Based on the names provided in your list and the internal context of the transcript (which includes several names not on your list, likely due to rotating commission seats or staff changes), here is the transcribed townhall with speaker names added. **Note on Names:** The transcript refers to a City Administrator named **Neil** and a City Attorney named **David**, which differs from the provided list (Jon and Shelley). I have used the names spoken in the meeting to ensure accuracy to the dialogue. *** [0:03] **Council Member:** so we got a couple of options discussion well i would i hate to spend fifty six hundred dollars uh for something that's only going to be around for a few months i i would prefer we just leave it closed it's inconvenience people have to go a couple extra blocks but that's that's my take [0:15] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** well just to squash the rumors it's all over facebook nobody knows if it's open or closed but it's closed to traffic i mean you can walk across it or you know take your bike as of right now but that's it right [0:30] **Jed Petersen (Public Works):** yeah the barricades are there and yeah [0:35] **Council Member:** yeah i see i see what you say about spending the fifty six hundred dollars but boy that's inconvenient to not have that bridge open you know you don't even think about it until you need to get from the east side of town to the north side of town but i can i guess i can see it either way is this 5600 something that we would be spending anyway or is this [1:05] **Bill Angerman (City Engineer):** no it's an additional [1:07] **Council Member:** okay well i'll defer to what the majority says thank god is there any way we can maybe go ahead and uh i would i'd be in favor of fixing it if we can do it in a timely manner if it's going to be a month or a month and a half out then i think it's a it's wasted wasted money but well one other thing too is you know other street projects starting and dakota street over there is gonna be done that's gonna be another hindrance to people getting from downtown say to their homes too that's gonna be closed for a little bit [1:47] **Bill Angerman (City Engineer):** yeah but the dakota streets only take about a week for them to [1:51] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** yeah it doesn't take long right to a mill and overlay but yeah i don't see the point of spending money especially as we don't know if we could get it repaired in in two weeks or two months i mean if it's gonna be you know more than a month month and a half then we're only about four four four and a half months away from them starting the project where it would be closed anyhow [2:23] **Council Member:** yeah i guess i agree with that if i knew it would be done by the middle of october yeah fine but it could be november or maybe even later [2:34] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** yeah can we do that as part as a as part of a motion i don't know you know they're laying down metal uh sheet steel and bolting them to the to the planking as far as i understand i don't know if it's a it's not a large project but getting somebody to get the material ordered and get it put down and and get it done the way the engineer is suggesting because i'm guessing that would be kind of a liability if somebody happens to fall through they would have to follow the this engineering thing [3:15] **Council Member Matson:** i'm going to make a motion to approve the expenditure if it can be done by october 31st [3:33] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** motion out there to uh approve the fix if it's with a timeline of october 31st and a second of that [3:44] **Council Member Lindell:** i guess i'll second that [3:46] **Council Member:** second by lindell but what would happen my one question what if they started or are you able to start by like october 25th but it'll take them a couple weeks or what if the estimate ends up being only 30 of what it's going to take to fix it you know yeah because they don't know what kind of parameters do we need to put on this i don't know i don't know what they're going to find yeah we don't know i don't know if we've got a project already starting maybe we should just leave it for the winter [4:26] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** well there's a motion on the table in a second with the deadline of october 31st. all in favor aye [4:40] **Council Members:** aye [4:42] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** well we better have a roll call vote on that i don't know how many that was [4:48] **Sara Peer (City Clerk):** Bringgold? **Bringgold:** no. **Sara Peer:** Duncan? **Duncan:** no. **Sara Peer:** Gesme? **Gesme:** aye. **Sara Peer:** Lindell? **Lindell:** yes. **Sara Peer:** Matson? **Matson:** yes. **Sara Peer:** Montgomery? **Montgomery:** no. [5:05] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** three three comes down comes down to the mayor you know i'm going to say no i can't see putting the money into it let's just leave it go you could open the walking and biking and i i got a feeling that there's going to be cost overruns and delays so i'm going to say no motion is defeated okay item b video server replacement jeff you want to take that one [5:38] **Jeff McCormick (Police Chief):** sure so as i outlined in the memo right now the squad video and body camera video are part of the overall city server it takes up a big chunk of it and as the administrator and i met with on-site planning for the replacement of the city server we discussed previously with on-site separating the video off into its own server the replacement of the city server has been something that's been on and off since either 2017 or 2018 i know that it's been part of you know a couple of different budget cycles it just never seemed to happen so in the discussions we previously had looked at replacing our body cameras the units that we have now are sort of at end of life we've been having battery issues they don't make that style anymore from that company and what we wanted to do was look at a body camera that integrated with the squad video system and we decided to keep using the existing squad video system because they came up with a new body camera system that has a removable battery that way the hardware doesn't have problems but the batteries do because of the minnesota weather they really take a beating in the in the cold winter months battery life cycle just doesn't last as long when they're that cold and so in meeting with the administrator and with on-site we decided to pursue the replacement of not just the body cameras but the video server um separating that off that way it's its own stand free system we looked at uh going with guard for the body cameras because they're the same system as our squad video and we also looked at a system that would be five years of support maintenance everything a turnkey operation they would bring it in install it we have trouble we contact them rather than our current on on-site vendor and that's what you see before you [8:28] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay any discussion [8:30] **Council Member Duncan:** yeah in i think this is an item we should table we've all gotten on the council we've all gotten information of questions that need to be asked and we're not going to have the answers right away and also we need to figure out a small town like this do we actually need body cameras so i would make a motion to table this until a lot of the questions get answered that we saw [9:01] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** there's a motion to table it is there a second of that motion [9:06] **Council Member Matson:** i'll second it [9:08] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** there's a motion by duncan a second by matson to table us for further discussion uh all in favor aye [9:16] **Council Members:** aye [9:17] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** opposed no [9:19] **Council Members:** no no [9:21] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** until four to two what was you what was it your vote mayor [9:26] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** i said no let's take a roll call or just a beast [9:32] **Sara Peer (City Clerk):** Bringgold? **Bringgold:** no. **Sara Peer:** Duncan? **Duncan:** yes. **Sara Peer:** Gesme? **Gesme:** yes. **Sara Peer:** Lindell? **Lindell:** yes. **Sara Peer:** Matson? **Matson:** yes. **Sara Peer:** Montgomery? **Montgomery:** no. [9:49] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** motion passes four to two the table okay moving on item c the administrative hearing for the cannon river winery sewer and water invoice appeal i guess maybe i'll just go through it or david you want to what the procedure is here [10:05] **David (City Attorney):** yeah thank you mr mayor so uh i did send you a memo with kind of an outline of the procedure basically i suggest that you allow cannabis winery to give a brief opening statement outline what their issue is not to call any witnesses they want to testify give you any documents they want to put in and then the city will kind of do the same so i don't know if you have that memo in front of you but you can just kind of run down that i am asking or suggesting that you do uh place the witnesses under oath and the oath is on the memo there and then at the end we'll have a summary and the council can deliberately make a decision i just asked the mayor during the hearing to act kind of like an impartial judge and then if necessary at the end you can deliberate with the council on the decision [11:15] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay okay we'll open up the hearing uh if the can river wineries attorney would like to make a brief opening statement [11:29] **Bill Tipping (Attorney for Winery):** good evening my name is bill tipping i'm an attorney representing ken river winery i think what you need to hear is not so much from me tonight as from the gentleman responsible for the payment of the utilities to this city to the water bill so i will wave our opening statement and i'm going to ask in a matter to try to focus this and keep this going forward that ron come forward and state his position he has documents that he will be interested in offering in for your consideration and when he is done if you would like to put him under oath feel free to do so i leave that up to you but he is we'd like to do this straight