Based on the context provided for the North St. Paul city officials and the dialogue within the transcript, here is the formatted version with speaker names. Note: As timestamps were not provided in your raw text, I have used `[00:00]` as a placeholder. *** **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Okay, I'm going to call the meeting to order. Thank you. The February 4th council meeting order. I’d like to say the Pledge of Allegiance, so please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. **[00:00] 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] Mayor John Monge:** Thank you everyone. Sorry about the late start; we had some really good workshops so we went a little bit long. For everybody watching from home, you can see it’s picture day here for the city; everybody looks so nice up here, so we’re ready to go for that. Brian, can you call order please? **[00:00] Brian Frandle:** Council Member Nordby? **[00:00] Council Member Jason Nordby:** Here. **[00:00] Brian Frandle:** Council Member Woods? **[00:00] Council Member Troy Woods:** Here. **[00:00] Brian Frandle:** Council Member McKenzie? **[00:00] Council Member Dave Mckenzie:** Here. **[00:00] Brian Frandle:** Council Member Schweer? **[00:00] Council Member Cassidy Schweer:** Here. **[00:00] Brian Frandle:** Mayor Monge? **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Here. Thank you very much. Can I get a motion to adopt the agenda please? **[00:00] Council Member Troy Woods:** I will motion for that. **[00:00] Council Member Dave Mckenzie:** I will second. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** All those in favor say Aye. **[00:00] Council Members:** Aye. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Thank you very much. Brian? **[00:00] Brian Frandle:** Thank you, Mayor. Consent agenda: Item A, January 21st, 2025 Workshop minutes; Item B, January 21st, 2025 regular meeting minutes; Item C, General claims of $4,668,617.29; Item D, payroll claims of $17,466.06; Item E, amend ordinance chapter 117 on liquor license setbacks; Item F, approve temporary liquor license for Church and School of St. Peter's annual Gala, February 22nd of 2025; Item G, approval of on-sale and Sunday liquor license for Puzzle Sports Bar and Banquet; Item H, electric purchase of 25 padmount transformers; Item I, electric custom flatbed for F550 purchase request as part of the CIP; Item J, city council staff goal-setting retreat which is February 11th of 2025. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Thank you, Brian. Anyone want to pull anything at this time? If not, can I get a motion to adopt the agenda please? **[00:00] Council Member Cassidy Schweer:** So moved. **[00:00] Council Member Dave Mckenzie:** Second. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** All those in favor say Aye. **[00:00] Council Members:** Aye. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Thank you. All right, next is open to the public at 6:40. John Schall, welcome John. **[00:00] John Schall:** Good evening, Mayor, Council. I don't know how many of you received an envelope from a local plumbing organization or company. I'm getting "nos" on that. Anyway, it is from a plumbing company and it starts off with "Your home is in a neighborhood where we've recently repaired the main sewer line at one or more residences." Well, I haven't seen any of that going on in my area. But anyway, it goes on to say that when homes in your neighborhoods were built, the main sewer lines were commonly made of clay pipe or cast iron. I called the building inspecting company, talked to a master plumber, and said, "When were clay pipes and cast iron stopped?" and he said in the '50s. So, they start right off with two items that are questionable to get into your house and probably upsell you. I can't believe that I'm sitting here as the only person who received this letter, so I guess I'm really lucky. What they're saying is that they will scope your sewer pipe—give it a colonoscopy—for free. Now I know there's no such thing as a free lunch. I'd be aware of this. Yesterday was a follow-up, this time saying only clay pipes, didn't talk about cast iron pipes. So I questioned the honesty of them. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Good to know. Thank you. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll go home and look to see if we got it. I appreciate it. I haven’t seen it in the mail. **[00:00] John Schall:** The letter was January 13th. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Oh, that was a long... yeah, I never saw it. My wife probably threw it away. **[00:00] John Schall:** This one came yesterday. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Oh, thanks John. Thank you. All right, that is it for public comment. Back to you. **[00:00] Brian Frandle:** All right, thank you. We have one item on the business action items. Item A is adopt ordinance enacting chapter 126, mobile food vendor license. We have Chief Mallinger here to speak to that. **[00:00] Jason Mallinger (Fire Chief):** Hello. Mayor, council members. Yeah, here today on behalf of myself, our department, Captain Brent Fyksen here—one of our fire inspectors as well—and our Community Development Department, to talk a little bit about the mobile food truck vendor license and to obviously answer any questions that you may have regarding it. I can get long-winded at times, but I have a lot of background going into putting this together if you would like me to start from the beginning a little bit? **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Please, yes. **[00:00] Jason Mallinger (Fire Chief):** For sure. Within the fire service, it