This transcript features **Mayor Michele Hanson** presiding over the meeting, with **City Administrator Matt Kline** providing staff support. Councilmembers **Ethan Gilmore**, **Katie Hill**, **Carl Bliss**, and **Orin Kipp** (who is referred to by the Mayor as "John") are all present. [3:10] All: [Pledge of Allegiance] [3:23] Mayor Michele Hanson: All right. Like to call to order the November 3rd, 2025 meeting of the Bayport City Council. Let's I'll stand for the pledge of allegiance. [clears throat] Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [3:52] Mayor Michele Hanson: Right. Thanks, Matt. Will you please call the role? [3:55] Matt Kline: Council member Bliss? [3:56] Councilmember Carl Bliss: Here. [3:57] Matt Kline: Council member Gilmore? [3:58] Deputy Mayor Ethan Gilmore: Here. [3:59] Matt Kline: Council member Kipp? [4:00] Councilmember Orin Kipp: Here. [4:01] Matt Kline: Council member Hill? [4:02] Councilmember Katie Hill: Here. [4:03] Matt Kline: Mayor Hansen? [4:04] Mayor Michele Hanson: Here. [snorts] All right. Do we have a motion to approve tonight's agenda? [4:09] Councilmember Orin Kipp: So moved. [4:10] Councilmember Katie Hill: I second. [4:11] Mayor Michele Hanson: Thanks, John and Katie. All in favor? [4:13] All: I. [4:15] Mayor Michele Hanson: All right. There are no proclamations, commendations petitions or announcements. So, we'll go right into our open forum. It's a portion of the meeting to address the city council on subjects that are not part of the agenda. The city council may take action or reply at the time of the statement or may give direction to staff regarding investigation of comments expressed. A total of 15 minutes is allotted for all of the public comment during the open forum. We do have a scheduled guest Kent Ryers and Brett Doyle, but actually only is it just Brett that's here. [4:52] Brett Doyle: Just Brett's here from Woodfire Wellness. So, you want to come on up and say hi. Right here, I guess. So, yeah. Okay. Is this Yep. Yeah. [laughter] Testing. Testing. So I I uh I guess I brought some handouts. I don't know if this is uh practical or maybe I I'll just offer those to anybody who's interested. [5:14] Brett Doyle: They've got some photos of our uh of our sauna units and things like that. QR code for our website. Um, but just tell us who you are and where you're from and then we'll get in give you the verbal rundown. Um, so my name is Brett. I'm from Woodfire Wellness. First of all, thank you very much for the opportunity to come and speak here tonight and for the opportunity to come and enjoy this practice in Bayport. Um the idea behind our business concept really revolves around the Nordic cycle and that is heat cold and a period of kind of resetting or relaxing the nervous system giving you a chance to let the internal thermometer catch up. Um and so that's what we strive to do is just create a an environment where you can practice those three components for the sake of numerous potential health benefits, improved mood, things like that. [5:59] Mayor Michele Hanson: So Brett, just in case people are two beats behind and didn't watch our other council meetings, we had allowed um your business to come in to Lakeside Park and we gave you a just kind of a short version of what you're actually going to do at Lakeside Park and when you're going to start and that because I feel like you may have jumped a little further in than some people may be caught up to, if that makes sense. [6:31] Brett Doyle: Uh fantastic. Yeah. So, [laughter] we've got essentially I I think we're kind of earmarking the 21st and 22nd of this month, so a few weeks from now. Um, great. To bring two 28-foot mobile sauna units to Lakeside Park. Each one of these is outfitted with a standard hot room, you know, with a with a big full-size barrel sauna stove imported from Finland. It it built out with a lot of rocks. You can pour water over the rocks to get the steam effect. Um, that kind of thing. It's a much more robust, radiant heat than what you would normally see at an electric sauna in a gym or something like that. Each unit also has a changing room or two changing rooms in each unit. Um, a lot of people come with their swimwear underneath the clothes, but we have facilities there to change. We've got bins for people to store personal items, hooks on the wall to hang things. Um, and even like an interior lounge if you want to come out of the heat and just kind of relax for a little bit but remain inside out of the elements, we'll have that available too. Um, beyond that, we have we'll set up patio furniture outside of the units so that especially once it starts getting cooler out, you can migrate outdoors, you know, kind of the next level of cooling off in between heat cycles. Um we we usually provide like cold water buckets and ladles so you can you know experiment with a little cool water um in between the heat. And then one thing I'm really excited about and we've I just realized I should send you the we got a permit from the Washington County Sheriff's Office uh surface permit to cut holes in the ice on the St. Croix for like the final epic level of cooling down if you want to plunge in the in the uh St. Croix River in the wintertime. Um so really looking forward to that. Um there's always going to be somebody on site on days that we operate. We plan to operate Tuesday through Saturday. Um there will always it's usually going to be me on site, but my better half Jill fills in occasionally. My business partner, Kent, uh don't be surprised to see him there. Um there's always somebody present to stoke the fires, um to answer questions, to you know observe for the sake of safety. Um always somebody there to use as a resource. Um you know and we don't have like a set schedule where you cycle in the hot room for this long and then go cool off for this long. They're 90-minute sessions for people to use how however they want. We're there as a resource to kind of help guide things along, make sure everything stays safe um and so forth. Um we have a our website is woodfirewellness.com. Uh there's a QR code on this handout, but you know, you can Google us uh however you navigate to the site. [clears throat] You'll see the interface with our mindbody platform there. That's where you can create your account. You can see our schedule of sessions, book your times, pay for everything. Um, so that by the time you arrive on site at Lakeside Park, you're just all you need to do is relax. Um, we we can't accommodate uh cash transactions unfortunately. Uh, we will have card readers on site. Um, but I just always recommend for people to book in advance. That that way you don't ever have to worry about we cap every session and [cough] every unit out at 10 people just to preserve the experience so it's not going to get super packed. And once we're up at 10, we won't allow anybody else in. It's just safer that way as well, you know, uh to control the crowds. Um so the best way to ensure you get your session is to book in advance um in case we come up against capacity. [10:24] Councilmember Katie Hill: Brad, are you still planning to do one of the um trailers as sort of like a more family-friendly one and one as more calm? [10:32] Brett Doyle: Yep. Exactly. And you can book that as you're when you go online, choose which one, which experience. That'll be part of the description. As you're reserving your slot, you'll be able to see like our Finnish style sauna is the social sauna we call it. That's all ages, family-friendly. Um, you know, plenty of talking allowed and, you know, no noise requirements or or restrictions [clears throat] or anything like that. The the other unit is uh the one that we call the sanctuary. sessions in that unit. And it's not like we're in there shushing people, but people just kind of understand if you sign up for that. That's 18 and up. And the idea is more meditative experience, you know, more calm relaxed um less socializing. [11:13] Councilmember Katie Hill: Okay. [11:14] Brett Doyle: Um so we will have both of those options available. And it's worth noting that we're actually operating one of them at a convention in Florida, which is why we're pushing the start date out uh currently. Um the other unit will stay here in Minnesota. We'll be starting with that unit by itself until the other one gets shipped back from Florida. [11:42] Mayor Michele Hanson: Okay. [11:43] Brett Doyle: So on the 21st and 22nd we anticipate just having the social sauna available and then beyond that it will be both. [11:49] Mayor Michele Hanson: Wonderful. All right. And everything's going okay with getting things set up with whatever you needed from the city. The county's on board with the hole. So, we got to just make sure that's safe and people aren't falling through the hole. There's some way to guard from that. Cover it up or something eventually, right? [12:12] Brett Doyle: Yeah. It'll have to be marked um at all times. So, we'll take care of that. Um and u it's not going to be that deep either, right? Like [12:21] Brett Doyle: No, no, no, no. It probably just be a couple feet deep just to you'll have to crouch down to get fully submerged, but like you said, for safety, that just makes the most sense. Oh, sheriff's office recommended. [12:35] Mayor Michele Hanson: Yeah, great. [12:36] Brett Doyle: Yeah, no problem there. So, I guess uh for the general public or anybody else that needs to get in touch with us, I recommend email info at woodfire Wellness that goes directly to me. I'll reply directly and um that's the best way for anybody to contact if they have questions or want to try and coordinate some kind of private event or anything like that. So, uh [13:01] Mayor Michele Hanson: Okay. And you should start getting some marketing out there maybe on Facebook that we can share within our Bayport Facebook pages and things like that and hopefully beyond that too. I mean people can come from outside of Bayport obviously. So [13:17] Brett Doyle: We hope so. [13:18] Councilmember Orin Kipp: I look forward to being a customer. [13:20] Brett Doyle: Excellent. We look forward to having [13:21] Councilmember Katie Hill: Yeah. It be fun to try it. [13:23] Brett Doyle: And with that I just want to say I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you guys so much for, you know, being so open to the experience and welcoming us and I'm just very appreciative for the opportunity. Can't wait for the for the winter. It's going to be a good time. [13:38] Mayor Michele Hanson: Great. Perfect. Great. I hope so. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thanks for coming back and [clears throat] giving us the scoop. Well, thank you. All right. Have a good evening. Yeah. Thanks. Okay. Anyone else here want to come on up and and speak? [13:51] Randy Gutsman: Mayor, council members, staff, I'm Randy Gutsman. I actually live in Grant, but uh Bayport has become my favorite town. First and foremost, mayor and I went through the leadership in the valley program through the uh store chamber of commerce. And I really got a chance to get to know Michele, to know of her commitment to this town, how hard she works, and I can't tell you how much that means to me. [14:21] Mayor Michele Hanson: And Randy and I did a lot of crying during leadership. [laughter] [14:26] Randy Gutsman: I lost my wife. I lost my wife, both of us about two years ago suddenly. And uh was never the plan. She was going to send me off and if there's some place to go, she would get me there. And so this role of of being on my own trying to figure things out has been not easy. But the other the other thing I want to recognize is just across the street. It's a wonderful church where there have been uh a wonderful place for me to find some peace and do some healing. And uh and I can't tell you how much that means to me. And we have an event coming up that my partner in crime here is going to do a much better job describing. [15:07] Mary Horic Binger: I'm Mary Horic Binger, 228 4th Street South and a member across the street at St. Croix United, formerly People's Congregational Church. Um, we have had a fall festival going for probably 30 years of different names and it was Harvest Fest, but because we're St. Croix United now. And because Stillwater stole the name Harvestfest about 10 years ago, we decided to to rebrand as Soup and Shop. Um, you may know that Croixdale is not doing their bazaar this year. They're usually four holiday events in maybe five in in Bayport. Croixdale is remodeling, so they are not doing theirs in December. The master gardeners at the library have stopped doing theirs. They they are done. They're not doing their um wonderful sale. So, it will just be the Lutheran church and us and possibly the the um Legion will do something when they do their business, small business in the basement. But, we wanted to let you know about this and we're doing something. [15:55] Mary Horic Binger: The other reason that I'm here is to tell you that we opened a food sharing pantry in conjunction with St. Charles Bethlehem Lutheran and us. And you cannot believe how the food is flying off the shelves. And all the proceeds from the soup lunch. We're not charging this year. We're going doing a free will donation and all proceeds are going to go for keeping the food pantry um stocked. I just heard today that Wall-E across the street, who's also the commander at the Legion, he's thinking, you know, he gets to see the the pantry out his window and he's thinking ahead to the winter when we can't have perishables. We can't have anything glass that will break. Um, and I, you know, we haven't, we haven't [clears throat] even started to discuss it yet, but I just wanted to let you know that the need is great and the response has been unbelievable. [17:10] Mary Horic Binger: Um this day, the Saturday before Thanksgiving, we'll probably have 400, maybe 500 people walk through the door. We invite our local law enforcement to come for lunch and to wander around because there will be um local vendors as well as the amazing lunch and lots of fun things happening. Um but as you're planning ahead, think about that the food need for the people who don't have the transportation up to um you know valley outreach. And I was just thinking today when the school gets redone with this building, we might have to be in discussion with the district. I don't know that our church can can expand. We'll see. But I just want you to know that the that the need is great [clears throat] and we're excited about this. So please come. [18:00] Mayor Michele Hanson: Thank you. Thank you for all that you do, Mary. Thanks for coming. Thank you, Randy. It's nice to see you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. [clears throat] Okay. Anyone else that would like to speak to the council tonight? [18:22] Mayor Michele Hanson: All right. We will move on to the consent agenda. We're going to consider a resolution adopting items 1 through 7. Number one is October 6, 2025 city council workshop minutes. Number two is the October 6 city council regular meeting minutes. And then three is the October 6 joint city council and planning commission meeting minutes. And then the four is October payables and receipts. Five is the October building, plumbing, mechanical, and zoning permits report. [clears throat] six revisions to the city's personnel policy to comply with state law for paid family leave and family medical leave, which is just an asterisk. And number seven, a change order change order number one from KUS Contracting for 2 and 18 point road property mitigation. Do we have a motion? [19:22] Councilmember Katie Hill: I move to adopt the resolution approving the consent agenda as presented. [19:26] Deputy Mayor Ethan Gilmore: I second. [19:27] Mayor Michele Hanson: Thanks, Katie and Ethan. Roll call, please. [19:28] Matt Kline: Council member Bliss. [19:29] Councilmember Carl Bliss: I. [19:30] Matt Kline: Council member Gilmore. [19:31] Deputy Mayor Ethan Gilmore: I. [19:32] Matt Kline: Council member Kipp. [19:33] Councilmember Orin Kipp: I. [19:34] Matt Kline: Council member Hill. [19:35] Councilmember Katie Hill: I. [19:36] Matt Kline: Mayor Hansen. [19:37] Mayor Michele Hanson: I. [clears throat] All right. And now we are going to move on to public hearings. We're going to um have certification of past due solid waste recycling charges and vacant building registration fees to property taxes. Matt's going to present the item. [19:49] Matt Kline: Uh thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, as discussed in the memo, um, every year pursuant to chapter 443 in Minnesota statute, um, the city is allowed to assess any, um, uh, past due invoices, this one in particular, from sanitation, um, to property taxes. So, um, a list was created of the past due balances from Tennis Sanitation. Um, city staff um has called and sent out a letter um to attempt to get these accounts zeroed out. Um, so any past due ones as of December 1st, um, the city is asking authorization to assess these due to property taxes. Um, [clears throat] up until December 1st, you still have the opportunity to pay that in whole uh, or in full. Um after December 1st, there will also be a 10% penalty added um in conjunction with assessment to property taxes. Um staff recommends adopting the motion certifying the past due charges to Washington County as outlined. [20:51] Mayor Michele Hanson: All right. Thanks, Matt. Guess uh we're going to open the public hearing. Anyone that would wish to address the city council come forward right now. No one's here for that either. [21:12] Councilmember Carl Bliss: I move to close the public hearing. [21:14] Mayor Michele Hanson: Thank you, Carl. [21:15] Councilmember Katie Hill: Second. [21:16] Mayor Michele Hanson: And Katie. All in favor? [21:18] All: I. [21:20] Mayor Michele Hanson: All right. [clears throat] So, then we are going to discuss. Got any? We do this all the time. Pretty straightforward. Okay. Motion to certify. [clears throat] [21:40] Deputy Mayor Ethan Gilmore: I'll move to approve this certification and pass due solid waste recycling charges and vacant building [cough] registration fees to property as presented. [21:48] Mayor Michele Hanson: Thanks Ethan. Do we have a second? [21:50] Councilmember Katie Hill: I second. [clears throat] [22:03] Mayor Michele Hanson: Thanks Katie. All in favor? [22:05] All: I. [22:07] Mayor Michele Hanson: Anyone opposed? All right. So, that passes. We're on to There's no unfinished business, so new business. Consider amendments to appendix D, the fee schedule, Bayport City Code of Ordinances. Matt. [22:23] Matt Kline: Uh, thank you, Madame Mayor, members of the council. Um, on a yearly [clears throat] basis or as needed, uh, the city staff brings forward changes to the fee schedule. Um we try and make it only on a yearly basis but if items come up um it's more annual than that. Um the proposed changes were actually reviewed at the workshop session um prior to the meeting. Discussion was had on specific ones such as zoning um engineering review. Um, from my perspective, council had questions answered, but if there's outstanding uh questions specific to ones or they want to um specify any ones that um feel the need to um we're welcome to are open to answering those questions. Um I'm not going to go into any great detail. They're available um within the um packet. So with that um city staff is recommending um the changes that are being proposed. [23:25] Mayor Michele Hanson: I think we do make need to make one clarification. The changes in the packet for the peddler solicitor license and investigation fees changed from packet to what you presented at the workshop. [23:35] Matt