This transcript has been formatted with speaker names based on the context of the Grant City Council meeting. [00:00:00] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. Pledge of allegiance. Next. [00:00:05] **All:** 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. [00:00:15] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. Next on the agenda is approval of the regular agenda. Get a motion to approve the regular agenda. [00:00:20] **Council Member John Rog:** I'll move. [00:00:21] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** Second. [00:00:22] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** I. [00:00:23] **Council Member John Rog:** I. [00:00:23] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** I. [00:00:24] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** I. [00:00:24] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** I. [00:00:25] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Approval of consent agenda. [00:00:26] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** A motion to approve. [00:00:27] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** A second. [00:00:28] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** I. [00:00:29] **Council Members:** I. [00:00:30] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Staff agenda items. City engineer Brad Reifsteck is here. He's got um a couple items related to the project um 26th Street in Great Oaks. Brad, would you um like to talk to us—talk us through the resolution certifying special assessments for Great Oak Trail North and 66th Street? [00:00:50] **Council Member John Rog:** Oh, we can't hear you. [00:00:52] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Brad, we can't hear you. Okay. Can you—is it you, Kenny, or me? [00:00:55] **Kristina Handt (City Administrator):** It might be on our end. [00:00:57] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** I don't know if you could hear us, Brad. Hang tight. It might be on our end. [00:01:00] **Brad Reifsteck (City Engineer):** Feel like that's—I can hear you from— [00:01:02] **Kristina Handt:** How about now? Can you hear me? [00:01:04] **Brad Reifsteck:** Yes, you can hear me. [00:01:06] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yep, we can hear you now. Thanks, Brad. [00:01:08] **Brad Reifsteck:** Okay. Sorry. Uh, good evening, Mayor, members of the council. Tonight we are at the uh final step in the assessment process for the 2026 street improvement project which includes improvements to Great Oak Trail North and 66th Street North. Um this project was initiated by petition from adjacent property owners and has proceeded in accordance with Minnesota State Statute Chapter 429 and the city's assessment policy. To briefly recap the process, the feasibility report was adopted in October 2025. Uh the public improvement hearing was held in November. Plans and specifications were approved in January. Bids—our bids were received in late February and at your March meeting, council declared project cost and scheduled tonight's assessment hearing. So the proposed improvements include reclaiming the existing roadway base using the current pavement and aggregate materials, placing a new bituminous surface, replacing catch basins uh castings and performing minor grading on Great Oak Trail North um essentially to provide positive drainage away from the roadway. Uh again, this approach maximizes the use of the existing materials while providing a structurally sound and durable roadway. The total project cost is $279,434 with the city contributing $37,573 resulting in an assessable amount of approximately $241,831. So that breaks down per street as follows. Uh 66th Street North, the assessable amount is $110,603. There are 10 buildable units. Therefore, the assessable amount per buildable unit is $11,060.30. For Great Oak Trail North, the assessable amount is $131,228. There are seven buildable units uh in that area which amounts to $18,746.85 per buildable unit. Um before opening the hearing um we did receive some questions from a resident that I'd like to address. Um I I uh took seven or six questions out of the uh the the uh email that we received from the resident. First question: why is the proposed pavement section thinner than what might be used in a typical urban street or parking lot? Um, again, so the proposed design is using a full depth reclamation approach, blending the existing bituminous pavement and aggregate base to create a new stabilized base followed by the placement of a new 3-in bituminous mat and a single lift. Um while this might differ from a traditional multi-lift urban section, it is well suited for the low volume rural residential streets that we have in Grant. Uh it is also more cost effective because it reuses the existing materials and reduces the need for additional aggregate and multiple paving lifts. Um the city has had very good success with this design in past projects and it is expected to provide a long service life when properly uh constructed and maintained. Question number two: why is the city only contributing a portion of the project cost? Uh the city's contribution of $37,573 reflects participation in the improvement and is consistent with past practice. Uh the city does not assess 100% of the project cost to adjacent properties, but it also does not fully fund local street improvements with general funds. Question number three: why are soft costs included and why do they seem high? Uh so the soft costs total $51,000 or about 18% of the total project costs. Uh these include engineering, surveying, geotechnical evaluations, construction administration, construction inspection, construction staking, material testing, and legal and assessment services. Uh these are all necessary to properly design, bid, and deliver the project um per the Minnesota state statutes uh for a typical project of this type and size. Question number four: how were bids obtained and can they be reviewed? So bids were publicly solicited and received through a competitive bid process uh which again is highly regulated under Minnesota state statute 429. Uh the city did review all the bids and will award the contract to the lowest responsive uh bidder. A summary of the bid results uh were included in the council packet and is public information. Um but a detailed bid tabulation um may be available through the city for review upon request once the uh contract is awarded by council. Question number five: why are culverts not being replaced throughout the project? Uh so the mainline culvert within the project area was evaluated as part of the design process and was found to be in satisfactory condition. Uh therefore no replacement is proposed um for this project. Again, catch basin castings will be replaced on Great Oak North uh along with some uh concrete curb and gutter to again facilitate the drainage along the roadway. Question number six: what are the financial options for property owners? Uh we touched on this a little bit last time, but this project is funded through again special assessments, not the general tax levy. Uh property owners may pay in full by October 31st, 2026 with no interest or uh again finance over 15 years at a 5.5% interest rate. So again, the purpose of tonight's hearing is to receive input on the proposed assessments. The proposed assessment role has been on file and available for public inspection at the city clerk's office. Property owners may present written or oral objections at tonight's hearing. Uh to preserve the right to appeal an assessment to district court, a written objection must be submitted to the city clerk prior to the hearing or presented at the hearing. Following adoption, property owners have the right to appeal in accordance with Minnesota state statute. In addition, state law allows the council to defer assessment payments for qualifying homestead properties such as those owned by individuals aged 65 or older or those who are permanently and totally disabled if payment would create a hardship. So eligibility or eligible property owners may apply for deferment through the city clerk within 30 days after the assessment hearing is confirmed. Uh with all that said, Mayor, I would uh gladly turn it over to you to formally open the public hearing. [00:07:30] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yeah. Before we open the public hearing, does um council members have any questions before we open public hearing at this time? Okay. So, before I call for a motion to start the public hearing, just a quick reminder that the purpose of this public hearing so the members of the public can express their thoughts and concerns and the council does not answer questions, deliberate or discuss matters during the public hearing, but we'll be taking notes. Um staff will be taking notes. I will be taking notes so we can address those after we close the public hearing. Um, that being said, I'll entertain a motion to open the public hearing. [00:08:10] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** Move to open the public hearing. [00:08:12] **Council Member John Rog:** I second. [00:08:13] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Public hearing is open. Anyone that would like to speak, please remember to uh sign in with your name and address so the clerk can properly record. [00:08:20] **Scott Sinclair (Resident):** Sign my name here. Yeah. Uh, Mayor and council members, I am Scott Sinclair, 11765 Great Oak Trail North. Um, on page 52 of your handout, I'm number one, my wife and I. Just a couple comments. Um, and the comments are because we're paying for the road to be fixed. Okay. Um, and we all need to be fiscally responsible, even though there's a lot of things going on in the state of Minnesota that aren't. The current road was not paid for by the city of Grant. Um, actually, it was put in 28 years ago, so I'm guessing that was the township at that time. I don't know for a fact, but it was not paid for by them. It is a cul-de-sac. Um, so it is not a through street. Taxes have been paid on those lots for all the years that that's been in. Um our current taxes on our own personal lots $1,406 this year to the city of Grant. Um the soft costs that are involved—and I heard what Brad said—um for this type of project is ridiculous. 20% um of the cost. And I just think there's some issues that people need to start managing some of that. Um we're paying the bill. The residents are—seven of us. Um, and we're paying $131,000 to have this road re-fixed. Um, you're giving us 15 years to pay that. Um, but we notice that in the document it was um suggested it be 4.5% but the board raised it to 5.5%. So, just to give you some example of what that means is my $1,406 taxes would go to $1,406 plus another $1,250 plus another $1,000 for interest. Um, we actually have a bid that came in February 26, but it didn't go through all the stuff. Brad had seen it. Uh which would save the residents—each resident—$3,800. Um that's about $26,000. So I ask you to think about putting yourself in my shoes and me in yours. How would you like to have somebody say, "No, we got a bid, but we're not going to look at it." Well, because of timing and it's $3,800 each—$26,000. Um, so I ask that you think about this suggestion: Postpone for 30 days, get our bid included or let us do the road again because we put it in the first time and we have talked to every one of the seven residents on the street. I think Bob might even be online. I'm not sure. [00:11:00] **Kristina Handt:** He's on. [00:11:02] **Scott Sinclair:** So I'll—I'll stop. That's about my time. If any questions or if Bob's got other comments? [00:11:06] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay, who would like to go next? [00:11:08] **Kristina Handt:** Yeah, Mayor, we should just say again for folks that are online, if they'd like to speak during the public hearing, if you could raise your hand, then I'll give you the permission to speak on the Zoom. [00:11:15] **Matt Stonehouse (Resident):** Mayor, city council, my name is Matt Stonehouse. I live at 11052 66th Street. I just wanted to thank Brad for the work that he's done to uh to help usher everybody that was on the calls that we've been on and understanding the work that was going to be done and the uh the process that we went through. I think it was informative and helped us understand the process as we move forward um on 66th Street. This is something I've been looking forward to having done for a couple of years. The road's at a a point now where—I'm a civil engineer, so I understand foundationally how this stuff works—the freeze-thaw cycles that this road's going to go through. Degradation of it's just going to be exponential over the next couple years. And I think failing to to repair the road and get it to a place where um it's going to be sustainable over a longer period of time is is essential at this point. The only thing that I would encourage—and I appreciate all the thoughts that you had tonight, sir—um was making sure that this is properly crowned this time. I don't think that the original construction really lent itself to um getting the water off of the road and that's what really led to a lot of the degradation—if you get on the road, you'll see it on the sides of the road. So, just proper construction. I know Brad's all over that. So, um that's all I wanted