forward and informally uh and substantively as possible very good [12:16] **David (City Attorney):** mr mayor i'll wave any opening statement and just address it at the end thank you [12:22] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay okay then we'll proceed with the uh cannon river winery presents with their presentation uh i want to call any witnesses ron i'm gonna have to swear you in okay [12:49] **David (City Attorney):** raise your right hand do you swear and affirm that the evidence testimony that you'll give well is relative to the cause now under consideration and shall be the whole truth nothing but the truth so help you god [13:06] **Ron Stoll (Winery Owner):** i do [13:08] **David (City Attorney):** thank you could give your name for the record please [13:14] **Ron Stoll:** ron stoll owner can a river winery now i do have some documents i'd like to submit to who do i actually hand these to i believe you wanted eight copies of each... [Pause for document distribution] ...okay i think everybody's got the information are you ready to start [15:58] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** go ahead [16:00] **Ron Stoll:** well first of all i think i'll just address uh john on this uh and to the rest of the console i'd like to highlight some positive notes to start out with the officer in the back there she actually caught me at my own place back about a month ago and i was working half hours and we hadn't had a chance to meet yet uh the alarm went off i didn't know how to turn off the alarm i'm going in a place that doesn't know how to and she came up uh very professional diligent asked me what i was doing there i told her i was the owner she nodded and then went back in her car and waited on her 15 minutes she actually went through the process of verifying that i was who i was which actually made me feel good as a as a citizen down here just a lachlan thank you very much you did a great job uh the reason i'm here today is and i'm sure most people in here have already heard about it but this winter we received a large water bill in the early part of february and it shocked us you know normally our water balls are anywhere from 300 to 500 sometimes they go as high as a thousand at certain times a year and this bill was you know like five six thousand bucks and so we immediately uh went down to the city and uh asked what was going on and then so we could receive two things we received a report which you'll see one with all the red markings and we were able to have one of the city employees come out to our place to find out what the heck's going on and what you'll notice here is that uh approximately well not approximately on december 27th of this last year we went from uh you know some small intermittent leaks it says it's probably usage to as you can see it just jumps up through the roof and it says it's flagged in yellow it says continuous leak and that went from 12 27 19 all the way through uh february 11th so it's basically 45 days and a little background on this what had happened is we're trying to upgrade uh the plumbing in our facility and we installed about a six thousand dollar system to try to make higher quality wine clean things and work for our dishwasher so they put in a sophisticated water softening system for us and it looked like what had happened unbeknownst to us it sounds like a piece of uh rust or debris came through the pipes and there's a bypass valve most you know what that means uh within the system that allows water to flush through and it's stuck and uh opened up this bypass valve so basically what was happening is fresh water clean water was coming into the building and going through our bypass system and and right out the building okay at full speed for 45 days and no one in my facility knew that this was happening or as we shut it off and it seems that no one at the city knew about it either at the time so i had kind of a as soon as we got that information i contacted the city to explore the reason they came out uh went to get the report uh at that point i reached out uh to the city and say you know what what do i do how do i approach this and i was asked to write a letter uh to the city and i hadn't had a chance to meet neil which i guess was a city administrator so i guess we meet for the first time tonight and try to lay out the background as far as what had happened and that we were shocked okay that it did happen and concerned and you know what do we do about it uh this is also the time we got basically started into the the corona issue even though it's a separate issue it does uh have an impact on the business well by time we had it fixed and stopped how we had received the second bill and the second bill was for the next uh two weeks and that was again for another i don't know 2500 bucks and it included another 450 dollars in penalties because we didn't pay the first one off even though we're you know in discussions about that so i just added uh you know additional insult to injury at that point so i got a couple more conversations uh with neil again a little background is all over utilities have always been uh up to speed at least since i've been the owner here for four years uh we're current on old liquor licenses restaurant licenses and everything else so we're basically in good standing with the city so what neil and i had agreed to is that we would i'd pay the majority of the back dollars off so we'd only keep this one issue as an outstanding value and we both agreed to that then we had the attorneys dropped a few letters back and forth between the city attorney and the lawyers representing me basically trying to find out exactly where we stand on this again a little history here is now i i come from uh i live in eagan and a couple years ago i received uh a notice from the city department of utilities and it says your water usage is up it was in the winter time check it out and i went i think my water's final my faucets weren't running but i did walk downstairs then and sure as heck my water heater the relief elvenar was leaking so i was having a continuous stream it wasn't pouring out but continuous stream but they notified me right away so i could immediately fix it and move on and it looks like the city has the technology at least after our first billing cycle to see that you know there is a significant change because these reports are beautiful now the city's analyzing okay before they send out the bills or if they don't have any keys or lights or whatever else going off to identify major issues either someone wasn't doing their job or it wasn't turned on to do it that way and so i'm not accusing anyone but if it wasn't turned on and no one's using the information that's available it's not only bad for me but it'll be bad for any other business in the city that this could happen to all of a sudden they have a major leak they don't know about it and this could go on you know for a couple billing cycles and really do serious damage and water down here is as evidence or more sensitive than i am is very very expensive you know my water bill in eagan is forty five dollars to fifty dollars every three months okay so it's it's more expensive down here in the first place and then when you have a problem like this that i believe i see there's no it's multiple issues is it could it be the part of the water softener company that the valve should have been stronger and the rust shouldn't have impacted maybe okay uh should one of my guys have gone back and looked at the meter every day but i don't think anyone that looks at their meter every day to see if it's spinning fast uh the city had some information okay that was available at least they have the technology to do it uh and i see some responsibility there also and i was i'm trying to get here to get stay in good standing with the city i'm trying to get this resolved and uh so i'm a little bit here saying uh i'd like to like to see some help on this if there is a way to i'm not sure if it said 100 of the city 100 mine but uh work through the issue a little backdrop again on the winery you don't hear us whining out there but it's been a tough year for us uh bottom line the minnesota state fair was canceled uh we've delivered about a hundred thousand dollars of wine that was our biggest sale of the year okay gone okay we do about 40 weddings down here and even that the police help us with that on occasion uh for this uh weddings uh we're gonna do about 20 15 to 20. we're going to be down a good 20 maybe 22 this year have moved into next year and we were shut down for a few months just after march 17th no inside uh seating was available at that time at all no no on-site consumption all we could do is sell bottles during that period of time our events are our way down as far as corporate events because no one is doing corporate events outside put that all in summary and again has nothing directly to do with this okay and i understand that but as a business owner we're down already five hundred thousand dollars we are fighting for every dollar uh to survive down here and i know that some of the other companies down here are experiencing similar things so it's really concerning what i have uh yeah you have the bills uh you have you have the information reports uh right testified is is accurate and i want to take any questions from your counsel or anyone else on the city council here or the mayor [25:17] **David (City Attorney):** i have no questions [25:19] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** console questions [25:21] **Council Member Steve Nordin:** i just i just have one one question and it probably doesn't seem as a large issue but let's say that there's there's 200 households in the city that are maybe getting over billed by the same percentage as you but they can't tell because it's not as big as the volume do you think that hurts them just as much as it hurts hurts you and what their would their recourse be anything to come to us and say uh our water was leaking and we didn't know it and we don't want to pay for it so and for that too boy i don't want to step on any toes here but um i don't think it's our responsibility to be a watchdog whether whether there's i'm sure west west knows if there's software that can control that or not we aren't responsible for watching everybody else's business and yep you're right it was a huge it was a huge uh jump from what you normally use but i just i can't see how we can justify helping you with this and our people are the