk runs all the way on one side correct on seventh avenue yep in in the section that we're talking about with this project it's on both sides okay thank you don't remember why i have nothing thanks councilmember thurston well you know it we've just got ourselves in such a bad spot right now from deferring this stuff for so long and i'm talking decades i mean this should have been adopted in the early 70s working our way towards us but we are where we are but when i hear you know we're trying to coordinate with the county to to minimize the impacts of a midnight road because of the water mains and you know it's just meanwhile that road continues to get worse right and and so if if we can only do one section and they redo the whole road and it pushes the water mains back farther they're still going to blow up the road we have to tear up the road so it's kind of like we're chasing our tail and you know sidewalks are always going to be an issue especially when there's non-existing sidewalks um you know to me it's we just got to look at it as a you know a case-by-case basis does it make sense does it make sense to put a sidewalk in a cul-de-sac no but i'm sure there are people that would argue that it would benefit the neighborhood and that you know they would want to see it does it make sense to put sidewalks on main arterial roads where there's a lot of traffic and a lot of pedestrian traffic yes absolutely um but you know i think it's just important we stick to these plans and you know deferring projects for things like you know like sidewalks to me it's just counterproductive and it's just going to compound the issue because if if a road is to the point where it needs to be replaced but the hang up is is a sidewalk and we just move on to the next area and that just continues to get worse i mean worst case scenario you can redo the road and people can walk on the road absent of a sidewalk even though perhaps in 20 years the road will be rescheduled for a full overlay and that is when accommodations will be made for a sidewalk um what are you talking about ariel or well just you know this 13th avenue i mean i get it it's an overlay and i understand why that sidewalks weren't in there and if you know councilmember cole and he's talked to constituents that have expressed interest in the sidewalk i'm not against bringing that in but you know we're looking at these costs and they pile up quick and you know i'm looking at it from the bigger picture what's more important that you know 13th avenue between mcknight and ariel i would argue is not heavily there's not a lot of traffic other than localized residents going to and from compared to mcknight road you know it's a main arterial road there's all sorts of traffic if we're if we're trying to decide where do we allocate our resources between fixing a water main and putting in a sidewalk in a non-entertainer road i mean i'm gonna i'm gonna side with the water main all day it just makes sense but you know not that's putting us in a position to have to prioritize something like a water main versus a sidewalk and you know certainly arguments can be made either way but you know from what i'm looking at here what you guys are proposing i mean i my concern is just when i hear you know when the county's ready to redo like a stretch of mcknight that's got to be a pretty big area right are they talking just in north saint paul or is it spanning all through north st paul into maple wood and then if we're asking them to hold off on that because we've got plans to do more water main repair but we can't afford it you know what i'm saying it's like we're now negatively impacting all sorts of people that live on ignite that travel on mcknight even though ideally we would just redo all the water main right but we can't do that we have to do it in parts and pieces so we can't avoid the this issue of the county wants to do a a deal and we want to try to do what's best but you know because we're just pushing something off and we can't predict water main breaks but it sounds like from what i'm hearing you explain if if we continue to push this off and respect to to preserve that overlay that they're doing we're it's just we're just moving it down the road farther right does that make sense so i mean i i guess i'm not supportive of deferring you know asking the county to delay a road project that they have you know especially that it's gonna cost more money and you know i don't know what there's no there's no good solution to this right we can't replace all the water main break in one fall swoop we have to kind of focus on the worst areas and hope for the best council member thurston um we've had multiple pretty bad water main breaks on mcknight and i mean they've been some of the worst ones that i've since i've been here where it drains the water tower like in a half hour so you know when the they extended this you know on a lot of water that it is a lot of water like you know 350 000 gallons in a half hour so um you know doubling the the water main on here it's something that i feel that you know when they're doing it that we kind of have to do and also when we have those brakes on a county road how we deal with them versus our regular roads we have to you know we dig them we fix them they're in the winter time normally we have to concrete them in for the winter then we have to go back dig them back out dig out that concrete and then there's a there's a road spec that we have to build that road back to so um the these water main breaks get fairly expensive when when they're on a county road so when there's an opportunity like this to do that or when they're doing that i think it's important that we do focus on that you know versus other things and i know that like you said there's needs for lots of different things that you know need to be done but something like this you know i feel that it's important and it's in the best interest of the city i think in the long run and the money spent for it and just to clarify that's right i'm fully supportive of focusing on the water main repair and allowing the county to redo the road uh you know sooner rather than continue to delay that because i think that is having the largest impact on the greatest amount of people versus you know i think we kind of can get sidetracked on you know sidewalk discussion and and things like that so am i hearing the county is going to be doing this project so we have the opportunity to replace that so it's already going to be done it's in there five years cip so as they do it then we would be able to replace is that word or are we talking so the timing is so what ramsey county does for these pavement preservation projects that they do every year on an annual