City Council Meeting 10-26-2017

It was a dark and windy night...

Fall is almost beyond us and the sun is now setting long before our meeting time, but that doesn't stop us from getting down to work!

Our meeting started at 6:32pm with all present but for Councilor Kennedy and Councilor Moody, who are out of town for other meetings.

I opened up the Public Comment period then and with no one present that was not on the agenda, the Public Comment period was closed.

We then took up the Consent Agenda, which was populated with the usual three items: this meeting's agenda, the previous meeting's minutes, and the City's bills from the past two weeks. There wasn't much conversation about this and thus it passed unanimously.

Next, Mary Somnis from the Cook County/Grand Marais EDA came to speak with the Council regarding the proposal they received from Spectrum Health in response to their Request for Proposal concerning the Elder Care Services Study that was completed by the Cook County/Grand Marais EDA earlier this year. Spectrum Health was the only company that responded to the RFP. They are an elder care health care provider with a number of other facilities across Northern MN, such as Ely, Babbitt, Orr, Two Harbors, Virginia, Aurora, and several others. She came to let us know that some representatives from Spectrum would be visiting Grand Marais in the upcoming days and wanted to make sure that the City would be able to meet with them and talk about some of the available plots of land where they could develop their $5.5 million building.

There were a number of questions asked about how Spectrum will be working with the existing elder care providers to make sure that the resources that we have already won't be endangered by this new development. Somnis reassured the Council that Spectrum has already started scheduling meetings with some of the heads of these providers to make sure that coordination would go as cleanly as possible, should the project move forward.

Somnis also reported that Spectrum is now doing their due diligence to make sure that a project in response to the EDA's RFP would be successful according to their models. There wasn't anything for the City to respond to, but we will be staying involved in the process...


The Council then moved on to the agenda item to discuss the interviews that were performed with the Construction Manager companies that answered our call for proposals to perform the work on the construction of the Public Works Facility. We had two companies respond: McGough Construction and Kraus Anderson Construction. Since Councilor Kennedy and Councilor Moody were not in attendance the Council decided that we should wait to have the conversation until all Councilors were in attendance. This is a really big decision and we have two great choices to choose from. Both companies have extensive experience and incredible reputations. Kraus Anderson has done a great deal of work in the area and McGough is just starting expanding into the area and is very eager to get a project up here.  Councilors Kennedy, Benson, and myself were present at the interviews.

The next thing on the agenda was a conversation regarding whether or not the City Council should have a Councilor (or several) go through the state's training on how to be a Local Board of Appeal and Equalization. This is basically a long way of saying that the Council would then serve as the organization that hears appeals to the valuation of property within the City... i.e. if you feel that your property is valued at a much higher value than it actually is, or vice versa, you can appeal this valuation and that appeal right now is heard directly by the County Assessor's Office. The new County Assessor Todd Smith asked if the City would be interested in being the Local Board of Appeal and Equalization because he has found, historically, that people feel more comfortable and are often more successful with their appeals if they are heard by their local elected officials rather than the County staff. The Council took no action on this because we wanted to get some more information to see what this would all entail and to see who on the board would be willing to take the training, which is free and provided by the State.


Cook County Soil and Water made a request to the City to match equally a grant for stormwater planning for the City. This grant is a $22,750 grant that the City would have to match $11,375 to the County's $11,375 to result in a total value of $45,000, which could be leveraged to match a separate grant for $25,000, resulting in a grand total of $70,500 for the City's investment of $11,375. This money could be used to address stormwater concerns as a part of the Hwy 61 redesign and hopefully to take mitigation action for the municipal parking lot.

There was another option put forward by Soil and Water that would result in a much larger pot of money to use for this process; this process would require a $25,000 investment by the City, but that could result in a combined total of almost $190,000, which could be used for stormwater planning and implementation of a plan.

Both of these options are a pretty good deal for the City and the City should take a look at its stormwater plan, which was done in 2001... before the municipal parking lot was paved (2004) and before there were other significant changes in paved surface in the City. This would be essential in creating tangible solutions to our stormwater problems now and to prevent new problems from happening in the future.

On to Council Reports!

Councilor Mills--
Broadband Commission met and accomplished just about all of its charge, but what hasn't been accomplished has been how to promote or encourage the attraction of tech jobs to the area to take advantage of the broadband resources here. The conversation was to transition this effort over to the EDA, which it sees is more in their wheelhouse. The other thing was to encourage e-government services to be incorporated or to continue to be incorporated into County and City governments.

Y Council-- Strat planning dealing with issues facing the Y and community

He heard a citizen concern regarding crossing the highway at 1st Ave W commenting that the flags DO assist in that crossing location, but people still are traveling very fast through there. This very conversation has been heard a number of times in the Hwy 61 redesign process and will hopefully be addressed in that process. He made a request to see if the County would put its speed sign down there to reinforce the speed limit.

Comments on the Spectrum Health project potentially being located at the Tomteboda site... The Council thought that this was a good idea to at least show them this property...

I reported on a slew of meetings that I went to, many of which address significant problems in our area:
-I went to a meeting of several interested parties (Moving Matters, the EDA, community members) to discuss the possibility or to create a plan for a park and walk or park and bike system to provide some parking relief for the downtown area and Highway 61 area during the 2019 Hwy 61 Redesign. The purpose of this meeting was to see if there were any places that we could direct people to park before the construction began so we could start to create a culture of walking before the redesign, thus lowering the impact of the construction on our downtown businesses and on our guests. There was a conversation about creating mini parks at parking spots to give people who choose to park off of the highway a place to sit and rest or to wait for an Arrowhead Transit bus, etc. Very early conversation on this. Ideas are much appreciated!

