This transcript has been formatted with speaker identifications based on the roles and names provided in the municipality context. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** City Council to order. We'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Is there any additions to the agenda? I have a few. Under new business I would be CW technology proposal. Still under new business J would be Q on the liquor store and K would be liquor store advertisement. Any other additions? Do we have a motion to approve the agenda? [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** So moved. [00:00] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen:** I'll second. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** All in favor? [00:00] **Council Members:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** First of all, consent agenda. A1, the May 9th, 2018 City Council regular meeting minutes. Any questions on those? Two, the financial records. Number one, the city accounts payable for June 2018. Two, the city financial statements, May 2018. And the liquor store profit and loss statement for May of 2018. Any questions on those? [00:00] **Council Member Kris Huso:** Roof damage, the first one. Beaver Roofing. Are we responsible for that or is that going to be at the depot? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** We own the building so we are responsible. It was submitted to our insurance company and we will have to pay the deductible but yes we are responsible. [00:00] **Council Member Kris Huso:** Can I ask what the damage was from? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** Wind. This was—I don't remember the date—but there was a really, really bad windstorm about a month and a half, two months ago, something like that. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Is there a motion to approve the minutes and the financial report? [00:00] **Council Member Kris Huso:** Um, I have one more question. Paid check number... it's still on that same page. Uh, go down to 43854, Municipal Equipment Repair, 165. We had a—who did the repair on that? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** Appliance Repair Services. So I'm just making sure that we use—we don't use like city employees to do all of our work on that. [00:00] **Council Member Kris Huso:** Okay, I just wanted to make sure that I understood that what we do. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** Okay, well it depends on what it is. I mean, if it's a drain or a plumbing thing, most of the time the street department guys come down and do it, but they don't fix like refrigerators or something like that. [00:00] **Council Member Kris Huso:** Sounds good. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Any other questions? Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** I so move that we accept the minutes and the financial reports as written. [00:00] **Council Member Walter Lower III:** I'll second that. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** All in favor? [00:00] **Council Members:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** All right, next we have public comments. This time is reserved for comments from the public on matters not listed on the agenda. Please keep your comments to three minutes. Is that us? Did you—yes, if you'd like to just step up to the microphone. This would be uh, 6D. Okay, do you want... can we move that? Yeah, let's just do it now. [00:00] **Verlina Jones (Donkey Rescue):** Okay, hi, my name's Verlina Jones and I'm here on behalf of Save the Braze Donkey Rescue located in Barnum, Minnesota. My daughter runs this rescue. It's the only registered non-profit donkey rescue in the state and each year we do a fundraiser awareness walk with the donkeys. This year our walk is gonna focus around the fires. One of the donkeys is going to be the goodwill ambassador for Mom Pod Kettle Days in Kettle River. So the route we are walking is going to be from Hinckley to Kettle River. The DNR did grant us a special permit to walk on the Munger Trail when we need to. So the reason we're here today is because we're going to be camping along the way and we need to camp one night in Moose Lake if we can. So we're looking for permission to camp with between six and ten people, but also four donkeys. So we're wondering if there's a possibility we could camp somewhere near the hockey arena, the pavilion, the recycling center back there, if that would be possible, and the day would be Tuesday, August the 7th. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** I talked this over a little bit with the Mayor. The reason that they're here is because we don't technically allow people to camp just anywhere on city property. And frankly, nobody had ever asked me about this before, so I didn't really know how to answer it. The Mayor also suggested—he didn't have a problem with down by the river either—but we had the Civil War reenactors or something like that, say 20 years ago, that camped up by the depot. He suggested that as a second option just in case anybody was opposed to some reason having them camp down by the pavilion arena area. [00:00] **Council Member Kris Huso:** May I ask a question? Yes. Do you need to be close to water? Is that why you wanted to be down by the arena or would up by the depot work for you? [00:00] **Verlina Jones (Donkey Rescue):** I think the depot area would work also. The reason we were looking at that location is that's right where we will be coming into town that afternoon. And we thought that it would be exposure because people are going to see if there's donkeys down there. You know, people would see and wonder what we were doing and things such as that. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Anybody have any questions? [00:00] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen:** No. