League of MN Cities Training: The Loveable City

I know you read that title and think, "Boy, that sounds corny." It kind of does, but the substance of the training was actually very good. The speaker for this training was Peter Kageyama, a public organizer who has spent his life doing a number of eclectic and strange things on his path to writing a few books on city development and the emotional attachment that people have to their places.

He started off the training by asking us how we talk about our City. What are the things that we actually SAY when we talk about our City? How about if we are talking to neighbors? How about to visitors? How about to family members or close friends who don't live here? I thought this was really interesting because sometimes I talk about the problems that I have had put in my face by being the mayor and sometimes I talk about the social structures in our communities and sometimes I talk about the amazing, awesome, incredible things that happen here... But I don't often talk about all of those things to the same people...

Then he asked how we think about our City. What goes on in your head when someone else talks about your City? What internal monologue to you have running when you are running errands? This was really interesting as well. There are some critical/cynical things that I think about our City, but it was mostly good stuff I recalled thinking of. Sure there are things that drag us down, but we can overcome most of those things...

Of course, he had us to this exercise to illustrate that everyone in your City is probably at a slightly different place in those conversations... Fair enough... Then he showed us a graph that said that only about a quarter of people were actually attached to the place that they live. What does that mean? About 25% of people in any given City view part of their personality and existence being directly linked to the place that they live.

I thought, "It has to be more in Grand Marais..." but I wanted to hear him out.

This was all introduction to show that there is a lot that can be done to create this sense of attachment and investment in your community. He shared a few examples of things that make people feel a stronger emotional attachment to their City:
- Bike friendly cities typically have a higher attachment rate
-Walkable cities similarly do
-Pet friendly cities do well on this as well
-Youth friendly cities excel in this-- This means that there are positive outlets for youth and safe options for youth to participate in.
-Opportunities to play also make a city more loveable as do little things around the community like parks, public art installations, gardens, murals, pedestrian spaces, etc...
*A lot of times it doesn't matter if the things offered are super polished; all of these things increase social capital and should be viewed as valuable!

He said that there are ways that cities can achieve these things, but the most valuable way is to empower what he calls "Co-Creators." Co-Creators are the people that get stuff done in your community. They are everyday people with an idea that they want to see happen, they are kids with a school project, they are businesspeople with a vision, they are that grumpy guy who really wants a place to sit that's quiet... These are people with energy that can accomplish awesome things if they are encouraged and given space to do so...

Now, I don't think that we have any shortage of these people in Grand Marais, so encouraging these people can get a little exhausting and may lead to some conflicts because we don't have that much space, but you know what, I still agree that it is important to encourage these people! Good ideas have legs, so let them walk!

He also talked about "Love Notes" and "Daggers."

Love Notes are the things that you really appreciate about your place and that make you feel a connection to it. Daggers are the things that do the opposite. Obviously his advice was to minimize the Daggers and go out of your way to increase the Love Notes. Turn the Daggers into Love Notes. Invest in the problem areas and then you try to give them new meaning to make them Love Notes. Simple and brilliant. I can identify a dozen things that would qualify for this consideration in my mind...

He spent a lot of time going over projects that other Cities have done to create a sense of space, many of which I feel Grand Marais already partially does, but there were many ideas that I thought were absolutely brilliant. For example, the City of Grand Rapids took actual video of people in their city lip syncing to the song American Pie to show that their city is vibrant and not dying. You can find it on youtube. There were entrepreneurs doing ridiculous, but awesome promotions to build community around their businesses, there were community story-telling initiatives, temporary pop-up parks that travel around the town, fairy doors, tiny public sculptures around town as a scavenger hunt, taking pieces of the City's history and developing them into public spaces, the list went on and on.

By and large it was a very inspiring experience that got me to think of the City in a new light with a number of opportunities and great energy. I have the book if any of you would like to borrow it and read it as well!

I will leave it there although there was a lot more to the training on the technical side of HOW a city can inspire and encourage its residents to get into these sorts of projects.

