This transcript has been processed to identify speakers based on the roles provided in your context list, as well as names and titles mentioned within the dialogue itself. *Note: The transcript roll call includes several names not present on the provided list (Duncan, Ringgold, Gizme, Lundell, Altoff). I have identified them as Council Members based on their participation in the meeting. "Dan" appears to be acting in a Public Works leadership capacity, and "Kyle" provides the community/Chamber report.* *** **[5:34] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Good evening everyone. I’d like to call the city council meeting for June 21st for the City of Cannon Falls to order. Can we have roll call please? **[5:34] Sara Peer (City Clerk):** Ringgold? **[5:34] Council Member Ringgold:** Here. **[5:34] Sara Peer (City Clerk):** Duncan? **[5:34] Council Member Duncan:** Here. **[5:34] Sara Peer (City Clerk):** Gizme? **[5:34] Council Member Gizme:** Here. **[5:34] Sara Peer (City Clerk):** Kronenberger? **[5:34] Council Member Kronenberger:** Here. **[5:34] Sara Peer (City Clerk):** Lundell? **[5:34] Council Member Lundell:** Here. **[5:34] Sara Peer (City Clerk):** Montgomery? **[5:34] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Here. **[5:34] Sara Peer (City Clerk):** Altoff? **[5:34] Council Member Altoff:** Here. **[5:34] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Will you rise for the Pledge of Allegiance? I 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. **[6:14] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Okay, Agenda. Council, have any additions or corrections to the agenda? **[6:14] Council Member Gizme:** I move to approve the agenda. **[6:14] Council Member Lundell:** A second. **[6:14] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Motion by Gizme and a second by Lundell to approve the agenda. Any other discussion? All in favor, aye. Opposed? Carried. Okay, that leads us to public input. Public input is intended to afford the public an opportunity address concerns to the City Council. The public input will be no longer than 30 minutes in total length and each speaker will have no more than three minutes to speak. Speakers may address topics relevant to the government of the city. **[6:59] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Speakers must sign up in advance and must provide their name, address, and the topic they intend to address. Comments must be on topic, respectful, pertinent to city business and adhere to the applicable data privacy rules. Any speaker that violates these rules will be asked to sit down and if the speaker refuses to comply will be removed from the meeting. Speakers shall not address topics that are the subject of a public hearing; all such comments shall be made at that hearing. The City Council will not generally act on issues raised by the public input but may choose to schedule consideration of the item on a future agenda. Babe? **[8:01] Citizen (Babe):** Good evening Mayor and Council. Um, as you well know, Jon [Radermacher], I called and I talked to you and I've tried several times to contact you to no avail, and I'm kind of disappointed in that. In fact, I'm quite disappointed. At the last council meeting, you claimed that I said the Chief had picked a candidate, even though you didn't name me—it's still not true. I was complaining about the Chief putting together the minutes at the Police Commission when he's not a member, and the Charter clearly states that you should pick a secretary off the Commission and the Chief is not one. **[8:50] Citizen (Babe):** At last week's Police Commission meeting when I attended, all of a sudden the Chief is running the meeting, so it's getting more bizarre yet. The next problem was somebody brought up a candidate and that he was of mixed race, and that threw me back. I mean, I'm a cement man and I'm nowhere near the public generally, but I read and I understand and that is definitely not proper. Worse yet, the Chief didn't say anything about it, and if he's going to be the chairman, he should have said something about it. And then he participated in discussion about that. And Derek, you were there, so you know all about this. And didn’t you think that was improper? Completely. I think it's illegal. **[9:38] Council Member Duncan:** What's that? We missed the beginning of the meeting when we chose a new chairperson, but she asked Jeff to finish running the meeting and she would take over next month. **[9:38] Citizen (Babe):** I'm talking about racism, Billy. You're the guy that brought it up, called it "Racist Falls." I did not agree with that at all, and all of a sudden there it is right at a Police Commission meeting and the Police Chief is participating. **[10:24] Citizen (Babe):** Seemed a little odd to me. And another thing that seems very odd to me is that outside there's a moped that's parked in a no-parking zone. I think that's what those stripes mean. **[10:24] Jeff McCormick (Police Chief):** It's actually a motorcycle. Look at the license. **[10:24] Citizen (Babe):** Okay, well it's parked illegally, I think. What do you think, Chief? Oh, well if you walk out that door and take a look, it's sitting there. It's been sitting there for years on and on. **[10:55] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Okay, we'll close the public input and we'll move to presentations. First presentation we got tonight