e e e e e e all right good evening uh this is the January 22nd 2025 Cottage Grove City council meeting uh which I am calling to order our first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance so if you please rise 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 all right will the uh clerk please do the role council member Clen here council member Olen here council member thei here council member Garza here mayor Bailey here uh next on our agenda is number four is open Forum uh this is the opportunity for anybody who wants to speak on anything that's not on tonight's agenda uh we did have a sign up sheet out in the entryway but and no one did sign up so just in case somebody came in uh that wants to speak during open forum is there anybody at all all right I will close open form then and we'll move to number five which is adoption of the agenda move the agenda all right so we have a motion by uh council member thei do I have a second second second by council member Clawson we'll do that one um all those in favor signify by saying I I I opposed motion carries uh next this evening is uh kind of an exciting thing we get to do every uh every year and that is the 2024 annual photo contest winners and Phil J our Communications manager is going to walk us through this so he'll go up there and Council if you want to join me down in front uh we'll eventually invite uh the winners up uh to take a picture with us you me to grab some stuff you got all right uh honorable mayor council members everyone here tonight uh my name is Phil jent the city of cottage Groves Communications manager uh very happy and honored and excited to be here tonight to talk about the uh 2024 Cottage Grove annual photo contest uh I was saying to some of the folks I got to meet uh just a second ago that's one of those things that while communicating for the city is always fun and exciting this is one of those things where our our folks get to have a little extra fun uh seeing all the the great photos that our residents send in and including the ones that we're going to see here tonight um so as we all know Cottage Grove is a beautiful place to live and many of our residents are talented and creative uh such as the ones here tonight and send in photos uh which is why we do the annual photo contest every year to capture some of that talent and creativity and the beauty that's that's in our community uh The captur Cottage Grove contest uh has been an annual tradition I believe going for about uh 10 years or so uh and we wrapped up 2024 with our photo contest started on November 18th and ran to December 9th um all photos uh were considered for judging um and were required to be from within the city of Cottage Grove itself uh and um taken in the year 2024 so all in all we had a few categories of of photos that we went through they were life in Cottage Grove business in Cottage Grove Cottage Grove Parks or landmarks and faces of Cottage Grove and I'll move through our excellent winners uh here so first off we have life in Cottage Grove submitted by Angie Schaefer with the photo titled morning run um this photo kind of explains itself obviously it's a morning Sunrise I don't know exactly where that location is but I'm a little envious of the view there uh and this was one of our excellent uh winners in the category of life in Cottage Grove moving on is this adorable uh winner here which is business in Cottage Grove uh while that may not look exactly like a business that is the Easter egg hunt at The Cottage Grove Ice Arena have the model in the room it's the model right here in the room with us we're very honored to have have a Grayson joining us uh this photo was taken by Sabrina Thuringer called the Easter egg hunt uh and again a photo that kind of needs no explanation right just very very adorable and then moving along uh for Cottage Grove Parks and landmarks uh this is submitted by Joseph pavl entitled Smoke on the Water uh this was taking that Ravine Parkway uh Park sorry not not Parkway but the park uh right next door here uh and as Joe said when I met him just a second ago that uh kind of a rare occurrence to see the fog happening over the the pond there but you you there at the the right time and right place and got a good photo so thanks for that and then last and certainly not least uh the faces of Cottage Grove Winter submitted by Ashley Thompson uh this must be Grizz because the photo is called Grizz uh and that's you know needs no explanation right just a very adorable photo of of the doggo there uh and that's really all I've got other than in total we had a really good number of submissions roughly about 50 or so uh it's always really fun coming through those photos uh and you know hard to pick a favorite but staff uh uh vote very very diligently moving re reviewing through those photos uh and we're very happy and honored to have you all here and and to have submitted those photos so that's that's all I've gotten mayor I'll throw it back to you fantastic before we have you come up and present you with a certificate and um some money obviously which is always kind of nice to have I just want to thank you obviously for um uh participating in this program uh we get to use these pictures as you know I think I saw you might have been already getting them to sign off on it right we get to use these pictures in a lot of our marketing materials to show a little bit more about Cottage grov so when people are you look at our Publications our visitors bureau all the different things that we have we always like to incorporate some of the pictures uh that our citizens are are making or creating over the years uh on some of our city Publications so you will see some of these pictures out there uh which is part of the reason why staff has asked uh for permission to be able to utilize those pictures so why don't all of you come on up uh and uh we will present you with the plaques and some money I got to see who we got here I've got sa Sabrina is over here Joe is here over here you go ahead I should the council members grab one ready one two three okay you good everybody good awesome all right now I'm going to come and some hand yeah congratulations and I'll extra credit foring congratulations yeah great job y good I hope you'll do it again next year yeah for sure y all right you guys thanks so much and I'll look forward to him at the next Easter egg hunt yeah put him on the front page R all right thank you Phil for uh uh uh facilitating that and getting are going there so that's awesome all right Council next on our agenda this evening is consent uh is there any think Council would like to PLL on consent and I believe council member thei said Q yep you want to do Q is there any other items at this point all right seeing none then we'll just uh uh PLL or have a conversation on Q which is known before security awareness add-on and Council M you have a comment or question just kind of some information more so because as I was going through it I was wondering well we're you know was it was a new cost of of uh 11 a little over $11,000 a year but I I did talk to Brian and and we're making some changes it it said in the description that we're replacing something