Council Meeting 5-28-15

One for the ages, we had a pretty concise and relatively short (1 hour) meeting last night that covered some very important ground for the City.

First of all, I would like to give a shout out to Tim Kennedy, who was absent from the meeting tonight recovering from an emergency medical procedure that he recently had.  Get better soon Tim!

Following the approval of the consent agenda with the addition of a few items, the Council considered an application from the American Legion Post #413 for a temporary liquor license for a beer tent in the parking lot adjacent to the Legion Hall for the weekend of Fisherman's Picnic.  Terry Breithaupt, the manager of the Legion, was present to give the Council a brief run-down of the safeguards the Legion puts in place to prevent beer from getting into the hands of minors, which sounded sufficient and appropriate.  The Council voted unanimously to approve the temporary  license for the beer tent.

Next was a pretty important item on the agenda.  The Council considered a new contract for a bonding arrangement with the County to take care of the EDA Business Park with the City limits.  The history on this goes back to 2007 when the original bonds were issued.  The expense of developing the Business Park was leveraged against special assessments on each of the lots in the amount of $60,000/lot.  This amount was to be paid concurrently with the purchase of a lot.  Since not all of the lots have been sold and because the EDA believes that the special assessments are hindering their sale, they have asked for the lots to be re-assessed in order to lower that assessment. (Still following?).  Basically, the County and the City are going to share the cost of the bonds for the business park so that the amount of assessment on each lot can be lowered so they can sell and so the City/County can start collecting tax on those lots and so that the Business Park can be used for what it was developed for.  After some input from our legal counsel, the Council voted and approved the contract for bond financing.

In another exciting piece of action, the Council had the second reading of Ordinance 2015-01, which dictates growler sales in the City.  We had the first reading at the last meeting where we had a few questions concerning language and structure of the ordinance, but at this meeting we were advised that the ordinance was in good form and thus we voted to approve the revised Ordinance 2015-01, which allows for Sunday sales of growlers.  In looking around, it seems that Grand Marais got on this pretty quickly as there are only a handful of other cities in the state that are currently selling growlers on Sundays, so go and get it!

The Council added a few additional conversations to the agenda, one being a conversation about topics for the next joint powers meeting and the next being a conversation about creating a plan for the public bathrooms in Grand Marais.

For the joint meeting conversation points, the Council brought up garages again, to see if there would be any interest in partnerships in building or handling that topic, the Council brought up recreation spending and wanted to have a conversation on where each entity stands on that, the Council was also very interested in seeing the work that the County has done on making an objective application for entities seeking discretionary funds, and there was interest in hearing from Grand Portage on its agricultural/compost projects, which sound incredible!

As for the public bathrooms, Councilor Benson suggested creating an action plan for the project so that we don't find ourselves sitting in the same place 12 months from now.  This was agreed on and added to by Councilor Mills pointing out that we are going to be getting back the building assessment for City Hall soon and that can inform any changes/construction we do.  The conversation will continue in the future.  Stay tuned for an action plan of some sort.

Then it was time for Councilor/Staff reports.  It was a pretty quiet few weeks with Councilors Moody and Benson not having any reports and Councilor Mills reporting briefly on his meetings with the broadband committee (to brainstorm what is next), the YMCA (discussing finances and budget), and the Northwoods Food Project (discussing their area food survey and compost project).  You can get the survey results from Diane Booth at the Extension Office located at the Community Center.

My report took a little time because there were several things that happened in my weeks since the last meeting.

1. The City won another GreenSteps City award for the work that has been done in creating more energy efficient/waste efficient practices in the City. I will be going down to the League of MN Cities Annual Conference in June in Duluth to accept it.  I also invited the rest of the Councilors to attend the conference because it usually isn't so close to home and the trainings have proven to be very, very valuable in application to our work here in Grand Marais.

2. I brought up some conversations that I have had with residents asking questions about vacation rentals by owner in Grand Marais and seeking some clarification in how and where these are allowed.  The Planning and Zoning Commission will bring a summary to the Council in the near future.

3. There will be an unveiling of the public art sculpture on the library lawn this coming Friday June 5th at 4:30pm.  Everyone is invited!

4. We had the first meeting of the stakeholders in the senior services conversation.  There were many very knowledgeable people in attendance and we spent quite a lot of time talking about the situation and then decided to set some dates to meet with the companies that returned the City's RFP for doing the market study on what services we have and what we will need as a community. These meetings will be happening in the coming weeks and then I will make sure to update you of progress.