is the Historical Society. Steve Dablo and Zach is here too. **[10:55] Steve Dablo (Historical Society):** Thank you for the time here. Um, Zach's day job, for lack of a better word, has not allowed him to ever be here for a presentation. So I want to present Zach Warren to everybody who may not know who he is. Now they know who he is, and he's got a presentation tonight. **[11:40] Zach Warren (Historical Society):** Thanks guys. I'm happy to be here. This is our ninth installment to pay back the city for the purchase of 212 West Mill Street and, uh, you know I'm really happy to be here now. As Steve said, this is the first time that my job has allowed me to come. This puts us at $150,000 paid of $186,000. So we're really pleased with that and we hope to contribute another check before the end of the summer. **[11:40] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Keep them coming. Yeah, really. Thank you. Thank you, Zach. Thanks. **[12:26] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Okay, second is our 2021 Audit presentation. **[12:26] Jon Radermacher (City Administrator):** Did I say that out loud? This won't be as much fun. I said thanks for the confidence. Brad's here with us tonight. Uh, he works for Abdo, they’re our audit firm. Um, he's here to present the 2021 audit and I'll let Brad take over. **[12:26] Brad (Auditor, Abdo):** Thank you, honorable Mayor, Council members. I am here—you should have the presentation in your packet as long along with the management communication and the financial statements themselves. So what I'll go through is a presentation that's in there... (Summary of Audit findings, fund balances, and enterprise funds provided by the auditor). **[29:08] Council Member Duncan:** I almost bring this up every year about water and sewer rates, but you mentioned that the water and sewer rates are sufficient to cover costs through the bonds that were expiring now in 2022. But with the rising prices through inflation, an increase is probably favorable? **[29:08] Brad (Auditor, Abdo):** Yeah, I mean your cash did decline depending on what you have purchased or what you have planned for capital in these two funds too. You kind of want to take that into account. **[29:08] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** We froze the rates for the last three years, but we’ll talk budgets here in about a month, but I think we're going to have to raise them a little bit. **[29:08] Brad (Auditor, Abdo):** Yeah, fees are going up across the board for sure. **[29:54] Jon Radermacher (City Administrator):** I'll just make one comment when you talked about the stormwater fund. I know there is a lot of money in it, but our next '23 project, we're going to eat a lot of that. We're working in a part of town that doesn't have storm sewer at all, so you're going to see that fund balance diminish pretty good. **[30:48] Council Member Ringgold:** Got a quick one. The class four cities, you said from 2,500 to 10,000—that seems like a big difference... is there a way to fine-tune that to be more in the three to five ballpark thousands? **[30:48] Brad (Auditor, Abdo):** There is, yeah for sure. We have the data. **[31:41] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Anybody else? Yep. Thanks, Brad. **[31:41] Brad (Auditor, Abdo):** Thank you. **[31:52] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** If we could get a motion to approve the audit, that'd be great. **[31:52] Council Member Ringgold:** I'll move to approve the audit. **[31:52] Council Member Duncan:** Second. **[31:52] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Motion by Ringgold, second by Duncan to approve the audit. Any other discussion? All in favor, aye. Opposed? Carried. Thank you. Okay, let's get into the consent agenda. (Mayor reads Consent Agenda Items A through I). Is there anything the Council would like to bring down? If not, I'd take a motion to approve the consent agenda. **[33:55] Council Member Gizme:** Motion. **[33:55] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Motion by Gizme, a second by Montgomery to approve the consent agenda. Any discussion? All in favor, aye. Opposed? Carried. Okay, Council Business, Item A: The tree and brush pile at the city compost site. Dan, you want to take that? **[34:41] Dan (Public Works):** I'll start this out. At the Finance Committee, there was discussion about our compost pile and our brush pile. Seems like we've got a compost pile kind of in hand, but we do have a glut of wood and branches now. No longer is Dakota Wood Grinding coming to town and grinding for free. District Energy is not accepting wood chips outside of the metro area due to the Emerald Ash Borer. So now we're stuck with a yard full of tree branches and logs. I did reach out to Showquist Brothers, and they would grind our wood for $30,000 and haul the chips out. I also received another quote for roughly $90,000. **[36:58] Council Member Kronenberger:** The controlled burn, that option—did we do that in the past? **[36:58] Dan (Public Works):** Well, when I started here in March of '21, they were just finishing up burning the stumps. We have an opportunity—if you didn't want to pay for any grinding—to do a slow burn. It would take a long time. The pile is huge and it's packed. **[37:44] Council Member Kronenberger:** Dan, would we be able to close off the part where all the wood is so that local residents could still