and so we're actually replacing another product that we had which was actually costing us close to $93,000 a year so it's a a a good uh good savings and so forth and so our it department is doing a great job of of looking at ways to to save money for for all of our residents and keep things more secure so uh just wanted to kind of let everybody know that just in case you were wondering as I was when kind of looking through that so awesome thank you so other than that no other comments or questions on consent so I'll look for a motion and a second move consent all right we have a motion by council member Olen do I have a second second second by council member Garza uh all those in favor signify by saying I I I opposed motion carries so if you are here for anything on tonight's consent calendar all of those items have been approved we'll now move to eight which is approved dispersment or 8A is to pay the bills I move to pay the bills all right we have a a motion by council member Garza second by council member theti any further discussion seeing none all those in favor signify by saying I I I opposed uh motion carries nine public hearings are none this evening 10 as bid awards are none this evening we have nothing this evening on our regular agenda we are now down to council comments and request and I will once again start down on my left here we're giving you a break give you some time so I I'll start with counil mbara thank you mayor um good evening everyone um I really don't have much to say today um there looks like we have a few events happening coming up pretty quick um Strawberry Fest they're having their purse Bingle we have our tickets I'm excited for that um and that's February 20 22nd at a 11 up at River Oaks other than that you guys have a beautiful rest of the month it's com T an in pretty quick it is all right uh CER miti well she just took what I was G to talk about Mr strawberry F it's okay it is a cute but by the way um just say that uh you know hopefully everybody's been uh been safe during our cold weather I got to I got to go get a new battery for the van that that kind of pooped out here in the cold weather but uh so uh hopefully it uh and and and it's just kind of shocking I you know I talked to my brother down in Kansas City he shows me pictures he they've got like had gotten the snow of like over a foot of snow you know in the backyard and so forth and I told him I was jealous geez we we hardly have anything so I you know it's kind of a been a weird winter and then then all the snow down south and so forth that uh feel sorry for those people because they don't have the means to to really clean it off effectively and so forth but uh other than that uh be safe when it's cold out sounds good uh council member Olsson my in-laws live in Gulf Shores Alabama and they are from Minnesota so they know how to deal with snow and they sent me pictures today and there's 6 Ines of snow on the beach in Gulf Shores Alabama and I don't feel sorry for him a bit so there you go how's that um I just wanted to make sure that the public out there was aware that uh this coming Saturday the 25th of January is hockey day in Minnesota and of course uh every year when there's uh hockey day Minnesota there's all kinds of events across the state uh this event that I want to mention happens to be uh hockey fights cancer which is uh Minnesota hockey day's kind of theme this year and uh we will be having events at the Cottage Grove Ice Arena on Saturday all day um there'll be lots of different things going on but if you want to catch a really good game or two the Girls JV will be playing at 1115 and the boys JV will be playing at 1:5 and then we will have the girls varsity playing at 1:15 and the boys varsity playing at 3:15 so uh if you're looking for a way to celebrate hockey day Minnesota uh watch a good game and maybe contribute to the theme of um hockey fighting cancer um I'm sure you would be very welcome to attend any one of those games at The Cottage Grove Ice Arena this coming Saturday January 25th did I miss anything Zach is that is that kind of the whole theme right there uh you can also donate online if you're unable to attend the event I know um you know there a lot of people out of town for um what they thought would be nice weather down in Florida and things like that so uh if you're unable to come you can also make a donation online and if you go to the Park High girls or boys hockey website the donation link is on there I'd read it to you but it's really long so um just go and look for it on the website and you can make a donation and I'll turn it back to you mayor right thank you Council mson uh Council M class thank you um being in the public eye we generally hear a lot of comments uh from the public when things go well or don't go so well or they seek us out with their opinion um it was very uh nice to hear today I was uh having a cup of coffee and a Gentleman um approached our group and wanted to say thank you to the fire department there was a fire in town last weekend that required a mutual response from our uh Partners in Hastings Woodburry St Paul Park Newport if I miss somebody I forgot but I don't have permission to speak on behalf of that person but he wanted to be he very uh he thanked our department uh for all the help and um I just want to make sure that that flows down to our staff to know that that we get a lot of good comments and I want to make sure that they know about it thank you that's fantastic no that is very good to good to see and it it happens a lot believe it or not we we hear that from the public all the time and it's really gratifying yep there you go uh I don't actually have really anything for myself this evening since everything's kind of been covered up here um so I'm going to go ahead and Skip myself um and just let the public know that uh we do have uh three workshops that we're going to be uh as a council we're going to be working with staff here this evening after the meeting here uh the first item is um the Future Park projects that were part of the the Lost uh uh referendums that just recently happened back in November and just giving direction to our staff on on where we want to go with it where you know putting it in uh cips and so on uh the second item is new development Boulevard tree requirements uh we're looking at a couple things that as we all know some of our lots are getting smaller uh part of that's part of what it is these days and different ways of making sure that if we do plant trees they actually are going to be able to survive uh and then thirdly is modifications to issuing a temporary certificate of occupancy which is our building department uh there's some things that they want to walk through with us uh for the future to make sure that uh housing uh that comes to Cottage Grove are able to get their significant occupancy at a at a a stable and quicker Pace maybe I guess maybe the best way to put it uh and then we do not have a workshop closed to the public this evening so we won't be adjourning in here we will be adjourning in the training room otherwise everybody have a great hockey day as we talk about it this weekend and and try to stay warm take care