5. Finally the last update I brought forward had to do with the District Heating Biomass project.  Last week myself and many representatives of the project met with potential customers to present the contracts and service agreements to each.  We received a good level of support and some more questions, which we sought to answer.  In the end, we were faced with the fact that local area businesses/agencies are getting propane for extremely cheap right now and thus the finances of the project simply are not viable for most.  Facing this reality, the City took advantage of one of the contingencies built into the process to stop moving forward on the biomass project at this time.  The economics of the project are not viable to finance and be competitive with current fuel prices, so we are going to wrap up all of the information that we have gathered to this point and "moth-ball" the project until the economic models make it more attractive and feasible.  Although this is disappointing, I believe that the City performed honorably in pursuing this project.  We protected the City with the contingencies built in, we gave this a heck of a run, and we ended up with a project that is still about 80% complete.  In the instance that fuel prices spike again, we will be ready to take this off of the shelf, update the numbers, and get the project going again if it is deemed worthwhile.

That was it.  As always, if you have any questions, please let me know and I would love to chat with you about it.

Council Meeting 5-14-15

It was our first meeting starting at 6:30pm and it went pretty well.  According to our agenda we even ended ahead of schedule... at 8:30pm...

A lot of good things were brought up and some good conversations started.

To begin with we took into consideration the consent agenda, which included the agenda (plus a first reading of the Sunday growler sale change enacted by the MN legislature), payment of the bills, and approval of the minutes for our last meeting.  Everything being in line, the consent agenda was approved unanimously.

We moved right along to the Planning Commission's Report, which included two requests from residents: one for a variance for the construction of a garage, and another for a conditional use permit the construction of a single unit vacation rental.  Reviewing the Planning Commission's findings for both of these requests, the Council agreed that neither of the projects would change the nature of the area surrounding each property and that all plans were in line with the zoning ordinance.  There were no residents present to oppose either request, either at the the Planning and Zoning meeting or at the Council meeting, so both requests were approved unanimously by the Council.  Details for these two requests can be found in the meeting packet or in the minutes of this meeting.  

*We also discussed how the zoning was developed and considered the implications on future requests for variances as well as vacation rental by owner (VRBO) in the residential zone, mainly to educate ourselves on the process.  The Planning Commission will present their thoughts on VRBO activity at a later date.

Next the Art Colony came before the Council with their application to use the downtown streets (Wisconsin Street, 2nd Ave W) for the 25th Annual Arts Festival this summer, July 10th and 11th.  A brief conversation was had encouraging the Art Colony to strongly encourage their vendors to park their trailers and vehicles away from the downtown area so that flow is improved and downtown businesses are not boxed in.  The application was approved unanimously.

One more request on the agenda:  Cook County Farm and Craft Market's application for use of the public parking lot off of Broadway.  The request made was for the same arrangement as in past years: use of several parking spots for Farmer's Market vendors on Saturday mornings throughout the summer.  Conversation was had about how much space they use versus how much they need as well as when they block off those spots for the market.  Local businesses have noted frustration about the early blocking off of those spaces and the representative of the Farmer's Market said that he would pass on the information to vendors and board members to encourage cooperation with local businesses and not to block off the parking spots until 4:30pm or later.  Councilor Mills noted the importance of the Farmer's Market to the entrepreneurial spirit in Grand Marais and asked if there was some other arrangement that the City could make with the Farmer's Market so that they don't have to come back to the Council every year, but the changing needs of the Farmer's Market seem to lend toward the annual request, so the plan was to continue doing it the way that we have been doing it.

Then the Cook County Local Energy Project's representatives were on the agenda to give the Council its update on their 2014 activity as well as projects they are working on for 2015 in order to make a request to the Council for funding for the 2015 year.  An extensive resume of projects and accomplishments was given to the Council to consider, and the representatives explained the projects that are currently happening. REEP (Residential Energy Efficiency Program) is one of their on-going projects, offering county residents rebates to defray the cost of having a home energy audit completed and taking action on the opportunities identified by the audit.  They are also preparing a "Solar Toolbox," which is a set of information laid out so that residents of the county seeking to add photovoltaic solar systems to their properties have all of the information they need to make an informed decision without having to start from ground zero.  They have put together a contractor's continuing education class in the county that has been well attended.  They have worked with North House Folk School's Sustainability Symposium. They are monitoring solar (heat and PV) installations for efficiency as well.  At the meeting a new potential partnership with the EDA's housing development work came into view as well, having CCLEP help to make any new construction of housing be as efficient as possible.  In the end, CCLEP asked for $2000 to continue their work in the community.  Seeing that this amount was the same as what was given in the past several years and seeing the value of the programs that CCLEP offers (over $100,000 of home improvement/efficiency improvement from the REEP program alone!), the Council voted unanimously to approve this amount to support CCLEP.  

