City Council Meeting 3-25-2015

Last night the City Council gathered for another marathon-esque meeting that covered many important topics and included a great deal of interesting conversation.  I will summarize these topics here so that you won't have to spend 2+ hours getting up to speed!

Things started out with a bang with community member Greg Gentz approaching the Council with a request for the Council to consider writing a letter of support of the Lakeview Natural Dairy and other residents of the state of MN who want to sell products directly from their farm or garden to consumers.  He requested that this be taken up for the next meeting and that, if written, the letter contain information about the Constitutional protections that are at issue in this case.  The Council agreed to take this up at their next meeting.  We will discuss our ability to write the letter and the language therein...

Then we moved on to the consent agenda.  This is where we take care of a bunch of routine business all in one fell swoop.  There were a few questions about the payment of bills, an item added to the agenda, and a permit renewal for the Cook County Curling Club Consumption and Display Permit (say that 5 times fast...).  That last one had a second of conversation:  to explain, the curling club uses the Community Center.  In order for them to be able to bring in alcoholic beverages to enjoy after or in between their matches, they need a permit.  There has never been any problems with this, so it was included in the consent agenda and passed.  There you go curlers!

Next we had a presentation from Kimber Wraalstad concerning the renovation of the North Shore Hospital.  She presented to us to get us up to speed and to gain the City's support in requesting grant funds from the IRRRB for infrastructure improvements that will be required with the hospital's renovation.  The total amount of the funds available would be up to $350,000 to pay for infrastructure.  The City would act as a pass through for this money and all of the construction would be performed and supervised by the hospitals building contractor, Boldt Building.  The City will require that all of the infrastructure be build to standard, will view and accept bids, and will maintain records of payments going out for this work.  Seeing it as a great opportunity for the hospital to make the reinvestment in our local healthcare more affordable, the Council voted to pass the resolution stating we will apply for the IRRRB funds for their project.  The Council was very impressed with the thorough information, financial planning, and project assessments that were given as background for this request (it was almost 30 MB of files on the computer... That's a fair amount!).

After that we had a community member Randy Sjogren approach the Council requesting permission, or at least an investigation into permission to place a set of viewing binoculars near Artist's Point.  The location identified was on the west side of the Artist's Point parking lot, in the pebbles between the picnic table to the north and the trees to the south.  This spot was identified because of its clear view up and down the Shore.  There were many questions asked, including, "Can we even do this? Who controls that land?" and "How would the binoculars be mounted to the ground?" and "What is your interest in this project?"  Sjogren stated that if he were the one installing the binoculars, he would want to make it a coin operated system so that he could re-coup some of his expenses.  If it were a City project to install the binoculars and he didn't have any income coming from that, that scenario would be great too because he sees it as something that would benefit the City and all of the folks that look out at the Harbor and lake.  The Council thanked Sjogren for his idea and will be looking into the control of that area and how we could permit for something that would be more of a permanent installation instead of a seasonal business without any foundations needed.  More to come on this!

The next thing was the addition to the agenda.  For those of you interested, please look at the previous blog post that I wrote concerning Assisted Living services in Grand Marais to get some background information.  The request before the Council last night was to take action on the decision of the previous Council (in December of 2014) to have a market study done to find out the feasibility of Assisted Living services in Cook County, centered in Grand Marais.  This Request For Proposals (RFP) will be sent out to companies that do market studies o find which company will be the best suited to perform our study.  We are casting a wide net for this study.  The previous market study, done in 2010, drew a small circle around Grand Marais and did not speak with members of our neighboring communities, who would be served by these services.  After some conversation and and introduction by Karl Hanson, a member of the North Shore Health Care Foundation (whom the City will approach for grant monies to pay for the study), the motion was made and passed to move forward with sending out the RFP to the vendors we know of AS WELL AS being in communication with the County Board and the Grand Portage Tribal Council about this process to get their cooperation in gathering information.  I have already sent out contacts to the County Board and the Tribal Council to meet with them and go over the RFP and the process.
*At this point we are not committed to anything.  The purpose of doing this process is to get accurate information pertaining to the needs and future needs of people in our community.  We want our community members to be able to stay in our community as long as possible and not have to move to a completely different community when their healthcare needs change.  Assisted living is the hole in our offerings at present, we need to figure out how big of a hole it is and if we can meet those needs with the services already present in our community instead of trying to attract another entity to fill those needs.  Again, please refer to my previous blog post or give me a call if you have any questions.

Next was the Planning Commission report.  The Planning Commission held a special meeting regarding the Development Agreement between the City and the developer of the proposed Grand Lakeview Development, which would be located in an undeveloped piece of land above the Gofer Cabins property.  Preliminary platt drawings have been done and the City approved a setback variance for the design previously, but before things get started, there needs to be a Development Agreement between the City and the developer.  Why?  Because this development requires infrastructure and the City is going to own that infrastructure.  The City needs to know that this project will be completed to the expectations and specifications that are necessary for the City.  The City is not a developer and doesn't want to be, so there are certain things that our legal counsel has told us are standard in an agreement like this.  We haven't done a lot of this development, so we want to take our lawyer's advice.  These assurances cost money and take time though, and that is something that the developer is concerned about.  This project is slated to be an affordable housing development, something that our community has identified is a priority.  All of the cost for this project will impact that sale price though.  For now I can say that our legal counsel and the lawyer for the developer are working together to figure out how we can both feel good about this project and get the desired result for both of us.

Moving on, we briefly discussed the continuing plan for City Strategic Planning.  There are two channels this planning is going to take: 1. Comprehensive Planning-- A wide, thorough, thoughtful process with a great deal of public input and investment; and 2. Capital Improvement Planning-- This will be more of an internal process, but not without community input, that will seek to determine the areas in greatest need for our City and then work toward creating a plan to accomplish those things.  Considering that our City Administrator is going to be taking a vacation here upcoming (and I hope he has a great time!), these processes will be getting researched while he is gone (looking at other Capital Improvement Plans and Comprehensive Plans), we will be setting dates for these meetings when he gets back.

At this point we were all getting pretty worn out, so we moved to Council and Staff reports.  I reported on a CCLEP meeting I attended where I learned a great deal about programs happening around the region to promote energy efficiency and even an internship program that the City would be eligible for that would potentially give us some opportunities to achieve considerable strides forward in our status as a Green City.  I also reported on the North House Annual meeting that I attended last week.
Dave Mills attended the YMCA board meeting where they are hashing out a facility agreement with the school.  Sounds like a lot of thought going into that as well!  He also mentioned the North Woods Food Project meeting he attended where they began talking about a city compost plan again and the Green Dollars survey that they are doing to gather information to see what kinds of foods we could afford to produce locally instead of buying it from other places.  Very good stuff.

The other Councilors either made their updates in the previous agenda items or had no scheduled meetings.

Our next meeting is April 8th where we will discuss the letter of support for the Lakeview Natural Dairy, the GreenCorps program (to see if we should apply for an intern), the possibility of changing our meeting time to make it more accessible, community bathrooms, and an update on the RFP support from the County and Tribe.

See you there!