basis is they let and award a contract to a contractor to do several streets highways sorry county highways throughout the county and they've identified similar to how we identify and prioritize different streets they have their own map and scheduled out and so they um one of their segments for 2023 is this from 11th avenue up to uh county road d which is in maplewood so a big chunk of this is outside of north st paul but our north st paul water main is under that section of mcknight even as a county road in in maplewood and so the the timing is that we would we would award our water main project this summer we would get a contractor out there this late summer and fall and they'd do as much as they could this year i mean if they were able to get it all done in one year that would be great although it's very likely that they would have to come back to finish this the water main um in the first part of 2023 and then ramsey county has indicated that they would coordinate with us if we had some work in 2023 such that the city water main work would finish and then because their contractor is actually going all through the whole county doing their overlay work through the whole summer when they get to mcknight that would be scheduled a little bit later in the summer such that they'd be doing their overlay work after we were already done and out of there with our water main stuff so my concern was that he had mentioned that they were already proposing to do this project the road i'm assuming it's a million overlay because if it was a full reconstruction would be no issue they would just say hey we're open up the road get in here now's the time to do it i mean i guess we could say no and we could say well we don't have the money to do it but that would be a ridiculous thing to do um but so my concern was that if we you know if we're continuing to ask like the county to delay this project because we've reprioritized which we haven't done but if we do shift from what we haven't planned here that's where my concern is that well now we're asking them to change their plans because for whatever reasons we've changed ours and in the meantime we're still going to have water main breaks so even though they put that new road down we're still gonna have to tear into it so it's just not really accomplishing anything by asking them to defer it but i agree with the approach that if we can coordinate it and get it done great i wasn't recommending that we delay it but just putting all the options out there you know but you're correct if any capital expenditure especially with the way prices are going um they're not getting any cheaper so you know doing something later is going to cost more dollars than doing it morgan you said 11th to county road d so i'm seeing county road correct so this blue line this arrow that's going straight up is that a mcknight then so 11th so the blue line is what we had in the cip that's where we started yep now what they're planning on doing is going all the way up to starting at 11th which is significantly starting on to county road d which is county road d if you i don't have a map to show it but it's right before you get to 694 and then you want to know whether or not we want to use that alternate to for the sidewalk that's that's in here uh i don't know that we're asking for direction on on this well i guess if the 13th avenue that would be a new direction certainly i'll take that direction if the council wants to have us even though the contract's been awarded we can look at options and see if there's like i said i think the way i would put it is is there a cost-effective way maybe it doesn't even have to be a sidewalk is there a pedestrian shoulder or is there something that can be looked at that could be considered a pedestrian facility on that road so the alternate in here for aerial street for the sidewalk we're not that direction's already been given to staff maple woods uh bids will be back in april and so got it at that time i'll have some prices to present to council and council will make the decision on the sidewalk at that time okay and i'm assuming 13th avenue you know the sidewalk that's a pond or that's a walking potentially could be a walking uh circle eventually you know so that is potentially uh i think people do use that i see a on the grass there you see a path on the grass that people use so any direction tonight on that or should we well just to kind of give you a little bit more information so we're starting to get prepared to get ready to bond for the for the projects so i love the discussion um i think we're all in favor that we want to continue with this scope um we're looking at about a 12 million dollars so the first step that we have to do is we have to publish a notice for a public hearing um our notice will go out friday and we'll have a public hearing on april 5th at 6 30. um we are going to go out right now for the full 12 million dollars for bonding that that will set the maximum limit that we can bond for we certainly can come down um part of that april 5th hearing will also give some some different looks at options of of uh we do have some money we've got the arpa funds we also have our uh we have our own maintenance street maintenance funds that were approved through the cip so we'll show what that cost is going to be um in comparison to what we were looking at before so we'll have that prepared on that april 5th but i am um very excited to hear that that we want to keep moving forward um you know uh you know in spite of of the increases in in the costs and we just hope that um that the bids come in good i mean i think we're timing-wise two different things morgan said it inflation is hitting us the costs are going to continue to go up we also from a timing point of view we got the feds looking at continuously raising interest rates right so we got to get out there and take these good bond rates that are out there right now so we very east any other questions in for uh morgan matt city manager start i don't have anything more for the workshop okay so at this time i just want to mention to the council that i'm going to formally uh say that i'm not going to be running for mayor for this upcoming election so just let everybody know that if you have candidates or know anybody that needs or would like to run for city council or mayor but i want to make that an announcement tonight formally to uh to the council so that's it at this time motion to adjourn so moved moved by council member thorson second second by council member wong any other discussion not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries and we'll start the meeting now no let's take a uh two minutes two three i'll minutes that on august whatever