ones that found a leak [26:44] **Ron Stoll:** no sir no no actually we we discovered that there was a leak what what your individual found after we had them come down to our place is identified where in the building and we immediately shut off the water [27:00] **Council Member Steve Nordin:** right so i mean but the city had no idea [27:04] **Ron Stoll:** no i know well after you called you guys couldn't find exactly where it was oh no we didn't even wait to try to find out where it was we got our city right away oh yeah and our people found where the leak was right i guess i i don't know exactly because of our running yeah it was our people and then we then i i heard a plumber to come out and fix it so i guess now that the city's value-add there would have been specifically that they came out to make sure that the water was actually going through it but uh we're the ones that identified the problem and we we're the ones that went through the expense to fix it i mean you had a guy out there probably for 20 minutes we're not trying to i said i was i acknowledged the fact that you helped but it wasn't uh [27:54] **Council Member Steve Nordin:** well there was two guys okay then there was there's two guys out there but they weren't out there very long well they went and did a number of things to make sure that and they found out that water was running i mean your own people couldn't do it but the city found it [28:13] **Ron Stoll:** just just so you know i'll acknowledge that the city aided in uh and i did acknowledge that at the beginning that the city did aid in the resolution once it was discovered the issue is i have a concern like you had pointed out i believe steve that if uh the city has the technology if you guys are you're paying for the software and if you do have the technology and it's not being used to its benefit i mean i was taking clean water that was coming in and putting clean water down the sewer system and i was charged full retail for every drop of clean water that was going also going and the sewer is more expensive than the water and it's like two to one and now water is crystal clear not contaminated in any way it was just going right back down so the city really didn't even have to do that but i understand it goes into your interior recycling facilities and it goes by gallons and i'm aware of that but at the same time the actual extra cost to the city the incremental cost of the city have water come in a water go out it doesn't change much okay i have a pretty strong uh financial background where you guys figure out the water usage for the year what you're going to use you take your expenses you divide by that okay and that's what you allocate to per gallon of water for water and sewer if for some reason the city doubled its water usage that year your costs don't double even close to that it go varies very small incrementally for additional chemicals and maybe a little electricity to pump the water through so i'm trying to say is that the city didn't get damaged by this financially okay and i got seriously damaged by this financial and is there a difference steve like you pointed out between an individual and a company there's a big difference okay you know if an individual like mine if my water bill went from seventeen dollars a month to 170 dollars a month okay does it have an impact on me it does okay but we're i'm not uh nsp corporation i'm not ibm here okay i'm ron stoll i'm probably a bunch of local people okay and a couple from outside and i have 45 employees i didn't laugh one employee during this whole chrono buyers thing i wanted me to i got some aid so i could work people through i didn't fire anyone i didn't lay anyone off okay i kept the operation rolling and even though we took a hit on it because i wanted to keep our team here so did that impact me a lot darn right it did that doesn't mean you're going to change your positions i'm sure you already had probably an idea where you when i wanted to vote but i just really wanted to express from a business owner and where we're at uh i think there was sure liability and i'm just asking for uh if there's any way you can do something for me to help me out i didn't gain anything out of this uh [31:21] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** i'm sympathetic to your situation but i've got a question uh you said the rust and maybe the o-ring and that's what it allowed it who told you that was it did you talk to the company and installed [31:36] **Ron Stoll:** yes [31:37] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay did you have anybody come and take a look at it uh after a different a third party or was it the same people that installed [31:43] **Ron Stoll:** i didn't just the same people that installed it okay and again we i see where you're going that it would have been nice to have a third party to come in and analyze it i wasn't at this time you know thinking uh legalities or a case or anything like that i was trying to stop the problem get it fixed because we need water to run for our facility [32:04] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** i understand that i believe it was the city the public works department that asked you to write that letter and to have it inspected by uh maybe your insurer or the installer and then to get back to us and do we have the dates on that or is that [32:18] **Ron Stoll:** actually the person asking was neil okay okay and and i did i actually went to uh my insurance company and because it wasn't uh it's not considered a a leak inside the building so there's no damage you know if i would could have been spraying all over and did damage to the property but the fact is that it didn't impact the property whatsoever it just was a cost i said water coming in and going right back on the same pipe uh also checked with the uh i did follow through on both things talked with the water softener company and and once again okay they they're cover parts and service but they don't have any uh you know liquidated damages okay into that for to cover those type of issues so now their their insurance was limited to that too so it's it is one of those things where you know there's a and one person have been kind of the stuck e completely and it just didn't seem right based on what had transpired i just liked it in the future if anything comes out of this i'd really like to see that if we have the technology here in the city that uh we use it that if there's a water bill it's significantly higher than the previous one on normal usage and if they're reading it because they're getting information out of it that there should be a report that comes out what caught a danger report or call whatever you want to call it or they can actually go to and hey these three properties have at least sent them a letter out okay saying you may want to check on this just like they said this happens in most cities happens in eagan and what happens in napa valley and what happens to all the other cities and like when i was a negan there was that much bigger than canada falls is now when we started that ask program [33:49] **Council Member:** a call a question on the water softener install you're saying that you contacted them about warranty coverage and they said they had only parts warranty [33:57] **Ron Stoll:** yeah the warranty covered parts and labor for their equipment [34:02] **Council Member:** were they had covered by bonding or any kind of installation coverage or you're saying that there's only coverage for the parts that they installed [34:08] **Ron Stoll:** again again for i didn't go in from a legal standpoint so i just i asked them explain the whole situation of them like we have here and they said their their insurance only covers or the warranty insurance only covers parts and labor for their actual installation not any uh i say liquidated damages but it's um i can't think of the term the legal german right now so i was i was trying to exhaust all possibilities to look for even maybe a multiple you know buckets chipping in to make the thing go away at least reduce the pain i guess that was what i was thinking when i first heard about this a few months ago is it was if it was a newer softer system why why aren't they taking care of this or your insurance because clearly there was a leak there [34:55] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** but i you know i realized that i sympathize with all businesses right now but still i i don't i i i think it's it should probably be why is it your softener company and uh your insurance stepping up to the plate [35:10] **Ron Stoll:** insurance was actually a complete shutdown on my insurance because they said where's your damage you know you're we're ensuring the building property my wine uh all everything in my building is all insured but he said nothing got damaged there was no damage right down the drain he said just because you had a powers we had a lightning strike last week okay out here a couple weeks ago and wiped out our elevator and all of our security and everything else and insurance will cover that it was like ten thousand dollars in damage insurance will cover that because there was actual damage done to items within the building itself believe me i wanted to be there [35:56] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** john any other questions for ron i appreciate your time yeah thank you okay david you want to uh proceed with your presentation wes to address the questions about the city side and i've got a few uh documents to hand out [36:58] **David (City Attorney):** want to raise your right hand thank you you do swear or affirm that the evidence and testimony that you'll give relative to the cause no longer consider thank you be the whole truth and nothing but the truth to help the god [37:16] **Wes Anway (Utilities Supervisor):** yes [37:18] **David (City Attorney):** state your name for the record please [37:21] **Wes Anway:** west anway city employee [37:24] **David (City Attorney):** mayor are you gonna be able to uh hear me if i stand here or where would you like me to talk that'd be the best place right in the middle area uh so wes you just stated your name could you uh state your occupation please [37:34] **Wes Anway:** uh utility supervisor did i say you can't involve yes yeah [37:37] **David (City Attorney):** how long have you been in that position [37:39] **Wes Anway:** well just probably about seven years okay [37:43] **David (City Attorney):** um were you called out to