Now comes the logistical request...  The hospital in Grand Marais has been in its present location for a while.  Some would say a long time.  It is going to stay there for a long time as well.  Other things can and have changed over time, but the hospital has stayed put.  Because of some of these changes, the hospital brought a Quit Claim Deed before the Council for consideration.  A Quit Claim Deed is usually used to transfer land from one ownership to another, but in this instance it is being used to correct the legal description of the hospital property.  5th Ave W used to be the Gunflint Trail.  That is what it says on the hospital deed.  It needs to say something else... like 5th Ave W or a legal description of the property in order to make sense anymore.  That is what we voted unanimously to do, to accept the formal change of the hospital's description of their property in their deed.  It took up many pages in our materials, but that is the summary of it.

In other items, we brought back Ordinance 2015-1, which was the ordinance allowing growler sales in Grand Marais.  Because the state legislature just passed a new law allowing Sunday growler sales, we need to change the wording of our ordinance to make sure that it complies and that we can sell growlers on Sunday as well.  There was talk about skipping this as the first reading and just accepting the ordinance as changed, but because it came to the Council pretty last minute and because the language change of the ordinance could potentially need to be changed, the Council voted to accept the first reading and will re-address this ordinance at the next meeting... So in two weeks you will probably be able to buy growlers on Sundays... Unless something weird happens with the ordinance.

There was a lively discussion concerning the upcoming Joint Powers Meeting on May 28th after that.  There was some conversation of things that the City would like to speak with everyone about, such as garages, spending on certain projects that share jurisdiction, biomass updates, county composting ideas, as well as a general update of how things are going at the City.  

An interesting conversation concerning garages came up that introduced 2 new ideas for our consideration.  The first idea was brought up by Councilor Moody suggesting that we take a look at the plans that were already drawn up for a Grand Marais municipal garage facility located out in the Cedar Grove Business Park.  He suggested that we should at least take a look at them and see what we think.  Then Councilor Benson added a suggestion that we consider moving the administrative offices out to the new location of our garages, wherever that may be.  Considering the problems that have been happening with the current City Hall (leaking roofs, inefficient heating, inflexible spaces, etc) such a plan could free up valuable downtown space that the City could lease out to businesses, etc.  **Please note that these were IDEAS, not anything that was put to a vote or even taken under consideration at this time.  A change of this magnitude would warrant public comment and consideration before any action would be considered.

Then we went to Council and Staff reports:

Councilor Moody said that there was an EDA meeting where the housing group OneRoof (of Duluth) came up and met with the EDA to consider possible properties/locations that would be appropriate for new housing in both the West End and Grand Marais to the East End.  He also commented that the Superior National Golf Course was open early this year, a fact that has bolstered its financial numbers for the short golfing season.

Councilor Benson had no report for this meeting.

Councilor Mills attended the Park Board meeting where it was reported that the Gunflint Hills Golf Course had a miraculous turn of events with about 75% of the winter kill (grass) has recovered!  The Park Board is also looking into various promotional offers to get new golfers to come up to the course.  The Park Board showed positive energy toward the potential of public restrooms located at Boulder Park saying that it is in line with the Park Master Plan.  Councilor Mills also attended the North Woods Food Project meeting where they continued to work through their plans to create a composting system in the county.  They are going to be asking local businesses that produce compostable material (restaurants, etc) if they would be willing to participate in a composting program.  He also attended the Broadband Committee's meeting where they are working on figuring out what is next for the implementation and optimization of the broadband services available (or soon to be) in Cook County.

Councilor Kennedy attended the Moving Matters meeting where they discussed the health impact assessments produced as a part of the HWY 61 RE-DESIGN project saying that there is more to be done, but that the information is very helpful.

