This transcript appears to be from a North St. Paul City Council workshop (circa June 2022). While you provided a list of current officials (Mayor Monge), the transcript explicitly identifies the previous administration (Mayor Furlong). For accuracy to the dialogue, I have used the names identified in the roll call and context of the meeting. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Council Member Thorson? [Member responds off-mic] Council Member Peterson? [Member responds off-mic] Council Member Wong? [00:00] **Councilmember Wong:** Here. [00:00] **Councilmember Cole:** Here. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Mayor Furlong here. Motion to adopt the agenda? [00:00] **Councilmember Peterson:** Moved. [00:00] **Councilmember Thorson:** Second. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Second by Council Member Thorson. Any discussion? [Pause] Not all those in favor signify by saying aye. [Council responds Aye]. Opposed? Carries. Uh, so we have two topics and I'll turn it over to City Manager to start. [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** Thank you Mayor Furlong and council members. The first topic tonight is the Arts and Culture Commission's snowman sculpture initiative. The commission's been discussing the possibility of creating a public sculpture program since last fall and you know, I'm just going to let Tom tell you about it. Tom Sonic is a commissioner on the Arts and Culture Commission and I think he's got a presentation for you. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Thank you City Manager. Welcome, Tom. [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, thank you for having me. Um, I'm not sure if you're familiar with any part of this project that we've been working on but if not, I will give you a brief summary of what's been happening. The Mayor actually had had some conversations last year with the company that makes these sculptures and they had done—this is the same company that did the sculptures of the Peanuts characters around Saint Paul—and they've done countless other similar type sculpture sculptures and city projects related to this all across the country. They happen to be based in the Twin Cities area and so the Mayor had met with them and talked about this, and they happened to have a snowman mold already. So the idea was born. We had, I think, had talked about this a long time ago as well about doing something like this in North St. Paul, and now the reality of the situation is that we've done some more digging, we've done some more research, and we understand what it would take to do something like this. So I want to share a little bit about that with you. We would love to try and execute a project like this for the city of North St. Paul. If you can see on your sheet there, there are various benefits for doing something like this. We think, you know, I think obviously the biggest thing is kind of this attention to civic pride, gathering people and buzz around North St. Paul. It's a perfect timing too given the downtown revitalization, everything that's happening with the city. So there there's so much good going on in North St. Paul right now—this is just one of those things that'd be sort of a cherry on the top and i think a lot of the work of the arts commission is trying to achieve that. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** So I just want to mention, Tom, that uh, this was brought up years ago in regards to Park and Rec. We talked about it. [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** Oh, okay. I wasn't aware of that. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** So it's kind of, you know, stirring, but then when I saw that company and they actually do something like this... because back in the day when we are looking at this, we don't know where to look for who does this. Yeah. So it was kind of interesting we did find out that it was from a company in Minnesota right here in the Twin Cities locally and uh, yeah, and they make it. So go ahead. [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** So I think there'd be a lot of great benefits to doing this. Some of these things are listed on the page that you have in front of you; you might even consider some of your own. Now, what we're thinking is something pretty modest in North St. Paul. If we were to get 10 of these snow people done—we're calling them "Snowys," they're Project Snowy—um, I think it would be fantastic if there were ten. And so what that means is that we have businesses who are willing to sponsor and pay for these things. But in order to help entice the businesses along, what we are hoping is that the city can put up some seed money to help get the things started. Even though there is an existing mold for the snowman figure, it requires an $11,500 refurbishment to have that thing ready to go. Once it's ready to go, we can order as many of these snow people that we want. If it's one, if it's three, if it's ten, whatever. And we can keep adding as we go as needed. Um, but so when we were originally looking at this, we had it broken down with the eleven thousand broken out among 10 snow people and what the cost would be per business if they wanted to buy one of these things. And then if it were say five—if we only had five or something—the price would just keep going higher for any business that wanted to sponsor and own one of these things. So what we're hoping to do is get some city participation to help front the cost of the refurbishment and then potentially even the cost of one of the Snowy sculptures itself. So if we