address this issue at the canon river winery on february 11th of 2020 [37:48] **Wes Anway:** yes [37:50] **David (City Attorney):** and what did you do when you received that call i assume you went out to the winery right yes what did you find when you went out [37:57] **Wes Anway:** um we removed the cover that is over the meter um and as soon as we removed that box i could hear water going through the meter um so we turned the main valve off and uh asked if any water was being used um they said no we walked through the building checking bathrooms and toilets um nothing was leaking uh so then there's valves after the meter um there's one valve so we shut that one down and the water quit running at that point [38:34] **David (City Attorney):** okay so when you say there's water coming through the meter that means there's water running into the building [38:39] **Wes Anway:** yes yep [38:40] **David (City Attorney):** okay did you eventually locate uh where the leak was [38:44] **Wes Anway:** yeah so we turn valve after the meter back on went around the building again and uh the water softeners are in a a back room with like a boiler system some type of boiler which so it's pretty loud um but we were able to kind of back search it with valves and found that the flushing valve had been stuck on the water softener and that's consistent [39:13] **David (City Attorney):** yep [39:14] **Wes Anway:** so we put it in bypass went back to the meter verified it was water had stopped running [39:20] **David (City Attorney):** okay did you uh have any discussions you're hearing when you make any comments about the water sound running in that back room [39:30] **Wes Anway:** yes there was a gentleman there i don't i think he was a maintenance guy or something he just mentioned that he did hear water running a few days prior to us being there but thought nothing of it [39:48] **David (City Attorney):** then did you take a look at how the city's water metering system works in terms of collecting data and whether you get the real-time alerts when customers are using water [40:02] **Wes Anway:** so our meter system is set up for drive by only so when the gals from city hall come down they load the meters onto the reader itself and we drive the city and it pings each meter and that gives us a reading for that month or that time period [40:21] **David (City Attorney):** just let me see if i understand right so the data is on the meter which is at the property and then you and your crew drive around the city with some kind of collector device that downloads or picks up the data from the meter [40:35] **Wes Anway:** correct [40:36] **David (City Attorney):** okay so do you i don't know if there's like some city control room or how it works but whatever your city controls are do you get like day-to-day or hour-to-hour readings [40:48] **Wes Anway:** the only way we can do that is with uh a data logger what that is we go out to the property if we get called or a water leak and we have to manually ping that meter and then spits out 90 90 days of data and then we can see you can get that graph to show the leaks and [41:09] **David (City Attorney):** okay so let's talk about the graph so we looked at a graph earlier and it's actually a property owner submitted a copy and i've got a copy in this back it as well which is marked as number five in this packet let me show that to you there's a reading on here or not a reading but a mark that says starting on december 27 19 there's something that says continuous leaked flag [41:38] **Wes Anway:** yep [41:39] **David (City Attorney):** when did you and the city get that information did you get it on december 27th of 19th [41:45] **Wes Anway:** um this is a graph that we download the data so on february 11th when we actually perform the data logger on the meter itself so that's when the city got the data [41:59] **David (City Attorney):** yep and then it looks backwards from that february 11th date back to 90 days [42:04] **Wes Anway:** yep yep [42:06] **David (City Attorney):** okay and did you also uh you emailed the manufacturer of the city's water metering system right [42:12] **Wes Anway:** yeah emailed our uh the meter rep [42:15] **David (City Attorney):** okay and that's the document marked number two here yep can you just kind of summarize uh what their response was regarding how the system works [42:25] **Wes Anway:** yeah so like i stated earlier it's a monthly reading so we manually have to go out and read the meters the meters that we do have are capable of what they call a fixed network system so we would have to have transmitters all over the city which collects the data so then we wouldn't have to be driving around but then you can set them transmitters to hourly or every week or monthly but the more often you ping them meters wears out the batteries faster so you got to kind of play that game of how much is too much and how much are you actually getting the full life of that register [43:16] **David (City Attorney):** so just out of curiosity if you know it i'm not sure if you know the answer or not but how many of those transmitters would you need to cover cannon falls and what would be the cost of [43:27] **Wes Anway:** i know that's excel energy uses them systems i believe you'll see them on the street lights but i don't know how much they cost [43:35] **David (City Attorney):** and then i'm also just going to point to you uh the document marked number number three here in this packet this shows a handheld collector [43:44] **Wes Anway:** yep [43:45] **David (City Attorney):** so if this is the gear that you and your crew use to go around to physically attach the properties and collect the data [43:52] **Wes Anway:** yes so this is this isn't for say the collector but it it collects the data from the transmitter which is exhibit four yep so they're just hooked bluetooth and that the exhibit three gives you the routes and house address and the transmitter just transmits the readings to the trimble number three [44:17] **David (City Attorney):** so based on the system that cam falls currently has in place uh was there any way that you or your staff could have gotten real-time notice that there was a leak at the candidate [44:31] **Wes Anway:** not my staff no um yeah it they want to had it for the whole month the whole site the whole month um i don't know in the software the billing software itself if that kicks up flags or not um as soon as they could have got their reading is the day we read it if we build that day or um i know sometimes they'll go through the bills and they'll pull up one that seems high and just lets us know to go out there and maybe check it [45:11] **David (City Attorney):** but so just pointing you to uh number page number one on this packet here this looks like kind of a summary of the building from the fan river winery right [45:21] **Wes Anway:** yes [45:23] **David (City Attorney):** so this has each of the months it's got charges and receipts and then down there the last i guess paragraph that's the bill that went out in february is that right february looks like fifth kind of small already february 5th [45:41] **Wes Anway:** yeah february 5th okay [45:43] **David (City Attorney):** and that would have been billing for usage during january [45:47] **Wes Anway:** yes correct [45:48] **David (City Attorney):** and this week now based on the information you now know started december 27th so that's why the first big bill was the billing for the month of january that went out [46:04] **Wes Anway:** correct [46:05] **David (City Attorney):** mr mayor i don't know how formally you want to be but i'll offer these uh papers uh and i i don't think i have any credit questions [46:17] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay of course council you have any questions for wes um could i take two minutes sure yep okay... [Brief recess/pause] ...okay we're going to call a recess for five minutes. *** [Recess until 51:16] *** [51:16] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay we are back in session. [51:18] **Bill Tipping (Attorney for Winery):** i want to make sure that i understood your testimony correctly want to have my back oh you're fine did i hear you say that it has been at least to your awareness it has been a past practice and if there's a high bill that it occasionally will get pulled that somebody will see a high bill and they'll pull that bill [51:48] **Wes Anway:** yes occasionally [51:49] **Bill Tipping (Attorney for Winery):** okay and that bill is pulled because it's high in relationship to prior usage of prior bills and it gets somebody attention [51:58] **Wes Anway:** yep [51:59] **Bill Tipping (Attorney for Winery):** okay i think i also heard you say that um the software the billing software may have the potential of a flash of putting a flag up i think was your word red flag [52:13] **Wes Anway:** i don't know if the software has that capability i don't go into the billing software [52:19] **Bill Tipping (Attorney for Winery):** you don't know one way or the other [52:21] **Wes Anway:** no [52:22] **Bill Tipping (Attorney for Winery):** but what you do know is you know that on occasion bills are pulled [52:26] **Wes Anway:** yes [52:27] **Bill Tipping (Attorney for Winery):** was this bill pulled and was the uh was uh cannon falls winery reached out to prior to uh the delivery of the bill in this case [52:38] **Wes Anway:** i don't believe so [52:39] **Bill Tipping (Attorney for Winery):** you know why [52:41] **Wes Anway:** i know we've went through some staff so there's overturned possibility that may have been missed i don't know if they still do that practice i know in the past when we had utility billing down at our office she would just go through them by hand so every bill kind of got looked at when she was ripping them [52:59] **Bill Tipping (Attorney for Winery):** that would have been helpful in this whole situation if that had been done right [53:04] **Wes Anway:** it would have prevented what five days a week because the leak had already occurred so but it would have been helpful in this situation five days of leaking [53:13] **Bill Tipping (Attorney for Winery):** yeah okay [53:15] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** any more any questions from the console for wes [53:19] **Council Member:** wes i got a question with the the plumbing the the rust and the knocking out the o-ring and making it so that it it leaked constantly have you ever seen anything like this in pipes