City Administrator Roth mentioned that on Tuesday May 13th he appeared before the County Commission to present a mutual long-term agreement on bond payments for the EDA's Cedar Grove Business Park.  The County Commission accepted this agreement and thus it will appear before the City and the EDA for final approval.

I had a busy couple of weeks as well.  I issued a proclamation that it was National Nursing Home Week and May is Older Americans Month and attended the Care Center's Golden Gala celebration.  I even got to dance with some folks!

The Library Board met at the beginning of the month and discussed briefly the budget for 2016, staffing (of which we are looking to increase so we can provide better service), and the financial policy to govern the library's reserve funds.

There is a small group of stakeholders getting together in the near future to discuss the Requests for Proposals that were received concerning the Market Study of the need for Assisted Living in the county.  I will be giving updates as we go through that process.

The contracts for the customers of the District Heating system have been completed and are being distributed to the customers.  There was a bit of a delay due to the unique nature of some of the facilities that are being considered for the system, thus complicating the calculations and causing much needed double-checking.  We are now pursuing signed contracts and will be preparing an application for bonding to the state contingent on getting the appropriate number of signed contracts.

Myself and many of the Councilors attended the Bike Safety Rodeo that was held last Thursday at the Community Center.  It was a great time with over 100 kids coming and learning about bike safety and safe riding in our community.  I also helped out with the 3rd grade class on bike safety this week as well.

I think that is about it.  If you have any questions, please let me know!

Council Meeting 4/29 and other stuff!

It has been a while and a lot has happened!

I attended the MN Mayor's Association Conference in White Bear Lake and met many of our area mayors including Two Harbors, Ely, Hibbing, Nashwauk, etc.  It was great to get to have some of the conversations about our city with these other cities that have similar, yet very different, environments!

The sessions offered had to do with groundwater and surface water management, which was very enlightening and informed me of some state and federal programs that exist that could help Grand Marais afford to re-do some of it's aging water and wastewater infrastructure.  They also spoke about how reclaiming graywater is starting to build up some steam at the state level, so stay tuned to that one!  I had an opportunity to ask the DNR's director of water resources about the regulations that are applied to surface water taken and put back into Lake Superior and was relieved to hear that the state is using the new regulations to "test the waters" both figuratively and literally because the regulations are where they want to be, but it could ignite a storm of protest because compliance could be very expensive for many small towns...

The other session had to do with how cities can work with state agencies better.  I met and chatted with the Commissioners for the DNR, the DOT (about Hwy 61), and the Pollution Control Agency (about regulations and about the potential of a GreenCorps intern in Grand Marais).  They spoke for several hours basically saying that they want cities to do their homework and come to the state agencies with some background, a solid plan, and workable numbers.  The state agencies don't work on ideas, they work on proposals.  I think that this is valuable information and hope that we can use it to connect with the state better on our future initiatives.

I was also on MPR for a conversation with a few of the younger mayors in the state.  It was fun for me to be a part of it and I tried to reflect Grand Marais in a coherent and honest way.  If you want to listen, here is the link:
http://www.mprnews.org/sto…/2015/…/24/bcst-millennial-mayors

There was a lot of other stuff going on, but I will try to mention that in the summary of the meeting!

Ok, here goes:

First of all, we did pretty well and got a great deal of the business taken care of right away, which felt good and put us a little ahead of our time expectation, but we had some complicated conversations to have and the only place we can have those conversations is in that meeting, so we are ok with it taking some time.

Since no one spoke up for the public comment period despite having some people in attendance, we moved right into the Consent Agenda.  There were a few minor semantical changes to the minutes of the previous meeting and a few additions to the current agenda, but the consent agenda passed unanimously.  On the consent agenda this meeting was the MN Deer Hunter's Association Raffle request to raise some money for their group, so keep your eyes open for those tickets.  They will be available at the Legion I believe and from members of the association.  If I remember correctly, their prizes are pretty amazing.

We moved on to the approval of the fireworks plan for the 4th of July show.  Just like in past years, Bob Spry has offered to put together the performance with the Lion's Club defraying the cost of the fireworks to the city.  This passed unanimously.  *We are very lucky to have Bob to help us with this!  Thank you Bob for your work to make our fireworks display great!  And a thank you to the Lions for their support!