City Council Meeting 1-27-2016

The City Council has been very busy this week with a few of our Councilors going to a League of MN Cities training in the Cities and with us having a worksession regarding the Public Utilities Facility project plans. I will be writing up a synopsis of each of those events for you shortly, but thought that I would get through the regular City Council meeting first!

The Council had already been in our worksession on the Public Utilities Facility before the regular meeting, but we wrapped that up, took a few minutes to gather ourselves, and then jumped into our regular meeting.

After calling the meeting to order, I opened up the public forum and no one spoke, so the public forum was closed and we moved on to the Consent Agenda.

The Consent Agenda had the usual three things on it (Approval of Agenda, Approval of Meeting Minutes of previous meeting, and Payment of Bills). We added to the Consent Agenda the American Legion's Bingo permit for offering Bingo on the 27th of February, the 19th of March, the 16th of April, and the 7th of May. We had received that application that day and thought that we could squeeze it in (so we did!). We also added an item to the agenda, which was the consideration of a class action lawsuit that the City is eligible for.  With those changes, the Consent Agenda was unanimously passed.

That means we can all go down to the Legion for Bingo once a month starting in February!

The next thing on the agenda was to have a conversation about the Arrowhead Animal Rescue Service Contract that the City has with the animal rescue group. It was brought up to the Council at the last meeting that the contract was expired and that the group has been offering its services without a contract with the City. We looked a little closer and found that the contract has an auto-renewal clause in it, so the City and Arrowhead Animal Rescue have had a contract in place all along, which is good. We still took a look at the contract though and decided that there was no reason for us to change anything with it, so we acknowledged the service that they provide for the City and took no specific action on the contract. Councilor Moody will continue to represent the Council to the animal rescue group and will keep us informed of any developments with the group.

After that conversation we had a thorough and kind of round-about conversation regarding the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities' request to all member Cities to pass a resolution in favor of supporting Local Government Aid payments to Cities in Greater Minnesota.

*A little explanation of all of this:

1. CGMC (Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities)--This is an advocacy coalition of a number of cities outside of the Metro Area that focuses on and promotes issues that affect typically smaller communities that have challenges not faced by larger cities or cities in the Metro Area. Grand Marais is a member of this organization and has found it useful in representing us in areas such as housing and economic development.

2. LGA (Local Government Aid)-- This is a pool of money determined by the State Legislature to be divvied up to the Cities of MN based on a very complicated formula that includes population, population growth, unemployment rate, median income, square mileage, jobs per capita, housing inventory, housing value, property tax rate, etc, etc... I don't ever pretend to understand the formula, but you can download the spreadsheet of all of the determining information HERE. LGA can be used by the receiving City as property tax relief or any lawful expenditures (operations, special projects, etc).

The CGMC was very concerned about a spending bill that the MN House of Reps put forward that would have cut ALL LGA payments to cities, thus creating some big holes in these cities' budgets. In reaction, CGMC has created a resolution that encourages legislators to reconsider by showing that LGA is very important and needs to be maintained.  They want all member cities to sign it to show how big of a deal this is...

Our conversation started very favorable to the resolution, because it would be good for us to support other cities who would be dramatically affected by the cutting of LGA, but Grand Marais only receives about $55,000 of LGA and that is only because there is a special piece of legislation in place that grants us some LGA because we are the only municipality in our county (among a few other factors). So, LGA isn't really a critical part of our budget and under the current calculations we shouldn't get any anyway. This thinking started switching the attitude in the room. After that we started talking about precedent. If we signed on to this resolution saying that LGA was a big deal to us and that it is essential to our operation, but we don't fit into the formula, that could create a problem for us in the future if LGA were to be cut, or increased for that matter... The last piece of the conversation was that our situation just didn't match the language of the resolution and the Council felt that if we wanted to make a statement on LGA we should research the City's situation (like why our LGA has gone down from $300,000+ to the current $55,000) and create a statement that truly reflects that. There was a motion made to support the resolution, but it failed in the vote unanimously. You don't see that happen very often, but it was a great conversation none-the-less!