Kline: Yeah, madame mayor. Sorry. Um Okay. That'll be updated in a new packet that goes online once it gets finalized. [23:45] Mayor Michele Hanson: Okay. So, if anyone's looking at the current packet, you're going to have to basically what it changed there were three different breakouts proposed for the peddler solicitor license fee and instead we've changed it to just the same fee per person regardless of size of company. So, um it's going to be $50 per person. Um so does anyone um have anything they want to discuss or chat about? I mean, I think we went over it in the workshop. Everything seemed pretty straightforward. So, okay. [24:30] Deputy Mayor Ethan Gilmore: I'll move to approve an amendment to appendix D fee schedule of the city code of ordinances as presented and summary for publication. [24:34] Councilmember Carl Bliss: Second. [24:35] Mayor Michele Hanson: Right. Thanks, Ethan and Carl. Roll call. [24:36] Matt Kline: Council member Bliss. [24:37] Councilmember Carl Bliss: Hi. [24:38] Matt Kline: Council member Gilmore. [24:39] Deputy Mayor Ethan Gilmore: Hi. [24:40] Matt Kline: Council member Kipp. [24:41] Councilmember Orin Kipp: Hi. [24:42] Matt Kline: Council member Hill. [24:43] Councilmember Katie Hill: Hi. [24:44] Matt Kline: Mayor Hansen. [24:45] Mayor Michele Hanson: Hi. Thanks. All right. Now, we're going to consider accepting an employee compensation study that was prepared by David Drown Associates. Come on. [24:56] Mark Goldberg: It's okay. Madame Mayor, council members, thank you so much for having me here. My name is Mark Goldberg. I'm here representing David Drown Associates. I'm going to go through the presentation. I hate hearing myself drone on. So, please, if there's something that's not clear or you want more details, just let me know and we'll go through it. So, [cough] just explain a [clears throat] little bit about our background, what we're trying to do with this, and then what we found. [25:18] Mark Goldberg: So, David's been doing this for a lot of years, over 25 years. Um about eight nine years ago our clients started coming to us and asking for help with HR related issues and that's when my partner Dr. Tessa Melvin started the class and comp group within um within David Drown. I joined it'll actually be five years next week. Before that I was with Arthur J Gallagher helped lead their public sector compensation group before that with the U of M and the Met Council. So, of my nearly 30 years doing this, over half of it is specifically within the public sector. [25:51] Mark Goldberg: So, what are we trying to do? We're trying to give you a class income system that makes sense, one that is internally equitable, meaning when [clears throat] you line things up, that hierarchy makes sense within the city. And when you go to the market, and we'll talk about the market in just a few minutes, you're paying where you want to be relative to the market. Not here to do staffing, not here to reduce anyone's pay. No one will see a reduction in pay as a result of these studies ever, at least from my side, you know, but it's not everyone gets a 2% 3% increase. It's okay, what's the data show? And then where do you want to position this job compared to the market? [cough] [26:38] Mark Goldberg: So, we looked at 20 different public sector institutions and it's not just who's right around you. That's going to be part of it. Can't get away from that. But it's also, hey, who do you lose people to? Where do you recruit people from? Who's similar to you? Maybe it's in terms of services provided or population or, you know, a number of different factors. So Madina, for example, is one of my clients and they choose for their comparisons a lot bigger cities because they've got the Madina ballroom. They've got a lot of places there. So, you know, we don't go off population size for them. We go off a lot of other factors. And here are the places we chose. I think you as a council and mayor, I think you've seen this before, right? [27:31] Mayor Michele Hanson: No, not the final list. I did not. [27:34] Mark Goldberg: Okay. Does this look like a good list? These are a lot of the cities. We typically see some of these. There's some new ones on there, but [27:42] Councilmember Orin Kipp: Yeah, for me, I would say yes. [27:46] Mark Goldberg: Yeah. And it is funny. [27:47] Mayor Michele Hanson: Oh, Matt was in on helping pick them, so he was going to agree, I'm sure. [27:50] Mark Goldberg: Yeah. And a lot of these are our [clears throat] clients, so you know, we had a lot of the data from it. So, what happens is we will ask these cities, if they're not a current client, hey, can you send us a roster? So, we'll get the actual rosters from these cities and go through it with administration here. So, Matt and Sara have seen this data ad nauseam. Um, how many rows of data do we have? I don't even remember. A couple hundred, right guys? [laughter] But we're careful in going through it and we're making sure, hey, are these the right matches? Some cases it's fairly easy. You know, police officer is a police officer, but in other cases, hey, is this accountant the right match? Is these other positions kind of the right match? what have we used for for other jobs for Columbus or for Falcon Heights or for Redwood Falls or for Lake City? You know, what do we match to? What does that look like? So, we're really careful about going through all this. Um, and all the data is current. Um, right now I think it's like 180 cities we have 2025 data from. So, we have the most robust database of anyone in the state. [28:56] Councilmember Katie Hill: You say that you if you go back that you eliminate um data points that are significantly more or less than the others. Is there a standard [29:05] Mark Goldberg: Two standard deviations is [29:08] Councilmember Katie Hill: Okay so you are using some standard criteria for [29:10] Mark Goldberg: I'm usually looking at like okay is this is this within two standard deviations or not? [29:14] Councilmember Katie Hill: Okay. [29:15] Mark Goldberg: Sometimes we still leave it in there even if it's high or low. Um but you know we are looking at that like is something way off [29:21] Councilmember Katie Hill: But you are the one making those decisions. Staff had nothing to do with choosing. [29:25] Mark Goldberg: I I mean I'll review it with my contact but it's like okay you know here's we don't remove it for anything. We'll put it in a spotlight section. So let's say we had 10 matches for an accountant and eight of them are between 45 and 55,000 and one of them's at 25,000 one of them's at 90,000. I'll remove that one that's a 25 and 90 and put in a spotlight section below. So, it's still there, but it's not being included in the overall averages. But Matt could say, you know what, I know that's really high, but it needs to be in there or, you know, or for whatever reason needs being there. That's fine. I mean, you can you'll they saw all the data, so you know, it's completely open, but yeah, I'll make an initial recommendation. Some places don't want me to remove anything. [30:21] Mayor Michele Hanson: Okay, that's fine. But, you know, it's just a question of what the city wants. Do we know if we did remove outliers in any of the cases? We did. Okay, good. I mean, I prefer to remove the outliers and deal with the [30:35] Mark Goldberg: Madame Mayor though. Some places don't. So, 10% plus or [clears throat] minus is considered market and that is not my standard. That's actually Department of Labor standard. And what it says is you could be 9% below or 8% above. In both cases, it would be considered market competitive. Obviously, it's a different message, but it's generally considered market competitive because plus or minus 10% says that's going to encompass, you know, encompass most people over 90% of people who are fully functional in their job, but they're paid at different rates for a lot of the reasons listed here. So could be previous experience, could be, you know, how long you've been in the job, could be a lot of different things, but what we consider market is plus or minus 10%. So with that, what we're proposing for you guys is 3.78. [31:21] Councilmember Katie Hill: Yes. [31:22] Mark Goldberg: So you guys are going to be above market. You're competitive in both the minimum and the maximum. Minimum's going to be a little bit higher. maximum is going to be, you know, about 14% higher, but it's going to put you in a good spot to retain or recruit the people, you know, that you want conceptually. Does that align with what you want for the council? [31:46] Councilmember Katie Hill: Are people understanding what this actually So, you're saying we should higher wages this I guess I don't know. [31:54] Mark Goldberg: Yeah. Can you take a step back and explain what we're actually doing? So, what we're let me kind of keep going through this a little bit because I'm going to kind of just kind of walk you through it. So, what we do is we get the market information that I mentioned and then we evaluate these jobs. We have to evaluate them because in the state of Minnesota, there's Minnesota pay equity legislation. So, you have to use a standard or some kind of job evaluation tool to say, okay, you know, here are the points assigned to this job. Um, as a quick aside, when people fail pay equity, they send them to us. So, you know, we do a lot of this, but it's a way of just saying, "Hey, what's that hierarchy look like?" You guys chose Jet, which is what most [cough] people use. Jet says there's these seven different factors you can use to evaluate the job. [32:45] Mark Goldberg: I'm going to kind of go through them real quickly in a few seconds, and it's it's a really comprehensive tool. Um, it looks at supervision, it looks at hazards, it looks at decision-making qualifications. Um and it was designed specifically for