to say and thank you and fully support the process. [00:12:45] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Um did you also sign in on the— [00:12:48] **Matt Stonehouse:** —Right now. [00:12:50] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Uh, he's doing that. Is there anyone else that would like to speak either online or in person? I think you have some— [00:12:55] **Kristina Handt:** Bob's not raising his hand, but I'm going to give him just in case we're having technical problems because— [00:13:00] **Scott Sinclair:** You have his testimony. You can read, right? [00:13:02] **Kristina Handt:** I have his testimony I can read. Just give him this. [00:13:05] **Scott Sinclair:** Bob might be shy. I mean— [00:13:07] **Kristina Handt:** Okay. Yep. I'm gonna let—let him speak if he wants to. Um, otherwise I do have three um comments, Mayor and council, that were emailed in and we can take the time to do those. Um— [00:13:20] **Bob Michaels (Resident/Online):** Do you hear me? [00:13:22] **Kristina Handt:** Is it Bob? Bob, did you want to speak? [00:13:25] **Bob Michaels:** Um, can you hear me clearly? [00:13:27] **Kristina Handt:** Yeah, we can hear you. Can you hear us? You might not be able to hear us. [00:13:30] **Bob Michaels:** Yes. I'd just like to comment that uh when we had this bidded by another company, we had a smaller amount of asphalt being placed on our road. And uh versus uh 66. Our bid actually came in less with the previous contractor—or with the contractor I had bid it—and I'm concerned that we're being charged a little extra on our side of the road uh as the asphalt fault uh is is really this the uh total uh increases the total cost of this kind of job and I'm concerned with bundling this process and we might be paying extra in our project. [00:14:15] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Anything else, Bob? [00:14:17] **Bob Michaels:** No, that's it. [00:14:18] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. Thank you. [00:14:20] **Anonymous Resident:** Question, please. [00:14:22] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yes, just sign in and— [00:14:24] **Anonymous Resident:** Oh, okay. My only question is why wouldn't the other bidder—why wasn't he allowed to bid and is there an option that that person that bid could be considered at this point in time? I'm not understanding why it wasn't considered originally because it comes in substantially lower. [00:14:40] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Anyone else? [00:14:42] **Kristina Handt:** Mayor, I have two other ones to read. Um, there's two other folks online. Again, if you want to speak uh raise your hand and I'll take a look uh if your hand is raised when I'm done. We received an email from **Jeff and Sue Lond** at 11076 66th Street: *"Honorable Mayor and City Council, thank you for moving forward with the very needed street improvements. We are longtime property owners on the street and fully support the long overdue street project. With an approximate cost of $2 a day, we cannot think of a better use of our tax dollars. The original street installed in 1999 is now 27 years old and regardless of maintenance is in need of a fully reconstructed surface. This is not only fiscally prudent as costs are surely to increase each year this is not addressed but also an important aspect of our property value often overlooked. The cost of this project can be assumed by a future buyer at any time during the 15-year amortization. We are potentially paying for just the time we are owners. The project has moved throughout the process established and we respectfully ask that the council move forward."* We also um got one from **Bob and Mary Michaels** at 11055 66th Street: *"Honorable City of Grant Mayor and City Council members, thank you and the City of Grant for getting our road replaced. As you know, the paving we have now has not been cared for in the past. Thus, it is full of spider cracks and potholes. Water does not drain off of the road. The road does not have a proper crown to lead water off of the road into the ditches during freeze-thaw cycles. I expect the road to come apart very soon. I've seen chunks of pavement dislodged by the snowplow truck in the past in my yard. Soon the road will be full of potholes with chunks of pavement lying about the street. This road improvement is very much needed now. The bids you received are with pricing prior to the surge in oil prices. Higher oil prices mean higher asphalt costs. The cost of transporting asphalt to the site would be much higher now than at the time the bids were placed. Fuel cost to grind up the old paving and level it for pavement would be much higher if bid out now. The city pays the full cost of filling potholes, patching, and spreading asphalt. These costs will rise sharply in the future due the continued and accelerating deterioration of the pavement. Also, the new asphalt roads in Grant need to be maintained properly with timely sweeping, seal coating, and inspection. Fully plowing pavement edge to edge gets snow and ice off to prevent freeze-thaw cycles from destroying pavement. These costs to maintain will be recovered if done in a timely fashion by eliminating road repairs rebuilding done due to neglect. Again, thank you for your very timely and much-needed road replacement."* And I do not see any other hands raised. Mayor. [00:17:45] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** No one else. And we'll entertain a motion to end the public hearing. [00:17:50] **Council Member John Rog:** So moved. [00:17:52] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** Second. [00:17:54] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** I. [00:17:55] **Council Members:** I. [00:17:56] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** So Brad, you heard some of the the comments and questions. The one that kind of stuck out to me as a as a theme there was the concern about a bidder that um potentially missed a bid or wasn't allowed to bid and asking if there was an option for that bidder to submit a bid. What's your understanding with that? Brad, could you explain what you know about that? [00:18:20] **Brad Reifsteck:** Yeah. So, Mayor, members of the council. Um again, I think I mentioned this earlier that the bid process is highly regulated by uh Minnesota State Statute 429. Um we do have to go through a public bid process where we advertise uh our plans and specs um in the local newspaper and uh we advertise in the Financial Times. We um had the um bid up on QuestCDN, which is a a software platform that most contractors um who do this type of work would know where to go to to look for work. Um so that was all part of the process. The one bid uh or the bidder that uh Bob and Scott are referring to as Metro Paving, they did not submit a bid uh going through that uh process. So, unfortunately, we're not able to um use that bid as a a responsive bidder. Um they would have to provide um performance bonds, um the two-year maintenance bond that we typically ask for. There's some other paperwork that uh this contractor would have to follow and I'm assuming uh that would only add to the cost that uh above and beyond the bid that they provided. So um I'm not sure what the bid—I—I didn't look at the bid um that Bob had sent me. Um but I want to say it was in the ballpark of $105,000 or $110,000 just for I'm assuming the pavement. It didn't include the the casting replacements on the catch basins. It didn't probably include any of the curb and gutter that we're proposing down at the low point to protect those new castings. Um like I'd mentioned earlier, there's some minor grading—I think it's up on Scott's property um at the very beginning of the project as you come off the county road to to try to uh knock down there's a little uh boulevard area that's trapping the water onto the road. Uh we'd like to to regrade some of that area so that we can try to get the water to drain properly off the road. So I know some of those costs probably weren't included in that Metro Paving um bid. So, um I think I think that covers it, Mayor, unless unless there's some other questions. [00:20:45] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. So, wasn't that they weren't allowed to bid is that they just didn't um submit the bid through the proper process. And if we were to make an exception to that process, then we would in fact be invalidating the process ourselves and running afoul of legal. [00:21:02] **Brad Reifsteck:** That's correct. [00:21:04] **Council Member John Rog:** Uh Brad, when in this project, um how many bidders bid on this when you picked the final bidder? [00:21:10] **Brad Reifsteck:** Yeah. So, uh if we do award the contract, I think that I included that information in the packet. There were six bidders. Um I want to say the bids ranged from $230-ish to $280,000. I think the engineer's estimate for construction costs is right around $260. Um, so, you know, six bids is a a good healthy uh bid environment. So, I was really happy and pleased that um we got that many uh people looking at this project. [00:21:45] **Council Member John Rog:** I agree. Um, anything else from you, John? I mean, just looking at this bid proposal, and I can appreciate the— [00:21:55] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yeah, they had them both together, don't you? [00:21:58] **Council Member John Rog:** Yeah, because one's for one road, one's for the other. One's for 66 and one's for Great Oaks Trail. And I just my concern is just looking at it, it does note that like erosion control isn't included. Um, and I suspect that'll be important and is part of the current bid that we do have. Is that correct? [00:22:15] **Brad Reifsteck:** Council member and Mayor, yes, that is correct. There is restoration included um with our bids. Uh there's always some um you know construction limits that go beyond the edge of the pavement that uh we plan to restore with seed and blanket. So restoration and and erosion control uh blankets and uh some um bios to to prevent erosion uh during the reclaiming and um you know the dusty construction activities from washing away um from the project is as part of the bid. [00:22:50] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** Greg, um, just to follow up a little bit on what Brad said, you know, putting these two projects together gets it a reasonable size project. There we got the six bids. Blacktop prices this year are lower than we've seen in the last few years in spite of what's going on right now. So, and rebidding the project, you're almost guaranteed to get a higher number. So, I think we have—we've got good bids. We got a good number. Pretty much overwhelming support on both sides. I don't know why we wouldn't move forward. [00:23:25] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay, it looks like the council is uh done discussing. We can entertain a motion for the consideration of certifying a special assessment for this project. [00:23:35] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** I'll make a motion for resolution 2026-11. [00:23:38] **Council Member John Rog:** I'll second it. [00:23:40] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** I. [00:23:41] **Council Members:** I. [00:23:42] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** And following that, we have uh consideration of resolutions accepting bids and awarding the construction contract for the very same project, Great Oak Trail North and 66th Street. Um resolution number 2026-12. Brad, is there anything um specific you need to cover with this? [00:24:05] **Brad Reifsteck:** Um Mayor, members of the council, again, um bids for the 2026 street improvement project, uh which included Great Oak Trail North and 66th Street North were publicly solicited and received in accordance with Minnesota State Statute 429. Um bids were opened on February 26, 2026, and a total of six bids were received and reviewed for completeness and responsiveness. Um, based on that review, the lowest responsible bidder is Winberg Companies LLC of Schaefer, Minnesota with a total bid of $228,444.34. Uh staff has reviewed the bids and determined that Winberg Company's LLC meets the requirements of the bid documents and is qualified to perform the work. Uh the bid is consistent with the engineer's estimate uh and if awarded the anticipated construction schedule includes a substantial completion date by August 28th, 2026. Um but the exact start date would be determined once the contractor is notified of the award and a pre-construction meeting has been scheduled. With that said, staff recommends that the council adopt resolution 2026-12, accepting the bids and awarding the construction contract for the 2026 street improvement project to Winberg Companies LLC in the amount of $228,444.34. So, with that, I would be happy to answer any questions. [00:25:40] **Council Member John Rog:** Mr. Mayor, did Brad say there's a two-year warranty on this? [00:25:45] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Two-year? Yep. [00:25:46] **Brad Reifsteck:** Two-year warranty from final acceptance. That's correct. [00:25:50] **Council Member John Rog:** Okay. Thank you. [00:25:52] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** By final acceptance mean completion of the road two years. [00:25:56] **Brad Reifsteck:** When