here in the city of cannon falls because i've heard accusations that it could be the pipes and too much rust have you seen anything like that in the area [53:41] **Wes Anway:** um water softeners the back flush valves stick on almost any water softeners just depends on age and time and bull rings we've had you know quite a few since i have started working here that have got stuck open in the bash backwash cycle and then you have to put it bypass to stop that backwash cycle so they do need to be repaired if you just can't put them in there and walk away [54:21] **Ron Stoll:** am i allowed to ask a question [54:22] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** yeah go ahead [54:23] **Ron Stoll:** water pressure is really low and i think it might be because of rust in the land so i was going to ask wes tomorrow if there's a plan to flush out the main and possibly there any way you can get a camera down here to take a look at the condition of it [54:39] **Wes Anway:** we flush lines spring and fall we have tested the water in this area for pressure on hydrants and at 70 pounds [54:53] **Ron Stoll:** so yeah i think you would mention maybe a year ago when i brought this up that the water pressure was maybe a little higher than you expected right i'm still having low water pressure at my building [55:12] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** anything else for wes well thank you wes david do you have anybody [55:20] **David (City Attorney):** well mr else i guess i'll just comment that in my opinion the city is not legally required to uh reduce the bill here um the city has the option to do that it's a discretionary matter but from a legal standpoint i don't think the city was required to give them a notice the leak happened on the private property the city provided the clean water the city provided the treatment of the water that came through obviously it's unfortunate no one wants to see a business uh lose money no one wants to see water wasted nobody wins here but uh the city it was not the city's fault the city provided the service that it was required to provide so the council sure can reduce the bill if it chooses to on a discretionary basis but legally i don't advise the council it's required to reduce that bill [56:39] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** rebuttal bill [56:42] **Bill Tipping (Attorney for Winery):** thank you and i'll be brief um if you don't mind i'll move that so everybody can hear me um so our position and i hope it's clear and i think that everything came in i think everybody was forthright and and honest and clear and they didn't take up a whole lot of time telling this story on either side so i i to both sides i think i want to express my appreciation for that there is a responsibility here because there is a as wes testified the possibility exists for the city to actually flag these bills to pay attention to do and that's really all that is being asked for here obviously he's asking for some help on his bill he's made that very clear but he's also asking going forward that the city take advantage of the systems that are already in place and do everything they can in order to to take a high bill something that they did in the past and for whatever reason didn't do in this case and that that become a point of emphasis going forward so these kinds of things can be minimized maybe not always prevented there's nothing perfect we all know that particularly this year but it can be everybody can do the best job they can [58:02] **David (City Attorney):** anything else david an issue briefly i think as wes testified you know that possibly could have saved about five days worth of this 45-day week so it really would have if it happened minimized or reduced a very small amount of that fund and it's not clear to me exactly how or when that happens i don't think the city has any legal obligation to do that [58:39] **Ron Stoll:** that's not exactly accurate okay it was 45 days and was split between two bills approximately 30 days was on one bill and approximately 15 days was on the other bill so that we would have been a five-day thing of at least another 15 days from a billing standpoint now when they read it now what their administrative time in between and all that stuff out and all that but it was clearly two separate bills you have information thanks [59:16] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay i'll call any closing arguments that anybody wants to make david or bill i think that was that was it that was it okay well i am going to close the public hearing on the winery and open it up for discussion of on the council [59:38] **Council Member Matson:** well i um i think this is something and a lot of times when we deal with some financial or personnel related issues i think we need to either table it or we would have to go into a closed session to discuss financial ramifications i think you've got three options here i think you can you can before against the winery in this case or a third option consider compensation and if that's the case i'm going to ask for a closed session for compensation so those are your three options you can side with the winery you can side with the city or table it for consideration [1:00:46] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** if we have a closed session with the winery be invited to that or is it only that would be just the contest okay so their presentation is done they're done [1:00:58] **Council Member:** okay i i think we should close the session yeah we don't want a table just yeah just let's get it let's try to resolve it just go into a closed session i think so that's my personal opinion that's fine i'm waiting closed session [1:01:13] **David (City Attorney):** mayor i'm not sure that there a basis to close it there's no attorney-client privilege it's a public appeal hearing i i don't think that uh the council's deliberations on this are necessarily confidential or non-public [1:01:29] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay okay all right all right fine okay uh then i'll start off with the discussion i'm sympathetic to this situation because you know we've had our water softener uh and our water heater both replaced since we've lived here and if our plumber was to make a mistake and then it cost us extra hundreds or thousands of dollars and we went to them and they said tough not our fault and then we come to the city and you guys say well it's not our fault either uh you leave somebody high and dry and i think that would be pretty bitter um i also think that we can be preventive of this situation from continuing either in the courtroom or with other agencies i hate to tell the winery to go back to the installer and go after them legally i think we can find a solution here tonight and if we want to discuss if that means some forgiveness on the bill adjusting it or whatever that is or credit for the future but i know that in the past with public works we did run into situations that were somewhat similar where there was a problem with the watering bill and i hope i'm not speaking out of class here but i think the the fact of the matter is we used to have an employee who physically looked at every bill before it went out and she no longer works for the city and she's the one that caught this in the past that doesn't mean that somebody didn't necessarily do their job it just means that this data came out later and so for that i apologize but that former employee did catch things similar and it did save those companies money and we when we address those things with that in mind that's also what helps for me to be sympathetic because in the past if something like this happened we would have stopped it [1:03:15] **Council Member Steve Nordin:** so we've had a couple lists in the past years but nothing like this i mean vinergy had a big leak in their plant and it was in their plant and we they got shards for the entire sewer bill but all the water went out the door into the didn't go down the sewer he paid for all the water but all the water went off the door into the lawn so he but he paid for all the water and then dr turner had one out that center where a bell kicked in and he i i don't know if we gave him a break at all either i think he paid for the water and sewer he had a mess out there too with water but those are two instances that were not really similar to this but it happens but anyway so we want to make a motion we'll be well our make emotions not discussing yet [1:04:19] **Council Member Duncan:** well we're still discussing okay um i'm going to make kind of a bold statement i think it's a good thing we didn't go ahead with that bridge repair because i think we just lost 5 800 i don't want to charge them for money for water they didn't use it's not like there should have been someone standing there oh what do i hear you know it's it was a mistake you know and it was a it was a failure of a lot of different things i don't think it's the city's responsibility to catch high bills but i also think it would be awfully easy in a in a business especially one like this that uses a lot of water obviously no one could tell there was water rushing everywhere i don't know you know i boy i hate to make them pay all of it if if we're gonna we can maybe meet him at the middle and nobody's happy that's a good compromise but i can't i i look at this and it's like okay there's something wrong it's not just we didn't see it for a couple of days so that's my thought [1:05:25] **Council Member Steve Nordin:** you want to look at it another way you turn down fifty six hundred dollars to keep people from using a bridge for four months and you're going to take that money and help one individual business [1:05:37] **Council Member Duncan:** i don't think i'm helping them i i don't it's it's not to help them it's like i i don't think this was intentional on their part if if i thought they were trying to hide it it wasn't intentional but also it wasn't our responsibility [1:05:54] **Council Member:** it may not be our responsibility legally as was said but we still have the power to forgive and give them a break i mean that's the decision if we had an individual who came in who usually had a hundred dollar water bill and they had a thousand dollar water bill all of a sudden what would we do would we just say tough you know too bad we'd give him a break maybe we wouldn't i maybe i'm wrong on that but this seems like i mean this is so obvious it wasn't even a stair step