This transcript features the **Cannon Falls City Council**. Note: While your provided list mentions Jon Radermacher as City Administrator, the transcript explicitly identifies **Neil Jensen** as the individual serving in that role during this 2021 meeting. Additionally, the roll call includes council members (Bringold, Duncan, Gesme, Lindell) who may have been serving alongside those on your list. [4:18] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: good evening everyone i'd like to call the november 2nd 2021 city council meeting for the city of cannon falls to order we have roll call please [4:35] **City Clerk Sara Peer**: bring gold [4:36] **Council Member Bringold**: here [4:37] **City Clerk Sara Peer**: duncan [4:37] **Council Member Duncan**: here [4:38] **City Clerk Sara Peer**: guess me [4:39] **Council Member Gesme**: here [4:40] **City Clerk Sara Peer**: cronenberger [4:41] **Council Member Kronenberger**: here [4:42] **City Clerk Sara Peer**: lindell [4:43] **Council Member Lindell**: here [4:44] **City Clerk Sara Peer**: montgomery [4:45] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: here i'll talk here would you rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [5:06] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: okay approval agenda anybody with corrections or additions if not i take a motion to prove the agenda [5:24] **Council Member Gesme**: so moved [5:25] **Council Member Duncan**: second [5:26] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: motion by gives me a second by duncan to approve the agenda any discussion all in favor aye [5:35] **Council Members**: aye [5:36] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: opposed carried okay we'll get right into public input public input is intended to afford the public an opportunity to address concerns to the city council the public input will be no longer than 30 minutes in total length and each speech speaker will have no more than three minutes to speak speakers may address topics relevant to the government of the city [5:53] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: speakers must sign up in advance and must provide their name address and topic they intend to address comments must be on topic respectful pertinent to city business and adhere to the apical data privacy rules any speaker that violates these rules will be asked to sit down and if the speaker refuses to comply they may be removed from the meeting speakers shall not address topics that are the subject of a public hearing all such comments should be made at the public hearing the city council will not generally act on issues raised by the public input but may choose to schedule consideration of them on a future agenda i'll open up the public input [6:40] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: first on the list is dawn lansing dawn could you give me your address please okay you're not you don't pay taxes or you're not asset you know or pay tax in the city of cannon falls you're not in the city of cannon falls though just one side to the other side so this is my this is my town i know but legally you're not in the city of campus i just want that for the record okay go ahead and your topic is the public uh pc ordinance and trucking you got three minutes go ahead [7:25] **Dawn Lansing**: one thing excuse me is that mike on mitch can you check that mike there's a button at the base of the thing there you go better perfect all right so um the first thing i'd like to ask about is i saw on the beacon that there was a public there was a notification for a public hearing for an ordinance chain another proposed ordinance change related to trucking and auto sales i believe i tried to find where that ordinance is so i can look at it and i haven't been able to find it anywhere on the city website i have sent an email to diane [8:11] **Dawn Lansing**: howard oh or is it dan howard no diane howard right okay so i sent an email to diane howard asking her for a copy of that i haven't seen anything yet so i'd like to um get some information on that uh or proposed ordinance change you know i'd like to know why it's being proposed who's proposed it and who's planned this public hearing just to bring home the same fact that david olson brought up last at your last meeting you know that's the sexually oriented business ordinance that was passed um he wanted to know who asked for it because he wasn't the one that asked for that change and he wanted to know who planned it and there you know i don't know if he ever got any [8:58] **Dawn Lansing**: answers i know it was never answered in the meetings so i'd like some information on that ordinance then the next thing would be um the proposed ordinance that you're putting forward the ordinance changes to the planning commission you know taking the planning commission from seven people down to five people with the reasoning that it's easier to reach a quorum i guess a better way to achieve a quorum would be to just change your people if you cannot get four people out of seven to a planning commission meeting then you need to change people that are on the planning commission but not limit the number of people that are on the planning commission by reducing the number of people on that planning [9:43] **Dawn Lansing**: commission you basically are taking away public input by reducing it to five people two of which are members of the city council which is kind of a conflict of interest the planning commission the purpose of the planning commission really is to look at a proposal or planning or zoning or whatever