Next, a letter from Jim Wiinanen asking for support of the Cook County Emergency Management Conference, which occurred last weekend here in town, was considered.  The letter had a description of the conference and an explanation of what the training means to local emergency workers.  Seeing the value of the conference for our local emergency workers, the Council voted to support the conference at the same level as last year, $200.  A thank you to Jim W. as well for putting together an incredible conference.  I heard something about a bus being tipped over or hitting a semi... Pretty amazing training scenarios any way you look at it!

The Street's Department brought a request to the Council to send out for bids to crack and chip seal a considerable amount of the City's streets.  The request was to seek bids for $75,000-$100,000 worth of maintenance, which is estimated to cover about 25% of the City's streets.  This technique, where cracks are filled with tar (or something flexible like that) and the road surface is sprayed and coated with some bituminous material, is the best way to preserve our road surfaces.  It can be applied to roads that are in moderate to good condition to extend their life about 10-15 years.  The Council asked why we waited so long to do it and the answer was reasonable: Economies of scale ($100,000 gets you a LOT more than $15,000), and the fact that Lenny is a relatively recent hire as the director of the streets department.  There is an annual budget of $15,000 to go toward this, so we can expect to have this request come up every 4-5 years, which will put us in a good place concerning road maintenance...
*Re-building roads in bad condition are another conversation.  When I was at the Mayor's Conference I spoke with several other mayors who are petitioning the Dept. of Transportation to include funding in their next transportation bill for city street maintenance, especially smaller and rural cities.  Currently the MN House has a bill on the table for $7 billion with little to no city street funding and the MN Senate has a bill on the table for $11 billion with roughly $57 million in city street funding.  It isn't much, but it would sure help us get some more of our streets (and the infrastructure underneath) back into good condition...

At this point we were cruising through the agenda, so we decided to skip the Tennis association request because their representative hadn't arrived yet!

We moved on to the Assisted Living Request for Proposals.  The City received 4 proposals from organizations that the City knows and trusts, but each of the proposals was vastly different from the others.  We purposely cast the net wide for this RFP and we got it!  Now we will move forward by inviting community members who have knowledge of assisted living to take a look through the proposals so we can distill down which organization has the skills and can capture the full scope of the market study we would like to do.  There will be representatives from the hospital/care center, the North Shore Health Care Foundation, as well as other organizations with insights into this topic.  Councilor Benson suggested that we consider putting someone on the committee who has construction experience, which certainly isn't a bad idea.  The rest of the Council agreed with her and is trying to think of people who have both construction and assisted living experience.  If you have any suggestions of who should be on this committee, please let me or one of the Councilors know and we will consider that.  We would like to get this going pretty soon though, so please act quickly if you feel strongly.

Then it was time for Resolution 2015-07.  That means nothing to you right now, but I will explain:
Our Council meetings will now be held at 6:30PM, NOT 4:30PM.  The Council thought that it would be more appropriate and accessible for the meetings to happen at 6:30 so more residents who work would be able to attend if they want to.  We will be advertising this around town, but make sure to pass this information on to others who would be interested!

Then we started talking about Public Restrooms.  This conversation seems to go on every week, but there is a reason for that.  We need to figure out what to do!  The background is that during the summer our visitors can't find enough places to use the restrooms and thus burden our local businesses with their bathroom needs.  The City provides port-a-potties around town at several different locations, but that isn't seen as a permanent or sound solution.  A set of plans was developed for the city showing what the old visitor's center (attached to City Hall) would look like if it was reconfigured into bathrooms.  It is an impressive plan, but the questions brought were:
1. Is this where we need bathrooms?  You have to put bathrooms where the people are.
2. Is this overkill?  What are the usage numbers of our current bathrooms (and the downtown)?
3. How are we going to pay for this?  We spend about $9,000/year for port-a-potties and building bathrooms will be more expensive, likely even in the long-run.
*Potential solutions/ideas were:
--putting smaller bathroom facilities in at Boulder Park and maybe at Coast Guard Point (if we even can!  Boulder Park is in the conversation easement, which has limitations on what can be done there)
--Renovating the existing bathrooms in City Hall so they work better and putting a few extra port-a-potties in strategic places around downtown (out of the way so they aren't an eyesore).
--A new thought was to use funds from the storefront loan program to help downtown businesses renovate bathrooms and/or install low-flow fixtures to encourage them to allow visitors to use their bathrooms.  The sticky thing about this is that many of these downtown businesses don't have bathrooms that are even accessible to the public... It's a thought...
--All of the ideas that were brought up, which included these in many different iterations, were just ideas... It was agreed that we couldn't move forward until we got the cost estimate on the designs we already have so we can know roughly what we are talking about.
One of the things that we DID agree on was that we should authorize some money to get the current public bathrooms up to snuff for this summer.  We voted to authorize up to $5,000 to install ventilation, improve the stalls, fixtures, etc so that we can get through the summer better.  During that time we are going to be gathering usage information from City Hall and hopefully from some downtown businesses so that we can have more information about what is appropriate!