we issue final payment when they're all done, that starts the two-year clock. [00:26:00] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** So basically from this fall. So we'd have the next two summers. [00:26:05] **Council Member John Rog:** Yeah. And so what do we do for monitoring to— [00:26:10] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Part of his bid is they'll have somebody out there doing inspection um on the on the work and the paving. You might have another guy drive by and keep an eye on you, Brad. You never know. Um uh but that's part of the the soft cost is their field work, some staking for the curb, um the reclaiming, monitoring the quantities. So when we get a pay application from Brad recommending payment, those quantities have been checked by him versus what the contractor just submitted and make sure they're in compliance with that. So we'll get a couple of pay apps. Council will approve when we when you issue when we approve the final pay app that starts the two-year—okay—which will essentially be for end of this fall. [00:26:55] **Brad Reifsteck:** Mayor and members of the council, I would like to add that we will do a warranty inspection too at the end of the two-year period. [00:27:00] **Council Member John Rog:** Yeah, because I can appreciate while it's important to have roads it is an expensive endeavor and that people want to make sure we're getting the most for our money so I appreciate that. Have we ever had a road project uh fail before a two-year warranty period expired? That would seem— [00:27:15] **Brad Reifsteck:** No, it's it's highly highly unlikely. Um we don't have, you know, um too many main lane culverts or uh I think that the the most places you'd see the failure would be in the curb and gutter or the structures. And we're really not replacing the structure itself. We're just replacing the casting. So, it's highly unlikely that um we would have any warranty work, but it's there in case we need it. [00:27:45] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** And is it fair Brad to say that at the end of two years you can assess the condition of the road to know with a high degree of certainty whether it will meet its expected um life expectancy whether it's like 15 years or 18 years? [00:28:00] **Brad Reifsteck:** Yeah. You know most of these roads—I mean—they—as long as they're properly maintained and timely uh crack sealing. We typically all of our new roads we've been uh crack sealing after the second year because that's when you're going to see most of the cracks start to appear. So, as long as we're timely with that crack sealing, um, in the third year, um, and and continuously stay on top of the crack sealing, um, this road should last at least 30 years or more. I would—I would say more, but— [00:28:35] **Council Member John Rog:** Okay, go ahead, Brad. Have you worked with Winberg companies before? [00:28:40] **Brad Reifsteck:** You know, I haven't personally, but I've heard good things about them. Um so uh I did talk to them personally and and they have a really good understanding of the project. Um so I felt comfortable um with their work and understanding that they um you know not working in Grant before have a a really good understanding of what the project entails. So I feel real comfortable working with them. Um, so— [00:29:10] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** And there questions or we're ready for a motion. [00:29:12] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** A motion to approve 2026-12. [00:29:14] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** Second. [00:29:15] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** I. [00:29:16] **Council Members:** I. [00:29:18] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Moving on to city planner. Jennifer Swanson has no action items. Nor does city attorney Amanda Johnson, which brings us to new business. Kristina, would you like to walk us through new business? [00:29:30] **Kristina Handt:** Sure. Let everybody leave. Oh, nobody cares about websites and whatnot. Yeah. So, Mayor and council. Um, and I don't see Celia online, unless she's signed in under another name. Um, let me know. Um, but we're here at the last meeting. Uh council member Cremona had mentioned that **Celia Worth**, a Grant resident and also website designer, had reached out and offered to volunteer her services to design a new website for us. And so, I've um been corresponding with Celia. We had a phone conversation, included some information uh in your packet. As you know, the 2026 budget did include some money. It was about $8,000 is my guess, just judging by how much your budget changed from um '25 to '26 um in order to update the city's website to meet those new web content accessibility guidelines um version 2.1 levels A and double A that cities under 50,000 have to meet by uh April 26th of 2027. And I had started to reach out to some um other companies uh previously or the Mayor had referred them to me. So I have a couple of other uh proposals in the packet. There's really just a point of reference so you can see what we would have had to spend if—if we didn't have this donation. Um but she is uh offering to donate her services like I said. Um and uh she's looked at our site, the Drupal site. It's out of date. I can tell you from using it. It's very hard to update it. You have to almost know how to be uh—how to write code to do it. It's not just as simple uploading uh PDFs and whatnot. So, I'm hopeful that this WordPress will be much easier for me to use as well. Um and so, she's suggesting that we go to that. Um she's uh volunteering to do that while we maintain the current site. She'd use the current content, use that to help train me and um get it—get it up and running. We, you know, show it to the city before we would turn it live. um and then move over to the new website. She thinks it'd be about two to three hours of my time to kind of—and and not at once, but kind of broken up—to give some feedback at the beginning of the project and um maybe there's others that want to give feedback, too. The Mayor had shared with me the high school intern had done a project last summer, I think, and talked to some of you about improvements that um felt needed to be made to the website. I don't know that we'll get all fancy there. This is, as I understand it, really just a basic website that we're looking at to meet those um ADA requirements. And then uh once we're up and running, if there's further changes that we need, uh it's a $25 an hour um fee. Uh I do did include in the packet some other um sites that she's done. There's no other city sites. There is the Browns Creek site and and a couple of other um nonprofit sites that she's worked on and included those links there um for you to look at if you had the chance ahead of time. I think the only other thing uh or a couple—two other things I want to mention: you know, she's not a graphic designer. So, if we wanted to do something like that, that is something that we'd have to go and spend money on. We've basically got the city logo and then just be colors and maybe right for this purpose just to get a new um website, we don't need anything too fancy is my thought um to get through. And since we had selected our peer communities um I thought it was interesting to just see who those other cities had um for their provider. I'd never heard of this Catalyst. So that'll be something maybe in the future that I have to look at if—if this doesn't work out. But similar to what we did for—or what you did for Kurt because it was before I joined the city—uh I drafted that resolution to accept her donation of um services to do the website. So that's what we have before you. I do not see Celia online unfortunately. I think she maybe had another meeting. Um I forget what time. Um so but anyways, that's what I have for your uh consideration. I am not a techie expert, so I—I'm not sure I can answer anything more than what's in the packet, but I can certainly try or follow up if you have questions. [00:34:00] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** So, uh, one follow-up that I have because I was looking at the requirements to like how you have to host the website, especially Gov-related website. Um, and I don't know if WordPress—you can create the website using WordPress, but where you host it is really what matters because it's just the security and—and luckily we're not dealing with any like PII or you know sensitive information. Um, so it makes it a little bit easier. But I know Drupal was one of the hosting sites. So this isn't really a question, just more of a comment where it's fine. We just got to make sure that wherever it is hosted is hosted in appropriate place that meets the government requirements. And I'm sure—is that Bluehost? Is that the hosting—again I don't know all this stuff and what WordPress does—sorry— [00:34:45] **Kristina Handt:** Clarifying question, Ben— [00:34:47] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** Yeah, so Drupal um isn't necessarily a hosting site it's more of a—a—a development platform. [00:34:55] **Kristina Handt:** So I believe you can also host with Drupal yes. [00:34:58] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** Um, the other places were like Azure cloud and AWS gov-space just some like normal spots it shouldn't be a big issue for her I'm assuming because it sounds like she's done a lot but it just we got to make sure that wherever it gets hosted, it's in a compliant place to make sure we're not, you know, shooting ourselves in the foot later on. [00:35:15] **Kristina Handt:** And is that related to the .gov? [00:35:17] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** That can. We got to make sure that we're not— [00:35:19] **Kristina Handt:** Well, it depends on—I started to look into the .gov stuff and my understanding is we would only have to do that if we accepted absentee voting, which we don't. We have the contract with the county. Um, of course that could always change at any time in the future. Um, but that's my understanding of it. Now, there's also maybe an argument: do we want to have the .gov because then people know that we're a governmental entity? Um, Celia had suggested we recapture—well, we do pay for the dot um domain even though we're on the .us. I don't know which one makes sense and point them all to one is kind of what she said, but um I don't know how many different domains we want to pay for and capture and all that kind of stuff. That's where it gets a little above my head. [00:36:00] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yeah. So, we are not using .com. It's just an empty placeholder and—Ben, for your—for your comments on um uh make sure we're using compliant—I—I—I agree with that. I would just add a caveat that if we can use Bluehost, our current hosting provider, we should look at that as the first option because that's cheaper. Um the the email hosting that they had was not very good at all, but I think the um from what I've seen with my research into the actual hosting websites, they're pretty solid and they do have they do support um WordPress, which I think Celia has. So, I think if we could um ask Celia if she could kind of, you know, work with WordPress if that's—and she's not here so that we can't, you know, um if I—if we can be flexible and just kind of, you know, um have her back and forth dialogue with these things, I'm sure she would be um open to do it. But I think um the price is uh—I can't argue with the price. It's almost like you had me at hello as soon as you say free. [00:37:00] **Kristina Handt:** Yeah. [00:37:02] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** And so, um, and this would for sure, I think, um, buy us time to get to uh—um, you know, and we might find that that we don't see a need to upgrade in the future. I mean, there's not, as long as I think the website is usable, it doesn't necessarily need to be fancy, right? And some of the um complaints which I think were captured by that interim report—and I think everyone has the same if—if asked by Celia to get the same um feedback—it's really hard to find some—it's not organized well. I think Celia's skill set would really um allow her to take what's there and present it in a much—so we're not changing um the actual um content but we're making it more user friendly and easier to—so—I don't see um a lot of cons at this point. I mean I appreciate you sending the different—the Civics Plus or whatever. It's always nice to have options. We didn't always get options before, so that's good. Looking at the cost of some of those, um, it's like buying a Ferrari when we just need a, you know— [00:38:15] **Kristina Handt:** I never would have recommended Civics Plus because they—I know they always then have add-ons that you don't need. [00:38:20] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Someone just made them call me and I had to do it because, you know— [00:38:22] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** It is nice to see because it allows it for me—it allows us appreciate more what what we're—we're—we're getting from Celia here. [00:38:30] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yeah. So, um, and then, you know, uh, a couple other things we can talk to her about when she takes us on is like we can maybe