get findings of fact get public input and then make recommendations the planning commission did their job and they were rewarded by doing their job by being slapped on the wrist cut down and taking away their ability to plan their meetings this city council has changed the agenda [10:28] **Dawn Lansing**: on the night of a of a meeting several times that i've been here from moving public input to the front of the meeting to the back of the meeting then back to the front of the meeting to slap the planning commission's hands for doing the job that they were supposed to do because it went against what the city council had fixed in um on that pro on the keller bartman proposal is a very un-american um and it's kind of ironic that today's election day you know we as citizens in canada falls may not be voting for anything today but you guys are 30 seconds thank you [11:16] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: okay becky [11:17] **Becky Youngmark**: i was going to yield to dawn so she's done so okay [11:21] **Rick**: rick also healed the dawn okay [11:23] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: diane i wasn't going to yield to anybody well you're up then okay [11:25] **Diane Johnson**: i'm not surprised i know what can i say um i was just going to comment again on in kind of reflection on the last meeting uh that i do think cannon falls truly is a wonderful community it is a good place to raise children for young families it's a good place for families to be it's a good place to retire and get old and i would commend all of you for your faithfulness and although i won't [12:01] **Diane Johnson**: always agree with your decisions i do know that you make them after deliberation and in consideration of lots of different opinions so thank you for your job thank you [12:15] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: that's all i got on here for public input is anybody else [12:23] **Becky Youngmark**: okay sorry i just have questions i'm becky young mark i have questions about the apartment complex okay the trucking the planning commission ties into that public something ordinance by commission ordinance yep what don was talking about [12:47] **Becky Youngmark**: so um i guess i agree with don in that aspect i think it's not a good idea to have three people on the planning commission um i know it kind of ties in with the apartment complex and i have questions about that too but i'll stick to the commission so that's my input i think it's better to stay with seven to keep the public involved and not have an alternate as a city council member thank you [13:20] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: thank you okay that's it for public input unless you got any more okay then we'll close the public input and we'll go right into the item six which is a public hearing resolution 25 83 certifying that unpaid utility charges be collected with taxes neil you want to explain that we kind of do that every three months i think [13:33] **Neil Jensen (City Administrator)**: yeah quarterly we bring delinquent water and sewer bills to you guys to certify the taxes and the public hearing is mandated by law so and i'll say it again we feel that's the fairest way to do it rather than shut the water off so we we take and put it on their taxes so okay [14:10] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: take a motion to approve resolution—you have to have the public hearing oh public here let's open a public hearing anybody who wants to talk about their water bill or something you got the floor [14:25] **Becky Youngmark**: anybody becky i would just like to know why our water bill is so inconsistent i mean one month it's 55 the next month it's 155 dollars [14:40] **Neil Jensen (City Administrator)**: because at 55 you're paying a minimum the minimum charge and once you get over you've got to help me Dan—once you get over a certain cubic feet and and then it uh it goes up to uh i think is it 80 don't look at me like it's your first date i think the easiest way would be to come in and see ellen and i and we can explain it to you [15:10] **Becky Youngmark**: yeah because i have called and it's just strange because it's never consistent and then the other issue is i mean we can be gone for a month and it doesn't go down and so we've checked for leaks we've done the whole gamut you know talking to people and fig trying to figure out okay do we have something running what's going on and it just seems like we can never figure out the bill it just doesn't make sense [15:35] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: is your uh when you're gone do you notice your neighbor hooking the hose up to your house [15:42] **Becky Youngmark**: we don't have any neighbors [15:44] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: yeah matt he may be mitch may be coming over i don't know [15:45] **Neil Jensen (City Administrator)**: well come in and talk to ellen down there i think she's— [15:52] **Becky Youngmark**: yeah yeah and i've talked to her several times on the phone so okay it has been an issue but we can't figure out what's going on so it's just such a wide gamut i mean when your bill goes up over a hundred dollars you know so that that makes a huge difference thank you [16:15] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: anybody else seeing none i'll close the public hearing and then i take a motion to approve resolution 2583 [16:25] **Council Member Duncan**: so moved [16:26] **Council Member Bringold**: second [16:27] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: motion by duncan the second by bring gold to approve resolution 2583 certifying that unpaid utility charges be collected with taxes any discussion all in favor opposed carried okay get right to the consent agenda [16:46] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: consent agenda items may be adopted under one motion as presented or may be removed for discussion and resolution as council business for you at home and in the audience i'll go through the consent agenda item a justin correct claims for the accounting period ending october 28th 2021 item b minute meetings for the october 19th 2021 city council meeting item c second reading and adoption of ordinance 380 amending the city code chapter 32 relating to the planning commission item d resolution 2584 designating polling places for two [17:31] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: thousand twenty two item e resolution twenty five eighty five accepting a monetary donation from goody county to the library item f approved the joint powers agreement for the state building code administration with goodyear county for 2022 resolution 2586 entering in a mndot agreement with the minnesota department of transportation imh resolution 2587 authorizing the 2022 city license renewals an item i approve a final pay request number two for 2021 street improvements is there anything that council would like to pull down [18:29] **Council Member Bringold**: matt anything nope [18:31] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: nope nothing for me okay well hearing none i'd take a consent agenda [18:35] **Council Member Duncan**: so moved [18:36] **Council Member Gesme**: second [18:37] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: motion by duncan second by gets me to approve the consent agenda is there any other discussion hearing then all in favor aye aye aye opposed carried okay console business i think neil we were gonna do that uh you're tabling that and we're still taking interviews we're going to approve a public works maintenance one operator position [19:17] **Neil Jensen (City Administrator)**: and we still got a couple interviews to do so maybe we'll can do that at the next meeting [19:25] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: okay okay that leads us to reports uh kyle from the chamber [19:26] **Kyle Paulson (Chamber Director)**: thank you thank you for uh letting me participate tonight it's good to see you john thank you the first thing i want to talk about is halloween trick-or-treat trot i don't know how many of you were in town we had 11 to 1200 children come through it's more everything oh this like blew the past years away just [20:04] **Kyle Paulson (Chamber Director)**: absolutely blew them away but also in regards to that 49 vendors chamber members other businesses in town that wanted to give away candy and so um and there were some really cute little you know troughs that they were sending the candy down and fun things the drama uh yeah the drama team was acting out over you know by uh body works clinic and so fun was had by all it was just an incredible event the secret is i don't know what the secret was so i don't know if we can duplicate it again [20:50] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: well in the past you did it one hour and this was two hours [20:55] **Kyle Paulson (Chamber Director)**: the morning we've been doing we've been doing two hours for the last two years okay yeah maybe because it was on a friday i don't know who knows yeah it's a good thing to have a lot of people there yeah oh my gosh yes and i want to shout out to the 14 volunteers and the three policemen who kept all of the traffic safe and going in one direction that just means a big deal for all of the families and they really appreciated all that help okay on to deck the falls if anyone is looking or wanting to put a unit in the parade [21:36] **Kyle Paulson (Chamber Director)**: please contact the chamber we do have registration forms to fill out and november 19th is the deadline and so you can be a walking group you can be a fire truck you can be a snowmobile on a trailer so anything that looks christmassy okay and so contact the chamber we're also looking for photos that represent cannon falls it can be of lake billsby the cannon valley trail it can be of any of our parks any fun activity [22:22] **Kyle Paulson (Chamber Director)**: we're looking for the new cover for the 2022 discover guide and so the more photos we get in the better selection and so please bring those to the chamber office and we will be giving the artist or the photographer credit for that photo just a couple more things it's as easy as pie the cannon belly or cannon rivers senior living is holding a fundraiser for the cannon falls fire department they are selling pies for five dollars a piece apple or pumpkin you call cannon rivers uh canon [23:08] **Kyle Paulson (Chamber Director)**: yes it is canon river senior living by november 12th and you pick them up on november 19th so five dollars a pie you can't beat it other than that that is everything i've got and so we're winding up also our light up cannon falls events so if you're interested in decorating your homes your business please let us know so we can get you on the map and then we are also doing um the giving tree or the gift tree and and so if you know of people who are in need children [23:54] **Kyle Paulson (Chamber Director)**: school age please let us know any questions [24:02] **Council Member Kronenberger**: did you say that benefit was for the fire department [24:04] **Kyle