bring grass clippings and twigs and stuff like that down, or would that be too difficult? **[37:44] Dan (Public Works):** I think that would be difficult because coming into the yard from either direction, you're going by a wood pile. I think people would just drop the wood off anyway by the grass clippings. **[38:29] Council Member Lundell:** I know at Finance we discussed the possibility of closing it for now and then maybe have Public Works committee come up with a plan. **[38:29] Council Member Gizme:** That too. Paying $30,000 for somebody to grind it is a waste, especially if we can do some controlled burns over time. **[39:15] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** It’s not an uncommon thing right now outside the metro for yards like ours to start filling up because word has spread that Cannon Falls is the only one that's accepting for free still. I think the quickest thing would be to shut the gates. **[40:00] Council Member Duncan:** Here's what I touched with Dan a little bit on too. If we do shut it down, would it be possible if we would put some type of receptacle outside for the homeowners that still want to dump their grass? **[40:47] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** But people even if we close it are going to dump it outside the gate. We know that'll happen. Dan, we talked a little bit about that—that you guys will have to probably scoop up some stuff every day until we come up with a plan. **[41:32] Dan (Public Works):** I did talk with Shelley [Ryan, Attorney] a little bit about if we ban commercial haulers and just leave the gates open. Dan and I talked about cameras. I talked to a camera person; they make some pretty neat stuff nowadays. Right now we don't have enough teeth in our ordinance if a commercial business comes in and did some illegal dumping. We would have to create an ordinance. **[43:05] Council Member Lundell:** Well, Dan, how many truckloads of stuff you think has come in since Finance met a week ago? **[43:05] Dan (Public Works):** Well, this week's been pretty slow, we were lucky. But the first truck is usually coming down the side road about 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning. **[43:52] Council Member Ringgold:** Well, it's obviously a great benefit to the people in the community. If there's—can we at least restrict it? Why are we penalizing our own people for people driving from Inver Grove and Hastings? **[44:40] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** That's a very good point. Because now you're also going to have your commercial tree services in town that, if you close that, now they can't do business with our local people. **[45:28] Council Member Kronenberger:** How do we differentiate? Tonight I feel we have to close it, unfortunately, for a while until we can get something to come to us. **[45:28] Council Member Duncan:** Can we put up some better signage? Maybe if we just say "local only," maybe people will have good conscience. **[46:16] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Dan, is it possible to put up some barriers so that the driveway that goes in between the two fields gets shut down, and then leave the east gate for grass and dirt? **[47:01] Dan (Public Works):** We can close the gate between fields three and four. But the wood piles are so big right now. **[48:12] Council Member Lundell:** If they threw a stick in on the pile, you know, that's not going to hurt a thing. It's what you got to slow down—these big semi-trucks or these tandem trucks coming in. We gotta slow that train down. **[48:59] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Unfortunately this thing has reared its head again. I remember writing $25,000 checks 15 years ago when they wouldn't take it. It’s hard to help residents and leave gates open when it gets abused. **[50:32] Council Member Duncan:** Can we compromise by shutting the one gate so the people can still go around for the grass clippings? And Dan, maybe coming up with signage. **[52:05] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Here's what I would do. Let's go for two weeks. Let's get a motion to approve a camera system, put up a sign that says "grass clippings only," and then work on Public Works Commission to get some real rules in place. Close the one gate going north. **[52:51] Council Member Lundell:** It's leaving that open, you know, all night long. You're going to get the little guy come in with a small trailer full of brush—that's what it's for. **[53:54] Council Member Altoff:** There’s a lot of people that don't live in the city proper that use it... I think that's almost impossible. **[54:27] Dan (Public Works):** Closing the south gate—that's where the commercial ones are used to coming in right now. **[54:27] Council Member Kronenberger:** But are we really okay with shutting down our local commercial businesses? **[55:13] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** This is just temporary. If they can't dump now anyway because there's no room... what do you think, Derek [Duncan]? **[55:13] Council Member Duncan:** Well, I mean, I guess is it the city's responsibility to have a place for these tree removal services to dump their trees? It's a private business. **[56:12] Dan (Public Works):** If there's no room to put the stuff anyway, then they'd have to have a backup spot. **[56:12] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Let's