City Council Worksession April 5th Noon

The City Council, following a conversation at our meeting on the 30th of March, set the date of Tuesday the 5th at noon as an opportunity to have the conversation formally about whether or not the City Hall Building should continue its existence in the downtown area or if it should/could be relocated to the newly acquired Tomteboda property at the top of the hill.


We started the meeting with a short agenda of information and conversation. It went as follows:

1. Discussion of Council Priority Project Timeframe--Basically a summary of the projects that the Council has taken on in the past year, which came down to a pretty expansive list of things that we have laid down some great foundations for. Yes, there has been a lot of conversation and not a lot of action, but sometimes there is a lot that needs to be said. Topics that came up were: the evaluation of City Hall, Strategic Planning with Department Heads, Public Restroom design review and information gathering (how many people actually use the public restrooms?), reviewed the Public Works Facility (PWF) designs for the Business Development Park and its budget of $3.7 million, conducted a needs assessment for the City Hall offices, conducted a needs assessment for the Liquor Store, identified and purchased a site for the PWF complete with environmental assessments, worked with the DNR to get our new boat launch plan into legislative bonding process, identified over $25,000 in funding for the City to do its Comprehensive Planning Process and organizations that will assist us, created plans for site prep on the Tomteboda property, began designing the PWF and considered other ideas for construction (other than architectural design), received a $100,000 grant from IRRRB for our PWF, continued gathering information about our Liquor Store needs and the benefits from improvements, continued to lay down Comprehensive Planning process groundwork, and a number of other things that I have abbreviated out of the list.

*This was mentioned for perspective and to rehash what has already been decided so that we didn't have to spend a lot of time going over things that we already took care of...


2. PWF Planning Update-- We were given a few designs that were worked up with our architect, LHB Inc. We also had our Streets Department Head present to talk through the design and point out the flaws and less than ideal parts to the designs. It was very helpful and we decided to take a look at making the building slightly bigger with a simpler design to try and cut costs, but be able to house all of the City's assets comfortably and safely. One of the examples of possible cost cutting measures included pricing out a potential industrial Morton-style building for the facility that would potentially be significantly cheaper than a concrete slab building as is being designed. There are pros and cons to each of course, and the Council will be considering those things when bids are received back from both the architects and the companies we will contact for estimates for such a building.


3. Discussion of Pros and Cons of future location of City Hall, Liquor Store, and Public Restrooms
This was the meat of the conversation. We started by looking at each of the topics separately:

a.) bathrooms: should they be downtown? The answer was a resounding yes, with the addition that there should probably be a few locations of public restrooms around.

b.) Liquor Store: Should it be downtown? The majority vocally spoke yes, but there was a little conversation by a few Councilors that said that the City should keep everything together to save costs, and that could mean relocating the Liquor Store as well... After going around and around for a few minutes it became clear that the majority of the Council felt strongly that the Liquor Store needs to remain in its prime downtown location, which came to nearly unanimous agreement.

Well, that went well! Now let's get to the tricky one!

c.) City Hall: Should it be downtown? There was significant conversation about the social value of having the City Hall downtown, but there was also conversation about the financial value of the location of City Hall and the fact that the business that City Hall does can be done anywhere as long as it is accessible to the citizens of our community. It was pointed out that moving the location out of downtown would free up more prime taxable property for much needed business and office space as well as increase the accessibility in the summer for people who don't like to go into the downtown hub-bub to pay their bills. A Con was the fact that the Senior Center is right downtown as well and that it has been a great service to our community to have those two institutions very close to each other.

A Pro for the downtown location was that it makes sense for the City to control that land so that it can direct development in that location for the Liquor Store and potential storefronts and office space that the City could draw rental monies from, in essence subsidizing the construction of new space and creating more income for the City (leased properties, even if they are owned by the City, are still applicable to property taxes).

A Pro for building up the hill is that it would doubtlessly be cheaper and less disruptive than a complete City Hall renovation happening in the downtown area. The City could construct an office complex to house the City's Administration, the offices for Department Heads (because it would be close to the PWF), and potentially offices and meeting spaces for the other semi-governmental organizations that currently use City Hall space (EDA, AEOA, SBDA, Chamber, and formerly VCC).

The conversation pertaining to the downtown location being easier for people to pay their bills at was an interesting one as well because the Public Utilities are working on automatic meter reading and the automating of charges/payments for PUC services, so that would decrease significantly the need to drop off checks etc at City Hall. That service STILL needs to be available though, but it was observed that the Arrowhead Transit buses could drop people off at City Hall just as it does at the Senior Center.

The Property Tax conversation came up several times and is one that the City is taking very seriously. Upon purchasing the Tomteboda property there was some criticism of the Council's decision to take another property off of the tax rolls and I want to be clear that it isn't the City's design to do this. It is to create financially prudent strategies for the City. The Tomteboda property will only be partly utilized by the Public Works Facility (PWF), so the original conversation was to stump in services to locations on the highway and then potentially sell those off to encourage business development on the top of the hill, which would create a much less expensive situation for that property and would effectively put the remaining part of the property on the tax rolls more quickly than the entire parcel would have been (of course this is speculation, but it is the view of most of the Council that selling a few smaller, affordable lots for development would happen faster than trying to sell the entire parcel).

In the instance that the Council decides that City Hall should move up the hill, then there would be less developable land on that parcel to sell, but the Council thinks that there would still be surplus land that could be sold and developed into retail space, or developed into a trail-side park for people enjoying the Gitchi-Gammi Trail.

If City Hall were to move, then the City would likely renovate the Liquor Store to take up the space it should to be most successful downtown and then sell the remaining part of that lot with the understanding that there would remain parking accessible to the public and that public restrooms would be provided.

*It is important to note that these details have NOT been set and that this is ONLY CONVERSATION that has been taking place at present.

No matter the decision, the Council will only move forward within the accepted debt load the City has been operating under (which means that we will retain our great credit rating and thus keep our debt payments low) and decisions that make sound financial sense for the City, either producing income for the City through the sale of property back to private hands and the resultant property tax income, or through lease agreements and the associated property tax income.


As the conversation quieted down a straw poll was taken to see how many people were interested in either option for City Hall.
As I stated before, everyone agreed that restrooms need to be downtown and that they should be well marked and advertised, everyone eventually agreed that the Liquor Store should remain downtown in order to guarantee its successful operation, and 3.5 thought that City Hall should move up to the top of the hill with 1.5 saying it should stay downtown...

Who is the half person then?  Well, I am. I am torn because although I can't disagree with the fact that it would be cheaper and easier to get what we want for office space up at the Tomteboba property, I believe that there is a great deal of value of having the City Hall in the City Center, but I also identify that the downtown area is the best place for private business and shouldn't we be encouraging that kind of development by making more property available? Although I can see that a city-leased property downtown would be a likely more effective means of making affordable leased space available downtown...

See what I mean??? It is a hard conversation.

The decision is NOT made at this point although the straw poll indicated that we need to gather information for relocating the City Hall offices and then see what the comparisons may be for the different options.

YOU are important in this conversation. What do YOU think? Where should the City Hall be?

Please let me know so that we can have a sense of what the community thinks.