have—if we front the cost for the refurbishment and one sculpture—then that sculpture lives wherever the city wants it to. So whether it's right here in the Council chambers, outside the front door, in a park, wherever we want to put it, we can put it and that would just be ours to keep. No, so the setup cost is $11,500. To add one statue to that would be $16,350. So that would be the total upfront cost. That would make it possible for any business that's interested in having one of these things to have the full cost to them—so full sponsorship cost would be $5,000. So that's all any one of our local businesses or individuals for that matter. If they wanted to have one of these things, they pay $5,000, they get to choose the artist, and that includes the artist fee because there's a $1,000 artist fee that's worked into that. And so however the thing is painted and designed, um, that they would be able to choose the artist and the design and keep the statue at their place of business or wherever they want. We have different sponsorship levels that we're looking at as well. So say if somebody wanted to put in $2,500, then we could say great, you can choose the artist and the art and this can live on your property for three months and then it goes into the general public. If you want to have a lower sponsorship fee, say $500 or $1,000—same thing—now it lives on your property for two weeks and then it goes into the general public. So we would have to figure out from all those lower-level sponsors how many additional snow people we could afford, build those, we would have them stay on the sponsors property for whatever was pre-arranged and then after that they could be auctioned off. Any cost from the auctioned snow people would come back to the city. So that's a key element in this. So whatever upfront cost that the city pays, much of it could be recouped. I can't make any promises on this and I won't, but any snow people that aren't paid for outright where there's full sponsorship by business—that we can auction those off, all that cost would come back to the city. Any other sponsor fees that we might collect or raffles if we were to do something like that... so a sponsorship fee—so if we wanted to say Project Snowy, so all of these things are brought to you by Anchor Bank, whatever. If Anchor Bank wanted to throw in a thousand bucks so that their name is on all of the advertisement, all the branding for this whole thing, that thousand bucks comes back to the city. Another idea we had is having raffle tickets for the entire population, all the residents. So say you want to put in five bucks, 10 bucks, whatever it is into a raffle to have one of these things sit on your property... you could, we could have Public Works hopefully deliver it to your driveway or your front yard for a week, right? Yeah. So now you're winning the chance to have one of these things on your property. They're very Instagrammable, very fun for people to take pictures. I can just imagine these things around the car shows around parade events, things like that. So any of that money, though, would come back to the city. Now the city can't hold raffles, but non-profit organizations can. So there's potential that we could work with a non-profit organization within the city, whether that's History Cruisers or the Historical Society or some other non-profit. We could work with them to help sponsor the sale of the raffle tickets so that we could do something like that. Still more leg work to figure that whole thing out if we were going to do that, but sponsorship is a little bit more straightforward and auctioning these Snowys after they're made would be more straightforward. So I'll pause there to see if there are any questions, but happy to tell you anything that I know so far about these things. We have had um, Hart Johnson, who is a co-owner of the company that makes these, has come, attended a couple of our Arts and Council Commission meetings via phone and Zoom. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** So other cities have done this like Roseville. I've seen Rose the giant Rose and I've seen it around Roseville Mall and... [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** Right, Roseville is by probably one of the closest examples of another city that's done this and and they're very open and willing to work with us on our project as well. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Any questions? Go ahead. [00:00] **Councilmember Wong:** Yeah, I just wanted to say as the—as the liaison—I've had a really wonderful experience watching the commissioners thoroughly think out this project from the financial standpoint, from the standpoint that they are a new commission. They want to make a really large statement with this commission and I think it's one of those things that our community needs as he said during the revitalization period. I think that also to benefit the artists here, I think that's just something we haven't had. So it'll bring a lot of extra, you know, like you said Instagrammable, I think it'll put us on the map just as we we have hoped to. We've also got plenty of volunteers and folks to help out with some of these projects and the company has been extremely supportive in providing any assistance and any questions that they have they've been extremely supportive. But I—I'm in favor of, you know, really funding this project um, hopefully in full. Um, I think you know what better way than the city to make that statement. [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** One other point that I wanted to make, I