September 9th meeting! Liquor Licenses and Preliminary Levy!

September 9th the City Council met again for another meeting to discuss a number of different topics that are very important to the community in their own way.

During this meeting I was actually driving back to Grand Marais from southern Minnesota where I had just attended the funeral of a close family friend. I returned back to town around 9:30pm and thought that I would stop by City Hall to see if the Council was still there, but I figured that if they were still meeting at that hour they wouldn’t need me poking my head in!

With that said, I will summarize what went down because I have been debriefed on the meeting, but I apologize if I miss some details of the meeting!

The meeting started right about on time with myself and Councilor Moody absent. Since there was still a quorum they were able to continue. Councilor Kennedy presided over the meeting.

First thing was the consent agenda, which had one item in addition to the usual agenda approval, meeting minutes approval, and payment of bills: The Arrowhead Chapter of MN Deer Hunter’s Association Raffle Application. The Hunter’s Association is planning to hold their raffle again this fall and you all should consider supporting their cause.  They will have a number of hunting oriented prizes that will make your hunting season go better!

Needless to say, the consent agenda was approved.

Next was the renewing of liquor licenses for the City. We have 15 businesses that need a license to dispense alcohol in correlation with State laws.  Of these 15, 4 are full bar, 8 are wine/beer sellers, one is a “club,” which means it is limited in what it can sell, but has both liquor and beer/wine (this is the American Legion, which is a special license as per state and federal rules). One is beer on-sale and the last is beer off-sale.

This was also a short discussion, as the Council approved the licenses pending the payment of the fees associated with each.

After that we had an interesting conversation with representatives from the DNR concerning a potential project taking shape on the west end of the harbor. Currently the west end of the harbor has a failing boat launch that has proven itself dangerous and/or inadequate for handling the launch and loading of different sized boats. On August 13th, the City and Park Board met with reps from the DNR concerning potential improvements that could be done to that whole area, including the current location of the City garages, animal pound, and the large gravel parking lot. The first stage of this project includes improvements to the boat launch and the breakwall immediately around it. There were three options for different sized boats, a 30 foot design, a 38 foot design, and a 50 foot design. Since we currently have boats over 30 feet in length, we ruled that one out and since 50 foot boats are rarely trailered out of the water (and we can’t really accommodate boats of that size in our harbor), we ruled out that design as well, leaving us with the 38 foot design.  This was liked and decided to be the project pursued by the DNR for the City. The DNR will seek bonding money from the state for this project so I will be heading down to meet with State legislatures this week so we can tell them of the potential positive impacts of this project for our area. 

*For the second phase of the project, the remaining space currently occupied by the city garages and the pound will be renovated, restored, and returned to a natural state that can be enjoyed by residents and visitors alike safely.

If you have any questions about this project, please let me know.  To be clear, this is NOT a marina project, it is a boat launch project with the possibility of restoring some great land to be useful to the City and community.

Then came the next logistical step in the reassessment of the Cedar Grove Business Park, which is calling a public hearing on the reassessment.  This is a hearing for those impacted by the reassessment, which is basically the EDA.  The resolution passed unanimously. Following this resolution and the hearing, there is just one more step before the reassessment is complete.

One more resolution to go!  This resolution was to set the preliminary levy for the City at 12.21% increase as per the Council’s discussions and calculations from its previous 3 work sessions on the topic.  The Council will continue hearing from departments and will look into the numbers to see where we can make cuts to get the levy down without hindering the City’s ability to plan for the future and support the services that our community relies on. There are several conversations that still need to happen and greater clarity will be available after those conversations.

There wasn’t any additional business beyond those things, but there was a great deal of conversation on each of those items to make sure the Council understood what they were looking at and the consequences of each decision.

Our next meeting will be on October 30th, and sadly I will be gone for that meeting too!  In the meantime I have been filling in my time with meetings about Senior services, the Intergrated Emergency Management Conference in Grand Portage (I'm writing this on one of my breaks from the conference sessions!), the Walking School Buss with Moving Matters, meeting with legislatures to discuss future projects, meeting with the Councilors for budget conversations, as well as celebrating the International Day of Peace, which I proclaimed for September 21st for Grand Marais.

Thank you for understanding my absence this month. My vacation for the end of September has been planned for almost a year and the emergency funeral was not planned at all.  I will be working for the City all month and will be back for Council meetings in October!

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