the public sector. So it works well with that. So there are these seven factors. Qualifications is the first one meaning what is the minimum education experience necessary to do the job. Matt might have a PhD and 25 years of experience which is great and lets him do his job effectively. But if he were to leave, which we don't want, would it be a PhD in 25 years is the minimum or a bachelor's in five. [33:15] Mark Goldberg: Decision making says all right, what are the decisions inherent in the role? What kind of decisions does this job really kind of control? Is there supervision? If something happens and breaks, what is the impact on the city and who's responsible? Problem solving is how technical is the job to do? And then similar to decision-making, what's the effect on the city? Relationships [clears throat] is a fancy way of talking about communication. Who are they talking to and what's the nature of those communications? Are they giving directions to the bathroom or are they standing up in front of state agencies? Physical effort, how much you got to lift and how how often you got to lift it. Mental effort, how mentally focused do you need to be in that job? Good example of that is someone who's a dispatcher. You know, qualifications aren't terribly high. Some decision-making aren't even that great, but they need to be mentally focused like all the time or somebody's going to die. Hazards and environment kind of what are you exposed to in the job? Is this an office job? They out in the highway kind of what's what's kind of the deal? But even if they're in the office, do they have to work that front desk counter where they have to deal with the public at times? That can be uncomfortable. There's some extra points with that. [34:25] Mark Goldberg: So what Oh, just be clear with this. We're only looking at the work content. How long someone's been doing the job does not matter. How well they do the job does not matter. We take the people out of this. This is the position itself, not the person. So, council member Hill, what what you're asking is kind of what happens with this? What does this look like? We take that market information, we evaluate these jobs and assign a certain number of points. We use those to put together grades and salary ranges and say, "Okay, you know what? When we look at all this, here's a clustering of four jobs that are between 260 and 270 points. Oh, they probably should be in the same salary range. another job might be at 250 points, maybe put that in a different salary." So, we kind of look at that and say, how do we put these all together and how many grades really kind of make sense? And then we align those salary ranges with the market information. We didn't get market information for every job. We got about 70%. Say, most of them. [35:26] Mayor Michele Hanson: Mhm. [35:27] Mark Goldberg: As a quick aside, 70% 80% that's pretty normal within cities. When I was with Gallagher, if we got 30 40%, we felt good. So, we do a lot higher matches and get more a lot more data here than in my old employer. But we say, hey, where was that salary range compared to the market? And when I was showing you that 3.78 at the minimum or 14% at the maximum, it's where are those positions compared to the market on the total? And I'm going to show you that in just a few seconds. [36:03] Mark Goldberg: But so we put all of this kind of ties together. The spreadsheet that we use is a spider web. I mean everything is literally linked all together. Matt was having fun with it at times. He's kind of a data geek. [36:13] Mayor Michele Hanson: Oh, I know. [laughter] [36:16] Mark Goldberg: That's why I saved the version outside of client access. Not just for him, but it's it's standard practice we do. But so we also say, hey, how wide does it salary range need to be? What is the distance from that first step to the last step? What does that look like? And that range width can vary quite a bit. Most times in Minnesota, it's between 28 and 38%. But I've done it as little as 20%. And this wasn't in Minnesota. This is in Florida 120%. So, you can determine a lot of you can determine a lot of different ways. But again, we use all this together. Everything kind of all falls together. It's not one job per grade. I want to be clear with that, too. So [clears throat] you can have a whole bunch of jobs in one grade. Maybe you have a librarian and a police officer in the same grade. Well, how can that be? Well, when you look at the qualifications, when you look at some of the other factors, okay, yes, police officer has a much higher physical effort, mental effort. Um, but there's a lot of higher qualifications for librarian, they're making decisions, too. So, you know, it that's an example of of something where well, you know, maybe I don't remember if those are in the same grade for you guys or not, but that it's a question of looking at all the factors in total kind of where do things come out. [37:30] Mark Goldberg: So, we did put together 13 grades for you guys. 10 steps in each grade. It's pretty common. 8 to 12 steps is most common in the state of Minnesota. Um, grades are anywhere from 5 to 13% apart. Meaning from grade 1 to grade two, it might be 12%, but from grade seven to grade 8 might be only 5%. Um, you don't want to have any grades less than 5% apart from each other because then there's too much overlap. There's not much. I mean, you're just really kind of right on top of each other. And if you get much more than, let's say, 15%, it's a huge jump from one grade to the next. So, you know, we keep it between generally five and 15%. Within the steps anywhere from 4.25 to 3.5%. We did what's very common within the state is higher increases earlier in the structure and then a little bit lower increases later with the goal that hey if you got a 10-step structure getting someone up to step four or five which is about where market is for most jobs. You know you want to get them there as quickly as possible. Then you get beyond that then you're paying above market so you can slow things down a little bit. Um, people would generally move through steps annually. Your range width is 41 a little over 41 and a half% which is pretty good. That's that's very competitive. It's a little bit higher than most, but pretty solid. [38:52] Councilmember Katie Hill: What does that mean? Range width. [38:55] Mark Goldberg: So that means how far is that from that minimum to the maximum. So anime when you see here starts at 24 and goes up. Step one to step 10. Step one to step 10. And if you're wondering why that 24 in the corner is in yellow, that's the keystone. If I change that from 24 to 23 or 25, everything else changes. [39:21] Mayor Michele Hanson: You said 13 steps, but there's 14. [39:23] Mark Goldberg: Nope. Grades. I mean, didn't you say 13 grades on the other? 13 grades there. There is an extra grade in there, but it's actually 13 grades. We're not using grade 14 right now. [39:34] Mayor Michele Hanson: Gotcha. [39:35] Mark Goldberg: Yep. But 13 grades, 10 steps. So that's how everything kind of gets put together. [39:40] Councilmember Katie Hill: And so to go back to the one the question that Katie asked that said something about [clears throat] 3% to 14 years. Where does that apply to them? [39:51] Mark Goldberg: I didn't actually put that in here. Um so with that it's every single position that we're able to find market data on and again it's about 70 70% of the positions. Um we said hey where are you now? where are you going you know compared to the market and some were most of them or I don't think we had anyone we read did we who was 10% below no everyone was at least market competitive or above market in the proposed propos you're saying the way you've structured this we're very competitive with the market [40:39] Mark Goldberg: But there's [clears throat] always a variance so some are going to be a little bit better than others some are just going to be competitive But on the total it was again 3.7 whatever% on the minimums and 14% of the maximums. So [40:54] Matt Kline: So Mark I want to verify that that 3.7 and that 14 that's the average right? That's not for everybody. So it's not for every single position like Mark indicated certain positions could be at 95% or 5%. [41:04] Councilmember Katie Hill: So if you're looking at column one and you did an average and compared all those numbers to a column one of all the other cities, all those 70. [41:15] Mark Goldberg: That's correct. What we did was here's where you are currently and here's where the average is for police officer, let's say. Here's what the a here's where you are now. Here's what the average is for police officer for the minimums, for the maximums, and here's where the city's coming out. No position was less than 10% below, you know, the average. Somewhere, I want to say like 93 95%. Um, but everyone was competitive and quite a few of them were over 10% above. [41:34] Councilmember Katie Hill: Okay. It's still a little fuzzy and I think like maybe it's fuzzy on purpose, but [laughter] I don't know. [41:40] Matt Kline: Do you want me to pull up the the analysis tab? I have it on the spreadsheet. I mean it isn't that's a question for them. They need like [41:49] Mark Goldberg: I do have the details that I can share with you in ter I didn't put it in the presentation but I have it in on the jump drive. I did bring my the the spreadsheet with all the information I can show you on the analysis tab every position that we found market data for and where they were compared to the market. Is that something you mayor and council members want to see? [42:15] Mayor Michele Hanson: Probably. I don't know if we need to see it at this point. I don't know. How are you guys feeling? I guess I'm just I just kind of want you to be able it be nice to be able to say and maybe we have to go