thought this was interesting. So Hart Johnson, one of the co-owners of Tivoli Too—that's the name of the company that makes these—he says, so if you're a business for example and you just want to get one of these statues—they're about six foot tall—and you want to have one of these things made whether it's a snowman or whatever it is, it would cost you about fifteen thousand dollars just to have one. And so what we're offering to all of the businesses in town is that they could get it done for five thousand dollars. So it's a great thing. It's something that they can have forever sitting outside, they can have it branded according to their business, whatever they want. I'm sure you've seen these things around town with the Peanuts characters where they have whether it's a Minnesota Wild or the banks or whatever, they have their their own branding right on the character. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** So not everyone's going to look like... [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** No. Yes, no. No. So they can look any way you want them. So it's a... artists can... what we—what we would do—is have a call for artists and artists would present ideas that they have, design ideas, and then those design ideas would be selected. And they would be selected by the sponsors if you're a full sponsor, or if not, we were thinking that we would have shared commissions—you know, all different commissions being involved—to vote on other designs for the remaining ones. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** And the actual art part could be an event of itself. [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** It could. Yeah, we had some discussion about possibly hosting this downtown somewhere during a car show where we could see artists at work working on the statues, doing some of the painting right there. There's also—you've probably seen these around town where you've got a, you know, Snoopy that's got a different hat on, a baseball hat or something. I know Saints I think have some of these things. Those things can be done. You can add, uh, I guess accessories to the characters. The artists can do it themselves if they know what they're doing and Tivoli Too, the company, will work with them to do that to help execute it. Or if somebody just says to Tivoli Too, we want you to do it, we will pay extra for that, you can do it that way as well. So that's when you see the ones that look a little different. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Really well, I mean I think you can go around town and see any of these things that have been out there for a long time. [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** Yeah, I think they handle the weather really really well. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** During the winter, yeah, they get cold. I know Joe's Sporting Goods—that's another one where I saw they have a Snoopy character out there. [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** But the—the characters—they're about six feet tall. I think there's some kind of resin material but then the base is made of concrete and that adds a lot of weight. So overall they weigh about 600 pounds. So people can't walk off with them, people can't tip them over. Right. Yep. Any other questions? [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** I would just add, um, at the next regular meeting on June 21st, I believe, uh, if you recall Finance Director Winik talked about—and actually it's on the consent agenda tonight—a new policy about kind of our cash on hand and anything that would exceed that would be available for some one-time purchases. It's, um, I'm not remembering the exact figure, it's somewhere in the in the neighborhood of I believe $340,000 for 2022 that would be available for one-time expenditures. Each department kind of put together kind of a wish list and I had added this to the wish list to be discussed at the City Council meeting when this comes up in two weeks. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** So that's when we would vote on funding. [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** Funding part, that's when you could. Sure. Yep. [00:00] **Councilmember Cole:** Um, Tom, I love it. I think it's—I think it's great. I'm—I'm fully on board from a support standpoint. Question on timing: I'm looking at the dates that are kind of here on the flyer. Um, that was my only concern is that I know you hate to—to look at postponing it till next—til next spring—um, but I didn't know if that had come up in any of your conversations. That if I understand what "bare Snowy at car show" means, that means that would be Snowys unpainted? [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** That's right. Okay. Yeah. [00:00] **Councilmember Cole:** So and then, you know, that's—that's the end of August. So from attraction standpoint, we're really only getting about a month out of them from downtown visibility. That was right. That was my only—my only thought, but I'm fully supportive of the idea this year. It's great. [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** Yeah, so the schedule is tight for this year. It's doable though and, uh, Hart Johnson has said he's already given us the date that if you want these things August 26th, here's when I need to know. And he—and again, it could be—we could start by having one, two, four, whatever, you know? We don't have to have all of them right away if we wanted to kind of kick-start and or just start building up the Snowys on a slower pace and then next year maybe we