you know and it's not i don't think it's wes's responsibility or anyone else's to catch a bill before it goes out i appreciate that it's been done but when that kind of thing is done manually you are going to miss them not everything is going to be caught as far as warning a customer i'd i don't know i just think it's a lot to ask for something that was so obviously a mechanical failure anybody else neil what do you think yeah you've been in the business that's your deal tell us what to do well at mass dominance or political stuff [1:07:15] **Neil (City Administrator):** yeah yeah let's go don't worry your mask is up you can talk what do you think i've been in this business about 20 years and in my career we've never forgiven a water bill and and i don't i know john you mentioned a few uh examples where we if i recall we did not forgive me not for we didn't forget another example was the riverside trailer court when they had a issue and we we didn't we didn't uh lower their bill [1:08:12] **Council Member Matson:** anybody else one thing i'll bring up um i know it's for residential i believe it is for business too that the billing is tiered based on how much they use so like if you use 200 gallons it's this amount per gallon it goes up as you use i don't know what the numbers would come out to be but one option we could do is bill the whole amount on the lowest tier it might cut off i mean i don't even know how much maybe a grand or so but it's something that we could look at but just so you know the water is tiered but the sewer isn't yeah i'm just talking about the water on this part [1:09:00] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay else well the the current bill is how much right now what we're talking about is this is a little over six thousand eighty four six five eight thousand four hundred twenty eight fifty six yeah eight thousand four twenty okay i thought i saw six thousand something sixty five 6567 and 64 cents [1:09:47] **Council Member Matson:** well i'm i'm worried a little bit about setting a precedent but i might be willing to give a slight break maybe say forty five hundred but well as much as i would go well lower the bill to forty five hundred right yeah about a two thousand dollar credit or well yeah well i'm thinking if we're gonna either vote for the winery or vote the other way make that motion now if we're gonna talk compromise i'd like to go into a closed session and talk about it [1:10:22] **Council Member:** well in that case i'll make a motion to deny the wineries request because i'm going to talk a compromise too if that's how you want it [1:10:35] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** yeah right does that sound correct david they do it that way [1:10:41] **David (City Attorney):** yeah if uh i think that would be the correct way mr mayor if you want to vote yes or no and depending on the outcome of that vote if the council wants to have a attorney-client privilege session with me about you know ability to compromise then you could do that at that point [1:11:04] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay okay want to do with that okay [1:11:08] **Ron Stoll:** john yeah it may be out of turn here but obviously we're hearing in the open conversation um i i don't want to make this anything more difficult than it has to be either okay uh it's not a good situation and it's not necessarily a finger pointing one way or the other okay uh i i've heard the conversations or or about sixty five hundred dollars okay is my damages and and i don't believe ever negotiating against myself it's a terrible thing to do from a negotiation standpoint but i i can't make the motion someone else have to make the motion but someone made the motion and said we would get a 3 000 credit going forward it's even a little less than half of that that would satisfy me and that could help me out a lot and hopefully we can go into the system and try to do some system uh analysis and reviews going forward so it doesn't hurt someone else especially if we do have the software that has it and the flags just aren't turned on [1:12:12] **Council Member Matson:** actually ron i had mentioned 4 500 which would be 2 000 or two thousand okay and and i mentioned three thousand so it was twenty five hundred i mean just it's something that would help us out tremendously right now and i'd like to also have the issue closed so we can move on but whatever you can do if it's true if anything you do would help us out tremendously right now [1:12:35] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** thank you well if we want to do something like that and we agree on that let's we could do that too as well [1:12:40] **Council Member Matson:** i'll make a motion to give the winery a two thousand five hundred dollar credit towards the future [1:12:47] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** there's already a question on the floor but was there was there ever a second to bill a second to bill anybody want a second bill's motion or do you want to withdraw your motion [1:13:00] **Council Member Duncan:** uh i'll withdraw my motion [1:13:03] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** go ahead matt [1:13:04] **Council Member Matson:** so i make the motion to give the winery a credit of two thousand dollars for two thousand five hundred dollars for the future [1:13:12] **Council Member Steve Nordin:** i'll second it [1:13:14] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** there's been a motion by matt montgomery and a second by morris to give the winery a twenty five hundred dollar credit is there any discussion on that [1:13:21] **David (City Attorney):** well mr mayor can i i just want to clarify so i understand procedurally so you are upholding the existing bill but then you're giving a credit for against future bills is that what you're right [1:13:34] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** correct correct the bill stands but we're giving a future credit [1:13:38] **David (City Attorney):** okay understood okay [1:13:42] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay all in favor of that... motion passes five to one okay thank you thank you yeah yeah thanks for coming in okay let's get into reports kyle [1:14:09] **Kyle (Chamber of Commerce):** good evening city council members and committee men community members i have a few things to talk about tonight i would first like to thank everyone for coming to the sizzling summer day contests that were put on by the canon bells coffee and ice cream ladies they had very good turnouts each night especially thursday night when they had so many contests going on and an agility course for bunnies so that was quite the uh attraction also we had a nice crowd for the open air fair and this was a new type of event we've been canceling all of the summer fun fests and so we came up with the open airfare which was having the vendor booths on the sidewalks no streets were blocked from this and when i surveyed the vendors they were happy with how the open airfare went for them decent business lots of people walking by and so we asked if they liked open airfares versus fun fests and it was interesting to see that open airfares was voted most popular and the reasoning for that goes actually back to the fun fests and the real reason the fun fests were started was to get people walking around the community downtown community to going to the shops and shop but the fun fest became this great big event on mill street and so by going back to the open airfare it is bringing people from all away from the beacon to the stop sign at mill street from the cannon river winery up to the library and so the chamber board is meeting this thursday and so we will be making decisions for our 2021 events and we'll take it from there also on thursday the board will be deciding if we're going to be holding a halloween trick or treat trot event remember that is 650 to 700 children on main street in mill street and 4th street deck the falls also needs to be decided on i know the library will not be having santa story time the responses we've been getting from the chamber membership is to not hold them due to covid but there has been requests for the fireworks and so we'll see what comes of all of that we are now up to 185 chamber members which surpasses last year's membership and so we have 11 new members the explore minnesota program that laura quali helped us get involved with is the leads that come in from the explore minnesota website we have now received 473 leads which means it's that many people wanting to get information about cannon falls and only sixty one of them have asked for the actual discover guide to be sent out to them the interesting thing is we had six or excuse me five thousand discover guides printed this year we are down to less than sixty and i have businesses asking for more because they're out but that's what we've had and so i just want to you know we may look at printing more next year or is it just this year because of covet the bike trail surpassed last year's visitors in july and they're predicting 150 000 people using the bike trail this season that's a ton of people and so just to let people know we do have to take all of this into consideration and so if you're interested you can sure let the chamber know the phone number is 263-2289 or you can do tourism at cannonfalls.org we do have a couple of uh quick events coming up there's a pop-up food distribution this uh excuse me friday september 25th and that is from nine to eleven they are needing volunteers to help pass out the food but this food which is produce dairy protein and more is available to anyone who needs it now when we did this in august people drove up there was no question there was no proof they drove up they said how many people they had in their family and boom they got a box of food and so people out there in the community need to understand that the pop-up food distribution is for anyone and if you would like to volunteer please contact david anderson at 651-385-6148 there are events going on at uh welsh on the bike trail uh september 19th and 26th it's music being held out at voices of the valley and so take those in only two more weeks of the farmers markets both farmers markets downtown and artisan plaza so be sure to get your produce and we do have a book sale coming up and that is this friday uh from 10 to two it's on the sidewalk in front of the library so nicole i don't mean to take your thunder but