City Council Meeting 10-9-15

Well it happened again!

With fall upon us and winter just around the corner, I have gotten behind in my chores around the house and thus have gotten behind in my blogging as well.

Here is the summary of what happened at our last meeting of the City Council on Wednesday night.

We called the meeting to order right at 6:30pm with the opening of the public forum. No one came forward to speak, so the forum was closed and we moved on to the Consent Agenda.

The Consent Agenda included the usual three items, bills, minutes of the previous meeting, and the agenda for this meeting. See no fault in them, the motion was made and passed to approve the Consent Agenda!

We then had a conversation with Maren Webb of Moving Matters Cook County, who explained that Moving Matters was likely to receive another 2 years of funding for its program and was looking for ways that it could assist the City in helping to improve health and wellness within it.  The Council explained that we would like to begin work on our Comprehensive Plan next year and thus would welcome assistance in putting together a process of public meetings so that community members could discuss potential changes and be a part of the broader conversation.  Ms. Webb expressed agreement that this would be something Moving Matters could do.

There was also conversation about the relationship between the City and outside organizations.  It was clear that the Council wanted Moving Matters to know that they would be assisting the City in achieving its planning goals and not the other way around. Thus, the relationship between the City and Moving Matters would be written along these lines: The City will work to create a Comprehensive Plan that will be able to inform and direct community decisions based on the principles and priorities expressed by the community. Moving Matters will help facilitate that conversation.  This seemed agreeable to both parties so we thanked Ms. Webb for her time, nodded approval, and moved on.

The next conversation revolved around the Indigenous People's Day Proclamation declared on October 5th. Administrator Roth prepared the proclamation in Resolution form with the assistance of Councilor Moody for the Council to consider. The vote was called and it passed unanimously.

Next, Fire Chief Silence sent us a request to hire another volunteer fire fighter for our department. It appears that due to some retirements from the department, we are currently hovering around 20 for membership when we would like to be around 22-25. The Council approved this request and would be excited to hear from Chief Silence again with another hire request!
*For explanation, the Grand Marais Volunteer Fire Department is a fully trained, equipped fire department. Our fire-fighters are more "on-call" than volunteer as they get compensation for their active time for certain events and they get a retirement plan as per MN state law.

We then moved on to staff and Council reports:

Council Moody reported on the EDA meeting where they moved closer to creating a work-force housing project here in Grand Marais. This project would be a small-scale pilot project and would inform future directions to take. There was a lot of excitement around this project. Also, the EDA is looking to hire a director after several years of operating without one. The details of this position will be forthcoming.
In addition, there is an EDA Board seat vacancy for a County rep that they are looking to fill.  If you know anyone, or are anyone, who would like to contribute to the EDA's work in our area, please contact Councilor Moody or any of the other members of the EDA.
Tuesday, October 27th the EDA will be making its case before the County Board for funding for the 2016 year.
The Golf Course (Superior National) reported that rounds were up and thus revenue were up. Hurray for good weather!


Councilor Benson had done some research on different liquor store design firms and potential places we could go to get more information about what we should have at our liquor store (i.e. square footage, layout, product, etc).

I sat in on a Grand Marais Area Tourism Association meeting where a lot happened:
-There are plans to do a downtown "Christmas Village" from Thanksgiving weekend to January 1. This will include specially set up Christmas lights and decorations, a store front display contest, and much more.
-There have been more conversations between Visit Cook County and the snowmobile club looking at how they can work together to produce the annual snowmobile map for the area trails. The snowmobile club prints thousands of these maps and collects advertising revenue from it, so it is something that they would like to keep their hands on.
-There were some complaints about the downtown alleys being loud and cluttered with illegally parked vehicles as well as trash being disposed of in places where it shouldn't be. I told them that I would speak with the Sheriff about what we can do about that.

Councilor Mills had a Northwoods Food Project meeting where they discussed the Green Dollars Survey that was done earlier this year. It turns out that the results seem skewed because of the expense of maple syrup production and commercial fishing, which produce a LOT of local food, but not to the end that the survey was looking for.
-He also reported on the park board meeting where they discussed and approved rate raises for the rec park itself. This was met with consternation from the campers and is a continuing conversation.

Councilor Kennedy went to the Greater Minnesota Parks and Trails meeting where they discussed the importance of "Regional Parks." Regional parks are those parks that have a significant regional impact. He was wondering if it would be appropriate to seek designation for the rec park as a regional park so that it would open it up for Legacy funds, which could fund a renovation of a significant part of the park. There was no conversation about that, but encouragement for him to do some research.
-He also went to the Moving Matters meeting where they talked about how important food is to our community and how that impacts many other parts of life. Very true.

After that we wrapped up the meeting and started making plans for our next meeting, a joint planning and zoning commission meeting on Wednesday October 21 to discuss Vacation rentals. More to come on that one!

As always, let me know if you have any comments or questions. I will do my best to answer them!