goes back for me definitely to about 10 years ago when locally in Lakeville there was a food truck explosion that happened in a residential area that affected 11 homes and displaced three families. That was kind of the onset in the local fire service to really start taking a look at these things and realize we haven't been doing our duty in keeping an eye on that. Obviously, that was quite some years ago, but it’s always been a concern of ours. I’d like to say we’re doing good things on the inspection side with rental licensing and commercial pre-planning, and it took some time to kind of get here. This has always been an area that we would have liked to address, especially with the majority of what we see in the city of North St. Paul for food trucks comes at the History Cruisers car show. There are other events where they certainly show up, but predominantly the bigger issue is with the amount of people and the trucks that we have for the car show. We’ve never really had a procedure or a policy in place previously. It wasn't until last year, after we have additional staff back, that I decided with our team that we need to start looking at these. However, we didn't have a specific food truck ordinance. Even though Minnesota State Fire Code is what we follow, there wasn’t that foothold to go out there and look at these units. Last year, by way of our event permit, our Community Development Department along with the History Cruisers got the list of vehicles and our team started doing inspections. We were just basically inspecting them from the fire code standpoint to making sure they were safe. There was no fee associated with that whatsoever. We knew we didn't have anything specifically in place, but we felt it was a necessary need. This past summer is when we really started, along with Riley and Jack, to focus on putting together an ordinance. Our fire inspector Brent has worked with our local Ramsey County fire inspectors as well as adjacent communities in Washington County, Oakdale, and Lake Elmo. One of our main concerns is we wanted to make sure we were doing a good service to those that needed to have the inspections done, because we knew they were going to other communities as well. We felt if we're all looking at the same thing, can we all be using the same inspection form? They also got the State Fire Marshal included on this. All of the inspectors and Fire Marshals within Ramsey County are basically on board. So if somebody goes to Maplewood and has an inspection done and they have that form and a license, if they were to submit that to us, the team would look at that and we would go, "Yep, you meet the requirement, you don't have to come in here for us to look at it," and vice-versa. We’d be sharing our inspection information with other departments to help lessen the burden on some of these units. The focus has been to make sure that safety and the liability of the city is being met. We focused on a few areas within the code to help protect our businesses. It wouldn't allow a couple food trucks to just show up and park outside of a business like Mac’s Dinette; they would need to get approval from the owner to do that and they would need to get a license from us. We felt that what we have in this code correlates to what’s going on in our city. This one is very similar to our neighbors in Oakdale. It's a little bit different in Maplewood because they have their own health inspector along with St. Paul. That’s my long-winded story of how we got here. **[00:00] Council Member Dave Mckenzie:** Does Ramsey County have the same thing set up through the State Fairgrounds? Do they inspect all those food trucks where once they get inspected would they be put onto your list? Because I think once they go fuel their tanks on their trucks, they have to have some type of an inspection almost each time they go and fuel their LP tanks. **[00:00] Jason Mallinger (Fire Chief):** I’m not sure about every time they refuel, but that definitely is an item on their list. Within ours, that is something that staff would be doing between our fire inspectors and Sarah in Community Development. We've been learning a lot lately about different types of licenses from the state, whether it's the Minnesota Department of Agriculture or Ramsey County. If a unit had that completed and had an inspection done say with St. Paul fire, we would definitely take that information and potentially sign off on it without making them come in to do it. It becomes a little bit more difficult when it’s a tent or a stand. **[00:00] Council Member Dave Mckenzie:** For the vehicles that come in for the car show, you get a complete list of how many they're going to set up in the city? My understanding is they'll be signing up each one of them so they get their license to sell food here in the city for the car show. Now if any of those vendors go to, let's say, a church function—would that be okay as long as they have that permit? If they do North Haven or St. Peter's Fall Festival? **[00:00] Jason Mallinger (Fire Chief):** Yes. Once they received from us our food truck license, they can go anywhere for an entire year within the city. The only caveat for them is obviously whatever event they would be a part of, they would have to be part of that specific event permit. **[00:00] Council Member Dave Mckenzie:** Correct. But our inspection whenever it is done—say it starts April 1st—gives them time before things really wrap up to hit the ground running. Now would this also include like vendors that come in and do the kettle popcorn under the tents? **[00:00] Jason Mallinger (Fire Chief):** Anything that is a tent or a stand, the difference is it’s going to require potentially a little bit more conversation because we're going to have to do the first inspection once they set it up. We’d like to have conversations with them beforehand, walking them through what we would like to see. Because in that scenario, if it’s the first Friday night car show and they're asking us to come out at 4:00 to look at things and there's a problem that they can't fix, they're shut down. **[00:00] Council Member Dave Mckenzie:** Even like the rib guy by the east end of town there, I know he's got his LP tanks out there and that's something that he should have set up and have inspected prior to the first night of the car show. **[00:00] Jason Mallinger (Fire Chief):** Yes. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Thanks. Because when we read through this, there were a lot of questions. A couple residents reached out: "Is this just a grab for another license?" Well, you can use the Ramsey County one—if you just want to do North St. Paul, you can do it with us. If you do Ramsey County, it flows through. To me, that’s comfortable because it's not every single city where they got to grab this. Brent, you reached out to Ramsey County and how they approve from the Agriculture department? **[00:00] Brent Fyksen (Fire Marshal):** Yeah. Do I need to go on this microphone? So yeah, there's a couple different licenses. They have a temporary license through Ramsey County Health that goes for one to two days. Then there is the Minnesota Department of Agriculture license, and that is recognized statewide versus if you're just looking to go here. They have their own licensing process; they do a lot of the health and sanitary side. It's really straightforward. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Appreciate looking into this. It's nice to see there's a hierarchy as far as being able to get the proper license as far as statewide all the way down to citywide. **[00:00] Jason Mallinger (Fire Chief):** And that’s what we worked on with our neighbors. Getting everybody in Ramsey County together to use the same form that we all put together and recognize it amongst each other. **[00:00] Council Member Dave Mckenzie:** Do they charge a fee through the county? What would that be? **[00:00] Brent Fyksen (Fire Marshal):** $80. That’s our fee. We've checked other places and ours is below what most places are. **[00:00] Council Member Jason Nordby:** Can you speak to the differences—and my assumption is this is completely separate from your inspection—to the Minnesota Department of Health? Because my understanding is their inspection has to happen every time they set up. Is that accurate? **[00:00] Jason Mallinger (Fire Chief):** I believe the difference is in the aspect of that temporary permit, not in the inspection of their large annual one. My understanding is with the temporary permit, that could be for a specific date or time—maybe more for a stand of sorts. I would have to double-check that with the Health Department. **[00:00] Council Member Jason Nordby:** I guess where I'm going with it too—because having some experience with food trucks at my venues—they do also check the Ansul system. Would the Minnesota Health Department work with you? My understanding is if I own a food truck, I call the Department of Health, say I'm going to be at such-and-such a location, and an inspector meets me out there. They have to sign off before I can start selling food. Is the Minnesota Department of Health willing to have your permit as part of this process to say, "Wait a minute, before I can even inspect you for health, I see you need to go to the county first and get your once-a-year safety check"? **[00:00] Jason Mallinger (Fire Chief):** Council Member Nordby, I’m tracking what you’re saying there. We have worked very closely with Ramsey County. It is as odd as it may seem for the Fire Department to be working with the Health Department regarding food, but we do, because it’s a health and safety thing. I was not aware that they would be coming out every time they get set up, but I could understand that because the application is very in-depth. **[00:00] Council Member Jason Nordby:** When I set up events, I’m asking my food truck drivers when they can start serving and they're always like, "The inspector's not here yet." So to the best of my knowledge, they are health-inspected every single time they are at a location. Would you be willing to reach out to ensure that your Ansul requirements for your inspection matches theirs? I don't want a food truck going to you and you passing them, and then the Health Department saying, "No, your Ansul system isn't up to par." If you guys could be on the same standard, I think that would be awesome. **[00:00] Brent Fyksen (Fire Marshal):** Yeah, so no matter what, when we're going to do our food truck inspections, we go through the unit with a whole checklist. You can see this online on OpenGov. Along with the fire extinguishers, the Ansul system is definitely one of the things that needs to be annually checked and serviced by a licensed technician. We make sure that is tagged. **[00:00] Council Member Jason Nordby:** And that’s perfect. Just an open line of communication to make sure we're asking for the same things they will be. **[00:00] Council Member Dave Mckenzie:** I noticed too on their temporary food license, it does require you to notify them two days ahead of time. **[00:00] Council Member Jason Nordby:** There's nothing in the ordinance we're passing right now regarding a 30-day maximum? In the state of Minnesota right now, a food truck can only be at a temporary location for a maximum of 30 days. I just want to make sure nothing in our permit is more restrictive than the state. **[00:00] Jason Mallinger (Fire Chief):** I don't think we have anything in there that’s specific to days. **[00:00] Brian Frandle:** Looking under licensing procedure, I don't believe we have anything in the ordinance as currently drafted. **[00:00] Council Member Dave Mckenzie:** Will these vending trucks bring them to your fire hall and do the inspections in the back? **[00:00] Jason Mallinger (Fire Chief):** Typically that's what they do. They come here. Last year, if they didn't come, we showed up to their doorstep or out in the street. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** I’m just glad we’re able to talk about this. Thank you, Manager Frandle, for being able to do this. It’s great to have this explanation so everyone is clear. It’ll help clean up events and vendors. **[00:00] Council Member Jason Nordby:** With our relationship with the History Cruisers, is it safe to assume that you'll be sending this ordinance to Bob? He has a really good relationship with his vendors. **[00:00] Jason Mallinger (Fire Chief):** Yeah, they've had meetings already and have talked about this, so they're expecting it. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Perfect. Thank you. Any other questions? All right, can I get a motion to approve Ordinance 126? **[00:00] Council Member Troy Woods:** So moved. **[00:00] Council Member Dave Mckenzie:** Second. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** All those in favor say Aye. **[00:00] Council Members:** Aye. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Opposed? None. Thank you. Appreciate the time. **[00:00] Jason Mallinger (Fire Chief):** Thank you. **[00:00] Brian Frandle:** Reports, City Manager and departments. This week, probably Thursday or Friday, they'll be installing that glass along the two counters as you come into City Hall. We got 50 building permits for the month of January—kind of busy for January. Just a heads up, down there at McKnight Fields, we've been storing all of our tree trimmings. It's quite a pile. We went out and got a couple of quotes to grind it; one came in around $30 grand, the lower one around $15. That company will come in, grind it all, and haul it away. The Electric Department has been busy tree trimming. They had gone around and gotten several quotes for the 12 lights that'll be put up at Casey Lake Trail. They found that the lights we have now, as expensive as they are, are actually the cheaper options, so we’re going to put them up. There will be seven more lights added to the walking path from 17th circling around the backside to the lift station. We stop there so we don't light up any houses. Ava’s been busy updating the website; she did her business highlight this week at Sweet Nothings Bakery. Fire and Ice is coming up this Friday from 5:00 to 9:00. PD Chief is away this week, but they had good luck with their last post; I think they got three applications for investigators and three for patrol. Public Works has been busy with the snowman build. Unfortunately, kids came in and stole the copper from the water service running into the house. It’s unfortunate; pretty soon you're going to have to put a 10-foot fence around these buildings. Regarding the VFDs (Variable Frequency Drives), that’s a city project we can fund the majority of. Out of that $50,000 project, we’re going to be able to cover $30,000 to $35,000. It saves money through electricity as well. WSB is at 90% completion for the road reconstruction plans for this year. They also finished tree trimming at Casey Lake and moved down to Southwood Park. That’s all I have. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Thank you very much. Reports, commissions and committees. Council Member Schweer? **[00:00] Council Member Cassidy Schweer:** Parks and Rec met a couple weeks ago. HJ wrapped up their final presentation on the feasibility studies. I look forward to having them come to the Council to present those. You can view it online. We brought in a new commission member, Rachel Lucas. We turned over chairs; Lloyd is no longer a chair, but we have Laura Greenley Carp who is the new chair, and the Vice Chair is Sarah Zarka. Fire and Ice is this weekend at Casey Lake. The reason why it's not at Hauser is because of the ADA requirements and we didn't want to damage the grass by burning, so it’s at Casey Lake. **[00:00] Council Member Dave Mckenzie:** EDA won't meet until middle of March sometime. **[00:00] Council Member Jason Nordby:** Arts and Culture Commission will meet tomorrow. **[00:00] Brian Frandle:** The Planning Commission meeting for February 6th has been cancelled due to lack of agenda items. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Thank you very much. General Business Council, anything? **[00:00] Council Member Dave Mckenzie:** I got nothing. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Only thing I have is when we had "Coffee with the Council," it was very nice to have some residents show up. Ava is going to be working on more of that where we can meet with people in different ways. **[00:00] Council Member Troy Woods:** That’d be a nice place to have a "Meet with a Cop," too. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Indeed. If nothing else, our next meeting is February 11th and I will ask for an adjournment motion. **[00:00] Council Member Dave Mckenzie:** Motion. **[00:00] Council Member Jason Nordby:** Second. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** All those in favor say Aye. **[00:00] Council Members:** Aye. **[00:00] Mayor John Monge:** Opposed none. We'll see you on the 11th. Thanks everyone.