The Final Council Meeting of 2016: 12/28/16

Last night the City Council met again to complete the work of the year. The meeting was called to order at 6:30pm with myself, Councilor Moody, Councilor Benson, and Finance Director Dunsmoor in attendance, which is enough for a quorum and for getting work done.

I opened the Public Forum, but no one was in attendance, so I closed the forum and we moved on to the Consent Agenda.

The Consent Agenda had the usual three items on it (Approve the Agenda, approve the previous meeting minutes, and approving the bills). It passed without any further discussion.

Then we moved on to the approval of the final City tax levy, which was reduced slightly from the previous number that was proposed due to a deduction in the cost of heating fuel for City Hall.

The final City levy was set at $700,560.00 for the General Operations of the City and an additional $209,433.88 for Debt Service payments on past City projects, for a grand total of $909,993.88, an increase in the general levy of 4.38%.

The Council saw these numbers as sound and proceeded to approve the budget as proposed. It passed unanimously.


The next item on the agenda was the the adjustment of the salaries for our Non-Union employees. The City negotiates with the AFSCME Union (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) roughly every two years to negotiate the wages and benefits of all Union City employees, but not all of our City employees are Union workers. Our department heads are not Union workers because of the nature of their job supervising other Union workers. Therefore, when we negotiate the wage increases for our Union employees that has no effect on the pay for our Department Heads. It is common practice, though to offer the same increases to Department Heads. The suggestion was made to offer this same increase of 2% to all Department Heads. Councilor Benson asked a very good question, which was, "What does the City perform for performance evaluations?" This is a question that has been asked several times since I was elected in 2014 and it is just as valid today as it was then. It is very important for the City to be able to commend the good work that has been done by its employees and also to suggest ways to improve or streamline the performance of each of the Departments. With this conversation, the motion was made to approve the 2% increase of the non-union employees with the expectation that in 2017 the Council will investigate and work to incorporate a means of performance evaluation for our Department Heads, and eventually all City employees.

Next on the agenda was the second reading of Ordinance 2016-15, which is the revision to the City's ordinance governing non-conforming uses of properties. Since Councilor Benson was not able to be at our last meeting where we had the first reading, she asked for a summary of the changes to make sure that her reading of the new language was accurate. The summary provided was basically that the new language was written to apply generally and theoretically to as many non-conforming situations as possible, whereas the previous ordinance language seemed to identify and deal with specific concerns that were raised and was not effective in giving clear direction to either the Planning and Zoning Commission or to community members with non-conforming uses on their properties.
The new ordinance language passed unanimously and thus was adopted.

There was no addtional business at this meeting, so we moved on to Council/Staff Updates:

It has been a few quiet weeks and Councilors Moody and Benson stated that their meetings were either rescheduled or simply not scheduled over the holiday season.

I reported on a few meetings that I attended: The Active Living Group had a meeting where they took a look at a model for assisting in directing policy making to be more effective. It is called Health and Equity in All Policies and it is nicknamed HEAP. This method is used to make sure that all policy changes or additions are in line with some guidelines approved by the community to ensure that they promote improvements in the general health of the community, promote equity among all residents, and is uniformly across all policy decisions. The concept of equity is roughly and very generally explained via the image to the right... This isn't exactly how it would play out in our City policy work, but it is a useful illustration.

I also attended a meeting of the Cook County Local Energy Project, who are continuing to work on Residential Energy Efficiency Project (REEP) energy audits for people in the community even though the funding for that project has been fully used. They are hoping to secure continuing funding to be able to offer those energy audits at a discounted price again next year. The audits provide homeowners with concrete suggestions, based on the observed and tested performance of their homes, of ways that they could improve the efficiency of their homes. It is a very useful tool to decrease your heating and cooling expenses as well as other utility expenses. CCLEP will also be offering the builder's workshop in February again, which will focus on Thermal Heat Pump Technology, Passive Building Techniques, and Thermal Enclosures & Airtightness, all information that is very useful to builders in our area. It also counts toward continuing education requirements for contractors... so sign up soon!

The final meeting that I reported on was a set of meetings actually that had to do with how we can create a more walkable environment in Grand Marais. This is especially poignant now after all of the terrible weather we have had. There were 2 meetings that each had about 30 people in attendance to brainstorm ideas that we can hopefully have implemented here in town to improve the safety and general experience of walking around Grand Marais. This was seen as a priority due to the fact that Hwy 61 will be all torn up in 2019! The clips for the meetings are included below.
https://youtu.be/mekVEtkU1Qo

https://youtu.be/DK9OIQC78mc

The final update was on the Comprehensive Planning/Visioning Process. The Steering Committee has had several very good meetings and have gotten the word out to groups that we normally don't hear from and I have been pursuing getting out to the Senior Center to hear the thoughts of those folks as well as connecting with Harbor View residents. If you can think of any other interesting ways to get the word out, please let me know and I will do what I can to make it happen if possible!

That was all for last night! I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and please be safe New Year's Eve! Let's start 2017 out strong and positive!

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