i also want to make sure everyone knows about it in case you're not reporting are there any questions it's amazing how we have canceled our events this year but we are busier than ever with people walking in phone calls organizations putting on their own events and we help promote them as well and so thank you all for your support and i'll talk to you in two weeks [1:21:28] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** thanks kyle public works commission steve [1:21:33] **Council Member Steve Nordin:** uh we met on uh third i think it was is that the third third uh we just discussed our um our public works director's position and we have the uh what's his name neil i forgot your own um we got uh searching for a a few candidates that we can interview later on so that's that's been posted and and getting responded to was talk about anything else that was about it then also the cable commission met that same evening and discussed a um a assistant assistant to our um cable director to um help with the uh help with the business at hand i don't know have you talked to sam i'm working on it okay okay okay other than that that's that's that's it [1:23:05] **Laura Qualey:** hey eda laura i don't need a microphone i'm loud enough um i just wanted to give a cares update for the goody county cares grant currently we've had 88 applications come in for goodhue county and uh 25 of them actually have been for cannon falls for up to or for 10 dollars so that's two hundred fifty thousand dollars that have been awarded to our small businesses or non-profits in canon i've got five more that are waiting to be reviewed and i'm not done hitting businesses yet so um they're still just shy of two million dollars left in that pot for gucci county so again i just want to get the word out that if you know someone that hasn't applied for it please do so um 58 awards have been made already so that's about 580 000. in goodhue county so we want to make sure those dollars stay here in canada and also in our county so that's my brief update [1:24:26] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay thank you finance committee mary jill bill [1:24:32] **Council Member:** i was absent have a report [1:24:34] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** what did we discuss [1:24:36] **Council Member:** um we went over some of the committees and potential changes for our ordinance to get those organized okay um that was the main part [1:24:50] **Neil (City Administrator):** um neil it was uh yeah the rfps for legal we went uh we can go in a number of different ways on that we can do criminal through the county or civil and criminal together or or separate criminal and and civil so we're looking into all those okay [1:25:21] **Council Member:** okay planning commission met last night [1:25:25] **Council Member:** yeah we met last night um at our next meeting first meeting in october we'll have a couple of items that will that we have recommended for the council to approve it was a very quick meeting 15 minutes is always kind of nice uh so that's that's where we're at there like say well there'll be a couple of things coming forward to us [1:26:01] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay library board oh anything there nicole's there's really nothing not much to report okay let's go around the horn um let's see neil you want to start [1:26:15] **Neil (City Administrator):** sure just got a few things uh on the public works side uh mill and overlay we'll be starting next week in the uh ridgecrest area and hoffman dakota the crack seal was done uh this week looks pretty good that we approved i suppose it's been a couple of months ago now westside west side park that they've been working on this summer got seated down and watered down today so uh hopefully that grass will grow we'll probably have to do an overseeding in the spring uh to get it to go the pool got filled up uh the last couple days we're going to test that to make sure that the the repair that we did is uh is working and i believe tomorrow or the next day they're going to dig out the rest of that there's a couple of broken frozen pipe that's heading over to the splash pad we'll get that exposed and and get that fixed i want to get that thing running this fall yet too to make sure that it's working correctly we had a uh the wastewater treatment plant has a roof i was expecting a uh a quote uh by tonight um to see what that would cost to fix but we have a roof to fix uh and it can't wait till spring um so uh wes called me out there this week uh last week actually end of last week and and we've been getting seeking some bids on it so we'll have some bids coming in i was expecting some of them to be here tonight but maybe we could have made we got a three week gap here coming up so um i wish we could have got some bids that i could have got approved but it didn't happen but you know we have to get that fixed and you know how the wastewater treatment plant uh account is it's this probably is going to be kind of expensive it's the vehicle shed that's that's leaking and it's leaking bad it's complete repair so um mcd voting starts friday so for the general election so there will be a probably quite a few people coming in and out i think absentee ballot voting is is going to be the thing for this year my last thing is highway 20 is going has got a pipe replacement out north of town that'll be closed um from september 28 to the 30th there will be detours um got that from mndot and in goodyear county today so i thought i'd pass it on that's all i got mayor [1:28:44] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** thanks christine you got anything okay david [1:28:50] **David (City Attorney):** oh mr mayor i don't know if my mic is working but i'll just talk loud uh i understand neil did add an item to the agenda uh for a closed session to discuss the litigation matter so i just want to remind the council of that and i give you the citation as well so after all the other business has concluded i'm asking you to go in a closed session to discuss that the statutes 13d .05 subdivision 3 clause b so you'll need a motion from the council and then a vote on going into closed session we'll do that and then come back on the public record and conclude the meeting but it's fun to remind you of all that and the procedure beyond that i have nothing else [1:29:43] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay let's see go around uh derek you've got anything nope morris [1:29:56] **Council Member Steve Nordin:** parking uh is parallel now in front of the winery on mill street so that's good to see [1:30:05] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** yep it opened it up too man or jill i have nothing [1:30:11] **Council Member Matson:** man uh two-and-oh in fantasy football just in case you're wondering uh it was brought to my attention by a citizen uh that with kovid outdoor sports seem to be more popular and that includes i mean we're getting ready for winter we're lucky that today was beautiful it's going to start getting cold out but we don't know what we're going to be doing next spring and possibly even next summer this citizen brought to my attention that the basketball courts in east side park is just one hoop it's not a full court and it's been pretty busy this summer i've seen a lot of kids out there and also the old tennis courts by the pool the asphalt there is pretty rough uh the citizen was saying maybe we should look into if we could make a better outdoor basketball court with uh you know those glass backboards that are a little bit bigger a little bit more industrial size than the the old style that we have just thought that i'd run that up the flagpole tonight uh i do think that the parks have been crazy busy this year and even if we're you know going to be on the uh downward trajectory of dealing with the pandemic and spring and summer i think they're going to be busy next year too so that could be a project that we could think about early next spring [1:31:18] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** sounds good bill uh nothing steve i've got nothing okay let's get into public input so this is my speak to items 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 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 may choose to schedule consideration of the item on a future agenda [1:32:04] **Babel Gorman:** babel gorman um i was at the finance committee meeting and it was kind of interesting because i didn't expect that we're finally catching on to changing some of our commissions and committees and forming them properly we've known about it for a couple years that we've been out of compliance for like eight years so that's a good thing um john you and i have talked about this citizen input thing it's not legitimate we know that robbie robinson developed it and what's happening up here is we get three minutes to come up here and speak after the meeting's over and what does the council do nothing oh wait a minute we finally got the parking change back on mill street but we haven't got to a police commission meeting yet so i'm wondering when we're going to finally get to it and have a police commission if you haven't noticed we've got some problems some serious problems with our police department so to speak i did talk to you derek i talked to steve and i talked to you john repeatedly i've been up here repeatedly matt you told me and so did derek that the police commission is for the hiring of officers now where would you come up with that i'd like to see that in writing it isn't writing it's right here you all got it in an email and i happen to get the email too says that chief mccormick gave a commission or overview designed to help the council selection of police chief and officers well it's the first i've heard of it and i've been around here just about 32 years in and around here i was on the council for 13 years i've been to many many police commission meetings why then with this last police commission meeting which was over a year and a half ago have an agenda with six items on it and none of them were police chief or a police officer does anybody find that odd besides me i mean it's right here in black and white doesn't make sense does it so what about this police commission what are we going to do about it nobody's got anything to say i love that i wonder if we're going to do anything about it don't think that we need any citizen involvement in the police department there has been