Busy Weeks!

It has been a few weeks since I have put a post up here and I would like to take a little time to update you all on the things that have been happening on the city-scape:

1. Grand Marais was voted the "Coolest Small Town in the Country" by Budget Travel!  This is a great honor for us considering that we beat out some pretty amazing small towns throughout the country.  A big thank you goes out to the staff of Visit Cook County who hit the promo on this hard and earned us a great deal of extra votes!  Another big thank you to everyone who shared the contest with friends and family and who put in the time to vote every day.  Now we need to figure out what we are going to DO with this title!  For a little background, this contest has been going on for 10 years, so there are 9 other "Coolest Small Towns," Ely being one of them.  I do think that the concentration of 1/5 of the coolest towns in the country being in Northern MN is not a coincidence...

2. The EDA's Housing Study came back with some very useful information.  As reported in our last Council meeting and in conversations that I have had with EDA members, it seems that there were not very many surprises in the report, but many troubling implications.  We are seeing a net growth in Cook County of residents, but the age of those new residents is indicating that we are getting retirees or people who are looking for a second career or empty nesters.  These things are not too disturbing because this demographic has definite advantages, but we are not seeing families moving up here to settle and raise their kids at the levels other rural areas are seeing.  This is the topic that we have to tackle and it is multi-faceted.  Rest assured that this topic will become a high priority for the Council in the coming years.

3. Talks with potential customers of the District Heating Project (Biomass heat for large consumers of heat energy in our city) have begun again and have picked up speed.  The City adopted the standing District Heating Task Force as the City's Committee on District Heating and thus we have been pursuing this project as a potential Public Utility offered by the City on a limited basis to buildings that consume enough heat energy that it is cost effective to hook them up.  The word "Feasible" has been said many times in these conversations and I would like to speak to that for a second:
This project is NOT being strong armed through by any means.  The contracts that the City has signed have many, many requisites that include safeguards for the residents of the City.  This project will only proceed IF and ONLY IF many things happen in a timely and accurate manner.  First the Committee is going around talking to potential customers and showing them the information that we have gathered showing that the cost of biomass and the cost of running the plant will be significantly less over time than each individual entity maintaining and operating their own boilers using propane or fuel oil.  The Committee then gathers the customers' concerns and questions in order to address them.  We will provide updated service agreements that address as many of the concerns and questions that are possible to address and will ask each customer to sign a contract for service (These contracts are null and void if any of the further steps fail to happen).  Once we get the contracts signed AND we get enough contracts signed to cover the expenses of operating the plant, the Committee will return to the City with an application for bonding funding from the State of MN and other entities (regional development funds, low interest loans, etc) to complete the financing package.  IF the City is successful in securing the needed funds AT AN ACCEPTABLE COST (it costs money to borrow money and this plant needs to support itself and still hit the cost projections in the contracts to customers!), then the City will seek bids for construction, accept the bid that fits the best, and then construct the plant.  This whole process is likely to take until the fall of 2017 when we would be ready to hook up buildings and provide heat.

*I hope that helps in the understanding of the project progressing.  If you have any questions about this, please let me know.  I would be glad to meet with anyone to answer questions or explain it in person.

4.  Downtown Retailers and Cook County Ministerium Meetings:  As the Council works toward addressing the City's Comprehensive Plan, I have been meeting with several of the important groups present in our community so that I can get their perspectives on their roles in the Comprehensive Plan.  There are many things that the Chamber, Visit Cook County, the downtown retailers, the Ministerium, and other groups offer to our community, and all of these things need to be considered in our Comprehensive Plan.  I have been getting great input and insight from these groups and look forward to bringing up some of their concerns on the Council level for discussion.

5. Joint Meeting:  The City hosted the first joint meeting of the year between the City, the County, the Tribe, and the School.  Many board members attended from each entity and we discussed the structure of the meetings, deciding to use the time together to bring one another up to speed on what was happening in each of our organizations as well as making it an opportunity to ask questions of each other in a structured meeting.  The group also agreed to extend an invitation to the Hospital Board to attend and participate in these meetings.

6. Library Strategic Planning: The library board met for its annual strategic planning retreat to discuss action items and reassess its goals from last year.  Movements forward on improving accessibility of library resources, both physically and intellectually as well as improving outreach to the community topped the list, but there will be on-going developments at the library to better serve our community's needs!

**As the Council gets deeper into the year the Councilors have been attending more of their committee meetings and have been bringing very interesting reports to the meetings.  Our next meeting is Wednesday, March 11th at 4:30 at the City Hall Chambers.  You are all welcome to attend!