Call the flag to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands nationy and justice for all. All right. Are there any changes to the agenda? No, Mr. Mayor. There are not. Okay. Can I have a motion to approve the agenda as presented? Motion to approve agenda. Motion by Kate. Second. Second. Amen. All in favor? I I uh no presentations or proclamations. All right, we'll move to public comment. A couple couple folks here for a couple public comment. How about that? I got it down. Terry, I follow directions or anyways. Bob Gleason, 27055 Hickory Ridge Drive, Elco, Minnesota. And uh been here before, but uh just no complaints or anything. I just wanted to congratulate Amanda on your re-election. Megan on your election and on your election to the mayor. And I don't think I've been here since you've been the actual chief, but congratulations on being named the chief. And I just wanted to to also comment. I like to watch election results just to see what and I thought the local election. I haven't been here um since the uh the election, but I thought it was pretty interesting the findings on that. But on to the the subject I wanted to talk about was Niagara. If you remember during the election that was a pretty contentious issue for us. Don't see anything on Niagara anymore. I don't know if they're currently pumping and I don't think this is the avenue to to I mean it's a question just a general overall question maybe a suggestion. Maybe the city comes out with something. I I'd like to understand are they pumping and if they are how much are they pumping to what they're allowed to pump? Um are they at max capacity? How many employees? Because I know that during the election there was a lot of numbers kicked around. Some people said they're only going to have a couple of people that keep the lights on and others said, "Well, Niagara was saying there's going to be 50ome employees." I have no idea. Didn't see anything about any type of open house or um job fair or anything for Niagara. It kind of just the election happened and then it just kind of went kind of quiet, zipped up. So that's all I got to say. And I don't know if you can answer any of those questions, but uh um and I always end with thank you very much for what you do for the city. I really appreciate it. And that's a heartfelt thanks. Now, you can never tell anyone. It's a thankless job. Okay. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you, Bob. I can I'll I'll try and touch on the ones that I remember, Bob. Um and I don't know if this is the forum to do that or not. Um so I'll start with the jobs. Um they uh just recently reported that they have filled all or most of the jobs that they had intended to fill at this time with this phase of the production lines. They have two production lines. They have room for up to four in that facility. Uh they're in the current they're currently in the oh with regards to the jobs um three I believe three of the top five jobs um in the facility are people that are from the very immediate facility. the plant directors actually from Elco and um the other I think six or five or six of the top seven are people from the general area. Um I've seen numbers with regards to their hiring. Um and everybody's generally the suburbs, the immediate area and as far south as Farbo, but everybody's generally local. the employees aren't coming from California and and other places. There's a few transfers in from other facilities. I think one of their key um production managers is from another plant obviously, but most almost all the employees are actually from the immediate area. With regards to how much they're they're pumping and and I know what you meant, but we always try and correct people. They don't pump anything. Uh they buy water from the city. Uh they're currently in startup mode. Um they are about four weeks away from actually shipping pallets to customers. So they're in the process of um uh the lines are built. They're in the process of tuning the lines. They're doing quality control and testing with regards to the product uh before they start uh shipping. And so um right now they're only at a a portion of what they will be doing on a daily basis. And that should ramp up until about early um summer. where they'll pro which is their normal peak season anyways because of the time of year um where they'll probably be pumping at or close to what their um industrial user agreement allows them purchasing purchasing uh allows them to do how many employees are there can you disclose that I don't um I think they're between 50 and 60 employees currently at the at the facility what they said Yep. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Did I answer all your questions, Bob? Yep. Oh, the very last one is I would like to take a tour plant, but I suppose it's uh they've got some stuff that they got to keep secret, but I've seen other bottling plants, Coca-Cola and RCA down in Georgia. Just intrigues me. We we can't help with that. I have toured the plant during the setting up of the lines. Um uh I don't know we don't know if they're going to provide any tours to the general public through the process. They've indicated that they tend to control because it is food production and there is a lot of proprietary technology in what they do that they it's not like uh it's not like the brewery where they just kind of do daily tours to have everybody come come through. So, I think it's a little more controlled, but we don't have any sense of what for me out if you see me in there. All right. Good. Thank you. Anyone else for a public comment? I need to turn that thing on. Uh, we'll move on to consent agenda. Is Is there anything on consent agenda anybody wants to talk about? I just wanted to note for council that you were sent a revised item. Excuse me. Um oh, excuse me. Ordinance. Uh, no. As actually under general business, I forgot to mention it earlier. You were sent a revised proposal. Um the city attorney requested that the proposal reference our master agreement with Bolton and Mink. I forgot to mention that during the adoption of the agenda. All right. Uh motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. I'll make a motion. Second. Second. All in favor? I. All right. Move on to public hearings and there are none. General business. Um we are asking the council to um accept a proposal and