I also attended a planning meeting to prepare for the November 17th meeting in Beaver Bay to discuss the sex trafficking and exploitation of our young people in the Arrowhead. A group of interested people including caregivers, elected officials, community activists, and community members sat down and discussed what the problem is, where it is in our community, why it is there, and potentially what we can do about it. This meeting will serve us well as we will bring this information to the meeting on the 17th and thus don't have to do all of that work at that meeting where we will have St. Louis County, Lake County, and Cook County present.

Sex trafficking is something that we don't talk about much because we don't usually believe that it is happening in our community. Sexual exploitation is a different matter. This is the exchange of sexual activities for anything of value. A lot of times this is where someone exchanges sex for food, security, clothing, luxuries, transportation, or drugs. Minnesota has a Safe Harbor Law now, which says that people who are fleeing this kind of situation cannot be prosecuted for things that they have done that broke the law. They are seen as a victim as long as they can prove that they were being forced into that behavior. It is an icky subject and something that we don't like talking about, but it is very important for us to address this as a community!

That same day I met with Barbara Battiste from the MN Office for the Economic Status of Women.  She came to our area to conduct a listening session on the challenges and situation that women in our area face economically. The meeting was exceptional, largely because we have a lot of exceptional women in our community. The meeting was attended by 22 people, from young single women to young women with children to middle aged women whose children are in school to women whose children are out of the house and independent. The conversation covered a lot of ground from the troubles that have been faced with childcare to the housing pinch, which hits single women really hard, to the trouble that women have getting jobs that pay them a living wage compared to men, who can get construction and trade jobs that pay a higher wage more easily than women. There were good things too. We have good resources available for higher education and we have a strong community of incredible female businesspeople that are willing to help other women get settled into business, etc.
The conversation has been rippling through my days and I have been staying in touch with Ms. Battiste so that she knows that we are still interested in state actions on some of these topics.

I had my last League of MN Cities Policy meeting also, which resulted in the 2017 LMC Policy Proposals. These are the official stance of the League of MN Cities and will be brought to the legislature for consideration for the coming legislative session. There is a LOT of stuff in there, but there are a few things that will have significant impact on our area potentially. One is the Workforce Readiness Policy, Workforce Housing, and the Public Infrastructure Policy. I served on the policy committees for the Improving Local Economies and Improving Fiscal Futures Policy Boards.

The Library Board met and discussed plans for its strategic planning activities for next year. This is an important part of making sure that the Library functions well and has a clear vision for what its purpose is in the community.
The Board also voted to authorize Director Harsin to purchase a new microfilm reader for the library because the existing unit has been non-functional for some time and that means that there is virtually no place in the county where people can read microfilm... which is how all of the records of the Cook County newspapers are stored for public use along with many other documents. There was conversation about digitizing the collection of microfilms, but it was said that would cost $50,000 or more, which is an amount that the Library isn't willing to pay at this point. There will likely be other opportunities to have the collection digitized into the future for much less money.
The Board had a conversation about how they would be involved in the hiring process of the new Assistant Library Director, for which the application period has just closed. We received a number of very qualified applicants it sounds and the hiring process will begin shortly.
Succession planning was also a conversation. The Library Board will have two members stepping down this year, Sally Berg and Audrey Stattleman, who have completed their 2 three year terms. Thus, the Board is looking for one City and one County representative who would love to help us insure that our Library stays vibrant and effective for our community.

I also attended the final meeting of the group meeting to work on improving and empowering the local creative economy. This group was very active in assessing the unique nature of our area and brainstorming how this area can grow to be a national arts destination without losing its local flavor and small town feel. A challenging charge, but I believe that they did a pretty good job. I will try and get an electronic version to share with you all. This information is going to be passed on to the Council in the future and the Steering Committee for the Grand Marais Visioning Process.

I also attended a two hour emergency preparedness training, which was training for how I can be a better Public Information Officer (PIO) in the case of an emergency. This is basically saying that if something bad happens I have to be the person to tell the media what's going on and this was a training to make sure that I don't say something that confuses the public or that makes things seem worse than it really is. It was very useful... but I hope that I don't have to ever use it!

Grand Marais Community Visioning Process did two trainings this past week to get community members ready to actually perform some information gathering events to support the process. One training was done at 2:30pm at the Courthouse and then the trained people tried out their skills on employees at the Courthouse. They then took their pop-up information gathering setup to the YMCA to gather information there. The second training was at 6:30pm at City Hall. Over 25 people participated in the training!
The next day, Wednesday, I took part in an information gathering event at the Coop and there was another one at the YMCA. We will be looking at doing more of these events across the City to continue gathering information.
Another one is happening this Friday. Stay tuned for more events! We still have a question as to how we get the people who don't usually participate. We will work on getting someone at the Community Connect event on Saturday, which is an event that highlights different services and assistances that are available in our area.

Hwy 61 Update: We hired a person to make sure that the public engagement for the redesign is where it needs to be and that we are still included completely in the pre-design engineering so that our business people have an opportunity to give feedback to the design. The City will then hold a few meetings as well and will issue comments to the design after that process is completed. Administrator Roth also reported that the work thus far on behalf of MN DOT seems to take into consideration the work that was done in our planning process.

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