pause. Do we want the $30,000 to get it chipped, or are we saying we’d rather see a slow burn to save money? **[56:58] Council Member Lundell:** I think that's still open for discussion. **[56:58] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** If it saves our residents $30,000, I would say shut that gate and start the burn as controlled and fast as possible. **[57:45] Jon Radermacher (City Administrator):** The only rules I found were from back in May of 2020. Some rules were set for material available for residents, but it doesn't say what people *can't* put there. **[58:31] Council Member Lundell:** I still say we gotta temporarily at least close the one gate and signage until we can work something out. I’ll make that a motion and also I want to add to that that we look into cameras for down there. **[59:17] Sara Peer (City Clerk):** Say your motion again. **[59:17] Council Member Lundell:** That we close the south gate, put signage up, start a controlled burn, signs saying "no commercial dumping temporarily," "grass clippings only," and look for cameras. **[1:00:04] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Okay, there's a motion by Bill [Lundell], a second by Steve [Ringgold]. Is there any other discussion? **[1:00:04] Council Member Kronenberger:** This is going to sound really odd, but I actually am not opposed to the $30,000. It’s not our fault that Emerald Ash thing happened. I don't like to see it closed. **[1:01:34] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Item B: Resolution 2635 to set a public hearing for proposed annexation of property owned by Josie Hayes. Diane [Johnson], you want to take that? **[1:01:34] Jon Radermacher (City Administrator):** If you remember last year we annexed about 12 acres of the Hayes property... this annexation is connected to that 12 acres. It's approximately 44 acres in size. Planning Commission reviewed it and made a recommendation to proceed ahead to set a public hearing. **[1:05:04] Council Member Diane Johnson:** That’s it. **[1:05:37] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Discussion? Motion to approve Resolution 2635. **[1:05:37] Council Member Gizme:** Motion. **[1:05:37] Council Member Montgomery:** Second. **[1:05:37] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** All in favor, aye. Opposed? Carried. Okay, reports. Kyle? **[1:06:21] Kyle (Community/Chamber Report):** Good evening City Council and community. Cannon Falls was the featured community on Minnesota 97.5... our golf tournament was held last Thursday... I want to do a shout out for Matt Lindell of Lindell Heating and Air Conditioning, he sponsored the lunch. Our next big event is our Open Air Fair on Thursday, July 14th. **[1:10:16] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Thanks, Kyle. (Mayor gives updates on Fair Board, cleaning positions, and recycling). Planning Commission? **[1:11:49] Council Member Ringgold:** Only thing we had was the Aaron Smith annexation that we recommended to move forward with. **[1:12:34] Council Member Kronenberger:** Library Board—nothing of note. Police Commission—I wasn't there. **[1:12:34] Jeff McCormick (Police Chief):** We're just in the process of hopefully hiring a new officer. We picked our finalist. **[1:13:07] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Dan, anything tonight? **[1:13:07] Dan (Public Works):** July 11th tentatively the contractor will be mobilizing to start the water tower work. Progressive Rail and the county have started working on the railroad crossings on 22. The pool's been open two weeks, running good. **[1:14:37] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Sarah, anything? Laura? **[1:15:24] Laura Qualey (Community & Business Development):** The Cannonball property did close. Also, the Veterans Memorial project... they are hoping to have some type of ribbon cutting on their phase one by the end of September. **[1:16:11] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Jeff? **[1:16:11] Jeff McCormick (Police Chief):** Well, Mayor, you pointed out we won't meet before our fair occurs. I just want to remind residents there will be no parking restrictions on the parade route on the 4th. **[1:17:10] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Diane? She said no. I’ll just add: Mndot is going to move in and start paving Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Rancho Loco—they are re-licensed and open for business. Our liquor license ordinance needs some work, so Shelley, Diane, and I are working on that. **[1:18:42] Council Member Kronenberger:** Just to clarify, the Highway 19 project is a *state* project. I can't tell you how many people have complained to me what "you people" are doing with these sidewalks. It is not a city project. **[1:19:46] Council Member Lundell:** Dan is driving around in a brand-new pickup. Is there a timeline on the 3rd Street Bridge approaches? **[1:19:46] Dan (Public Works):** We got a quote for the south approach and we do have a punch list that has to be finished up by the contractor first. **[1:20:33] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** Meetings coming up: Joint Powers Trio Board on June 28th. Otherwise, Cannon Valley Fair July 1-4. I'll take a motion to adjourn. **[1:20:33] Council Member Duncan:** So moved. **[1:20:33] Council Member Gizme:** Second. **[1:20:33] Matt Montgomery (Mayor):** All in favor, aye. Opposed? Carried.