The next item was a very interesting one as well! The City of Grand Marais has been offered a piece of art by an artist with close personal ties to the area, and the City doesn't really know how to handle that! When former Councilor Sivertson was serving she was working on creating a "Public Art Policy" or an "Arts Commission" for the City so that we can better handle these generous offers of art. How do we quality control the art? What is the right character of the art? Where can it go and not go? These are all things that came up. It was suggested that this be a topic for Comprehensive Planning this year, but the Council was not wanting to re-create the wheel in these conversations so I agreed to speak with former Councilor Sivertson and other art leaders in our community to get a pulse on where those conversations were left so that we can continue them. I have made contact with these people and will be reporting back to the Council at the next meeting. It is an exciting concept to add to the City though!

Stay tuned for more about that!

Finally we got to the Class Action Lawsuit information. Again, a little background:

Grand Marais runs its own water treatment and wastewater treatment plants. These plants make sure that our drinking water is treated and safe as well as making sure that any water re-introduced to the lake meets State criteria for cleanliness. There are a number of natural processes that these plants take advantage of to treat our water, but there are also some chemicals that we need to buy/use to achieve the state standards. One of these chemicals is Aluminum Sulfate. Aluminum Sulfate is useful because it makes fine particles present in water stick together, thus making them bigger and easier to filter out of our water supply. Well, it turns out that the company the City has been buying this chemical from for several years has been price fixing and participating in non-competitive bidding so that they can keep the price of this chemical artificially high. That means that we have paid more money for the chemical than we should. Thus, the class-action lawsuit seeks reparations for this breach of federal law. Now, we don't use very much of this chemical at all, but we stand to get a little money back from it, so the Council voted to formally participate in the lawsuit. There will be no expenses for the City at all from this, all of the lawyer fees are built into the settlement, but we may not be seeing that for a while... Class-action lawsuits usually take a year or more to settle because there are SO many claimants. Anyway, the City is participating in that; I think that is the most important thing...

After all of that we moved on to the Council and Staff Reports:

Councilor Moody reported that he went to the League of MN Cities training in the Cities and the EDA is still working on housing in conjunction with OneRoof out of Duluth.

Councilor Benson reported that she also went to the League training in the Cities as well as listening in to the North Shore Management Board meeting. She phoned in to the meeting and struggled with technical difficulties during the call so was not able to bring up the City's request for resources having to do with the Municipal Parking Lot issue, but will bring that up at the next meeting, where she will be attending in person. The North Shore Management Board is also looking for a rep from the Grand Portage area, so if any of you can think of someone, have then contact Councilor Benson!

I also attended the League training in the Cities (don't worry, we didn't talk to each other there) and found it to be very useful. More on that in another post! I also attended a very productive Library Board meeting where the various Committees of the Library made some important reports:
-The Personnel Committee will be meeting this week to create a formal plan to deal with plans to increase staffing according to the 2016 budget requests and current staff needs/changes.
-The Financial Committee created some suggestions for the Board for ways to spend some of the Library's dedicated funds (gifts from over the years). One of those plans is to begin to replace the technology at the Library so that it is more up to date and compatible with new library services available through the Arrowhead Library System. This would mainly be new computers and servers. Another idea was to investigate options for lowering the Library's operational expenses by potentially installing solar heating units or solar electricity units on the library's south roof. This could lower the Library's operational expenses, thus freeing up budget space for more programs and outreach.
-The Art Committee reported that it is still planning on building a sidewalk from the Hwy 61 sidewalk to the entrance to the Library to compliment the Puzzle Tree sculpture. The Art Committee will host a call for poetry to select a few locally produced poems to stamp into the concrete of the sidewalk, thus making it more appealing and engaging.

Councilor Mills reported that he will be presenting the Northwoods Food Project's Green Dollars survey to the Council sometime soon. He said that the Food Project hopes that local food will be a consideration in the City's Comprehensive Planning this year. The Broadband Commission is still pursuing video conferencing and co-working space in the County and are working on a job description for a coordinator for those projects. They are also taking a closer look at the City's offer of the old Visitor's Center space as a potential pilot location for this program. His final update was that Executive Director Emily Marshall will present the "State of the Y" to the Council at the Feb. 24th meeting.