authorize the water tower sighting study. This is a continuation of the implementation of the water system plan that was presented last fall um by Bolton and Mink Council's previously um already authorized work related to the construction of a an additional well for firm capacity and some work at the treatment plant to provide for blending to provide for greater capacity in a more cost-effective manner than building a whole new addition. And the other item that we had identified within the near term was the construction of an additional water tower which the lead time on a project of that nature is much longer. And this is really just the first portion of that process. And I'll turn it over to Rich to talk about it more. Yeah, the water study indicated just based on the growth projections we had that for firefighting you need more storage capacity in 2027. But uh if you have to first of all build this enormous that takes time. Uh, and if you have to acquire land for it, which we think you probably will, that takes time. And so, we're suggesting getting started on this now so that when you get into 2027, you can hit that target of providing that storage. So, yeah, this is just the first part. Where are we going to put this thing? And then we'll come back and okay, now we need to design it and get it bid and all that stuff. I have what is probably a dumb question, but it's just it's a curious question for me. Why do we have water towers and why don't we just like put something in the ground to hold on to the water? That's a great question. It is. Um because gravity, okay, we like that water up in the air because it requires pumps to use it. If you have storm or power outage, your faucet still work because it's all in the air and running like gravity. Thank you. All right, with that motion to accept proposal and authorize. So moved. Second. Amanda. All in favor? I I All right. Move on to reports. So, uh, the council um had authorized us at a previous meeting to fill the vacancy that was created with the promotion of Sergeant Geris to the sergeant position. Um, we have posted the position effective today and we will at some point get to a second round of interviews where we traditionally incorporate a council member to be just kind of a a lay person involved in the process and representing the larger community. So, we are looking tonight for a council person to be designated as that individual. Now, the way that the hiring process has been in hiring officers is different than it was what 15 years ago where you would have well, we would have up to 50 applicants for the position. If we get six, Craig will be really really happy. Um, one or two and and what we've found is that a lot of times after the first round, if we don't find anybody, we go to open till filled. So, we can't give you a specific date. Um, if we have a candidate that makes it to a six second round interview, we will call the representative and based on their schedule schedule that second round interview. Any volunteers? I'm happy to do it. I don't I don't I've done it before, so if somebody wants to do it that hasn't done it, it's fine. But I'm happy to be a part. Cool. Nominate Amanda. She nominated herself. Okay, we'll take that as so directed. Okay, can we get a backup? That has come up. I can be a backup. Okay, I can too. I'll be a backup to the backup. I'll be the fourth one. Okay, so in that order, throw my name in. Yeah, Rich is in. All right. Anything else that All right. Public works. Cory didn't have anything for me to add. [Music] Chief, good fire representative here. Engineering field questions. I have nothing to present to you. Anything from community development? Just the draft minute 7 packet. Uh Renee did not have anything specific for me. Anything from parks? Uh same. Same. CC Easter egg hunt is on Saturday 10:00 a.m. at the school. It's my plug. Uh, uh, scale executive committee. Scale is tomorrow morning, the regular meeting. Um, there will be a legislative update from Tony Albbright, the lobbyist for scale, primarily related to the housing legislation, where the session is going or not going at this point. um service delivery executive committee I don't have a report from that I was not able to make the last meeting I don't believe and then oh no executive committee is next Friday and scale service delivery is the Monday after so no reports on those and Josh isn't here for I35 unless you Yes that was this morning so we had both house transportation co-chairs President John Cosnic and Aaron Kaggel um they dropped their full package today. Our bridge was not included, but we still remain hopeful for years to come. Um we're looking at a budget deficit, so there's not a lot of high priority projects. The highest project um allocation is the uh County Road 5035 interchange. That's at 40.8 million. The next closest is 10. So, a lot of interesting things happening. Also learned a little bit about um a small empowering small communities grant program that they're funding. Um, that's for towns of 15,000 or less. So, I spoke with Tom about that and I think there could be some good grants coming our way in the future. Excellent. All right. Any other reports? And we'll move on to discussion. Anything from the council? Nothing. See none. Move on to the close portion of our meeting. Tom, could you just inform people on Zoom as well? Yep. So, for those individuals that are on Zoom, uh we will be holding a closed meeting. So, we will need you to leave the meeting. If you'd like to come back after the closed meeting, of which there will only be the adjournment. Once you've left the meeting, you can sign back in, but we will hold you in the waiting room until we're done with the closed meeting. For those of you in the audience, we would ask you to leave um the room, and you're welcome to uh hang around if you want to come back. But again, the only item on the agenda after the closed meeting is the adjournment of the open meeting. So, thanks for coming. Technically, it's an open meeting. City Council will now close the meeting pursuant to Minnesota State Statute 13 Delta.05 05 sub category 3 3C3 to discuss an offer for purchase of real property number one real property with P number to read all those 239210040 and 239210042 and real property located at 421 Main Street and 431 Main Street and P 230030040 zero. Motion to move.