have them all on parade or something. [00:00] **Councilmember Cole:** And that was kind of where I was going is you kind of get it kicked off now but let it build into the following summer so that, you know, either more can participate or if those who choose to, you know, have the Snowy for a period of time it can live in front of other, yeah, you know other locations. You know, it just gives it a longer period. That was—that was my only question. [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** Sure. Yeah. And it depends, you know. I mean, September 16th we have it as being in the Fall Roundup Parade, but you know there are other things that happen after that. It's another reason to bring people downtown after the car show wraps up in the—in the end of the summer, you know. So maybe there are events where we have—have these things on display or on parade at that time. I know downtown St. Paul had—when all the Snoopies were out in the whole community—they brought them all downtown and people would come down there on the weekends and yeah... I mean they had a lot of people that just came down and watched and toured the... yeah. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Yeah. [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** So I think, you know, once we get going with... I mean the ideas are endless as far as what you could do with sort of programming with them, you know what I mean? So but the main thing is to have some kind of seed money to get started. So otherwise we were looking at talking about businesses, it would be, you know, it's going to be a much higher cost to each business to have it... [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** It would limit the amount of businesses. [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** Yeah, it just seemed cost-prohibitive. Then you're not going to have, you know, any smaller business. I think this puts it more something that's doable for an independent small business to potentially make it happen. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** I think it's great. I think it's something that uh would add a lot of art to the downtown. [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** Yeah, it would be a very visible thing and or parks or wherever they attract a lot of attention. Yep. Parks, businesses, you know, and it's something I'm sure we'd get a lot of good press out of that type of thing as well. Um, so well you know how to find me if you have any questions, happy to answer any questions about this anytime. I really appreciate everybody considering this project. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** So it looks like the 21st is when we would... [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** The 21st we might know something. Yup. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Okay, perfect. Good. All right. Thanks everyone. [00:00] **Tom Sonic:** Thank you. Thank you. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Your son feels better. Thank you. [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The next topic is a, you know, I'd call it a continuing discussion on the Community Center. I don't know that any one discussion is going to resolve everything, so I think in my opinion this should be kind of an ongoing thing until you have all the information you feel like you need to make a good decision. I'm going to try to not do too much talking to give you all as much opportunity as you can. My goal here has been to gather as much information as possible so you can make an informed decision. Um, some of the things that—so on April 19th—I've given you a memo talking about some costs. And you know, I just reiterate even the short-term costs um to keep the facility up and running for six to 18 months would likely be a million dollars plus or minus. And the—just getting the rooftop parts and I—I need to double check that figure with Ron—but the parts for the rooftop should have been already ordered because of supply chain issues. So we're—we're really pushing it as it is. Kokoro Volleyball has a lease that expires on December 31st and their absence would make the building about 75% vacant. Some of the things I've looked at is other suburban community centers. I—I'm not going to tell you that this is an all-inclusive list; it's the best list I could make. We reached—I reached out to my peers to try to identify where other community centers existed. If you look at the list, you'd see that it's primarily bigger communities. Mounds View does have one and Mounds View is a very similar size to North St. Paul. Mounds View, though, has 5.5 parks and recreation staff that are dedicated to just parks and recreation. Um, that is something that North St. Paul does not have. So you know, the conclusion I've kind of drawn is that the staffing would really need to be increased by probably four to five employees in order for the City to run a facility. Um, you know, certainly YMCA, Boys and Girls Club, other entities can run a facility. From—and this is more anecdotal, I don't have a lot of great evidence—but it—it seems to me that the YMCAs of the world are actually scaling back their participation in municipal community centers rather than expanding. I've heard about more closing in recent years than opening. There were questions about the Library lease. I can tell you that these documents were hard to find. Um, they weren't really in the city files anywhere that I could find. Um, you know, that's in your regular meeting you're going to be talking about kind of transitions and turnover and those things. It's