back to that one screen that Katie had the question on because that still is a little confusing to me. So the new minimum of structure compared with the benchmark minimum [42:47] Councilmember Katie Hill: Ours on average are almost 4% higher across all the positions. But you're not. But what you're trying to say is that there are some positions that aren't 4% higher. Some are above that, some are below that. And it doesn't go past 10% below. So we're within a good market competitive range cuz you said is that's where that 10% fluctuation thing you pointed out earlier comes in. [43:10] Mark Goldberg: Yes, ma'am. [43:11] Councilmember Katie Hill: And we're within that 10% for every single for every single one of them currently without any changes. [43:18] Mark Goldberg: No, this is proposal. We've scratched the old one. We don't even talk about that one council members. [43:25] Councilmember Katie Hill: That's what I wanted to know. I want to know how what it is now and what your data is showing differently. [43:30] Mayor Michele Hanson: And I think the problem is can you because I feel like we changed like all the well the grades are still grades, right? [43:35] Mark Goldberg: I can show it to you. [43:36] Mayor Michele Hanson: But it doesn't mean that the jobs that we had in those grades before are still in those grades. No. So, it doesn't really tell you that much other than that you're changing the the the the skeleton that the job's going. [43:56] Mark Goldberg: It'll show you. So, again, if you want me to pull it up, I can, you know, [43:59] Councilmember Katie Hill: Sounds like maybe we do want to see it. [laughter] [44:03] Mayor Michele Hanson: We have a fairly quick meeting tonight here. [44:06] Matt Kline: Yeah we have we have time, I guess, is what they're saying. [44:11] Mark Goldberg: Um, just hit escape tomorrow. Hit escape. Okay. Oh, yeah. I thought you had to go get a jump. Okay. Um, so this council member Hill, this is what you're looking at. So, this is I think what you were asking for. Here are all the positions. So, we found market data for 13 of these positions. Then, where are you currently? Here's what you're paying, your minimums, your maximums, and then what is the benchmark for this? So what this shows so that library clerk for example the 23.24 that is the average of the market data that we're able to find for that for that job again at least four data points for it and then where is the maximum and then what's the actuals for it and then here's what we're proposing that job's going to be grade one what does that look like oops sorry I didn't mean to do that so you guys currently for that again if we want to put put up a um freeze panes on that. Okay. So, for that Oh, great. That didn't do it. Um but for for that library click right now, you're at 4% below and 9% above and it's actually moving to 3% above and 18% above. So, you can see here nobody's in red, only green, but you can see kind of where they are and kind of what the variance is behind a bunch of these. Council member Hill, is that [45:51] Councilmember Katie Hill: Yeah, this is exactly what I was [45:52] Mark Goldberg: Again, got it all. [45:54] Councilmember Katie Hill: I like it. Yeah, thank you. [45:57] Mayor Michele Hanson: So, but isn't there a little nuance to this because the grade may have changed for the job? [46:01] Mark Goldberg: The grade absolutely changed. So, what we wanted was we wanted to align the grade with where the market is. So, something could have been a grade five before and maybe that was whatever the the salary range was. Okay. putting it and that's where this information is, mayor. So that's where your current minimums and maximums are. But I'm saying, okay, you know, what does it look like now? If we're changing it over to this new structure, what's the impact? Does that make sense? [46:31] Mayor Michele Hanson: Mhm. [46:32] Mark Goldberg: Okay. Thank you. This is this was very helpful. [46:36] Councilmember Katie Hill: Yeah, you guys that's all you're good question. [46:42] Deputy Mayor Ethan Gilmore: Oh, I do. Yeah. Um, you made the statement that we're not trying to lower anybody's pay. I find it hard to believe that all of this will never we'll never enact that. Like, oh well, this person's getting paid too much. That's a tough deal for me to swap. Like, if everybody wants this whole all this stuff to say, oh, this is what people should get paid. Well, somebody should get paid less. I'm not advocating for people getting less money, but I can't believe that all this would just be like, "Yep, every single person deserves more all the time 100% of the time." [47:20] Mark Goldberg: Madame Mayor, council members, um, it's not the people. We take the people out of it. So, if you got someone who's being paid above the salary range maximum, and do we have anyone? I don't think we did. Okay, you guys did, but let's say you did. You had someone who's being paid above the salary range maximum. I would never say that person's salary gets lowered. What I'd suggest is you freeze that person. So maybe that person's hourly rate is $40 an hour and the max goes to 30. You freeze that person's hourly rate until the salary range catches up with what their their rate is. Some places will still give someone a COLA or half a COLA or something like that. It's not what I recommend, but I do have clients that do that. But the best way to approach it is, okay, you know what? You're we're not reducing your pay, but you're being paid above where the market is is showing for this job. We're going to wait you to stay where you're at until the market catches up with your pay. [48:13] Deputy Mayor Ethan Gilmore: You said that the state has legislation. [48:15] Mark Goldberg: State Yep. Minnesota has um pay equity legislation. [48:20] Deputy Mayor Ethan Gilmore: So, my question is, why doesn't the state have all of this and have the guidelines and we put it into a database? I have a hard time paying an outside private company when the state if they're going to legislate something then they should be the ones dictating it. I have a hard time like paying as a city wanting to pay a bunch of money to a company when the state if they're going to legislate something they should have the guidelines. It shouldn't be out to a specific [48:53] Mark Goldberg: Well, the state has has a state match system, but the truth is that state match system is not good and the cities that use it usually hate it want to get off of it. Am I lying with that? Well, isn't the state system it's not specific to public positions like like we're a city and that is a different operating structure than corporate numbers which is what the state might be reflecting. So the state should be using if if you have it separated 180 data. 180 in the database. There's thousands of cities, I would imagine. [49:25] Matt Kline: I don't know if there's that many. I think it's in the hundreds in Minnesota. Not thousands, but it's hundreds. [49:40] Deputy Mayor Ethan Gilmore: Not terribly far, I believe. So, I guess I just I don't think if we're going to be held to that by the state, I think the state should have the the database and we should be submitting that. [49:49] Mayor Michele Hanson: Your point is taken, Ethan. But this guy can't help that. [49:52] Deputy Mayor Ethan Gilmore: No, I know. I get it. [laughter] But I don't have to I don't have to agree with it, do I? [49:57] Mayor Michele Hanson: You don't have to, but we have to. We already agreed to spend the money. And you're just making your point again that you wish we didn't have to, which I agree. It would be great if the state had it, but to make it to have it done right, we needed to hire a company [clears throat] to do it. [50:11] Mark Goldberg: Madam Mayor, council member, but even without this, even if there wasn't pay equity legislation, and Minnesota is one of only like two or three states that have it. We were the first. I still do that. I mean, not with my DDA. I have still had clients that are outside of Minnesota from my Gallagher days, but not too many. But there's a lot of places across the country that still do this and have us do this kind of stuff because it still makes sense to have a hierarchy to be able to say, you know what, here's why this job is here and here's why we're paying this. Whether there's pay equity or not, that's a good message to send to people that here's here's the rationale behind why we're placing this job in this in this range and why this range is where it is. Mhm. [51:00] Mayor Michele Hanson: So, okay. Do you have more questions? Anyone else have questions or comments? Pretty good. It was a nice presentation. [51:20] Councilmember Orin Kipp: Yeah, particularly the last section with that that um spreadsheet was helpful to see that. So, we weren't pretty far off being in the right way. [51:40] Mayor Michele Hanson: Yeah. And um a a lot of very complicated data and what you have to go through and then you had to siphon it down to make it make sense to us. I appreciate that. [laughter] Okay. So I guess now we have to um accept the [51:59] Matt Kline: So what do you want us to do? [clears throat] Can Mark can you kind of describe next steps for the process? Right. So if the if the city council accepts or approves that salary structure, what's next steps for like employees and then pay equity and different things like that? [52:21] Mark Goldberg: So madame mayor, council members, what would happen is you would accept the proposal and say, "Yep, this is good to go." Um, I've given Matt some um tools that actually I'm being completely transparent. Kitson County developed an employee um uh information thing which I just think is awesome. So, I give Amy, who's the county administrator there, all the credit. Um, but something to communicate with people like, "Hey, you know, here's where you were. Here's where