City Council Meeting July 27 2016

The Grand Marais City Council gathered for another meeting last night to cover quite a lot of ground again. One difference about this meeting, apart from Councilor Kennedy's absence to attend a Greater Minnesota Parks and Trails meeting, was that we were slightly reorganized and were speaking into microphones as part of our new offering of live streaming of the Council meetings as well as their archival on Youtube. Thank you Good Measure Media for getting it all set up and for providing a professional service for us! Check out the video and let us know what you think!


We started with the Public Forum, but no members of the public were there to speak so we moved right along to the Consent Agenda, which included the usual three items (Approve Agenda, Approve Previous Meeting Minutes, Pay Bills).


Next Howard Hedstrom and Mary Somnis representing the Cook County Grand Marais Economic Development Authority spoke asking the City to consider being a partner with the County and EDA in supporting the EDA's proposed housing development in the City in conjunction with OneRoof Housing of Duluth. OneRoof is a housing land trust model developer that tries to get the biggest bang for the buck out of housing developments in rural areas. The ask from the EDA representatives is that the City be a partner with the other entities in raising the necessary local match funding for the project, which would come to a maximum of  $25,000/unit or $175,000 total.
**The City, County, and EDA had a meeting on Tuesday afternoon to work on hashing this out and got to a point of majority consensus in the conversation that the amount asked for was not unreasonable and that there are many options open to these organizations to find that money.
With this in mind, the City voted to support this project and will begin looking for options for funding that will assist in meeting that obligation. The County and EDA will be doing the same.


Every year we have a visitor come from the Coatition of Greater Minnesota Cities (CGMC), a lobbying group composed of 88 outstate MN cities that Grand Marais is a member of. This representative, Bradley Peterson, came and gave us an update of the State Legislative Session and what we should be looking forward to in the future. He touted an increase in Local Government Aid (LGA) to small cities and the hope that it will continue to increase, he spoke about a Commercial/Industrial property tax exemption that CGMC is working on, he spoke about the continued gridlock in the State Legislature and how that is impacting things on local levels. If you are interested in finding out more about these issues, or what CGMC is up to, please check out their website.

The next thing that we had on the agenda was a discussion/update on the Public Works Facility project. At our last meeting we spent some time weighing the pros and cons of two different models for constructing the building, General Contracting or Construction Manager at Risk. These two models have pros and cons, but the Council, after some continued conversation and perspective from all of the members, voted to move forward with a Construction Manager at Risk model, which would give the City a more secure concept of the total cost of the project. It is in essence paying a little bit more for a guarantee that you are going to get the project for the agreed upon price. The Council considered the costs of other projects that have been built in recent history in our area and it seemed that most of them came in over budget due to our location and geographical challenges, so in order to insulate the City from unnecessary expense, we decided to let the Construction Managers take on that risk in exchange for paying a little more for that guarantee.
*If this doesn't make sense, let me know. I have it down in my head pretty well, but sometimes that doesn't translate well...


Next we took a look at the proposed budget timeline/calendar, which has several of the key items that need to be accomplished in order for us to be able to pass our yearly budget in line with statute and so that we can do it well. Last week Financial Director Dunsmoor provided 6 month year to date summaries to the Department Heads for their analysis and this week the Council was supposed to go over Council priorities, goals, and to arrange meeting times to continue the discussion.

At the beginning of this discussion, Administrator Roth mentioned that the Council is pretty much already maxed out on projects for 2017 and that this will already be reflected in the 2017 budget requests from the Department Heads, so there probably wasn't too much to talk about there. Councilor Moody interjected a quick question about whether or not 2017 would be the year that we built more public restrooms around town to meet the need so passionately portrayed by downtown business owners. This set off a long conversation of options and why it hasn't been done yet and a few suggestions for ways that we could address this need and what the need was in the first place. This was all good to hear, but in the end I asked the Council if this is something that we should get done in 2017 understanding that if we commit to it we would then have to come up with some money to make it happen. It was a strong consensus on the Council that something has to be done and there was a seeming leaning toward having a few locations throughout the City to help take the burden off of local businesses. There was also a strong perspective to not spend $450,000 on public restrooms (using an amount spent on the recent reconstruction of a bath-house at the Rec. Park.
We left the conversation at that, understanding that at the next meeting we will look at the projects that we have already committed to and will talk about other options for public restrooms that are cost effective other than porta-potties. If you have any ideas, let us know!


