First Council Meeting of 2019! 1-9-19

The City Council met at its full attendance for the first meeting of the year on the 9th of January. This meeting is largely logistics, but this meeting was characterized by a lively discussion of the Highway 61 Redesign Project, which the Council, the Creative Economy Collaborative, and the Highway 61 Steering Committee has just finished a review meeting for. More on that later...

If you would like to watch the video, you can find it HERE.

The meeting started with a public forum with no public speakers, so we closed the public forum and moved along.

The Consent Agenda was populated with the usual three items (Approve the Meeting Agenda, Approve the previous meeting minutes, and payment of bills). With the addition of a discussion of the Highway 61 Redesign Project to the end of the Agenda, the Consent Agenda was approved unanimously.

On to the logistics!

The Council started by taking a look at openings on the public boards and commissions that the City has. These groups are very important to the functioning of the City government as they provide valuable oversight of different areas of City business and give members of the community a direct voice to be a part of the decision making process. Tonight the Council considered:

One candidate for the Economic Development Authority Board-- Bev Green, who will be serving her second 6 year term.

One candidate for the Library Board-- Judie Johnson, who will serve her second 3 year term.

One candidate for the Park Board-- Jennifer Stoltz, who will serve her second three year term.

One candidate for the Public Utilities Commission-- Melissa Brown, who will serve her first three year term.

A motion was made to approve all of these appointments and it passed unanimously.

**Please make a note that we are still looking for a member of the Planning and Zoning Commission. If you are interested, please let me know or go to City Hall for an application. The P&Z deals with some very interesting subject matter; things that directly impact the use of property in our City.

Following that discussion we looked at the Council appointments, of which there were some vacancies that needed to be filled due to changes in the Council roster.
The following list shows the current list of Councilors and their assignments:

EDA Board--Anton Moody
Library Board-- Jay Arrowsmith DeCoux
ARDC Board-- Anton Moody
North Shore Management Board-- Kelly Swearingen
Park Board-- Craig Schulte
Personnel Committee-- Jay Arrowsmith DeCoux, Kelly Swearingen
Planning Commission-- Tim Kennedy
Public Utilities Commission-- Tim Kennedy
Public Utilities Board-- Jay Arrowsmith DeCoux, Anton Moody, Craig Schulte (This board meets to discuss disputes and complaints to the City Public Utilities)
Safety Committee-- Anton Moody (This group meets with employee reps and safety experts to assess safety and ensure OSHA requirements are met)

There are also some groups that the City has liaisons for. Those groups and their liaisons are:

Arrowhead Animal Rescue-- Anton Moody
North House Folk School-- Jay Arrowsmith DeCoux
Cook County Local Energy Project-- Jay Arrowsmith DeCoux
Active Living/Safe Routes to School-- Tim Kennedy
Northwoods Food Project-- Jay Arrowsmith DeCoux
YMCA-- Kelly Swearingen
Cook County Parks and Trails-- Tim Kennedy

There was a motion made to approve this slate of appointments and it passed unanimously!

More logistics!

The Council has the option each year of designating an official newspaper for City announcements and advertisements. This is to make sure that there is an official publication that someone could find if they wanted official information in regards to City goings-on, such as meeting minutes or announcements. There was a brief conversation about what it means to qualify as an "official" newspaper, but a motion was made to designate the Cook County News Herald as the City's official newspaper. There was also discussion about misgivings in the accuracy of the reporting from the News Herald and whether or not that reflects well on the City endorsing the paper in light of the tone of some of the reporting therein. Nevertheless, the News Herald was identified as still being an important conduit to many in the community and was approved as the official newspaper.

In order to disclose where the City deposits public funds to, well, the public, the Council needs to identify the official City depositories for the year. This designation is done every year. The Council approved the following depositories for City funds:

Grand Marais State Bank
North Shore Federal Credit Union
Security State Bank
LMC/4m Fund
RBC

Another piece of accounting that the City needs to do each year is to officially designate the mileage reimbursement for City employees and expensable travel. The IRS set that amount for 2019 at $0.58/mile, up 3.5 cents from 2018. The Council decided to go with the IRS's suggestion and set mileage reimbursement at that level.

The next item on the agenda was not a typical item, but something that came across as pretty timely though. It seems that the FCC changed its rules for the deployment of "small wireless facilities" or cellular boosting antennae in rights of way to limit the actions that cities can take against companies that want to erect poles with these cellular modules on them. At present, cities can request directly to the companies that the community would like them to have the "cellular facility" or antenna or module look a particular way to blend in or meet some aesthetic. This rule change says that after January 14th if a city doesn't have an approved policy on the books requiring certain aesthetic considerations, a city cannot ask the company to do so and cannot deny requests based on an aesthetic complaint. Sure, there are lots of other ways that a city can deny a right of way facility, but there are other rules in the FCC that make such an action harder to do than you'd think. With this consideration and considering all of the work that the community has put into designing and being very intentional with the Highway 61 corridor, the Council saw that it was important to take this action. There were a number of questions asked directly to the City Attorney, who gladly answered them, and the Council decided to adopt a template policy for "Small Wireless Facility Design Guidelines" that could be amended and revised in the future as technologies and applications of those technologies require. This one will be a slightly moving target though and the City Attorney will keep the Council up to date on any developments.