Councilor Kennedy reported that the EDA's housing projects are moving forward nicely. There will be 2 projects, one in the West End and the other in Grand Marais focusing on meeting the perceived housing deficits in those areas. The EDA will be bringing a more formal report to the Council in March.  He also reported that the PUC has been working on putting together some suggestions for a Community Solar project that City PUC residents could buy into. This means that PUC users could basically lease panels in this project for a set price and then would get the credit back on their bills of what the panels produce, thus creating a relatively short pay-back schedule. It sounded like our electricity provider SMMPA (Southern Minnesota Municipal Power Agency) was putting certain incentives in place for projects like this, so it may be less expensive to implement that the PUC originally thought.

Administrator Roth and Finance Director Dunsmoor are beginning the City's annual audit, which will keep them busy for a while...

There you have it! That was the meeting! If you have any questions about any of this, please let me know. If you are curious about our worksession or the League of MN Cities training I attended, stay tuned for other posts on those topics!

City Council Meeting 1-13-16

On the 13th we had our first real meeting of the year and went through a lot of the year-beginning logistics items as well as starting the year on the right foot, setting some time aside for continued work on the development of the Public Utilities Facility.

Without further ado, here we go!

We called the meeting to order at 6:30, right on the dot with all of the councilors ready to go!


I opened up the public forum for comment and Bev Green with Arrowhead Animal Rescue spoke on behalf of the group to share three goals they have for the year and hope that they can be included in the conversation about the Public Utilities Facility in order to find a new home for the City "pound" other than down on the harbor. We acknowledged their goals and encouraged the rescue group to put together the specifics that they would like to see in a new "pound" facility so that we can have accurate information from the group that will use it, so that it will be as useful as possible. She also mentioned that the City and the Arrowhead Animal Rescue haven't had a contract for service for a few years and asked that we take a look at that. The Council acknowledged this and will act on that at a later meeting.

No one else had any comments to make, so we closed the public forum and moved on to the Consent Agenda.


The Consent Agenda included the usual three items (Approve Agenda, Approve Previous Meeting Minutes, Approve Payments of Bills) and since we had a chance to look through the information in our packet, the Consent Agenda was approved unanimously.


Moving right along, Ann Mershon from the "Art 'Round Town" group spoke to the Council seeking partnership in their efforts to sponsor artists to design new banners to hang in the downtown area throughout the year. The "Art 'Round Town" group would facilitate the process of advertising, collecting, selecting, and producing the banners. The City would hang, switch out, and store the banners in exchange. The Council thought it sounded like a great idea and promoted one of our priorities, which is to promote local art and artists, so it was approved unanimously! Stay tuned for more updates and for advertisements for submissions for this project!


The next item on the agenda required a little more conversation. Jim Boyd with the Chamber of Commerce addressed the Council in regards to a letter that he sent summarizing the issues with the Municipal Parking Lot adjacent to the City Hall, Coop, and Stone Harbor. The letter explained the issues that we have all heard about and explained that the latest incident, with the wet, sloppy snowstorm at the beginning of winter and the frozen pond that accumulated in the parking lot was something that can not be tolerated. The Council agreed with Boyd on this matter and went into a conversation about the paving of that parking lot several years ago. It turns out that the parking lot was designed to collect water from rain events and thus slow the infiltration of the stormwater into the lake. This was engineered by our engineers and was approved by the agencies overseeing stormwater and Lake Superior water quality, so it was built. At that time the Council thought that this would be a sufficient solution to the muddy slough that was there previously, but the Chamber's letter formalizes a change in feeling; one that the Council has been working on deciphering a solution to.
Here is a summary of the steps that the Council has/will take(n) to address the situation:
-Councilor Benson will bring up the issue to the North Shore Management Board, who has some funding available for planning that will improve conditions along the Shore, that this project would qualify for.
-I will follow up with the Soil and Water Department to see if they have suggestions for engineers, funding possibilities, and/or guidance from their Stormwater Plan.
-The City will contact IRRRB to inquire about the availability of infrastructure funding that could be had for such a project. This would speed up the implementation of the solution.
*In short, the City will actively pursue organizing our resources and lining up an engineer so that we can pursue a solution immediately this spring. Implementation of ANY solution, which, it was admitted, may be difficult, will depend on project funding and the Council's perspective on whether or not what was suggested will actually solve the problem.
Mr. Boyd thanked the Council for addressing the situation and will stay abreast of the situation.