At a previous meeting the Council voted to seek assistance with our Comprehensive Planning process from the IRRRB. The City was awarded the maximum amount for our process, $20,000, and needed to sign the contract to release the funds to the City. There was a vote and it unanimously passed to sign the contract and accept the funding.


Let's see, then it was time for the Council Reports. Due to our changed seating, Councilor Mills started:

Councilor Mills-- The Park Board has a vacancy that they are looking to fill. The position will be posted soon, but if you are interested, please go to the City Hall and ask for an application!
He also reported that the gravel on Creechville Road was cleaned up very quickly, but asked if there was any other work done or in the planning stages. Administrator Roth informed us that he is in communication with the County about the clogged culvert on that road and is looking into what kind of maintenance is necessary to make that ditch safe again and to stop the erosion of the road. More to come on that in the future!

Councilor Moody-- The Cook County Grand marais EDA has a City Position Open. They need someone to start immediately. There have been a few application packets taken, but none have come back in yet. This position will be posted as well, but if you are interested in serving on the EDA board, please stop by City Hall to pick up a packet. Councilor Moody spoke of how rewarding he found the work and how important it is to the community.
He also reported that the EDA Housing Project work has been good. There is a lot of inertia building around it and hopes it will come together so that groundbreaking will happen next spring. Also, another Business Park Lot sold! There will likely be 3 groundbreakings this year on previously sold properties there.
At our meeting on Tuesday one option for paying the local commitment for the OneRoof program ($175,000; see above) was to use the money banked from the sale of Business Park lots. In order to weigh this accurately, the Council had Administrator Roth look into it and give us the balance of that account as well as the balance of the levy on the business park. After looking at the numbers it became clear that using this money for any use other than servicing the levy debt would be imprudent. Councilor Moody noticed that the City didn't receive a payment from the County in 2013 to help pay the debt service and wondered what was up with that. Administrator Roth didn't have a solid answer for that question, but it sounded like it wasn't really worth looking into at this time.

Councilor Benson-- Noted that the Housing conversation that we just had and all housing conversations in the future need to be viewed not just as a City concern, but as a wider County concern due to our location and the nature of our economies up here. She also asked what the status of rebuilding City Hall and the Liquor Store is. Truth be told, not a lot has been done on this because there are so many other projects happening, but they are important items that we will keep on our list.

I had a bunch of things:
There was question again of whether or not the curb cut between Joy and Company and the Gunflint Mercantile should be dedicated as parking now that the lot it is in front of is being developed. The answer came mainly as another question for the property owners that is abutts, so that question will be asked before any changes are made.
I recently received an invitation for the City to apply with the University of MN as a "resilient community" which would basically mean that the City would partner with the University of MN to get graduate student real life assistance in trying to accomplish projects that would make us a healthier/stronger community. I proposed that we could use this to try and get a solid stormwater plan for the City, but there are many other directions it could go... There wasn't much conversation on this, but it seemed that there was interest in looking at it a little more closely, so we will do that for next meeting.
A few members of the Public Works Commission provided me with information pertaining to the potential installation of a SolarWall solar heating unit on the Public Works Facility when it is built. This technology would increase the build cost of the building, but could potentially save us a LOT of money for heating in the winter. I will gather more information on this to present and the information has been sent along to our architect.
Last week I made a proclamation. I posted it here on the blog, but it was for "Go to the Theatre Months" to honor the Grand Marais Playhouse's 45th season. Head out and see either of the shows. I hear that they are great!
I also received some information from the Department of Health's Cean Water Fund, whcih could be potential money to do improvements on the municipal parking lot as well as to help design a stormeater treatment plan. More information to come, but again, the Council seemed interested.
The Library Board had a meeting to discuss their budget, which the City approved last meeting, and upcoming programming, which is going to be great! Stay put!
Last week I was invited to go down to the Twin Cities and participate in MPR's Policy and a Pint event where they had a panel of young elected officials discuss their experiences and challenges in their service. It was a lot of fun and very informative to hear how others deal with their positions!
Just a few days ago we received at City Hall a proposal from a few concerned citizens for a thorough renovation of the municipal public restrooms attached to City Hall that would cost roughly $12,000. This isn't a lot of money, but the Council tried to pull up the reason it didn't get completely renovated last year as well as asking whether it was a good idea to spend ANY monty on our building because it is going to start falling apart more than it already is. We thanked these ladies for their assistance and will take it into consideration as we cross that bridge.

That was everything. As always, let me know if you have any questions.