you're going to. Here's what this looks like." Um, and then employees would have a chance to appeal. Now, what they can appeal is their grade. They can't say, "I want more money." It is, "Oh, you put me into a grade five and I should be in a grade six. I didn't include this information in my job description, position analysis, you know. So, here's some additional information to consider." [53:15] Mayor Michele Hanson: Okay. And everybody in within the city, our city employees know what job description was used as the basis for their position? [53:23] Mark Goldberg: Madame Mayor, um they can be provided that description. Um, I remember I did have something and I don't want to get completely off track, but it's important for me to know how how does this jive with a union negotiated contract that that a particular union member has already negotiated and now we're opening it up again. So that you want to take this one? [53:50] Matt Kline: Not particularly. Um, so from a pay equity standpoint, Mark and I did talk about this, right? So if we're holding them to what's in their union contract, it might take a little explanation with the state to determine where their best fit currently is. Our intent in the future will definitely be to attempt them to get both unions on the same pay scale, right? That makes everything a lot easier because if they're on the same pay scale then any changes that would be made um impact them directly. So currently our intent is not to include them in terms of any changes that are made in the salary structure. [54:55] Councilmember Katie Hill: So police officer isn't one of our great [54:58] Matt Kline: It's in there. They're not going to be counted in terms of when we present the pay equity. Yes. Their adjustment won't occur, right, Madame Mayor? [55:03] Mark Goldberg: What I will do often with this is here's what this looks like. Here's how it's better for you guys. So, you know, if you were to go on to the structure, here's how it would be a positive for you. Police officer being just one example of that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but we did do it at least to include them because you can still always say, "Hey, we're not we're not doing this. We're sticking with where we're at right now." In which case, okay, well then we'll just kind of report it on you as you normally are, but you know, this is a better deal for you. [55:33] Deputy Mayor Ethan Gilmore: And so public works staff there everything's there are grades for them, but we can't really use it because we just have to go with what the union has negotiated at this point and we're hoping next time we negotiate we're going to say go with what we have here because it's better for you according to yeah or I mean that's their right to belong to a union or not I've just in to be transparent I belong to a labor union have for a long time but at the same time when you make these negotiations they happen in good faith that I'm agreeing to this you're agreeing to this I'm happy you're happy and and I want to make sure that it doesn't get tipped to say, well, now that this came out, I clearly I should get X% more. You agreed to a contract for X number of years at X amount of money and I think that should be held to until your contract expires and then let it rip. [56:40] Mayor Michele Hanson: Okay, thanks for that was a good question and thanks for clarifying. Okay. So, our potential action is to accept the salary structure that is proposed with implementing it in January. There's still more. [56:56] Matt Kline: I have one other question. So, um can you talk to the pay equity portion of it Mark? [56:58] Mark Goldberg: So, once you agree to it, then we'll run everything through pay equity. You shouldn't I don't remember. Were you reporting this year? We should be reporting this year. We're not scheduled, but there were enough changes um in last year when we moved the sergeant um that technically we were required to report. [57:15] Matt Kline: Okay. So, I'll run it through pay equity whenever you guys are like, "Yep, we're good to go." Um and there shouldn't be an issue. [57:25] Councilmember Orin Kipp: So, why wouldn't we have already run it through pay equity before we approve it? [57:30] Mark Goldberg: Because sometimes council members just like no this isn't you know we need to go back to Oh because you don't want if we made changes then you'd have to compare it again. It'll take it won't take me very long to to run through pay equity and I'm pretty sure you guys should pass it. Um but sometimes things get get wonky. I haven't experienced this. My partner Tessa has where some demographic changes have caused people who were passing to not pass. Um because pay equity, it's kind of funky how they do it. They don't care about the actual pay. What they look at is the monthly max and they run a regression line off the monthly max and the points assigned to the job and whether it's male-dominated, female-dominated or um balanced. and then look to see which of the jobs are above or below the predict predicted payline depending you know using their multivariable regression analysis. So if you have a lot of if you don't have many female-dominated jobs but there's a couple of them that are below then things can get really wonky. [59:04] Mark Goldberg: Um I don't think you'll have a problem if you do have a problem I will help fix it. I promise you um it it shouldn't be an issue, especially with the Jet system. Like I said, when people fail pay equity, they get sent to us and Jet fixes a lot of it. But I'm working with a city right now who is actually one of your comparables where they are just missing and just below um a number of people. So, we're going to be changing their monthly max. I'm not even joking with you, one to two pennies. And that will change it on the monthly basis to get it should I'm going to actually finish running it tomorrow. It should get them to where they need to go. But it is literally just one to two pennies difference. [59:19] Councilmember Orin Kipp: I mean, what what happens if what what's the penalty or what? [59:35] Mark Goldberg: They could um suspend state funding. They could have have fines. I know for a fact they haven't done anything like that since the early 90s. So, the truth is they're probably not going to do anything, but it's also not not a good look for you as a city. You don't know what We want we want to make sure we're paying equitably. [clears throat] You know, it you you'd like to pass and it's a good I mean, it's a good message to send, but if you're if you're not passing, I will get you to pass. [59:59] Mayor Michele Hanson: All right. Thank you. Anything else? Okay, we don't have anything nicely written up for us now. So, uh [laughter] you're winging it, council member. [1:00:20] Councilmember Orin Kipp: Make a motion for uh to move. So, um just a motion to um approve the salary structure um as presented. [1:00:32] Councilmember Carl Bliss: So moved. [1:00:33] Deputy Mayor Ethan Gilmore: Second. [1:00:47] Mayor Michele Hanson: All right. Thanks, John and Carl. All in favor? [1:00:50] All: I. [1:00:55] Mayor Michele Hanson: All right. Motion passes. Thank you very much Mark. Madame Mayor, council members, thank you so much, Matt. Thank you so much. Yeah. Hopefully, we don't have to see you back here because that means everything lines up. Right. Right. Okay. All right. [laughter] Okay. City Council liaison reports. Let's start down with uh Katie. [1:01:26] Councilmember Katie Hill: Um at their meeting. They went over Derby Day stuff. And then the next event is the Village Green lighting. So, they're working on that. Uh they're thinking about doing it kind of like how last year it got cancelled, but moved to the library. So, starting at the library and then when Santa comes have the lighting and everything outside. Oh, so maybe do a little bit of both. So, look for that on Facebook. I I just looked before I came here and they don't have anything yet. So, and it's the first Wednesday in December. First Wednesday of December. Yep. [1:02:09] Councilmember Orin Kipp: I was unable to attend last month, but I plan on their m their minutes are always really really late. So, I don't even have the minutes to be able to report on that. And I don't even know if we're having a meeting this Thursday yet. So, I plan on next month being able to give a um little recap from the recap of the last two months. [1:02:44] Councilmember Carl Bliss: Yeah, the airport commission meets next on December 1st, which I think is also a meeting date for us, but uh so we may I may call in absent to that one in favor of you all. I don't remember them ever overlapping with our meetings before. That one surprised me. Okay. I think it's the holiday week be the week before that that may have some messed it up. [1:03:00] Mayor Michele Hanson: All right. So, I attended the um fire department open house back on October 11th and it was very nice. Seemed like very well attended. Um nicely done you guys. And then um the regional council mayors had a social instead of their regular meeting which again was really helpful to kind of make those networking connections with some other mayors where you actually have a chance to just chat instead of sitting down to a meeting and having a meeting. So that was really nice. And then on the 20th I did go to the cable commission meeting for Ethan. It was it was so cute how they were like treated me like I was royalty because I hadn't been there for years and I used to be on the cable commission. So, that was really fun to walk in. They're like, "Oh, Michele, look at me." So, that was great. [1:04:10] Mayor Michele Hanson: They um they have the new space, which is great. And um the flood insurance like everything's going great with getting everything back up and running and they're getting reimbursed for