really important to have good filing that's consistent from person to person and I don't know that that was the case. Ultimately I was able to get all the documents from—from our law firm and that's the source and I've attached all of those. So there are one, two, three, four, seven documents attached that really relate to the lease. You know, it really goes back to—I would say really uh Document B, 2004—when Ramsey County approved a resolution for $750,000 in costs for the site construction. Um, and then the—there's a memo from the North Saint Paul City Manager recommending approval of that lease. And this—this whole timeline is kind of full of starts and stops that I can't really explain. Another six years goes by before the County signs a joint agreement for the lease that went unsigned by North St. Paul for another three years. And in that, the County paid for roughly $750,000 in construction costs and the County paid for $517,000 of leasehold improvements, which included a lot of things including—from what I can tell—even books were included in that $517,000. Um, the City was going to lease that to the County annually for 20 years, wishing up with an optional renewal for 20 more years. The big question is: when did that 20 years start? And I don't—I can't give you a great answer for that even after reviewing these documents. In the event of the termination of the lease, North St. Paul would have to repay the construction costs plus—and I put this in quote—"all furnishings, the equipment and the collection." Um, I don't know exactly what that means. It could be the $517,000 that I referenced in addition to the $750,000. Um... [Pause] In 2010 the document was recreated and ultimately was approved/executed by North Saint Paul in 2013. Finally in 2018, an amendment to the lease happened and it was this time it was signed by both parties at that time. So that was a good document. In that 2018 amendment it identified the original date of the lease agreement as 2010. I think that's important because this is the first document that everybody signed and it's the—well, let me rephrase that—it's the first document that everybody signed in a short time period and it's the last document that everybody signed. And uh, if that said the original—it identified the original um date of the lease agreement in 2010—to me that tells me that's probably when the 20 years started. But that's my opinion; I'm sure everybody's got a different opinion on this. Soren doesn't really have a... his—his legal opinion is that it's—it's so complicated that it ultimately would probably um one of two things would have to happen. Either the City of North St. Paul and Ramsey County would have to have like just an agreement that says, well, really this started in 2005, or the less favorable would be that it would have to be decided in court and that's nothing any of us want. So that's what I can tell you about the lease. We do have a meeting set up with the Library... [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Yes, to get an answer for that. I don't know if that will—if we'll get an answer for that or not at that meeting. We do have a meeting with—with them. Yep. [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** So the Mayor and I did meet with the Library director on May 13th. He's new to the position. He did indicate his support of satellite library branches; he thought that was a good thing. He—he felt like he had that support from the entire organization. I—I've got a blank in here, but there are seven Ramsey County satellite locations; North St. Paul's and one other's are owned by somebody other than the County, so it's a little bit of an exception. The Library director seemed interested in the prospect of expanding the County's use of the building to provide additional programming. He felt like it was a well-utilized branch and there—if North St. Paul was open to an expansion—he certainly would be. Again, he couldn't speak on behalf of the County Board or anybody else. And then the Mayor and I are going to be meeting next week with the Library director and then the Director of Property Management for Ramsey County to hopefully get an answer for that. Um, I can keep rolling or we can—we can talk about each heading separately. I'll just keep rolling for now. Nobody asked me this—this maybe was just my curiosity—I asked Wold Architects, who really specializes in government and institutional buildings, whether they thought the building could be kind of "surgically demolished" where we would keep portions we wanted and get rid of portions that were seemingly less usable. And they went out, looked at the building, looked at the blueprints, and they felt like demolishing the Community Center but keeping the Library intact was possible. That would be a cost of 3.1 million in their estimation. They thought demolishing the entire Community Center was probably a 1.3 million dollar project. So obviously you're spending a lot of money on Option A to um to build kind of the walls and the infrastructure that the Library would need to be a stand-alone facility. Um, and then Option C was their estimate of demolishing the Community Center and then constructing a new library on the same site at 4.8 million. Uh, and then finally, um RT Luzak, the owner and operator of uh Kokoro, asked to meet with me and he wanted me to convey his continued interest in either buying the building outright—in which case he said he would retain the library as a tenant—or continuing to lease the area he currently occupies. As I said, the lease currently ends in December. He said