Now it was time to get into the year-beginning logistics part of the meeting. There is a list of items that we set, so I will list them below with any conversation that happened concerning them:

-Appointments to Committees and Boards-- The City has 5 appointed Resident Committees (EDA, Library Board, Planning and Zoning, Park Board, and Public Utilities) all with term limits. The City has to keep these policy boards full with representation from the area serviced. This year there were 5 openings on City Committees, but 4 current members chose to continue serving for another term as per the term limits. That left us with one opening on the Park Board, vacated by Walt Mianowski this year (Thank you Walt!). The Council received 2 letters from interested individuals, both of whom were amazingly well qualified for the position. There was some conversation about interviewing the candidates, but in lieu of having a set policy that states that is how we handle applicants, it was felt that we can't implement anything like that this year, but will discuss it for next year.
Long to short the motion was made and passed to appoint Jennifer Stoltz to the opening for the Park Board. Jennifer has worked in developing campgrounds and uses the park daily so if very aware of the goings on there. We look forward to her service!

-Selection of the Acting Mayor-- This is the person who runs Council meetings in the event that I cannot be present at a meeting. Last year this was Councilor Kennedy, but Councilor Mills filled in for one meeting when both Councilor Kennedy and I were not able to be at a meeting. I believe that was the shortest meeting of the year, so Councilor Mills has some great efficiency skills! Apart from some back and forth dodging from both of those councilors, Councilor Mills nominated Councilor Kennedy to again serve as Acting Mayor and that motion passed unanimously.

-Designation of Official Newspaper-- This item identifies the publication where the City will publish its updates and information. The City was very glad to renew the contract with the Cook County News Herald to serve as our official newspaper.

-Designation of Depositories of City Funds-- This is a formal declaration of where the City holds City funds. The City holds funds in local banks and has a few investments that other institutions. The Council passed a motion to designate the existing depositories and it passed unanimously.

-Northeast Service Cooperative Contract-- The City gets its insurances from a pool of other services and organizations that are members of the Northeast Service Cooperative (NESC). We have used this cooperative for a long time and we need to renew our Joint Powers Agreement with the Cooperative so that we can participate in their negotiations for lower rates. Considering that this Council has never seen this agreement before, there were questions about whether there were other options, to which our lawyer responded that the only other organization we could consider would be the NorthWEST Service Cooperative... so we decided to look into the contract with NESC. This contract had been reviewed by our lawyer and was found to be in the Cities interest, so we passed a motion approving the NESC Joint Powers Agreement meaning that the City can be a part of their negotiations for lower rates on our insurances.


*In "Other Business" Administrator Roth brought up the possibility of the City of Grand Marais participating in a Class Action Lawsuit pertaining to price fixing for a chemical that the City uses to treat our drinking water. It turns out that several companies that sell this particular chemical worked together to jack up the prices customers paid for several years. The Council instructed Administrator Roth to work with our lawyer to determine if we are eligible and then to follow through with the settlement to see if we can get some money back from this lawsuit. So, we are going to see what happens. We could get some money back from this that would help the Public Utilities fund some other improvements.


Also, Councilor Kennedy requested that we put together a worksession so that we can work on the timeline and specifics of the Public Works Facility. The Council is going to check their calendars and set a time in the next few weeks to come up to speed on where we stand and how we want to move forward so we can keep this project moving forward. More to come on that!


There was no further business after that and the meeting was adjourned at about 8:30pm.

As always, let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Opportunities to get Involved! Committee Openings!

Happy New Year to you all!  I hope that you were all able to reflect back on the year 2015 and put it to rest, thus opening up great potential for 2016! I believe it will be a great year for us in Grand Marais!