everything and replacing everything that got ruined in the flood. A pipe burst. I don't know if you remember this from before, but so um everything seems to be going well there. We did approve disbursements for the past two quarters because there hadn't been meetings and then um approved the 2026 budget after some discussion about how that was panning out. We ended up adding a line item for some marketing that was just overlooked. They planned to do it, but they hadn't budgeted for it. Only about $5,000. [1:04:55] Mayor Michele Hanson: And then um kind of an interesting aspect that you'll hopefully be talking about in the future, Ethan. Um South Washington County, their cable commission adopted the very first local broadband franchise agreement in the state. So right now we have a cable franchise agreement, right, with Comcast, but we don't have anything like an agreement for broadband. And so they did that in South Washington County as another way to get So it's very confusing to understand how cable commissions work, but it a little background. Ours um is called the Central St. Croix Valley Commission and we have that agreement with Comcast and then we get PEG fees. So PEG stands for public education and government. So, if you're a cable subscriber, you're paying a tiny little fee to the cable commission so that they can put on things like our council meeting, right? And other things like football games at the school and church things and all of that. [1:05:40] Mayor Michele Hanson: And so that they're hoping this is another maybe revenue source because of course fewer and fewer people are subscribing to cable. So, kind of an interesting thing that you might be able to be in on. Um, [clears throat] so yeah, and then we just talked a little bit about some other ways to get some additional revenue. When I was on the commission, they had started doing some like ads during the Pony football games, so getting like Joseph's to pay them and so some other revenue stream. So, they're that's why they're hiring like a marketing firm to help them think through how can we market ourselves, how can we get more advertisers and things like that. So, um, that was about it for them. [1:06:30] Mayor Michele Hanson: And then I went to the library board meeting on the 21st. They had Jill's review first. So, we met a little late and it was a pretty quick meeting. Nothing really to add other than what was in her report. She does a, like I said, a pretty good summary in the packet every time. Um, and then I was at the Halloween event at with the police department and the Lions and very well attended as usual. It was a little drizzly. So, I think people liked having the chance to come in to the old fire station and um it was nice that we work with the Department of Corrections, so they have to move their buses out and then let people tour the buses that they move the prisoners around in. So, another kind of cool aspect, we had uh the canine there and lots and lots of families coming in and just kind of plunking themselves down on the floor over by us and hanging out. It was kind of fun. [1:07:15] Mayor Michele Hanson: So, we made uh 12 and a half pounds of popcorn. My husband and I popped it. It was uh very fun. That's a lot of popcorn. I know. It was a lot of popcorn. And uh almost 200 hot dogs were given away. And thanks to the bank, they supplied some little bottles of water for us to give out. And it's great event. Thank you, PD, especially um Officer Ryan Jones. He was the lead on that with us. Um and then just this morning, I went to a paid leave info session to just kind of learn a little bit more about what's happening. And then I came back in a panic. No, not really. I came back and I talked to Matt and Lucas. I'm like, "How are we going to do this?" [laughter] and you're like, "Don't worry about it. We got it all figured out." So, um, because that starts January 1st. [1:08:10] Mayor Michele Hanson: And then I did some chamber events, a coffee talk at Market and Johnson, a mixer at the new, um, Chalice is how you say it. The one that starts with an X, it's in the old um, Thai Basil. Very nice. Very good food, by the way. Ambassador meeting. Um, learned that the Langford Exchange is a new chamber member. um they're giving me credit for that since I talked to them and told them they should join. So that's exciting. And then uh ribbon cutting at it's called the gardener school which is in Lake Elmo which is another preschool which we desperately need a place for kids to go um basically like daycare, right? So yeah, that was my month. [clears throat] Um what's going on with the city, Matt? [1:08:52] Matt Kline: Um well, let's find out. Uh, fire chief Eisinger. [1:09:12] Fire Chief Eisinger: Madame Mayor, council members, uh, for the month of October, our call volume was 87 compared to 101. So, we are, uh, 50 below last year. Our year-to-date is 1,007 compared to 1,067. Monthly drills are ladders, EMR, quarterly review. Fire inspections are ongoing as well as plan reviews. [clears throat] Uh, as mayor mentioned, the fire prevention week we had the open house was very well attended. We moved the date or the time back to 10 o'clock to one o'clock and that seems to work really good. Uh, football standby anniversaries. Adam staff did seven years. Josh Eisinger 24, Jake Eisinger 21, and I had my 40th anniversary with the Minnesota State Fire Chiefs this month or October. Uh upcoming events uh Santa escort November 29th. The day after Thanksgiving. Yeah, I had a typo there. And then Stillwater Area High School Sports Escorts. I did let Administrator Kline know that my last day on the fire department is going to be January 31st, 2026 cuz I bought a lake home and I'll be moving. [1:10:19] Councilmember Orin Kipp: Congratulations. Congrats. You'll need to get a replacement. [laughter] [1:10:25] Matt Kline: We are we're working on it. We got one step done with the pay study. So with that, I stand for any questions. [1:10:32] Councilmember Katie Hill: So Santa on at Village Green, not on here. [1:10:35] Fire Chief Eisinger: That's December, but we're not going to have a meeting before that. No, the Wednesday. Okay. We we [laughter] contracted with Santa. He's booked. [1:10:45] Deputy Mayor Ethan Gilmore: At least I don't think we will. I'm kind of saying is will I always and now my think my kids are beyond the age of running out to see Santa on Black Friday. Is the route published on social media or somewhere? [1:10:59] Fire Chief Eisinger: Um we send it to I thought I included something or didn't I include it in my notes? I think I did. Typically I send it to the cities, the Bayport, Oak Park Heights, and Still Water. And it's kind of a he he meanders around and we stop at the bank at 9:00, uh Ace Hardware at 12, uh Cornerstone Automotive at like 1. So we have some hard stops, but we they do their best to get around. There's always a little bit of a where [1:11:35] Mayor Michele Hanson: Yeah, I know. Yeah, it's we just wait for to hear. [1:11:38] Fire Chief Eisinger: My kids are 20, 23, and 25, and they still run out. [laughter] It's very exciting. It's fun for me. [1:11:49] Mayor Michele Hanson: All right. Thank you. Police Chief Jackson. [1:12:00] Police Chief Jay Jackson: Is that a promotion? Really? How do you feel about wearing hats? I solved the fire chief problem today. [laughter] Mayor and council members. Um I we only have a couple of public events with uh colder weather coming up here. I don't have a whole lot to add that the mayor didn't say about the Halloween event. It was very good. Hope to continue it for many years to come. Special thank you to the Lions Club for helping out. They've made it so much more easy on my staff. It's great. And then also special thank you to Ryan Jones for organizing that. [1:12:36] Police Chief Jay Jackson: We also have a November 18th broad presentation uh working with Community Thread and First State Bank. This will be my third time doing the presentation. We're still not quite locked down on the location yet, but we'll put it out on social media. Um, I'll probably talk with Aaron from the bank this week and get that nailed down for us. [1:12:53] Mayor Michele Hanson: What are they trying to decide between Still Water or Bayport? Community thread. Yeah, I'm not. Tell them it should be in Bayport since the bank and you are both in Bayport. Try to serve all the citizens here. [laughter] I just go where they tell me. [1:13:09] Mayor Michele Hanson: I know. Um, and we did have a really good um, showing the last time as you were there as well. So, yeah, I know. But it would be nice. That one was in Still Water. So, another good reason to have it down here. They need to advertise that that location. That's what I'm getting at. So, I will pass because I had Monday with the mayor and the people that came didn't even know community thread existed in Bayport. So, community thread existed at all. No, they knew about the Still Water one, but yeah. [1:13:30] Police Chief Jay Jackson: And then we will be starting to get the Toys for Tots uh buckets out here hopefully this week if not next week for sure. So if people can come by and um drop off donations, that would be great. There will be one here in city hall. There's another one in Croixdale. The Department of Corrections also does one. We'll put all the stuff out on social media for people to uh hopefully swing by, help donate so we can do a nice hall down to uh Golden Valley later in December. [1:13:58] Councilmember Orin Kipp: On something like that. Um, if somebody just wanted to give cash to toys for tots, is there a link? Can you Venmo them? Any ideas on stuff like that? [1:14:04] Police Chief Jay Jackson: So, what we've done in the past is that we've done a drive here with the police department where we've all, you know, thrown in a few bucks and then we'll just go up and spend