After that conversation we were back on schedule and ready for the Tennis Association.  In the same proposal as last meeting, the Lee Bergstrom asked the City to consider assisting in funding the renovation of 2 of the tennis courts up near the YMCA and Community Center.  The Council showed great support of the Tennis Association and for the project, but had some questions.  First of all, $60,000 of the money they need (roughly $150,000) will come from 1% funds, but all of the project was originally slated to be paid for with 1% funds.  The City has some funds that could be used for the $20,000 request, but that money would have to come out of the "Council Priorities" fund, which has historically been used as a stop-gap account or to fund the different projects identified by the Council as important.  This fund would be decimated by this request and thus would limit the other projects or expenses that could be taken on.  This was not seen as being a good idea by the Council.  Lee said that they would be changing their plan to perform the renovation next spring instead of this fall because the funding has proven difficult to obtain.  This would allow the City to budget for this expense and share our part of the burden.  The real question was what is our burden?  The last time they renovated 3 courts at the expense of $240,000, the City only put in $10-15,000 (the exact number was unknown at the time).  The Council decided that we need to get these numbers and also take a closer look at the Council Priorities fund to see how it has been used and if such a donation is a good idea.  Lee said that she would be glad to keep coming back for this and we hoped, for her sake, that we could get it taken care of so she didn't have to!

Following that conversation we moved on to the seasonal staffing for the Park's Department.  Dave Tersteeg brought three names before the Council for consideration and they were unanimously approved.  Here's to another great season in the parks!

In "Other items" there were two:
1. Resolution 2015-6 or the letter in support of constitutional protections for peddlers of farm/garden goods.
2. Purchase of a new phone system for the City Hall.

Starting with #1.  It came to the Council's attention shortly after the previous meeting that when we passed the resolution of support mentioned above, some of the language didn't reflect the message that some of the Council members meant to send.  Because of this, the resolution was brought back before the Council for further discussion.  Basically, the changes that were proposed were specific and concerning inspection as well as safety measures used in processing farm goods.  We spoke about it to gather a better understanding of the impacts of the language and then voted to replace the existing resolution with a new resolution with the mentioned changes.  It failed 2-2 in vote, so the previous resolution still stands.

#2.  Finance Director Kim Dunsmoor brought a bid to the Council for a complete renovation of the City Hall phone system.  This was spurred by the installation of broadband at City Hall and the possibility of getting a more useful system that could use the broadband connection for the phone as well.  It was determined that the needs of City Hall does not warrant that technology right now (I pushed them on this... does it really make sense to wait?), and thus is would be much cheaper to go with a digital system that would provide City Hall with the flexibility to grow and to access the services that we need, like voicemail...  The Council voted unanimously to accept the bid for telephone replacement, so soon you will be able to call and leave a message at City Hall!

In staff reports Councilor Moody attended an EDA meeting where they made a request to the Planning Commission to consider rezoning part of the Cedar Grove Business Park to be commercial/residential.  There will also be a meeting on May 15th where they will dive into the housing study again to start looking at possible actions.
Councilor Benson said that there was a North Shore Management meeting while she was out of town on vacation and that she is getting the meeting notes so she can report back about it.
Councilor Mills said that the last YMCA meeting was focused on team building and getting to know one another better so they can move through the challenging items facing them.
I reported on the Mayor's Conference, an update on the District Heating Project (look for information at many local businesses!), and the Moving Matters Blue Cross Blue Shield educational meeting that was hosted by Grand Marais on Monday and Tuesday.  I met many of the BCBS leadership and was very glad that I was able to!  There was a slough of other meetings, but I can't remember a lot of them off the top of my head!
Councilor Kennedy was out of town.

That's it!
Whew!  We look forward to seeing you at a meeting in the future!  At 6:30!