ask her just to uh do some things to provide some metrics—like so we can get um stats on how many people are visiting our website and that can—but I'm—I'm sure that she's dealt with that before. So, she can— [00:38:50] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** WordPress has that. [00:38:52] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yeah. All that's probably— [00:38:54] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** —It's baked in WordPress. So, you can pick on a thing and it'll be there and it'll tell you. [00:38:58] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** So, yeah. Yeah. I mean I— [00:39:00] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** —Which is nice. [00:39:01] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yeah. Um you want to— [00:39:03] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** No, I mean I'm in favor of having her assist with this. We're going to need this new website anyway. It's great to have a resident who is engaged and putting their time to help the city. I think that's great that we have this involvement and let's capture that and um look forward to seeing our new website. [00:39:20] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yeah, Greg, I know you're the expert on roads. You're probably not going to comment at all on the techy geek website stuff. [00:39:26] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** Watch as he suddenly has all this knowledge on websites, too. [00:39:30] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** Nothing new to add. And when we have someone interested that's going to help at a reasonable price, why not? [00:39:38] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yeah. Okay, John, what are your thoughts? [00:39:40] **Council Member John Rog:** I would—I would just uh motion to do that. [00:39:43] **Kristina Handt:** It's a resolution 2026-13. [00:39:46] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** I think it's great. I will second your motion. [00:39:49] **Council Members:** I. [00:39:50] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** I think it's wonderful she's doing this. I really do. It's just—great. It's wonderful. [00:39:55] **Kristina Handt:** All right. Moving on to the next one. [00:39:57] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yep. [00:39:58] **Kristina Handt:** So, the next one, um, this is bringing back the updates to the rules of procedure that we talked about before. I went through, made a few kind of um just grammatical and formatting changes, but otherwise the changes mostly include what we talked about last time, like updating the time of the meeting to 6:30, noting the 3-day notice um required for special meetings, changing it so the Mayor and council calls a special meeting. I don't know why it said clerk. I have no—I've—I've never come across anything where the clerk has the authority to call a meeting. And then I know it it can be really messy reading it in the redline. So I wanted to include in the staff report what I'm proposing for the new um order of business which is: call the meeting to order, pledge of allegiance, approval of agenda, consent agenda, then public input, regular agenda, discussion items and adjournment. Um and again I looked at our our peer communities and um certainly most of them use unfinished business or old business and new business format. Um, so I'm breaking—breaking from the the best practice here. And the reason is um I like to use regular agenda so that I can be more flexible in the order in which I put things. So for example, even tonight, this would have been old business and if Celia would have been here, I would have had to make her wait to get to her item, right? Rather than having the flexibility of putting her first. Um, so or last time when we had to listen to Brad talk about all that road stuff and we had the county commissioner waiting here, right? Like I would have rather put the county commissioner first when—when it wasn't a public hearing, right? And so that's for me that's why I like just clumping it all under regular agenda. Um but as I said, it's not—not what's most commonly done in other cities. So I will leave that up to, you know, council's discretion if you—which way you want to go. But that's my rationale for why we should be different. Um Stillwater Township is the only one of our comps that I saw that does do it that way with the regular agenda. So, um, and then obviously if we don't have new business, we'd have to refer to it as—as regular agenda. And then adding some clarifying language about again when residents can address the council. It doesn't have to be about an item that's not on the agenda. And then last—the last thing that I had—we didn't talk about last time. I know I talked with some of you on our one-on-ones, um, but there's language in there about doing an annual review of our consultants, and that's just not a practice I've ever run into in other cities. So, I propose that we strike that. So, those were the things that that I had um drafted. Any questions or concerns about those for me? [00:43:00] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** Uh I of course have mine which we discussed last time. So is just where the uh public input sits as I don't believe it should be taped as it to my opinion gives people a platform uh to memorialize things that could be put out in you know the world at large that we might not want put out. Uh, we want people to be able to come up here and not worry about, you know, are they going to be held to whatever they're said for all time at public input or, you know, are they coming up here to grandstand and try to make some sort of larger political statement, which we've seen that has nothing to do with us. Um, so outside of that, I think everything's fine. Uh, but that's just my thing and you know, people disagree with me. It—it is what it is. [00:43:45] **Council Member John Rog:** Okay John. Um I don't mind um changing it. I know that we have discussed back and forth of um you know video recording uh public input and uh you know as Ben was just talking about there's—there's pros and cons to doing it and I think uh we've seen some things that don't make any sense to record. So, I don't know. [00:44:05] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Uh any—any feedback on all the other— [00:44:08] **Council Member John Rog:** No. No. It—it—it all looks pretty good to me. Um you know, gone through all of it and it's—it's—it's good. [00:44:15] **Kristina Handt:** Is something going on Kenny with the recording? Brad's got his hand up and there's something weird going on our screen. [00:44:22] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Oh, no. [00:44:23] **Kristina Handt:** Looks like he's in the participants. He probably wants to be moved over. Disconnected and wants to get back in. Oh, there we go. Got it. [00:44:30] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Good. Sorry. Are we good to go? Okay. Yes. So, um, Kristina, regarding the the striking of the performance reviews, um, so you and I talked about this and I think it makes sense. So, if I can kind of explain what you're saying, like since our contractors are not actual employees, it doesn't really make sense to have uh quote-unquote performance reviews and um how you manage the employees is you're giving them real-time feedback. You're not waiting till the end of the year to say, "Hey, this is what I'm seeing wrong. This is I'd like to see you to improve." And conversely, you're giving the um council, you know, the same kind of feedback, too. So, it's more like real-time um you know, rather than uh a more formal uh year-end scheduled uh performance appraisal process that would be more suitable for actual employees. Am I kind of stating that somewhat? [00:45:25] **Kristina Handt:** Well, so kind of—I want to correct two things because as you know it's been a little bit of a burr in my saddle—and this is not a reflection of our consultants in any way as people—but they're not employees and I think we have to be very careful to not treat them like employees and so this is part of that. Um I've always been that—whether as a management style whether it's an employee or a contractor or consultant—I'm not one that waits till an annual review to give feedback anyways. So, that's—that's just my—my style. Um, but this idea of giving a a consultant an annual review feels like it might be crossing that line and treating an independent contractor like an employee. I think the city can do better to put performance measurements into their contracts when they do them. Um, that doesn't mean that I don't still give them feedback on when things happen, but you can also get into a more—in a consistent pattern of doing requests for proposals or quotes or whatever. You know, there doesn't seem to be a consistent process and how you apply that across your contractors either. Um, it just when I saw that—or I don't even know if I saw it, I think my predecessor told me about it and I was like, what? I've—I've—I've worked in cities with contractors, even when you have employees, and I've never done annual performances of our consultant contractors. That just feels odd to me. [00:46:50] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** So, it's not the same kind of employer-employee relationship, right? Like, you should not be managing their performance. You should be managing to the contract as far as expectations. [00:47:00] **Kristina Handt:** And we're always—Go ahead. [00:47:02] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** I was just gonna ask, I don't recall being asked to give a written review like it says in here last year. Do you guys recall ever doing that? [00:47:10] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Well, last year um typically how it was done is um in March we were asked—March or April we were asked to provide uh or fill out forms that were given us by the previous administrator for all staff and then we filled it out but then uh that was it—we didn't hear what was—any follow-up—and so it was kind of like a a fruitless exercise. So yeah, I don't—Yeah, I don't remember last year but um I—I think Kristina um it's still obviously we're still uh as council members free to provide our input at any time. [00:47:45] **Kristina Handt:** Yes. And not just—so it's actually—but again I would prefer you come to me not to the contractors. I'm going to say that one more time till I— [00:47:55] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Cremona. [00:47:58] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** And—and—and that's—and that's your job, right? That's one of the things that you bring to the table as experienced, skilled uh administrators. You—you—you know how to manage staff and we trust you to do that so we don't have to micromanage you. And—and for myself I've seen—I've have confidence in seeing what you've done so far that I don't have the worries like I did before you know that process is happening. So um—I mean I feel comfortable noting like removing this noting that our recommendation moving forward is that we are having an akin review every time we're looking at the contract and we can put those mechanisms in the contract uh as we move forward because with all of our consultants they're not perpetual contracts where we're looking at them either annually or every two to three years however each contract is. So I feel comfortable that we still have a mechanism to make sure that we're formally providing something in writing um and that in the interim during the term of their contract that our you know city administrator will be providing live feedback. [00:48:55] **Kristina Handt:** Yep. As—as should the process be. [00:48:58] **Council Member John Rog:** And—and if I may ask um Kristina, do we—all the contractors that we do have when their contracts are up, we as a city council have to renew it, right? It just doesn't automatically renew. [00:49:10] **Kristina Handt:** Correct. I mean, there's been a couple that you did um since I've been here, you know, some of them. So, they're all on different kind of timelines. There are a couple of perpetual ones. Um, and you know, maybe we'll have to have talks about what is the best practice of how often we bring some of those up for a review. And you know, and again, like you've seen with some of the ones that you keep renewing with the same one. It doesn't necessarily mean you're going to switch contractors, right? But what is an—this is where you—this is the more appropriate process to review that relationship, I think, rather than whatever this annual review process was that may or may not have happened. [00:49:50] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. Thank you. Okay, we're gonna go. So, I'm going to go next. Um, the only other thing I wanted to touch upon is um the the public comment. I thought about—a lot about this. We had a work session back last April where we talked about this and at that time we were like, well, let's just do the first step and make sure like people can hear each other on the um record on—on the actual meeting. And um I—so I initially was—was not in favor of recording public comment just because of the—you know I understand why the council made a decision back in 2018 to not report—co—record public comment. I don't know um