it. Uh, one year Britney and I were up at uh uh Walmart doing some purchases and people actually came up to us and said, "Here, here's a gift card. Go buy some more toys for the kids." And so, we've done that. [1:14:24] Councilmember Katie Hill: Have you guys participated in that shop with a cop? I feel like you used to. Is that [1:14:27] Police Chief Jay Jackson: No, there was a program, I forget the name of it, um with the community outreach where it was like a gift card donation where um Officer Leowski went around with um gift cards and you know some gifts and like brought the area families. Holiday. She helps distribute something but not the actual um shop with the Okay, gotcha. Any other questions? Thank you. [1:14:55] Mayor Michele Hanson: Thank you. Thank you. Public works director Hansen. [1:15:05] Joe Hansen: Uh Madame Mayor, council members, uh update for public works. Public works staff has been uh busy with our fall maintenance and cleanup around town. Um all of the park buildings have been uh shut down and winterized for the year as well as all the irrigation systems blown out uh to prevent them from freezing up. Staff continues uh daily sweeping of citywide streets um as well as uh picking up leaves in our parks uh to prepare everything for fall. [1:15:40] Joe Hansen: Um, one of our things that we are uh doing, as Council Member Bliss said earlier, is people are receiving uh letters in the mail um from our utilities department on identifying their water service lines coming into their homes. Um, public works is putting a big push behind this uh because we hope to get into the next phase of this which will be the replacement of those lines that are deemed necessary to replace by the state. Um, that would be any lead lines or galvanized lines that require replacement. Um this is funded through the state and as we get closer um this not only covers the city's portion but the uh homeowners portion as well. So we'll be starting to apply for that grant uh starting next year. [1:16:40] Councilmember Katie Hill: What percent of the locations have you already done your check would you say? [1:16:44] Joe Hansen: So, we are down to roughly about 160 homes that are listed as unknown currently. Um, we do have more and more calling in every day. Um, but we do need to get that done so when we do apply for this that everybody that is entitled to have their lines uh replaced that they can join in to uh participate in that. It's most likely going to be free of cost from um the homeowner's point of view. Um, from what I've witnessed uh going on in the past year. [1:17:10] Mayor Michele Hanson: How many homes do we have? Like close to 400. [1:17:15] Joe Hansen: In terms of what, Mary? Well, he said we have like 160 that are residential buildings that would have a water service. Yeah. So just in Bayport I believe it's 7 to 800. I suppose so of that just you're not counting the Baytown ones that we supply. Not counting Baytown. Baytown it wouldn't even be um considered for this. They all have new developments. Yeah. They wouldn't have lead and um Inspiration wouldn't be counted in there either. Inspiration is not counted either. They have all either copper or but they have all copper. [1:18:00] Councilmember Katie Hill: You said you had there's about 160. Is there a list of that? Would that be something that would be good to put on like the website so people could look and see if they've I don't know. I'm just an idea. [1:18:06] Joe Hansen: Everybody that is on that list has received a personal letter from the city. You had to let them into your house, right? Okay. So, we did do mailings. Um and we are just now waiting for them to reply because we do have to get into the home to verify what their service is. [1:18:22] Councilmember Carl Bliss: I got a letter. Carl, that's you, too. I got a letter, too. [laughter] I didn't call mine's probably with my newsletter. Yeah, [laughter] notice I didn't say anything. [1:18:37] Mayor Michele Hanson: All right. What else we got? Sarah. [1:18:40] Matt Kline: Um, Sarah had to go home sick, so uh, I'm filling in for her. So, [clears throat] um, on Sara's list this month was updates to the personnel policy. Um, that was seen in the consent agenda to, um, uh, comply with state law regarding Minnesota paid leave and then FMLA. Um, also, um, fee schedule updates that's been approved. Um, those changes will get put in the new packet and, um, that'll get sent to, um, I believe it has to get updated in our um uh ordinance. [1:19:24] Matt Kline: So um planning commission there is a planning commission meeting scheduled for November 17th to hear two land use applications. First application is for operation of a retail cannabis business at 243 Third Street North. And then the second application is for variances to allow for the reconstruction of a non-conforming boat house structure at 317 Lake Street. Um the new website will launch this Wednesday. Um so watch for one last email blast tomorrow from the current website um with how to sign up for notifications on the new website. You have to sign up for the new one. Unfortunately, we couldn't transfer people over. It's probably going to take more than one blast to get people to sign up just so we have a schedule. I would say do at least three reach times that you contact everyone, but [1:20:30] Mayor Michele Hanson: Okay, great. That is all for Sara's report. Any questions? Exciting. Yeah, I um are we back up to a full planning commission now in terms of members or we still like who who came? We just had a joint one and wasn't there only four people here? [1:20:45] Matt Kline: I believe yes, we are at a full planning commission, but that will change January 1st, I believe. But we want people to apply because we're losing someone. [1:20:56] Mayor Michele Hanson: Okay. [clears throat] I just another note, if you're looking at the packet that is currently online, it says 143 3rd Street North is where the retail cannabis business is looking to go. And that was just a typo. So Just wanted to clarify that. All right. Any other questions for Sarah. [1:21:20] Matt Kline: All right. Um my report I just have a couple of things. The fire chief position will get posted this week with um a couple of updates to uh minimum qualifications and then an update to what was passed tonight um for a new salary range. Um, our intent is to potentially interview probably early December. Um, and the holidays play a big role there, but um, and depending on the background check, which has um, can vary greatly, right? Our intent would be to get somebody on board in January. That of course is our intent. [1:22:00] Matt Kline: Um, Bay Haven, just an update there. Tree removal and grading um have started at the development. I'm sure if anybody's driven past or looked on Facebook, um they have seen that um some of that tree removal has occurred. Um just for everybody out there, tree removal is definitely regulated, right? They know which trees that they can and can't take. Um it's recorded on a map and they did an excellent job of identifying all of those trees. So, and they will replant trees like they have rules around that as well. Correct. There is a plan for replanting of trees that are scheduled to be removed. If ones are removed that aren't supposed to be, there is a penalty in place. [1:22:45] Mayor Michele Hanson: I mean, it it's in their best interest to have there's some gorgeous oak trees there. They're not going to want to cut. Correct. I mean, that's part of the appeal. I will say the developer and land um kind of the contract land guy actually went around before all this started and looked at specific oak trees to see because they were some of them were right on the edge of trying to be saved and they tried their best to save some of um the the bigger ones. And you know people get that property particularly I drive by it all the time. It's full of buckthorn which is uh undesirable invasive. So yeah that stuff's going to go away. It was never meant to be there in the first place. [1:23:45] Matt Kline: Okay. Then my last item is the cleanup effort at OnPoint Road. So, um there is a court hearing this week that hopefully we will get some direction um from the court regarding that. Um and again, it is our intent to continue mitigation of that property hopefully this year still um as weather holds out. So, with that, I'll stand for questions. [1:24:10] Mayor Michele Hanson: Questions for Matt? All right. Thank you. Thanks, Matt and Sarah. Yeah. Okay. Does anyone else have anything they'd like to announce? [1:24:20] Councilmember Katie Hill: I do. I just want to uh congratulate the uh Stillwater varsity soccer girls. They won the state tournament this year. All right. Halloween. Pretty awesome. Yeah. Friday morning. I was there. It was cool. Yeah. [1:24:35] Mayor Michele Hanson: Oh, yeah. And they got school off. The kids could go watch the game, right? The high school kids. [1:24:40] Councilmember Katie Hill: No, they uh order was off on on Friday. Oh, they were already off. The student section was much bigger on Wednesday. I will tell you that. What was the other day? It was like Wednesday. Wednesday was like the semifinals or whatever and then the finals were on. But yeah, it was a good It was a good game. [1:25:00] Mayor Michele Hanson: Awesome. Yeah. Congrats to them. If we were Stillwater, we'd probably have some proclamation about it cuz they do proclamations all the time about things. Yeah. Probably have some Bay. [laughter] No, I'm just saying the city of Stillwater likes to do proclamations. [1:25:15] Mayor Michele Hanson: Okay, great. Any other announcements? Anyone want to make a motion? [1:25:20] Councilmember Katie Hill: I move to adjourn the meeting. [1:25:22] Councilmember Orin Kipp: Second. [1:25:24] Mayor Michele Hanson: Thank you, Katie and John. All in favor? We are adjourned.