The final thing on the agenda was a lively discussion of the Highway 61 Redesign Project. As I mentioned above, the Council had spent a few hours this afternoon going over design considerations for the project and looking at proposals for the design of the amenities for the project. The project planning is nearing completion and the MN DOT is preparing to work on their engineering designs, so time is of the essence if there are any changes that need to be made. Councilor Kennedy reported that he was impressed with the process and thought that the Council should take some action to approve the design so the City could stay on top of the planning and also send the message to MN DOT that we are staying engaged in the process and won't broadside them with any changes at the last minute. I shared my perspective as well, which was that the Council, community, and stakeholders have come a very long way from the initial plan and I believe that the plan captures nearly all of the desires of the community. Any further modifications to the plan would not be an effective use of time as what the community told the City they wanted is almost all in this plan. At this point Councilor Swearingen added her perspective that she really likes a lot of the plan, but she believes there are a lot of things in the plan that aren't necessary and that the City doesn't need to do. She identified a few locations throughout the corridor where she was nonplussed with the design or the need for the items built there. She identified the 3rd Ave E and 3rd St "landing," which was created because there was a large space made available by the closing of 3rd St to Highway 61. This space called for a potential public art location, a wayfinding/bulletin board kiosk, a bike rack, and a number of different seating options. When asked, Councilor Schulte looked up the amount that was designated for that installation and it was estimated at +- $64,000. Seeing that this was not a completely necessary part of the corridor and that picnic benches on a green space would also be very nice, she made a motion to remove this installation and leave it as grassy space. In the discussion of this motion points were made that, a.) if this is removed now it is gone from these plans, but could be taken up at a later time, b.) there should still be conduit run for a light installation if it is deemed necessary to have a light at that space, c.) the stub of 3rd St will still be included in the plan to allow for a few parking places for area businesses. This motion drew a significant amount of discussion, but in the end passed, saving the project that estimated $64,000 at the expense of the 3rd and 3rd landing. Following Councilor Swearingen, Councilor Schulte spoke about his experience with the process thus far and reported that many business owners on the corridor are very nervous and unhappy about how the process has played out. He reported that many he spoke to feel that there is very poor communication (little to no communication) coming from MN DOT pertaining to property leases for construction, property purchases for right of way, or significant impacts on their properties, including parking, sign location, and entries. He spoke at length of his experience working with MN DOT and the Council saw that it will be necessary to reach out again to these property owners and then advocate their concerns directly to the project manager with MN DOT so the property owners can get an update on where items are and when they can expect to hear about the developments pertaining to the project. The conversation was very thorough and covered many bases, so, to get the full picture of what was discussed, you can watch the meeting video, starting at 56:30.

Following that discussion we had exhausted our topics and moved on to Council and Staff Reports:

Councilor Moody reported that there has been some snowfall this winter and that the Council and County Highway Department should be working on Snow Emergency parking. Administrator Roth reported that the County Highway Department will be attending a future meeting of the Council to bring a draft ordinance for this, which will have some mechanics that the Council and County will have to work out. He also mentioned that the letters concerning the ordinance enforcement for parked RVs have drawn questions and desires some clarification on this. He updated the Council on the sale of another EDA lot to the vet clinic for expansion. The Superior National golf course met its round goal despite a bad October. The EDA housing that has been built has been sold and the second batch of houses are on the market. The Lutsen apartment project is in process with three of the four buildings in place with finishing ongoing with one of the buildings becoming available in each of the next three months. He finished up reporting that the EDA brought in around $1.3 million in grant funding to benefit

Councilor Schulte did not have any reports other than bringing up the conversations with business owners concerning the Hwy 61 Project.

Councilor Kennedy reaffirmed the desire to have a snow emergency parking ordinance.

Councilor Swearingen has a YMCA finance meeting next week. The Golf Course Task Force met and had good conversations about potential actions to improve the course. There are 6 candidates for the superintendent position and interviews will happen in January. She stressed the importance of City strategic planning and its results (i.e. ordinance revision etc). She also mentioned concerns for digging out the fire hydrants around town and ask that if you have one in your area, any help you can give us with this would be much appreciated. The City staff are working on it, but have been pretty busy...

I reported on an interview I did with the City Pages in regards to the award that Cook County received saying that it is the best place to live in the state. I didn't take the steam out of the conversation, but I did say it pretty clearly that there are many challenges to living up here as well. Other than that I reported that the CEC (Creative Economy Collaborative) met to formalize its bylaws and will be bring that information to the Council for considerations in the upcoming months.

Administrator Roth is looking for dates for strategic planning, preferably in February. The Council will be brainstorming for dates and topics.