Greg you might live through that—maybe John you did too. And so um and I—so I experienced the dysfunction firsthand with witness folks um using public comment to personally attack um those that disagree with um and um you know having thought about it some more. It's—it's—it's a different—it's a different um time right now. Things a lot changed a lot since 2018. I think part of that is because of where we are as a city and the leaders that sit up here. We—we um promote unity rather than—so—divisiveness. So I think um a lot of that um fear of what might happen with people using the platform to um for their own um gain to be malicious and attack other people is—is largely in our control. Like if we don't give—a—you know—uh—because most of the attacks were uh to uh council members and and not necessarily other people um in—in the community. So, um, I think yes, while there's—while there's a chance that we might get occasional abuse of public comment like we did in the um was it February meeting where we got that caller that was— [00:51:40] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** —Said all these bigoted um comments. [00:51:42] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yes. Uh I—I—I think um that would be the—the—rarity, the exception. and um you know looking at where we are if we can err on the side of um promoting free speech—and it's—it's free speech and I—I don't want to see it um get abused. I mean I—I still think the purpose is to inform the public and not necessarily allow people to go um on a soapbox and and share you know what—whatever they want. I mean that we have Facebook and other media for that. I think um um I'm okay with recording it. I I did have—I looked at your uh proposal, Kristina, and I had a couple recommend—recommendations, couple changes that I'd like just to pass out to the—so and I have a copy for myself. Okay, I'll look. So basically—basically um the changes that I'm proposing—it's the—it's the second part there, proposed alternatives—it's just adding a section that says—because um this—we're changing the order right and that's the—the—um how we're recording public comment because it's after—it's when we start the recording. So that might not be intuitively obvious to people at first. So, I'm just suggesting that we add a little bit of language like that second paragraph there just to um remind people that, you know, it's public uh input is going to be recorded. And then the other thing is addressing a concern. I heard it from a couple residents that like, "Well, I'd like to provide um public comment, but I've seen so much toxic um stuff" and and this is, you know, back several years ago, but the concern is still valid that they're um would rather um not be recorded. And if we put it like a disclaimer, it's more a reminder what they can already do—encourage them if they want to uh reach out to the council and Mayor to provide input, they can still do that. And so I think that's a a small change which is kind of um encourages people to be um uh to participate and the other stuff is just a little bit of uh cleaned up wording. So I don't know if um—go ahead. [00:54:05] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** So for clarity, you added the second paragraph and then the third paragraph is already what's in the first one. It's just you moved generally. [00:54:15] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yeah, I just—I just—Yeah, I just ran that through—Yeah, um yeah, just made a little bit clearer and keeps all existing rules um just a little bit more readable and professional. So yeah. Um, that's kind of where I'm at right now. Um, let's hear from Greg and then we can go back and—Greg, what are your thoughts? [00:54:40] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** Um, all the rest of the changes agenda aside, I'm fine with—appreciate the cleanup. Question on your proposed order is: the public input is after consent agenda. Any rhyme or reason? Um, we might have somebody that would want us to talk about an item on consent agenda. [00:55:00] **Kristina Handt:** Yeah, fair enough. I was just thinking, let's get through some stuff. I—I don't know. I was probably looking at somebody else's agenda and that's where it was to be honest. I—I—I didn't um consider that. Um, so we could move it as we—we talked before. Yeah, there was some shenanigans, but I yet to go to another council that doesn't—that puts the public comment basically outside the meeting. And if we're going to expect—if we have low expectations for people coming to talk to us, then we're—that's what we're going to get. So, if we put it back in the meeting, and I would propose to move it after the approval of the agenda—you've got the wording in here. You got two minutes. We don't interact and you have the gavel, Mr. Mayor. I—I don't—I understand some fear of some other shenanigans. I've seen plenty of shenanigans at council meetings, but taking it out of the meeting, I—it just doesn't feel right. So, I appreciate you putting it back in, and I would suggest putting it right after approval of the agenda, prior to the consent agenda. [00:56:05] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** So, where—where do you—where does Kristina have it now? [00:56:08] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** She has moved. Oh, yeah. That—that's fine. In case something is brought up or something and we want to pull something on a consent agenda versus—probably be very rare someone comes and, "Oh you approved the consent agenda that's what I was going to talk about and I can't talk about it." [00:56:25] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** Yeah. Yeah. Good catch. But to be fair at our recent public comment someone did talk about something on the consent agenda and so I do reiterate I—that's a good catch. So I think flipping it makes sense. I agree with Greg's comments about that. Um, as you all know, I think it's really important that it is recorded and that we hold people accountable for what they say and that if for some reason someone is getting out of order, we have a Mayor who is able to say, you know, it's very clear in here that signing in does not guarantee their time at a podium. And so, we have the ability in our policy to cut them out, cut them off before the two-minute window if need be. So, I think we just, you know, move ahead with enforcing that if need be, but our hope is that we won't. [00:57:15] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yeah. In terms of like um holding someone accountable. I—I—I think what you're saying is um uh not allow them to go on a—a—personal attacks or that stuff. [00:57:25] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** It's got some decorum rules in here. [00:57:27] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** The decorum rules. Yeah. So, and you can cut it because it's right here. Even in the one that you proposed, it—it makes it clear: signing in does not guarantee time at the podium. And so, if someone's going rogue, that's our key of saying we're going to have to say thanks but no thanks. You're done. But we're not going to come after—after them after the fact and impose a fine on them or whatever. I just want to make it clear that when we hold—what we say people do that—No, I'm just—I mean—No, I'm—I'm just being—just I—I just want to be clear like when we say hold people accountable, that's what we're talking about where we're not trying to um you know pick and choose who can say what. It's just more decorum that we already have defined in there. So um—you know, John—Ben, do you have—I know you guys are kind of like maybe not um— [00:58:20] **Council Member John Rog:** No, I don't—I don't mind. You know, you say that, you know, it seems as though we're saying that if you don't want to be uh recorded, you have that opportunity. So, do we, you know, record everybody and somebody says, "I want to say something, but I don't want to be recorded." Do we have that ability? [00:58:35] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Well, question—I think—I think in the language right here it kind of covers that because we don't want to— [00:58:40] **Council Member John Rog:** —But but I think we need to clarify that's—that's not how I read your language, Mayor, that if they don't want to be recorded—if you let me—if you let me finish. I—I think you and I are on the same page. Um no this—this—Yeah, this is not saying that we have the option to um record someone or not. No, it's going to be recorded regardless. This is just a little disclaimer that if you're uncomfortable being recorded, um that doesn't mean you—you're dissuaded from communicating to the council, Mayor, whatever it is, you can just do that by email or phone and then that way they still have an avenue to communicate with us. [00:59:15] **Council Member John Rog:** Okay. Yeah. Okay. [00:59:17] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Because um—Ben, any other thoughts? [00:59:19] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** No, it's—I get both takes. I'm on the the other side of it. It is what it is. I don't think that it's worth giving, you know, the—the—in my mind, the point of public comment is for the public to address us with issues, not address the world at large. So, I'm just going to disagree with that. It's—Yeah, I get your guys' side. It's not a big deal. It's just—Yeah, I just disagree with that approach. [00:59:40] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** That's okay. We don't always agree. Yeah. No, and I understand what you're saying and I—I would say that um with the exception of that—that person from um that February that called in um people are honoring the intent of um—of public comment and you know if for whatever reason we've—we do a really horrible job as a council, we foment dysfunction instead of promote unity like we seem to be doing and it gets to be really nasty again. Well, then we can solve that problem, you know, if—if it ever presents itself. So, trust me, that one wasn't that bad. I would like to move to approve the revisions with the caveat that we swap the public comment and consent agenda on the proposed order of business and that we swap out the public policy input with the proposed that was provided by the Mayor this a—this evening which is section to letter D. [01:00:40] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay, we got a motion. Second, one second. Okay, should we roll call this one? [01:00:45] **Kristina Handt:** You might want to. [01:00:47] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Let's roll call. I think we can figure out for one. [01:00:50] **Kristina Handt:** Council Member Cremona? [01:00:51] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** Aye. [01:00:52] **Kristina Handt:** Council Member Cornett? [01:00:53] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** Nay. [01:00:54] **Kristina Handt:** Council Member Rog? [01:00:55] **Council Member John Rog:** Aye. [01:00:56] **Kristina Handt:** Council Member Anderson? [01:00:57] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** Aye. [01:00:58] **Kristina Handt:** Mayor Giefer? [01:00:59] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Aye. [01:01:00] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. You got one more on your agenda, Kristina. [01:01:02] **Kristina Handt:** Yes, Mayor. Uh, Mayor, council. So, this—so this will nor—was normally a consent agenda item in most cities, but since I—I think this is kind of a new process for you, I wanted to take the opportunity tonight to kind of walk you through it. Um it's the unaudited first quarter financials I'll call it. We're still um working with the auditor. You'll see some negatives in there. We are an accrual-based city. Basically some of those negatives on revenue is because we got the money in January, but it was really for money in 2025. So I had to move it back. That's why doesn't—it's not that we're giving out money. So I just for—for folks that aren't—aren't familiar with the accrual versus cash basis um and might have thought some of that was weird. I wanted to mention that. I also wanted to prepare this using um—we have two financial software systems. We have QuickBooks that was used by your treasurer. That's what your budget was prepared in. And then we have CATS which was used by um your administrator clerk which is what the checks were run through and that's what your disbursements looked like each month. Um and as you probably know they have different accounting—there are different accounting systems with different charts of accounts, different titles and things were probably really hard to match up. Um, so I—I ran this using um QuickBooks to and did the analysis. I'm still using both systems for this year. In talking with the auditor, we think we can save um a few thousand dollars by just going—a few thousand a year of their time. QuickBooks does not do fund accounting, which is really important, especially as you do more debt. Um, if you're going to borrow for roads, for example. Um, so we'll look to move to that, I think, with the 2027 budget. So, this will kind of be an—a messy transition year, but just so you understand kind of why you're seeing things and they might not align um when you see again like the disbursements versus this—these audited financials. Um but I think