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** If you guys were in favor of this, and we talked about this as well, and they stated it before I asked, I think part of the recommendation or motion would be that they clean up both after the donkeys and after themselves as well. If you're okay with them having a campfire or not okay with them having a campfire, anything having to do with camping. I mean, there will be people camping, so. [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** I would like to see this as whatever motion's made that this is like a one-time conditional use type thing because we're not allowing camping in other undesignated areas in the city of Moose Lake. So. Anybody like to make a motion? [00:00] **Council Member Walter Lower III:** I'll make that motion that we allow them to... was there a choice? You wanted to be lower and filled? Is there an issue with them being down where they're talking about it? If anybody doesn't have an issue with it, I guess send down by the shop area and be allowed to camp. If there is a fire, then I would like to see a fire ring being used if there's some type of barrier for that and be with the understanding this is a one-time thing that we're allowing and any future requests would come back to the city council and we're not setting precedent by doing so. That's my motion. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Got it. And clean up? [00:00] **Council Member Walter Lower III:** Clean up, I'm sorry, yes. Clean up. [00:00] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen:** I'll second that. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Thanks. Any other questions? Comments? All in favor? [00:00] **Council Members:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Opposed? Motion passed. Thank you. [00:00] **Verlina Jones (Donkey Rescue):** Thank you. I do have one question, though. You're saying down by the maintenance area from the shop area? [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Well, down by the, like, between the pavilion and the shop, you know, in that grassy... [00:00] **Verlina Jones (Donkey Rescue):** That would be ideal for us. Okay. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** It's not part of the motion, but my suggestion would be stay farther back from the highway. It is a state highway. I don't want to get anything into anything with the state. So the farther back that you are in that grassy area, probably the better. [00:00] **Verlina Jones (Donkey Rescue):** Okay, well we really appreciate it. Thank you very much. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Thank you. Moving on, departmental reports. Chief Boviglon. [00:00] **Chief Boviglon:** Mayor, councilors. Somebody flipped a switch a month ago and it's just been crazy busy. You can see from our calls it's a substantial increase from our off-time months. A couple things I want to hit on. The summer bill races went fine, kind of crummy weather. Last weekend we had the bike-a-thon went through town and that went well. We also had the mugs and hugs. Again, kind of inclement weather, so the numbers were down, but still went very well. I've been working on a lot of investigations and did arrest the individual for possession of stolen property that is associated with the copper theft at the substation, so that was a substantial theft. Couple other cases where we just put in for review at the county attorney's office. Just a lot, a lot of calls. The new Zerker system—we just made a payment to them, one of our final payments, I believe. Again, very much a learning curve with it. One thing I like about it, we're able to capture a lot of more of the activity that we do. You'll see from our report. So that's moving along, still quite a learning curve. The thing I wanted to touch base with you guys on is that for several years I've been kind of describing the need that we have for some kind of an interview room at the police department. Right now we either use my office or the back conference room. It's just getting harder and harder to do that. The fire department is a very busy place. People in and out. Not a lot of privacy there. I mean, can you imagine being a victim of a sexual assault, how embarrassing that is, and not have a real private secure place to give a statement? It's something that we really need to provide a better service for our customer base and been talking with the mayor and Ellissa about a location for that for quite a while now and recently we've kind of reopened the discussion and I've been talking with some people on the Fire District Board about maybe making a plan to utilize some space down at the Fire Hall/Police Department to make a nice interview room there. So I'm going to meet with the fire board next month and just kind of go over some ideas that we may have and listen to any concerns that they may have. So just if you hear of any feedback, that's what we're looking at doing. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Very good. Did you have any issues with MS-150 bikers or anything like that? [00:00] **Chief Boviglon:** Not that I heard, no. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Nothing? Okay. Perfect. [00:00] **Chief Boviglon:** Again, it's kind of crummy weather, but no. We had somebody specifically working that intersection that the MS Bike-A-Thon pays for. They hired another officer for that, and I didn't hear anything negative. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Perfect. Very good. Thank you. [00:00] **Council Member Kris Huso:** Thank you. Thanks for the good work. It looks like National Night Out will be in August? [00:00] **Chief Boviglon:** Yes, ma'am. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Okay, we'll announce that again at our July meeting. Moving on to Public Works Superintendent report. [00:00] **Phil Entner (City Superintendent):** Members of the Council, we've had a very busy month here, making the big transition to putting the spring stuff away and getting the summer stuff out, and it's just coming in really quick, and it's just like this big change that we're experiencing. We're back in the kick of summer, so things are good, and we're working on pothole filling, street sweeping, curb painting. You probably saw that today and yesterday. That was completed. Water department, we pumped 4.7 million gallons of drinking water in the month of May. Sewer department, we collected 14.1 million gallons of wastewater in the month of May, and our spring discharge at the wastewater treatment plant was completed in the middle of May, and that was accumulated to 38.2 million gallons of wastewater. Our phosphorus numbers for our effluent, again, are right on track. They're looking really, really good. So that's that new standard that the PCA put out a couple of years ago. So that system is working good, and it wasn't just a fluke last year. We're moving right along, and things are looking very, very good. Equipment standpoint, flow meter that monitors the flow coming from the Windermere Sanitary Sewer District... I don't know, Ellissa, were you going to touch on this later? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** No. [00:00] **Phil Entner (City Superintendent):** Okay. That's put online now. That's onto our SCADA system. That's reported to us at any time throughout the day on our phones and on the SCADA system at the shop there. We know exactly what's coming in every minute of the day. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** I think June 1st we were taking over billing of that, correct? [00:00] **Phil Entner (City Superintendent):** Correct. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, July 1st, yes, July 1st we were taking over on that. That is all, so far, seems to be a pretty cut and dry process. Yeah, the Knollwood lift station, that was... put new pumps in that here last month. Those are working well. Knollwood, that lift station got new pumps last month as well. Those are working well. And the Campground lift station has new pumps. Those are all working well. It's good to see, especially on the wastewater side, we're making a lot of improvements. We're saving a lot of money with these new pumps. Runtimes are way down. I believe our electrical costs for moving wastewater are going to be way down. So it's good, all around good. And then, obviously, too, the new equipment trailer arrived last month, and that's put in service, and the guys are really liking that. So we're moving right along. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Good. Questions? [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** Yes. Go ahead. Was there some comment about the state—maybe Mike remembers that—looked at the sewer ponds as far as capacity and said that we're doing okay? Where are we at if a bigger business came in and wanted to get into the sewer? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** Our engineers are reviewing that right now to get a better answer to that question. If you want to go into a longer discussion about like the I&I issues when we replaced the main lift station that we corrected, Phil can go through that stuff. But that was one of the things as a part of the well project that we wanted to look at was what is the capacity of our sewer ponds right now and is that something that we need to address prior to any well projects. So we don't... I think the answer that both of us would give you is we don't know for sure where we are because there's been a lot of changes in the last year. [00:00] **Phil Entner (City Superintendent):** We should... I would think they'd have a pretty good number for us, a good ballpark for us by next month. I would think so. Yeah. I mean, they only have like 16 months of data to go off from the big changes that we made. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** Yes. But that alone should be enough to put us fairly close to where we think we are. And it's considerably less than what the last review was from the state. Well, maybe here's a good example. Do you want to talk a little bit about the number of discharges and what we might be looking at in the future? [00:00] **Phil Entner (City Superintendent):** Yeah, so per our permit for the PCA, I'm trying to think of these numbers off the top of my head without looking. Our discharge window—we have one in the spring, we have one in the fall. The one in the spring starts April 1st and goes through the end of June, and then the fall one starts September 1st and goes through December 1st. Anyway, it's been a known that come April 1st, every spring, I'm about beating the door down on our lab and the PCA to get approval to start a discharge because we are at capacity, only just because we're running out of room in our holding cells. This spring, we were able to wait until halfway through May to start, and by no means... the only reason I did discharge now was because we didn't have enough storage to make it until September, which is normal for every other wastewater facility. However, to be able to wait even that 45 days, have the ability to not be "hurry up, push, rush, rush, rush, go" because we're running out of storage and so on and so forth, to be able to treat the wastewater slower which will give you a better quality effluent—which is your wastewater going out—there's a huge difference there because usually we'll try to get two discharges out a year or in the spring and we only had to get one out here this spring. And really we're sitting really, really good. I don't think we could have pushed it all the way through to the fall, but it would have been close, but by no means where we were before. So definitely I would say we're in a better boat than we were, but as far as hard numbers, I don't have that answer right now. But we can definitely get it for you. [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** Well, I just would like to know in case we do have more businesses coming in, more construction coming in for housing, where are we at capacity-wise and where should we be looking, I guess. [00:00] **Phil Entner (City Superintendent):** Sure. Absolutely. We can get that to you for sure. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Thank you. Next we have the technology library report. There's a memo in our packet. Any questions? Is that informational? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** Just informational. If anybody has any questions, we can grab Steve quick. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Any questions? No. Okay, then we'll move on to the city engineer report. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** You can go through the minutes on this one. There's a couple things. There's a section later on that's specific to the well project, so I won't get too into that. I will say that Phil and the Public Works Department went through a lot of mapping updates. That's a big project that's being worked on. The next after they get kind of that stuff done, the next project will be city policies on standards for streets, utilities, lights, things like that. One of the things that we've started talking about kind of pertains to the woman that was here before the council meeting about some sort of excavation and construction. The permits that have to do with land disturbance as well as like stormwater runoff during the project. So we don't just want any gravel or sand or things like that flooding into our stormwater system. So different erosion control measures that people can take. And then you can see the sewer capacity discussion that we had in there as well, just going over some information prior to them being able to complete that for us. That's about it. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Chamber of Commerce updates. Lois? [00:00] **Lois (Chamber of Commerce):** Yeah, we're coming up on our busy summer season. We have a Chamber of Commerce meeting tomorrow at Gampers at noon, so if you're interested. We'll be talking about some of the things, Agate Days and Fourth of July. Fourth of July will be the usual activities on the 4th, the parade and activities in the park. And Agate Days is July 14th with Art in the Park, the Agate Stampede, Fireman's Steak Fry, and the Gem and Mineral Show has been moved to the Riverside Arena. That'll be new this year. There's going to be a lot of problems with people parking in nearby businesses, so there's going to be signs put up to try and keep them from doing that. But parking's going to be at a premium. Yeah, other than that, if we're just heading into it, the spring fever days was last weekend and went pretty well, considering you had a hard rain shower right before the parade, but they delayed it for half an hour and didn't get any more rains during the parade. So any questions? [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Thank you. Previously discussed business. A: Gas franchise fee. Any updates? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** If I got a new report from Minnesota Energy, I'll be going to the school board working meeting I think next week maybe on Thursday to discuss that with them. Still need to talk to the prison, MSOP, and Mercy. Those were really there was only say three or four changes that came in the new report and basically they impacted the four big users. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Animal control? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** I met with Cloquet, Carlton, Esko, the county, Renshaw, pretty much everybody in Carlton County to talk about the animal control contract that we had received from Friends of Animals. I'm not sure if anybody signed it. I know that Cloquet did not. We did not. Esko did not. Carlton did not. So most everybody was in agreement that the contract that we had received was quite the change both service-wise and money. We talked a lot about trying to consolidate some of the services. We tried to question and suggest heavily to a couple county board members that were there that this is an issue that impacts the county. Every community in the county has the same kind of things coming up. So this is something that we thought would be a good avenue for the county to look at. They seemed a little apprehensive. So one of the other things that we talked about was like Cloquet is going to look at creating, say, five to ten kennels just to handle kind of day-in, day-out type stuff. We have one, again, just for day-in, day-out stuff. We don't have a more permanent solution for, say, dangerous animals or something like that. But, you know, we can ask the Chief, but I don't really know that we've been having much of a problem since we stopped having our contract. We took in two dogs or three... and the procedure that we've taken is $225 per dog for a five-day stay. So just in this instance, let's say... I mean, we're saving hundreds of dollars already just by not going to Friends of Animals for animals that we are just able to get back to their owners which I think is going to be most of the time what the case will be. It's something that we'll have to continue to review. Maybe after a year we'll have a better idea of what our actual numbers are. There's another meeting scheduled with the communities to kind of go over where everybody's at. Every community was kind of supposed to go back and see if any of the vets, any animal shelters or anything like that would be willing to take some of this on. The county currently gives Friends of Animals I believe fifty thousand dollars a year for spay and neuter services. I'm not sure if that offsets some of the cost or what exactly the county is paying for. But basically, if you combined all of our communities and that $50,000, we're talking about giving somebody $100,000 a year to handle this concern. It was also discussed about bringing Fond du Lac into this as well and seeing if they have the same concerns. So I'll let you know. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Okay, 2017 audit. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** It'll be July—in the July meeting we will have the presentation from the auditors. The presentation to Water and Light will be at three o'clock I believe. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Okay. Third and Kenwood closeout. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** Just an update. Phil and I walked it. After Phil met with the SEH guys, I think Phil and I did a really bad job. Phil, I think, learned a lot. And it was really good having them come and walk it. A lot of the things that we thought were important were not, and a lot of the things that we thought were unimportant were. So that sums that up. I will say, this is not something that Phil does for a living. [00:00] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen:** You're learning then, huh? [00:00] **Phil Entner (City Superintendent):** No, I was kind of hoping this would be the answer. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Okay, paving Earl Ellens. I see there's a... Is that done? Is that the memo in there? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** Yep. So we need to approve this. But it is done. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Okay, so do we need a motion to pay the quote? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** We need a motion to approve this quote, yeah. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Is there a motion to approve the quote of 22,537? Who was the contractor? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** Kaminsky Paving. [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** I'll make that motion. [00:00] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen:** I'll second it. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** All in favor? [00:00] **Council Members:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Opposed? Motion passes. Joint meeting with Moose Lake Town Board? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** I sent them four dates. Two dates work for everybody, two dates work for four of you just opposite on one date. They have not gotten back to me so I will let everyone know. Most likely in July then. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** On to new business. Staffing change memo. That would be on page 44. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** I can sum up the memo a little bit, but also it's in your packet for you to review. We've been talking with the DMV for the last year, year and a half or so with staff. A couple different factors are just causing some issues in there. Some of them we've talked about at length here. First and foremost, there's a new system for DMVs. It's taking considerably longer, and in some cases they can't even process items for customers coming in. We also just have a larger number of people coming through our DMV. And then finally, there's an additional change that's going to be coming in a few months that's just going to cause more headaches with the REAL ID Act. Basically the personnel committee sat down with the staff and the DMV and they felt pretty strongly that the best way to handle some of the issues that they're having is with additional staff. I should mention one of the big concerns that I think we had is the inability for them to take vacations, sick leave, breaks, things like that. And so the personnel committee's recommendation is to hire an additional part-time person within the DMV. The remainder of this letter I'm going to ask that we put on hold for a month with the knowledge that there will be some additional changes coming along. There's a proposal in this memo that pertains to the library. I met with the library staff and library board today and there was some additional suggestions that they had that might work as well. And then there was a couple of things that I think are worth looking into before we make any final decision. And then finally, one of the things that kind of came about with this discussion is how we handle our IT services. And so there's a proposal in our packet for CW Technology to take over that additional IT service. So as far as this tonight goes, the one thing that I'm asking is that we are able to add an additional part-time staff in the DMV to post it and start the hiring process there. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** I do want to comment when we met with the DMV girls, they're very dedicated and that is why they are unable to take vacation and sick time because they know the stress and the just sheer number of people that come in there and it's very hard for one person with this new system to get through the day. So they're backing each other up. And so we really support a part-time person. So if anybody would like to make a motion to approve the part-time DMV? [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** I so move that we approve the process of starting to hire a part-time individual for the motor vehicle department. [00:00] **Council Member Walter Lower III:** I'll second that. [00:00] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen:** Just comment. This has been an issue for quite a while, you know, but it's, to me, I've noticed it's coming to a head more because of just the stress on their faces. You know, you can see it, and it's not good. It's too bad they can't go back to the old system until they fix this thing. I mean, it's just ridiculous. At least that would help some. So we definitely need to take some action there. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** The state hasn't made it easy. It was the Sandstone office that closed, right? The driver's license portion. Yep, it was a private... so I mean, it's just added more to their load. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** All right, so there's a motion and a second. All in favor? [00:00] **Council Members:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Opposed? Motion passes. Then will you be setting up a advertisement? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** Yeah, we'll post it in the paper, on our website, our Facebook, all of those things. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Thank you. Next, moving on to hydraulic model estimate for new wells. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** So the first part to studying putting new wells or redoing our current wells is this hydraulic modeling. And one of the first things that I'll say is that during our engineering meeting, it was basically agreed by Phil, myself, Mike, Ted... Moving the wells from their current location just does not seem like a good idea for a number of reasons, including quality of water and quantity of water being the biggest two things. Where we are right now, we know that we have never had an issue with quantity or quality of water, and it doesn't necessarily make sense to move it and potentially run into some sort of issue. So one of the reasons that we did want to look at moving it is to eliminate a couple of additional aspects that our water system has to have. We have a booster station and then pressure relief valves. So one of the things that this study is going to look at is basically: what is the water pressure in a couple different zones? Is it possible to just put new pumps in there that are larger that would pump water all the way to the water tower without the booster station? One, can we do that? And two, if we do that, are we increasing the water pressure so much that we're just going to blow water through everyone's old pipes? I mean, you can read the whole thing, but basically this is the work that leads up to the design of new wells. The proposal is submitted here for $25,700. It is quite a bit of money. I will say that this was kind of the plan for 2018 all along—this is going to be a year of planning. We need to get our plans set before we start moving forward with all of this stuff, which is why, like we talked about earlier, we're looking at the sewer system, the wells, and looking at the water tower inside and out. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Yeah, I think that this is something that we need to move forward with. We know that the wells are old, and we're kind of on borrowed time as it is right now. Is this a budgeted item? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** No, it is not. It would come out of the water fund, not the general fund. We do have reserves in the water fund. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Any questions? Comments? [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** It's just, you know, it is needed. If you go there, it's kind of scary to look at. We can't be without water, period, and we need to get our act together and get this thing squared away. So I have no problem with moving to make the motion of accepting the estimate of $25,700 to complete the study. [00:00] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen:** I'll second that. [00:00] **Council Member Kris Huso:** And just something to be aware of, maybe we should be even looking at our water rates this year may be starting to increase a little bit at a time. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** So I think the end result of this is that we will start working out the design aspect, which gives us the cost, which gives us the bond amount and rate studies. By the time that we're done with this, we should have a proposal to the state for grant funds and PFA for low-interest loans. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in favor? [00:00] **Council Members:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Opposed? Motion passes. All right, next we have striping parking spots, changing one way on Elm. So we're looking at getting all the parking spots striped. And I have had this complaint come to me a number of times. And before we go paint them again, does anybody want to change the direction of the one way on Elm? So it would be coming up from the lights? Correct. So you would drive from the lights through Elm over to 3rd and you would exit that way. I don't know if everybody considers this to be an issue, but the people that have brought this up are just adamant that it is the wrong direction. And now would be the time to change it if we're going to. [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** So then the parking would be on the opposite side? [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Yeah, the parking would still be on the same side. Facing the other angle. Yep. Facing up. I do think that makes sense. I mean, I've kind of always wondered that, but... [00:00] **Council Member Kris Huso:** I don't actually have an opinion other than I think it's a weird conversation. I don't think that one way is right or wrong. It doesn't matter. You know, you've got to come in one way and you've got to leave the other way. So I don't know. [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** Well, I don't think it's right or wrong either. It just, to me, made more sense to come up because you have a lot of people coming from the stoplight and then coming up and then they got to go around. But that's just my opinion. [00:00] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen:** No matter what we do, it's going to be wrong. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Hey, Ellissa, can we do like a poll on our website or Facebook or something like that? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** Yeah. [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** How about we do something like that? That would be great. Because there is issues with truck deliveries and everything there, and nothing's ever going to be perfect no matter what we do. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Well, then maybe we'll put something in the Gazette and we'll have a poll. Have you had any ever comments, law enforcement standpoint? [00:00] **Chief Boviglon:** We haven't had any issues with them. It does create a lot of traffic going in front of the DMV that's already tight in there. That's my only thing that I see. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** This is only the... you're only talking about one stretch, right here in front of, basically in front of the building here. [00:00] **Chief Boviglon:** Yeah, everyone then has to go up. You get a couple of pickups in there and it gets pretty tight. The Public Works truck's been hit like that. [00:00] **Phil Entner (City Superintendent):** It sure has. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Perfect. Well, I think the poll or the questionnaire is a good idea. All right. Thank you. Next we have Colshus Pyrotechnics Inc. estimates. Fireworks for 4th of July. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** Same dollar amount as last year. It's budgeted. They've done it forever—he's a local guy. They pick them up. [00:00] **Council Member Walter Lower III:** I so move that we approve the purchase of the fireworks at seven thousand four hundred and ninety dollars and thirty six cents. [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** Second that. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** All in favor? [00:00] **Council Members:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Opposed? Motion passes. Next we have budget change request. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** This was my fault. We have three employees in the Public Works department. They are broken up between Public Works (which is in the general fund), Water Department (which comes out of the water fund) and Sewer (which comes out of the sewer fund). The sewer fund had the public works employees' health insurance dollar amount in there and we're already over the budget and it looks obviously wrong. So I'm requesting that we update that one expense line item to this updated dollar amount. [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** So moved. [00:00] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen:** I'll second it. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** All in favor? [00:00] **Council Members:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Opposed? Motion passes. Legislative updates. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** Well I can sum it up pretty easily—everything was vetoed. They did pass the bonding bill. We were not included in that. So our capital request for the arena was not included in the signed bonding bill. Not that we necessarily thought it would pass this time, but it really didn't receive any... they didn't really seek our input whatsoever. The DMV stuff was throughout the entire session. They worked really, really well with the House and the Senate in at least getting something included in both bills, and the Governor vetoed the whole thing, stating that he didn't like it because it didn't also include money to fix the system—which he never told anybody that he wanted included in that bill. So he vetoed the whole thing. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Okay, moving on to ATV trail washout. I think there's a map on page 56. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** This came up at the last city council meeting, just kind of washouts or ATVs or whatever the case might be, gravel coming up on the walking and biking trail. Phil and I met out there and the best idea that I can come up with is if we pave above and below the trail, any washout or any ATV rock material will just enter onto that section of the trail, which is not on the walking and biking portion. Now I will say that basically this is the same length that we just did Earl Allen's and that was over $20,000. This is a lot to do. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Is there any other options out there? [00:00] **Phil Entner (City Superintendent):** I can't think of anything that just stops it. Honestly, I think a lot of the rock that's coming down is coming down from washouts. I think the rain—the entire thing is downhill—and I think rain and all that comes screaming down the hill and deposits rock and dirt. [00:00] **Council Member Kris Huso:** Is there any way that like that ATV trail could be moved on one side or the other to connect in a different area? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** We looked at having it try to move one way or the other. What kind of the way that we felt is first off, if we moved it towards the shop, there really isn't anywhere to go. But more importantly, if we moved it one way or the other, they would still... that same thing would just still happen. It would just happen in a different location. I mean, the whole thing comes downhill there. [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** See, I'm just looking at all these biking events that happen—like we had the MS event—and I look at that road more as a bike trail than a street department road. Trying to get people to utilize our city more and have a good quality trail. So again, this is really spendy. I'd still like to look at it and see if we could come up with some other solution. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Does the DNR ever come through? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** They do clean up, I think so. At least a couple times a year. And they do our loop at no charge to us. [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** As a matter of fact, all the bike systems... sometimes we should get all the players together on it because they are eroding. Whoever owns the property is responsible for the maintenance. We should probably be meeting with them, you know, why they haven't completed or maintained the trail. But yeah, that would be something to put our thinking hat on to make it better for everybody. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Moving on to CW Technologies. That is on your desk. [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** One of the things that we've been looking at over the last month is moving our IT support fully over to CW Technology. Originally, they just monitored our workstations and our server. What this proposal would do would make it so that people can also call them if they need technical support, and it makes it so that so long as they're over the phone or working remotely, none of that would be charged to us, whereas right now, if anybody calls, we are charged for every call. I would suggest that we do this. [00:00] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen:** Do you know what the charge is per call at this point? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** It's $135 an hour. We are paying for a lot of this stuff already. I mean, the SCADA system, how many times have we had issues with that? I think that we can safely assume that quite a few months we would be going over top of this dollar amount anyways. [00:00] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen:** So then that will cover the SCADA? [00:00] **Ellissa Owens (City Administrator):** Yeah, one of the workstations is the SCADA computer. All of our cameras and all of that stuff, our server, all of that stuff is included in here. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Do we have a motion to accept the CW technology management proposal? We'll work on the one-time fee as we already have their stuff on our computer. [00:00] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen:** I'll make a motion to accept the proposal as submitted with someone please look at the one-time fee. [00:00] **Council Member Walter Lower III:** I'll second it. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** All in favor? [00:00] **Council Members:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Opposed? Motion passes. The "Q" on the liquor store. It's missing. We need to get it put back on. It's been gone for quite a while. And I think that we already had a liquor store meeting in March or April, and it was supposed to be taken care of. So I guess I would make a motion that we direct our City Administrator to follow up on this and if the letter is missing, we give him permission to have someone make the letter and put it up as soon as possible. People do notice. [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** I'll second that. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** All in favor? [00:00] **Council Members:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Motion passes. You'll get the "Q" up. Next, liquor store advertising. At that same meeting we discussed having an off-sale for Sunday. People do not know that we're open on Sunday for Sunday sales. I would move to have our City Administrator handle that and get the sign made and displayed. It would pay for itself in the first few hours. That's my motion. [00:00] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen:** I'll second it. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** All in favor? [00:00] **Council Members:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Motion passes. Next we have reports and correspondence, MPCA letter. The good press for Phil showing people around our sewer ponds just keeps rolling in. This is a letter from John Stein, who's a commissioner with the MPCA, thanking me, but just about how great Phil was. [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** Kudos, great job. Well deserved. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Yes, thank you very much. Please pass that on to Scott as well. Both of you were mentioned in that. [00:00] **Phil Entner (City Superintendent):** Hey, I have a lot of copies of bad letters from the MPCA. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Well, we should get those in your file, too. It's good to see things coming around the right way. Moving on to announcements. The regular Moose Lake City Council meeting will be Wednesday, July 11th at 4 o'clock. [Mayor reads remaining scheduled meetings for EDA, Water and Light, Housing, Fire District, Park Board, Library Board, and Technology Committee]. Are those all correct? Is there any other questions, comments before we adjourn? [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** Good meeting. Just, you know, you did a better job than Mayor Shaw did again. I have to admit that. Amazing work. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Thank you. With that, do we have a motion to adjourn? [00:00] **Council Member Douglas Juntunen:** So moved. [00:00] **Council Member Lou Ohly:** Second. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** All in favor? [00:00] **Council Members:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Jim Michalski:** Thank you, everybody.