extending that until April or May would be very helpful to him because his season doesn't end in December, it ends in the spring. And then he said he would also be open to the idea of leasing only the court area of the Community Center for a longer term to serve as a second location to the facility he is currently constructing elsewhere. The—the school district had indicated a willingness to participate, but I was not able to get any update from them on uh their continued interest. So really what I'm— [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** I wanted... still a part of the equation? [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** They certainly could be. So like I said, I just wanted to keep providing you information and find out from you if the—what other information you need so we can gather that and bring that to you so you can make a good decision. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** I think one of the biggest decisions is that at least meeting with them next week and determining when that lease ends, the Ramsey County one. [00:00] **Councilmember Cole:** So I just—I—I want to, if I can, I just want to pause and thank you. I've been asking in my short tenure up here, I've been asking for a detailed list and I—I think we all recognize that bits and pieces existed. So John, I just want to thank you for—for taking the time and putting it together. We—we're not—not to the goal line yet, we haven't established the exact date, but at least we've got of several documents that are in chronological order. So I just—I want to—I want to thank you for that piece of it because I know that last time it was presented that was kind of my "line in the sand" before I was willing to move forward was a better understanding. So thank you for addressing my concerns. [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** Yeah, of course. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Councilmember Wong, any—? [00:00] **Councilmember Wong:** Not at this moment. Maybe come back. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** So moving forward, I... we're trying to get as much information we—we have here. We don't know about the School District, but they are—could be a viable piece of this equation. The Library is showing that they—they have strong interest and they would like to possibly expand. We've got Kokoro Volleyball who potentially would want to lease the just the court area, you know, allowing for all the other tenants to be part of that. You know, we need to either have like a focus group or something where we get, you know, people, you know, maybe some residents together and and Council members and and really come up with a plan once we get all that—once we get, you know, the information from the—from the Library Board of what their intent on that lease is, and also the School District, you know, because School Districts potentially could take a lot of this. And then I think we have another resident uh who's also inquired in regards to possibly... Mario inquired about uh also potentially programming something down there. So I don't know what you think about some sort of focus group—or is that what you call it, a focus group—or would it be a task force? [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** Maybe task force or... [00:00] **Councilmember Peterson:** Yeah, I think the big key is this is County uh leasing thing, you know? Getting that figured out and then you can probably proceed from there talking about the years left on the lease. I was surprised that the School District was interested; that was new to me. It makes sense. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** No, we need to get the repairs done. [00:00] **Councilmember Peterson:** Yeah, sooner than later. [00:00] **Councilmember Cole:** Okay. So I guess the way that—that I'm viewing this is I look back at—we determine the extent of the lease to fulfill the obligation to the County. Once that's defined—and that, fingers crossed, that could be as soon as end of month—um, you know, we have—we have—we—we have a tenant and a tenant has a—has a signed lease with a—with an exit date or a renewal date. We have yet to open the—open the facility up to notification to see if anybody else is interested. We've had people approach us knowing that we were going through some conversation with the existing tenant that have expressed an interest in backfilling. We've yet to open—open the space up to the public for rent. So the piece that I look at is we determine the date and then we determine the "go forward" piece from a repair standpoint. And I would—I would go so far as to recommend for consideration that the entire Community Center be turned over to the EDA and let the EDA manage it. It's no longer the responsibility of City Council. Um, this—the City hasn't been necessarily a phenomenal steward at keeping the building where it—where it needed to be. And I think if it turned it over to an EDA who, um, you know, can—can put a little bit more focus, time and energy into that, as well as take the time and energy just to search for suitable tenants et cetera, it would then take some of the workload off of—off of Council as well as off of City Manager. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** City Manager, do you know of other communities that—? [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** I don't know of any that use the EDA to run the facility. I do know—I shouldn't say I know—I believe that some create like a non-profit entity um that would run it or at least participate in running it. So it's another option. [00:00] **Councilmember Cole:** Yeah, I think where it gets—gets fuzzy: if it remains a Community Center, then I think it falls on the responsibility of Council. But I don't think anybody is moving forward with the thought process of opening the Community Center back up. It's a building the City owns and we would have tenants in the building, and I don't—and it would then not necessarily be up to the Council to manage that tenants for building. [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** And so to me that's an extremely helpful statement. Um, you know, what I'd like to really—well what the City should work on I think going forward with the five of you—is almost like a Venn diagram of where all of you sit on this. Uh, that position that, you know, the City shouldn't probably be in the business of running a recreation... we'll call it a recreation center. Um, you know, if that's something that all five of you share, then get it off the table and start eliminating options. And then once there, you've eliminated some, the leftover options you can start to diagram that out and see where there is political um you know consensus of where you can go. [00:00] **Councilmember Thorson:** Well, it hasn't operated as a Community Center since 2012. We've had tenants in there since then and again, the first tenant was the school district. We have—I have a copy of the lease. You know, we discussed it last time. They were paying far less than what our current tenant is paying. Um, you know, and I think that's a huge part of this too. I mean, have we actually put up a "for sale" sign and—and—and publicly advertised hey, it's for sale? [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** Uh, at one point we—we engaged in a realtor and he was, you know, putting it out there. [00:00] **Councilmember Thorson:** I'm all supportive of that if there's other interested parties, because I feel the best option for us is to just sell it. You know, it's an influx of cash for us, it—then the property goes on the tax rolls, then we've got revenue coming in for utilities. I mean, it's—it's just to me it's a no-brainer. But to—to go back to the Library portion, first of all, you know, in your memo here you're stating that there's some discrepancy on the construction costs and the, uh, you know whatever they're calling the build-out and books and stuff. So it's 700... where's that number? The construction cost was $749,999. But then and an additional 500 and some thousand... well, if you look on these attachments here—is that—well, it's loading, I just had it up... it specifically says in the last "whereas"... this is an agreement, it's... this is on page... this is the Amendment B here or the resolution or what... it's the original resolution that was signed, it's Ramsey County Commissioners dated 2004. The last "whereas" reads "The estimated total project cost is $749,889 consisting of $517,809 in construction costs, $200,000 of Library collection, and $32,000 for technology." I mean, to me that's crystal clear. The total construction cost is $749,889. [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** And which—which document was that? [00:00] **Councilmember Thorson:** The "B". You got it marked as a Resident... okay. And again— [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** And again, we're gonna meet with the Board next week. So we—we have to figure that—that number out. [00:00] **Councilmember Thorson:** So my point is that's not to me... that's crystal clear. I mean, where's this additional five hundred thousand dollars coming from? [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** Okay, it's coming from later documents. That's the problem. I think the later documents supersede, right, the previous ones. And we haven't advertised, uh, going out to get tenants in the building either, correct? [00:00] **Councilmember Thorson:** You know, because we've had tenants—well basically Kokoro has been there since—you know, again, when is that started? That was 2017 is when they kind of officially took over or is it... is it... I mean even saying right now, since we determined that we weren't going to sell it, we haven't gone out to advertise that we're going to have tenants. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Current tenant. Right. So we have an ending date for the current tenant and also for the previous time we weren't really, you know, looking broadly for our new tenant. Um, it was: do we sell it or do we continue this—this on with this current tenant? So that was kind of what we were deciding on previously; there wasn't the larger note to the public. [00:00] **Councilmember Thorson:** So if I could, I'm just gonna... I still had more. I mean, if we have time I'd like to... and I don't know why we would look for a new tenant when we already have a tenant, I guess that's where I'm confused but... um, with an ending of the year... okay, so and I... okay so if I—I'm gonna—if I could just continue please. I mean, I've... no one interrupted you when you're talking. I know you probably don't want to hear what I have to say, don't agree, but I'm gonna—I'm gonna continue here. Uh, new information though, what was presented—and I'm so... [00:00] **Councilmember Peterson:** Filibuster, 27 of the 35 minutes. Point of order here, Mr. Mayor. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Uh, go ahead. Everyone's had a chance to talk and I'd just like to— [00:00] **Councilmember Thorson:** —finish my point here on some of these issues with the Library. But it's what you had, I mean at the... as I call... I'm—I'm going to let you continue. All right. One last question. Yep. Is there any dispute over when the Library physically moved into this building? And I'm looking that as 2000... May of 2005. Does anyone disagree that that's the date they physically moved into this building? [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** You don't know? [00:00] **Councilmember Thorson:** Okay. Good enough. I'll—I'll stop it. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** No, no, no, no. That's fine. I mean, it's obvious you guys don't want to, you know, hear what I have to say so fine. We'll just leave it at that. [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** Okay, so we have a list here of all the options. And to move forward, uh, we need to either have—I would believe a focus or a task force... [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Force. Or something. [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** Yeah, I think there's two things. One is I think the task force would be talking about long-term uses. Um, in the short term—the six to 18 months—i mean, if just to keep the building going, it needs a new roof and it needs a new HVAC. Those were not in the 2022 budget and so that budget would have to be amended um to to do these things. Um, as I said in the prior topic, there's this $340... I—I don't remember the exact figure, but in the neighborhood of $340,000 in one-time expenditures. That's not enough to pay all these costs, um, but that could be a partial funding source. Um, and that would probably be included when you discuss this on June 21st. I'll also ask Finance Director Winik to, you know, identify if—if in the event that the City Council said, you know, "Dan, find us money to do these repairs," where would that come from. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Okay. Councilmember Thorson, if you could just explain that... the 2005 the—the date they moved in, if you could do that? Okay. I want to hear your—I want to hear your point about—about the move-in date. [00:00] **Councilmember Thorson:** I'm happy to discuss that here. So the move-in date—and the reason I bring this up is because I think it's extremely relevant—and the fact that the lease originated on the date they moved in. It didn't start in 2010; it started in 2005. There's a plaque down in the building that says they moved in. So if it's originally a 20-year lease and they physically occupied the space in 2005, I mean—I mean—and it the fact that we lost this contract or whatever and that's... leak... the attorneys can discuss that. The County can take the stance, "Yes, we're gonna recognize it as 2010." But they moved in in 2005. I don't think there's any dispute over that. I—and that's my question I was posing to anyone. Are you saying that they did not move in in 2005? That they only moved in in 2010? [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** So I would say that for your—your own personal point of view, yes, that's when it would start. But our attorney has told us—he's already told us—that this is muddy. That the actual date... because another—another lease was signed. [00:00] **Councilmember Thorson:** And that's why I'm asking these questions, to try to get clarity. Because my hope is that we can at least get consensus on some basic simple facts of, like this instance, we've got these documents from all three and all four when they're getting ready to move in, they're talking about the construction costs, they're talking about their build-out and—and—their technology and materials. They took occupancy in 2005. [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** And I think the relevance is going to be that meeting next week talking to that, because they're going to have hopefully their documents that they have. I—I don't know that they're—I—I don't know what they're prepared to talk about. So I don't want to give the impression that we're going to figure this out next week. I just don't know that. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Right, we don't know. I mean, that's certainly the—the goal with the County: is to get on the same page, to get a consensus between the City and the County in regards to when the end date is for this lease. Get that agreement between the two cities or between the County and in the City, get that verified, and we can move on from there. Right? [00:00] **City Manager John Stark:** And let's just—let me just throw out a hypothetical. If we were to meet with the County and they said, "Well, we've thought about it and we really like to um you know increase the size of our footprint there by 50 percent, and we're willing to invest some money, we're willing to invest X amount of money if you guys are going to take care of the roof and take care of the building exterior and in that case we would sign a lease extension"... um, it's at that—at least extension—that we could that all this could become moot. We could say, "You know, the new lease is going to expire on 2032 or whatever date," and then all of this doesn't really matter anymore in that hypothetical. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Right. And hopefully we'll know that next week or at least start down that path. Let's talk about that. All right. Any other discussion on the Community Center? [Pause] Not a motion to adjourn. [00:00] **Councilmember Peterson:** Move. [00:00] **Councilmember Wong:** Second. [00:00] **Mayor Furlong:** Second by Councilmember Wong. Any discussion? All those favorite signify by saying aye. [Council responds Aye]. Opposed? We are adjourned.