that moving to that will again increase transparency because you'll see your—your quarterly reports is my intention right now. Some cities do them monthly. Um I just with having our meeting on the first Tuesday of the month. Thank—thankfully today was the 7th. So it allowed me that time. It might be that we're going to be cut a little short on the month or the quarter um in the future just depending on where that lands. But we'll try and at least get you some regular updates. Again, having one system versus two will improve efficiencies and then reduce those auditing costs like I mentioned. Um but so I ran that report and then I included some notes um there just to give some explanation for folks who may not know. You know, a lot of our revenues don't come in until we get our tax payments, right? So 75% roughly of the city's revenues come from our property tax payments. We get them mainly in um July and December and we get a small cleanup in January each year. That's the people who don't pay um their October bills on time. Um, we get those in January, whatever they get from like October 15th till the end of the year. I'm probably going to—you can put in a request to the county to get your July payments early. I'm probably going to do that and we'll get it a couple weeks early just so we can get some more interest earnings on that um, and get the money in the bank sooner. So, I'll do that next month unless anybody objects. Um, but otherwise, you know, their other biggest area of revenues is building permit fees. And our inspector has told me people are a little uneasy with what's going on in the world. And so, some—some of our home um projects, especially some of our multi-million dollar homes, are kind of in the wait-and-see mode right now is what he's hearing from folks. So, we'll see what happens and if that activity starts to pick up, but again, it is normal this time of the year for that to be slow, too. So, not too worried yet. We'll see where it comes in next quarter. Um, on the expense side, again, a lot of these things are some um timing issues. Council only getting paid once a year. Sheriff's bills, those usually come in July and in December. The office rentals once a year at the end of the year. Real estate taxes did um, pay them this—this uh, month, paid them in full for the last time for this property um what's called your finance category, which is uh where the staffing for my—myself is in a lot of the dues and subscriptions and stuff obviously is higher because you've had staffing changes and and changes in positions and reallocations and um different memberships and whatnot. Um but uh all the dues have been paid uh for this year that I'm aware of. The building inspector expenses, as I noted, are over budget. Again, this is a timing issue. Um I've been pushing him to get caught up. We are through this um check that you approved tonight. We are caught up in paying him for um permits that were issued in 2024 with the exception of I think there's one house still in um White Oak Savannah that still needs to be final inspected. So we pay him after final inspections. Um, and so some houses could take, you know, like a year and a half, but there's also just a a delay in getting um, the paperwork done because he's really great at answering calls and getting inspections done and getting those type of—providing that service to folks—and the paperwork falls behind. Um, but I do expect that we'll see an impact to the um, fund balance because we'll start tracking that liability now so that we're not surprised when it happens. Um, but just in case you're wondering why that line item is showing that it's over so much. Um, the fuel surcharge. So again, that—we're only a quarter of the way through the year, but we've paid 50% of that. That's because we just pay that to our road supervisor in the winter months of October through March. Um, if you want to know how winter goes, I always say: look at your sand and salt budget. We've spent 81% of it. The general rule of thumb um that I've always been taught by my public works directors is you should plan to spend two-thirds of your sand and salt budget um in the first part of the year and the other third in the latter part of the year. You know, November, December. Uh of course, that's just a general rule of thumb. You never know what's going to happen with your weather. So, we'll see what what happens. Um maybe we won't get any snow for in—in November and December. Um and then last, let's see, bond payments. So, you make bond payments twice a year. February is your principal and interest. August is your interest-only payment. Um, so we've—we've made that. That's why that's kind of showing ahead, but we've just got the interest payment left in August. If you exclude those um bond payments, which again that would be your separate um fund, not your general operating fund, expenses are at about 18% for the year. So that's my um kind of high-level summary, but I'm happy to answer any questions that council has and we'll aim to um put the next quarterly updates in um in July. Happy to run this report monthly for you, but I would not have the time to do this level of analysis that frequently with everything else. So that's the—that's the kind of tradeoff I can offer you and and look for a year. So four times a year is four times as good. [01:09:40] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. Well, I mean again you have them on your website. You have it on the website. The expenses from anything that was run through CATS, but again not everything was run through CATS. Some of it was just QuickBooks. So I—I want to be fair to previous staff. They—they did what they could. But—um yeah. Okay. Let's start on the um left. Greg, do you have any questions on the— [01:10:05] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** No. I've got them answered before. I appreciate the update and quarterly would be just fine for me. [01:10:10] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** Same. Uh Kristina did a great job answering my questions already today um at our meeting. So I appreciate the information quarterly as well. This is really a really good insight to see where we're at. [01:10:25] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Um so the uh uh conversion over to just using um CATS. So, that'll save us by several thousand dollars just from the the accountant's time alone, right? [01:10:35] **Kristina Handt:** That's what they've told me. Yeah. [01:10:37] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** And—and—and how much time will you save not having to do dual entries in QuickBooks and CATS? [01:10:42] **Kristina Handt:** Um well, it will—it'll you know, the dual entries on a monthly basis is maybe only a couple hours. The audit was a lot of extra work. But on the flip side, you know, I got ready under the audit in QuickBooks and taught myself QuickBooks. Now I need to go and learn the other things in CATS that weren't done there. So QuickBooks was used like the check—or CATS was used like the checkbook just to run your checks, but we haven't put investments in there. We haven't done bank reconciliations. So we've got to learn all those—I've got to learn all those modules. The whole full budget isn't in there. So getting prepped up for the budget and doing that this year—there'll be time. I think by 2027 we'll be in a much better position, but this year there's going to be a lot of um time needed to be invested to make that transition. [01:11:35] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. Um and then you said uh we're caught up through 2024 from Jack's. So when do we get caught up through 2025? [01:11:42] **Kristina Handt:** I'm asking him every month, you know, so hopefully he continues to—I know it's bad because we're paying out a lot of money, but I'd rather get caught up and know where we're at. So, you know, like maybe the one good thing—if it—if it stays slow, he gets caught up on his billings to us. I don't know. So, yeah. [01:12:00] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. That's um—it's—it's uh something we continue. That's one of those perpetual contracts that maybe um we're going to have to look at: Do we need to change some of the contract language in there to incentivize that? [01:12:12] **Kristina Handt:** Yep. [01:12:13] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** And then um looking at your your budget versus actual, did you do anything with um changing—like consolidating or or breaking out to different accounts to make it more or reflective of actual? Because I think that's one of the things that we in the past were like this doesn't seem to be like the best breakout county-wise of—of—um our budget. Did you make any of those changes yet or are you just sticking with um the buckets we had and then looking for later on? You'll look for— [01:12:42] **Kristina Handt:** So, this is the buckets that you had um that matched your budget from last year because this is Sharon had this entered into QuickBooks before she left. And the reorganization of some things—that's again leads into the what's going to take a lot of time this year. Even in CATS, I don't like how it's organized. Um, I mean, one thing that's funny—if you look at this really closely—like why is the cable caster cost under public—under roads? Like what, you know— [01:13:10] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** —Yeah— [01:13:12] **Kristina Handt:** —You know, like there's little things like that for—for me that as somebody who's done this for a long time, I'm like, no, this isn't the categories that it should be in. So, that's the part of—and I—I haven't figured out yet how um—how much forgiveness I'll have to ask for from you for prior years, right? Because there's one thing to set it up going forward from maybe '26 and '27. Um but it's going to be then a lot harder to figure out pre—prior years, right? Um so where do we—how do we balance that? Um that's part of where I think our struggle might be this year and um how much time do we put into what it was versus do we just look forward from 2026 forward or '27 forward or wherever that cutoff needs to be. So— [01:14:05] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** I keep saying every change is a step in the right direction. So don't feel pressured to boil the ocean. [01:14:10] **Kristina Handt:** Yeah. But sometimes it's hard to know the answer to project forward if you don't know where you were in the past. Right. I mean that's how I've always done budgeting is what have we spent in the past to know where we need to be in the future you know given certain assumptions. [01:14:25] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yeah. Um I you know—yeah budgeting will be I think I know I don't know maybe different from what I heard you've done in the past. I'd like to invite more of our consultants to come and be part of those discussions. So maybe they'll be able to answer those questions for us. [01:14:45] **Council Member John Rog:** I think you have a a better idea how to properly do budgeting than we've done in the past. So, yeah. Um, I didn't really have any other question coming. John, good? [01:14:55] **Council Member John Rog:** I don't—you know, it's—it's all it's all broken out nicely. Um, you know, like you said, how do you where do you where do you go forward? You know, there's only so much you can do. So, um, you know, you have you have 2025 and you're showing 2026. So, um, I think you're doing a good job. Thank you. [01:15:15] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** Nothing more to add. Anything that looked odd or out of place had a nice little comment next to it explaining where it was. So, all good here. [01:15:22] **Kristina Handt:** Yeah. Okay. So, Mayor, I am looking for a motion to accept the financial report. My—my other hope in this is that then the auditors will see this in—in your agenda packets and I don't have to burden you with bank statements and receipts and all that other stuff because this is more of a best practice that I'm used to in other cities. Um, so if that—if council um is comfortable with that, that is what I'm asking for tonight. [01:15:50] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** Just need a motion to accept the quarterly report. [01:15:52] **Council Member John Rog:** I'll make that motion. [01:15:54] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** Second. [01:15:55] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** I. [01:15:56] **Council Members:** I. [01:15:58] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Uh that takes us through new business. Um unfinished business? There is none. Discussion items. Um staff updates. Kristina, do you have any other updates to share other than the many that you've already been sharing? [01:16:15] **Kristina Handt:** Um, I do, but I'm willing to let Brad go first if you would and then come back to me, so I'll catch my breath. [01:16:22] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Um, Brad, do you have any updates? [01:16:25] **Brad Reifsteck:** I do, Mayor. And I apologize. I lost my connection there for a little bit and so now I'm back and um it's a good thing that you guys got through that uh that unfinished business. So, appreciate it. Anyway, um tonight I'm just uh here to give you some informational update on the 