so uh good morning everyone uh thank you for uh coming today um and obviously we're hitting a very important Milestone here in Cottage Grove and the frankly the future of Cottage Grove this ribbon cutting is not just the opening of a new building it represents growth progress and a long awaited investment in the services that keep our city running smoothly today we celebrate the completion of our new utilities and engineering building which is located just north of 110th Street South uh next to the low Zone uh new water treatment plant which is almost finished almost finished uh this is truly a significant moment uh for our community it is a testament to the hard work dedication and the vision of everyone involved City staff the city council and of course the residents of Cottage Grove who support and trust us to deliver uh Services each and every day the new facility which uh spans over 35,000 square ft will provide much needed space for our utilities and Engineering uh teams who have long outgrown our existing facilities and for those of you that had been down to visit our old our older Public Works building I guess better not say it's still part of our Public Works building uh you could see that uh we definitely needed this space it is a vital step in ensuring that we have the space and the resources uh to grow as a city and continue to provide excellent services to our residents for many many years to come we're very proud of this new facility and what it represents and obviously it's a strong commitment to the future of Cottage Grove I want to personally thank our city administrator uh who is next to me here Jennifer levit and our Public Works director Ryan bfine who is right next to me here and the entire team uh for their hard work and dedication to making this Vision become a reality and of course a special thanks to cross Anderson W architect and stantech who is our designers and and construction Partners uh that brought this project to life and I've already had the opportunity myself to do a self-guided tour and the place is absolutely amazing so of course Let's uh let's celebrate this this fantastic accomplishment together and uh look forward uh to the great things that this facility will continue to achieve uh for the residents and citizens of Cottage Grove into the future so I think now I'm going to turn it over to Ryan burine uh who has a few things to say so thank you thank you mayor Bailey I think you did a great job of summarizing what this facility means to our department and the city as a whole I really want to start by thanking the entire city council um without their support and allowing us to build this amazing facility we wouldn't be here where we are today I will say it feels like just yesterday it was a very very cold January day two years ago uh when we had a special workshop with city council and we walked through our existing facility in the evening and uh they went all over the entire site with us they saw how we used the facility how crowded we were and how much of a need this this building was so it I think it was a pretty fun evening and uh and I appreciate them doing that and then allowing us to move into this project uh once we had approval we jumped right into the design process right we knew we needed this facility and the sooner the better um so we put together a team with wal stantech and uh Krauss Anderson as the construction manager and I will say with so many years and so many successful projects with those uh with those uh companies um I think it made for a great project team I will I do need to mention we had a really unique challenge so we built this facility at the exact same time that we were building the water treatment plant uh that facility actually started first it's going to end later it's a little more complicated there's a little bit of uh back and forth with the construction teams on on the length of time to build each facility but um it was a challenge because it's different projects with uh different companies different subcontractors so it was a lot of work and I need to mention this to actually make them match right and not necessarily match perfectly but compliment each other it seems kind of maybe silly but my gosh the amount of time we spent looking at materials and different aesthetic things um it was not something I expected so that was uh that was fun I will say specifically just the tip up panels right these concrete panels with two different suppliers if I never have to look at a tip up panel sample again I will be happy um everyone knows as I was staring at at those down the hallway at public works from a distance trying to make sure they match and these facilities would really look well right because this is a amazing piece of property as we keep building it out for our community and for our public works department um that leads me to my final thank you and and just as important and that's a thank you to all of our staff this really was a team effort that we went through this design process um everyone that's going to work here help maintain this facility I felt very strongly that they should be part of the process as we were designing it because it really does need to work for them um and with that you know it was just a very engaged process I think and I think in the end of all of it it made for a great facility um for us to work out of so uh with that I want to thank everyone for all their hard work uh dedication through the project and for getting us where we are today so thank you everyone and with that now we'll do the official ribbon cutting so if I can get Rick and Crystal to hold that and while they're rolling out the ribbon I do want to just acknowledge uh Su vento uh is over on the left over here Sue why don't you come up here with us Su vento for those that don't know she's our Metropolitan Council representative for our area so come on up yeah come with us and it's only fitting when the question was who's going to cut the ribbon it certainly isn't going to be the mayor councel council M rosen's next to me here uh it's definitely got to be the Public Works director uh that's putting all this through so there you go ready all right so we'll do 3 two one and on one y all right three two one we are official there it is perfect you got her well done Ryan congratulations good job Justin yes all right well that's yeah y you want to do it y I can do it that's it for our our talking our speech and our ribbon cutting so we have Refreshments here hopefully people have grabbed some and after that feel free to take a tour of the facility hopefully the utility guys can maybe kind of be around it to help answer questions and uh yeah feel free to check out the building thanks to everyone thank you all right good job thanks fantastic thank you good job e for