Speaking of potential, the City had 5 openings in Committees for residents to serve on. These Committees do a great deal of work for the City creating and modifying policy and generally being the sounding board for the department supervisors.

Thank you to our incumbent committee members for stepping up and filling in 4 of those spots for another term, so we only have 1 to fill!

The time required by each of these committees varies by committee, but is usually limited to a few meetings a month. The City Committees have 3 year terms unless otherwise designated (due to someone stepping down in the middle of their term, etc).

Here is the opportunity that exists right now!

We have 1 Park Board position available. The Park Board acts as the policy and direction board for the our City Parks and works directly with the Parks Director to create strategic plans, policies, and plans for our City Park system! They draw heavily on the Park Master Plan and are in the midst of fulfilling some projects that have been identified in past years. If you would like to help the Park Board take Grand Marais' City Parks to the next level, please read the Park Master Plan and contact either myself or Dave Tersteeg at the Rec. Park Office to have a conversation about it!

Thank you very much and we look forward to working with you!

Can Grand Marais Stay Hot? A Response to the Twin Cities Business Article

On December 30th the Twin Cities Business Magazine did an article concerning whether the "Cool Cook County" can stay hot. The article is well researched and well written and highlights many of the pros we have going for us as well as some of the cons. I have included the link below if you would like to read the whole article.

TWIN CITIES MAGAZINE ARTICLE

Last year I did some predictions for the year 2015 and I think that we did pretty well fulfilling those. The prediction that we didn't do the best on was the "quiet optimism" prediction, but that was mainly because our title as "Coolest Small Town" removed the "quiet" part of that prediction!

I predicted that it would be a year of careful planning. I believe that this was fulfilled. The City Council considered many in and out of the box situations and problems and spent a great deal of time creating a plan for the future that will properly fund our departments and the necessary improvements to our infrastructure. These are all good things.

I predicted that 2015 would be a year of hard work and of fun. It was a busy year! There were more visitors in our town than in past years and you could tell! The Council spent many, many hours in our meetings discussing and hashing through issues to fully understand the perspectives put forward, none of that is easy, but we did manage to have some fun with it as well.


So, let's talk about 2016. I am using the article as fodder for these thoughts, so here we go:

2016 will be a year where arts and crafts continue to make strides forward as an economic driver in our community. I think that the article was right on this one. Through our community partnerships with the Art Colony, North House, and the Playhouse, our community will continue to deepen and and establish itself as an arts destination in the country. The City will do what it can to encourage the arts (and crafts) in our community to further this end.

2016 will be a year where tourism will expand its scope in our county. The article states that 80% of our economy is tourism related. I am not sure that is ever going to change, however, we do have the ability to develop winter season recreation more and more as well as eco-tourism opportunities as well as education tourism opportunities. There is much more we can do in these areas! The City will start looking into things we can do to be a better partner with our businesses as well as those non-profits that buoy up our economy. This will mostly be through policy and practice I believe...

2016 will be a year where local business will expand. That 80% figure is troubling to me. It is a way to make a living, but I am not sure if it is the best way for all of our residents. The article states that logging and fishing are "shadows of their pasts," but there is a legacy we can build on. We need local businesses to be founded based on well-thought-out plans and operated on solid best practices for our area so that they can be successful. We need to continue incentivizing local business development. The Council will continue looking for funding to assist in this as it is currently a big topic of conversation and the State and Federal levels.

2016 will be a year of community conversation. There is a lot to talk about. A Comprehensive Plan. A new boat launch plan with the DNR. A revisiting of the City Ordinance Code. What do we want our community to look like? How are we going to make that happen? What are the things that we do well? What are the things that we don't? These conversations are going to be challenging, but we are going to be starting them this year... at a community level. Small groups, large groups, surveys, public meetings, meals, etc. We will try many different things to get information about our community's thoughts so we can create a plan that can guide our City for many years to come. Our County's leaders are not just our elected officials, they are the people who stand up and speak. Please consider what you will say when the time comes to speak. Your contribution is important!

I think that I will stop there. I am interested in starting conversation about 2016, so let me know what you would like to see happen in 2016. This information will start to inform the City's direction, so it is very important!