2027 street improvement project. Uh specifically focusing on the project schedule and some early considerations for how the benefit area could be defined. Um I'm not looking for any action tonight. So this is just really intended to keep you folks uh informed as we move through the uh feasibility report process. Um again, as you know, earlier this month, the council authorized the preparation of feasibility study for the improvements to Mikusk Road and Lofton Avenue North. Uh this study is currently underway. We've got the uh survey scheduled here for the next couple of weeks. Um and we've got Brauer doing the core roadway by the end of this month. So, we'll have some good preliminary information uh to get started for the feasibility report. So we're—again the report would cover things like uh recommended improvements options, uh developing cost estimates and identifying properties that again may benefit from the project. So um the project schedule is a little different than what was in the agreement. Um but it truly follows more of a typical chapter 429 timeline. Most of—most of these projects would take a year to—um—a year to—take to—to get through the process. And so um the schedule that I have in the memorandum uh probably truly reflects some of the comments that we received last month regarding, you know, public engagement um and giving us a little bit more time and flexibility uh to get the draft report done. Um and maybe share that with the council at a workshop uh before we present it to the neighborhood uh and get their feedback as well. So, um what we're proposing is to—excuse me—you know, have a neighborhood meeting potentially in—in June and maybe workshop a draft feasibility report uh at the end of May. Um we could have the uh the actual acceptance of the feasibility report in August. Um the public hearing and potential ordering of the improvements in October. Uh in December we could get approval of the plans and specifications. Uh a bid opening in early January or late January. Um have the assessment hearing in February. Award the contract in April just like we did for this past project and be ready for construction um in May of 2027. Um so the other item I wanted to talk a little bit about is the benefit area. Uh one of the—obviously this is one of the more important policy decisions ahead—will be to define the the benefit area. Uh again under Minnesota state statute 429 assessments must be based on the special benefit received. So the way the benefit area is drawn directly impacts how project costs are distributed. Um there are a few general approaches the the council could consider. Uh the most traditional approach is the buildable unit method which is typically what we use today where costs are evenly distributed among parcels along the corridor. A second option that we could look at is the expanded benefit area which would include the nearby properties that we discussed at the last meeting including you know Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the Stillwater um development right right north of—or north and south I guess of 88th Street. Um you know these—these parcels and even the parcels along Lofton Road really use Mikusk as access. So we could look at that as one option too. And then finally, we could potentially look at a hybrid approach which blends the you know the elements of the buildable unit with uh the network approach. So um you know each—each approach has its tradeoffs between simplicity and equity and and how broadly benefit uh is interpreted. So there are some risks uh to that but I think we can work through those. Uh again at this stage uh staff is not recommending a specific method um but we would be looking at um some of those options in the feasibility study. So I guess with that said I would be happy to answer any questions. [01:21:40] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yeah. Um so for the benefit area considerations different options—I like that you have options. Um it seems like um we still have the opportunity to use the whole Mikusk—it's like a—a case study to um consider these different options. Is that—is that fair? [01:22:00] **Brad Reifsteck:** That—that's correct. That's—that's why we want to go through several options in the feasibility report um just to—you know just to see what—uh what kind of benefit we can get out of this project for—for the network, right? We—we—we understand Mikusk is a network road for these neighborhoods and um you know the people that directly live on Mikusk aren't the only ones that—that use this road. So—yeah—I—I think there's some—some ideas that we can come up with to um define the benefit area. [01:22:40] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** And—and Brad, would you—and I guess this question is due to Greg. Um, do you think that because this seems to be like a—it could be a really complex topic, right? Uh, do you think this would be like a workshop type thing where we would do uh— [01:23:00] **Brad Reifsteck:** Yeah, I think that's the best approach. I think, you know, and just—get me through—you know, get me through the draft report and then we can bring the draft report and work through some of that stuff in a workshop and before we are ready to present it to the neighborhood meeting, right? We can go through the options and and uh discuss amongst us what—what we think is the—the best approach. [01:23:30] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** And then I was a little confused when you were talking through the project schedule. You mentioned like um potentially to have the feasibility study um presented to the council in May. [01:23:42] **Brad Reifsteck:** No, I was—I was thinking August. I—I think originally in my agreement I might have had May or June thinking we could get through the process a little quicker, but um again if we want to workshop it, we want a draft feasibility report and we want to do the public engagement. Um I'm just giving us a little bit more time and I think there's a lot of flexibility in our schedule to get through this process. Um but in my memo that I provided tonight, I've got the council accepting the feasibility report in August. And that still gives us enough time to get through the, you know, the final design, the the cost estimating, the the bidding process. Um, yeah— [01:24:30] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** Greg, you want to jump in here? Um, this—Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, going off your schedule, Brad, I think what I heard tonight was the council would get a draft report as part of a work session potentially in May, but at any case before the neighborhood meeting, so the council's aware of the options being presented at the neighborhood meeting. [01:24:55] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay, that that was kind of my—that was my big point. That makes sense. It doesn't—when I read the schedule, it doesn't—I don't see that. So, we just need to make sure that that's clear. [01:25:05] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** So, do we need to—Yep. So, we would—we would workshop this in May. The feasibility report—the draft feasibility. [01:25:15] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Thank you, Greg, for fixing what I was trying to say. [01:25:18] **Kristina Handt:** Does that mean a workshop before our May meeting or are we suggesting another time? I'm not sure because you don't have regular workshop scheduled. So, I don't know what that means. [01:25:30] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** No. Oh, yeah. It's—I think just a—a work session before the council an hour before the May meeting. That way, we're all coming here anyway. [01:25:40] **Brad Reifsteck:** Yeah, I'm okay with that. Does—I would suggest—I would suggest the June meeting because I'm not sure I'll have the draft report ready in three weeks. I haven't got the borings. I haven't got— [01:25:52] **Kristina Handt:** Oh, I guess it is April, isn't it? [01:25:54] **Brad Reifsteck:** I haven't got the topo survey. So, I would suggest the hour before the June meeting as long as that— [01:26:02] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** Sorry. Go ahead, Lindsay. And just for clarity, I was going to bring this up during our thing. I will be—our June meeting is June 2nd. I will not be here because I um and will not be able to join anywhere remote because I'll be hiking the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim. So I can't even message anyone even if I wanted. Um and so—hey, at least you told us. [01:26:25] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Wow. Okay. So June, you're—you're out. Um yeah. Does that work for everybody else to do it the hour before the June meeting? [01:26:35] **Council Members:** Yep. Yeah. [01:26:37] **Brad Reifsteck:** As long as that the—that'll give us time for the because the neighborhood meeting is also—well just don't schedule it before on—don't schedule it on June 1st. That's the only day before June 2nd. So, okay. Yeah, we wouldn't—we wouldn't schedule them the neighborhood meeting until we're all comfortable and go through the workshop, right? I mean, it could be late June. It's—it's—I mean, it—it could be in July, too. I mean, it doesn't really impact the schedule if we want to accept the report, the final report at the August meeting. [01:27:15] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** So then to make it clear for that June workshop meeting, we're going to have these different options using Mikusk roads as an example, right? And—and that—I think it'll be a good—good case study to— [01:27:30] **Brad Reifsteck:** These will be specific to the Mikusk project—specific. Yes. [01:27:35] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** Um throwing it out there. I don't know if he needs it in the report or this council discussion. Do we want an option where the city's contribution is more than our maintenance money? I don't think it would hurt. I mean, we might have to start going that direction to make some of these projects more acceptable to the—to the folks. Well, it gets it—in my opinion, it gets back to the benefit. The benefit is the city to some extent getting the road improved so we can maintain it. So, it's not what it is. But the larger—the larger benefit is the people that live on it or use it daily. But, okay, I don't think following, you know, the current process, it's going to—I think some of the feedback we got at the current the previous open house was—just doesn't seem palatable because of the use, you know, the project we just passed. Those are two dead-end streets where the benefits pretty—pretty much largely 95 or percent or 100% the people that live there. This one's different and getting to your the point. Okay, we're looking at different potential assessment options. Do we want to consider potential other funding options—whether it's a third or something—just so we can have all the options on the table at that work session? See what it means and then go from there. I just throwing it out there for your thoughts because if we're—we're departing already potentially on how this is assessed, you—you might as well take a very 10,000-foot holistic view. I—I'm okay with that. [01:29:15] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** I don't want to make it your life a lot more complicated, Brad, but maybe— [01:29:18] **Brad Reifsteck:** No, I—no, I think that's totally acceptable, right? But I don't—it's not going to take a whole lot of effort to maybe—maybe we kick in 30% cuz right now it's about 10% or 20%. We can come up with those three options or you know maybe something right—I mean we can certainly provide those uh that information um with a draft report. [01:29:45] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** It'll be easier to defend whatever—whatever decision we make. You know the more things we can show that we looked at and considered. Okay. Just to reiterate, we'll have the draft report at the June work session prior to—prior to any neighborhood meetings. [01:30:05] **Brad Reifsteck:** Correct. That—you'll probably have it a week or so before the workshop. [01:30:10] **Kristina Handt:** She wrote that down. [01:30:12] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. I—thanks for the memo, Brad, and and the discussion on this. [01:30:15] **Brad Reifsteck:** Yeah. Thank you. Um, so this is an hour before the second—the June 2nd meeting. [01:30:25] **Kristina Handt:** Oh, an hour before. Okay, got it. [01:30:28] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** And um, Lindsay have to brings back some souvenirs from the Grand Canyon—everything on my back. So—pieces, little tiny pieces of rock. And do we um, because of the July 4th holiday is our next meeting in June the 30th? [01:30:50] **Kristina Handt:** No, it's July 7th. [01:30:52] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yeah, it's July 7th. [01:30:54] **Kristina Handt:** July 7th. Yeah. So, it is just—okay. And we'll probably have enough for that to not have an option to cancel it. [01:31:05] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Oh, yeah. Like we did last year, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Um Ben, anything else for Brad? No. Brad, can you give us an update on the LRI grant application? I already know the answer, but