little citizen involvement hasn't there thanks for your time [1:35:20] **Lou Twozenau:** hi uh i'm lou twozenau and i own a building right across from the winery and i've had low water pressure there for years now and so i'm concerned about it i have called the the water department a couple times over the years and have really gotten nowhere with it so i'm just kind of hoping that somebody i can get a name or a phone number contact somebody i can get ahold of that will actually get so help me get something done for instance i have a bunch of questions if i have to dig up the water supply to my building what permits are required uh does the city and get involved in any of it will they supply a new curb stop valve if that's the problem uh do they replace the concrete apron and sidewalk that's going to be torn up oh it's just a bunch of questions i have i think it's pretty straightforward stuff that a citizen would have uh with a project like this and i'm also asking about borescoping at me and i i understand that's an old main and that it sounds rusty it was news to me tonight i'm really glad i was here by the way and uh thanks if anybody's got any ideas about who to contact i'll be over over here thank you [1:36:42] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** yeah it cheap as we go through well uh pass out forms [1:36:52] **Ralph Kahler:** i'm ralph kahler from st charles i'm running for the minnesota senate here to introduce myself and uh ask for your input on what you'd like to see in a representative as as we go forward i think uh if it's all right i'll pass these around to you and maybe talk as we go but i come with a little different pedigree than most of the politicians that step forward um i'm a fourth generation farmer uh grew up as a worker we're solar developers and business owner so i think it'll come as a surprise to most people when we look most people are unaware there are no active farmers in the minnesota senate from either party there are no active farmers in the dfl caucus and we know the number of small town rural representatives we have in our state government is too low how long has it been since you were able to vote for a small town business owner that has agriculture experience the closest we've had it was steve svegam he's not a business owner but my wife ran for his seat when he was becoming a commissioner i'm a moderate democrat i believe the work is going to be done by people in the middle and those with skin in the game all my future my career my family our businesses just like you depend on minnesota being prosperous i can't afford to kick the can down the road we need to get things done i've got one foot in the history of minnesota being the owner operator of a fourth generation family farm we're in the middle of transition to my son the fifth and sixth generation i understand the opportunities and struggles of coming into a small town rural business and getting out of it the flip side my other foot's in the future of minnesota my oldest son is ceo of our solar company it's one of the fastest growing solar companies in minnesota we've created over a hundred new high paying jobs we've developed over a hundred megawatts of solar so it's the equivalent of planting 30 million trees and brought over 200 million dollars of economic development to rural minnesota i don't talk about everything elect me and i'm gonna start all this stuff just take what i've done in the past as a private citizen and then what can we do if we put the power of government with that isn't that a different approach to it instead of talking about mitigating climate change we're doing it now we're working at it we have to be cost effective create jobs and that's how it's going to be sustainable healthcare my wife's a cancer survivor of eight years we are a major medical expense surviving family when she was diagnosed i had an off-farm job to get health insurance and the income the company i was with after 10 years was self-insured if it wasn't for the affordable care act they eliminated my position rather than have her come on insurance she had ended her term as a county commissioner which is important experience if it wasn't for the affordable care act we would have had a pre-existing condition would have capped out and our farm would have been at risk of being lost the flip side of that is we're providing healthcare for our employees we did it when we had 30 employees my son who was 26 at the time realized that was really important to him to provide that i understand the impact to a business when i walk around to these small businesses most business owners can't provide health care benefits for their employees or they won't have a business that shouldn't be the determination but kicking the can down the road is not acceptable we need to start dealing with that now we can expand men care we can have group insurance like 40 square is doing in the ag side of things but we need to start getting solutions politics right now is the only place where everyone's frustrated without their doing they aren't getting their work done and yet for some reason they think they should be different if we did that in our daily jobs we would be told we can't keep our position if you don't get your work done you don't get to stay we expect that for some reason our politicians don't get their work done and brag about having division and then want to go back and give us another term of the same thing and we think things are going to change if we send them back we need to start holding them accountable and keep people in that have again skin in the game that aren't going to be going kicking the can down the road because they're fine if things don't change i'm not that way it impacts every day every decisions going to be impacting either our ag side or a construction and building side so i just ask for your support when it comes to making decisions i don't know how to run a city we need to get input from those that have that are boots on the ground that deal with it every day with the city the employees and come back and get those solutions and take them into st paul rather than having saint paul send solutions down with good intentions and then we deal with a whole bunch of unintended consequences we've dealt with that in agriculture in our construction all the time it's too many times we don't have the people involved bringing the best solutions and we expect the people up above looking at 10 000 feet to do that so again that's i would appreciate your support i would like your input i'll send out an email if you have ideas for me that's how i work with everything is we get from the people working on it take them back work with a good solution and then bring that forward for new legislation and laws rather than getting the new laws and then seeing how we can fix things for the problems that were created so if there's any questions or comments i guess public comment you can't but uh our website's on there i would appreciate your input because that's uh with education it's going to be the teachers parents and administrators that give me the ideas not me sending them out so uh our small towns like i said i've got skin in the game my future my quality of life depends on our small towns and our rural economies being successful and prosperous thank you [1:44:00] **Tim Diemer:** tim diemer cannon falls it's going to be a tough speech to follow to get through this um i can just um would like to make a really nice um just i don't know the word to you um but with the great amazing work that um the chamber and since knowing kyle when she first took over down there um it's probably the very few people that i can i haven't talked to her in over a week i think it is or since labor day or even before then but just like that but i could have probably waited to ask this or went to public works i guess is who i'm wondering it's about the what the bridge the street what's that street the name of it that's the third street bridge i took my i wasn't sure if i could even go over it pedestrian or bicycle but i thought i could usually one time i think they had orange snow fence bit a barrier blocking it they're doing some work on it the south end i you can't even get a i had to lift my bike that the two concrete barricades a little narrower on that end so they go pretty much from side to side i had and my my main question is wondering about winter time will they be any snow removal on on the walkway that it's it's a pretty nice sidewalk that wouldn't for for walkers or if they have to stretch through the steep snow and buy i'll probably bike if i'm still living here sticking around um but i i'd probably bike um through there if it was cleared so i i just was bringing that up here instead of having to call somebody later [1:46:17] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** anybody else public input public input and final call public input hearing no none will close the public input and allow motion to adjourn the regular account got to go okay going to close session i'd like to make a motion that we go into closed session [1:46:53] **Council Member Steve Nordin:** okay i'll second it oh steve got her all ready [1:46:57] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** we got a clear outfit they can never hear us over here they're not paying attention... [Transition to Closed Session] *** [Closed Session from 1:47:00 to 2:15:00] *** [2:15:05] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** you can call it a motion and move back into open session yeah okay he'll come out when he's ready flipping it all on all right okay i can't have a motion to go back in the open session [2:15:30] **Council Member:** i moved to go back into open session [2:15:34] **Council Member Steve Nordin:** second [2:15:35] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** a second by steve all in favor aye [2:15:37] **Council Members:** aye [2:15:38] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** opposed okay we're back in now we make a motion well you know or what do we do [2:15:45] **David (City Attorney):** mr mayor i don't think any motion is required uh probably not no action you know it sounds like the council decided to take no action is required [2:15:52] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** okay okay we like that all right i'll make a message in case you adjourn [2:16:01] **Council Member:** so move yeah [2:16:04] **Council Member:** second [2:16:05] **Mayor Matt Montgomery:** all in favor all right