Paulson (Chamber Director)**: yes i did okay thank you i sure did november 17th uh nope excuse me november 17th is when we're wrapping the garland and then it'll be either the 18th or the 19th that it'll go up it all depends on when we can get a safe tree truck available okay that's always a fun couple of days anything else okay thank you [24:36] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: thanks kyle okay joint powers trail board anything laura [24:37] **Council Member Kronenberger**: sure um not much but they did talk a little bit more about um using the excess bond money that they had available um they're going to do one additional vaught toilet and then they are now looking into doing electronic self-pay stations so right now their cash self pay so you have to have exact cash and so they're looking at ways um to convert them to electronic and they actually think they'll get more compliance by that yeah by doing it i believe that that's good so there's that and then that was really it other little stuff but okay thank you [25:41] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: okay let's go around uh dan you got anything tonight [25:43] **Jed Petersen (Public Works Director)**: i do just uh update on the water main project on 3rd street they're going to start that on monday november 8th connecting the new water main okay the bridge work is progressing the painting's done there's rip rap to be installed yet so we're not quite there but it's coming along at the wastewater plant the biosolid application is taking place this week at the street shop we're getting all the equipment dot the snow plows are on we're starting to work on some of the storm water collection areas kind of transitioning into fall and winter here that should do it [26:24] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: did you say that if they don't get the structure done on that bridge you're still going to have it open so the traffic across it this winter [26:34] **Jed Petersen (Public Works Director)**: we'll find more out next monday we have briefings every monday kind of give an update on how things are going they still have the safety span installed underneath the bridge that needs to be removed before they can actually get serious about any traffic okay so some of the residents have asked if it's going to be open this year i guess okay thank you [27:07] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: mitch anything neil [27:08] **Neil Jensen (City Administrator)**: just a couple items um thursday we're going to be looking at the water tower council approved that a while back to get that painted and and we had a meeting today with the people that are on the tower verizon and goodyew county and and them antenna folks and they're looking at putting their temporary tower up just outside of the tower there and on a 100 foot pole i believe the artesian well that's in the basement that we've been working on forever and ever what that resolution that you approved with mndot tonight has that uh a storm water drain coming out of one of the catch basins and into that building to catch that water so if we can't get it completely capped and and and sealed then the water will have an escape route so that's finally going to get completed [28:04] **Neil Jensen (City Administrator)**: well it'll be next year but uh um at least they're going to be bidding out here in a week so that's all i got [28:10] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: just a little background that artisan wells in the basement of brewster's and it's been there forever and the water you know eventually went under the main street and was flooding the caldwell banker building across the street so but we've had a temporary fix but this should correct it hopefully for sure so okay let's go uh let's go on the screen derek you got anything [28:38] **Council Member Bringold**: nope nothing for me tonight [28:44] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: matt no [28:46] **Council Member Matt**: i got nothing and uh i apologize if the wi-fi the audio and all that stuff back [28:52] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: yeah you sound great i'm marrying jill i have nothing steve nothing [29:05] **Council Member Steve**: nothing [29:06] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: but mentioning oh yeah laura nothing phil nothing [29:08] **Council Member Phil**: i just got to mention talk about a jack paul trades the football game last friday night matt and his buddy were out of town so we were hard-pressed to find somebody to uh do the football game cinematographer so we hold neil jensen our city administrator did the taping of the game last friday night so yeah but i think it was good i had no complaints [29:33] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: watch forum this winter on a city plow it's like learning to can vegetables forever your job then no you did a good job thanks for thanks for stepping in okay just no just a quick note of the upcoming meetings uh this this thursday november 4th we got eda public works and park and november 8th monday library board finance committee and planning commission so that's next monday okay anybody got anything else if not take a motion to adjourn [30:26] **Council Member Gesme**: so moved [30:27] **Council Member Bringold**: second [30:28] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: most of my gives me a second but i bring gold to adjourn all in favor aye [30:35] **Council Members**: aye [30:36] **Mayor Matt Montgomery**: opposed carrie [30:42] [End of Transcript]