I want to hear from you. [01:31:25] **Brad Reifsteck:** Yeah. So, we weren't successful in securing that um local road improvement fund grant. So um it's unfortunate, disappointing. It's the second time we've tried to apply um for the LRI grant for this road and um it's just very difficult. There's a lot of competition out there for those—those dollars and we just didn't score very high. So, um, again, it's unfortunate but—yeah—you know, I really appreciate that resident putting together that uh request because it—it—does take a quite a bit of effort um to put that application together. [01:32:15] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** So, and I—I think the county appreciated too because as Kristina mentioned in one of her reports that the county is talking about, we're going to have to do something sooner rather than later on—in that intersection um with—with Manning. [01:32:30] **Brad Reifsteck:** Yeah that—that's still out there. I think it's—I think it's planned for 2028 potentially. Um, so we may want to consider at least if we're—if we're going to do some improvements on Mikusk, we should look at maybe at least doing the the aggregate base to—ex—to expand for the turn lanes that they're potentially looking at as part of the roadway improvement. Um, and we can add those as alternate costs or something so that you know—you—you'll have that information. [01:33:05] **Kristina Handt:** She's nodding her head. So include what? What's that? Yeah, we should plan to—plan to do it. [01:33:12] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Yeah cuz that—the county's telling us we're going to have to do it in two years and you know— [01:33:18] **Kristina Handt:** Well, it's not guaranteed two years, but it's coming up, right? It could be five, it could be two, but we should plan for it regardless. [01:33:25] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** We should—Well, if you do a new road, even in five years, you don't want to be tearing it up again, right? [01:33:30] **Brad Reifsteck:** Right. Yeah. Right. At least you want to plan for the turn lanes, correct? As part of this project. So it would be most cost-effective to—when it does come to fruition for the signal—that we're prepared and ready to go. [01:33:45] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay, Brad, you're done with your staff updates. We don't have any other staff. You—you're— [01:33:52] **Kristina Handt:** I've caught my breath, so I have a few more things. A few more things. Okay. Um, on behalf of some of our other contractors who aren't here, I wanted to provide some um, code updates and corrections to Jack's report. With respect to **Woodchuck Tree Services**, the city attorney is not reviewing anything as far as we're concerned. That's a closed matter and we've gotten everything we need and no violations to be investigated. With respect to the **Buddhist temple**, they are continuing to submit some items and I'll be having a meeting with the city attorney and city planner and we will um be looking to see if they have a complete application and whether or not that will be moving forward. So that is um in the works still. Um, but we—they have been told repeatedly that they do not have permission to hold events. And so if they are holding events on the weekends, I have told the complainants they should be calling the sheriff's office to get out there and document that for us since we're not around on the weekend. [01:35:00] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** When I get a text from someone with pictures, asking me to do a driveby and I'm in Rochester. I'm like, uh, it's not my—it's not my job really. I—like uh to help out when I can, but the sheriff's better uh better equipped to handle that. So yeah. [01:35:15] **Kristina Handt:** And then last two things I have: uh, the newsletter was sent to the printer and so newsletter should be arriving in the mailboxes next week hopefully for folks. Uh, and information about spring cleanup is on the website. It'll be in the newsletter and encourage folks to check that out because of the new uh, fees that—that we'll be collecting this year. [01:35:40] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Did you hear anything from—in terms of— [01:35:42] **Kristina Handt:** They never got back to me. Our phones have been down. I don't know if that's—the last couple afternoons people have not been able to call in. I've been able to call out. So, it's been weird things. Um I'm hoping that's somewhat consistent with what they do with Stillwater Township that it's not going to cause them to go into—Again, all they do in Stillwater Township is dump a dumpster. They're not there. They don't have staff that do it. It's all volunteers in Stillwater Township. So, it's the only—there's no consistency with from a fee perspective in Stillwater Township that Moronis collects. [01:36:20] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** So the volunteers—someone's collecting it. [01:36:22] **Kristina Handt:** Sure. The—the volunteers are—I— [01:36:25] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** So we'll have to make sure like we have um—I already promise you volunteers so I have to look for that. [01:36:30] **Kristina Handt:** I've got—I've got Greg. I don't know if you guys can help. [01:36:35] **Council Member Greg Anderson:** Yeah, I'll be around. What's that? I'll be around. [01:36:40] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** Oh, sweet. Okay. Unfortunately, I'm a the trap coach on Saturday mornings. [01:36:45] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. That way you can have them practice trap on the ball field. All right. Um uh anything else? [01:36:52] **Kristina Handt:** That's all my updates Mayor. [01:36:55] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. Um—something—future agenda items. Um, do we want to talk about the um offer to um do the planting, the screening? Um, what would that—what would it take for you to—to write up that uh resolution? [01:37:15] **Kristina Handt:** Um, my understanding is that there's nothing that's needed from the watershed at all. Um, so it would be similar, I believe, to the resolution like I did for—for Celia. Um, I'd probably want to get a few more details about specifically the native plantings that are there. So, we can document that and we'd also document that the city's not responsible for any maintenance. The city's not responsible if the trees die, we'll be replacing it. I know that uh Mr. Helmer probably knows that, but you know, I—I—I think in—you know, 10, 15, 20 years when somebody else buys his house and a tornado comes through and blows those trees down, we don't want somebody to come back and say, "Hey, I don't want people looking into my—into my living room city. You've got to go plant all these trees." So just kind of some documentation, things like that in a resolution is—is what I think will be sufficient. [01:38:15] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** And—how does the council feel providing that direction to—Kristina? Absolutely agree. [01:38:22] **Council Member John Rog:** Yeah. Okay. It's good to—that you're using a shovel in your back. That's—Yes. Godspeed. It won't be done in a couple hours. Yeah. Solid afternoon. Um, anything else? [01:38:40] **Kristina Handt:** Uh, do we need to set a time for a special meeting? Um, well, we probably should set it now. We—So, we won't know if we'll need a—a special meeting, but we should probably um set a time for a special meeting um sometime next week, like a Monday or a Tuesday. Are we early? [01:39:00] **Council Member Lindsay Cremona:** I'm in depositions pretty much all next week—on purpose. Yeah. What'd you do? Yeah, it is on purpose. I'll be the one asking the questions, but so it's a little—But the 15th is the only day that I do not have depositions next week. [01:39:15] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** The 15th works for me. 15th tax day. Yep, I'm good. Tax date. Okay. So, let's reserve it for now—time. Um, and then TBD. Oh, 10 o'clock. Well, yeah. Good. What? We've done at 10, we've done at three. We've done it at four. Yeah. Good. [01:39:35] **Kristina Handt:** Um, just so I—And you'll send me the topic. [01:39:40] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Oh, yeah. We'll send you the topic. But yeah. Do we want to do earlier? Is that working? [01:39:45] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** I have—I have a call 11 to mid—11 to noon. So, we do 9:30 or we do one o'clock. I prefer— [01:39:55] **Council Member John Rog:** —Morning. Morning. Morning. 9:30 gives us an hour and a half versus an hour. [01:40:05] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. 9:30. I'll work with that. Yep. I should be able to be here by—the—what do we say? The—what's the date? The 15th. The 15th at 9:30. 9:30. It's going to be close. Yeah, it's going to be tight for me. Okay, 9:30. [01:40:25] **Kristina Handt:** Is 9 better though? [01:40:27] **Council Member Ben Cornett:** No, no, no. 9:30, 9:45, 10 is the best. But um I—I can try to make 9:30 work. Yeah, I should be better. [01:40:35] **Kristina Handt:** And you'll know the topic before the posting period. You—just you—just tell me what to write on it. [01:40:42] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. No, the—well, when we know if we'll need it, you know, I mean, the—the Mayor and any two council members can call a special meeting. So, you don't have to do it here. So, you know, we're talking about the um potential special meeting to discuss the contract for our city administrator. So, that's the topic. That's the topic. Okay. Um let's see what else here. Where are we go? Um anything else under future agenda items? Thank you for bringing that up. Um, don't have any on my list. John anything? [01:41:20] **Council Member John Rog:** I was just going to um make a—a comment that um I don't know if it's going to be if it made the letter or not, but about uh at the local restaurant that's—that's uh has their 60th anniversary. Oh, yeah. Did—did you get that? Um, did Chris—Okay. So, Amanda talking about—Amanda. So, just to back up, so what John's talking about is in our last special meeting, um, John brought up um the fact that **Gosch's House** is having her 60th anniversary and I wanted to know if council was cool with putting something in a newsletter. We said, "Yeah." We told Amanda—did we—did I dream this or did—Yeah. No, we talked about it. And so did Amanda. Okay. She never gave it to me. [01:42:15] **Kristina Handt:** I—so there's nothing in the newsletter. No, you need to have a conversation with her then and just—well, or you all need to have a conversation about how you can only talk on things that are on the agenda for special meetings. That's probably what she's going to tell me. So you can't bring up stuff that's not on the agenda. That's why we keep asking you what you want on the agenda. [01:42:40] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** That's right. But that doesn't mean that you couldn't have asked her separately. But no, she did not send me that. So, well, we—we—we talked—we talked about—sorry, it's already been sent to the printer. We talked about trying to adhere to that, you know, that and then we ended up—Okay. So, so—is there something that you have somebody's written up I could put on a website or something at least to get it out? I don't have any information about it. I'm—Is that what I—I did get something from the owner, but I can—I can forward it to you. [01:43:20] **Kristina Handt:** Okay. Um but yeah, and if there's something like that, I can do. I—Yeah, the—it's off and printed. I'm sorry. [01:43:30] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Sure. No, that's—that's fine. Could be in the next one, too. All right. The next one won't be till—well, actually, the next one will be what? In the fall. Are they having an event? Maybe that would be the better time for it. Oktoberfest. I have to—I'd have to look it up. [01:43:50] **Kristina Handt:** So, wait. Okay. I—it wasn't an agenda, but didn't we talk about that in the future agenda items? I thought so. Not at a special meeting. You don't have future agenda items. Nice try, Mayor. Oh, yeah. Forget you have an administrator that knows. [01:44:10] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** Okay. Thank you. Thank you for holding us accountable. Yeah, that's fine. I'll—I'll find it and I'll—no, it's—you play by the rules. You play by the rules. It makes sense at it in the fall when I sent it to me and I'll hold on to it. So, who wants to read the community calendar? Last time. I thought last time was last time. I thought—Yeah, that's—Yeah, you read it because I think it was last time. Last time. Oh, that's right. Mr. Mayor did. [01:44:40] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** I'll breeze through it just to get through it. Mahtomedi Public School Board Meeting Monday, April 27th, Mahtomedi District Education Center 7 p.m. Stillwater Public School Board meeting Tuesday, April 21st, Oak Park Learning Center 5:30 p.m. Washington County Commissioners meeting Tuesday government center 9:00 a.m. Tuesdays. You could have said that any faster. Move to adjourn. [01:45:10] **Council Member John Rog:** Second. [01:45:12] **Mayor Jeff Giefer:** I. [01:45:13] **Council Members:** I.